Most fantasy settings tend to be built of a standardized template. You have your humans, elves and dwarfs in the good guys corner, and then your orcs, goblins and undead in the bad guy corner. These “classic” races are almost always represented, and many games do not offer much beyond them. I’ve been running a series based on rattling these shackles since 2008 and I have barely scratched the surface. That said, every once in a while someone out there has a sheer stroke of brilliance and creates something strikingly unique. A fictional race that is not only undeniably cool looking, interesting and weird but also completely original and not recycled from another setting.
For Warhammer Fantasy this race are the Fimir: the bad-ass, one-eyed mist monsters:
The Fimir
Fimir live in bogs and swamps of the Old World. They loathe sunlight so they rely on magical mists to hide and shade their camps, and their armies when they march to war. They have a single large eye in the middle of their head, beak-like snouts, mouths full of sharp fangs and long barbed tails. They are neither reptilian nor goblinoid but they are said to have demonic blood in them which makes them innately magical and attuned to their mists.
Their society is matriarchal and divided into a strict caste system. The rulers are powerful female Mages known as Meargh, aided by Dirach, the horned priestly caste which communes with demons and more mundane magic. Below them are the Fianna – the noble born Fimir blessed with dagger like, razor sharp blade growths on their tails. They get first dibs on food, get access to best armors and equipment and tend to grow to the largest size. They command squads of rank and file Fimm Warriors whose tails culminate in barbed clubs and whose main role is to protect the tribe. The lowest caste are Shearl – the permanently hunched over workers with smooth tails and subservient attitude.
Fimir Concept Art
The interesting thing about them is that their creators (Graeme Davis, Jes Goodwin and Tony Ackland) did something few fantasy creators ever do anymore: they went back to the original sources. Instead of cribbing of Tolkien, or copy-pasting from Gyrax they based their concept on genuine folklore and mythology. The Fimir are not yet another species of Orks or Ork like creatures. They are not a re-interpretation of Kobolds other reptilian race. They are their own unique thing. In fact, this was the specific design goal: to create something unique to Warhammer.
At the time, Games Workshop (and thus the Warhammer franchise) was owned by Bryan Ansell, who has been described by various sources as a tad eccentric and opinionated miniature hobby business veteran. Ansell intended to turn his acquisition into profitable business venture, and so he introduced many changes. These included organizational changes such as moving the company office out of the expensive London venue to Nottingham, and creative changes involving focus on branding and marketability of the firms properties. Not everyone shared his vision for the company. In fact, Ian Marsh became so disgruntled he arranged the table of contents of
Ansell was instrumental in creation of Fimir by way of Zoats.
His ambition was to build Warhammer up into a recognizable, and marketable brand name rather than just one of many fantasy settings that existed on peripheries of D&D. He wanted to capitalize on Warhammer’s distinctive feel, and make it memorable and instantly recognizable. To properly market that uniqueness he needed an original monster that could be put on book covers and merchandise. Something akin to the Beholder: a creature that is unmistakable D&D trademark. And so, he came up with Zoats: a centaur like space lizards heavily inspired by of Poul Anderson’s Polesotechnic League stories. They looked like this:
Zoat Concept Art
Most Games Workshop designers hated his idea with a passion. Zoats were goofy, awkward and didn’t really fit with the dark fantasy theme of the setting. Ansell was adamant about putting them in, unless someone could come up with a better idea. Graeme Davis along with Jes Goodwin and Tony Ackland teamed up to rescue Warhammer from the four legged goofball lizards by creating more Warhammer worthy monster.
Back in 98 Davis reminisced about the design process on rec.games.miniatures.warhammer and Google was nice enough to archive those emails for posterity:
It all started when Bryan Ansell decided that WFRP should introduce a new race to the WH world – “to be as distinctive of Warhammer as the Broo are of Runequest” were his exact words if memory serves – and to this end he came up with the Zoats, which everyone hated, but which he said would have to go in if no-one could come up with anything better. And he *did* own the company, so we took the threat seriously. So as I say, Jes and I came up with the concept for Fimir, Jes did the designs and I did the culture and game stats – and in the end, both Zoats and Fimir ended up in WFRP, and nobody much cares for either race.
In a more recent (2013) interview with Realm of Chaos 80’s blog Tony Ackland corroborated Davis’ story:
Graeme Davis had been tasked with creating a new race. So between us we came up with the Fimir He working on the text and me on the visuals. The starting point was a book cover that Graene found featuring a Fomorian as depicted by Alan Lee. I mutated the image and Graeme shortened the name and changed the vowels. Not the most original thing either of us did.
Who were the Fomorians? To make a long story short, they were the Celtic version of the Titans: primordial beings older than the gods themselves, who represented the unbridled force of nature.
I was able to reach Graeme Davis via email listed on his blog and asked him directly about his inspiration. He was kind enough to shoot me a message back, and he even remembered the title of the book mentioned by Ackland:
The concept of the Fimir was based on the Fomorians from Irish folklore: they are a barbarous and cruel race (much like Orcs in that respect) who were finally defeated by the more civilized Tuatha De Danann. Their most famous king, Balor of the Evil Eye, had one eye, so I applied that to the whole race. (…)
The appearance of the Fimir was based on a book cover drawn by Alan Lee for “Irish Folk and Fairy Tales, vol. 2” by Michael Scott. I showed the image to Jes Goodwin when we were discussing the Fimir for general inspiration, but I was surprised how literally he copied it.
Michael Scott’s book has been out of print for quite some time, though you can still find used copies online here and there. The cover can actually be seen on the author’s official website but it is pretty obvious it is not the right picture. The Fimir protoplast’s likeness is actually on the back cover of that volume.
The front cover of the book that inspired the Fimir.
The author of the Realm of Zhu blog was able to dig out the following image of a Fomorian king Balor One-Eye by Alan Lee. This one actually appeared in a 1984 art book titled Castles:
Formorian Balor One-Eye by Alan Lee
Davis told me this is not in fact the image from his book, though because it was painted by the same artist it does have many similarities. Unfortunately he no longer had the book, and neither of us could locate the correct Fomorian painting. Fortunately in 2019 a helpful reader, James Fishwick-Ford from Oxford, was able to track it down. Here is the image that inspired the Fimir:
The back cover of the folk tale book that inspired the Fimir design, sent in by James Fishwick-Ford,
Davis later added:
Another source of inspiration (…) was palaeontology. I decided to give the Fimir a tail attack, which is why the Fimm warriors have a mace-like tail inspired by the Ankylosaurus. In the nobles, of course, this is a halberd-like blade instead of a mace.
As far as RPG monsters go, this is a solid pedigree: part primordial fey folk, part dinosaur, part daemon. The Fimir are as firmly tied to folklore and mythology as Orcs, Dwarfs and Elves (by way of Tolkien). They are rooted in a rich oral tradition of ages past, unlike Beholders, Owlbears and Rust Monsters who can trace their origins to a Hong Kong toy factory. More than that, they tap into something primal – swamps and mists are innately mysterious, uncomfortable and eerie (to the point where mist monsters can almost claim to have their own horror genre), but that’s where the Fimir thrive. And yet, they never made it big. They did not catch on, and were subsequently phased out from the Games Workshop lineup.
They did become a fan favorite, fondly remembered by many a Game Master and treasured by collectors. But they were not the marketing slam dunk Ansell hoped for. Neither were Zoats for that matter. Even though both races were quietly omitted from future bestiaries, they never fully disappeared. It seems that nothing in the Games Workshop ecosystem ever dies permanently – everything that was ever published has a tendency to eventually become re-introduced into the cannon in one shape or another. Fimir, have been cropping up in the lore for decades though usually on the peripheries of the Warhammer universe. Whenever their memory would start to fade away, some author would re-insert them into a spell description, magic item fluff or some unimportant background mini-story.
What went wrong? How could a race so awesome and so unique turn out to be a complete dud?
Davis thinks that the reasons for their lack of success were mostly economical:
The popularisation of Fimir wasn’t helped by a communications foul-up when Nick Bibby took over making the miniatures from Jes – Nick made them all Ogre-sized, compared to Jes’ and my idea that they should be Orc sized. So we had big, expensive miniatures with low game stats, and nobody bought them.
When asked why the stat lines were never corrected, Davis clarified that the miniature designs were altered after the stats were already published in the rulebooks:
I wrote game stats for an Orc-sized creature, and that was the size of Jes’ prototype miniature, but after the game stats had been published the miniatures became Ogre-sized. The result was that the minis had very low abilities compared to the cost of the miniatures, which made them bad value for money. So they never caught on in Warhammer Fantasy Battle, although they did remain popular in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Warhammer fiction.
I was able to locate a picture of the original prototype miniature sculpted by Jess Goowin which looks like this:
Jess Goodwin’s Fimir Prototype from 1987 painted by Phil Lewis
Goodwin’s model was designed to be mounted on the 25x25mm square base. For comparison, here is the official miniature line as sculpted by Nick Bibby mounted on 40x40mm bases:
Original Fimir Miniatures by Nick Bibby
In WFB the standard base size for humans, elves, dwarfs and other races is 20x20mm. Larger models such as Orks are mounted on 25x25mm bases which have the same frontage as the mounted cavalry 25x50mm bases. The 40x40mm base size is rare and limited to monsters (Dragons, Hydras, Manticores etc..), animal swarms and monstrous infantry such as Ogres. When lined up against a block of standard infantry, a model on the 40mm base can attach, or be attacked by at least 4 enemy models (2 in direct base contact and two on diagonal) leveling the playing field and making the combat fair for both sides. Monsters who use the 40mm bases typically have beefy stat lines designed for fighting against multiple opponents at the same time. Fimir did not. Their characteristics were tailored for a much smaller creature. The models sculpted by Nick Bibby presented to wide of a frontage and would be easily overwhelmed, even if fielded in large numbers, giving them little tactical value. Not to mention that in the late 80’s Games Workshop hasn’t yet perfected the art of casting inexpensive plastic models. Fimir were expensive resin metal casts sold one per blister (as opposed to 3-5 per blister for non-monstrous size models) making them exuberantly costly to collect.
For competitive WFB players they were more than useless: they were a literal waste of money. The only people who would bought them would were collectors or hobbyists more interested in painting and diorama design than actual tabletop gaming. Fimir were relegated to be display case material rather than a viable battle force.
Concept art showing the intended scale for the Fimir.
Today WFB and Warhammer 40k are the core of Games Workshop business model, but that was not necessarily the case in the 80’s. The Warhammer Fantasy RPG was still a big part of their lineup, and Fimir could have potentially survived as a WFRP-only monster. They didn’t. While they appeared in occasional adventure modules and licensed stories, they were never a major focus and quickly faded into obscurity.
WFRP was probably the Role Playing setting I have played the most as a kid, but I never recall anyone using them. I’m not talking about miniatures, because my gaming group was composed of full-on RPG hipsters who scoffed at dungeon grids and random encounter tables. We hardly rolled any dice and we played WFRP as if it was a diceless storytelling system. There wasn’t any economical or mechanical reason for us not to use the Fimir (we would fudge rolls and mostly ignore stat lines in the name of fun anyway) but we never did. In fact, even though I have always been fond of these little buggers, I never actually considered putting any Fimir in the awful scenarios I designed when it was my turn to GM a session. I was never really comfortable running them in my adventures.
There is something about Fimir I have neglected to tell you.
Fimir Army on the march.
It is something neither I nor anyone else one in my gaming group was really comfortable with. A quirk in their design that takes them from being creepy in a fun and engaging way, to being creepy in real life…
You see, the Meargh (Fimir hag-queens) are their only females. For some unfathomable, unexplained and inexplicable reason they are always born sterile and unable to reproduce. The lore does not provide any context or a back story for this. It just states it as a fact. Where do baby Fimir come from, you ask? Well… It’s actually better if you don’t know, but for the sake of this article, let me explain. According to the original WFRP lore they… uh… abduct human women.
Yes, there is no two ways about it: Fimir are genuine rape monsters. They are fucked up sexual parasites whose continual existence depends on forcefully breeding with unwilling women of another race. And if that doesn’t rub you the wrong way, then F.A.T.A.L. RPG might actually be right up your alley.
The question is: why were they designed this way? Just to be edgy? Just because dark fantasy and mature themes were in back then? Tony Ackland has been quoted to jokingly write it off as just just that:
When I asked about where the idea of kidnapping and ritualistic rape as a method of reproduction came from Tony replied “I think that was Graeme in one of his dark moods, but I can’t be sure.”
When I asked Davis about it, he did not defend hid choices. In fact he regrets writing the reproductive lore the way he did. If he could do it all over again, he would have done it differently. But it did not come from malicious place.
If you have ever spent any time reading folklore and legends you might have noticed that there are many supernatural creatures who reproduce in unorthodox ways. For example, in some traditions fey folk are known to kidnap infants and replace them with “changelings”. Davis wanted to deeply root the Fimir in mythology and some of that fey-folk weirdness inadvertently seeped into his writing:
The most controversial aspect of the Fimir, their need to kidnap human women for breeding, came from an Orkney creature called a kunal-trow, which is probably a distorted folk-memory of troll-myths brought to those islands by the Vikings. When I wrote the description of the Fimir, I didn’t give this feature enough though, as I now realize; at the time it somehow never occurred to me that the legends were talking about kidnapping and rape. It should have, and I regret this.
The alternate spelling of Trow is Drow. Yes, this is the same matriarchal fey species that inspired the lore for the infamous D&D dark elves, which arguably fared much better than the Fimir. Back when people were making up these critters to scare their children into obedience they didn’t really have these granular taxonomies we Role Players love. A Trow is a troll, a goblin, an elf and few other things as well. That’s just how faeries work in real life.
The point is that Davis was therefore working of the same cultural templates as all the other pioneers of Fantasy RPG. Perhaps his mistake was staying too close to the source:
I had been reading a lot of folklore and faerie lore, and I liked the idea of a small caste of witch-queens ruling the Fimir. As I said above, I borrowed the abduction motif (very common in folklore, especially in British and Irish faerie lore) without really thinking through the implications. What I was really trying to do, I think, was to create a new race that, despite its uniqueness, still had a strong psychological resonance and feeling of being “right” because it was based on so many elements and archetypes from myth and folklore.
You know what? I get that. I know where he is coming from. That feeling of “rightness” does exist. This is why we have a lot of deeply established tropes, archetypes and story arcs. Because they feel deeper and more natural. Because they tap into our cultural heritage, and are built on familiar concepts. Unfortunately not all tropes are positive, or worth perpetuating. Using mythology as the source of inspiration does not excuse perpetuating rape culture in fantasy fiction. Davis acknowledges that he made a mistake, and ultimately the Fimir paid the price for it. It drove them to a virtual extinction.
I think that their rape monster nature was precisely what sabotaged their chances to become signature Warhammer mascots. It was not their suboptimal tabletop performance, but the fact they were a PR disaster waiting to happen. They were the exact opposite of the kind of monster you would want to use in branding a marketable product. TV Tropes suggests that perhaps this was by design, arguing that the Fimir lore is an example of Writer Revolt in response to Executive Meddling by Ansel. But that conjecture is not supported by statements made by Ackland and my conversations with Davis. They both frame it as a simple lapse of judgement that was not recognized as such until it was too late.
I have always loved Fimir for their primordial fey-folk mist-dinosaur look and feel, but was never comfortable with their lore. I never pitted them against my players because other Warhammer antagonists always seemed more fun, characterful and free of controversial baggage (though not perfect). You can throw Orks, Skaven or Chaos cultists against the players, and it is going to be all fun and mayhem. Fimir however have this air of uneasiness about them. Their reproductive lore is something you are best to ignore or rewrite yourself, especially if playing in a mixed company. But at that point it is just easier to use another monster.
Dirach Balefiend from Storm of Chaos campaign.
That said, fantasy creature lore does not have to be set in stone. It can be rewritten and retconned to remove any and all unwanted baggage. It wouldn’t be the first time nor the last time. Fimir desperately need a figurative “facelift” and it seems that this is exactly what they are getting. Games Workshop has recently reintroduced them into the game lore by including a Dirach sorcerer as a bound monster with beefed up stats and powers in the Storm of Magic expansion for WFB. Around the same time the GW affiliated specialist-miniature-kit maker, Forge World, started selling Fimir Warrior kits. I do not have the expansion, but it appears that their revised lore emphasizes their fall from grace with the Chaos gods and wisely keeps details of their reproductive cycle completely on the down low.
You could say the Fimir are coming back. Historically, creatures on 40mm bases never actually got their own army books, but ever since Ogre Kingdoms release this rule became null and void. Still, chances for a dedicated Fimir army seems slim, but I’m glad they are at least making an official cameo. Warhammer fans seem to have nothing but love for these twisted, disturbing beasts. Even with the unsavory bits of lore, they remain one of the most original and most fascinating fantasy antagonists both within the Warhammer setting as well as outside of it. The recent revival is probably not the last you have seen of them.
Great article! Just one minor correction: the Fimir minis were metal, not resin. GW was starting to experiment with plastics at that time, but it was nowhere near full production.
Advanced HeroQuest featured some (more appropriately sized) plastic Fimir, but as far as I know all the Warhammer releases were multi-part metal kits. Which, given the rising cost of tin right around then, made them even more expensive.
An excellent article. I can’t but agree on the fimir being an utterly fascinating fantasy race, in spite of the unfortunate elements to their background. I’ve been building a fimir army for a couple of years now, and much of the background for this army was based on the fimir special featured in Warpstone magazine, issue 25. The pseudo Celtic mythology stirred into the fimir lore gives a hobbyist huge scope for building an army, but it’s not an easy road, due to the need to convert almost everything. I do hope the fimir make a return, I’ve seen no less than 3 ranges of fimir-type models in the last couple of years, not counting forge world’s own fimir warriors. Fingers crossed.
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I first encountered fimir in the GW/MB Games collaboration HeroQuest — they weren’t in Advanced HeroQuest, that was all Skaven — where they were a more sensible size, just a tiny bit larger than orcs but still on a 25mm base.
@ Kelvin Green:
You’re right – it was HeroQuest, not AHQ. My mistake.
I remember thinking that in terms of visual design there was quite a strong similarity to the skeksis creatures in the film Dark Crystal. A one eyed skeksis.
@ Graeme Davis:
Thanks so much for letting me use your quotes. And yes, I think where I said “resin” I actually meant to say metal. I’ll go fix that.
@ David Stafford:
I think I did see a few scanned pages of that magazine at one point, but never the whole thing. I didn’t mention it here because I couldn’t find a complete copy, and as far as I could tell it was non-cannon. Did they ever fix the stat lines to account for the 40mm base?
@ Luke Maciak:
Hi Luke, it’s certainly not official, but I dearly wish it was. You can probably still order a copy I would think. The fimir stats only really got an update in monstrous arcanum with the fimir warriors. They are still expensive for what the do though.
@ Luke Maciak:
Luke Maciak wrote:
No, they never did. I offered more than once, but was told it was better never to mention the Fimir again.
I remember the Fimir! Thanks for posting about them. I first encountered them in Heroquest (when I had no idea what they were supposed to be) and then enjoyed reading the interesting lore in te bestiary of WFRP (although never ever encountered them in play or any adventure module).
What’s interesting is that I never connected the reproductive method with rape either – I guess I was too young (early teens) when I read it to really think about the implications. It is pretty nasty when you think it through. On the other hand it does seem somewhat in keeping with some of the darker myths and fairy stories. But I can totally see why GW phased them out!
@ Graeme Davis:
And yet they linger on.
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I’m a few months late to this discussion it seems, wonders of Google eh. I love the Fimir myself, and it’s a shame that GW backed away from them although I suppose it was inevitable given the pathological avoidance of controversy that all publicly traded companies must favour to avoid being Daily Mailed.
I’d hesitate to say their background is an example of “rape culture” though, to fit that definition surely there would have to be some attempt to justify their behaviour or present it, unconsciously, in something other than a negative light. Twisted daemon-worshipping cyclopean mist-monsters abducting women for their own unspeakable purposes is hardly on the same level as what I’d consider genuinely damaging behaviour/themes which embody the concept of “rape culture” like real life discussions among men that treat methods of artificially eroding a woman’s resistance to their unwanted advances, or just outright sexual violence, as being no more controversial than offering a gift, or the particularly “rapey” examples of “romance” fiction. I don’t think we have to completely eradicate any mention of rape in any context in order to combat sexual violence, only ensure that when it is part of a fiction it’s used in a conscious and deliberate way in service of exactly that goal; indeed I’d argue material like the Fimir background, if written with the purpose in mind rather than as an unconsidered consequence of borrowing from mythology as it seems was the case here, can be a valuable tool in pushing the message that sexual violence is abhorrent among a social group – young nerdy men – that seems unfortunately resistant to that message in many cases.
That said, it’s fairly easy to retcon the Fimir reproductive process to make any connotations of rape more metaphorical and tone them down to the kind of “implied freakishness” level that Slaanesh and its followers have reached, while still preserving the thematic elements drawn from the abduction/changelings aspect of the folk mythology – make the sterility a consequence of their fall from grace in the eyes of the Chaos Gods rather than an inherent biological trait(I’m not sure if that was spelled out in the original background, it may have been but it was before my time and I’ve never managed to get a hold of a copy of the original magazine article); make the abductions gender/sex-neutral, ie they simply take “humans” rather than just women; explicitly lay out the process as being a magical ritual in which the abducted human is transformed into a Fimir through some combination of sacrifice/daemonic possession. That’s the version I went with when my pal’s wee daughter ambushed me with a “who are those cool lizard things?” question after seeing my hobby desk :P
@ Yodhrin:
I agree with Yodhrin’s response in that people overacted to the Fimir’s reproductive method. Especially since it is true to their folklore origins and not some crazy Heavy-Metal fantasy devised by the original creators.
Black-listing the Fimir because they have to kidnap females to continue their species seems odd when you have the other races of the Warhammer universe that commit even worse crimes on a daily basis, yet they continue to prosper and are headliners in Warhammer. To make this easy, here’s a list of the Warhammer Races and their not so nice social marketing problems:
-Skaven: They eat children or morph them in to rats. (Eating children is in a lot of folklore as well, bty)
-Dark Elves: As if you already didn’t know!….very well; they rape men and women to death on the altars of Khaine, all while on drugs. And the same people they rape are slaves! There’s also the Witch Elves who steal baby girls to make them Heavy Metal sex murdering bikini warriors. (Not sure if that’s a women’s empowerment thing or not)
-Dwarves: There’s next to zero mention of their women in Dwarven society and only a handful of miniatures ever made…which means they oppress their women and that is evil. They are also all severe alcoholics, which means they fly gyrocopters drunk and that’s just plain dangerous.
-Chaos: Jeez, which aspect of them is worse? Khorne murders unarmed men, women and children. Slaanesh also rapes people, animals, and themselves (they’re hermaphrodites!) for their rituals. Nurgle is a capitolist marketing scheme for pharmacy companies. And Tzeentch is just a jerk overall….or is he?
Undead: They desecrate graves! That’s not cool even if you’re an atheist!
Chaos Dwarves: Slavery is bad. And no women mentioned either! Being sexist slavers makes them double evil!
Xenomorphs: They freaking rape your face and their babies explode out of your chest cavity. Without buying dinner and a movie even! (Yeah I know they’re not part of Warhammer, but they have been a popular species for decades)
I really doubt the Fimir reproductive system was a major factor in their phasing out in the Warhammer line. It seems to be more because of their lack of battlefield ability, miniature cost, and lack of proper marketing on Games-Workshop rather than their “dude that’s not cool” social problem.
The Warhammer Fantasy world is popular because it’s a dark and ultraviolent world. Making it all nice and “PR Friendly” would make it an uninteresting and bland game that no one would buy.
Zoats probably go even further back to the Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoomian ‘Thoats’ even if the Anderson Zoats are the direct source:
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/barsoom/images/2/28/Thoat.jpg/revi sion/latest?cb=20110203103436
Interesting article. However, the ‘something you neglected to tell us’, makes for excellent RPG fantasy back story. A nearby horde stealing the local women, all the more reason to hunt and kill them. Adventures needed to solve the towns problem. Rescue the Nobles daughter or solve the mystery of the disappearing young brides to be, a curse that has plagued the town for some time. Or, simply a young local who has gathered his friends to find his lost love.
The more disturbing these characters the better.
As a gamer not knowing the Fimir back story, the more you discover this sickness the better the Quest.
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@ Humphreys:
Bloody funny and brilliant, and I agree with you a lot. I mean I’ve always thought it highly unfair and outrageous how, the minute a human being-even if good in life-becomes an absolute life-hating horror against his own kind the minute he should die and be brought back by some fell human/Witch/Dark Elf etc. sorcerer. It seems that good heroes are more than pressed beyond the brink enough fighting off all the Orc/Goblin/Troll/Ogre/Lizard Men/Gnoll/Hobgoblins/Bugbear armies, monstrous creatures like Dragons, Hydras and Clawbeasts, not to mention special featured evil beings like Medusas and Beholders, to say nothing of killer undead and actual Demons like Fire and Hell ones, and Balrogs, without losing their own kind to the bad side too. I do think an evil sorcerer should make the odd mistake and have a ranimated person as Ghost/Wight/Wraith/Ghoul/Chillborn/Vampire/Spectre/Banshee etc. turn on them and kill them!
About the Fimir, I, like many, was introduced to them through HeroQuest and instantly loved them-their whole reptilian-humanoid appearance, club-tail, cyclopian eye and beaked face, and I always use them for battles when I like. Their folklore is unfortunate, but why can’t it be changed. There’s nothing worse than Zombie folklore being deliberately flouted even by Games Workshop to cynically get in kids to buy their stuff, pretending that Zombies are cannibals capable of free thought and turning others into them like vampires do, just cos one stupid Hollywood director tried it in one of his movies and now the world’s gone mad for it. Illogical, stupid and wrong. GHOULS are the undead cannibals of the world, Zombies are reanimated cadavers barely able to move beyond a few simple orders-“guard”, “build”, “kill” so on!
Back to Fimirs-if they’re coming back, bloody good. They’re utterly themselves and I had no problem doing their stats myself, which I base on the Fighting Fantasy Monsters guide way of doing it. Namely I gave them SKILL 9 STAMINA 9 with an ability to have 2 Attacks-as the same-sized Trolls and Ogres have, and though their marshy home is nowhere in evidence for their dungeon “imprisonment” for HeroQuest, I imagine that’s a brilliant placde for them to live. I don’t think we need the rape thing or the rather arrogant insistence that anything not as “pretty” as a human has sex/mates/rears children. Why the hell shouldn’t they be as successful in their own way continuing their species as any of their contemporaries. And maybe Dwarf women are never mentioned, because their creators find it too embarrassing, rather than the easy assumption the males must be nasty sexist bullies, to try and detail a dwarf’s sex life. In fact my impression of a Dwarf is that they quite worship their women.
At the end of the day, we’re all humans writing this stuff-which maybe says it all! That if other beings were around, they’d possibly taking a very different view and find our generally backward and hypocritical way of life really quite nasty and off-putting, if they were ever to make assumptions about us, and I bet we’d be the first to hate it and take umbridge, even if more than a little freaked they may be going very near the truth about us. Something to mull over perhaps?
@ David Stafford:
I agree, I loved them ever since I first came across them in HeroQuest. In fact to hear there seems to be annoyingly two different ideas on what size they should be-and what size is correct exactly?-is irritating to say the least. I always felt they otherwise brilliantly sculpted models in HeroQuest were an inch too small at least. I briefly saw a few of the lead ones around, though never got any, pity. Prices were terribly steep, and maybe a few were oversized, but then I always thought of them as more nearer the Troll/Ogre/Bugbear size of the scale than the human/Elf/Orc/Chaos Warrior size they are. But the HeroQuest ones are the easiest to get hold of via eBay on a budget, so I just ignore their small size and pretend they’re the foot taller than a human I imagine a full adult to be whenever I use them, which is often as I love them. As for their dodgy mythology, I don’t see why they can’t be race in themselves, nor why they can’t reproduce themselves, nor why should they be any more savage in life than your average Barbarian-or even just town living “civilised” human being! Why does everything have to be a “human” once before they get “changed” into a monster, as if humans have to make up 90% of humanoid life on whatever world we’re basing our fanatsy worlds in. Only an human creator could be so arrogant…?
What, in life, would all these Fimirs, Orcs, Gnolls etc. even Dwarfs think of all this criticism and possible simplifications of their social heirarcheries if they were to hear them, to say nothing of what they might think of ours! I do not use this in the defence of something like Dark Elves which seem to be unbelivably vile in anyone’s terms, and the likes of vampires too, but creatures like Fimirs and Gnolls, Rhino Men and Deep Ones, I feel terribly sorry for. Especially when they’re completely disregarded often minutes after being dreamed into being!
Hi, I read your comments in detail. I created a forum to be accumulating as much as possible in everything related to Fimirs both in official coo as created by fanes, you can participate.
It is a forum in Spanish, but the translator can translate the pages without any trouble and browse the contents.
Here the link; http://fimir.mforos.com/
Regarding the mode of Fimirs play, it certainly is something unpleasant, but token, also the Dark Elves, the Slanesh, rape and not by necessity, but for fun or sadism worse.
Or from other races that encourage cannibalism, the desecration of the dead, or the weaker discrimination by the mere fact of being stronger as happens with green skins.
Therefore it is stupid Fimirs eliminate, if not profitable, it’s another excuse, but should be in the world of Warhammer.
In any case books armies details such violation is suppressed and as they do with other ejecticos with vestments of rape, death, cannibalism, slavery, murder, genocide and so much more.
Anyway, my attempt to enos part to keep alive Fimirs despite the current situation of Warhammer, but fans are trying to keep both the Warhammer itself as alternative books armies as are Fimirs or Estalia and many others.
Greetings from Spain.