Army Fluff Does this make sense, lore wise?

So, I actually don't care for Slann too much. I guess I'm just not a fan of giant frogs, however skilled they might be at magic. So my army list lacks a Slann. Then I got to thinking....what would happen if a group of lizardmen managed to fall outside Slann control, and how would that even happen in the first place?

Well, I decided that any lizardman in its right mind would never leave a Slann or break with its culture, so something terrible had to happen. The only thing suitable I could come up with is that there was a small to middling temple city that was under assault by Khornate forces, and the head Skink Priest in charge of that group made a horrible judgement call or failed to carry out the Slann's order's properly, which wound up with the Slann being butchered and most of the citizens slain. In fact, this poor Skink Priest flubbed so horribly that it made the rest of the defenders look bad as well. So the Slann decided communally that they should either be exiled for their uselessness or slain for it (whichever makes more sense lore-wise). In the event of them being exiled, they left Lustria, downtrodden and shamed, knowing they were innately flawed and could never serve the Old Ones properly. They managed to gather giant sea turtles and cross the oceans to the Old World, where they now roam, still trying, in their own small way, to combat the forces of disorder, though without a Slann to guide them, they have become more vague about their goals and wind up just helping wherever anyone who looks suitably chaotic is causing trouble.

If them being chosen for extermination makes more sense lore-wise, then they fled and fought their way out of Lustria, losing most of their number in the process. Either way the cookie crumbles, they are a hardy, tough small army of veterans who have been forced to become adept at healing magics to keep their numbers from dropping too heavily. As you can bet, they have no real reinforcements from their own kind.

So would this make sense in regards to lore, or am I barking up a very wrong tree?

 

Not bad...

Or perhaps their Slan had sent them on a ques far across the world pond to get some sacred plack or something...


Or maybe this spawing arose from their spawing pools only to find their temple city
had long ago turned to ruin and been abandoned.

 

Hmm, n810, I really like the idea of them spawning and not really having anyone there. However, that brings up the question of how they'd really learn to do anything. Even with Saurus, there is culture to be passed on. Unless they are all instinctively born knowing how to read their glyphs, or enough of the pictographs in their city were preserved, they're not going to have any idea how to do anything. I mean, the saurus know how to fight on instinct, and it isn't hard for Kroxigors to crush and eat things. But for skinks, would magic even be possible for them? Could anyone master the Lustrian beasts that would be necessary for the numerous terradons, carnosaurs, stegadons, cold ones, and salamanders that are in the army?

Any suggestions on how to solve that conundrum?

 

I suppose you could have a Skink priest and a couple or regular Skinks left in the ruins.
to kinda watch over the place...

 

Or they were part of a temple city far outside lustria, as part of the geomantic web. The cataclysm hits, their slann dies, for whatever reason.

I've always thought of the skinks as the real power behind the lizardmen. They're the artisans, the engineers, the scouts, the priests, the poliicians (maybe ), etc.

The saurus are kind of just the muscle, and seem pretty brainless/cultureless.

 

Actually, I really like your idea, Old Mossy. That makes more sense, and would allow for more spawnings so they are actually like a little nation state stuck somewhere in the middle of the Old World without any real leadership aside from the few skinks that are adept at magic. I've seen dozens of theories on what makes lizardmen spawn, and I'm going with the Spawning Pools themselves being chock full of billions of tiny, tiny eggs that the flux of magic influences to produce whatever the heck they need. This would also explain why none of the beasts they ride, aside from some Cold Ones they raise, look like the ones in Lustria (I like various dinosaur models by Carnegie and Safari Ltd. better).

Actually, based on that theory, I kind of want to make a hybrid of various races of Lizardmen, like the genetic code got triggered in odd fashions, like an intelligent, skillful kroxigor, or a skink with added scales and bulk but keeping its speed and skills.

Thanks for all the input, folks!

 

In the lizardman codex, it talks about "The Dragon Isles." on page 35.
It says
"To the east are the Dragon Isles, which were populated by Saurus and Skinks but never by Slann. If any dwell still in the islands, then they must have regressed to a savage state indeed without the guidance and wisdom of the Mage-Priests."

You could write your fluff, characters, and such to have come from these areas? Tehenhauin can be a proxy lord to have access to beasts so that you can represent "the savage state".

Just an idea.

 

Well, ADustyMan, thanks for the input, but I think I'll be sticking with something that allows my lore to be a little less feral. I'd prefer some degree of cluelessness about how to function according to the Old One's plans, but not being completely in the dark and eating whatever gets too close.

Thanks, also, Scalenex (and by the way, nice VC/Lizzie fiction), but I think I'll keep my scalies a little more independent at the cost of some of the "Elite Servants of the Old Ones" feel, and just ditch the Slann entirely, again, because I don't really care for them all that much. Though I think some of the terrain will incorporate the Lord Kroak model as a sort of shrine to the fallen Slann.

Actually, while I'm here, I know the geomantic web and all sorts of other Lizard-spellcraft is extremely powerful, but my question is: is the stuff fine-tuned enough to actually grow a jungle ecosystem where there should not naturally be one? On purpose? And is that something the Slann would even allow, or would this have to occur after its untimely demise by fallen temple walls/deathly gases released during an earthquake?

 

You don't have to run it that way, you could do it in a way to prove the codex wrong, that Lizardmen can run themselves without the Slann. The point of those little blurbs is usually a little inspiration for players to do a themed army around, but anyways, was just tryna be helpful

 

Yea the Lizardmen actually did this on the island of Avalon just off the Britannia coast.

 

Actually, Scalenex, your suggestion might be very fun to try out for a Skirmish list, so I could spend lots of time making every model look nifty and different. I think I'll make a mental note of that. Thanks!

And that, n810, is exactly why I wish I had the money for the rulebooks. Because lore is in them. I can learn my armies by reading guides and tactica, and use Army Builder to build lists, but I can't get at all the art and lore when I'm dirt poor. Not for some time, anyway. But yeah, this makes my army's lore even more awesome, then.

 

Um, unless I'm mistaken, and the King Arthur legend is actually from warhammer, I think maybe n810 might have had his sarcasm turned on.

 

Yep, and the Lizards took it over...

No really, and yea it is the King Arthur island.
I believe it was in the fluff from the last great GW campaign.

 

You mean the Albion one, with the truth sayers and dark emissaries?

http://whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/Albion

 

... ... wow.

 

the fluff reasoning in Fantasy and 40k where they get all the armies together is always really weak.

 

True, but it's an excuse to get genetically engineered vampiric angelic space nazis with personal tanksuits to go to war alongside magical robot skeleton egyptians.

Or in the case of Fantasy, an excuse to get dinosaurs fighting the Knights of the Round Table.