Hello, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,
and welcome back to Law Crimes with Fantasy Fireside.
And today, because it is the Christmas time of
that year, it is the snowy month, it is the festive
season, we're doing something a little bit special
this episode. Colin, what are we talking about
today? Kieslev. Kieslev. Just Kieslev. So like,
oh, it's just Kieslev. They have their cavalry.
What do you mean, just Kieslev? no that's uh
there is context of that believe it or not that
was their only total war diplomacy line for like
five years wow because they weren't a proper
faction until three so you'd click on them and
they would just go kislev and that was it that
was that was the diplomacy with them thanks for
coming wow wow i mean are they are they kind
of a they're a major faction i mean they're in
the trailer for total war they've got to be somewhat
important or they just kind of they're on the
doorstep to hell that makes them important ish
but they're not like a proper art like what's
their deal i for a bit of meta history if i'm
remembering correctly they used to be like you
could have a kiesel of army both in uh i believe
there was like a way to do it in the empire army
book like they were like a variant army formation
kind of almost like chapters like you can take
different chapters for rules but they're still
marines okay i believe it was something like
that and then there was uh actually i think it
was called war master uh much indeed you know
like like the horus one but uh this this was
like uh this was warhammer fantasy's version
of you know epic okay uh where it's like the
minis are a lot smaller but that means you can
get like an army of 10 000 dudes on the table
right you don't have to spend a grand for a titan
you can buy it for 50 pounds like okay fair enough
yeah uh i believe they were a uh like they were
they were their own fellas in that one okay uh
they had a good amount of minis at least compared
to their proper eighth edition army which was
zero minis so and that was called All I know
about Kislev is they live in the snow. They are
right next to where the portal to hell is for
chaos. They're like the first line of defense.
There's a lady. There's bear cavalry. And there's
a man with a beard who, in the trailer for Total
War, pulls a sword out of the thing and goes,
and that's all I know about Kislev. So I'm excited
to learn more. But on that note, where does one
start with Keystep? Do they have a long history?
Do they have an interesting... Where are we going
to begin this one? They actually do have a decently
long history. In terms of years, it's kind of
comparative to the Empire. It's nothing like,
you know, the elves and the dwarves and all that.
You know, the elder races, as they're called.
But they go back a fair ways. They're not a new
nation. Actually, we'll get into it. Okay. So
go back as far as we can, right? You've got the
Empire, right? Which before Sigmar was just different
tribes of German barbarians, right? Well, to
the northeast, go to, as you will surely notice,
it is what this place is. You go to fantasy Eastern
Europe. We find a tribe called the... Gospodar.
I'm going to call them Gospodar at least once.
I have the same little brain worm I do with Barabast
Antioch, where I keep calling them Barbarist
Antioch. That's not right, but I do that with
these guys too. So Gospodar, though. They were
one of the early tribes of man that were in the
region, while Sigmar was uniting all of the German
tribes. what would become the Empire of Man.
He was going around doing that. And at one point,
he... Er, no, pardon me. I've called them the
wrong name. Ungol. I was looking at the wrong...
I skipped ahead a bit in terms of the names.
This proto -Kislev tribe is the Ungol tribe.
Okay. Everything I've just said is still valid,
but they're called the Ungol. Pardon me. But
while Sigmar was... uniting uh the empire that
led him into fighting one of the uh proto -human
tribes uh not proto -human proto -empire tribes
they were that were a little bit too fond of
chaos you know a little bit a little bit too
too demon worshipy for sigmar's taste so he drove
them out and this ended up driving them towards
ungold territory who You know, they don't much
like chaos either. So they were like, hey, Sigmar,
you want to double team these bozos? Which, you
know, Sigmar agreed. He's like, kill chaos with
each of you. Don't mind if I do. Sounds fun.
Yeah. So they did that. And this was a little
bit into Sigmar getting everyone together. And
the Ungol people and Sigmar and their realm,
they made a promise to, if anyone, if the other
is invaded, we'll help each other out. This wasn't,
you know, Sigmar wasn't getting them into his
group. They were a little far away. But they
were like, hey, you're cool. We're cool. If we
ever need help, we can help each other out. So
that was the start of the alliance between these
two realms. The poor ungles, however, they did
have about 1 ,500 years of just kind of chilling,
you know. But come just before the year 1500
in the Imperial Calendar, that's when the Gospodar
show up. I messed up. Now they're here. Now it's
Gospodar. Okay. These fellas were another tribe
that was a little bit more generally wealthy,
well -equipped, and as it is fitting, magical
than the Ungol. They showed up from the farther
eastern region of the world. fleeing from away
from chaos waste as it was kind of expanding
a little bit so they were they were just running
away led by a very fine queen named miska the
slaughterer oh that's a fun title what do you
do what are you known for slaughtering i guess
take a guess yeah yeah so she was uh she had
united her own little tribes and then they all
just went west and decided that The lands of
the Ungol were as good of a region as any to
settle down. The Ungol, they tried to fight them
back, right? They were like, hey, this is my
house. What the hell? But as I said, Miska the
Slaughterer was one of the, I believe, the first
of the Ice Witches and whatnot. Yeah, she wasn't
Miska the Diplomat or Miska the Negotiator. Yeah,
she's not Obi -Wan. She's not here to play nice.
So she invades and fairly, with minimal difficulty
relative to how much land they conquered, just
kind of takes over the region. The Ungol did
try and call in that bargain before. And it wasn't
like, you know, the Empire, every now and again,
the Empire would have responded because, you
know, they're like, Kislev's being invaded or
the Ungols are being invaded. We should help
them out. But this was during one of the periods
where the Empire is having a little bit of a
civil war. It does that. fairly frequently. So
they were not really in a position to go help
out. Yeah. So eventually the Gospodar did try
and invade the Empire, which didn't work out
for them. You know, they were able to push back
them, which the Empire then made another treaty
with the Gospodar. And it was around this point
that the nation proper, now it is called Kislev,
would begin to form. They had built themselves
over the ruins of a destroyed Ungol city, the
city of Kislev. And then they just eventually
named the whole kingdom after it. in very vague
terms with the timeline. So this is well after
we've had the elves, we've had the dwarves, we've
had the lizardmen, we've had a lot of species
already lay claim to a lot of the world. And
Kislev, are they kind of like a late runner of
like, oh, they've been around, but they're kind
of newish? Can you give us like a vague indication
of where they sit in the timeline? In terms of
being an actual country, they... They were a
good few, like, thousand years, like... Honestly,
I think actually they were just, like, if we're
taking the end times, they were just over a thousand
years before the end times was formed. Okay.
Which happens 25 years after the Empire was founded
and several more thousand years, like, after
the Dwarves and the Elves all had their empire.
The Tomb Kings are all skeletons by this point.
Yeah. Kathy's being Kathy out there. Yeah, it's...
Most of the other nations that were going to
pop up, ignoring whatever random border kingdom
fiefdom, that doesn't matter at all. All the
other nations are just about here. So now we
do have Kislev. There is... There was some problems.
Again, these two different tribes didn't much
like each other at first. What with the second
one kind of coming in and rampaging all over
the place and just planted flags down. Yeah.
Tribes in history have always been a bit not
good with each other. Hence tribalism. It's like
poetry. They rhyme. It's like the modern day.
And they would... I mean, it's kind of a simple
thing. So over, you know, over the thousand years,
the two tribes would eventually start coming
together. And eventually it did get to a point
where they were kind of all like, we're a Kislevite,
you know, first and foremost. And then they'd
be like, I come from a long Ungol line or a Gospodar
line. But keep in mind that did take about a
thousand years for that attitude to properly
like, you know, set in. uh up to that it's there's
not too much to say on it if for no other reason
than you could sum it up pretty easily as took
a thousand years for the ethnic infighting to
kind of calm down a little bit just a thousand
yeah yeah several generations of people hating
their forefathers enemies even though they never
met them like yeah amazing great yeah you know
their kids hate each other just a little bit
less and you know on and on for for a millennia
What would also happen is that the Ungol would
kind of end up inhabiting over the northern parts
of Kislev, and the Gaspar would kind of set up
shop in the southern parts of the nation. Okay.
So they would... Part of what probably also helped
them not hate each other was they just agreed
to live in different parts of the country. You
go over there, we'll stay over here, and don't
come near me ever again. Cool. Yeah. And, you
know, it was this, again, I do want to say things
did get better. Like, you know, come the modern
day of the setting, that Katerin lady, she started
a, what do you call it? For a while, like, you
know, only the leadership positions were all
Gaspinar, but Katerin's a cool gal. She was like,
some of these Ungol are pretty cool. Why don't
they can be in charge of places? Why not? So,
yeah, you know, so that's, and we got Kislev.
It's semi -dynamic, but also kind of not. Okay.
It's, I mean, I'll show what I mean by that.
Here's a map that came out with the release of
the old world. I'll send this just to you for
some reference, right? Okay. So I'm seeing a
bear with an axe, a big old lion. a corgi and
like bear claw and another frowny face bear two
frowny face bears okay and ogres yeah uh ogres
are greed skids said you know what it's uh what
i meant by like you know they kind of expand
or they're not like this was a at the height
of keith lives uh territorial expansion because
they they did for a little bit pardon me they
had a pretty decent empire for a while right
It was a lot of mountains and cold regions, but
they got far enough. They were kind of pushing
into Norsca for a little bit. And if you look
close on that map at the rightmost edge, you
can see something called the Dark Citadel. Yeah.
Kislev was kind of outside the Chaos Dwarf tent
pissing in for a little bit. Oh, yeah. To be
fair. Opposite side, I like there's just a bit
that says troll country. Like, wow, that sounds
fun. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a little
bit. It is what it is. And there's also a lot
of skull and crossbones everywhere throughout
the mountains. It's like skull, skull, skull,
skull. Yeah, those are the world's edge mountains.
They kind of suck. I mean, they're not great.
So, yeah. We got Kislev now. It would expand,
it would shrink. This was, like I said, the greatest
extent of their territory come Modern Warhammer
Fantasy. There was definitely less Kislev than
there was before, but probably makes it a little
easier to defend when you don't gotta worry about
too much chaos going all over the place, right?
So, hey. Now we get Kislev. Cool. Pardon me.
So going forward, things were good. And by this
point, the other firm thing Kiesel has established
itself as, as you mentioned, they are the first
line of defense that chaos bulldozes into whenever
it's time for another ever -chosen to take a
crack at the world. There are, for example, there
are... mostly the uh the country the little empire
province of nordland so northland the northmost
one probably gets more norscan raiders than anywhere
else but they have to cross you know it's called
the sea of claws uh they got to cross that if
they want to get to nordland right so even if
you know they're they're the norskins are vikings
so even then they're uh They're good at sailing,
right? But it's a thing. They still, you know,
you got to build the boat. You got to get enough
people together with you to sail it. You got
to make your way back then. And I'm assuming
it mimics real life Vikings where the land's
very difficult to grow things on. So they resorted
to raiding and pillaging a lot because it was
like, oh, this place sucks to cultivate. We'll
just go to another country and nick their stuff
because we're really hardy people. We're good
at fighting. We're good at sailing. and then
we'll just take the stuff we need and we'll do
it to survive. Like, oh, okay. Got to make friends
that way, don't you? But it's, so yeah, that's
part of why they do it. But either way, right,
that you need some work, even if you're an expert
sailor, putting together the boat and all that,
that takes some effort, right? For Kislev, there's
no barrier like that. You just walk south. Kislev,
especially the northern bits, at any given time
probably has just dozens of chaos raiding parties
just coming in to try and wreck shop. The downside
is, I mean, that's kind of obvious, right? When
you border part of the chaos bits of the planet,
there's going to be a lot of creatures, like
a lot of beastmen. There's a lot of mutated monstrosities
up there. Fun fact, they're the... talk a little
more about it but there's a skaven settlement
up there for the uh the frankenstein clan because
there's just so much good monster up there they
have a field day having fun with making worse
monsters oh it's called hell pit oh what a lovely
name for a place yeah uh but yeah the downside
is pretty obvious you let you border chaos it's
not good uh even At least they had to go through
a little bit of space for Cadia, right? Yeah.
They had to get in a spaceship. No, they don't
got to do that. They just kind of walk. A few
light years where it's like the block over. Oh,
no. Yeah. Great. And that will lead to plenty
of destruction and misery and bad crap. Brightside.
This has turned Kislevites into damn fine warriors
in pretty much any regard you could want. uh
especially again once the ever chosen gets rolling
uh that's much like you know the black crusades
and 40k so whenever chosen gets rolling it's
it's initially it's really just always just kislev
uh 1v1ing the united front of all the chaos gods
and their followers bulldoze again so they've
had to like one dude with his shirt off holding
a claymore with like blue paint all down his
face, shouting with a massive beard, and being
like, oh, he's kind of tough. Don't like him.
He's scary. Even the Chaos Demon. Oh, that guy's
burly. They've had to get good. And they have.
They have in pretty much every way. Kisamite
armies are... Which is, again, we'll go back.
This is kind of going to be a little all -over
episode. well again you were kind of you were
asking like are they main because they've got
the total war but are they not are they kind
of a background thing the answer is yes okay
uh and again like whatever keys live is mentioned
they are without a doubt mentioned it's like
some of the short of like chaos warriors they're
just built differently because they need to be
built differently because they border hell So
whenever chaos invades, whatever army does get
to, you know, the Empire and the rest of the
world is almost without a doubt significantly
weaker than when it started. The flip side is,
again, Kislev does get the brunt of the chaos
invasion. Like when it's at the freshest, everyone's
raring to go. They've just left the wastes or
Norsca or the realm of chaos if it's a demon.
So usually these kind of things end with Kislev.
being rather more on fire than it was prior to
the chaos invasions. But I'll give them credit.
They bounce back phenomenally well. So, let's
get a little bit about the country, right? It
is much like every human nation in Warhammer
fantasy. take X Earth cultures and jam them together.
This is the Slavic super stew of Warhammer fantasy.
To the point that the Total War devs had some
fun and sometimes your warriors will just be
squatting on the battlefield if there's no enemy
nearby. They're doing the slob squat. We have
a pineapple care. Oh, you say that. There's nothing
a Kislevite loves more than a nice bottle of
kvass. Uh -huh. to the point that even the dwarfs
respect their drinking prowess. Is it perchance
a clear liquid that resembles water? It perchance
may be a clear liquid that remembers water. Fair
enough. Yeah, they love themselves a good drink,
which Felix learned the hard way, that kvass,
yes, that is just vodka you're chugging. Yeah.
Yeah, so it's a fairly... in comparison to a
lot of other of the Warhammer places. It's a
very centralized realm. Everything is based out
of Kislev city. And it's all very Slavic. If
you take away the S and the L in Kislev, you
get Kiev. Yeah. If you haven't noticed, so there's
that. Did you know that one of the most important
cities is just called Prague? Oh. Fair enough.
E -R -A -A -G. It's Prague. They have the winged
Hussars. It's just the winged Hussars. It's very,
very Pekoslavic country and throw it together.
Do they do the dance where it's like you bend
your knees and you kick them out, like in Team
Fortress 2? Do they do that? You know, I don't
know. I don't know if that's confirmed, but I'm
assuming that if... It wouldn't be unheard of
if the Kislevites were doing that. And I'm sure
if the setting progressed to modern times or
an equivalent, there would be the hard base.
It's ruled by... There's some fighting going
on over that. They have a Tsar or Tsarina. Just
again, you're really going to understand what
this is. Who rules over the country? And they
historically do a solid job. Again, it's I feel
like you need to give there's like a baseline
level of credit. Everything Kiesel needs to get.
Because it's a nation that's held itself together
on the footsteps of chaos for a thousand years.
There's a baseline level of competence everyone
needs to have to do that, right? You can't be
an idiot and live on the chaos waste. No. I'm
assuming they're very serious. Very little joviality.
Very little humor. Or maybe gallows humor. You
know, actually, some of them... A lot of them
are like that, but some of them are pretty jolly.
From Godric and Felix book, for example, all
reliable for references. Ulrica's dad, very like
jolly bear of a man. He's like seven feet tall,
about as wide, made out of pure muscle. And he
slaps you on the back, shoves a bottle in your
hand and says, we're going to drink tonight and
have fun. I would say they've made the best of
the region they're in. A lot of them are definitely
like that grim, almost Krieg kind of style. Especially
if it's one of those time periods right after
chaos has just bulldozed through. Do some people
from Kiesler occasionally go like, I'm getting
the hell out of this place. This place sucks.
I'm just going to get further south? Not too
often. okay temporarily that will happen uh if
refugees might need to go to the empire if it's
one of the really bad chaos invasions and the
main cities are burning but they will by and
large they're actually quite proud of of where
they make their home uh they view the uh the
empire as weak southerners uh who uh don't know
how to properly stand and fight it's it's more
of a rivalry fun little thing there are sometimes
wars i'm gonna be honest but it's mostly like
a fun little like weakling little, let me show
you how it's done kind of deal, right? Zangief
show you how to fight. But no, they are actually,
by and large, quite proud of that. And then even
in Kislev with the young goals in the north,
that kind of repeats itself, them calling the
Gospodar, like the weakling southerners who've
taken to imperial culture too much. Yeah, no,
that's... It's mostly pretty well. It's ruled
by the Tsarina and all the governing bodies below
them. It's divided for government purposes into
realms called Oblists, which I'm sure that is
just some Eastern European languages word for
like some governing body, right? Yeah. I'm not
entirely... I don't think that's completely unique,
but I don't speak any of those languages, so
I can't confirm. I've just been reading, I'm
just looking at the rest of their lore, so I
don't want to give them too much credit based
off of precedence. Yeah, you've got the, you
know, we'll go down up. Southern Obelisk, right?
It's the least crap one. Okay. No, it's the warmest
one, which means it's got the main farming and
all the foresting and all that stuff you need.
Depending on where you're at, you might even
think you're in the Empire. And depending on
what moment in the setting's history, that may
or may not be true as one of their border wars
gets a little bit too hot. But by and large,
this is, you know, Kislev's breadbasket area.
This is where a lot of trade happens because,
you know, it's right next to the Empire and even
a couple dwarf places, dwarf realms. It's a solid
enough place to live. It's where, again, most
of the politics play out. Like if anyone's coming
to visit Kislev, they're going here because this
is where Kislev, the city, is located. It's pretty
solid. And looking at the, I'm assuming the border
that's on this map, it's a bit cut off. I can't
see the one that's near Griffin's Wood. But is
that like the empire right there? Are those empire
territories? Yeah, down there. Down there, that's,
if you see like that red dotted line, that's
the border of the two realms. Yeah. So yeah,
that's the empire. Yeah. You know, Southern Obelisk,
solid place. It's Warhammer, so there's Beastmen,
there's Orcs, there's problems. But all things
considered, not a bad place to be. Eastern Obelisk
is very cold. It's mostly a lot of frozen steps.
A lot more dangerous. With a lot of, just a lot
more green skin and chaos problems. It's a much
rougher place to be. It's a lot more... This
is where the Gospodars and the Ungols are pretty
mixed. This is where a lot of that friendship
making is going on. It's a good place. At least
for that. But it is a very dangerous place otherwise.
Just because of the increased level of threat.
It's more northern. This isn't perfect. north,
south, east, west. It's a country. There's some
blurred lines in how the organizing goes, right?
So it does have some problems. It also indeed
has the northernmost main city of Kislev, which
is that Prague place. It's called the Haunted
City. Oh. Because one day during one of those
ever -chosen invasions, right? Actually, the
Great War of Chaos, which was the second largest
one. until Archeon blew up the planet. Prague
basically had to be rebuilt from scratch. Okay.
And it was so corrupted by chaos that they got
rid of the worst of it. But there's a lot of
people born with just like some kind of mutation.
Sometimes ghosts just wander the city, just tormented
spirits corrupted by chaos. That's just something
that happens. it's just it's just a you know
it's it's just an occupational hazard in the
city uh it's a lot like entire regions are still
abandoned and they're just like dumpster fires
that are also magically corrupted and haunted
it's not great yeah i mean looking at the map
again it's like oh that's the you get all these
like cities and it's like in a forest in a forest
kids love city and then it's like this one's
empty so there's a big river going through and
then like as you get to the west it's just like
nothing just barren barren barren barren uh so
yeah you can see that prague's been through it
a bit of a tough time yeah it should be said
that you know there's when it isn't it's one
of the main cities of kislev so it is very well
defended there's a lot of outlying defenses it
has when it is an ever chosen season it's not
the worst place to live It's actually, you know,
it's got a big park like in it named after Emperor
Magnus the Pious because he helped kind of clear
up the Great War and chaos. There's a lot of
there is a decent amount of trade and a lot of
silver, a lot of other like valuable metals.
It's. You know, there's a. It has its positives.
It has its positive. It's just like. It's not
great. It's still, it's a haunted city. Like,
there's a lot of chaos corruption in it still.
Just like, they try and burn out and they get
a little bit of it. Like, they slowly can get
a little bit of it and then another chaos horde
invades and it's like, eh, we're back to square
one. Time to clean it up again. Yeah. So, it's
rough. But it does have, you know, again, another
positive. It's kind of where Kislev has its contact
with Cathay, with the Silk Road or the Ivory
Road, depending on how... copyright -friendly
GWs with history at the moment. It's, you know,
it's got some stuff like that. And this place
is, for what it's worth, it is a fortress. Yeah.
Like, dwarf rune magic on the cannons, on the
walls. It's probably some elf stuff, just they
were like, anyone want to help us hold off chaos?
I'm sure some elf at some point was probably
invested. Cannons right from the Empire 2. This
is, yeah. Are other nations quite sympathetic
to their plight and give them lots of stuff just
for their own self -interest to be like, hey,
we'll give you some guns, we'll give you some
stuff, some materials, because we don't want
to have to deal with chaos, so you deal with
it, or are they kind of dispassionate, like,
oh, it's your problem, isn't it? I'll wait until
they come to my doorstep. The Empire and the
Dwarves actually do. Because, again, they're
like, the Dwarves, they do like Kislev as well,
and the Empire is also aware of the fact, like,
this is... This is the speed bump for chaos.
Yeah, let's give the speed bump teeth. The Empire's
like, these are our neighbors. We should be nice
to them. And Dwarves are like, they can hold
that alcohol. Let's give them a hand. Like, nice.
Brilliant. Dwarves. Yeah. It's... The city burns
down a lot, but they always build it right back
up, and it may be haunted, but, you know, they
do their best. So, eh. You know, it's not too
bad. I mean, I definitely wouldn't want to live
here, but it could be worse. Again, there's a
lot of entertainment districts in this city,
which is, again, a plot point in Godric and Felix,
as the dwarfs all go to the brothel. And it's
not Skavenblight, so you're doing pretty well
in comparison to that. No, you can always be
thankful it's not Skavenblight. Although that
is kind of like the lowest bar to clear. Also,
fun fact, there used to be a Chaos God of Law
entombed under the city. in a coffin made out
of gromwell yeah that uh that was a thing in
old fantasy the chaos gods of law and then because
of if my understanding of british copyright law
is correct that was an independent contractor
who wrote that for gw so he got to keep the intellectual
property rights yeah so gw would have to pay
him to use that lady again so they uh just decided
not to yeah and that's why there's so many weird
retcons or things i never pursued because like
oh yeah Why isn't Fulgrim clone coming back?
It's like, well, because that's that writer's
work, and he doesn't have to be tethered to GW
for the rest of his life. So they're just like,
oh, just leave it alone. Leave it alone. We don't
want to pay him any royalties. Yeah. But hey,
at some point in Warhammer history, there was
a chaos god just taking a nap, kind of like the
lion. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that's Prague. And
the Eastern Oblast is otherwise like a lot of...
feral regions. There's a lot of witches called
hags in Kislev that honestly just picture something
called a hag witch and whatever you come up with
in your mind is not going to be that far off
the mark. This is where, fun fact, Baba Yaga
lives. Kislev has Baba Yaga. John Wick. That
would be really funny. I think in older lore
they did just call her Baba Yaga or some very
similar name, but now it's Mother Astankia as
of Total Warhammer. But she's Baba Yaga. Okay.
There's a lot of haunted forests, some of them
chaos related, some of them more like Eastern
European folklore, which... haunted forest kind
of deal because in war have sometimes there's
just a haunted forest it's not chaos it's just
like that uh these uh there's the there's the
uh pardon me and uh here i'll bring it up again
for one of the new ones uh the next ones but
this is where you start seeing a lot of those
little outposts kislev has like in the northern
part of their country They're like fairly isolated,
but there's a whole lot of them, relatively speaking,
like little outposts, like these watchtowers,
fortresses, like mini forts that are the, hey,
chaos is a coming, go ward the cities. So once
we get to here, you'll start seeing more and
more of those as we go farther north. The Western
Oblast is mostly not. Not too much in it, except
for one important place, the city of Arangrad,
which is trade capital of the old world. It's
a very rich place, although it's built with wood.
It's not too far from both Kislev and the Empire.
It's kind of like equal distance between the
two. It's pretty solidly placed. Yeah, it's a
very cosmopolitan city. It's where a lot of trade
is. There's cults to all the different sea gods
there. It's actually the only place where Kislevite
gods are worshipped in a minority. It's a rich
trading city. Is there some kind of Elder Scrolls
shenanigans going on here? Like, is he God? Is
he a man who can't worship him? Not quite that.
It's just, you know, there's a... What is it?
It's just there's a lot of mixing and matching
of cultures in this city because it's the trade
capital. Okay. It's just everyone worships someone
different. It's all over the place here. Okay.
As long as it's not chaos, you can do what you
want. Yeah. As long as it doesn't have tentacles
and too many eyes, you'll be all right. Don't
worry about it. Yeah. Or Nagash. Or the big skeleton
man himself. Yeah. Yeah. And then we get to the
Northern Oblast, which sucks. There's no major
towns like Prague or Ehrengrad or Kislev City.
It's a hole. Even settlements are rare. It's
mostly those fortress camps or tribal nomads.
It's mostly just icy steppes and crap wasteland.
This is where we find that troll country place,
right? Yeah. Theoretically, Kislev owns it. theoretically
yeah uh in practice there's a whole lot of trolls
and other chaos corrupted monsters and norscan
marauders and it just sucks like anything that
is built here really only exists to like act
as a speed bump to chaos when they're coming
through right It does look like there's a pretty
good dwarf presence in the north, though. In
the mountains, at least. I'm seeing several dwarven
heads. There seems to be a lot of them. You know,
I guess that does bear a little bit of mentioning.
Okay. Those are the Norse dwarves who were cut
off from the rest of their kin. Norse dwarves?
That's cool. Indeed. They developed, you know,
kind of differently, their own traditions. Made
some friends with the surrounding Norskins who
were not chaos worshippers, because there's a
few of those. And then they died. Oh, they're
gone. They got, if I remember correctly, they
got murdered in the Great War Against Chaos.
Oh. No more. That's a shame. Although I think
Thorgrim did grab a couple of them and rescue
them, so that's something. Because I'm not being...
I'm not being funny. A Norse gun riding a bear
cavalry is kind of cool. A Norse dwarf riding
a bear would be awesome. I'd pay money to do
that. That would be pretty sick. Yeah. You are
right. They are there, but they're not there
for long. Poor guys. Yeah. Yeah, they die off.
Yeah. But yeah, so Northern Oblast sucks. It's
not great. Really, it's just shit. This is like
the most stereotypical of the you are the front
line against chaos place. It's a lot of like
skirmishing forces. And, you know, like with
the few, you know, Kislevites that are up here,
like their main job will usually be half of you.
Like some of you go send message that the problems
are coming and the rest of them will kind of
like flank the chaos horde, you know, skirmish
a little bit, do some harrying tactics and then
run away. And that's so, you know, it's a, it's
a, even ignoring ever chosen, there is a constant
level of like small art, small grade warfare
going on here. Not fun. Let's see. Let's see.
Religion. Religion's always fun, right? Okay.
If the Black Templars have told us anything,
religion is fun. Okay. Yeah. There's a few different
gods they have, and some of this is newer stuff,
right? Let's start with the first guy, right?
We got Urson. Urson is the bear god. He's the
god of bears and strength and, of course, the
winter. And I believe it was Total War that made
this a thing, but it might have been mentioned
before. But I know Total War Hammer was, if not
the first, at least the most recent to kind of
do it. And it did bring them back into the spotlight.
When he roars, it heralds the end of winter.
At least in Total Warhammer was a problem because
he didn't do that for like a decade and everyone
was kind of freezing to death. You reminded me
of Game of Thrones. So in Game of Thrones, their
winters can last. They don't last like a season.
They last as much as several years. Is there
any like quirk of Warhammer fantasy seasons where
it lasts several years of summer or several years
of winter? Or is it literally every year it's
the same? Or do we not know? Well, if Urson doesn't
roar, the winter doesn't go away. So when Bellacor
locked him up for a while, that caused problems.
Oh, okay. But even with that, he's a solid god.
He's a pretty cool dude. All around, yeah. He's
the national patron. He's their war god as well.
He's a cool dude. Cool dude. He's a... I just
quite like this image, so I'm just going to send
this to you. Sometimes, at least in Total War,
he is just a very big bear, right? Yep. Sometimes
he's a bear pretending to be a human being, as
you'll see in this image. Wow. Yoked. That guy
is yoked. He's like Tarzan's dad. What's going
on there? Yeah. Izzy. 100 % muscle by volume.
Yeah, he's liver king without the roids. Wow,
that's crazy. Yeah. He's a cool dude. Defends
Kislev, lets the winter end, at least when he's
able to roar and blow away the winter. He's not
the state religion necessarily, but the Kislevites
do have, especially with the newer lore they've
gotten, A very religious branch, the great orthodoxy,
who you will properly worship the gods and the
spirits. And if you're a wizard, such as that
heretic ice witch we have to call our queen,
you might get burned at the stake if no one is
stopping them. Oh. And fires of fortune and keys,
they're like, we need this. We really hate you
if we're burning you. Yeah. And speaking of,
there's the god. It's D -A -Z -H. D -A -Z -H.
Daz or Daz. Daz. It might be Daz. He's got a
fire and sun and stuff like that, which can fire
quite important in Kislev. He gets very cold.
And Tor. T -O -R. Thunder and lightning. He's
not really... He's one of the big three of the
traditional gods, but there's not too much...
He's not too much talked about, to be honest,
which is funny because he's supposedly also the
most active one. Well, you know why. It's because
games work, so I don't want to get sued by everyone
who depicts Thor in any of this. We took the
H out. I don't know. I want to get you. I want
to sue you. Yeah, who knows? Or maybe that was
that even just that is too much for him. Thor
is here. Thor. He throws lightning at people.
He's a god of lightning and thunder. You can
probably figure out. Does he have a hammer? He
does not, actually. They held off from that one.
The lengths they will get through in order to
avoid copyright is astounding. He does have an
axe, though, so we're not that far off. Okay,
so he's for Ragnarok, God of War Ragnarok, but
he stole Kratos' axe. Okay, fair enough. Yeah.
He was worshipped by... There was once a third
group in Kislev called the Robsmen. Oh. There
was. Robsmen? Okay. R -O -P -P -S -M -E -N -N.
You know, Sigmar didn't like them very much.
When Sigmar doesn't like you, you don't get to
survive. There's supposedly a couple tribes that
still claim to be descended from them. But by
and large, Sigmar didn't like them very much.
So they might have been unpersoned. That might
have happened. Excuse me, there's only room for
one lightning god, and these guys are also heretics.
I'm going to put them both to rest at once. I'm
going to do a double tap. Get them out of here.
Yeah. Other gods, there is, as I said, as much
as there is the great orthodoxy, there's also
in a lot of ways not one state religion. There's
a lot of stuff about worshipping and appeasing
even lesser, you know, smaller nature spirits,
right? Stuff like that. Plenty of other gods
can also be found here, like worship of the god
Ulric. There's a lot of him there. Tal, who's
a nature guide, you can find stuff for him. They're
not as commonly worshipped as the main Kislevite
gods, but especially the further south you go
in Kislev, you're closer to the Empire, so you'll
get... You'll get a good amount of worship of
them, too. There's a lot of minor deities and
stuff that are here. The Great Orthodoxy, though,
it's the religious organization. It's very new.
Total Warhammer takes roughly in modern Warhammer
fantasy. There's no year timer in it, so you
can't get an exact year. But by the time it shows
up, it's a couple decades old. It's not around.
It gained power pretty quickly. So there's some
heresy accusations that go on and about. But
it's like it's trying to become the state religion,
right? Like they're trying to get everyone to
follow their word and whatnot. Not to... It depends
on where they're at. Kind of successfully, kind
of not. That's causing a whole lot of religious
problems in Kislev as all the people who prefer
the older styles are potentially being burned
at the stake. It's a little bit rough, but such
as it is when you invite witch hunters into your
country, things will get a little bit rougher.
Let's see, what else? I feel obligated to mention
winter. Okay. uh general winter they call it
something else but i i can't general winter is
what i can't help but think of you know they
call it cross deaths and of the lizard kill there
you go yeah it's brutal uh it's which is I mean,
it's much like, you know, don't invade Russia
in the winter. Don't invade Kislev in the winter.
Yeah. You will freeze solid if you walk out too
far and you don't know very well what you're
doing. You got all the protective clothing, which
Kislev does take advantage of because they'll
usually, even when chaos invades and chaos comes
over the north, so they're used to the cold,
but it's really bad in Kislev. Yeah. Like abnormally
bad. So they... They've gotten used to timing
their invasions with the winter, raiding during
it, planning major attacks right as it's ending,
when they've had time to scrounge up food and
the enemy's not had time. They're quite smart
with it. Also, they're sometimes ruled by an
ice witch, you gotta remember. So, she could
at any moment decide the winter's gonna be ten
times worse. Can you briefly touch upon what
an ice witch is? I can. Kinda heretical? So,
if you ask not Rasputin, who leads the Great
Orthodoxy... Of course, there's a character called
Rasputin. Well, he's called Castalton, but if
you look at him, he's Rasputin. They are filthy,
heretical deviants that must be purged. They're
also, again, that Miska the Slaughterer lady.
She was an ice witch. And it's... This is going
to be really stupid to say, but I mean, they're
ice witches. They're magically gifted women who
use ice magic, which is its own kind of thing.
Still uses winds of magic, but it's like it's
its own thing. It's mostly a kesel of magic.
But the winds go before you cast it. The winds
go brr, indeed. Yeah, Ice Magic is very connected
to Kislev's land. Their origins are a little
unknown, but supposedly there's a goddess called
the Widow that used to give them, that in fact
gave this Misk of the Slaughterer lady not only
the ability to control winter, but told her to
go and found Kislev and go kill a whole lot of
ungles. Ice witches since her have been part
of society, and they've got a lot of political
sway as very powerful witches. It's slowly diminishing
with the Great Orthodoxy and not wanting that
heretical magic, but they're... Are they all
like aristocracy, or are they more... They are
by and large like aristocracy, and usually one
who isn't from a noble family will... In some
way be like raised up almost. Okay. So you get
a pass. The nation does have a ban on men with
magic. So they tend to kill any guys practicing
magic, which does usually mean you're wondering
why there's no male ice wizards. There's a prophecy
that one of them is going to, you know, kind
of ruin the whole thing for everyone, which is
actually quite similar to why Malekith doesn't
allow male. elf witches in the dark elf lands
a lot of uh a lot of sorcery misandry going on
in the warhammer fantasy universe i was reading
that it's actually kind of funny it's like this
this is the second time this has happened it's
like special boys we've got to kill the special
boys i i guess if if you want to be nice like
the keys to the one is more so like they're worried
right where it's like this guy is going to ruin
ice magic for everyone. We can't let that happen.
Whereas Malekith says very much there's a prophecy
that he specifically is going to die. So he's
like, oh, no, no. I'm not letting that one happen.
No, thank you. But yeah, they've got a lot of
political influence. Again, the most recent times
they've been fighting with the great orthodoxy,
but they've still got, you know, a thousand years
of political power and influence they've entrenched
themselves in. So, yeah. And, you know, it's
a little bit nice. Any families that have, right,
a male magic, like, you know, their son is born
a wizard, they'll usually smuggle him off to
the Empire. Yeah, I was going to say, like, send
him away far from Kislev and he'll probably be
okay. Yeah. So there's probably a couple of...
What is it? I'm sure there's a few, right, like
male ice warlocks or whatever. Probably not in
Kiesliff because they're usually put to the death.
Yeah. But, you know, it could be worse. It could
be in Skavenblight. It could be in Skavenblight.
You can always be thankful for that. I'm thankful
every day when I wake up in the real world that
Skavenblight is fictional. That's good. I'm quite
happy. Although I don't know about under New
York, under those subways. I wouldn't be surprised.
New York. Concrete dungeon? Oh, it's scathing.
It's... Oh, jeez, I don't know. My brain just
kind of turned off for a bit there. Pardon me.
There's not always necessarily with Kislev an
ice witch leading, but it does tend to happen.
For example, this is perhaps the most... There
was a guy whose name was Zarboris Baca. Zaboca.
Barboris Baca. Okay. Yeah. You know, he did a
lot of, you know, he was after the great war
against chaos. He did a lot of reforms and kind
of strengthened the country's politics and made
it an absolute monarchy and all that, you know,
stuff like that. Got rid of some of the feudalism.
Did, you know, did all that Peter the Great stuff.
And then, you know, we have. Tsarina Katarin,
who is an Ice Witch and the Tsar, so it's not
always an Ice Witch in charge, but it does tend
to, you know... It gives you some credibility
to be like, hey, we were founded by an Ice Witch,
Ice Witch is a stronk, she's kind of pretty...
Yeah, it does tend to give you some amount of,
like, a sway, you know? And also, I'm sure, you
know, something something Frozen let it snow
joke. Yeah. uh that's that seems almost obligatory
you know uh but yeah so that's you know i switch
it i mean their eye switch is fun too uh fun
fact grim gore ironhide once bulldozed his way
through kiesliff okay and then zarina katarin
instead of fighting right uh just said i'm just
gonna freeze the entire countryside solid until
you go away Well, that's always the best way
to get rid of an orc. It's like, don't fight
them. Delay them and they'll get bored. I mean,
it worked. He did eventually go away because
all of his army kept turning into orcsicles.
Oh, no. Except for his boys, the immortals, and
himself, of course. But yeah, he did try and
invade Kislev, but they just went home. He did
brutalize them in combat first, though, you know,
of course. But, yeah, no, it was eh. Yeah. That
is a major part of their military strategy. It's
cold now. Please go away. Which, you know, when
you're controlled by an ice wizard, it does work.
What are some other bangers? Like I said, they
don't have presently an army. I'm hoping they
get one. I'm really hoping they get one because
that'd be cool. I mean, like you said, they have
bear cavalry. But yeah, Kisavite soldiers tend
to be going off a total war for this because,
again, there's no army I can draw from from the
tabletop. So they don't have a tabletop army
itself. They just have bits? Not at present,
no. They don't really have bits anymore. Again,
like that Warmaster in the old model days, that
was a while ago. But that being said, they do
have a pretty unique army. It's very hybrid.
So your average Keith is a person, right? He
doesn't just have a spear or an axe or a bow.
He's usually got, like, a melee weapon and a
ranged weapon. So, like, you know, the basic
ones, they've got a bow, one hell of a bow. You
know, a spear or an axe to cut you or poke you
or whatever with. Scale it up. Usually, at least
for the basic troops of the army, even the more
elite ones, this is pretty consistent. They just
might have a gun and a sharper axe or a bigger
axe if you get to the big boys. I'm guessing
Kislev aren't too big on gunpowder because maybe
it's difficult to procure and maintain and stuff.
They do need to get a lot of it from the Empire
through trade. Yeah. They do make use of it.
There are a good amount of Kislev units that
do have guns, so they do make use of it when
they can. But depending on the attitude, you
might get the classic. weakling southerner need
gun yeah just beat man to death i'm gonna eat
raw meat and headbutt them to death like yeah
okay yeah or some of the times it is just more
of like that practical like we'd love to use
more cannons we cannot afford them oh i'm just
thinking we can't make the gunpowder much dragging
the cannons through the snow would suck anytime
the ice melts it makes the gun yeah wet like
that would be a nightmare keeping all of the
logistics in place which is something i think
people don't realize like war it's like it's
not just top trumps where it's like who's shooty
bang bang the best it's also like kind of like
what you alluded to with like the russian front
of world war ii where it's like the germans have
for example uh in in like even in um the battle
of the bulge they had really good winter gear
and they were very difficult to get out of of
their encampments because the americans did not
have as good winter gear and they were suffering
from trench foot and shivering all day in box
holes and then the it's like if you have like
the gear that's one thing but if you have a tank
you also need to have the fuel for the tank and
if the fuel freezes you need to for it and if
you have to for it that wastes time there's all
these things that people don't think about it's
like Even with gunpowder, that's such a finicky
technology. But yeah. Yeah. It's rough. They
do use it when they can. There's not nearly as
much of it to go around. They do make up for
it with a lot more ice magic. That's helpful.
And then they have their various other more unique
units. They've got the horse archers and stuff.
They of course have The winged lancers, I know
what you are. Which, I mean, hey, you know, the
winged hussars were, for a brief moment, the
fiercest cavalry unit around. Fort Gunpowder
kind of made that not mean anything, right? Yeah.
But hey, the winged hussars give one hell of
a charge. And if you don't like the horses, well,
they have bear cavalry. Magical Ice Bear Cavalry,
of course. One of the monstrous units they have
is just... It's a big frozen bear. Like the size
of a house. Oh, why is it frozen? Because Ice
Magic Bear. Oh, okay. So it's like enchanted.
It's, you know, I mean, I've seen the Revenant.
That bear could give even Scarbrand some trouble.
It's a really big bear. Yeah. I also... I forget
the name of them. They're like forest monster
demon things, right? Okay. Like a faun? They're
mostly used a lot by the hags, Mother Astakia
particularly. But I'll send you an image. Okay.
If you piss off the wrong person, that might
get thrown at you. Yeah, that's a faun on steroids,
that is. What is that? I promise you, it's not
a demon. Yeah? Not with the glowing eyes and
mouth and runic sigils and gemstone carved into
its heart? No, please. This is Warhammer fantasy.
Sometimes there's just normal magical monsters
like that. It's not a demon. But it is horrifying.
Yeah. I always like when something like that
gets like the special rule, like causes terror.
Like, yeah, I don't think you needed to tell
me that. I think I could take that one on faith.
I didn't need to be told that thing is scary.
I promise you. It's yeah. Here's a little fun
fact. It's not a. It's not their military. But
they have a group called the Czechists that are
the secret police of the government. And this
might be up there for one of Warhammer's most
unoriginal things, because you know what the
Czechos were? Right. They're just the pre -KGB.
Okay. They're just the original Soviet secret
police. Okay. Kislev has that, so that's fun.
I would be nice when in Kislev, right? Mm -hmm.
You might get a visit from the friendly neighborhood,
not KGB, if you might be doing a little bit of
heresy. But don't worry, Andy. They never convict
the wrong people. Never. Not once. Just like
in real life. Secret police never do anything
wrong. Clearly, comrade, this was an enemy of
the state in the making. Yeah, exactly. Even
if they weren't yet. He went against the party
lines and, yeah, heresy. Yeah, and it's exactly
what we just said. Have some vodka. It'll be
okay. Have vodka, comrade. Don't ask about your
neighbor. You never had a neighbor. That's the
term, isn't it? Vodka is water. Ka and ka is
little. It's just a little water. Little water.
Yeah, no. Yeah. And the government, of course,
rejects any indication that they're they're monitoring
foreign countries or that they might be just
around the corner. You know, they're. Such such
as rumors and slander against the party. Yeah.
Oh, it's just... It's so on the nose, isn't it?
Yeah. What other little bangers do we have? Do
you have any other questions? There's a couple
smaller things I wrote throughout I'm trying
to pull up. So this might be a... I'm kind of...
What's the word? I'm treading on thin ice here
with you. With regards, because they're obviously
the first line of defense, you'd assume they'd
get demolished and then not be able to fight
the rest of the setting. How do they factor into
things like the end times? Well, in the end times,
they basically died off screen. Oh, great. Fantastic.
Nice. Yeah, that makes sense. As for that, usually
they'll burn down the city and then Kislev will
promptly rebuild it once the invasion is dealt
with. and after the city burned down like kiesel
will usually spend the rest of the invasion with
whatever force that it has left just harrying
or maybe uniting with the empire and fighting
them together or doing like flanking they're
they're like a semi background where they're
important and there's there's a a decent amount
of lore but at the same time like and nothing
compared to anyone like the major factions they're
like the french certainly not the empire they're
important but like they're it's like america
uk important countries but no it's like because
the only thing is also they have like am i right
in thinking that they have a very large chaos
contingent where the screamy man is the guy in
charge of their like chaotic like war band and
i and i saw an animation on warhammer tv where
it's like a bunch of kislev guys turning to chaos
and they will like integrate forest entities
or some such into like their they're like i don't
know how to describe it but like yeah what i
remember of the animation it was like a guy and
he had a brother and they were fighting in a
big forest and chaos was happening and they were
just kind of like uh beats dying i guess i'll
be chaotic i guess i there's definitely a couple
like keys to the lights that do turn to chaos
that's indeed the plot of total warhammer 3's
narrative campaign oh uh it doesn't happen too
often but it does happen it was like even on
katia like there would be passages where it's
like yeah we got a bunch of chaos cults we're
five feet from the eye of terror of course they
exist yeah Well, there's a poor bunch of beast
men on Terra during the Siege of Terra who defect
because it's like, we're always mistreated. Fine,
we'll clear our chaos and then we'll be purged
from the setting like everyone else who's a beast
man. Aw, poor fellas. There's definitely a couple
people who get sick of being the speed bump of
chaos and decide to join chaos. That does happen
every now and again. That definitely does. And
as for the country itself, I mean... So they
burn down, but they're very good at rolling with
the punches. You burn down their little wooden
fortress, they put it right back up and tell
you to come for round two. And it was that for
a thousand years. Until the world blew up. Kislev
supposedly has never fallen, although that's
very funny, because in both Storm of Chaos and
The End Times, Kislev's lore was Kislev has fallen.
LFs in the chat. Unfortunate. No, again, they
put up a good fight. They deserve some credit
for what they do. They do good work. I guess
one other fun fact is that... Oh, God, I forgot
her name. Mishenka Romanov. Oh, Romanov. Of course
it is. In a partially Russian -inspired setting?
No, surely not. Shocker. There's on the nose,
and then there's pulling the nose off. And then
there's that. Yeah. Wow. She... What do you call
it? She was in charge during... She's in charge
during the old world, right? And she's... There's
not been much about Kiesel, unfortunately. Come
on. Come on, insulin pump. You can do it. Pardon
me. It's okay. There's not much on her, but she's
basically trying to... get that civilization
like get that uh centralization going and also
trying to figure out how to make the empire behave
because as the person who's on the borders of
the chaos wastes she can tell that something's
a brewing because right before right after the
old world's time period and maybe it'll continue
on into it is the great war against chaos uh
so she's looking north and we're like oh there's
problems coming And then she looks south and
we get the age of three emperors where the empire
was divided into, you know, three. So she's looking
south like I really need you all to behave right
now. I really need you to stop pitching a fit.
Yeah. And help me get ready. So, yeah. I don't
know what happens to her because I I'm fairly
certain she's a she is like from the old world
and there's not been much development. But she's
got the last name Romanoff, so I'm going to make
some assumptions. Okay. Yeah. Rasputin fella
might be involved partially. Yeah. I have some
ideas. Okay. I'm assuming Kislev aren't active
in Age of Sigmar. No. There weren't any, at least
in 8th edition, there weren't any Kislev minis
to be put into the cities of Sigmar. It was like
the old, we had fancy minis still in stock army,
right? There weren't Kislev minis, so they didn't
get to be. And either way, there's not really
any one country. There is no, none of the realms
survived. Even the high elves of Age of Sigmar,
they're not. That's not the High Elf's kingdom
in Ulthuan Continued. That's just the High Elf
equivalent, right? Mm -hmm. Yeah. So, no, there
is no keystone in Age of Sigmar. Now, granted,
I'm sure you could find some equivalent in some
book or story or codex entry, so I'm sure that
exists. There's wintery places in the mortal
realms. I'm sure if you want... you can flavor
your cities of Sigur army around Kislev. Like
I can't imagine it'd be hard to justify that.
But no, there is no Kislev. And to my knowledge,
I don't think there's even been like any Kislev
characters, like Stormcastified. It's such a
strange decision because like, and again, I know
Total Warhammer is not Games Workshop. I know
Creative Assembly are not the guys who drive
Warhammer by any means, but they're kind of the
custodians of fantasy. and to have them as a
POV main drive of the premiere gaming series
for your franchise, and then just be like, oh,
they're gone now. What? They had Bear Cavalry.
What do you mean they're gone? That's the coolest
thing ever. That's another thing. I don't know
why they weren't just launched a lot sooner.
It took Cathay this long, and I mean... I actually
just checked right now. This is the first time,
legitimately, I'm looking at the web store right
now. This is the first time I've not seen half
of what you can buy for Cathay sold out. I mean,
Cathay is cool. They've got the jade statues
and everything, but I'm like, bear cavalry, bro.
Yeah, I don't know why we don't have that yet.
It seems like such an easy slam dunk. Yeah. And
then you could have a platoon of... infantry
guys doing the crab sit or whatever you call
it with a bottle of what's it called? Kvass.
And then maybe with an Adidas style uniform and
it would be perfect. 10 million sold. Everyone
loves it. I don't know why we don't have none
of that. You'd think it'd be so easy. Maybe one
day. I'm pretty sure that Eastern Europe loves
Warhammer. One of the reasons I have so many
subtitles from Poland and Russia and stuff like
that is there's a substantial amount of people
in Eastern Europe who I guess resonate with Warhammer
content and think it's really cool. And yet the
premiere... representation for them it's just
like it's cool in the trailers for the total
war games and yeah like do they even have any
books i not many um they do have i just double
pulled it up i really i double checking now and
i think i'm unfortunately correct uh they have
They've got a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Supplement,
which is fun. I do like that. It's a good read.
It's called The Realm of the Ice Queen. Good
stuff. Good stuff. There's something called The
Ambassador, which is by Graham McNeil. I've not
read it, actually. It's an Empire general who's
sent to be like an ambassador to Kislev, right?
Beyond that, I don't really think they got anything.
And I have a feeling, because I'm looking, right?
I'm on the Black Library web store, right? Yeah.
The recommended books are an Empire book, a Wood
Elf book, and a High Elf book. How did that happen?
What? I'm getting the sinking suspicion that
if there were more Kislev books, it'd be recommending
me, though. Yeah, that's so strange. I mean,
what? They're very much, like I said, they're
a prominent background faction. You can find
a decent amount of stuff on them. They get mentioned
pretty regularly in other books. Not a lot of
stuff focused on Kislev. Ugh. They got Batarian'd,
which is a... like a species in mass effect where
they're the, you meet them in the first game
as a terrorist cell, good first impressions.
And then like by the third game, they're in the
direct line of the, the Reaper advanced. So it's
like, Oh, their home world was completely destroyed.
And now all their people are dead. Oh, Oh no.
And to be fair, shitty people like, Oh. There's
a reason you don't meet a single female Batarian
in the whole series, because they're not treated
well. And they also have slaves. So not great
people. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, so pretty scummy.
But also, they got killed offscreen at the beginning
of Mass Effect 3. Oh, no. Yeah. That's a shame.
Yeah, there's not much. Which is unfortunate.
Like I said, prominent background. You can find
a lot of bits and blurbs about them. They show
up pretty frequently. Not much in the way of
directly, hey, here's this. And if you'd like,
you can buy the Realm of the Ice Queen fantasy
roleplay supplement for $130 on Amazon. Oh, gosh.
Not fun. Yeah. I am glad some Kindle alternatives
exist or Audible because otherwise I would not
be able to do what I do because it's just, oh,
this book is quite odd. How much is it on eBay?
£75. Oh. Yeah. Alternatively, look up Realm of
the Ice Queen PDF. Oh, that works. Okay. Right.
As I've done. Good watch, good read. Let's see,
really quick. Any other questions I'm going to
try and see? I don't. So are there any prominent
characters other than Serena? I know the Ice
Queen Lady is important. Are there any others
who are like... I assume they have legendary
lords in Total Warhammer. Yeah, there is Costalton.
He's the other guy. He's the head of the Great
Orthodoxy. And it almost seems like they don't
know what they want out of him. Because in some
of the cutscenes of the game, he's got this very
educated, regal almost voice. And then you click
on him in the game and he's kind of a raving
madman. Yeah. And he's the only other character?
No, there's some of those other background characters.
Miska the Slaughterer. Oh, yeah. No. She's there.
There's not as many, which is unfortunate, but
there's Igor the Terrible. Igor. Nice. He helped
save Kislev from chaos invasions. He was also
paranoid and cruel and insane. Kind of like another
guy called the Terrible. Yeah, I know. Where
could this guy's inspiration be from? He also
had a name that began with I and it had two syllables.
I wonder who it could have been. There's a good
animation about him tearing his family apart.
There's Boris Ursus. Okay. It's me, Boris, not
Horace. Boris. He was the Tsar before Katarin
and indeed He's her dad. Yep. His lore is...
So he wanted to be a priest for the cult of Ursin,
right? Yeah. To do that, you need to go into
the forest and tame a bear. Oh. So he tried wrestling
it. Which, for what it's worth, no one won the
wrestling fight. They couldn't do it. They just
kept bleeding each other out. This caused a pack
of wolves to attack them that he helped drive
them off. And then the bear kept him safe after
he passed out. And now they're buddies and he
rides the bear into battle. Its name is Erskine.
Erskine. Nice. Yeah. He's a, you know, he was
a solid enough czar. He did cool things. He brought
Ersan back into more popularity. Good for him.
He helped unify Kislev a bit. Pull it back from
being in a bit of a sticky spot it was in. And
then he did get lost. Which, depending on the
lore you're reading, if it's Total Warhammer,
he was frozen in a block of ice and freed. And
I believe in the end times some dude just killed
him. Oh, how anticlimactic. That sounds like
a GW plotline. Yeah. Boris. Boris. Yeah. I mean,
it is very cliche in some regards, this faction.
You've got Boris and Ivan and Rasputin kind of
guy and Prague. But I wish they'd have like...
I know Total Warhammer has already done a lot
of heavy lifting with Cafe. I guess they couldn't
really do much more with them because they've
already kind of given it a shot. They had them
in the launch trailer. They had the whole narrative
campaigns for the games. And it's like, what
else do you do from there? You've already put
in so much work and effort. It hasn't necessarily
paid off. There's no model range for them. There's
no books for them. Where do you go from there?
I wonder why, too, because Kislev already existed,
right? Yeah. They did, too, but not nearly as
much as Kislev. You'd think it'd be a lot easier
to do the work with Kislev. Yeah. And yeah, they
just had bear cavalry and they went, no, there's
nothing in it. It's like, what do you mean? But
even that, you could have like, you know, in
like Elder Scrolls, you've got those kind of
wraith, ice wraith creatures. You could have
those as miniatures. You could have a bunch of
cool stuff. You could have little tunneling guys.
It's like, they don't... They don't survive well
in, like, the surface, but maybe you have some
subterranean forces that can burrow up and then
disappear. You could have weevils or ferret creatures.
You do a whole lot of things. Yeah. And they're
like, nah. It is rather unfortunate that we don't
have more. What we have is quite cool. I guess
the elves have a claim on deer and things with
antlers. But, like, you could have yeti stuff.
You could have, like, snowy stuff. Penguin. Penguin
militia. That would be fun. Ice stuff. Polar
bears. I could see it working. It could work.
Archeon, as we know, is also terrified of penguins,
so have a penguin regiment and that would destroy
his armies very quickly, in short order. Yeah,
I mean, and it's a shame too, because Total War's
narrative campaign was focused on Urson the Bear
God. Yeah. And where did that go? Nowhere. Well,
it was the narrative Total Warhammer campaign,
so no one liked it, and we played the big everyone
map instead, because why wouldn't you? Yeah.
Well, is there anything else we need to cover
on Keith's lab, or have we more or less done
the gamut? I think that's the gist of it. Yeah,
they get attacked by chaos a lot. They always
bring it back. Don't piss off the Chekists. Nope.
Yeah. It's a brutal, it's a harsh, wintry land,
but it could be worse. Could be worse. Here's
a question. Does Nagash or the undead factions
have any... Because I'd assume there must be
a lot of dead people buried under the snow. Surely
there's a whole bunch of people you could be
like, they're quite strong and burly corpses.
We could rise them up. They'd be quite good.
Or is it just too difficult to get to? It's hard
to get to. Usually the vampire counts themselves
are focused on Sylvania. Kislev had already died
off screen by the time Nagash was really doing
much. So that's why that didn't happen. I imagine
if nothing else, it's cold. Rigor mortis is going
to make moving those zombies a real pain. Yeah.
And we've already got White Walkers in Game of
Thrones, so that's copyright infringement. I
see how it is. I see where it's going. But yeah,
I guess if there's nothing else, then I suppose
that was our episode on Kieslev. It's just about
Kieslev. Yeah. Shame that they haven't got what
I think they deserve. but maybe in the future.
I think they should get some more. It is a shame
that they don't have it. Maybe Age of Sigmar
can bring some bear cavalry back, and that would
be nice. Even in just that form, if it's just
a model for Cities of Sigmar, that is the easiest
slam dunk, and I don't know why they've not done
it. Have a Stormcast riding a bear in snowy colors,
maybe with a Russian Fabergé egg. in his hand
or something. I don't know. Give it a go. Give
it a bash. See how it goes. Yeah. But anyway,
if you want to know about Key Slip, play Total
Warhammer. But either way, I hope you guys enjoyed
this little festive episode of Fantasy Fireside.
We'll be back in the new year to talk about some
other factions. So please let us know in the
comments if there are any particular factions
you'd like us to cover in Fantasy Fireside. warhammer
factions uh i think there's still quite a good
spread of them remaining i know there's things
like we've done some elves and dwarves we've
done a little bit of the human factions etc ogres
etc but there's still a lot to cover there's
yeah there's still a good bit so yeah let us
know what you want and i will get on it but anyway
uh thank you colin for for doing the research
and and helming this episode and uh we'll catch
you all on the next one have a good one fellas
take care