What Inspired Our Armies (Dark Elves)

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Saintofm
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What Inspired Our Armies (Dark Elves)

Post by Saintofm »

Wasn't sure where to put this but i this turns out to be popular I just might do somethings on the other armies as well


I thought it might be fun to take a look at all the things that inspired our Warhammers, even at the most tangential of tangents, and see where they add up. And since I hate walls of text as much as the next guy, I will even throw in some pretty pictures here and there.

Today I will mostly look at Dark Elves, but I may have some elements of High and Wood as well.

Real World Cultures: I think there are a mix of mostly Greek and Roman, with some Druid and Pic as well. The Gods are the most evident.

While Asurian has more in common with the Judao Christian God then the poon hound Zeus, the others have some closer similarities to the Greek pantheon.

Khaine is a copy of Ares: A bloodthirsty brute interested in war only for the sake of it.
Aneth Raema is loosly based on Artimis in they are both goddess of the hunt. The major difference was Artimis was really not into guys (save for Orion who seemed to be just that good of a hunter) and while she seems to have tried to hook up with Kuranus for similar reasosn, her bloodthirsty and vengeful nature is more in lines with the Nemesis of the furies.


Athari is Venus, and no I am not going with the Greek name because I can never spell that out without my Spellcheck dyeing a little inside. While we definitely call her the Goddess of Love in a more G Rated sense, but she was essentially the horny goddess of sex (although given the ancient Greek definition of love, this might fit with this one as well)

Nethu has had elements of the Greek grim reaper Thanos, but recently he has been given almost an Egyption feel with a raven head and a guardian of the gates of the underworld. Something more in lines with Anubis, but he wasn’t a jerk this guy is.
Marei Hag is all three Fates in one.

Helkarti shares more than a name with the Godess of Magic Helkate, though her appearance is that of a multi armed snake woman (like a combination of the Mother of Monsters of Greek Lore Ecidna and a Hindu goddess.

Echidna, the image is just big so have to hide it witht he spoiler
[+] SPOILER
Image



Maththland is Neptune.

Monsters also have some influence;

The Harpies and hydra are obvious enough.

Kharibdyss was one of a pair of monsters from the Odyssey responsible for whirlpools that were side by side and a danger of ships. While ours is a primordial monster that would be at home in a loftcraftian novel, the namesake Charibdis was leviathan sized monster. Later she was the daughter of Posiden and Geia, and was used to consume whole land masses. Tht said I couldn’t find a description of the appearance That said her partner Scylla was was however described, have a maiden’s to half, and the lower half of nothing but snarling wolf heads and dragons heads (so also at home with lovecraft).

The dark steed’s pension for eating flesh is reminiscent to mares that did likewise in one of Herculeses’ many trials.

The Medusa also has a Greek origin: Once a drop dead gorgeous woman that was a devoted priestess of Athena, she had the bad luck of being too beautiful. For of being raped by Posidan in her Temple (which defiled it and destroyed Medusa’s world as she was both unworthy to be a priestess and unable to wed as she was not a virgin, ancient Greece were awful to women) she was turned into a hideous gorgon, a beast with snakes for hair, the skin more akin to a corpse, and a stare that would turn one to stone. Yeah, the hero of this story pretty much put her out of her misery.


Image

While the manticore is traditionally lionen in appearance in games workshop, the mythical one was a strange amalgam. In Greek myth it was similar to the spynx, having a red lion body, a human face, and three rows of teeth like almost like a shark. Besides this, other stories gave it other combination of animal parts like bat or dragon wings, and the tail of a scorpion that could shoot needles. The manticor may have been inspired by tigers, as its name was a butchering of the Persian word for man eater, but this fan favorite is thrice as nasty and ten times as angry.

So Games workshop made theirs drop dead gorgeous and pissing of the very vein Goddess of Lust. Is it ok for me to actually go in favor of this one as it takes some of the squick factor out of it?

Others have other more down to earth influences.

Malekeith has a Alexander the Great Feel, being the son of a great king and a darkly seductive woman. The legend of how he tamed a seemingly wild stallion also fits with Rakarth’s childhood. There is also an Arthurian feel with Malekith as Mordred and his dark sorceress mother Mortathi being Morgana.

Blackguard are a Pretorian guard, the protectors of the emperor. That said, the Black guard seem to have done a better job then the Praetorians in this regard as Rome went through Emperors like most people go through french-fries but that was in favor of the Praetorian’s other job: Making sure an unfit ruller never stayed on the throne very long.
While the Gladiator games were a popular sport amongst the Romans, women gladiators were far and few between. But who doesn’t like an excuse to have women beat the crap out of each other in fantasy armor?

Witch Elves are less Greek and Roman but more Barbarian. Welsh and other British peoples had massive couldrons they would use for both feasts, but also very brutal sacrificial rituals which did include a lot of human sacrifice (something the Romans found distasteful).

Assassins are ninja, but every nation had their rouges and their assassins.

Chariots, while a popular mode of transportation in the old world, was more of a Europian barbarian, middle eastern, and Egyption weapon of war. They were the earliest tanks, but the Romans used them more as a way to get fresh troops in and tired troops out if and when they did use them.

Aside from this there are some Asian aspects.

Deulswords may be a symbol of status in the 6th ed book and the Malsu Dark Blade series, but it was also the symble of Japane's samurai, and they and they alone were allowed to carry these pair of blades.

Repeating crossbows were a Chinese weapon, and while the crossbow had been used to some degree by many cultures on the super continent between 200BC and today, I think this is more a standard Dark Elves like Crossbows thing. Duel swords as a status symbol as was in the 6th ed book and the Malus Darkblade novels are very Japanese as that was the symbol of a samurai.

Image

Thoughts, feelings, your interpretations, and where you thought I was pulling this out of the air?
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Re: What Inspired Our Armies (Dark Elves)

Post by Calisson »

I might be influenced by the decision of 9th Age team to make Elves closer to celtish background, but I share their feeling.
The Pantheon of Celts as we know it has lots of similarities with the Greek-Roman one, if only because it has been described in medieval times by clerics who were versed in Greek-Roman Lore.
The Cauldron is a strong Celtish feature. Frenzied women are Celtish more than Roman or Greek.
About monsters, I have the feeling that GW took all kind of monsters, most of them coming from Greek-Roman mythology, and spread them over all factions with no special care for coherence.
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Re: What Inspired Our Armies (Dark Elves)

Post by cultofkhaine »

Nice crossbow! and write up - quite a bit of thought has gone into this.

I often wonder how much fantasy is based on the real world - it also takes quite a lot of effort to make a fantasy setting unique without loosing your intended audience.

I mean how do you step away from the norm of races we call Dwarf, Elf, Orc, Gnome, Troll etc. taking that further with our Dark Elves how do you make a race of beings evil without getting stuck with the norms as well.... base them under ground, give them a dark god, exile them... by basing them on a past culture it gives us something to relate to.
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Re: What Inspired Our Armies (Dark Elves)

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The druchii were first presented in something close to their 'modern' form in 3rd edition. They were very much decadent late-Republican Romans with some Celtic influences. They lived in big cities, with noble families that were more like street gangs, and a huge underclass that lived in squalor and were kept from rebellion by bloody public entertainments and the fact that the slaves who did all the worst jobs had life even worse. Cripples, lepers and beggars were common, tolerated because it was considered unlucky to molest them (there was no Death Night to thin the numbers back then).

The nobles (the dru perim or 'Black Pilgrims') were initially all decadent, hedonistic Slaanesh-worshippers (the druchii had been exiled from Ulthuan for turning to Slaanesh). But the Cult of Khaine (explicitly the elven aspect of Khorne back then), led by Rhudd Cynhaeaf (who would be renamed Hellebron in 4th edition) would eventually overthrow them and institute a Khainite theocracy (and start a Blood Crusade against the Elven Kingdoms after five millennia of sitting in Naggaroth doing nothing having endless orgies). Interestingly, Rhudd was a sorceress as well as a priestess. Khaine didn't have a problem with magic-users back then (Khaine's magic-phobia was introduced in 6th edition, although Khorne's hatred of magic goes back further).

We already had repeater crossbows and reaper bolt throwers back then. And cold one knights. And obviously witch elves. Entire armies of witch elves, actually - them being an unlimited 'core' troop type is not a recent thing, but a change back to how they always were prior to 6th edition.

Their language was mostly a mix of Irish and Welsh, but that was true of elves generally in 3rd edition.

The whole Malekith/Morathi/Aenarion storyline was added in 4th edition. Largely to pull the druchii away from being just Chaos-worshipping exiled elves.

As for the elven gods...

Asuryan has a lot of the pre-Islamic Iranian god Ahura Mazda in him. The whole 'passing through the ritual fire to be judged/purified/reincarnated as a king' thing is very Zoroastrian. White being the colour of purity because it's the colour of ashes. God being visualised as an 'angelic' winged spirit. The symbol of an altar with a fire upon it as representing divine kingship. All taken from pre-Islamic Iran.

Asur and druchii are perhaps originally from the Avestan asha, 'pure', and druj, 'false'.

The phoenix isn't Iranian, though, but Greek (and maybe Egyptian before that, and possibly based ultimately on the flamingo - now you have to imagine High Elves riding on giant pink flamingoes...)

Khaine is named for the Biblical Cain, of course. I don't think he has much in common with Ares beyond the obvious link that they're both war gods of the 'feared and hated, but acknowledged as a necessary evil' variety. And, I suppose, the conflict with Hephaistos/Vaul. Khaine is a god of murder first and war as an extension of that, whereas Ares was very explicitly a god of battle and soldiers, not of any other sort of killing, and certainly not of killing by stealth.

Given Khaine's original 'look' before he was Eldar-ified, he seems more influenced by (the Hollywood version of) Kali. So, Kali by way of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, with a gender-flip.

Some of the recently added gods are just slightly renamed Middle-Eastern deities. Atharti = Astarte. Ereth Khial = Ereshkigal. Nethu = Neith (in her psychopomp aspect, and gender-flipped for some reason - actually, maybe he's meant to be Namtar...). I generally dislike these additions. Hekarti is the most egregious, since she fills basically the same conceptual space as Morai-Heg. But Atharti probably annoys me the most, since she was introduced purely to retcon the Cult of Pleasure away from Slaanesh (because some moron thought elves were too smart to deliberately worship a Chaos god).

Re. Medusa, the Greek myth we're all familiar with is actually a very late version. In the earlier Greek versions of the myth, she was just a hideous monster all along. All the stuff about being a beautiful priestess of Athena raped by Poseidon was probably invented by the Roman poet Ovid in the 1st century BC.

Originally, the Medusa/Gorgoneion may have been a ritual mask (part of the North-African, or Minoan, or maybe Anatolian... cult of Athena before that goddess was adopted by the Greeks) not a person at all.

The mask (Medusa) was taken (raped) by sea (Poseidon) to Greece, where it was later excised from the religious rituals of the now-Hellenized Athena (beheaded/slain on Athena's orders). Maybe?
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Re: What Inspired Our Armies (Dark Elves)

Post by Calisson »

Wow, great insight!
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Re: What Inspired Our Armies (Dark Elves)

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Lovely references from all. Nice to learn something new.
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Re: What Inspired Our Armies (Dark Elves)

Post by Darkprincess »

Shadowspite wrote:now you have to imagine High Elves riding on giant pink flamingoes...)

That doesn't take a great leap of imagination though ;)

Shadowspite wrote:I generally dislike these additions. Hekarti is the most egregious, since she fills basically the same conceptual space as Morai-Heg. But Atharti probably annoys me the most, since she was introduced purely to retcon the Cult of Pleasure away from Slaanesh

To be honest, pretty much everything that GW have to say about Slaanesh since the End Times is just heresy anyway, and I have chosen to ignore it totally :twisted: Yeah - as if that wimp Tyrion (aka Prince Charming from Shrek 2) is going to actually capture a God of Chaos and lock him/her/it up in a dungeon somewhere (Slaanesh would probably get off on that anyway :P) - Come on GW, get a f***ing grip!

Shadowspite wrote:(because some moron thought elves were too smart to deliberately worship a Chaos god).

That's what happens when you let the morons write the fluff :(

As for Hekarti, that to me just seems like a different way to spell Hecate - as it's pronounced more or less the same - An ancient Greek goddess associated with the moon, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and toxic plants, necromancy, sorcery etc, so not really too out of place in the Druchii pantheon I guess, but still an unwelcome addition. The trouble with adding new stuff is that you have to wonder why she wasn't there in the past, making the whole thing look very contrived. And Atharti is, as you say, Astarte, which is pretty much Ishtar, and once you get into that you're back with Slaanesh again anyway.

So yeah, the fluff writers may well be idiots, but I do wish they'd stop treating the rest of us like it...
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Re: What Inspired Our Armies (Dark Elves)

Post by Saintofm »

Speaking of Ishtar, I forgot her reference to the Pale Queen.

Basicly our current ruleler of the underworld has more to do with the Christian Devil (a high ranking being kicked out of the heavens for huberous/trying to get under the boss god's toga and very bitter about it). She shars very little with Hades, one of the few Greek Gods that was not a complete jerk 90% of the time.

There is also a direct comparison with the patron Babylonian Goddess of Love and War, Ishtar. Basicly int eh Gilgamesh myth, he turns her down after she offers him a chance to be her lover as all her past ones all suffer terrible fates, and the Goddess was so angered by this she made her father, the head god, unleash a massive firy bull upon Gilgemesh's kingdom, and when that was not enough she threatened to unleash the inhabitants of the land of the dead so they could start the zombie Apocalypse.

I don't mind all the changes made, as it made little sence for a polynistic society to give up all their gods, BUT there a few between here and there I find odd (like the sudden change in MO and appearance of Nethu from his introduction in 7th to how he is in 8th).
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Re: What Inspired Our Armies (Dark Elves)

Post by Darkprincess »

Ahh yes - the Great Bull of Heaven (Keeper of Secrets, anyone?). GW nicked a fair bit of that story for the Malekith / N'Kari stuff too :)
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