Overview of the Old World

[Daedalus]

The Frozen Horror resemble a Chaos daemon/demon best because of the horns. The lack of wings is telling--but this is a power of Chaos, after all. I assume Hasbro/MB didn't want a visually-direct representation of an Old World demon because of American parents.

But while we're on the subject, consider possibility that the lack of wings as an indicator that the Frozen Horror is something other than a demon. Other beings have been manifested through the Chaos Gate, and countless creatures have been warped by Chaos.

Could it be a kind of ice genie or elemental? Its spells are a majority of cold/ice spells supplemented with basic Chaos spells.

Aside from its nature, I have proposed that the Frozen Horror might have filled the role of Morcar's General.

[cornixt]

Wings have never been a requirement for something to be a daemon. Greater daemons of Slaanesh and Nurgle don't have wings. I think it just looks like a large monster, it doesn't seem to have the impractical features that daemons tend to get through mutations.

[Kurgan]

Because he drinks RedBull*(tm)... that gives you wings!

The Frozen Horror has been dead for centuries (prior to his revival; similar to the Chaos god in Japanese HQ), but I guess Zargon being driven off by Rogar and his companions leading the armies of the Empire also took place centuries ago. Has anybody tried to (war)hammer out a timeline on this?



*also a demon, if I recall correctly

PS: Chaos Warriors are also called dread warriors in the GS monster descriptions at the end of the quest book... and on the back of ROTWL NA box the Witch Lord is referred to as having a "mutant army." Make of that what you will!

[Daedalus]

Wings have never been a requirement for something to be a daemon. Greater daemons of Slaanesh and Nurgle don't have wings. I think it just looks like a large monster, it doesn't seem to have the impractical features that daemons tend to get through mutations.

Concerning winged demons, I neglected to mention that I was referencing the earlier 3rd ed. Warhammer Fantasy rulebook that preceded your accurate examples. When possible, I like to restrict my Warhammer to works that coincided with Hero Quest. It's possible one of the later 3rd ed.supplements contains better demon info, however--Idk.

I agree the Frozen Horror resembles a large monster when taken at face value.

[cornixt]

Wings have never been a requirement for something to be a daemon. Greater daemons of Slaanesh and Nurgle don't have wings. I think it just looks like a large monster, it doesn't seem to have the impractical features that daemons tend to get through mutations.

Concerning winged demons, I neglected to mention that I was referencing the earlier 3rd ed. Warhammer Fantasy rulebook that preceded your accurate examples. When possible, I like to restrict my Warhammer to works that coincided with Hero Quest. It's possible one of the later 3rd ed.supplements contains better demon info, however--Idk.

I was thinking more of Slaves to Darkness, which was a 1988 supplement, so still current to Heroquest. I hadn't noticed that all daemons could fly in the rulebook, even those without wings, and there weren't any daemons in the Warhammer Armies supplement at all - I guess there was too much that was already covered by Slaves to Darkness.

[Daedalus]

I'll have to check that one out. Do you think the Witch Lord's pets from Les Edwards' RotWL painting could be brutish, wingless demons? Chaos Trolls? Chaos Troglodytes? Something else?

[cornixt]

It's hard to say, they look like they could be lesser daemons of some kind but just being regular monsters would also fit.

They seem to be physically restricted by the bars, but if I recall correctly daemons are difficult to contain without using magic, which doesn't appear to be being used - no glyphs visible. For that reason, I would go with them being non-daemonic, but it's not strong evidence either way.

[Daedalus]

Gargoyles are made to resemble great monsters through Chaos magic, so it could be cool to have a one waiting for any Hero who falls into the pit trap in the Court of the Witchlord. The mono a mano monstrum fight with a "Witchlord pet" could take place off to the side on some tile (ie. short stairway.)
vs. . . . It's on!

[Daedalus]

After some searching, I found a secret door to a related topic, The Role of the Empire in Hero Quest.

The opening post:

This topic came up in the Artifact pricing topic, so I thought I would make it its own thread.

Basically, what is the relationship of the Heroes to the Emperor, the Empire at large and even to Mentor himself?

I'll start with Mentor as he is the character about whom we know the most (or do we?). According to the lore, it seems this wizened old man is personally responsible for training up the four Heroes, and others as well, including the Empire's hated enemy Morcar/Zargon. Yet he claims he cannot intervene directly with the knowledge he gains from Loretome, lest the world end or something. Why did Mentor choose to train these greenhorn Heroes at all? Is he really feeble from his old age, or a powerful wizard in his own right? How has he lived for so long? (It can be inferred the Mentor is much older than most normal humans, as he personally trained M/Z in the age of Rogar and Co, which was over 1,000 years ago.)

Then there's the Emperor and Prince Magnus, the latter of whom I assume is the crown prince and the heir to the throne. We see both royals enlisting the Heroes' services for a few various Quests in the base set Quest Pack, and pay the Heroes some gold in exchange for their work. How much sway does the Crown hold over the Heroes? They are probably not part of the general army, as they do not have any commanding officers over them. And while the Emperor does occasionally gift the Heroes with sums of gold, titles and laurels (the latter of which generally have no in-game effect), he does not usually allow them to take anything from the imperial armory except by paying for it. Against the Ogre Hoard does contradict this mentality somewhat, since Mentor gifts the Heroes with twenty Potions of Healing before they leave to fight the Ogre Lourde, but I can't think of any other examples offhand.

Finally, we consider the Empire at large. The imperial army is busy fighting against M/Z, of course, but how does the rest of the Empire fare? Are they reasonably prosperous, even with Chaos literally at their doorsteps, or has the war ground them down such that even a decisive victory is likely to turn Pyrrhic? Is the army itself well-trained or rag-tag? Why do the Heroes never meet any other groups of traveling heroes?

These and other questions, if answered, can provide much inspiration for the writing of Quests. I look forward to seeing what the rest of the community thinks.

[iKarith]

It's kind of interesting reading people's opinions about how much loyalty the heroes have to Mentor or to the empire… Feudal society is VERY MUCH a rigid class structure, and I think people don't realize how much so it is.

A band of adventurers living within a lord's lands … it'd actually take something fairly extraordinary for that to happen in the first place. Serfs would've had fealty and been beholden to a lord. They'd have had simple occupations and would only have turned to "adventuring" if something had happened. Most of the ways they'd wind up adventuring would have been bad—most of the town wiped out, being accused of a crime, or having been previously a bandit whose band was mostly wiped out … serfs just didn't become adventurers.

Merchants usually didn't either, because they had some wealth and means to acquire more otherwise, again unless something bad happened.

Nobility generally didn't because wealth and power … although a noble with a lot of sons may have too little of either for later born siblings to share in much of it, perhaps? One could argue just a little bit of that sort of actually happened—but it would be a BIT of an oversimplification and a pretty wild tangent into potentially touchy off-topicness.

But … in HQ's case that only really seems to apply to the wizard, doesn't it? The barbarian is from a borderland tribe. A Norscan, probably, or some have speculated from the Border Princes because AFAICT someone always suggests the Border Princes as an easy answer for anything. The dwarf and elf come from kingdoms of their own kin, not really part of the empire but not really hostile to it. They've come because there is some evil that concerns them all.

But the fact remains that while they're in the Empire, if they are not there as an envoy of their own kingdoms, they'd be obliged to obey the crown within its domain and could be banished from the empire even if they were.

Certainly the emperor and the prince would reward the heroes for their service, but if the crown has summoned them and ordered them to hunt down Ulag or hunt down stolen chests, they're kind of obligated to go and do it.