Admittedly, this weeks Wednesday Weird is more of a staple of the Sword & Sorcery genre than anything else, but it's still a cliche. In honor of the release of Dark Horse's new Conan comic and Mongoose Publishing's Conan RPG, this week's project is the barbarian.
Technically, a barbarian could be anyone whose ways are considered primitive by the people around him or her, but Robert E. Howard's character has been so popular that when gamers think of barbarains, they inevitably think of the Conan, a big muscular guy wearing simple clothes or furs and swinging a huge sword or battle-axe. This stereotypical barbarian has been showing up in video games as far back as Gauntlet and as recently as the PS2's Baldur's Gate II. It's time to give him a little weird.
Since the story that inspired the Wednesday Weird was about a combat with a frozen lizard (Col. Tom was an iguana technically), I've wanted to use a frozen lizard in one of these weirds....so this one is it.
This one is set in the setting of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
As the PC cross the dunes in a desert, they see a very large human fighting with some dark elves. Around him lie several fallen warriors, some elven and some human. From his skin and hair colors, he is apparently from the far northern kingdom of Kislev. He wears a fur loin cloth and little else, but the most striking thing is how he seems to be fighting the elves with a giant frozen lizard which he is swinging by it's tail!
How it happened- The Dark Elves of this world ride giant lizards called "cold ones." This one wasn't big enough to ride yet, but they start training the cold ones at a very young age. This one was the size of a large dog. When the dark elves ambushed the barbarian and his companions, the wizard was able to cast a few spells before falling, including one that made the cold one even colder.
The Dark Elves were taking heavy losses against this barbarian and were about ready to run when a wizard with them cast a spell to turn the barbarian's great sword into rust, so the barbarian improvised with the closest thing he could find, the frozen lizard.
Posted by Nuadha at February 26, 2004 12:22 AMDisney's "Dave the Barbarian."
'Nuff said.
The source of the word "barbarian" is ancient Greece. The Ancient Greeks considered anyone who didn't speak a dialect of Greek as a Barbarian, literally because their speech sounded like "bah bah bah bah bah." This was often said of anyone to the North of the Greeks -- Gauls, Germanic tribes, celtic tribes, etc.
The Romans took the word from the Greeks -- along with a lot of other things they borrowed. The Romans gave it the sense of "wild, untamed and uncivilized", though. Of course, they can't just borrow -- they have to put their own spin on it.
Thus, the picture of the Barbarian like Conan is able to stick.
:)
Posted by: Patrick at February 26, 2004 3:55 PMI love your sensitive side.
'nuff said
I love your sensitive side.
'nuff said