Being happy

 There's this quote I keep thinking about every time I think about this blog and the way I let it fall away. 

"But you know, success can test one's mettle as surely as the strongest adversary."

It's from Conan the Barbarian (1982, Crom laughs at your 2011 remake). I guess I always thought it was an interesting concept, but I never really thought about whether it was very true. Truth is, it's a bit exaggerated, but the general principle holds true. 

The last three years, I've been... happy. It's strange. The world is on fire, people keep voting for obviously fraudulent madmen, climate change is becoming actually frightening, idiots are starting idiot wars. In a macro-sense, things are as bad as they've been in my 42 years. But personally... well... the best three years since university. Let's start by saying it was nothing to do with hard work: it was luck. My family is no longer with us, and despite or perhaps because of their determined frugality, I was able to sell my childhood home, buy a nice little house of my own without mortgage, and have a reasonable sum in savings. This in turn meant that I could go to four days work a week and travel abroad several times a year. End result... I'm happy. I wouldn't change that, but it did mean that I grew somewhat ill-disciplined in some areas. This blog was one of them. If I told you I didn't have the time or the energy, I'd be lying. I think that it was more the case that I was suddenly a bit drunk on my newfound freedom and reduced stress, and that sort of made me a bit... I don't quite want to say entitled, but it hooked me on feeling better about the world. Truth is, I didn't do my blog because I just didn't feel like it. 

Now, there are some other considerations worth thinking about here. I think I was a bit of an idiot with Warhammer: Age of Rebuilding. I'm very proud of it as a body of work, but I think I should have actually ended it at the chapter 'Altdorf'. I have all these ideas for ongoing stories in the Age of Karl Franz, and I have written some since, but with that project I'd invited strangers to read it and get invested. Now, I've always been scrupulous about never allowing any adverts on this blog. I have never made a penny from AoR or anything else here. I never wanted that. I wanted it to be my passion project, and I certainly didn't want anyone getting the impression that I somehow owed them (didn't stop one or two people acting as if they were paying customers, but then some people are just morons). But bizarrely, when I saw the traffic stats on the project, I felt like I kind of did owe it to the people who had taken that time. Which on reflection is why I should maybe have left it at Altdorf: I'd given every faction a hook for the new age, and ended that chapter with a new status quo. I think it might have been arrogance to go on after that. 

I had one overriding goal with AoR: stop people from talking about the Old World in the past tense. It's a fictional world: a corporate decision could not kill it if we didn't want it to die! I was a tiny part of a much broader effort, and in the end, the Old World proved so resilient that GW realised how daft they'd been to throw that market away. Warhammer: The Old World has now been back for almost three years. I'd have done some minor things differently, and as with all modern GW games, it suffers from their infuriating desire to constantly meddle with it, but in general I love it. 

I am so happy that TOW exists. We showed, in the end, that there are no End Times. But it left me with two slightly absurd realities: first, my mission was obsolete. The Old World was back and supported. No more past tense. Also, all of those supplements I'd written were for a version of the game that wasn't going to be played that much anyway. Er! 

I never made a decision to stop, per se, but other things got in the way, not least of all TOW itself! 

Now... I'm not here to tell you that I'm back. I don't know, maybe I am. Maybe this is my final word on this blog. I'll carry on writing my stories in the Age of Rebuilding. I doubt I'll be doing more custom rules. Maybe those stories will appear on here, maybe they'll just be for my friends. I just don't know that right now. What I do know is that despite the world's ills, I'm in the right place in life. The Old World lives, as we always hoped and believed it would be. I feel good about getting all this down. 

Now, I must bid you adieu. The time of battle draws near, and the Empire needs heroes like never before!

2023 - I'm not doing that again

 That... did not go as planned. 

It has been a long time since we talked, you and I. I'm knackered. 2023 has been... exhausting. Honestly, the most exhausting year since 2011, when I had freshly started my new profession and wanted to make an impression. I won't say 2023 was bad, but just... so incredibly draining. 

So. November 2022, my mother died. My father died back in 2021, so I'd already done all of the death admin once, but this time there was an entire estate to deal with. I've learned more about probate and property law in the last twelve months than I ever wanted to. And frankly, British probate law is absolutely bananas. It's so archaic and muddled, it's a wonder anyone ever gets away with dying. I lost a lot of sleep worrying about it, and I've been too drained to do anything more creative than paint the occasional model. 

But it's all solved now, and hopefully things are actually looking up. I'm an only child, so my parents' whole estate was left to me. They weren't rich, but they did have money in savings and a fully paid off house. I was able to sell their house - and closing up the house you grew up in for the very last time is a weeeeird feeling - and buy one of my own. I completed and got the keys for my new house on 15th December. I've moved some stuff in, though the big removals van is booked for 12th January. I've got the house I'm in until 15th February. My new house is a robust 3 bedroom affair with a loft conversion which will absolutely be a gaming room. Look, I'm not pretending I'm anything other than very lucky; I'm a single 40 year old man who will not be troubled by rent or mortgage concerns after February, who has a decent job and a reasonable amount of savings now. I got very lucky, and most of it wasn't through any cleverness or hard work on my part. There are a lot of smarter and harder working people than me facing real trouble in this country. So I'm not complaining - but that doesn't change the fact that getting to this point has been an absolutely exhausting road. That's where I disappeared to. 

But, 2024 should be nicer! Mainly due to everything I just described, but there are other things to look forward to. Round about May, this country should take the first step back towards recovery (don't quote me on that, autumn could be a possibility but I would guess May). And in the shorter term... we've got The Old World coming in 3 weeks!! All that I've ever done with Warhammer: Age of Rebuilding was to prove that Warhammer Fantasy cannot be killed. It is much too beloved. In the end, even GW saw that they were throwing away a cherished thing. I'll still pick AoR back up again when I've finished my move, but it's enough to know that The Old World just wouldn't die. Suck on that, Archaon. 

Anyway, I told myself I'd do a post before the end of the year, which is in 16 minutes. I wish you a Happy New Year and I'll see you on the other side!

Bad news and an important message

Right. My mother passed away on Sunday. We knew her cancer was terminal but expected a bit longer. I am up to my neck in admin, arranging a funeral and wotnot else. Honestly, I really hope this won't disrupt my writing as long as my father's passing did, but bear with me. 

Now, I'm sorry to go on a bit of a rant when relating this sad news, but it's so important. As is always the case, the NHS doctors and nurses were incredible. If you ever find yourself angry at NHS waiting times, stop for a moment. and remember how fast everything was back in 2010. Then ask yourself what changed. Then ask who it was that kept claiming they were increasing NHS funding whilst then forcing the NHS to allocate most of those funds to private providers (whilst clapping, no doubt). Always remember how hard the NHS staff work, how much of a difference they make... and remember who is really to blame. 

The NHS is what Britain can be at its best. The people to blame for the NHS crisis are Britain at its worst. I know it's difficult, but always remember that. The NHS is the greatest achievement in this country's long and often bloody history. We need to protect it. 

Donate to the NHS. 

A great and terrible bloodline

The Von Carsteins are a strange dynasty: noble, conniving, blighted by grim sobriety and unhinged lunacy. And even among the undead, they sleep uneasily in their graves... 

Find out what the legendary vampire line are up to. 

Squat on Earth is this?

 Well, the Tyranids did a piss poor job of that. When your whole gimmick is eating things, accidentally failing to eat an entire civilization that everyone thought you had is embarrassing. But I digress. 

Something else which is good at chewing through civilizations is Covid-19. I haven't been able to leave my house in days and it has made me a bit crazy. But after the first couple of days, I was well enough to do some hobby stuff as long as it didn't involve standing for long. So I decided to paint up some of my new Leagues of Votann. I never thought you could sell me on the idea of Squats coming back, but I think they did a good job overall. The lore could do with more flesh and fewer superlatives, but it's their first outing so I'll let that go. 

Now, the various official colour schemes are fiiiine, but they don't quite appeal to me. The reasoning behind them is solid - the Votann are a bit more rational and slightly less mad than other 40k factions. The workmanlike, blocky colour schemes work to reflect a practical and no-nonsense people. But I decided to go with a silver and gold scheme.

The models are, for the most part, user-friendly. They fit together reasonably easily and are pretty civilised for a painter. The one exception is the Hernkyn Pioneers, which seem to have been designed to be as frustrating as possible. But the rest are enjoyable to work on.

This might seem like an odd view, but I quite like the simplicity of the army - a handful of characters and a total of seven units. I think that building an army of them will be undaunting. 

Now I've heard there's been a bit of a fracas among competitive players, but I don't really follow any of that scene closely. I think that they're a nice addition to 40k in general. 

Paint the heads separately. Thank me later. 

20 years later

 There are some moments in our lives which, in retrospect, were the pivots that everything turned on. There are a few for me, but none which resonate as much as the 1st October 2002. A change came into my life, a change without which none of the rest of it would have happened, not in the way it did at least. It was a moment that had come for untold millions, but that doesn't change how important it was to me. 

I left my family home. 

I was 18 years old, and I moved away to university. I was the first person in my family to ever attend a university, but apart from that, there was nothing remarkable about it. But the moment itself was remarkable. I moved to a hall of residence called Sibly Hall (S to the I to the BLY), a monstrous 10 storey pile which I think was built in the 1960s. It had that curious smell of being washed a bit too often. And if anyone says a bad word about that place, I will fucking fight them. It was our home, and we had some of the best times there. It was where, I suspect, we became who we are. A friend of mine died in a tragic and grossly misreported accident there, but that does not poison it in my memory. Even in that dark time, we looked out for each other. Some of the people from Sibly remain my friends to this day. 

It grows on you. 

Sibly Hall is gone now, pounded down so that faux-affordable housing could be built, but it will always live on in our memories. And it was really the start for me. I used to half-joke that my life really started on 1st October 2002, but it wasn't far off the truth. That was the day I started living, finding out about myself and the world in a meaningful sense. 

I can't begin to summarise the last 20 years. Like everyone else, there were good times and bad times. Towering highs and crashing lows. I know some people who are more successful than me in any material metric, but I'm proud of these two decades. I'm proud of 2am takeaways, and distant lights over the lake, and the smell of airports, and the year I spent living in a 6' x 8' room. As I say, there are some who have technically achieved more than me, a lot more. But I feel like I've fulfilled the only metric that mattered to me. 

I've lived. 

Heffengen

 
The Empire is recovering. But in his private chambers, Karl Franz is worried.

Find out why.

The Green Hell

The Norse and the Lizardmen? What could go wrong?

Read The Green Hell.

Oh yeah, there's a bit of pontificating from me below. 

Right. The last year and a half was... I don't want to say I was unlucky because honestly I'm one of the luckier people about, but a lot of things got in the way. Like, a lot of things. My dad died, my mum got cancer twice then broke her shoulder and got a severe chest infection, I lost of load of Age of Rebuilding templates when a laptop pretty much blew up in my face and then I broke my bloody leg. I'm not complaining, there are plenty of people worse off than me. But it has been a long time - and I kind of had to remember how to do this. This might not be my best, I'm just getting back into it. But I am glad to be back. As long as I draw breath, an ongoing narrative for WFB lives (usual disclaimer about if you don't like it use that energy to write your own version and show me how its done). Anyway I'm done whinging, let's do this!

 

Right. Enough mucking about.

The last year was... complex. Some of you already know that. But a little while ago, someone actually asked me about Age of Rebuilding, which means that at least one person still cares about what I'd done. And coming to think of it, even though the last year was not an amazing time, I missed it. Demonstrating that with just a little imagination the Old World could not only survive but become an evolving story is something I care for dearly. 

Plus, there are a lot of stories left to tell. I haven't forgotten about that newborn democracy in L'Anguille, or the Sultan of Araby cryptically moving his armies around. I haven't dismissed Katl Franz and his reforms, or Settra trying to build a new kingdom in the snow. And most of all, I haven't forgotten about the threat of the Outlanders, lurking at the top of the world, unseen but deadly. 

Point is, sometimes I need to be reminded to do the things I love. So I'm going to dust off my quill, open my Incunabulum and start off again. 

Plus, I can't get the idea of Vikings in a jungle out of my brain. 

I like Orks!

 Orks are cool. I tried to start an Ork army about eight times over the years, but I could never get on with the models for the Boyz. But the new models have changed that. So here are some Orks!

Iron Within, Iron Without

I feel a degree of sympathy for Perturabo. He strikes me as the guy who sticks his hand up in a meeting to point out the catastrophic flaw in management's latest scheme, gets shouted down, and is then expected to clean up the inevitable mess. 

I wasn't going to paint an Iron Warriors army. But I had loads of Chaos Marines knocking about. It struck me that the Iron Warriors colour scheme would be quite easy and satisfying.

I decided not to bother with black shoulder pads. On a test model, I found that they actually detracted.

Sometimes, it's good to just settle on a scheme that allows you to get a nice result quickly!

High Elves, plans, plots, schemes and me getting my hands stuck together

 Right! So, I've had some very kind messages and a comment asking where I went. Truth is, all the stuff with my family really knocked me silly. I had to step away properly for a bit. I took the time to learn some new stuff as well - I've been working on my terrain building. One of the things I learned was that water clear resin sticks like a limpet: I got that shit on my hands and literally had to keep washing my hands for the rest of the day!

Oh! Quick shout out to Square Hammer for motivating me to get back into things again!

Now, my original Age of Rebuilding writing schedule got completely blown out of the water, and this wasn't helped by the fact I decided I had to do something different than what I'd been working on when my father died. But I've not quit. I'm working on a new piece, which I admit has got a bit out of hands, but I'm getting there. 

So, let's talk about High Elves! Like a lot of 4th edition kids, I started with High Elves and Orcs. The former have always been special to me. 

These are the multipart spearmen, and I recently painted this unit. For a long time, I thought these models were outdated, until suddenly one day I realised that it didn't matter. Yes, the hands are a bit big, but I like them anyway. They come from a time when Warhammer Fantasy was at its apex (well, arguably its first apex, since it nows exists as a purely community porject, which is fairly awesome).

What I will say is that the newer paint ranges make painting High Elves a lot easier. Corax White is more or less my saviour at this point. 

I was also pretty pleased with the bass. They're a base-ready mix from a company called Geek Gaming Scencics. 

It's nice to be back. 

Building the Mystic Isle

 Right, I'm back, more or less. My father's funeral went well... even if my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer only days later. My blog output might be even more spotty than usual!

Anyway, on to business. I've always loved the idea of Ulthuan, this mystical pseudo-Atlantis of soft focus, slender pines and blue hues. But how to realise it? I've never felt quite confident enough to scratch build elven terrain due to all the perfect lines and wotnot. Luckily, Etsy and Ebay came to my rescue!

Look at these statues! LOOK AT THEM! The detail on them is incredible. I got these from an Etsy seller called Elfhead 3D, who was really nice and quick as well as creating great terrain. I decided to paint them as a cold blue stone. 

Speaking of Elfhead, they also sell this great obelisk. My paintjob isn't quite as solid on this one, but that's me, not the model. 

Last one from Elfhead. I decided that this fallen statue should be overgrown. Indeed, all of these bases use a variety of static grass and model leaf litter.

Now, this one here is from minimonsters.eu. It's a bit differently proportioned, but the texture is probably nicer. They also do a bigger version, which I have, but... erm... it's in a different paint scheme and doesn't fit here. 

So there we are! Ulthuan on the tabletop at a fairly low price!

The greatest achievement in British history

Well... that was bollocks. 

I probably don't need to tell you that 2020 was a bit of a cruddy year. The pandemic was the main problem and the gross ineptitude of many governments in handling it another. The question of whether money or human life is more highly prized was answered as governments desperately encouraged people to endanger their own lives in the name of economic activity. Perhaps more disturbing was the lengths that ordinary people will go to in order to protect their sense of routine or normality: let's not entertain all that guff about freedom, what people were protesting against was a change to their routine. I've been working from home for nine months and recognise that I'm one of the luckier people in all this, more privileged you might say, but I still feel frustrated at people being cavalier with their own lives. 

Perhaps I am most sensitive to this today. I don't want to go into details, but yesterday my mother and I had to take the decision to let my father go after a very short but shockingly escalating series of health crises. I love and respect my father: with the amount of suffering he is in now, and though it seemed unthinkable a month ago, it would be the height of cruelty to keep him technically alive after all he has suffered. The doctors will administer such drugs as they can to keep him in a peaceful and painless state until he slips away. Yet I have reason to be thankful.

The doctors have been absolutely incredible. The greatest achievement in this country's bloody history is the National Health Service, not just for the sheer scale of the accomplishment but for what it says about us at our best. In recent years, the world has seen Britain at its worst: nativist, small, pompous, self-aggrandizing in its delusions. But at our best, we can be noble, generous, and caring. The National Health Service was built on the belief that we only cross the finishing line when the last of us do. The political titan behind the NHS, Nye Bevan himself, once said: 

"No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means."

My father will die today, or perhaps tomorrow. He will certainly not live to see his 75th birthday on 21st January. That fills me with sadness. And yet I know that, in the height of a hundred-year pandemic, despite a decade of attacks from the worst government in living memory, they did absolutely everything in the realm of medical knowledge to save him, and when that was impossible to at least make him comfortable. And that fills me with pride. My father does not leave a legacy of unpayable hospital bills, because I and my mother and people I have never met and every British person reading this have already paid those bills. Because the National Health Service represents the very best of what Britain can be, what people, in general, can be. It represents, more than anything else, the human impulse to help others. It represents our belief, despite all of our failings, that nobody should suffer without help. Our belief that money is not more important than human life. 

The NHS was built to make a better world after the fall of fascism in the twentieth century. Now, as it always does in the end, fascism has slithered back out of its cesspits and stalks abroad, warping minds and hearts. But I do not believe it will triumph in the end. Because, for all of our stupidity and self-humiliation of the last few years, the British people still love their NHS. No serious politician will ever say it should be scrapped in public. I believe this is because no matter how much you scare and confuse people into cruel and foolish decisions, at their heart people are still decent, people still believe in supporting each other. These are dark times. But the spirit of the NHS still burns strong. 

Nye Bevan would proud of that spirit. So would my father. I know I am. 

Enter the Kingmaker

 

What can possibly make a civil war between three factions of the most untrustworthy race in the entire world any worse?

An arms dealer, maybe. 

Read a bit about this shifty character.

A saga begins

 

The forces of Chaos took a colossal beating at the end of the dark years - even greater than that which the Empire suffered. The tribes of the north find that the world has changed, bringing new problems... and new chances for glory. That is, assuming that there isn't someone even meaner and more brutal than them on the horizon...

Gather round the fire for the saga.

Fear them

The Dark Eldar (don't make me call them that new name) are the alien race I love the most in the 40k universe. It wasn't always so, and deservedly: when I worked at GW in 2005-06, weeks would pass without us selling any Dark Eldar models. I distinctly remember that there was one blister pack of wyches with assault weapons that was sitting on the peg the day I started there, and the day I finished. but in 2010, they were reborn with an almost complete refit both of lore and models. They are undoubtedly the most horrible thing in 40k (including Chaos!) and they represent the perfection of what GW has tried endless to replicate since: the uneasy mixture of science fiction, mysticism and faerie tale weirdness. 

If I said 'quasi-undead space vampire elves' you'd assume that I was talking about a bad Shudder import. But somehow, it works. As cruel and vile and twisted as they are, there's something... kind of sympathetic about the mounds of shit which they have to plough through every moment of their benighted existence. There's something bizarrely almost admirable about the frantic desire of these wretched, evil creatures to stay alive. Given that the alternative is to have their souls eaten by a dark god who pretty much embodies sadism and is almost wholly their creation, you can't entirely blame them. From devouring the suffering of their victims to restore their withering souls to frantic and ever more perverse surgery to rebuilding their own bodies in oubliettes of horror and pain, the Dark Eldar are ultimate survivors. 

The only problem is that for years I couldn't bloody paint them. I kept trying various lacquered metl paintjobs, but they all looked pants. In the end, it occurred to me that I should stick to what I'm good at: miserably industrial and metallic. They look like Moorcock and Clive Barker had a collision anyway, so I decided on dark silver and gold. The light blue bases and red grass were a way to throw a bit of contrast in it. 

I love Scourges. They're one of the most 'Dark Eldar' things. Both from the perspective that in such a vicious society only messages carried by hand can be trusted and because... well... they voluntarily got a haemonculus to hollow their bones with massive drills and suture wings to their backs without any anaesthetic whilst they presumably feed on their own agony! Because you know... they were bored.

Speaking of Dark Eldar who do weird things because they're bored... Wracks. It's one thing to be a freakish flayed Frankensteinian surgeon creature with a cheese grater grafted to your face. It's another to have ended up in that state because you thought it was a good idea having seen the results beforehand. It's the truly frightening thing about the Dark Eldar: the bizarre debasements they inflict on themselves as much as others. 

Their big brethren, the Grosteques, are pretty unnerving too. I'm not keen on the model, so I made mine from Vampire Counts Vargheists and spare Talos bits:

On the other end of the spectrum, Incubi are cool just because they look slick and martial. I really enjoyed painting their helms. 

My final offering for today is a Lhamaean. Again, I'm not too keen on the official model. It's not a bad model, it just doesn't seem to quite fit the aesthetic of the Dark Eldar. So I did a head and hand swap on a Dark Elf Sorceress. Simple!

I have to be in the right mood for Dark Eldar. Although they share some of the visceral horror of my Nurgle stuff, the mood is very different. Nurgle is all about grime and corruption and decay. With Dark Eldar, it's about perversity and invasive cosmetics, about life at its most desperate and demented. 

I might go and paint some cats or something now.