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Discussion Feathered Jumpy Creatures

Discussion in 'Fluff and Stories' started by The Sauric Ace, May 6, 2015.

  1. The Sauric Ace
    Salamander

    The Sauric Ace Well-Known Member

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    So a long time ago I thought it could be cool to make sort of a "real" list dinosaur army book for warhammer, not many exciting ideas came out of this, though I do think my raptors made for quite an interesting concept in battle (Or I might be wrong, judging these things are not really my specialties). I would imagine their fluff if they exists in the lizardmen army to be something like this:

    Pack hunting big reptilian birds would surely be the best description of these animals. Even though they have feathers they cannot fly, though there light bones grant them with a very high speed and jumping capability. Further unique aspects about these animals, when comparing to other birds are that they have sharp teeth in their mouth and clawed hands they use to slash their prey with. They've also got a huge sickle formed claw on there feet as a third toe. This is perhaps the most dangerous part of these creatures since they can use it to rip into flesh of any kind.

    Their natural habitat is the culchan plains of Lustria, given them their names, Culchans. These plains also inhabits many large creatures. A lesser species of stegadons dwell in these parts as do long necked reptilians, browsing the tall trees and resting their huge body in the many larger lakes of the plains.
    Here the culchan stalks the tall grass, swiftly and silent they maneuvers around the plain, using their keen eyes to spot potential prey miles away.

    They are not exactly reptilian in the fact that they are somewhere between bird and lizard, many skink scholars suggest that they may be of close descent to the Coutl, for these reasons. Though due to this they are some of the fastest and most agile hunters in all of Lustria. Far quicker than the horned ones and much more trainable and easy to handle than most other creatures. The only problem the skinks has with them are their warm-blooded nature, they are simply not equipped to handle such eager and constant aware animals.

    They are more demanding in food than what their body would suggest and such many armies choose to disband or not use these band of fierce hunter, for the reason that other creatures are less resources exhausting, when on a march.
    However they are such great hunters that if they are lead in environment, where natural food sources are available, this issue become none existing.
    They'll hunt every thing from rats and small lizards, to huge giants of the jungle. No prey are too difficult to hunt down eventually for these deadly creatures.

    Culchan M 9 Ws 3 Bs 0 S 4 T 3 W 1 I 8 A 2 Ld 6 Troop Type War Beast
    Always Strikes First; Cause Fear; Fast Cavalry and Scaly skin (+6).


    Terrible claw: With their sickle shaped third claw the culchan leaps into its enemies and impales them. On charge each culchan models gains 1 impact hit with +1 strength, in addition to there normal attacks.


    In honour of my new awatar
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2015
  2. Scalenex
    Slann

    Scalenex Keeper of the Indexes Staff Member

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    GW published works refers to a flightless predatory bird called a Culchan sometimes ridden by Skinks. The Culchans are very minimally developed, save that they are common in the Culchan plains (where Argentina is located). Perhaps you can call these birds Culchans.
     
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  3. n810
    Slann

    n810 First Spawning

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  4. The Sauric Ace
    Salamander

    The Sauric Ace Well-Known Member

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    Edit: added scalenex's info, such that we'll from now on reference them as chulcan's .
    Terror birds hunting tactic would however look more like the hunting tactic of large theropods (they are also themselves large theropods, but you know what I mean), using their heavy jaws to kill prey; while claws are more of a secondary natural weaponry. So the terrible claw rule perhaps wouldn't fit, but I like the idea of a raptor leaping into battle, striking its huge sickle claws into the enemies :)
     
  5. The Sauric Ace
    Salamander

    The Sauric Ace Well-Known Member

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    More Fluff, for the Feathered Jumpy Creatures, also now known as Culchans:

    Culchans are highly socialized creatures, when not on a hunt they enjoy combing each others feathers for bugs and other parasites, very much like many apes this is a bounding process where each member learns to get along with the other. The Culchan has quite a few vocal cries for various of different "events" not exactly a language, but close. A cry could mean "Danger!" while another "I am here!" both distinct tones and sound. In fact so distinct that for a clever skink it is possible to learn what such cries means to the culchan. Such a culchan master can become quite valuable for he can even communicate with wild chulcans, not just tamed ones. Though just as with civil species it is not likely that they will response in any kind manner.

    The hunt for a culchan is also a formidable sight to behold, the younger culchan will position themselves on top of hills, where they are easy to spot, as far away from the actually hunting pack as possible. While the hunters, the older of the pack, quietly sneak closer and closer, these young ones will faint the prey as much as possible. Finally when the young ones as become winded and the prey as well, the hunters has come close enough and has have a decent time to analysis, which potential prey is the best option, and has gone in the perfect position for a leaping attack; which is dealt in a combined assault from as many sides as possible. Even much larger prey animals than the culchan easily falls for such an attack and it is perhaps only the mighty carnosaur, that has a better record of successful hunts, if that even is the case.

    Culchan are however victims themselves to the more sturdy and tough predators like the jungle cats and cold ones stealing their prey or even assaulting a lone culchan, whom by its own is no match for these slightly larger and much more bulky hunters.
    Again their communication comes into effect; has they stay in touch over longer distance with simple cries of "I am here!"; which helps the spread out pack, to come to the rescue quickly should an accident occur.

    Hopefully more will follow ;-)
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2015
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  6. Scalenex
    Slann

    Scalenex Keeper of the Indexes Staff Member

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    A tame animal is a wild animal that is made subservient to humans (or other sapient species) A domesticated animal is an animal bred in captivity and conditioned over the generations to be more amenable to serving humans (or other sapient species). Presumably culchans cannot be bred in captivity, so they would never be domesticated.

    Am I being nitpicky with vocabulary. Maybe. Blame Jared Diamond, the author of my all-time favorite non-fiction book. He analyzed domestication of animals pretty thoroughly. One of the reasons why the Incans didn't sail to Europe and hold the King of Spain for ransom was a lack of domesticate-able animals in the Americas.

    By definition, Carnosaurs, Stegadons, Salamanders, and Razordons are all tame beasts not domesticated beasts. Cold Ones and Horned Ones are vague since they are often described as being born alongside those destined to ride them.

    Following the Elf books, every animal they use is tamed, not domesticated (save horses) though Eagles are vague.

    Every animal the Empire and Brettonia uses save horses is tame (pegasi are also not domesticated). The Ogres beasts of war are all tamed, not domesticated. Same with the Orcs and Goblins though boars are vague. The Chaos powers tend to get their monsters straight from the dark gods so that throws the tame/domestication thing out the window.
     
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  7. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

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    Another great analysis!
     
  8. The Sauric Ace
    Salamander

    The Sauric Ace Well-Known Member

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    Yes, it should probably say tamed; I hadn't rally considered the difference, if I am being honest.

    The main thing I take from it, would be, the quite interesting fact, that tamed over domesticated animals are far more numerous In a fantasy ;-)

    Edit: now it says tamed instead of domesticated, better fitting the fluff and has scalenex so correctly pointed out, domestication is a longer process of selective breeding a process of which the culchan has not gone through. Skinks do as with most other animals they tame, they find a wild nest and collect some of the eggs for taming.
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2015
  9. The Sauric Ace
    Salamander

    The Sauric Ace Well-Known Member

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    Also fun side note:
    I read somewhere, properly an article for behavioural science, that domestication has some weird fenotypical side effects.
    Apparently the genes that are bred for, less feral is closely connected, at least when trying to breed animals, with a couple of other genes. That is the gene, which also makes the animals slightly less intelligent, which is quite interesting since we humans probably think that animals staying with us are smarter than the wild version. Also the gene for curly tails are m ore likely to occur, has a weird side-effect.
    I don't remember any lizardmen beast of war having curly tails, but if there should be, or ever be one, now you know why ;-)
     
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  10. Scalenex
    Slann

    Scalenex Keeper of the Indexes Staff Member

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    Wild animals need to learn more things and solve more problems than domesticated animals do.
     
  11. The Sauric Ace
    Salamander

    The Sauric Ace Well-Known Member

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    Exactly! Which I also believe was one of the points of the article :)
    It's just funny how we humans tend to think, that we "Inspire" our comrades to become smarter, when in fact it's the opposite :p
     
  12. Scalenex
    Slann

    Scalenex Keeper of the Indexes Staff Member

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    You agreed with what I said and parroted it with slightly different phrasing. Obviously you are very smart, all thinks to my inspiration.
     
  13. The Sauric Ace
    Salamander

    The Sauric Ace Well-Known Member

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    hehe, I guess flattery also come in the respect of man to animal. Really that sentence could just as well referrer to a professor talking about his favourite student or a craftsman about his apprentice. In the end we humans likes to be acknowledge, I suppose that's the flaw here (Not that I mind, I uses this fact heaps, when dealing with professors of an especially difficult course). :)
     
  14. spawning of Bob
    Skar-Veteran

    spawning of Bob Well-Known Member

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    That is the reason Scalenex believes Scolenex is very smart, too.

    Compare the linguistic abilities of chickens to Scalenex's crude grunting.

    I can verify the examples above. The Chickens of Bob told me. I recall hearing that chickens have a more sophisticated vocal language than chimpanzees, which I find very easy to believe. There is a distinction between the alarm call for a predator on the ground (snake, one of my blue tongue lizards) and "Death from above". I can imitate the alert call and get them to all perk their heads up to see what the fuss is.

    Given that your fowl death birds have a visual signalling system as well, you can really eggsplore their compleggs culcha. Unless you are chicken.

    <@£
    ...║__.|/
    ...╚<=╝
    .....┘┘ o
     
  15. The Sauric Ace
    Salamander

    The Sauric Ace Well-Known Member

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    Here's a question for you guys, should they gameplay and fluff wise stay these skirmisher single models or change them into fast cav, with skink on top?
    What do you think? I feel like they would be fun either way.
     
  16. spawning of Bob
    Skar-Veteran

    spawning of Bob Well-Known Member

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    I like the idea of having packs of warbeasts to supplement the Legions of Lustria. If we can command swarms, why not other critters?

    I've got a little flock of struthiomimus or something similar which I based up to proxy as Chaos Warhounds for Storm of Magic Games.

    Flick through the scrolls of binding list on SoM and see if there is a rule set that more or less suits your beasties This is a good starting point because it gives you a points cost.

    If you modify those rules (giving swiftstride and skirmish, adding a pip of initiative, taking off a pip of toughness, removing scaly skin) you have a starting point for adjusting your points cost.

    Possible 1 wound per model war beasts from SoM would include wild cold ones (remove scaly skin, add skirmish), giant spider, warhounds. If you have a skaven friend you should check your breakfast cereal for broken glass and then look at the profile for giant rats.

    Strongly consider the Fast Cavalry special rule for these (giant spiders have it). The ability to reform and charge after a feigned flight suits the fluff and would go a heck of a way to making up for their likely squishiness. You could justify armour piercing as well if they play test poorly.

    Warmblooded quadrupedal predatorial war beasts move at M8. There are a handful of semi magical quadruped herbivores with M10. I would expect these to be M9 - they are prey for cold blooded things like cold ones and carnosaurs at M7.


    Pick a rule set, estimate a fair points cost and then let the math-hammer heads argue about balanced points value.

    If you want more detail about SoM then start a conversation with me.

    I can picture them in battle, charge redirecting with a moderate risk of fleeing off the board and charging in late in a combat to pick off the weakened unit with some high initiative attacks. If they can march through the lines then they make good fluff sense as war machine hunters.

    You mentioned making them as cav, I suggested war beasts, but a third and incredibly lazy path is to make them like the dobie-o-matic.
    [​IMG]

    Like the Egg of Quango, they can be an effect that a skink chief has tucked in his hip pocket. In the start of a combat round, he puts his hand to his mouth and shouts, "Suppertime!" and D6+1 Culchans appear, each one dealing out a Nasty Peck® (legitimate special rule☺) and enveloping the enemy unit in a cloud of feathers which cause Violent Sneezing®. Alternatively, they could be triggered as an innate bound spell attached to your chicken handler. Taking this approach saves on all that messy modelling and painting bizzo.
     
  17. The Sauric Ace
    Salamander

    The Sauric Ace Well-Known Member

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    I agree the M 9 seems better when comparing to the possible prey and predators of the culchans, my main problem was if this was giving them too high of an advantage in the moment phase. Though I'll say that it seems like it isn't so, for now, it will be added. :-D
     
  18. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

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    I like movement 9 as well. It seems fitting based on the fluff and works well with the rules you have created.
     
  19. The Sauric Ace
    Salamander

    The Sauric Ace Well-Known Member

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    Edit: Added Troop type, obvious their are as written now, war beasts; and change them from skirmishers to fast cavalry. The latter were more because I felt like they should be fast, but I don't know if a model can have both rules, that is skirmishers and fast cav? Might be too weird, but I don't see it being to powerful. Skirmishers would really just add less shooting casualty to the unit.
     
  20. spawning of Bob
    Skar-Veteran

    spawning of Bob Well-Known Member

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    IIRC, fast cav have all the skirmish rules plus a couple of extras. Being troop type war beasts automatically gives swift stride.
     

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