Monday, June 27, 2011

check out this crazy hag!


That's a Meargh, the sterile matriarch of a clan of Fimir, the beaked, cycloptic, reptilian giants of early Warhammer Fantasy Battles and WFRP.  I didn't really know these weirdos existed until I read a mention of them here.  A few minutes of research revealed that they were intended to be the WFRP equivalent of Runequest's Broo, a signature "Holy crap! That's messed up!" critter, if you will.  The Meargh is the only female Fimir in the clan, so this race reproduces by impregnating human females.  Like I said, messed up.  One of the notions in the back of my head for my Wessex campaign is that human expansion is causing an extinction level crisis in monsterdom, so I may use just one sad, lonely Meargh, all the menfolk of her race long gone.

19 comments:

  1. Even in D&D land, everyone needs a little lovin'.

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  2. I loved the Fimir. Another relic of a time when Warhammer was much more interesting than it is today.

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  3. Fimir are also the coolest (and biggest) monster of the old HeroQuest game. HeroQuest is perhaps the best intro to RPGs ever created.

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  4. Oh man, they'll be perfect for Wessex.

    Hopefully the re-introduction of the Fimir into Warhammer will be a good one, too.

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  5. JasonZavoda, I quite agree!

    As I recall, there's a full page drawing of all the Fimir variants in the original WFRP.

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  6. http://www.bloodmoonminis.com/store.html

    Blood Moon Miniatures sells some familiar-looking "Bog Raiders"...

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  7. That looks like one of Frank Ernst's surrealist creations from the '30s.

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  8. I like the idea of the matriarch outliving the males.

    @Adelaide Gamer...Max Ernst

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  9. The Fimir are one of my all-time favourite races. I've ported them into OD&D because of their unadulterated awesome.
    This is the bible on them:

    http://www.warpstone.org/issues_pages/issue25.htm

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  10. Legion: Have you posted your port of them anywhere?

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  11. Anonymous11:50 PM

    Somebody said the magic word, hell yeah heroquest!

    It was practically the Basic Set of the 1990-ish era. AD&D was even introduced to me as "heroquest without the board".

    Anyway, I find it a little weird that you haven't heard of fimir until recently 'cause they were literally in the first dungeon I ever played!

    But for the record, the gargoyle (knocking off the balrog by wielding a whip and badass sword at the same time) was waaaaay bigger and cooler than the fimir.

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  12. The original Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay rulebook has a nice writeup on the Fimir. They are gloriously f'd up, a big influence on the way I think of monsters in RPGs now, and were a big reason why I fell in love with WFRP back in the day.

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  13. But for the record, the gargoyle (knocking off the balrog by wielding a whip and badass sword at the same time) was waaaaay bigger and cooler than the fimir.

    Well, to be fair, the HeroQuest "gargoyle" is a Warhammer bloodthirster, and it's the bloodthirster that's borrowing from the balrog.

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  14. Never even knew Fimir had been dropped; Hero Quest is definitely a great introduction to adventure gaming, though!

    (As a side note, I always figured the gargoyle was a statue of a bloodthirster).

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  15. Poor old Fimir, wiped out by studio infighting (the sculptors got the scale wrong; the writers got the blame) and the expansion of Beastmen, Skaven and Dark Elves(!) into their conceptual niche.

    Looks like I'll have to change their write-up in Small But Vicious Dog (WFRP B/X).

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  16. If not for their appearance in HeroQuest, no one would know that they even ever existed - being an esoteric legend, like the Zaots - and even still, most HQ fans still dont know much about their background.

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  17. Fimir are really cool creatures - it's be good to see them back in some sort of capacity, even if it was something like the "supporting-act background and models"

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  18. Anonymous9:43 AM

    My girl is looking pretty good there. Currently working on some more fimir. Would love some more of the older models though

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  19. Building my own Fimmy clan right now... nearing completion in fact! Only for GW to bring them back, offends me argh! :)

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