Discussion Warhammer Wild West as an alternative setting? Brainstorming

Here is a six minute video on the science of Badlands.



Now we need to decide the SCIENCE! of Badlands. "SCIENCE!" at least in Scalenex parlance for when a fantasy world has "facts" that fly in the face of the real world.

Maybe the Badlands marks spots where the Old Ones took their fingers to the land and carved up the land. Maybe the mark the spots where ancient gods died.

Do Badlands in Westhammer have unique magical properties? Is there gold or other treasure there?

Whether formed by science or SCIENCE!, Westhammer Badlands are a great place for monsters to hang out.

When the Rule of Realism and the Rule of Cool come into conflict, Westhammer should lean towards the Rule of Cool.

Keep in mind, that whether created by science or SCIENCE! that the Badlands don't have a lot of food and water, so while there could be a sleeping undead hoard in a Badlands canyon or pack of squigs bouncing around, there probably shouldn't be a secret city of 100,000 skaven or any other group that would require a lot of food and water.

Anyway, lets brainstorm thought on how to make the Badlands of Westhammer come alive with reasons to write short stories about them and reasons to explain why a miniature collector would want to make Badlands theme terrain and have competing teams fight over MacGuffins in there.

 

I don't know how many of you guys peruse the Westhammer Wiki, but has it recently become less easy to read.

It used to have orange-ish letters on a brown background. Now it's light brown letters on a medium brown background, at least for me. I don't know what triggered or if this affects the rest of you.

I'll try to fix this, this is hampering my attempt to showcase an article on Lordroid Goldmann's personal luxury train, the Steel Clydesdale.

 

I did some poking, apparently it's a problem on World Anvil's end, not our end. And it is endemic to the "Wild Wild Steam" default setting. They are working on fixing this bug, but in the mean time, I stopped using "Wild Wild Steam" and switched to "Opulent" and it seems to be both thematic and readable.

 

Much to my surprise, I thought Jackalopes were a Native American myth. They were created as a joke by some American taxidermists in the 1930s. Note, they never claimed the jackalope was real, they were attempting to make a joke, not a scam.

There is also a tumor that rabbits can get that sort of looks like antlers from the right angle.

But anyway, how should jackalopes fit in Westhammer? Obviously for comedic effect but the best jokes are well crafted and carefully implemented.

They could be a creature that can be deployed on the table top, they could be a random event or a terrain feature on the table top. Such as jackalope infestation being a possible game mechanic of a randomized magical terrain feature.

In fluff, they could be a repeating gag or a source of omen. Or they could be a deus machina.

I once put in an off hand joke that goblins are terrified of jackalopes, but I I left it as a noodle incident. Maybe it's funnier if it is never explained and remains a noodle incident.

 

Anyway, long story short. I'm working on writing prompts for a World Anvil event, mostly for Scarterra but a little bit for Westhammer.

I am still working on the prompt "A travel log or other document relating to discovery," and I immediately thought, maybe Westhammer could use an analogy to the Louisiana Purchase.

A lot of you guys are in Europe, so I don't know what you guys have heard of the Louisiana Purchase, but it's something American history classes make a big deal out.

In 1803, Napoleon sold all of France's stake in North America to the United States of America, who then had Thomas Jefferson as president. Effectively this was the middle third of the modern United States.

Thomas Jefferson wanted to buy New Orleans for $3 million dollars (or maybe $7 million I don't remember) and Napoleon wanted to sell the entire French territory for fifteen million dollars and Monroe who was negotiating on behalf of Jefferson thought that was a good deal. In modern terms that is about 2.5 billion dollars. Still a good deal. The Americans got a lot of land real cheap. A Napoleon got some quick cash for his European wars (and he probably couldn't realistically benefit much from his American territory while at war with England who controlled the Atlantic Ocean).

This always baffled me. Sure, you can always say "How can sell land inhabited by Native Americans" but Europeans never really believed they counted. Ignoring that, apart from New Orleans, the French had very few French people living in North America. To claim something you need at least a few people to back your claim.


How do I add a Warhammer spin to the Louisiana Purchase. Yeah, I am probably going to have a Napoleon-like Bretonian sell the land to a Thomas Jefferson-like Hammerican but that feels a little bit boring.

 

Yeah, i'd say it made much more sense for Napoleon to sell Louisiana, than for the Tsar to sell Alaska

 

Anyway, here is my Westhammer take on Old Ulthuan, answering the question "Whatever happened to the High Elves and the Dark Elves." and the World Anvil Summer Camp 2022 prompt "A settlement that was lost or discovered."

I hope you enjoy and it. Rather than my usual encyclopedia style article this one is told by an elf storyteller with a lot of Westernisms in it.

 

My new thought is that rather than make jackalopes a physical threat (as funny as that might be), I'm thinking sighting a jackalope is an omen.

In fluff terms, seeing a jackalope is an indicator "Something unusual is about to happen." It could be bad unusual or good unusual or something ambiguous, but you are probably not going to have a boring typical day after sighting a jackalope.

Given that a lot of taxidermists like to manufacture mounted jackalopes, I should probably figure out if there is any different effects for living and dead jackalopes.

@Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl, you are or game board guy. I'm not sure a jackalope should be an aspect of a terrain feature, or maybe a jackalope is a neutral monster that moves about the table top randomly.

I'm not sure how to represent this with dice, but I figure whatever model or unit is closest to the jackalope has a chance of triggering "jackalope luck". Probably need to roll a chart. if you are fortunate, that model or unit gains a few bankable chances to re-rolled failed dice. If you are unfortunate, your opponent has a few bankable chances to force the model/unit to re-roll successful dice.

Unless you have a better idea. But the idea is jackalopes are a major X-factor. Maybe they could have global effects on the battlefield like weird weather or maybe everyone gets a bonus or penalty on one aspect of the game.

 

Here's what I cooked up. The picture below is the best open source jackalope picture I could find that was not mounted on wall. Sadly, this is a doctored picture of a rabbit, not a jack rabbit. If @Paul1748 wanted to digitally slap some antlers on an open source photo of jack rabbit and splice it into an iconic Western setting, that would awesome. If he has better things to do with this time, that's understandable.



EDIT: I found an open source picture I like better.



GO TO WESTHAMMER HOMEPAGE
JACKALOPES

"Of all the fierce critters out West, none is more terrifying than the jackalope!"
-Pullirk, Goblin cowhand

"During the The World that Was, magical creatures were common and dangerous. Magic isn't dead but it is much weaker. Some magical creatures simply look unusual, that is all. Jackalopes are curiosities in appearance but they have no special abilities or powers."
-Randolph Köhler, historian

"Jackalopes are harmless by and of themselves but they are usually reclusive and unseen. They only allow themselves to be seen when portentous events are coming."
-Eva, the medicine woman

"That's true, my cousin's woman's brother's friend once saw a jackalope, and six month later, he fell from his horse and died!"
-Pullirk, Goblin cowhand
Basic Information
Anatomy
Jackalopes looks like a common jack rabbits with the exception of their prominent antlers.

Most jackalopes that are sighted are roughly ten pounds and two feet long. This is big for an ordinary jack rabbit, but not ridiculously big.

Jackalopes have similar fur colors to ordinary jack rabbits with variations tan, brown, grey or silvery fur. Unverified sightings of pure white or pure black jackalopes are subject of much speculation.

Genetics And Reproduction
"Bof! Jackalopes are rabbits. We all know how rabbits reproduce. Why should jackalopes be any different?"
-Louis, Brettonian farmer

Ordinary Jack rabbits, despite the name, are classified as hares not rabbits. Jack rabbits are generally solitary, usually avoiding others of their kind except during mating season, giving minimal care to their young and cutting them loose relying on breeding large numbers of offspring to guarantee that some survive. Jack rabbit liters tend to number between one and six, and a female can have several liters in a single year.

"Jackalopes are the result of large jack rabbits and small antelopes knockin' boots."
-Vrogak, orc railroad bull

No one has every seen two jackalopes mating. No one has every seen a baby jackalope.

"I cannot prove it, but I reckon that jackalopes are not a separate species but I believe they are mutants. A small portion of ordinarily conceived jack rabbits grow up to be jackalopes."
-Ayemer, elven conjurer and storyteller

Dietary Needs And Habits
Their behavior is pretty indistinguishable from ordinary jack rabbits. They hop around, they graze, they wiggle their nose in an adorable fashion, and they are spooked by odd sights and sounds.

They are herbivores and much like the common jack rabbit, they seem to enjoy eating a wide variety of plants. Eye witness accounts of jack rabbits eating carrion are usually considered tall tales as this act was only ever "witnessed" by goblins.

Like common jack rabbits, jackalopes are primarily but not exclusively nocturnal.
Biological Cycle
"If you see a jackalope, get your irons and shoot it dead!"
-Pullirk, Goblin cowhand

"I wonder what jackalopes taste like, I bet theys taste delicious."
-Vrogak, orc railroad bull

No one has every found a jackalope that died of natural causes. Every dead jackalope seen in the West was either slain by a predator or more likely, a hunter with a gun.

It is rumored that jackalopes are immune to disease and never die of old age, though they are obviously not immortal as they can be slain.

"It is bad luck to harm a jackalope. It is worse luck to bark or stuff a dead jackalope as a trophy. Apparently though, there are no ill effects to mounting a dead jack rabbit and fixin' fake antlers on it."
-Eva, the medicine woman

Additional Information
Uses, Products & Exploitation
"Let the lesser minds worry about jackalopes. There is no profit in messing with them, dead or alive, so I say leave them be."
-Lordroid Goldmann, railroad baron

"Jackalopes are more than they appear. whoever unlocks their potential will rule the West....or maybe I need to cut back on whiskey and absinthe."
-Doc Bones, necromancer

Geographic Origin And Distribution
Jack rabbits can be found almost everywhere in the New World, but jackalopes seem to have a much smaller range. They are never seen out east and rarely seen up north.

"Jackalope sightings are fairly rare. Goblins report seeing jackalopes heaps more often than most other folk, so either they are good at spotting jackalopes, jackalopes are attracted to goblins or goblins are simply liars.

I reckon it's all three."
-Muddor, Dwarf mining boss

Average Intelligence
"Other than a few crazy goblin tall tales, no one has ever witnessed a jackalope doing anything a regular jack rabbit wouldn't so it seems that they are no more or less clever than ordinary hares.

Then again, there are thousands of rabbit snares in the West and I've never heard of a jackalope being caught in one."
-Ayemer, elven conjurer and storyteller

 

I believe they deserve a place in the folklore.

It started as a hoax but it became a modern aspect of Western folklore. I spent a fair bit of time in New Mexico and almost every Western memorabilia shop had a jackalope mounted on the wall.

I like the kitchen sink approach to fantasy.

I honestly think squigs are silly and don't really offer anything to the lore but they are popular, so I'm okay shoehorning them into Westhammer.

I'm trying to get the diamond award for the Summer Camp 2022 and I'm also planning on going camping on Friday. This means, I have to finish writing the prompts by Thursday and I don't have time to rewrite this prompt as I spent a lot of time on it, so jackalopes will be a part of Westhammer until the Summer Camp 2022 is over (September 1st).

We can remove jackalopes then if they are a problem. Given that people liked my jackalopes, I assume they are not a problem, but I'm not married to jackalopes.

 

I don't mind them, they are fine.

 

To change the subject away from jackalopes...

@Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl , did you read my article on Old Ulthuan? Any constructive feedback. Nothing is set in stone.

None of this in Set in Stone, but here are my general thoughts on Westhammer Elves

My general thought is that High Elves and Dark Elves made peace and reunified. There is still friction between them but they feel more kinship with the other elf group than they do with any non-elves.

The Wood Elves are extinct but they are rumored to have merged into the nature itself so you might see nature spirits that happen to take on beautiful humanoid avatars with pointy knife ears.

New Ulthuan is somewhere in Not Canada, but is a separate realm from Cebeq (aka Not Quebec) which is a Brettonian colony/former colony.

I figure elves are frequent visitors in the West but they don't own any exclusive lands there, though we can add an elf province or town if someone comes up with a cool concept.

I figure elves in the West are out looking for work like most other folk. I figure they are more transitory than most of the farming humans but less transitory than the more savage types.

There are probably a lot of elves in Cebeq and Cebeq is part of the Westhammer setting as far as I'm concerned even though it's not technically western. It's still a wild and untamed land in the New World.

I figure elves would be better than humans at magic, but not by a crazy amount. I haven't put much thought in what they would look like in the actual gameplay. Presumably they would be a little bit faster and a little bit more accurate than humans but less able to survive a hit.

I don't know whether they would be best as an "Elf Company" or if they would be add-on mercenaries that can be tacked on to other Companies.

Anyway, I want Westhammer to have elves in it, but I have no clear idea on how to implement though I am near certain I do not want High Elves versus Dark Elves to be a thing, or if it is a thing, it's a very small thing.

 

I was talking with my friend about potential variations of the minotaurs because this is what normal people talk about in their conversations....

My friend asked what would be a good name for buffalo based minotaurs. Maybe Blanktaurs or Minoblanks.

Mino means man and taurus means bull but "taur" sounds cooler than "mino."

I believe buffalo beastmen was mentioned on this thread.

I could not find any indigenous malevolent buffalo monsters via internet search engines, that is not too surprising.

At the top of every search engines seems to be the White Bufallo spirit that can take the form of a beautiful woman. This entity's name is Tatanka Ska, a Lakota legend. Searches for Native American words for "bison" tend to put the Lakota term "tatanka" at the top of the list.

A good name for Bison based beastmean might be "Tatankgors" or "Tatankagors" or something similar.

Now the question is, are Tatankgors malevolent servants of Chaos, tragic heroes or something else. I'm not even sure what answer is "playing it straight" and which is "subverting expectations".

Beastmen are traditionally malevolent. Buffallo myths are traditionally benevolent.

Tatankgor would make an awesome looking model or art project, but that's a meta reason.

Outside of meta, I have narrative questions. What created Tatankgor? Why were Tatankgor created? What do Tatankgor want? What are their relations with outsiders like?

Splitting the difference between narrative questions and meta questions. How would Tatankgor fit into a warband and what are their abilities and powers?

 

Anyway, it's Worldember season in the World Anvil community, so I have been binge writing for Scarterra and my "new" world Warhammer Fantasy Scale Universe. I always liked Empire Witchhunters in WHF and I think the concept fits with a Wild West setting. Here is what I wrote for them so far.

I'm open to suggestions for things to add. Again, I'd like to come up with some interesting but hopefully not sacrilegious analogy between the real world Protestant Reformation and the the Church of Sigmar but I have no idea how orthodox and reform Church of Sigmar would look like or how their witch hunters would differ if at all.

THE ORDER OF THE SILVER HAMMER

Back in the World that Was, the Empire of Man grew to become virtually the sole ruling power of the human world eventually co-opting Kislev, Brettonia, Tilea, Estalia and more.

As the reach of the Empire grew, they brought the Church of Sigmar with them. After the four Chaos gods were supposedly defeated once and for all, the aftermath of the War Against Chaos created a series of natural disasters that damaged the infrastructure of the greater Empire of Man and exacerbated existing factional conflicts within the Empire causing the mega-empire to split into competing nation states.

However despite all this, the Empire of Man lingers in the Church of Sigmar which is now the predominant religion in all human lands...well almost all human lands.

The Order of the Silver Hammer was and is a militant inquisitorial arm of the Church of Sigmar. Originally charged with ferreting out Chaos cultists and hidden corruption, the Order never stopped aggressively and brutally purging heretics and the corrupt wherever they could be found.

The Church of Sigmar has dealt with schisms, protestant movements, supposed heresies and both successful and failed attempts at reformation. Generally, when people demand reform of the Church of Sigmar, the overzealous actions of the Order of the Silver Hammer were and are a chief complaint by the would-be reformers.

The Order of the Silver Hammer has been stripped of a lot of their formal power and has legally been reduced to a paper tiger, in theory. The Order has always been a tip of the iceberg situation, as controversial as their actions were even at their peak of power, their most brutal actions have been conducted quietly.

Used to operating in the shadows, the modern iteration of the witch hunters of old operate semi-legally at best now. A lot of them migrated out to the western frontier because there are a lot of hidden evils for them to expunge and not a lot of organized law and red tape to stop them.

 

Arizona Ghost Riders are always great for mixing history and myth which is perfect for a high fantasy version of the Old West.

The idea of a feral camel driven mad with a corpse strapped to it's back sounds like a great basis for some kind of Westhammer monster or ghost.

By which I mean what I consider a "true monster" in that I mean a terrible creature that is unique due to abnormal circumstances.

If you can replicate something, it's not a monster, that is the root word of demonstration (you de-monster something by showing how to replicate the process), but "monster" in modern fantasy often refers to races and species. That's a tangent but Westhammer as a minatures game, true monsters aren't that useful, but Westhammer as a fiction genre, true monsters are great.

 

I have created a new entry for Westhammer. A mysterious haunted gold rush town with a vague Lizardmen connection.

Dragon's Den Valley.

 

Anyway, my wildly popular entry for the last short story contest got zero votes, but at least I introduced Strife as a character.

I have a short entry for all Four Horsemen as they fit in Westhammer now. I'm open to feedback. Nothing is set in stone at this point.

Strife

Plague

Famine

Death