This month, the poll has two questions:


First question. Who's your favorite archvillain of the Warhammer universe?

I know there are a lot more important villains than those listed here: Zacharias the Everliving, Grimgor Ironhide and many others. But I want to stick to the Big Four.

For me, that would be Malekith: he's less of a stupid brute than Archaon and he's also more complex than the others because he wasn't always evil. He reminds me of Darth Vader: he was on the good side once and was even a strong opponent of Evil, but he became bad while thinking that he was still doing the right thing.
Another similarity: he, too, wears a black armor to hide his horribly burnt body. ^_^


Second question, an even more important one. Do you want my One Ring back, or is my Fremen avatar alright? I don't care either way, really.

The Horned Rat gets an option, but Tzeentch doesn't?

The Ruinous Powers for the win. Nagash a close second.

You nulled your vote? <_<

I don't think gods can be called villains. I put the Horned Rat in because he has a physical form and actually walks and talks, but the gods of Chaos don't count.

Perhaps I should have put Morghur, though. He's more ancient and evil than Archaon.

I didn't vote at all.

The Horned Rat doesn't have a physical form any more than the Chaos Gods do. He supposedly appeared to all of Skavenkind on one night to end the civil war between the Council and Clan Pestilens, but that was it.

If you're thinking of the Verminlord miniature, that's a Greater Daemon of the Horned Rat, not the god himself. In fact, it's even possible that the Horned Rat is another 'face' of Nurgle, or possibly Tzeentch, or possibly both.

If we're limited solely to corporeal villains, though - well, it's either Nagash or the first generation Von Carsteins.

Really? When's the last time he showed-up?
Vermin Lords I've heard of, but not a full-fledged deity walking around. Besides, I'd hardly consider the chaos gods not worthy of villainhood just because they can't take physical form. Through they're servants and slaves (which the themselves empower) they are FAR more dangerous than the Horned Rat.

That's debateable. Though he may initially have hunted-out chaos worshippers, he did falsely accuse and persecute a lot of people just because they were in his way. It's incredibly unlikely that he thought all of them really were chaos worshippers, or that this was even a consideration by the end.
He was always a bit of a 'dark' character anyway, and had always wanted the crown. So it is possible he mainly only have strived against chaos as a way of gaining a good enough reputation to be considered worthy of the throne. If anything I'd say he has more in common with Lord Voldemort than Darth Vader.

Nagash by a long way. No one person has had a 'founding' effect on multiple races except perhaps Ariel (Wood Elves and Brets). And he also has demigod powers and has cheated death more than anyone.

I just hope they resurrect him soon.

Nagash, but you've got a hella unbalanced poll there. As has already been pointed out, you've got gods alongside mortals. Hell, Nagash is virually a demigod.

I think I heard somewhere that the Horned Rat himself led the Council of Thirteen... As far as I know, no other god gets as directly involved in the affairs of his people than this one. So I consider him as a valid archvillain, not the kind of cold and distant entity that watches from afar but does nothing concrete.

@ Benedictus: Yes, Nagash is powerful indeed, but he was once a human and surely has human failings. Despite his power, he could possibly be defeated. He is somewhat akin to Sauron, in the same way that Malekith is a bit like Darth Vader.

Edit: I would appreciate answers to the second question, too. :D

Ariel (Isha), Orion (Kurnous), 'The Lady' all have very direct influences on their respective races. The God of Chaos also, through their demons, and empire's through their priests (not as direct as the wood elf gods, but still influential enough). Then there's the other characters who are near-godly and still lead their race, such as the Slann, Nagash (when alive).

I'd say all of these have more influence than the horned one, who as others have said has practically been written out of the 6th edition fluff. It once made sense to call him another god of chaos with his own greater demon, but I never thought of him as a direct leader. Maybe he has a position at the council of thirteen, but then don't a lot of systems have 'honorary' council positions for influential powers that never turn up (such as gods, or in modern times most Commonwealth countries have a seat in parliament for the queen).

There are thirteen seats and twelve physical members of the Council of Thirteen. The thirteenth seat is symbolically the Horned Rat's, in the same way that the people who choose the Pope say that God decides. But in reality, it's just left empty, and if the voting is tied, it means the Grey Seers get to 'interpret' their god's wishes and cast the deciding vote.

The Horned Rat hasn't exactly been written out of the background, but he's still a minor Chaos God, not some walking, talking, physical being.

As for 'cold and distant entities that watch from afar but do nothing concrete' - I think you're getting mixed up with our old Real World god arguments. The Chaos Gods give people physical blessings - if you please Tzeentch, he gives you magical armour that fuses to your skin, or sends you an otherworldly daemonic disc to ride about on, or gives you feathers, or suchlike. They send daemons (basically tiny parts of themselves) to do their bidding. They instigate the Incursions. They are very direct, and very concrete in their influence. As far as gods who get directly involved in their peoples' affairs - well, quite aside from the Big Four, there's Sigmar (who started out as a human and basically built the Empire, and supposedly reincarnated himself to fight Archaon), Asuryan and Khaine (who did the whole Aenarion thing back in the time of the Great Catastrophe), Sotek (who is supposed to have destroyed Clan Pestilens' war effort in Lustria with a plague of snakes, and incarnated himself as a giant serpent to do so), Myrmidia (who also started off as a mortal, leading her people to war), and Isha/Kurnous as Swordsalot mentioned. The Lady doesn't count, she's just Ariel in a wig.

And don't forget Heinrich Kemmler, he out-villains a hell of a lot of people.

Kemmler's problem is he is very much in the shadow of Nagash. He suffers from "anything you can do I can do better". IIRC, even Kemmler's "second in charge" Krell was recycled from one of Nagash's early minions.

*sigh*

Okay, let's just ignore the Horned Rat then. I was under the impression that he was a physical character (and a god).

Heinrich Kemmler is indeed an important villain, but not an archvillain.


Just a question: has there ever been a member of the Council of Thirteen available as a special character?

I think Deathmaster Snikch (or however it's spelt: the uber-assassin guy) is on it. For some reason I think Thanquol is as well, though I'm not sure about either.

But for some reason Snikch stands out in my mind (maybe because he's the only skaven character with significance in the general warhammer world: come on: that valten assassination was a thing of beauty).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skaven

OK, I was wrong. This page contains a list of 8 of the most significant members of the council of 13: I don't recognise any of their names as models or special characters.

Wikipedia also has a very good entry on the history of Nagash. I really hope they make a future worldwide campaign about the return of nagash, these petty little incursions by chaos and the like are getting very boring. IMO, Nagash is THE archvillain of warhammer: no other baddy has had such an influence as to corrupt a whole nation single-handedly. The master of black magic, and an ultimate warrior: only able to be beaten by Sigmar himself or the entire council of 13 allied with his most hated enemy when he is at his weakest.

He is a much more formidable baddy than this archaon weakling. And I don't even know what the nemesis crown campaign is about.

'Petty'?
'Little'?

I suppose you're right. It's rather like history's rather irritating focus on those two insignificant little World Wars.

The Ruinous Powers have, on my count, already done six (Naggaroth, the Darklands, the Kurgan, the Hung, the Tong and Norsca). None of those nations have rebelled against them and shattered their power, either. Ariel has also done Bretonnia, and she's not even a 'villain' (supposedly).

I hate flatly contradicting people, but Chaos is the enemy that the whole Warhammer mythos is built around. The struggle against Chaos, that entire 'Man vs. Himself' theme, is what distinguishes Warhammer from Generic Fantasy/D&D world no. 432.

Nagash may be the most powerful walking, talking evil chap on the planet - Amon Chakai and the morally ambiguous Slann notwithstanding - but calling him 'the' archvillain of the setting is like calling the Sackville-Bagginses 'the' archvillains of Tolkein.

But that's my point really: chaos isn't a single archvillain entity, they are a collection of gods. Warhammer is, in the end, about the mortals who fight on behalf of these gods (with a few exceptions we've already talked about: mainly Ariel again). Therefore, if chaos was an archvillain, it would take the form of someone who isn't fit to scrub Nagash's claw: someone like Archaon or Crom.

As for Ariel, it's odd how understated she is in the fluff. Yes, she has also 'corrupted' 2 lands under her influence (don't forget loren, she's sculpted that far more than Bretonnia). I think it would be interesting if Ariel was Nagash's 'opposite'. Both are masters of magic :Nagash was noted as one of the first human learners of dark magic, and probably created Necromancy and death magic to teach to the humans. The fluff also sounds like he was the first human to harness magic at all. Ariel too has influenced life magic, and probably created the Lore of Athel Loren and personally teaches all Bretonnians magic. Both are demi-gods: Nagash just because he's damned powerful, Ariel because she is possessed by Isha (or is she actually Isha? The fluff is a little dodgy on that now). Ariel protects life, Nagash destroys.

I for one would love to see a duel between Nagash and Ariel. Probably unlikely to happen since Ariel is by her nature a protector and defender rather than a hunter, but oh well. Nagash has been noted to be weak against the power of gods, so it should be interesting.

Chaos takes hundreds of forms. And some of its human servants rock, like Egrimm van Horstmann or Aekold Helbrass. Egrimm for one could probably take on Nagash and come out reasonably well.

I don't see what's to stop each individual god being considered as an 'archvillain', though. They're conscious beings, and unlike most 'evil' fantasy gods (who seem to be there to provide symmetry with the good ones), they are constantly pushing their own, all-encompassing agenda.

Also, I think that under the new Wood Elf background (which I kind of like), Loren shaped Ariel more than Ariel shaped Loren. The wood elves have had to sacrifice their identity to the daemons of the forest in order to survive. On the same note, Ariel doesn't exactly 'protect life' - she protects Athel Loren. She probably couldn't give a monkey's about what happens to people, animals, trees and whatnot elsewhere. I think what with how she's dragged Bretonnia down into a quagmire of out-of-date feudalism in order to serve her own goals, and how the Damsels are abducted from their cots, and how the male ones never come back, there's easily a case for saying she's an archvillain too.

And I'm pretty sure that Nagash wasn't the first human to use magic. Just the first human to use necromancy.

I´d say Nagash aswell. Nice and intresting discussion here :). Seeing something as a villain, isnt that highly a point of view? Feels like we´ve had this discussion before, strange feel of deja vú :blink: .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagash_%28Warhammer%29
I'm not sure where this article gets it's information from, but it very strongly implies Nagash was the first human to use magic. It talks about him harnessing the winds of chaos, and realising they can be used by him.

I wish there was more fluff about Ariel. However, I know Isha is worshipped by High Elves, and possibly the empire. Her magic links all forests together, so I think it's fair to say she likes trees everywhere. I'm not sure where you get Ariel being changed by the forest: I for one don't even know what she is any more. Is she actually Isha, or (as in 5th edition) a possessed little girl, or does she possess a new person every spring in the same way as Orion? I'm also not sure if she dies in the winter etc.

However, Isha is more powerful than the forest spirits. Perhaps the elves are in servitude of the forest (I think of it as more symbiotic, but whatever), but Isha is not an elf.

Hehe, as for Bretonnia: at least she does more for it than her husband. The guy whose idea of a party is slaughtering and razing the neighbours. Anyway, no matter what she does for Bretonnia: they seem pretty damned happy about it. Blissful Ignorance or not: they're still alive and protected by her magic. Come on: a 6+ ward save for most of their core troops ain't too shabby :D

I think that’s an example of Wikipedia unreliability. I have the 4th/5th Edition Undead army book, and in that it says that the Dark Elves taught him the secrets of Dark magic, not magic as a whole. The reason that magic-users are so tightly controlled in the Empire is that untrained ones can still manipulate the Winds intuitively, although this is insanely dangerous: it's not something that needs to be taught, it's something that's been written into the genes ever since the Great Catastrophe.

That’s assuming that Ariel really is an incarnation of Isha. As far as I know, however, Isha isn’t a forest god – she’s a fertility god. So she likes all things life-giving and natural, not forests in particular. Not that that invalidates your point in any way.

The Oak of Ages to me seems pretty clearly an agent of the sentience of Athel Loren. And that’s what changed her and Orion into what they are today.

Also, as I recall, the new WE book says that the elves were initially at war with the forest spirits, and that the transfiguration of Orion and Ariel signalled the start of the pact between them.

Isha/Rhya (depending on whether you’re an elf or a human) doesn’t have any daemons. The sentience of Athel Loren does. I think that point is highly contestable.

Well, the miniscule ruling class are happy. I wouldn’t be too sure about the hordes of unpaid serfs that labour for pennies a week beneath their iron-gauntleted rule, and couldn’t give a monkey’s about chivalry or honour.

That’s not Ariel. Think about it: if she could do that, why don’t the Wood Elves get the Blessing? And why does a Bretonnian army still get the Blessing when facing Wood Elves?

In Warhammer, the warp responds to peoples’ feelings: that’s why the Chaos Gods are so hugely powerful (because they embody the most extreme and potent emotions), and why the cults of Sigmar et. al can perform minor magical ‘miracles’ – because enough belief in their god actually creates a god in the Warp, albeit an artificially-constructed one much less powerful than the primeval Chaos Gods. So it seems to me that the Blessing is most likely to be the feedback from the way that thousands of Bretons actually believe in the Lady as a god, and thus the Warp creates a Lady for them to believe in.

After all, would Ariel really bother watching every Bretonnian army, and carefully take her blessing away from the ones who misbehaved? And would she set up a network of PADI-certified damsels to wait at the bottom of lakes with chalices in order to make sure she had the infrastructure to create Grail Knights? No, it’s psychosomatic. But with added Chaos.

In some cases. I think it's fairly uncontroversial to say that Nagash or the Ruinous Powers are villains, though.

I'd argue that Morghur could probably give him a run for his money as well. Face it, he's immortal, nigh-immune to spells and anything the gets too close to him runs a very high risk of being ripped to shreds by the storm of chaotic energy that surrounds him.

It's always irked me that he's never gotten much press compared to other followers of chaos.

Ariel is definitely not a villain. She's manipulative and arrogant for sure, and she views Bretonnians as little more than an expendable human shield defending Athel Loren; but she does her best to protect life from the forces of Chaos, with little thought for personal power. I see her as a 'vengeful angel' kind of character: fundamentally good, but grim, merciless and capable of violence.

Saying that she's a villain would be like saying that Lord Leto II, in God Emperor of Dune, is a villain. Ariel and Leto II share a common point: they cause death and misery, but they do it to avoid even greater death and misery. They are the surgeons who cut off an arm to stop the cancer from spreading. Is that evil?

Being manipulative doesn't make a character evil. Ariel doesn't kidnap little children and control Bretonnian society only for fun: she does it for a greater good, namely the protection of Athel Loren from Chaos. With an added benefit for Bretonnia as well: without Ariel and the Wood Elves, they would have been invaded by the Greenskins or Chaos long ago. Even the peasants can be thankful for that.

@ Chili: Ariel might not be the Lady of the Lake (though I believe she is), but one thing is pretty sure: the Lady is a Wood Elf (or possibly Isha herself), not a power created by the Warp. I mean, think about it: some young girls disappear from Bretonnia, are brought to the realm of the Wood Elves and come back able to use magic, and they're called the Damsels of the Lady. The Fey Enchantress, self-proclaimed herald of the Lady, is a Wood Elf. And Quenelles, the dukedom that happens to be the closest to Athel Loren, is also the one in which the powers of the Lady are the strongest.

But maybe the Lady is not actually Ariel. Maybe she's the prophetess Naieth.


Edit: True, Spire, Morghur is worth mentioning too. He's far more ancient than Archaon, and probably more powerful (fluff-wise, of course, not rules-wise). And he wasn't born an human: he's a true child of Chaos, evil by nature. I say that he's the true enemy, Archaon just being a temporary inconvenience compared to him. Morghur would probably be a match for Nagash himself.

Ariel's not in it for 'the greater good'. She's in it for the preservation of Athel Loren, and the preservation of the Asrai. The Bretons' culture and lives aren't being sacrificed in the name of the fight against Chaos - they're being sacrificed in order to keep everyone away from Loren, and to hell with the rest of the world. The vendetta against Morghur is only because he trespassed on her 'patch'.

If Loren burned to the ground, the rest of the world wouldn't care, and it wouldn't make much odds in the ongoing struggle against Chaos, either. And if the rest of the world burned to the ground, I don't think the Wood Elves would notice. They'd probably be happy about how all the noisy neighbours seemed to have moved away.

Ariel's not evil in the same sense as Khorne-worshippers, perhaps, but certainly selfish and amoral.

Mm-hm. In the same way that some young students in the Empire get involved with radical new movements, are brought into the inner circle of Tzeentchian cults, and come back able to use magic, and are inducted into the Imperial Colleges of Magic. Their existence doesn't mean that the Colleges of Magic are therefore a Tzeentchian organisation; ditto, the existence of the Damsels doesn't rule out the existence of a real Lady of the Lake. They are exploiting the cult, not generating the god.

See above. What's to stop a Tzeentchian becoming Grand Theogonist, if he's good enough at covering up? In both cases, the reasons for doing so are obvious.

I wouldn't think that required much explanation. Obviously, with the Damsels operating out of Loren, and Ariel's other means of influence, there are going to be more supernatural occurrences of the type that Bretons attribute to the Lady in the immediate vicinity of the forest. However, it seems that the Blessing works with equal potency whether you're in Quenelles or Hexoatl. Surely it should diminish further with distance - there should be a mention of that in the background, even if it were too complicated for a rule of its own? The Bretonnians who fought in the Araby Crusades seem to have been operating under a good deal of the ol' divine protection.

According to Warhammer metaphysics, it's practically impossible that a Warp-entity of the Lady doesn't exist, after all this time and all this belief in Her. The Wood Elves may be in control of the cult, but that doesn't change the fact that they will have created a real god, and that the Bretonnians can use 'faith-based' magic directly from the Warp-Lady to create the Blessing in the same way that Warrior Priests can cast prayers directly from Sigmar. Neither of them believe they're using magic (or, for that matter, that their gods inhabit the same realm as the Chaos Gods) - both of them are subconsciously moulding the winds through ritual and the aid of the god that they and their ancestors have built through the force of their belief.


As for Morghur - meh, I'm not a big fan. He never had a mention before the new book, which is strange enough for someone who's meant to be such a big villain; while he darkens up the Wood Elf background nicely, I don't think he does much for Chaos. He seems too anarchic and insane to have any kind of effective command over his subordinates, and without an intelligent leader, all you get is "BEASTMAN SMASH! GrarGH!". Archaon was definitely more dangerous and powerful than Morghur, for all that he made big mistakes. He had a more interesting background, as well. The thing about Morghur being 'born evil' - well, that's the point, isn't it? Archaon is a more Chaos-y villain, because Chaos is all about corruption, not innate evil.

Nagash would certainly beat ol' Morghy in their current states. If you compare Nagash's last rules incarnation to Morghur's present one, there's not much of a contest - particularly considering quite how easy it is for Nagash to bring Morghur down without ever getting near him.

Whether or not Ariel fights Chaos for the greater good or just to protect Athel Loren, she's the sworn enemy of Morghur. Though this does not necessarily qualify her as a good character, at least she fights on the same side as the good characters.

And if I remember well, it's clearly written in the WE book that, according to Ariel herself, the survival of Athel Loren depends on the Bretonnians. And without the Wood Elves, Bretonnia would be in trouble too. They need each other, even though most of them are too arrogant to admit it. Now if only Orion could stop acting like an idiot and launching his bloody rampages against Bretonnia... If I were a duke, I would not tolerate this: I would fight back, even if that meant killing Wood Elves. Not even Ariel could blame me for simply protecting my land...

Maybe. But the belief in the Lady started when Giles and his companions were blessed by some kind of enchantress. Where did this enchantress come from? I'm pretty sure she was a Wood Elf, and a powerful one. Ariel or Naieth, I bet.

Here I was talking fluff-wise. Morghur's rules certainly do not show his full power. Same as Teclis, who once banished a Keeper of Secrets with a wave of his hand.

Well, that would probably lead to trouble. The Wood Elves don't care, especially as Orion is a forest spirit and therefore linked to the sentience of Athel Loren. You'll just get a big ol' Dryad rampage a la Drycha. I don't think it's written anywhere that there's a concrete friendly relationship between the Asrai and the Bretons; the Asrai occasionally aid the Bretons, but I doubt they'd take an incursion well.

That doesn't really detract from Chili's point. The wood elves may have started belief in the Lady, but, regardless, an independent god ought by now to have arisen due to the effect of mass belief and emotion upon the Warp.

Thragka's got it in one.

How so?

Loren doesn't guard any important borders: in fact, borders with the Empire and Estalia would be safer and far more profitable than borders with the forest. The Wood Elves deliberately cripple Bretonnia's technological and cultural advancement in order to further their own aims, and preserve the woodlands. And they have only come to Bretonnia's aid militarily once in the entire history of the two nations. If they hadn't been there, the Empire or Estalia might well have been able to send aid: what's more, if they hadn't been there, Bretonnia wouldn't have been fighting without the benefits of blackpowder and trained infantry, and might well not have needed them in the first place.

There's not really a friendly relation between the Wood Elves and the Brets, but Orion goes too far. It's written in the WE book that the duke of Quenelles and his family were once slaughtered during the Wild Hunt. For any country other than Bretonnia, it would be tantamount to an open war declaration from the Wood Elves.

If I were a duke, I would never be mad enough to launch an incursion against Athel Loren, but I would like to stand against the Wild Hunt and send Orion and his Wild Riders fleeing back into their forest with grievous losses. The Wood Elves violently repel any invaders; do they really expect the Brets to tolerate their attacks?

I think the implication would be that that previous Duke of Quenelles had the same idea as you.

Chili could be right there.

The Asrai wouldn't value the opinion of the Bretons at all. They will go to whatever lengths necessary to safeguard the forest. Brettonian quality of life and any deaths incurred are of negligible importance. It's not a question of the Bretons tolerating them, it's that the Bretons not intervening and not threatening the forest.

Is the Wild Hunt necessary to safeguard the forest?

I know they don't give a damn about what Brets think, but I hope they won't be too surprised the day a duke actually decides to defend his dukedom.

"How dare they defend themselves against our unprovoked and unjustified attack? We are Elves and they are mere humans! They have the duty to let us kill them whenever we feel like it. Who do they think they are?"

Y'see, I think that that actually is their point of view.

Yup. They's Warhammer elves. Human lives have roughly the value of those of ants.

Except that humans don't kill ants without reason: they kill ants just when they feel they're a nuisance. Since the Brets are instrumental in the defense of Athel Loren from outside invaders, they're hardly a nuisance. What might be the purpose of the Wild Hunt, anyway? Having fun?

If the Brets actually made a stand against the Wild Hunt, what would the Elves do? Attack again in retaliation and run the risk of an open war? Such a war would weaken them considerably. And with Morghur around, they can't afford that.

When you expect to be left alone, you must also leave the others alone. That's what they need to be taught. I'll muster my armies at once.

*rides away*

The Wild Hunt is a cultural ritual. Humans have been known to sacrifice each other in the name of ritual - why would an elf give any consideration to the life of something so lowly in the same circumstances?

Of the two gods, Kurnous is the one representing the untamed wilds, while Isha represents nature's bounty. A good example of this is how Rhya's symbol is a sheaf of corn (agriculture), while Taal's symbol is a pair of antlers (hunter-gatherer). As such, the reason for the Wild Hunt is pretty Orion's existence: he is an incarnation of Kurnous, so it is in his nature to be an untamed hunter. It's like asking why Flesh Hounds eat people: it's because they're slivers of Khorne himself, and Khorne is the blood god.

Come to think of it...
Kurnous.
Khrnous.
Khornus.
Khornes.
Khorne.

Yay! Another god can join the Khaine club!

Laugh, and kill them all, before riding away on their magical horses?

They've suppressed the advance of Bretonnian civilisation so much that, without the aid of the Damsels (who would know which side their bread is buttered), they would stand no chance against the Hunt. It can't get to a confrontation, because the Hunt can dominate its immediate assault with impunity and slip away into the shadows. The Bretonnians' only advantage - numbers - is one that can't be brought to bear against a lightning strike.

If, however, you were to hire say, a company of Reiklander or Dwarf mercenaries with cannon and handguns... but then, you're Bretonnians, aren't you? Shame the Elves brainwashed you into thinking that paying for outside help is evil, too...

Really, what you need is a Lord of Change with a grudge. He'd sort things out for you. Sure, some mercenaries and the odd innocent child might get killed along the way, but it's for the greater good, eh?

Wow, you sleep a few hours and have to read a lot :D

However, I just read the first few pages of the Wood Elf fluff: there is a little on Ariel. She doesn't die over winter any more: so she is truly the original Ariel. Also, she is the aspect of Isha, 'mother goddess' of the elves. I don't know what that means, but there you go. It also does say that Ariel and Orion were considered 'sacrifices' by the forest. I would still say that they have power over the spirits though, since Ariel was the first elf to talk to trees (before being possessed) and Orion managed to wake a new army of Dryads during the Winter of Woe (his first battle after possession).

I think the Lady of the Lake is Ariel still. You argue that they worship a god, so that god should come into existence. But if they worship Ariel, they already worship a god. In the same way that Valten collected followers, but there is no 'God Valten' because everyone saw him as sigmar, The Lady is Ariel, who is Isha. If the lady is anyone other than Ariel, it's possible, but to be honest there isn't anyone else powerful enough in protective magic to make it all fit.

As for other things about the Lady that don't happen to Elves: there is the grail (which is pretty similar to the effects of a few spites or the forest spirits rule, well within her power) and the blessing. It's possible that the Knight's belief in himself, that he'll be protected, is what actually protects him. Or that enough believe it that they are protected.

Remember everyone that the wood elves are entirely neutral (apparently). They are capable of great violence (such as the hunt), but this is counteracted by good acts. Also, I don't think there's any evidence of them going out of their way to restrict Bretonnian technology. As for bretonnian retaliation: do they even know it's the elves who cause the hunt? It seems like if they understood what was going on, they wouldn't rebuild every year.

Good point. Where, Chili, did you read that the Wood Elves try to keep Bretonnian technology primitive? It's not written anywhere in the WE or Bret army book that they do that. What would they gain by doing this, anyway?

By the way, I'm pretty sure the Bretonnians could stand their ground against the Wild Hunt, even without the damsels. Their knights are some of the best in the world. And their peasants, though usually cowardly, are probably just as brave as anyone else when it comes to protecting their land and their family.

And Bretonnians have... castles! I'd like to see Orion and his Wild Riders try to assault a fortress with hundred-foot-high stone walls. In the Middle Ages, castles frequently opened their gates to the peasants in troubled times. And by now, the Brets must have figured out that the Wild Hunt always happened at the same time of the year, so it's not as if the attack were a total surprise.

I can see it now, the Wild Hunt rides up to a castle.

Orion: Let us in, we have come to kill all of you.
Brett. Peasant: [Slimy french accent] Go away you sons of dogs, or I will blow my nose in your general direction. Your mothers were pigs and you smell like rodents! Now leave before I taunt you again. [/accent]

*scene continues much like Monty Pythons Holy Grail scene*

But as for the Brettonians letting in peasants? :lol: :D :P Thats a good one @ztech. The knights see their surfs as general scum, why would they allow them to enter their beautiful castle.

Burro Boskov

What good acts? They came to the aid of their buffer state once, when it was about to be destroyed by an industrialised species that would have turned the forest into a furnace. That's the only thing I can think of that wasn't a direct act of self-preservation.

Sure, they ain't evil, but the point of GW saying that they're neutral is because people assume that elves who don't have that whole dark-and-spiky look are good. The tagline for the WE release was "Capricious, Malicious, Malign," and the current background material paints a picture of an entirely self-interested nation, with no regard for its neighbours and a completely amoral perspective on non-Asrai lives.

They steal children. They kill for fun. They kill people who break their invisible rules without warning. They subvert the self-determination of an entire nation. They do this on a daily basis. I really don't think there's any argument for saying that the paltry few 'good' deeds they have done counterbalances this. They may not be aligned in the great Good vs. Evil battle-lines that GW has been drawing up recently (which is pretty much Humanity and Friends vs. Chaos and Minions), but that doesn't mean that they can't be b***ards from the point of view of a human with all the facts.

It's implicit in the fact that everyone else is late-Renaissance gunpowder age, while the Bretonnians are stuck in the High Middle Ages. I think there was a line or two about it in the 5th Ed. Wood Elf book, too: the longer the Bretonnians are prevented from industrialising and urbanising, the less of a threat they pose for the forest, as the less fuel and raw materials they require.

Pish-tosh. They wear half-plate, and are no better-trained than their Empire counterparts, who wear vastly superior armour and don't have all the downfalls of the chivalric code.

Plus, knights are just the wrong kind of troops to be fighting Wood Elves with. Anyone who's played WE on the tabletop should know that.

Um, as I remember, the Wild Hunt can ride through walls.

There's the point: Ariel's not a god. She's the incarnation of a god - however, that's a god that the Bretonnians recognise in the general Old World pantheon already, as Rhya. I think if you asked most Bretonnians, they would definitely say that the Lady and Rhya are two distinct deities. As such, they may be worshipping an idea that Ariel has built, but they are not worshipping Ariel herself: the nature of belief shapes the nature of the god, and this belief is definitely not in Isha or her incarnation. While Ariel may even have started off masquerading as the Lady, their belief in the Lady will have created a Lady, and that Lady has to be a warp-entity. Since Isha is already the avatar of a different warp-entity, it follows that she cannot absorb the belief in a different warp-entity, particularly as she is a physical being.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the Wild Hunt happen at the height of Orion's power, i.e. midsummer? Which is when the peasants all need to be out in the fields working hard to supply their food-stocks for the winter, thanks to their medieval economy (oh! Look who's to thank for that. Again). You can't afford to hunker down inside the castle all day every day, 'cos you'll starve - and if you do leave them out there, how much warning are you really going to get that they're coming? They're faster than any message you can send except an alarm horn, and they're definitely faster than any response you can organise.

Plus, they're intelligent. I doubt they'd do it at exactly the same time, or in exactly the same place every year.

Unless you count all the elves, all of chaos, all the undead, the orcs and the lizardmen, yeah. Also, I'm not sure if you've checked the Dogs of War army list (which is basically what the armies of Tilea and Estalia are built around) it's not exactly swarming with gunpowder weaponry. Sure, they have some light cannons and pistols but the crossbow is still the most common ranged weapon by far. I would guess that Araby is similarly inclined, possibly using even less gunpowder (it's worth noting when the two nations last fought the Bretts won convincingly).

The only armies that use a good deal of gunpowder weapons are The Empire and the Dwarfs. Brettonia is also repeatedly reffered to in the fluff as being only slightly behind The Empire in terms of power.

The fact that Empire knights can't fight in a lance formation would kind of suggest that the Bretts are better-trained than their imperial counterparts. Their horses are also better bred and better in combat. When you facter in the blessing as well (which actually gives them better protection agianst S3 weaponry) the differences really start to become aparrent.

In game terms, Bretts get the charge more often and will cause more damage when they do so.