Happy New Year! Welcome back to Eyes of the Snake, Doombringer here with something a little different from Warhammer that I thought you might like to see. Further down the post is also a brief reflection upon 2014 as well as hobby plans for the new year. So sit back and enjoy some more of my ramblings.
I have served as DM for this party for something like five or six years now and they have been equally the most epic and dysfunctional party I have ever ran games for. The four of them had never met one another before their first session but have formed a strong friendship that has seen them rise from Level 1 adventurers solving murders at the Merchant's Guild; to leading the Grand Coalition in a universe-wide war against the tyrannical Infinite Empire. About a year ago they finished that legendary campaign and have since begun anew with the next generation of characters.
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| The Celestial Court |
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| The Whisper |
A mysterious elven ranger from the Golden Woods of Valacre he seeks justice and vengeance upon his exiled evil brother Malgor - the Angel of Blood. The voice of reason in the party he successfully prevented many terrible PC plans from leaving the drawing board, diligently following the plot and his destiny. Noble warrior, valiant sacrifice and all-round hero; he repeatedly proved himself the very spirit of justice as champion of the White Knight.
The Euphemism played this character, in fact it was his first PC and since then he has gone on to DM a party of his own. As far as I know we both still use 3.5ed as it was the edition I was taught how to play when I started many, many years ago and what I then taught The Euphemism and this group to play. I have considered switching to Pathfinder but have never gotten round to it and I am watching the release of 5ed with some trepidation as I was decidedly unimpressed with 4ed.
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| Draco Armageddon and Francis |
Resident Wizard/Samurai/Pale-Master is the craziest character I have ever encountered and I don't even know why I let him get away with most of this. Draco is a gnome who lives in a hole in the ground with a family of badgers all called Francis: an agent of chaos he travels the land with his badger 'The Francis' seeking glory and power. Having wielded the Regalia of Evil, killed dwarf Stalin, written a best-selling biography and made his badger a demigod; Draco Armageddon has been there, done that and gotten the novelty t-shirt.
This moustachioed maniac was a veritable bag of tricks with a skeletal arm for propping open trapped doors and a spell for every occasion. He was also the player who remembered most about the setting and plot, largely because he was my brother so had 24-hour access to the DM and all my resources. He was however the main instigator of intra-party conflicts; once even attempting to drug the Whisper, and was often advocating for the party to undertake nigh suicidal courses of action. A menace to his fellow players and NPCs alike he could nevertheless pull through and make the right choices when it really mattered.
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| Aluora Chandler |
The party druid Aluora Chandler was a nomad turned bar-fighter who accidentally killed her sister in a brawl. Seeking atonement she turned her talents to adventuring so she could help those in need. As party druid Aluora was the often used healer whose primary role was keeping the rest of the party alive, something that they regularly had problems with. Far quieter and reserved than many of the other players, this PC often supported The Whisper in decisions in an attempt to make a rather dysfunctional party less fractious.
Aluora's player was nearly always late to sessions (in fact he still is) which often resulted in us either starting late or his character disappearing to pursue other courses of action. In fact when he missed one session his character went on an epic journey to slay her sister Quain Chandler who had been raised as a zombie Samurai by one of their recurrent antagonists. Making peace with her sister 'off-screen' Aluora returned to help save the world and clear up the mess the rest of the party had made whilst she was away.
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| Urisgra Dankil |
Even as DM I don't know this characters backstory as it seemed to change nearly every session. By the end he was apparently heir to the dwarven monarchy (the dwarves in this setting were a theocracy) who was also an assassin who cut off the Gnome Lord's hand. I think he was also some kind of terrorist or freedom-fighter but I couldn't be sure. As far as the rest of the party was concerned he was some kind of violent lunatic with a penchant for boastful and fictional outbursts.
His obscure origins aside this Rogue/Assassin was the sometimes useful, usually obstructive member of the party who took every opportunity to backstab his fellow adventurers whenever personal gain was possible. His crowning achievement being the stealing of The Gun (the first black-powder weapon) whilst the rest of the party wasn't looking and setting up the first munitions factory without them. This made him filthy rich, gun-obsessed and even more of a danger to his team mates.
I hope you enjoyed this somewhat random post but I am hoping to add some more non-Warhammer content to the blog steadily to increase the variety of content in our posts. Comment if you liked this brief glimpse into the characters I DM for and if you would like some more Dungeons and Dragons content such as world-building, NPCs, book reviews, models or whatever; and I will see what I can do for you.
2014 was an unusual year for me, finishing A-Levels and starting university has left me strapped for time and cash. Rather than starting anything new I have largely been repainting armies and repurposing old models with my main hobby expenditure being the End Times books. In fact I am yet to finish posting all of the things I have done this past year on the blog so expect them to appear periodically over the next few months. This will include a few more pictures of my revived Dark Eldar army as well as some pages from my sketchbook and some miscellaneous Hobbit stuff. I will also be continuing with my End Times reviews, possibly doing some other reviews as well such as for Tamurkhan which I acquired recently.
2015 is going to be another weird year. For a change I start the year with only the one ongoing project with my Witch Hunters/ Ecclesiarchy forces which I will be adding to piecemeal over the course of the year. I will also be getting Nagash next week when I can get into a store and I expect he will take several weeks of my time to paint. However beyond that my goal will simply be to empty Limbo.
Now, you ask yourself, what is Limbo? Limbo is a name I have given to a draw in my hobby cabinet where all manner of random miniatures and aborted projects go to linger in a miserable half-existence until I can find uses for them. I like to think many people who have been in the hobby for any amount of time have one but I am yet to confirm this. Last year I rescued many Lord of the Rings models from Limbo by making them into Game of Thrones war bands. This year I would like to completely empty this draw of shame, partially because I am running out of space to put my actual armies, but largely so that I do not feel as if I own a hobby black hole or some kind of backlog of failures.
To this end I might find myself starting new armies or exploring hitherto unexplored territories for me in order to find uses for everything in Limbo. If any of my current armies get updated in the meantime then we can safely say goodbye to any actual plans and I imagine chaos will reign over my paint station until I run out of time, money or patience. Hopefully though, by the end of the year I will have all of my miniatures in order and I can finally get round to actually being a good at playing any of the games I own these models for.
Right then, now that I have committed this to type I can look back in six months time and see how poorly I have performed. Until then I once again wish you a happy new year and all the best in your respective hobby resolutions.
Doombringer out.
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