The Mini-Mod Update MOSTLY UNITS!

[danny X]

They look pretty damn cool.

I hope to have a mini campaign map preview up today, hopefully the forum will get a bit more stable soon.

[Squeaks]

Thanks, seen the maps

Now, Ashapur Royal Guard...

ASHAPUR ROYAL GUARD helmet







Technically, I should probably not be showing a lot of Ashapur, but I love them and it's going to kill leaving any out for the mini-mod...

[Squeaks]

in case it's not obvious, the sashes aren't textured yet...

[Squeaks]

The Ashapur faction will only have one Sythys cult unit, aside from the baby Hydra.

I grabbed and altered the Selim Daan quickly; cultist fanatics of Sythys, the Snake God, Serpent of the God Tree.

[ggggtotalwarrior]

So, I haven't been here for awhile. Name change, huh? Too many Skyrim fanboys annoying you with questions?

[Squeaks]

So, I haven't been here for awhile. Name change, huh? Too many Skyrim fanboys annoying you with questions?

Kind of yes. There were also a lot of people very excited by the thought of a skyrim mod, which we're not, so it was a little unfair on them too. We can do without all that really

------------------

Seeing as we've decided to make the forums a bit more active, we're showing all sorts.

They're almost done...

AVASHIRI ROYAL GUARD (Ashapur)















Sorry there's lots, but I like stuff like this! Weirdly, this faction is one of my top 5 coolest, even though they're naughty. I dare say there'll be an ingame one soon, when I get time and whatever else.

[Squeaks]

Okay. The AVASHIRI Royal Guard are in, and here they are ingame....













Sorry it's image heavy, but I really like them, and that's slightly unusual....

[Squeaks]

AKASH NADIR (Ashapur) - Shadow Circles' or 'Death Vultures'

[danny X]

core blimey charlie, looks brilliant

[paradamed]

Long time since I checked these forums and Im glad to see lots of cool new units!

[DeVrie]

The black & gold colouring of these last two units is really elegant.

[Shankbot de Bodemloze]

These look amazing Squeaks.

I love the look of the Kalacrisian Torments.

[Sol_Man]

The Ashapur: We'll enslave you and look good doing it! Great models! I also love the extreme amount of detail in the lore on each factions, and how the units fit into it.

[Squeaks]

The black & gold colouring of these last two units is really elegant.

Yep...they had to be. The Royal Household units for a vastly wealthy kingdom (one of the top 3 wealthiest) needed to be noticeably so. I'm thinking that the next preview might be Ashapur in full. Neko's doing that one. Black and gold IS nice for a nasty nation's bestest.

These look amazing Squeaks.

I love the look of the Kalacrisian Torments.

Ah....cool! I've never been any good at bad things, so I really wasn't sure...

The Ashapur: We'll enslave you and look good doing it! Great models! I also love the extreme amount of detail in the lore on each factions, and how the units fit into it.

Thankyou. It's really important to me that each faction has it's own identity and are not slightly different clones or just tired or fluff to make up the numbers. That makes three of them absolute pigs to do properly, model-wise, as they're not your usual stuff. I think, within the limits of MedII, we've done as good a job as we can to make it work and work nicely. There's much more to be done, of course...

[Borissomeone]

Everything is looking really good. Keep it up.

[Squeaks]

Everything is looking really good. Keep it up.

Thanks Boris! Nice to see you here

Uhm, I finally decided how the Bandit kings Beggar Host would look. I wondered about so many approaches, some very cool, but the word Beggar is a major indicator The soldiers embrace the name of Beggar, and, in return they wear the vestments of the sick...the clothing lepers, infested, plagued and suchlike wear. This is normally so people don't have to view these people, as it's 'unpleasant' to most to be sick. So, the Beggar Host take the clothes of these people as their over-armour cloth. There is a relevance to the cloth of the Yaga Dai, and Grey Whispers, but the similarities end with colour.

Anyway, two screen peeks...





There are 2 units of these little fellas.

[Squeaks]

A shot or two of DIluvian basics (Orcs).....up from the ground they come, all grubby and dusty...









There won't be too many of these for a bit, but then I may be doing something else when I thought I wouldn't anyway....you never know, mostly because I don't either!

[knight of meh]

hmm what ash ghouls should have been in Morrowind was my first thought ^^ .. more an more i am seeing these guys as radical versions of the Rhysthari .. not quite sure why ,

[Kaiser Leonidas]

hmm what ash ghouls should have been in Morrowind was my first thought ^^ .. more an more i am seeing these guys as radical versions of the Rhysthari .. not quite sure why ,

In a way, they kind of are. Both of them exist to serve the Dragon (the world basically), just in different ways.

The Naugiri seem evil, but they're there as a kind of immune system I guess. Their role is to remove parasites from the Dragon, and they see the humans and dwarves etc as parasites that have to be removed because of the damage they've caused to the Dragon through war and completely unsustainable use of ley mining.

The Rhysthari serve the Dragon by repairing the damage caused to the the Dragon's body by things like ley mining. They could be seen as more of a 'good' faction though because they help other races with their healing powers, whereas the Naugiri are solely focussed on destroying what they see as parasites to be removed.

So to stick with my wonderful immune analogy of the Dragon being a body, the Naugiri are the white blood cells destroying the infections, and the Rysthari are like the plasma in your blood as they repair stuff. it's a terrible analogy I know, but it gives the basic idea I guess.

I'm hardly an expert on the lore though so I'd recommend having a read of their sections in the lore preview as that gives a good overview of each of the races.

[Squeaks]

more an more i am seeing these guys as radical versions of the Rhysthari .. not quite sure why ,

You're not far off.

In a way, they kind of are. Both of them exist to serve the Dragon (the world basically), just in different ways.

The Naugiri seem evil, but they're there as a kind of immune system I guess. Their role is to remove parasites from the Dragon, and they see the humans and dwarves etc as parasites that have to be removed because of the damage they've caused to the Dragon through war and completely unsustainable use of ley mining.

Yep. The Rhysthari can regrow Ley Crystals, even grow the mineral deposits that are stolen/mined, and they're anathema to the Cthonic beasties.

The Rhysthari serve the Dragon by repairing the damage caused to the the Dragon's body by things like ley mining. They could be seen as more of a 'good' faction though because they help other races with their healing powers,

Yep, but, in battle, when forced into it; previously by the Infected, Ghaurchlai and CThonae - also the Haladin now, and they work to prevent the Dwarves of the Bandit Kings opening the old Infected Holts of the Dwarves, as they know the Infected aren't dead in there.

whereas the Naugiri are solely focussed on destroying what they see as parasites to be removed.

They're kind of a symbiotic predator sort-of-thing; yep, they see so simply that the humans and Khezdruli appear to be parasites - they are really, as they feed and take and give nothing back.

So to stick with my wonderful immune analogy of the Dragon being a body, the Naugiri are the white blood cells destroying the infections, and the Rysthari are like the plasma in your blood as they repair stuff. it's a terrible analogy I know, but it gives the basic idea I guess.

It's not a bad analogy, as it's pretty much precisely correct. The whole idea from start to now was that the 'planet' is a living and growing Celestial Dragon, which will awaken and burst into flight once the northern ice cap melts, freeing it's brain from dreaming or stasis. The Infection was caused by Khezdruli mining; they created empty wounds in the body of the Dragon which became 'infected'. Ley is the brain pulses it sends around the body, so the Crystals of Ley are it's nerves - mining them is bad...take it all and the body around it ceases functioning properly. Likewise, the Elves and Rhysthari can use this energy to do magic; but they then send it back to the flow of Ley. Humans tend towards messier magic, so some is wasted - destroyed or lost forever; the Haladin use Blood-Fed, or Warping, which is all taken and lost - some opens up the defences of Reality to the Abyss, but the killing of living things to power a form of magic that already steals the Ley, then adds the deaths of creatures, whose souls (kind of) are never sent to the world of the dea, which would provide balance along the way, in that they return to the Ley flow. Naugiri lived below ground and tended the 'world' there...lava is it's blood, and they kept the inside clean by hunting or growing more of what's down there; not everything nasty lives on the surface, but the surface is the most vulnerable bit.

Not every world has Humans, not many have Naugiri that breach their mandate and flood to the surface. Some worlds have Khezdruli that are fully developed...they're all different in some ways, and some are devoured by the Abyss, some grow normally and become new Dragons...they mate and the Mother births eggs, then becomes a Sun to warm them until they hatch. I'm sure it's a bit weird or too much for some people, but I just wanted something that made utter sense, where everything could be explained and could relate to everything else. The Dragon itself has no impact on playing a game in it as a setting. It's just there.

Rhysthari, in their swamps also grow stuff that can have an enormous effect on the Dragon's body. Molds and stuff.

I'm hardly an expert on the lore though so I'd recommend having a read of their sections in the lore preview as that gives a good overview of each of the races.

I could spend weeks explaining all the little bits, so it's quite frustrating in some ways, but I'm trying not to confuse anything.