The Moon is a Sorcerer - Effects of Lunar Light or Lack Thereof

"At the end of the lunar cycle there are two or three nights of complete darkness, called the kamwonag’anga “the one seen by the practitioner.”  Only those with a ken extended through the knowledge and use of magical medicines can see the moon then; it is “there” but “invisible” to ordinary folk.  The moon is a “sorcerer” at this time, using its own remarkable powers to effect passage from the eastern horizon where its last sliver was observed to the western where the new moon will appear.  Fish and game may be seen in extraordinary numbers during these days of tenebrous nights, but as one man said, “the moon is a great sorcerer, he is bad, he closes the game and fish and prevents us people from catching them.”  What is more, lions and other dangerous beasts “wander about excessively” then.  Moonlight is auspicious and the personified moon “beneficent,” showing man his path through the woods.  For a few days, however, the moon is a “sorcerer” and denies man “his” light and the fish and game so tantalizingly, so tauntingly placed before him." - Perfect Lions, Perfect Leaders by Allen F. Roberts

 

The moon is a sorcerer ... when I first read the passage above, this phrase captured my imagination.  What does the moon do when he is a sorcerer?  What does he want?  Many cultures seem to have associations with moonlight and madness, but what about the lack of moonlight?  The time when the moon is invisible, when he is teleporting.  What is it like to be a practitioner of the art, one who is attuned to the moonlight and what it shows?  Roll a d8 or chose one of the effects below depending on the phase of the moon.

Full

1. The moon becomes a giant eye that stares incessantly at the party no matter where they go. Practitioners of sorcery are aware of this. Before announcing this effect, have all players who can use magic give you a taboo of some kind. Then reveal that the moon is watching them and they know they will be severely punished if they break these taboos or allow anyone they associate with to do so.  Follow through if needs be.
2. Invisible beings are sometimes caught in a moonbeam; they are easier for a mage to see.
3. One magic-using PC becomes maniacally obsessed with silver. They will go to great lengths to obtain silver that they see and take risks to acquire it – consider temporarily changing their alignment with regards to silver to Chaotic Evil (perhaps borrowing from Dark Sun’s water rules). They may steal from NPCs and even PCs if they think they can do it without being caught. If they have a silver weapon they will use this over all others; if they don’t have one, they will try to acquire one, etc.
4. The full moon descends to the planet and chases those who use magic.  If they are caught they are utterly destroyed.  The specifics of this (how big the moon is when it comes to the planet, how fast, if there is a way to defeat it and how, etc) are left to the ref.
5. The party becomes lost. Somehow they wind up in an area they cannot recall getting to – a place that is disconnected from the area they have explored. They recall walking along feeling slightly hypnotized, just putting one foot in front of another and following the person in front of them, not paying attention, lost in their own thoughts as they plod along, but suddenly all of them realize they are somewhere they have not been before, and they stop and look at each other – “I was following you.” “But I was following you!” In truth whoever was first in the marching order was following the moon.
6. The moon takes a piece of gear from all magic using characters in trade for its light. This piece of gear simply vanishes.
7. This moonlight, which is only visible to practitioners of sorcery, is attracted to particular people and “sticks” to them, so that they are illuminated with a soft glow for the duration of the night. They are easier to hit with missile weapons (+2 on rolls to hit) but shed light as the spell in a 30 foot radius. This is not dispel-able and is not affected by anti-magic etc. Roll some percentage for party members as well as those the party encounters to determine if the light is attracted to them in this way (or just determine it arbitrarily).
8. Sorcerers are able to see future events; one party member is selected and can ask the ref for the likely effects of a particular action once in the time from sunset to sunrise.

Gibbous

1. Under the strange light of the gibbous moon, the PCs look, sound, and act …. Different. Players swap charisma scores in some randomly determined way.
2. Sorcerers can see the strange marks which appear on a PCs skin when it is viewed under the moonlight. This could be a message of some kind, or it could be Aklo or written Theolal or a map or it could be nothing at all, just a strange patten caused by the PC resting their flesh against something. The marks may or may not be permanent.
3. The moonlight makes an object “come to life” – it becomes animate, conscious and able to speak, have opinions, etc. The animating force dissipates when the sun rises. This object is only animate to those with the power to see.
4. Sorcerers are more conscious of ambushes and the light makes them easier to see. The party is surprised half as much as is usual, and, if an enemy party has a magic user, the party surprises them half as much as usual.
5. A single time during the gaming session, a single PC sorcerer is able to detect ALL of the traps and tricks within sight range as they are revealed in the gibbous light (note the moonlight must shine upon these things in order to reveal them). If this ability is not used, it fades with the sunrise.
6. A ghost follows the party around for the night, visible to those with the power to use magic; it isn’t a “monster” as such, and can only impact the material world with much mental effort, and even then the effects are subtle. It might be able to whisper a word in a PC’s ear, or distract them at an inopportune moment. It has very limited poltergeist abilities – it cannot move anything heavier than a pound / half a kilogram. But it could potentially latch or unlatch a lock, or otherwise help or interfere with the PCs. The Ref can determine if this ghost is from someone the PCs encountered in the past – but it does not have to be.
7. Animals are inexplicably friendly towards the party, even those who might otherwise attack them or run from them.
8. If they concentrate, sorcerers are able to see through barriers such as walls if they are thin enough. “Thin enough” is whatever the ref says it is.

Half

1. The moon affects the value of coins. Roll a d4 – on a 1 or 2, they are worth only 50% as much as normal; on a 3 or 4, they are worth 150%. The value of the coins goes back to normal at sunrise, and the change is not obvious to the PCs; it only comes into play if they decide to buy something that evening.
2. At precisely midnight, time stops for everything and one except one random magic using PCs. This lasts for ten minutes, then time resumes its normal flow.
3. PCs feel hypnotized and possessed, as though an intrusive alien presence is influencing their actions. Players swap character sheets and play a different character until sunrise.
4. All written material becomes unintelligible to sorcerers under the light of the half moon.
5. Magic-using PCs become two dimensional for the night and are thus able to fit into the thinnest of cracks – they can thus slide under doors, into cave crevices, etc. However, they are incredibly ineffective combatants when two dimensional, since they have to adjust the angle of their attack in ways not at all familiar to them, and completely whiff three quarters of the time or more.
6. Spells fail a quarter of the time, and another quarter of the time they are twice as potent (in terms of effect, duration, etc).
7. There is an unusual and colorful indicator of the party’s route for the night. For example, butterflies that glow with moonlight follow the party wherever they go, or small black flowers sprout where they have stepped.
8. A mage can see the true nature of the world under the light of this moon. Such a reality is crippling, throwing the PC into an existential crisis. They are either paralyzed with the utter meaninglessness of it all (50%) or they suddenly see no sense in the survival instinct and will hurl themselves into danger no matter how foolhardy (50%).

Crescent

1. This light rubs against blades borne by obeah-men and practitioners and sharpens them until they will cut light.  Up to the ref if they implement this as a damage bonus or in a more narrative way.
2. Normally docile animals become aggressive towards mages, who are attacked by possums, or racoons, or deer, or domestic cats, etc.
3. The radiance of the moon makes one randomly chosen PC magic user recognized and adored by nearly all NPCs. They are famous and largely admired, though no one they speak with can tell them exactly why. A few NPCs might loathe the character and party, again for undiscernible reasons. In any event, they will be recognized, and an NPC might start conversing with them by saying, “oh my god, it’s YOU!” or “oh, it’s you.”
4. The light reveals vulnerabilities to the mage. The threat range of their critical hits is doubled.
5. The thin light of the crescent moon is surprisingly heavy – sorcerers are unable to stand, and may only crawl about on all fours until the sun rises.
6. Sorcerers are unable to heal while exposed to direct moonlight.
7. Invisible creatures are fully visible to mages. Visible creatures are invisible.
8. Any magic user who is under the effects of extreme stress (including combat) has a ten percent chance to begin randomly teleporting once per round (DM could use blink spell or something else as they prefer).

New

1. This moonlight is nonexistent and thus mages no longer need to use their muscles to hold up the light of the moon. They can use this muscle power for other purposes – refs could give a small bonus to overall STR for the night or allow a PC to complete some feat of str successfully once, even if it seems unlikely.
2. Sorcerers in the party are unable to see attackers. These are not invisible. It is just that the PCs cannot see them; they are hidden by the sorcerer moon.
3. A mage is able to see lies under the dark clouds of the new moon.  What these look like (and what they might be able to do) is up to the ref.
4. Dead sorcerers left under the empty night sky from dusk until dawn are resurrected at sunrise.
5. An important mage (PC or NPC) disappears and is nowhere to be found until a sliver of the moon is visible again.
6. The Gods are paying attention. Calls for divine intervention are twice as likely to be successful, and sometimes a god may be called even inadvertently by using their name.
7. From dusk until dawn, sorcerers are able to speak fluently with the dead.
8. Sorcerers can see secrets. Magic using PCs pick another player and state something general their character suspects of that player’s character. This turns out to be true in some way, though it may not be in an obvious or expected way. For example, Player A may say “Character A suspects that Character B is not who he seems to be.” It is then up to Player B to make that true through play; perhaps player B’s character is secretly in league with forces opposed to the party, or perhaps they are a permanently shapechanged animal in human form, or are, unwittingly, the prince or king of some obscure principality even though they are currently a pauper and vagabond.

The Death Guard - All Hail the NEW LIFE!

The Day of Resurrection is upon us!  The smallest and meekest among us, the humble single cell organisms, the bacteria and the virus, they are the INHERITORS!  Let them rise and multiply!  WOE unto he who interferes with them!  WOE!

I have been working on a 40k Death Guard army.  Given the wide range of models and opportunities for kit bashing, I wanted to try to do an army where each model was unique.  I haven't quite managed it in terms of sculpts - some of the Poxwalkers and chaos cultists are duplicate sculpts - but where there have been dupe sculpts I've done my best to ensure the paintjob distinguishes them from each other.

I am not a great painter and I am absolute SHIT at sculpting.  But much of mini painting is more about learning technique rather than being a talented artist.  I am always amazed when I see truly good work, and it makes me wish I was that good - but I will also say that knowing a few simple techniques like washing, drybrushing, and highlighting can go a long way towards making models look passable, and the more you do something, the better you get at it, even if you don't have a ton of natural talent (which, clearly, I don't).  I think it's enough to just enjoy the process.  Mini painting is one of those things that induces flow state in me - the world just drops away, I forget how anxious everything makes me when I think about things at the macro level, and all I am focused on is this one little model, right here and right now.  That alone makes the practice worthwhile for me.

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE

First up, the Poxwalkers.  Dark Imperium came with two sprues of 15 that are duped, so I had to distinguish them with paint.  I also grabbed a box of the old Warhammer fantasy battle Zombies and did my best to convert some of those for a total of 40 walkers.

YE SHALL KNOW THEM BY THE BUZZING OF THEIR WINGS ... 

Two Foetid Bloat-drones.  I'll probably do one more of these and a Greater Blight Drone before I am done.

A Mephitic Blighthauler - I want three of these guys.  There is only a single sculpt, so I am going to do some conversion work, replacing the circles and tri-arrow design with a different Nurgle symbol from the Blightkings kit on one of them, and using a faceplate from the Bloat-drones for another.

SEETHING WITH LIFE, TEEMING WITH DEATH

A Daemon Prince.  It's hard to get this guy to look anything except goofy.  I think he turned out OK.

HULK SMASH

A Helbrute, the first of at least a pair.

HEAVY METAL

A Plagueburst Crawler, hopefully I'll do one more of these and then a Land Raider or a Spartan.

ASK NOT FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS...

Two Noxious Blightbringers, another conversion using the Blightkings and some Chaos Space Marine bits if I remember right.

LORDS OF THE UNDEAD

Leaders - a Lord of Contagion and below him, Typhus, Captain of the Terminus Est

DEATH COMES IN MANY FORMS

Various support units.  From top to bottom: Malignant Plaguecaster, Plague Surgeon, Tallyman, Foul Blightspawn, Biologis Putrifier

THE CRAWLING HORDE

Many, many Plague Marines.  Each one of these guys is a unique sculpt.  I did a lot of conversion using the Putrid Blightkings set - the Death Guard armor is so unique that you can get away with more medieval looking plate mail as power armor.

The dude below with the fly head and flanked by the two icon bearers is definitely Chosen of Nurgle.  Maybe at some point he will be elevated by Grandfather Ruin to Daemon Princehood and challenge the current master of the warband for supremacy.

I am in love with the cheeky Nurgling wearing a helmet below.

WARDENS OF THE GRAVE

Deathshroud Terminators

Blightlord Terminators

THE UNMADE

Works in progress - some additional Blightlord Terminators and a converted Lord of Virulence (the dude with the fly head).  A second Mephitic Blighthauler - I have a couple of Nurgle symbols from various kits and I am planning on scraping off the one that is on him and replacing it with a shield from the Putrid Blightkings set to make it unique.  Last, a humble Rhino that is in the painting stage.

The chaos cultists are not pictured - I also have a Mortarion to build (or possibly cannibalize for a converted Daemon Prince using Vashtorr - an idea I rather like) and a few other models that don't quite qualify for even WIP photos, but the rest of the army is captured in photos below.

That's it for now - I'll post more of these guys once I finish the second wave, whenever that is!

An Excerpt from the Tome of Sable Chains: Creation of Visanguka

 

https://www.deviantart.com/balaa

“Kanego told me that lions of the bush will not attack men without provocation, but will lie in the grass and let one pass. He added that stories of lions breaking down doors to kill people are lies; these are men. Lions have shame, man does not."   - Perfect Lions, Perfect Leaders by Allen F. Roberts

The creation of a visanguka is a mighty feat of sorcery involving perfect timing and self-control. It is a thing a mage may be proud of, for the process is long and fraught.

To begin, the sorcerer should first obtain two animals, a lion and a rat. These are starved to death. Maggots are allowed to gestate in the corpses, and are fed and fattened until they become huge and furry. The maggot of the lion will provide the visanguka with the ability to change shape and wield the weapons at a lion’s disposal. The maggot of the rat will provide the visanguka with a complete lack of shame, so that it will kill without reason or remorse.

While the maggots are grown, the sorcerer shall prepare an amulet. The amulet is to be charged with components that make one invisible: a shard of glass from a smartphone screen, which people stare at to the exclusion of all else around them; the vocal cords of one who has gone unheard – for example, an innocent man who has been hung in spite of protesting his guiltlessness or a victim of rape who screamed for help that never came, or who is disbelieved; an insect of the order hemiptera family reduviidae, who we walk by without noticing. These are the sorts of components that the evocator must charge the amulet with. This will provide the assassin with the ability to walk invisible and soundless, unseen, unheard, and unnoticed, into any compound, no matter how well secured.

The mage meanwhile should also create a child from clay and weave a basket. Let the child be as perfect as the mage can make it, of a size that indicates he is a newborn, and sculpted with his mouth closed. If the child is smaller it is well, but if it is too small, the sorcery will fail.  Let the basket have a lid that can be secured closed, and straps that allow the mage to fasten the basket to his body so that it rests against his stomach. The reeds of the basket must be woven in such a way that the sign of VULDRA VORN ZELAR is clear upon all of its sides.

When all is in readiness, the mage is to place the amulet around the neck of the child of clay. He then places the lion maggot in his mouth and blows it along with his life’s breath into the right nostril of the child. The same is to be done with the rat maggot, saving that the nostril should be the left one.

The child should then be placed into the basket and the basked closed, secured, and sealed with the mage’s emission (hence the sorcerer must be a potent male). The mage must then strap the basket to his belly, never taking it off for any reason for a time of one hundred and eleven days and nights. It is crucial that the cessation of this period of time coincides with the new moon! At the end of this time, upon nightfall and if the moon is new, the mage should open the basket. If the sorcery has been successful, the mouth of the clay child will have opened. If it is closed, no further sorcery can be worked upon this effigy and the mage must begin again! But if the mouth is open, all is well and he may continue.

The sorcerer is then to cut his wrist, giving the child to suck upon the wound. The sorcerer must wait for the child’s eyes to open and ultimately must judge for themselves when the child’s grey flesh has flushed with the color of life. He should then close the lid and fasten it again. Daily, the child will seem to change back into clay, and this feeding must be repeated again at nightfall for another one hundred and eleven days. Again, the wizard must never remove the basket from his body for any reason unless he is willing to begin anew, for removing the basket will cause the spell to fail. This is a time of great peril, for the child is hungry and will need more and more blood to sup upon as it grows! A careless wizard will be drained entirely of his life force and yet if the child is given too little to feed upon, it will die. The mage must wait until the clay child’s chest rises and falls as though it breathes and for its skin to have the hue of vitality before he withholds his blood for the remainder of the day. If the wizard judges well, the child will live and can be removed from the basket at the end of the second one hundred and elven day period. Thus released, it must be fed on the flesh of a human murder victim chosen at random and will then grow quicky, attaining the size and wisdom of an adult (though it will never talk, having been fashioned by necessity with no tongue) in not more than three months.

Once all this has happened, the mage will have a powerful servant; a visanguka lion-man who can spread terror and enact revenge at the sorcerer’s demand.

Crow

Kris Tsujikawa

For weeks afterwards, Faolán feels like nothing. Not like a Buddhist nothing, which is everything and bullshit and wonderful, but like an American nothing, like the holes in Wonderbread nothing, different and empty and invisible and absent. Hollowed out and left behind, like the shell of a cicada, papery and delicate. A burnt thing, consumed and ashen and scorched. As though he would disintegrate if someone even blew on him.

One morning he wakes and goes to the bathroom and rinses his mouth, spitting several times. He looks at himself in the mirror. He feels shaky. Weak. He feels like a fool.

He makes this accusation as he looks at himself.

“Fool. Idiot,” he says, calmly.

Then the words came in a rush. His voice rises by degrees with each word until he is shouting, and keeps rising until he is screaming.

“Idiot! Fool! Weakling! Coward! You are so fucking stupid, you know that?! Do you get that, you fucking brainless asshole?”

He heaps abuse upon his reflection.

“Trash! Moron! Man, FUCK you! FUCK YOU! I fucking HATE you, you know that? I fucking hate you.”  

The last sentence comes out like a sob and now he’s weeping, the tears running down his cheeks even as he clenches his jaw and growls through his gritted teeth. “You set yourself up for this! You realize that? You did this to yourself! Of COURSE this is how it was going to go. You KNEW it would go this way. You fucking KNEW IT. And you STILL did it, you fucking ASSHOLE!”

He flings the medicine cabinet open and starts pulling things out, hurling shaving cream and ibuprofen and toothpaste around the bathroom until his hand finds the small box of razors. Fingers shaking, he fumbles with it and gets one of them out. Even in the dim light of the bathroom, the edge of it gleams, bright with promise.

There is a sudden tapping at the textured glass of the bathroom window. Faolán registers it but it seems distant. He ignores it and turns the razor back and forth in his hand, watches the light dance across the blade, hypnotized by the idea of the blood against the white porcelain of the bathroom sink, the pale mint tiles.

The tapping sounds again, frantic this time.

“What the FUCK?!” Faolán shouts and, furious at the interruption, he slams the window open.

A sleek black Crow is perched on the outside sill. It releases a bright red berry from its beak and barks out a call, a cackling caw that sounds suspiciously like a laugh to Faolán.

Apoplectic, he eyes it incredulously.

“What the FUCK do you WANT?” he shrieks at it.

“Remember the dream,” Crow says calmly.

The razor falls from his nerveless fingers as Faolán gapes at it. It just talked, he thinks. I don’t think it’s me. I know I’m fucked in the head, but I don’t think it’s me. Suddenly, he cannot make his voice louder than a whisper.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“I am Crow,” croaks Crow, “Keeper of the Law.”

“What do you want?” he asks again, fascinated.

“Remember the dream,” Crow repeats.

Faolán’s mind races to match his heart as he casts desperately through the wreckage of his memory. What dream? he wonders, which one?

And then he knows.

“I was a bird,” says Faolán, “I flew and flew.” The words come out almost like a sigh.

Crow inclines its head slightly.

“I soared over the world,” Faolán continues, his countenance calm, “I caught the wind and rose. I could glide for a time, coasting carelessly on the currents, banking with the breath of the breeze. And I looked down at the world and saw how beautiful it was. How fragile and how beautiful. And I flew. I flew and flew.”

Then anger creases Faolán’s brow. “But I woke up.”

“Such is the way of dreams,” says Crow.

“What did it mean?” asks Faolán, “What do you mean?”

But Crow does not answer. He picks the shiny crimson berry up with his beak, cocks his head at Faolán and fixes a quizzical stare on him with one eye for a moment and then, with no further prelude, takes to the air and flies away.

Instant Kafka Back Catalog Released

 SO:

I know I promised you guys to stop with the music posts but I'm kind of excited about something that happened a few days ago, so there will be one more music post before I stop for at least a little while.  I have blathered about this here before but one of the old bands I was in reunited recently.  We got picked up by a (very) small label and nearly our entire back catalog (seven albums worth with one more album on the way) is available now on just about every music platform on the internet - Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Pandora, a bunch of others - I've linked several of them (but far from all) on the sidebar and I'll include a link to our page on Spotify at the bottom of this post as well.  If you use something else like Tidal or Boomplay, just search us and we should come up.  If there's a particular platform you use that we don't seem to be on, please let me know and I will look into it.

It's been kind of a nice little boost to see the music out there and generally people seem to have enjoyed it from what I can see (though, granted, most of the folks who I have talked to about this are people I know and am friendly with, so my sample is biased). I have a hard time saying what we sound like - the closest thing I can think of is Faith No More, but we don't sound a lot like them either.

But it does seem like most folks have found something they like.  One of the albums is almost all covers, everything from Bob Dylan to Devo, the Sex Pistols to the Beatles, from David Lynch's Lady in the Radiator from Eraserhead to the Stooges to Neal Diamond to Hüsker Dü.  That should hopefully give you some idea - we are all over the fucking place.

These guys have always been fun to play with.  Our first show was a Halloween gig and someone dressed up as the Baby Jesus dosed the lead singer on stage.  At another, the sound guy was having a lot of problems getting us set up (we were a pain in the ass for sound guys in part just because we had a big band - two keyboards, lead vox, two guitar players, bass, two drummers, three backup vox setups) and four songs in I started smelling something burning only to look up and see that the PA system closest to me had caught on fire (we had no pyrotechnics mind). Though our liability in this incident could have been refuted, we still packed up and absconded pretty hastily.

Good times!

Here is the link to Instant Kafka on Spotify.

Maybe This Is Not Even Earth

The Armies of Old Night and Blanche's Techno-barbarians

For whatever reason, I found myself going through the Horus Heresy black books again recently - not the novels but the books that were intended for gaming, written mostly by Alan Bligh. It really is a shame he passed away, he's responsible for some of my favorite material to come out of the Warhammer 40k universe, along with Warwick Kinrade over at Move to Contact who wrote some of the early Imperial Armour books. I tend to re-read RPG material when I am going to sleep the way some people watch TV.

Anyway, I found myself thinking about the Unification Wars, and about the possibility of a game set during the Age of Strife, and not for the first time. I can't recall when I first thought about this - probably shortly after I first heard about INQ28 / Inquisimunda, but it might have even been before that.

For the record, I came to 40k late. I remember seeing ads for Rogue Trader in Dragon Magazine when it was brand new (and I was like 13 or 14) and thinking "Fuck that looks awesome," and then, some years later, being in my FLGS and seeing models and books for Warhammer, though I cannot recall if it was 40k or Fantasy or both, and thinking that not only did you have to buy the minis, there were like 20 books you needed (I think I thought you needed ALL the codexes (codicies?) to play) and I sort of immediately went well, I'm never gonna play that shit, it's way too expensive.

And I forgot about Warhammer for a long time. But sometime in about 2013, I found an image of a Necron and out of a vague sense of familiarity and idle curiosity I did a couple of google searches, and the next thing I knew I was on a Warhammer wiki. This particular wiki basically ripped text wholesale from the books, especially the gaming books, and while I don't generally condone this, I think it was probably a net positive financially for the company that makes 40k as it had the same effect on me that bootleg cassette tapes of the Cramps and Crash Worship and the Dead Kennedys had on me when I was 14, and I was digging into the Siege of Vraks and the Badab War and lore on these weird mechs called Titans with something approaching glee. And the art, my god. The art was SO good. John Blanche's artwork in particular just left me kind of gobsmacked, but all of it was good.  I've included a bunch of examples of Blanche's work throughout and at the end of the post.

I had always enjoyed the mini aspect of D&D so I wasn't averse to trying that at a larger scale. I found that in particular I was really intrigued by the Skitarii. There were no models for the Mechanicus at the time, so right from the beginning, conversion was a thing I was considering. But I had no idea how to go about it, so I just sort of digested as much as I could of the lore and looked at models for a few years, trying to get a sense of what might work if I wanted to convert or scratch-build an army of Skitarii. GW came out with a line of plastic Mechanicus dudes in 2015, which was enough to get my to buy in, and I have a pretty decent sized Martian Mechanicus army. I should post pictures sometime.

So those first couple of years, before I knew about ForgeWorld and before there were any plastic AdMech dudes, when I was dreaming of how I might go about scratch building the little guys, left me with a love of conversion, and I am even more amazed when someone sculpts their own stuff, like some of the work on Le Blog des Kouzes (check out Maxime's Plaguebones stuff if you stop by there, it's amazing).

I didn't stop with the AdMech, and among other stuff, I have a Death Guard army where the goal was to ensure that no two models were the same. That was the first army where I started converting some of my own stuff. Again, one of these days, I'll throw some pictures up. I think right around this time period - 2017 or 18, not sure - is also when I found INQ28 and some of the sites kind of dedicated to Blanchitsu, to conversion, sculpting, and darker palettes then what you see in a typical paintjob from the GW professional team.

So the other day while I was going through the Horus Heresy books again, with all this stuff about conversion and whatnot swirling around in my head, I was reminded of the Unification Wars and the Armies of Old Night.

For those that don't know, the Age of Strife or Old Night is kind of a pre-historical era in the 30k/40k universe, the end of which was brought about by the Unification Wars. It's a time period when the Emps was not yet fully dominant, and was going from this power bloc to that and unifying everyone, by force if necessary - hence "The Unification Wars." We get little tidbits about it here and there, but they are very few and far between.  

But the tidbits we DO get are compelling in every sense of the word, at least, it has compelled me to consider creating armies for the various forces of the Unification Wars and Old Night. There's more about the Emperor's forces than anyone else - Thunder Warrior armies have been done, I think - but I'm more interested in the other rulers of the time period - the forces of the Unspeakable King or the Ethnarch of the Caucasus Wastes.

So I am collecting all the details I can about these forces. There are many more than these mentioned on the various wiki pages etc, but for now I am only including those where I have been able to find a bit of additional detail, enough that I could root an army in canonical lore rather than spin it from whole cloth. Most of this can be found on various sites like Lexicanum, but some of it comes from bits of the Horus Heresy gaming books and I've re-organized it to focus mostly on the military tidbits. There's some confusing information (for example, there are two Ethnarchs, and the "Unspeakable King" ruled both Albia and Panpacifica but was then succeeded by Narthan Dune, the Tupelov Lancers served Sheng Kal but then later served the Emperor), but I think I've gotten it mostly right.  

If you have any additional details about any of the states below (the info is pretty well scattered through lots of different books) or enough detail on a state I didn't include to warrant it's inclusion here, please please let me know! 

Akkad

Summary: Akkad was a techno-barbarian state in the Upper Asiatic Basin who fought against the forces of the Emperor.

Leaders: a monarch known as the Great King of Akkad

Troops: genetically-engineered slave soldiers known as the Udug Hul. The Udug Hul's bodies possessed poisoned blood and had a physical strength greater than 10 un-enhanced human warriors. Akkad had approx 200,000 of these gene-forged warriors.

Albia

Summary: Albia, sometimes called "Old Albia," was a techno-barbarian state which bordered Northern Atlan (probably the North Atlantic Basin) and was known for its ancient warlike clans. Albia consisted of towering, soot-blackened castram-cities. Albia is probably located in the area of the British Isles and was also called Britonnica and likely Albyon as well. Albia engaged in frequent wars with the Pan-Pacific Empire.

Leaders: Uilleam the Red (If Albyon is indeed the same region), as well as, at one point, the Unspeakable King of the Pan-Pacific Empire.

Troops: Armored Ironside Clan soldiers and proto-Dreadnoughts

Ethnarchy of the Caucasus Wastes

Summary: The Ethnarchy of the Caucasus Wastes was a techno-barbarian state located in the Caucasus Peninsula of Europa. The Ethnarchy's strongholds were hidden deep beneath the hollowed-out mountains of the Wastes and shielded from attack from above by near-impregnable power-filed webs

Leaders: The Ethnarch of the Caucasus Wastes, “mutated eugenicist-oligarchs”

Troops: many, from "armored, gene-augmented "Ur-Khasis" troops, roughly analogous to the Emperor's Thunder Warriors, to narcotically-enslaved covens of psykers."

Franc

Summary: The lands of Franc were based in the territory of Western Europa, largely in the region of the ancient nation-state once called France. The people of Franc were known as the Frank, a fractious people before the Unification that did not take kindly to invaders.

Leaders: Havuleq D'agross

Troops: a force of 50,000 rebels, which was largely composed of unskilled militia.

Himalazia

Summary: Himalazia was the name given to the mountains of what had been known as the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau, the greatest mountain range on Old Earth. Located well above twenty-thousand feet, the air was too thin to breathe without mechanical aid. The mountains of Himalazia served as the Emperor's original base on Terra. Deep beneath these mountains, the Emperor established a vast number of gene-laboratories and other areas for research. Late in the Unification Wars, the entire chain of great peaks was transformed into the massive fortress and capital city known as the Imperial Palace.

Leaders: The Emperor

Troops: too many to list, but obviously the Thunder Warriors and the Custodes; also the Old One Hundred - a series of one hundred Imperial Army regiments, mostly unaugmented humans, who fought for the Emperor (and apparently pre-unification some of these fought against the Emps as well). This list is not exhaustive but: the Geno Chilliads (Geno Five Two Chilliad being one specific regiment), Geno Spartocid, the Angkorian Dragoons, the Antioch Miles Vesperi, the Catharti Arraigners, the Cordesh Cavalry, the Golden Hegera, the Inferallti Hussars, the Kimmerine Corps Bellum, the Kushtun Naganda, the Lucifer Blacks, the Qui-Helic Guard, and the Tupelov Lancers. Also - the ConFed Gun Brotherhoods, the Thorosian Voltigeurs, Ouranti Drakes, the Lombardi Hort and Zanzibari Hort, and the Outremar (led by a Grand Khedive).  Also the G9k Division Kill.

The Geno Chilliads, or at least Geno 52 Chilliad, was composed of soldiers that were produced via genetic selection to be at the absolute peak of unaltered human performance, while the officer class (called Uxors) was exclusively female, with junior officers being in their teenage years. These officers had a weak psychic power they called Cept that manifested as a "felt" connection to the troops under their command and a higher than normal grasp of the operational situation. This power burnt out usually before the age of thirty. Loss of Cept usually meant removal from command position.

The Geno Seven-Sixty Spartocid, when we see them in Legion, seem somewhat run down from a long war against abhumans on Dycenae and their neglect has led to mismatched plate and carapace armour with threadbare cloaks over them (but we could probably assume that duirng the Unification War era they were well supplied). The crests on their helms seem to indicate rank. They are armed with broadburn lascarbines. Their ranks include a Subalterix officer rank and a Strategarch command rank.

Hy Brasil

Summary: Hy Brasil was a powerful techno-barbarian state centered in the former territory of ancient Brazil on the continent of Sud Merica. Hy Brasil was considered the most powerful of all the Sud Merican cantons.

Leaders: Dalmoth Kyn

Troops: "the Dracos,” who were allowed to maintain their existence even after the establishment of the Imperial government. They wore green, scaled armor. They were exclusively recruited from the desiccated jungle regions of Sud Merica and apparently had scaled cloaks and reptilian-styled helmets.

Maulland Sen Confederacy

Summary: The Maulland Sen Confederacy was a techno-barbarian state based in Nordyc (Scandinavia) that unwittingly served the Dark Gods of Chaos by engaging in cannibalistic Human sacrifice and forbidden genetic manipulation.

Leader: the Tyrant-Prophet of Maulland Sen (also called the Priest King of Mauland Sen)

Troops: A horde of genetically-altered warriors, witch-marked men, and zealots.

Pan-Pacific Empire

Summary: The Pan-Pacific Empire was a techno-barbarian state composed of the Pacific Islands and what had once been the territories of parts of East Asia, Australia and the Japanese islands that flourished during the Age of Strife. Eventually, the empire became one of the most powerful techno-barbarian realms on Pre-Unification Terra.

Leaders: A warlord remembered in legend only as the "Unspeakable King," who is said to have ruled both Albia and the Panpacific Empire at one point.  Later, Narthan Dume, the Tyrant of the Pan-Pacific Empire, “half-mad, half-genius.” The Crimson Walkers in Vhnori, who are likely old generals of Dume and are described as “psykers, gene-splicers, and warlords.”

Troops: Under the Crimson Walkers, the troops are described as “mutant monstrosities,” and “stich-golems who scampered on dozens of hands, ranks of braindead slaves, and demented Psykers.”  The Unspeakable King had the Hollow Ones, an order of pariahs like the the Silent Sisterhood, and was probably a powerful psychic null himself. 

Ursh

Summary: Ursh was a techno-barbarian state that was located in the steppes of what had once been Russia and Central Asia. Ursh was the mightiest of the techno-barbarian empires on Terra before the Unification Wars. It was not as technologically advanced as several of the other techno-barbarian states. For example, the acquisition of superior military machines from the Nordafrik Conclaves was the main reason cited in the Chronicles of Ursh for Ursh's decision to launch that infamous ancient war against its southern neighbor. The Chronicles of Ursh mentions the influence of "primordial gods" upon Kalagann and the Ursh. Also, the sorcerous powers of Kalagann mentioned in the Chronicles of Ursh formed the main part of Ursh's military power.

Leaders: Ursh was ruled by the despot and warlord named Kalagann at the time of the Unification Wars. Kalagann was described as being of cruel character, and commanding vast armies of techno-barbarians. Other high positions within the government of Ursh were all filled by military warlords including Lurtois, Sheng Khal (also known as Shang Khal) and Quallodon.

Troops: The armies of Ursh consisted mostly of unaltered Human soldiers. Kalagann also employed powerful psykers within his armies, using their arcane abilities to unleash the foul powers of the Warp upon his enemies.

Some of Ursh's troops are known by name and include the following units:

The Roma were organized mercenary fliers who fought for the forces of Ursh. Highly-skilled pilots, they were said to never touch the earth beneath them. They were trained to carry out pinpoint aerial attacks, and were therefore of great value to the generals of Ursh.

Both the Red Engines and the Tupelov Lancers followed the command of the Urshian warlord Sheng Khal. The Red Engines were masters of the siege, and possessed siege engines able to raze whole fortresses or hive cities to the ground. The Tupelov Lancers are described as screaming berserkers. These Urshian warriors were trained for close-combat action, and proved ruthless and deadly. They were known also for their use of cybernetic steeds.  They later became one of the "Old One Hundred."

The Oneirocriticks were the personal counsellors of the Ursh warlord Sheng Khal. Their name means "interpreters of dreams," in the ancient Urshian dialect of Low Gothic, but it is likely that they used some kind of Warp sorcery to guide Shang Khal in his actions.

The Wrathsingers were a specialized Urshian military unit that was likely comprised of practitioners of sorcery that bent the powers of the Warp to their will. They were able to use their "magic" as the Chronicles of Ursh names their abilities, to change the environment to their advantage or to kill men from afar with their "spells."

Yndonesic Bloc

Summary: The Yndonesic Bloc was a techno-barbarian state located in what was once Southeast Asia. As late as the time of the Horus Heresy in the early 31st Millennium, the Yndonesic Bloc, though an integral part of the Imperium, still retained a distinct regional identity and culture on Terra. Their ruler, Cardinal Tang, imposed a genocidal policy that consisted of forced breeding between only "genetically compatible" citizens of the Bloc, combined with a eugenics program that aimed for the pursuit of racial hygiene through the use of compulsory sterilization and the genocidal extermination of "undesirables."

Those that defied these enforced edicts were punished brutally. Imperial history would later characterize Tang's rule as one of "bloody pogroms, death camps and genocides."

Leaders: The Yndonesic Bloc was ruled by a man named Cardinal Tang, the tyrannical "Ethnarch," during the closing years of the Age of Strife before the Unification. He wished to "return the world to a pre-technological age," burning "scientists, mathematicians and philosophers" who opposed his church's views.

Troops: The military unit known as the Stormbird was developed by the Yndonesic Bloc and used against the Pan-Pacific tribes during the Unification Wars. The Stormbird was developed from Warhawk and Nephoros class assault craft.

So there's obviously not very much here, but what IS here, especially when combined with Blanche's art, is enough to work with.  A while back I started messing with some bits I had to create a couple of units of chaos cultists, and I think they could work, but when I did that, the parts were taken mainly from a unit of genestealer cultists, a unit of skitarii vanguard, a set of Cadians, the old chaos cultists from Dark Heresy, and the Vraksian militia bits FW used to make.  There are SO many more choices at this stage with the advent of Kill Team, Necromunda, and Warcry, that I am tempted to just start again.

At any rate, I think I may have found my next modeling project - though it's certain I could get pulled back into the world of Titans pretty easily, I'd kind of like to give this a go.  Though, man, it has been so hard to find time to do this stuff recently.  That's not a bad thing, it's mainly just that most of my free time is being eaten up with music. I'm actually getting close to where I was when I stopped playing all those years ago.  And when I am not doing that, I'm trying to sneak in a little writing or work on the not-yet-abandoned dungeon23 project that has spilled over in to 2024 (there's about 160 character sketches and I'd like to get it to 200 before I let it go).  I'm still sort of undecided on wether I want to do Albia, with the proto-dreadnoughts, the Panpacific Empire (the stitch golem might be a lot of fun to make) or Ursh (there's quite a bit to work with there). But I've been itching to paint a bit again, and one of these seems like it might be a worthy project!

Bonus happy factoid, if you made it this far: the band I've been working with got signed and we're in the process of releasing about six - seven hours worth of material on eight albums (nearly a hundred songs) on Spotify.  So that's coming soon!