Medieval Fantasy Monster Hunters/City Guard
-
For visibility:
-
-
-
-
-
-
I started to write a couple detailed essays on "medieval" monster-hunting characters, but realized after finishing them that, honestly, there are two points to be made:
- I don't think we're necessarily all on the same page about what "Victorian" or "Medieval" mean.
- It probably doesn't matter much in this discussion, because, honestly, I don't think I quite understand what the magic ingredient is supposed to be that separates a standard-issue armed and/or armored figthing man of any given era from a "monster hunter", and maybe that distinction needs to be explained from the ground, up!
I mean, are we asking for a set of fantasy knights in a differnet style from whatever is already out there (given that Oathmark, Frostgrave, Warhammer, D&D, and Pathfinder miniatures cover a lot of territory here), or a serial-numbers-filed-off version of a specific fantasy character (e.g. from some video game, TV show, or movie), or what?
Regarding that first point, if it needs further explanation:
@Vitor Correia
That's Reaper's "The Black Mist" - the name, costume, and semi-auto pistols pretty much mark him as an "expy" for the pulp hero The Shadow, a character pretty firmly rooted in the 1930s and 1940s - nothing Victorian about The Shadow!
Maybe you're thinking of something a bit closer to Reaper's Dreadmere setting, which runs a bit more Gothic horror than '30s pulp or '40s noir?
Not that I'd call this "Victorian" either, but it did get me to start realizing that we're almost certainly not talking about the same thing when using the term "Victorian", and with the context apparently being something Games Workshop has done, I ran an image search for "Games Workshop witch hunter", and got a lot of variations on this guy, who shares some similarities to Reaper's Dreadmere stuff:
The GW Witch Hunter in thi scase is actually another expy for an old 1930s vintage pulp action hero - in this case, Robert E. "Conan the Barbarian" Howard's Solomon Kane, who - as a (fictional) Puritan adventurer from the late 15th or early 16th century - would have predated the Victorian Era by a couple centuries! Solomon Cane would have been practically a Renaissance contemporary of Wargames Atlantic's Conquistadors, give or take a couple decades.
Compare to these Victorian-era drawings of actual Victorians:
Reaper kinda covers that territory with a fistful of "Chronoscope" characters in old (and relatively flat) Bones sculpts:
Which is awesome - I'd love to see a set of actual Victorian monster hunters of some sort! But, I'm pretty sure there really isn't very much of this sort of thing out there anywhere except these guys, and a fistful of white metal minis made for Gaslight Cthulhu, Space 1899, Wild West, and similar niche gaming, made by specialty mini manufacturers! That is, I don't think you're really seeing many Victorian monster hunters in your mainstream fantasy gaming....
And just for a general visual reference for how European armor technology evolved since the latter days of the Roman Empire:
(Give or take a century or two depending on who you ask, the Medieval period is generally considered to run from 500CE to 1500CE, and the Renaissance overlaps it from 1300s to the 1600s or so, with the English Long Bow leaving an impact at the Battle of Agincourt at around 1415CE, and the use of gunpowder for hand-cannon, arquebuses, matchlocks, and such in warfare dates to the 1200s, ceasing to be a rare, experimental novelty by the 1300s; cannon, bombs, and rockets are even older.)
-
-
Here is a quick example of what a simple upgrade sprue can do for the recently previewed Infantry kits for example
Helm capes swords etc.
-
@Charles Tottington Yeah they did have them, enough so you can use history sets like like the ones by Perry's for the War of the Roses or WA's upcoming heavy armored conquestdor cavalry set. That said pistols used by mounted knights tended to be expensive and misfire, As to the older match cord guns from the 1200 (not matchlock, match cord) tended to blow up in the face of the users like modern scrap together gun.
@Vitor Correia Hmm, yeah looks pretty town guard like. Its probably the real way WA should go with with men at arms and knight types to start with.
@Yronimos Whateley For dress the typical Werewolf and Vampire monster hunter usually looks to me like a “heavily modified cowboy or pulp detective fantasy outfit” or “some upper middle class to rich noble Victorian to Edwardian dude who really prepared for rain but with garlic and crosses outfit” or some “Dr. Watson outfit maybe with armor bits thrown on” (ie Victorian Fantasy, keyword being FANTASY).
Typically this is pull on boots, practical looking pants, long button shirts, maybe button vest or waist coat, a leather belt or sash, a bandoleer often with small knives or bullets, typically with either a very long trench or dress coat over it or a rain cloak, often but not always followed by some sort of wide brimmed hat that varies in apperance.
If they are not wearing a long coat they are either wearing some sort of late 18th to early 20th century riding coat typically worn by cavalrymen but in black with fantasy touches or they have an armored breast plate that is anachronistically out of place with the rest of their outfit but somehow still looks cool.
If he has neck wear it’s either neck armor, a cravat, or a bandanna.
As to Soloman Kane, to my knowledge the Puritans never wore the “pilgrim hat” or buckles (that’s a Victorian era artistic trope depiction, and I am pretty sure the pilgrim hat is actually from then) and over half the time Solomen Kane gets done by artists he is dress the same as Zorro and/or Jonah Hex:
I would say Vitor may have been onto something with his Reaper pic choice, old Kane is a typical Pulp Hero look.
-
@Yronimos Whateley Also there actually are some big arsenal differences in both style and standard of what you can and should add to a monster hunter kit from a normal soldier arsenal which I have even brought up. i.e. this really shouldn’t be a standard men at arms set particularly given what we want them to hunt which are werewolves, witchs, and Vampires.
For a typical soldier set: undecorated sword, common real world range weapon (bow, two handed crossbow, and/or two handed gun depending on era or setting), a pole arm if before 1750 perhaps, maybe a shield, and maybe other melee weapons (axes, maces, etc.) depending on the era.
For a typical medieval fantasy soldier set it is “read above and normally subtract guns” which can also be summed up as “either very curvy blades that look vaguely East Indian or more boring looking than the arsenal of historical counterpart that it looks the same as which is probably Saxons.”
For “standard” examples of monster hunters I have seen however it’s generally like this:
Custom combat swords (either a bejeweled long sword, artsy cutlass/saber, fencing/dualist swords, Katana that makes no sense in Transylvania or some other sword you would never see the rank and file carry, occasionally in pairs or sets). For this I would go with a heavily fantasied up saber and some sort of equally bling-bling long sword.
Cane swords (for the more gentlemanly hunters, yeah its actually common enough I put it as its own thing instead of a custom sword).
Artsy two handed great sword (it can vary from a real world one with more decoration than normal like a wolf headed pummel to a complete fantasy sword).
Hunting knives and daggers.
Weird throwing knives used to deal with flyers and distraction (often in the shape of crucifixes, so yeah you can double use it as one).
Long whips (yeah I am hard-pressed to find an real army that went Castlevania on an opponent, but it is pretty common amoung monster hunters).
Single hand crossbow (no western army used single hand crossbows, I am not even sure they are more than Hollywood).
Custom crossbow (its always lighter and more fantasy looking than real military crossbows and often shoots stakes).
Maybe a functional rapid fire/repeating/auto crossbow (a pure fantasy weapon).
Single, double or more barreled civilian shotguns and rifles with silver bullets (firing mechanism dependent on setting normally, but percussion and lever tend to be norms followed by flint and pump action for hunting the 3 monsters we are talking about, and yes I am counting the blunderbuss as a shotgun).
Pistols with varying numbers of barrels and mechanisms (from flint to automatic, for this I recommend generic early percussion cap pistols that can work across the board from the 16th century to the 19th and a set of colt revolvers that work up to present).
Wood stakes of course.
Torch.
Crucifix.
Garlic, may work better as a belt bit.
Oh, and Holy water flasks to chuck at the forces of darkness.
Beyond that if there is still space to waste a book and/or scroll, maybe a staff. Maybe a hammer for the stakes and axe, though axes would be more a female set thing to give it a slight “red riding hood” vibe. I didn't add any poll arms becuase I haven't really seen any stick out in a consistent way, though both the Bradich and the fantasy scythe seem like they could be consedered.
That said a normal Frostgrave set covers some of this for monster hunter archatypes already, but that was part of the plan for those sets.
Anyway long story short, monster hunter are specialist fantasy adventurers, they are to men at arms what Bounty hunter are to modern armies normally. Basiclly its their career to hunt monsters and are prepared for it were as a man at arms only fights monsters when a monster shows up and may not be prepared for it (ie one is hunter the other slightly dangerous prey).
-
Or something Witcher like
-
@Vitor Correia nah, Witcher is just a D&D Ranger, and I wouldn't call him the typical or iconic werewolf hunter or Vampire hunter for that reason (I mean, he is mostly focused on killing dragon sized critters with a side of goblins, may as well be recommending the Delicious in Dungeon crew).
-
-
-
-
@Vitor Correia I don't think you want to understand that the concept your arguing for is a Frostgrave soldier style set that's main differntiating factor is the box art and discription on the back.
Also while the way I worded it may have been dismissive (cause honestly the best thing about Witcher is the monsters, not the Witchers), I have played enough of the Witcher games and watched enough of the Netflix’s show to know it’s a completely and utterly fair to compare the Witcher to general fantasy anime settings nor is that comparison insulting. Some of the best fantasy media franchises out there currently come out of Japan and other Asian countries primarily in the form animation, games and comics, Delicious in Dungeon is one of those. So if you don’t like animation and comics fine, but having your favorite fantasy franchise being compared to them should not be insulting if you’re an adult about it.
If you look at the Witcher franchise, it’s setting is basically watered down Medieval Europe with lotr races like a typical D&D campaign setting with slightly more eastern European monsters (ie we have seen it before). It’s not even a stretch to compare it to adult anime like Goblin Slayer, Delicious in Dungeon or Berserk. In fact a lot of what the MC of Witcher does when tracking monsters is the same stuff that the Delicious in Dungeon characters do when they are tracking monster only played straight and in some cases with more magic.
The real unique aspect the Witchers bring to the table that a typical Dragon Quest style adventurer guild memeber doesn’t is that lore wise they are technically not just an organization but also a upgraded mutant race that has a culture similar to the 40k spacemarines, only instead of being taller they look exactly like humans but with cat eyes.
That said everything they do outside of the order lore though such as policing the relations between humans and non-humans, use of tracking magic, taking fetch quests, use of Jedi mind tricks, other magic and of course slaying monsters is not actually that different from what typical anime adventurers and while we are at D&D adventurers do, in fact they are basically just rangers that use swords more than bows (yeah rangers do some to all of that to one extent or another depending on the setting,).
As to their armor, weapons and appearance, Witchers while kinda of cool as a lore idea to me seem very boring on the physical appearance and toys end if we are talking for a fantasy plastic set. Shape wise despite being mutants they are basically humans in generic men at arms armor. With weapons it the same old generic Dark Age men at arms arsenal at best to at worst just two normally plain looking swords with maybe a few flasks and scrolls added on a good day.
I mean this guy beats Geralt’s whole closet and arsenal in the cool fantasy monster hunter kit department if we really need to do Medieval:
-
-
Nope witchers are either dressed in historical plate armor, historical padded armor, typical D&D swashbuckler/ranger gear, or they wear Dark Age fantasy chainmail. The guy in my picture while intentionally similar is not the same, he is wearing what could best be described as fantasy WW1 plate armor over historical padded armor with an awesome non-historical helmet and is armed with among other things a wrest crossbow which by itself is a way cooler design to anything the witcher or real world men at arms used. To steal from you even children can tell the difference between this:
and this:
Also my last post I said “Frostgrave soldier style set” keyword being "style" and setting that aside if you actually had the Frostgrave soldiers you would know that arms all have the same sleeves and depending on how one built and painted them, I doubt a child or anyone else other than you would know the difference between them and any “order of realistic medieval fantasy monster hunters” since realistically any middle ages organization would not have uniforms but a matching heraldry color schemes in zero industry fantasy land.
Given your "uniform" comments though (which the witcher schools don't really have so much as heraldry color schemes from what I can tell, guess the artists researched real life of the era), I think if WA goes your route it would end up being either of these guys yet again but with maybe a crossbow added and less spears:
Both of which look a lot like the pictures you have posted thus far to me and others (and to be fair the wrest crossbow guy pic I posted, but honestly that is the defult look for European fantasy men at arms). Not a bad design pre-say, but it’s kind of been done a lot now and there are history sets that are close enough to this look for most folks that it’s a harder sell. So, not real interesting as a fantasy set at this point and it would be competing with the frankly better history sets form other lines like Age of Chivalry just within WA given realistic Fantasy humans are basically just historical humans with maybe different funny hats if people are not buttheads about it.
That said if I really wanted uniformity beyond a "mix and match armor with unifying heraldry color schemes" for a human fantasy topic I would use a 19th century foot soldier as the basic uniform design like oh say a FPW Prussian, then give him an armored cuirass or breastplate with maybe some pauldrons and an enclosed helmet along with the basic "medieval men at arms" weapon load out which when taken together will look medieval fantasy enough depending on the setting they are used in and still fairly realistic while not being interchangeable with real world history sets.
Plus with monster hunters we really want it to be something that can fit in a later era with guns for games like Silver Bayonet and Dracula's America, so that would likely be a better option than Witcher style monster hunters or other "trying hard to be realistically medieval" options.
Frankly though, both the fantasy Prussian trooper design I just floated and the Witchers or any other "organized order of monster hunters" would likely end up as something that would be better labeled as "classic fantasy Men at Arms/foot knights" or something else along those lines.
Simply put its smarter to go rag tag with monster hunters and focus on it being character maker set and if it’s got to double as something it should be topic that is similarly dressed, just as "character maker" like and fits in with the theme, like Vampires not city guard.
-
honestly, i think a mix of "Brotherhood of the wolf" style with fantasy elements ala the Van Helsing and WHFB/AoS stuff would sell best.
Brotherhood of the Wolf:
Van helsing:
another one i found while finding those.. Viggog Mortensen in a rendition of the Three Musketeers. (several centuries older than the previous images were set, but some of that style was common across a very long time)
-
-
-
-
- 1
- 2 / 2
