THE WFRP STORY XXIV: HERE BE DRAGONS

This post continues my history of WFRP1, which started here.

WFB2‘s bestiary mostly built on the foundations of its precursor in WFB1. It contains fuller descriptions and greater detail, but the selection of creatures largely reflects Citadel’s miniatures range at the time and is similar to the previous edition.

There are a few noteworthy changes. There is a narrower selection of goblin species. Greater goblins, red goblins, night goblins and lesser night goblins have all been removed, leaving just goblins and lesser goblins. Menfish have disappeared. Some followers of Chaos have been added, such as beastmen and warriors of Chaos (which had already been described in inserts and articles). Demonic Servants are included in the demonic hierarchy. Elementals of air, earth, fire and water also appear.

It is for the most part a generic collection of fantasy monsters, and nearly all regions of the Known World lack distinctive fauna. Those looking for entries for wendigo, ifrit, mokele-mbembe, zhenniao or oni will be disappointed. The only continent to be populated with unique native creatures was Lustria. Most are familiar from earlier writings. Various examples of giant wildlife are substantially repeated: giant frogs, giant leeches, giant snails and giant ticks. Coatl and culchan are adaptations of WFB1‘s winged serpent and carnivorous bird (the former evidently under the influence of D&D‘s couatl). Slann and Amazons had already been presented in the first and second Citadel Compendiums (though the former now incorporate their extraterrestrial origins). Only one new inhabitant of Lustria is revealed in WFB2, and it is probably the most controversial of all: pygmies.

Pygmies are a race of men native to Lustria, where they live in the dense jungles along the banks of the Amoco-Cadiz river system. They are few in number, and materially primitive, having little by way of possessions, other than a simple loincloth, a few stone tools and a blow-pipe and darts. They live by hunting crocodiles, Slann and other creatures that live along the river banks. They hunt from swift dug-out canoes, using poisoned darts and stone tipped [sic] spears.

Although troublesome they can hardly be said to represent anything other than a nuisance to the human settlers of Lustria, and their numbers are declining due to an influx of foreign disease and the practice of ‘bounty scalping’ among the Norse. Pygmies speak their own strange tongue, though the occasional chieftain might know enough Norse or Old Worlder to get by at a trading post.

Pygmies are short and squat, [sic] they rarely attain 5′ in height. They are powerfully built and by no means puny. Skin colour is dark and copperish, whilst hair is always naturally black. All the stone age [sic] tribes of the Lustrian jungles practice [sic] body painting and ornamental mutilation such as bones through the nose, plates for the mouth and ears, filed teeth and scarred cheeks.

– Warhammer Fantasy Battle, second edition (1984), ‘Battle Bestiary’, p23

The depiction of pygmies in WFB2 and the accompanying C27 miniatures range conforms closely to crude racial stereotypes. They are shown with oversized lips and pot bellies. That they are the principal depiction of black people in WFB2 exacerbates the problem.

Moreover, pygmies are not the only example of material in WFB2 that should be considered racially offensive. Consider this grotesque cavalcade of racial stereotypes:

Most Arabians are shortish and swarthy, with hook noses, and dark hair and eyes. Some of the Arabian Kingdoms lie upon the northern borders of the South Lands and the people are negroid.

All Orientals have dark, yellow skin and usually have slanting eyes.

The black-skinned Southrons of the South Lands and red-skinned natives of the New World are very primitive and have little contact with any of the major races.

– Op cit, pp21-22

In sharp contrast, the fantasy analogues of white Europeans are expressed in neutral terms:

Old Worlders are white skinned, usually have brownish hair and green or brown eyes.

Physically Norse tend to be tall, fair or red headed with blue or grey eyes.

– Ibid

Zhu Bajiee has suggested that the characterisation of some races as primitive refers only to their level of technology. Such an interpretation is in my opinion not supported by the text, which does not generally qualify its notion of primitiveness. (In any case, even if it were true, I don’t believe it changes the argument. There would still be a racial bias in the depiction of technological sophistication.)

Fortunately WFRP1 (1986) adopts a somewhat different tone. The bestiary entry for humans (p222) notably removes the physical descriptions of Arabians and Orientals (though it does keep the same language for the descriptions of Southrons and New Worlders). WFB3 (1987) avoids these descriptions altogether.

Pygmies lingered slightly longer in the background, reappearing in the WFB3 bestiary and ‘The Floating Gardens of Bahb-Elonn’ in White Dwarf 100 (against the wishes of some in the Design Studio). In time, however, the pygmies would also disappear from the Warhammer world.

Summary of the development of the Warhammer bestiary*

The next post looks at WFB2‘s reception and impact.

footnote

* Shaded rows are creatures that do not persist. Bold text highlights the first occurrence of a creature.

CHRONOLOGY

The following chart summarises the chronology of the posts in this section of ‘The WFRP Story’.

Title art by Peter Andrew Jones. Used without permission. No challenge intended to the rights holders.