Merry Christmas to everyone!
I don't know if it has been already mentioned, my apologies if yes and maybe it is an off-topic stuff..., but I have realized that
DQP rockmoles concept is not totally new in HeroQuest universe... I know several HeroQuest fans do not consider it part of HeroQuest canon but in 1994, the Amiga's videogame
HeroQuest II: Legacy of Sorasil already introduced such concept... and more.
*** WARNING: VIDEOGAME'S SPOILERS AHEAD ***Videogame's level #5 (or #6, depending of with path the player had selected), titled as
Khaz-Aldoth, goes through an old mine and passages impregnated by Chaos magic. In this quest the heroes will fight against evil dwarves (I guess they may be perfectly named as
Chaos Dwarves) and also against their special "pets" called
Rockeaters. This is the intro of such level of the videogame, there you can see what are those creatures and the entire context of the quest:
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Khaz-Aldoth
Long ago - at the time of Sorasil's crusades - the place known by travelers as The Hellpits, and Khaz-Aldoth by the more learned, had become the centre for all Dwarven metal workers in the known world. For many years the forges belched out their fires as the Khaz-Aldoth Dwarves strove for perfection in all they constructed. So prized were the artifacts they made, that they could name almost any price for them.
Year after long year the Dwarves toiled until one day a new seam of metal was mined and forged. The Dwarves named the metal Diamond Iron, for it was indeed as hard as Diamond when smelted and forged for weapons. But there was a price to pay, for the metal was seeped in the foul odour of chaos and at first the Dwarves were ignorant of it until - of course - it was too late. As they remain today, the Dwarves of Khaz-Aldoth became bitter and twisted shadows of what they had once been, tainted by the evil seeping from their forges far below the mountains.
Deep within these haunted halls lie the Shielding Cloaks of Sorasils' Knights. The Oracle Stone tells that they are warded by very powerful Dwarven and Chaotic magic's, but is unclear as to what. Also guarding the cold halls of Khaz-Aldoth are the Rockeaters, a malign race of creature used as hounds by the Dwarves to literally eat new passageways and mine the seams of Diamond Iron deep within the earth.
-----------------------------------------------------------------Some related pictures from the videogame...
Main Entrance to the mine art, and gamming entrance guarded by Chaos Dwarf warriors:
Entrance_Scroll.png
Entrance.png
The two different types of Chaos Dwarves found in this quest. I think these dwarves look closer to the Chaos Dwarves from Warhammer Fantasy Battles 3rd Edition, instead of the babylonical look ones from 4th Edition:
Chaos_Dwarves_info.JPG
And finally... some pictures of the Rockeaters!! You can see they are a kind of hound with four-petal mouths... Is me the only one who sees there an alien??
:
Rockeaters_info.JPG
Well, I like the
rockmoles rhino-type prototype miniature of DQP, but I think this
rockeaters concept for creature tunnel diggers is so interesting too... furthermore this Legacy of Sorasil's level also deals with concepts like
evil dwarves and a special
dwavmetal material they named as "Diamond Iron"... similar concepts as the ones we can read in the DQP-leaks sinopsis... are they just coincidences? Who knows... but the videogame was developed before year 1994 and DQP design works were supposed to be performed during 1992... anyway, althought I would like to see one day the
Legacy of Sorasil's levels converted to HeroQuest quests, maybe we could also extract some inspiration from this videogame's level for the DQP development, regardless this videogame is also part of HeroQuest universe.
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