+ inload: The Throng of Nog +

+ The Throng of Nog +

Draw close, manling, and pass that well-water your brewer flatters with the name of ale.

Hm. 

Passable, after all. Perhaps I misjudge the children of Sigmar.

At the least, my throat is not so dry as it was. While the fire burns still, let me tell you a little. You have been hospitable to my sister in her illness, and my kin do not soon forget kindness. 

Of the Tallowlands, it is said the Star Giants drew their plough across these lands long ago; before even the raising of the Hold. The land buckled and melted in the heat, and the bones of the earth themselves grew soft and flowing. For two wholemoons the skies rained ash and fire as the plough drew slowly through the groaning ground. All who stayed on the surface perished. As the Giants passed, the land grew cold once more, and the mountains set into the soft rolling hills you see now.

Ages passed – of war and terror; long since passed into the myth of man. Then it was that our honoured ancestor, the first lord of the Nog, came into this land. It was hard, then, and bare: naught but thin grasses and heathers stretched across the moorlands, and the wind was chill.

Nog and his household found the great Scars; open still after all those years. Such deep chasms... They glittered with wealth undreamed of – before or since. Striking camp, the First Families staked their claims, and raised Nog to Cyng. An outpost was raised, that became a town, that became a great hold. And none too soon...

Then came the greenskin, and the silver-tongued infidious elves – and with them they brought their war...

+++

+ A little bit of painting last night allowed me to polish off ten more dwarfs for the long-in-preparation Throng. The annual tide of enthusiasm for Warhammer has risen in the PCRC of late – Lucifer216 has polished up a new undead army in the time it's taken me to do these, but dwarfs aren't fazed! +

+ The scheme's a bit of a random construction – suggested as much by the red undercoat I used as by anything else. In between Legio Sumer-Nikator, my Blood Angels and Word Bearers, I've been on a bit of red kick recently. +

+ In that lies a lot of the appeal of a Warhammer army: the chance for variety. These red-coated fellas can happily be a particular minor lord's retinue – The Scarlet Few of the Weartling Cwichelm, for example – without tieing me into painting the whole army this way. While you'd expect a sci-fi army like a Space Marine legion to demonstrate some form of uniformity, the same doesn't apply to a pseudo-dark ages force. Even if the lord dictates his men must wear red, then you'll likely have different hues due to different fabrics and batches of dyes, and even different interpretations of how to show this – from full custom plate armour to a simple scrap of cloth ties to a spearshaft. +

+++

'Who would tend the flocks? Who would nurture and harvest the barley? Answer that, and tell me what sort of dwarf would live wearing only ragarin, or worse, live without meat and bread and ale?

'No, of course not all dawi live in the holds – but nor again are all we hill-dwellers farmers. From the vorns and kazid of the Barrow Hills, the Throng of Nog draws many of its warriors. I am one such. Thrungling, I was; trained in axe and shield, as was my father and his father and his father before him, to the time of the Throngfounding.

'I served proudly besides my comrades. Firstly, as a road-guard for the caravans to the manling city of Yeld – for the plains and woodlands are full of brigands, aye; brigands and worse – all greedy for the ore and craftings of the Nog-folk. That is how I learned my craft for a five-year. Latterly, then, it was as mariner; on the trading route between kazid-Eo and kazid-Narya.

'Like many of my folk, I was a reluctant – though obedient – sailor, at first. Soon, though, I grew fond of the salt air, and the clear skies, and the many folk I met. It kindled a desire in me to see more. After my five-year was up, my lord the Weartling Cwichelm knew my mind and granted me therefore an akrak-baraz – a bond, that is – to enable me to travel.

'I have wandered since, my baraz a security and a provisioner for my household. I explore, I seek; I write to the Weartling of my encounters; and thus the map of our ancestors is expanded.'