The Gutwrencher Tribe (Ogres)
Hello y’all,
Right well this is my first attempt at a plog. I’ll give a forewarning that this is going to be nowhere as beautiful nor fruitful as the Harry and Lew type logs but I certainly hope it will encourage me to get an army painted! I bought my first box of bulls around the Christmas of 2005 and to date have managed to paint 5 ogres and 13 gnoblars (and a wood!)… which isn’t a great yearly average. With a shiny new edition of the army book due in September I’d really like to try and finish what I started …in under ten years.
Pictures will follow tomorrow (fingers crossed I can get some good ones!) but here’s the background:
Gris Bigtooth was a hefty tyrant, large of gut and long of beard. He fathered many ogre pups but one born – during the passing of a green-yellow tailed comet, they say – was sickly and oozed a greenish-brown slime from its pores. It screeched and mewled like nothing the tribe had heard previously. Gris attempted to consume the abomination but the sickly taste caused him to throw up the mewling pup almost instantly. The pup, known as the Pale One through tellings of this tale, was summarily thrown out into the wilds to meet its demise by other means.
The tale goes that the Pale One travelled down the mountains and found itself by a massive foetid lake, known to the Ogres as the Hurhdung. The pup sustained itself feeding off the bloated boil-leeches and sticky grotweeds of its waters. Over time the Pale One grew stronger and faster, becoming able to catch and feed off of the spine-pike and giant eels of the lake and survive without returning to shore for days.
Many tales abound regarding this part of the Pale One’s life. Some tales hint at the pup being reared by Tyrant Gris’ banished half-brother and hunter, Iorek the Grim and other tales dub him a loner. What is known is that the Pale One returned to the tribe a hulking sinewy mass of muscle and, as ogres are want to do, consumed his father, family and half his tribe over the course of one bloody night. At dawn the Pale One was accepted as the new Tyrant of the Bigtooth and that day the tribe migrated to live at the shore of the Hurhdung’s waters.
The tribesogres flourished by the waters and whilst they did not take to consuming the grotweed and slippery inhabitants of the Hurhdung they grew fat of the mountain and forest beasts that relied on the lake for sustenance. The days of the Pale One have long since passed, in fact it is said the Pale One walked into the Hurhdung one day and never returned and they are now more commonly known as the Gutwrencher Tribe due to the distasteful pulped up grotweed they daub themselves in when they march to war.
Since moving to the lakeside the day to day life of the Ogres has only changed to a small degree. Some duels are now held in the water and instead of Gnoblar tossing you have Gnoblar skimming. For most, the Hurhdung fish are only eaten as a last resort and usually only during eating contests and amphibious-sabaticals. Leaders are respected for their ability in eating contests as much as in feats of strength, and unsuccessful challenges to leadership can lead to an awful lot of vomiting which is not pleasant in an ogre camp.
On occasion a sallow-skinned ogre will be born who will invariably be able to stomach the grotweed and Hurhdung fauna better than others and will gain in strength and status quickly.
Lake based traiditions abound and to gain entry to the Ironguts an ogre must spend seven days and seven nights submerged up to their heads in the Hurhdung. This is no mean feat as not only does the Ogre get awfully hungry (few can catch the slippery spine-pike and lumpfish by hand) but they are also weakened by the numerous large leeches that quickly adhere to them. Tradition also states that the tribe’s tyrant will spend at least most of the day prior to an intended battle or large scale raid submerged in the lake in a strange meditative fish-consuming leech-infested state. Although the whole army will tend to daub itself in pulped up grotweed from the Hurhdung the Tyrant and his ironguts will generally go one step further and adorn their armour with the lank grotweed that fills the lake.
Well… That’s enough waffle for now. Will update tomorrow with pictures if all goes well. Please feel free to feedback and comment.
Cheerio,
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Originally Posted by nagash66
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