Ye Olde Inn

So me and my friends of course knew what are monsters like goblins, zombies, mummies etc. But fimirs were enigma! My friend theoretized that they are chaos warriors without armours. I just assumed that they are "third level" of greenskins (orc is big goblin, fimir is big orc).

I had come to the same conclusion before I had heard about Fimiri Warhammer lore. I think it's easy to believe they could be a greenskin brute because of their relatively unknow nature. You couldn't use a lot of other monsters since their color wouldn't pass for kids as green, such as Ogres or Skaven. Maybe a hobgoblin could have passed as green, but those GW miniatures weren't imposing enough.

Now that I think about it, I think Hero Quest was my introduction to "greenskins". Before that, I thought of goblins and orcs in terms of not-green D&D descriptions.

We just thought it was another kind of monster, bigger and stronger than orcs, just it. We read the description ans went on. Curiosly, in EU because all monster just had 1BP the fimir wasnt much different from an orc (+1 DEF and MIND but -2 Movement).

We also thought it was related to orcs and goblins, but on the artwork of Kellar's Keep it was painted with beige skin.

I didn't think that hard about them but I guess they kind of made me think a little of the Aliens from the Alien franchise (the head shape, the tail). I thought the pose was just cool. I didn't know anything about warhammer (I ran across 40,000 via a demo in a video game magazine, the name at least... and then saw the unpainted models in a local game shop in college but didn't pay much attention because it looked like an expensive hobby... I was so ignorant I actually thought the models were chrome covered plastic rather than metal! Had I hefted one in my hand I would have immediately had that dispelled). I guess I reasoned somehow the shiny surface let the paint adhere better or something? Didn't make much sense really, but my only thing to compare it to was HeroQuest with the plastic styrene miniatures the same type of plastic used in most board games (and dinosaur model kits) I'd ever encountered.

So the revelation that they were intended to be r*pe monsters (I guess that kind of ties into the Alien lore as well, when you think about it), never even occurred to me until I read it online not so many years ago.

I also pronounced it "Fim Urr" not any of the variations I hear people say nowadays (I'm partial to "Fim Ear" now).

I didn't see Fimirs as being strongly connected to Orcs and Goblins, although O&G were clearly connected to each other. This was before I knew any of the lore. But they were still in green plastic, so I saw them as being more connected than to the Chaos Warriors or Undead, even if it was really only because they were big regular monsters rather than being connected to magic or chaos in any obvious way.

HeroQuest was released when I was 6 years old, so I was impressed by the game but still too immature to learn how to play or respect the game. The original game my brother and I got on Christmas of 1990 went unplayed and fell into disrepair, but it left a lasting impression. As I was too young to even care to read this was my first experience at the Tolkien-esc fantasy genre. I didn't know what Orcs were, so Fimirs were just as new to me. Goblins I heard of through the movie Nilbog (Goblin spelled backwards). The Zombie-virus genre wasn't out in full-force just yet, so I only thought of them as a human hypnotized by a Vampire. I've seen bits and pieces of Jason and the Argonauts, so I remembered a scene with a bunch of skeletons swordfighting some soldiers, Jason escaped by jumping into the water and Mummies were some thing out of ancient Egypt.
What I do remember thing is "Why is the Elf so tall?" As the only experience I had with Elves at the time was in regards to little guys helping Santa in the North Pole. It would be much later on in life that I would read Tolkien and Salvatore. So HeroQuest was my first experience with the fantasy genre. Unless you count Conan the Barbarian. How could I run a quest without naming the Barbarian "Conan?"

Later on in life I would read books about Mythological creatures, which mentioned Orc, but said nothing of Fimirs. I would later find out they were a product a Games Workshop, not before writing my own fantasy stories, as I considered these 1-eyed Lizard people the sworn enemy of the Cyclops. I hadn't read the Odyssey, so I was relating Cyclops to the one character from Krull. Do I remember what that movie was about? Not at all! But I remember there was a Cyclops that road horses so fast that they left a trail of fire. I also remember the one guy who turned into a Tiger., but not really anything else.

So HeroQuest hit me at both the right and wrong age. Wrong because I didn't know what anything was. Right because this game hits me with a nostalgia factor , maybe that why I love it so much.