The Dread of the Unknown

Throughout fiction one of my favourite types of factions are the ones that the other factions in the setting have no idea about. These “Unknown Factions” will usually pursue their own goals/agendas , which remain a mystery to the other factions, while simply killing anyone or thing that gets in their way. The White Walkers from Game of Thrones are a perfect example of this, you don’t know what they want, what their plans are or why they are marching south and all you do know is that kill anyone else that gets in their way. This gives the White Walkers an extra element of dread.

In my view it comes down to the fact that if you know nothing about a faction then there is no way to reach a non violent end to hostilities with them. Oddly enough this doesn’t give factions whose motivations you understand but who still refuses to comprise or come to peace talks that extra element of dread. Take Archaeon from WHFB as a good example of this, we know what he wants (the destruction of the warhammer world) and why he wants it (anger towards the Empire and the Church of Sigmar after reading a unsettling “Truth”) and we also know that he won’t comprise and nothing short of the destruction of Empire and the Warhammer world will satisfy him but that still doesn’t make him a terrifying opponent. While reading the End Times I saw him more as a determined leader of a very powerful army, I understood his motivation and this understanding removed that extra element of dread that not understanding him or being able to relate to him (he was a human after all) would have generated.

Despite all his power and his amassed armies he is still only human

Broadening the Topics

I have decided to broaden the range of topics I talk about on this blog. This is mainly fuelled by my growing lack of interest in what GW is doing and my reaction to the recent pricing for the 10 man assault marine box captures this perfectly. The box is priced at 166 NZD for ten models and a while ago this would have provoked me to write a whole post it, however now all it managed to provoke is mild apathy. We all know GW’s prices are bad and GW’s prices will continue to be bad as long as we buy stuff from them, that’s my whole view on the Assault Marine box price tag.
 
This growing apathy towards GW is proving positive though as it is fuelling my interest in a long term passion of mine, the Fantasy genre. I have always loved Fantasy as a genre of entertainment and have always found fantasy settings more interesting than historical, sic-fi or any other “Type” of fictional setting for a video game, war game, book, movie, TV show etc. And with my interest in GW waning I have found my interest in the Fantasy genre growing, I spent all of the recent long weekend playing The Witcher 3 and enjoyed every minute of, I found the main and side quests to be far more engrossing and interesting than anything GW ever put out for WHFB.

So expect to see posts about different fantasy related forms of entertainment in the near future, I have several posts about The Witcher 3 already in the works. This is not to say that there will be no wargaming related post, there will be as I still like playing WHFB and 40k but there will be broader range of things talked about. Until next time.

Rex