"Whoa!!!! 15mm Chinese Undead-Terracotta Army?" Topic

Hi everyone,

I am preparing a 15mm Chinese Undead-Terracotta (Qin based) army for sometime now. You see, this popped out from my idea for a new range of 'Hades Battleground', a nomans land that hosts all dead kings and armies of history with an extra-suppernatural flavour. The idea is to represent Qin's warriors as a mixture of bone, rotten flesh and Terracota (Qin's tomb in China), producing a new range of undead...i.e. headless spearmen caused by tomb dwellers, half faced skull,spearless spearmen!,etc.... (het it's fantasy afterall!!)

At the moment the spearmen regiment is almost ready with archers, horsemen and a couple of chariots to follow, and to complete the range heroes and emperor.

I am glad to receive your comments and suggestions on my range and if this would be of any interested to any of you out there...

P.S. planning to expand range (Greek undead-mythological)

Aztec undead, please. All undead ranges tend towards European style armour and weapons. What at least two of us want ur undead with obsidian weapons and feathers.

Thanks Alan,
that sounds really interesting!!!!! Can you please send me more suggestions(ideas) or links to Aztec culture especially realigious/after-life stuff???? I had this in my mind but unfortunately have had any literature/links for Aztec or other American culture...(you see University history has to be focused in one place or the other).
Aztecs seem most attractive as I believe (correct me if I am wrong) their religion practice involved human sacrifices, which make them extra-potential undead customers for my Undead universe!!! Bear in mind that I am planning alter undead armies, not necessary warriors made of bones...
feathers and obsidian weapons suit perfectly in the concept! Maybe with a mix of religious artefacts....

Eek! Aztec afterlife references? Your guess is as good as mine. I'd just be happy with corpses/skeletons in feathers with obsidian weapons :-)

If you want the use the sacrifice angle, you should have them with ripped open chests, where the hear was removed. Eeeuuugh!

That's what I had in mind :-)

Aztec Mummies, please.

They did mummify their dead, although not in the traditional Egyptian manner. Aztec mummies would be vaguely humanoid, with shriveled, blackened skin (teeth pulled back, hair long and stringy, falling out). Usually there were stones or gems in the eyeholes.

Most Aztec mummies would have ceremonial headress. There were many different types, perhaps a Jaguar headress would be the most widely recognized.

As for weapons, a club with pieces of sharp obsidion. Clothes would be rags, a kilt like garment, sandles and some sort of vestment around the shoulders.

Walt

ie, think of the mummy in Hergé's 7 boules de Crystal (a Tintin adventure)

I've been planning both of those armies of Armies of Arcana forever. I would (ok, did) make the terracotta soldiers clay golemns instead of true undead though.

The Aztec's afterworld isn't very clear to me, but they seemed to regard life pretty harshly. I wanted to do an Aztec/skeleton/zombie/mummy army because if I had a pile of hundreds of bodies left over from a fertility ritual, and access to necromantic magic, I know what I would do for the cause of national defense...

If you make these figures, Armies of Arcana will have army lists to support them.

Warning: google searches for aztec mummies ned a LOT of negative search terms, because there were some B movies made with aztec mummies.

But getting around that, aztecs believed in blood magic - it was the motive force in universe, which is a neat interpretation of how it seems to work for us and animals. they sacrificed to make the sun move, to help the war god drive off the night, to nourish the earth, and to aid with the harvest. They had interesting ways of killing people for all of them. All of which seemed pretty pain oriented, which is something none of reports I've found have much of an explanation for. Sometimes it was an honor to be sacrificed, sometimes it was completely involuntary.

It brings up the very weird concept of mass killings of people but for the very best of reasons - it keeps the universe moving.

Man, people can be stupid...

It may not help with the troop design, but it makes some interesting concepts come out for magic.

"If you make these figures, Armies of Arcana will have army lists to support them."

I can think of a few people that will be looking to do HOTT armies as well; I have Aztecs, Inca, Maya and Conquistadores who would all enjoy some Meso-American undead to play with.

The Inca and Maya actually did more embalming than the Aztecs. Most Aztec graves feature lots of grave goods, but no attempt at preserving the body. The Andean climate allowed for a corpse to become dessicated naturally in the case of the Inca.

The best reference on MesoAmerican burial practices is National Geographic. My wife has some older books on the various cultures as she minored in that era. That's right, I'm married to a rocket scientist who knows exactly how far to nuke you 'til you reach the stone age. :0)

Wyatt

Not in 15 but in 28mm. I've been thinking about maya undead armies. Eureka does 28mm aztecs and is working on maya's.
Chronofus has some reviews:
chronofus.net/wargames

Especially this Maya god would be an interesting necromancer type, or else maya nobles:

Maya mummie mini's I don't know any apart from painting minis earth colours.

I've also been thinking on north-western european peat-bog mummies, 2500 year old bronze age flattend bodies with all features still, but everything brown. But probably more interesting for skirmish-style encounters.

Naismith and, I think, Essex do Inca mummies, on a litter in 15mm. Obviously the poses are not very active, but there you go :-)

Wow - these look like really cool ideas. I already play 28mm and 6mm fantasy though - make the figs in 28mm if you want me as a customer!

Although... they are really, REALLY cool ideas...

Maybe it's time to try a new scale...?

I'd buy a Terracotta army, but then I'd just have to bury them in my backyard.

tjskupin wrote:
"I'd buy a Terracotta army, but then I'd just have to bury them in my backyard."

...and probably wait for 2000 years to be excavated, and make your backyard a museum for the generations to come!!!

Thank you guys for all the ideas. I guess Aztecs is by public demand the next army I'll sculpt :-) But are there any other ideas on the subject apart from Aztecs and Mayas?

If you build them, mj12games will also put out lists for _For the Masses_ (actually, we;re woring on an undead list now.

jim

Some more thoughts:

Hawaiian Night Marchers - Ghostly warriors whose feet don't touch the ground, carrying drums and torches and roaming islands at night.

Inuit Tupilaq - 'Spirits' constructed from various animal body parts, bits of cloth and so forth. Animated by evil shamen and sent to kill their enemies.

Bog Men - I like the idea of slightly squashed Celtic bog-men.

There is an Indonesian vampire (I think it's Indonesian) that consists of a giant floating head with trailing entrails. One company makes them in 25mm; no-one does one in 15mm. Yet.

By the way, which company *are* you. So I know whose New Releases to watch?

Come join the Light Side, Alxbate :)

Hah, sorry Leontios, I didn't realise you're producing the mini's, I thought you were collecting. :-)

Alan:'Bog Men' weren't Celtic (nor Germanic) by the way but (bronze age?) cultures before that, afaik.

"Alan:'Bog Men' weren't Celtic (nor Germanic) by the way but (bronze age?) cultures before that, afaik."

Whoop! Sorry. You are right. So much for that day in the British Museum this Summer (home of a very nice bog-man).

Of course, an earlier culture 'planted' them, but it was the later Celts that resurrect them as an army of shambling undead. That's it!

Time for another "local" HOTT army - the Britsh Museum bog-man came from Lindow Moss, just a few miles from my home.

Tim

Alan, I am afraid I dont work in a company (yet!! :-)), we are a couple of friends from Greece making minis for fantasy 15mm. We are sending the minis for molding and casting elsewhere for our sake. But as I can see there is a lot of interest from many gamers. I will post some pictures of my greens in due time for your comments and even more suggestions.

Thanks Leontios; I'd like to see them. Any undead that are out of the ordinary are going to be of interest.

Any suggestions for suitable 28mm. mini's for 'bog-men' are welcome for me!

I suppose they'd be people defeated or drowned in the name of the Old Ones and then resurrected by (Celtic/Germanic-)barbarians.

Or by Old One demons to destroy the new invaders...

All right, people... This just became rightfully under my alley!

The Aztec Afterworld (Or How the Mexica Rot)
By Yours Truly.

The Mexica (they were "Aztec" to the other tribes as the name derived from the point of origin "Aztlan") believed--like may other cultures-- that Reality had 3 main sections: Heaven, Earth and the Underworld.

The Underworld was divided in 9 starta, and it was know as MICTLAN (the Place of the Dead). In the lowest stratus lived Mictlantecuhtli, the God of Death and Lord of Mictlan.

The aim of the Mexica souls was to croos the various strata of the Underwold and make it to the lowest level, so they could finally rest besides Mictlantecuhtli. Their journey was had and unnerving, full of agony and pain.

Now, this could go on forever and I do not have that much time to slack off (the Crisis Management meeting is about to start, lads), but asa whole, the Mexica folklore isn't that full of ghosts or undead, but there are stories about warriors coming out of the Underworld. Still, this was more in a "heroic vein", where one or three lads took up arms and fought these "evil" invaders. But there wasn'yt a myth dealing with a Horde of the Dead.

But we are warganers, right?

Now, some of the mummified corpses were not the product of Human procedures, but rather a result of chance. The Mexica just buried theier dead, and only the very important nobles were entombed in certain buildings or pyramids. The pressure and humidity levels there, made up for these freak mummifications.

Only the Maya did try to conciously create a mummy.

Well, I'll return in a few hours and try to give you more details of whta the Mexica thought and what types of creatures populated the underwold...

See ya'!

Wonderful stuff Javier. Thanks.

As you say, we are wargamers. Whilst there is no mythology about hordes of the dea, I still want some, if only for the look of it.

I actually asked my wife to bury me with some small terra cotta dudes in my coffin. I'm hoping I'll really freak out some archeologist 1000 years from now and single-handedly mess up the historical record.

Hi everyone,
I have uploaded a couple of pics in the following groups for your comments and suggestions. Its only a small sample just to get an idea:

1 ) – link
at 'files' folder name: 'Leontios Sculpts'

or

2 ) link
at 'photos' folder name: 'Leontios Greens'

Thanks Javier!

Its kind of weird that the afterlife was made to sound pretty awful itself, especially considering how frequently Aztecs were asked to get there a little earlier. Or did you get bonus miles for a sacrifice?

Also, considering the value of blood, were there any non lethal blood letting rituals, like the Christian flagellants or the Muslim Shi'ites?

What ever happened to this? Did any figures come out?