Monday 13 March 2017

Jovan Voortdurend – A DAoS Witch Hunter



The rise of the witch hunter in the Mortal Realms came out of necessity at the beginning of the Age of Chaos when the isolated settlements of man needed champions armed with both the knowledge and weapons to fight the dark forces of the ruinous powers. Indeed, the term ‘witch hunter’ has become something of a misnomer considering their foes include not only witches, but also the predations of daemons, cultists, rat men, the various forms of the undead and a thousand other cthonic entities that have risen in the apocalypse.

Neither was it just individual hunters that answered the call in defense of the Mortal Realms, but rather, as the millennia passed, whole family dynasties of hunters came to be. Relying on the foundations of wisdom from their ancestors, certain hunter bloodlines became infamous across all eight realms, each family armed with their own weapons, knowledge and creed. Indeed, each realm can be said to have influenced each family in the ways they wage war against their enemies: those in the realm of Shyish utilise bells, those in the realm of Hysh use mirrors and captured light, those in the realm of Aqshy wield weapons of purified flame, and so on.


Nor is the knowledge base universal amongst the dynasties for each often hold massive libraries filled with unique tomes of lore reflecting their individualistic creeds. For some are more than willing to utilise the blasphemous magicks and weapons of their enemies against them, whilst others are staunchly against such a practice; citing reasons from the robustly pragmatic to the fervently dogmatic. Similarly, not all families are solely devoted to the grace of Sigmar, but will often call upon the forgotten gods of order (and sometimes to other deities or pantheons of a more ambiguous alignment) for aid in their works.


Jovan Voortdurend belongs to a fractured bloodline of what is often referred to by the other dynasties as a “Ragged House of Vagabonds”. Despite his acerbic nature, his tattered demeanor and his ‘whatever it takes’ attitude to his work, he is an incredibly proficient hunter. Armed with a vast pool of knowledge and variety of esoteric weapons, he earns very few friends amongst his peers for his creed, but his results cannot be argued against; even if most say he walks a dark path and is bound to fall off the edge soon enough
.




14 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks, JB! He's somewhat inspired by John Constantine; even his name is the Danish variant. ^^

      Delete
  2. Great! I like both the mini and the background.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you like him, Ana! The background was put together from a variety of inspirations; Supernatural, John Constantine (and the whole DC mystical universe), the lore from the Inquisitor Rulebook and the Buffyverse. :3

      Delete
  3. Excellent conversion! What bits did you use for the body?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! His body is from the 40k Chaos cultist (the one with the hood, gasmask and autogun), his arms are from the Bretonnian men-at-arms command sprue, the head from the Empire Greatswords and various gubbins from the Flagellants. ^^

      Delete
  4. Emotive text for a visually intriguing character . Wonderful !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you like him, Neil! The background was put together from a variety of inspirations; Supernatural, John Constantine (and the whole DC mystical universe), the lore from the Inquisitor Rulebook and the Buffyverse. :3

      Delete
  5. Your speaking my language now. I used to call myself and my other geek mates , the constantinians._.Hellblazer our Bible of choice , ankh wearing trenchcoat sporting darhorse acolytes ._ haha. I think i still have my original books of magic somewhere . ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You were born in the wrong era, Neil! You should have been around in the 80's! ;)

      I have my own tomes somewhere amongst my many bookshelves. :3

      To be honest, I know Jake has a bee in his bonnet about DAoS centring around witch hunters (and moving far away from the yawnfest collection of Stormcast), so I pulled this together to fit more comfortably in the new setting. Making them a little more like their 40k Inquisitor counterparts and less like the puritanical Sigmar KKK wannabes of the Old World (although they're still an option if you want).

      I've also just realised that the idea of family hunter dynasties also have a ring of the 40k navigatorii lore about them too. ^^

      Delete
    2. I was around in the 80's :) but those were my sword and sorcery formative years. It was my 41st bday a few days ago ._so now iam officially synchronous to my hobby lol. I guess daos can be anything you want it to be._reminds me of dungeons & dragons in that way ._ i would be tempted to push a surrealist agenda or some such ,far removed from common tropes._as i get a buzz from the juxtaposition common and bizzare , a cult worshiping a poster of ian Livingstone , meta fiction stuff like that. The sort of generic fantasy stuff in aos leaves me cold. Still on the fence about the whole thing really . I feel it may be an opppertunity to really consider what floats my boat in that sense . Maybe even look to creating my own fantasy myth .. The family dynasty stuff adds a sense of permanence ,motifs and crests passed down through the ages , the origin unknown and the reason warped by years of interpretation . Loads of scope in that ._

      Delete
    3. Holy Carp! You're the first person I know in these circles who is actually older than I am! :p

      I do get what you mean though as I am also very fond of the surrealist and absurdist motifs, and that whilst AoS is a new blank canvas, GW have gone very Hellenic with it so far.

      At the moment I'm currently working on something a little boarderline between parody and pastiche: I'm making some fantasy 2000AD Judges based on the Blood Bowl human linemen and calling them the Judexi of Sigmar City One (based in the realm of Chamon). I thought it'd be a fun/funny little setting. :

      Delete
  6. ;-) when I saw those bb guys all I could think of was judges with those heavy eagles pauldrons or arbiters ..i look forward to seeing those. Humour is often overlooked with the hobby I think in fear it may return to the slapstick days of yore.. But I have always thought there is small place for it .. Particularly black comedy or absurdist stuff as you mention. But then I am a great big fan of the late Douglas Adam's brand of surreal sci fi. 2000ad was full of scathing satire too. Yeah the age thing is relevant I often feel I should be the one championing oldhamner.. Instead of Inq28 but I feel that there is a focus more on collecting expensive rare models, and I am not really a collector .. I often feel at odds with the those around me because of it tbh.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My era was surrounded by the birth of the more well known skirmish games (Necromunda, Mordheim, Gorkamorka, Inquisitor), so I've always championed them as opposed to oldhammer in general.

      Delete