Undead revisited

Although DARK•HERITAGE is, of course, a setting that purposefully eschews some of the standard conventions of fantasy, it doesn't abandon them completely, and there are a few that I really like and can't help but put in place.  A lot of these come from D&D which makes sense since my setting is an evolved cadet line of D&D, if you will, in the first place.  I'm also a fan of a lot of the stuff found in Warhammer (as a setting) however, as well as stuff found in Iron Kingdoms.

I stumbled into a game store on Friday afternoon--the first time I've been in one in months--with the intent of flipping through the 5e books.  I did do that--the Monster Manual in particular--but what really caught my eye was stuff going on in Warhammer that I hadn't been aware of, namely the return of Nagash and the End Times supplement.

Sauron is, of course, the original Dark Lord of modern fantasy fiction, but Nagash is probably the original Dark Lord of the Warhammer setting, at least, and a great classical expression of the Dark Lord motif.  I've long been a fan of Nagash.  Of course, it's a lot easier now with really cool new art and really cool new models.  There are other cool models released recently too, Arkhan and others on Dread Abyssals, some kind of undead creature that looks sort of like a short-nosed dragon skeleton with the ribcage completely filled up with ethereal skulls.

I don't play Warhammer, nor do I have stats for a lot of these monsters, but I love the visuals and the concepts behind them.  Not just the dread abyssals, but all kinds of critters from the Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts armies--I've long been tempted to stat up a terrorgheist or a necrosphinx in m20.  This latest batch of releases will probably be the tipping point that causes me to add some of these Warhammer monsters to DARK•HERITAGE, at least as options.

Of course, while I'm at it, it's not like the Undead are the only Warhammer armies that I like.  I'm a big fan of both skaven and the beastmen, and for that matter, the Chaos daemons are philosophically very interesting (although when it comes time to advance specific daemons, I tend to fall back more on D&D conventions than follow Warhammer notions.)

But if I'm going to be statting up Warhammer undead, why not add some of the Cryxian undead from Warmachine while I'm at it?

Last night, I made a list of troop types from both armies, based on what was available on their online catalog of miniatures (minus actual warmachines--those are too specific to Iron Kingdoms to be able to translate well into any other setting without being obvious that they're "stolen.")  Over the next few days or weeks, I'm going to stat up some of these critters as m20 monsters, usable in DARK•HERITAGE.  Of course, I haven't really developed the concept of undead in DARK•HERITAGE very well yet, other than establish that Tarush is some kind of slumbering undead god under the capital of the nation of Tarush Noptii, which is ruled by vampires.  Does that mean other undead would be in Tarush, or be rivals of the Tarushans?  Don't know.  I've only obliquely mentioned undead in the setting so far.

I do have a few ideas, but let me stat some guys up first, and then I'll worry about exactly where they fit in after that...