Tall Poppies

 Tall Poppies. 

That's what they called us, almost 20 years ago. It was towards the end of my final year of primary school, which today remains one of the happiest times of my life, and I had been called in with a bunch of other classmates, a lot of whom I was friends with, and a lot of whom in hindsight were probably considered the highest performing academically, for a short little lecture thing. There we were sat all around in a quiet classroom, and my teacher at the time (an Atreides-grade tutor who happily indulged in my passions for fictional worlds, introduced us all to the wider body of Douglas Adams and who will forever hold my eternal admiration) explained to us that we were all of us a a special sort called Tall Poppies. 

Being Tall Poppies meant that we were especially intellectually gifted types, with enormous potential in life, but it also meant we were likely prone to eccentricities and, most crucially, would draw a lot of ire from others, because the world was very hostile to eccentric intellectually gifted types with sensitive souls, and would likely throw all manner of venom at us as we grew older, because people fundamentally do not like Tall Poppies. They typically try to cut down the Tall Poppies in their midst. 

Doubtless for the kids in the audience today this will all sound terribly elitist and bourgeoise, and it is true they missed a bit of a trick in not recognising that everyone can be a Tall Poppy with the right circumstances behind them, but remember this was back in the ancient halcyon days of 2005, when everything was all milkshakes and rich girls and lovely lady lumps, and when Hummers roamed the earth. It was still a very neoliberal bourgeoise time. 

More importantly though, it was very uplifting for me at the time, I got a really good feeling out of considering myself a Tall Poppy, a bright shining example along with all my other fellow Tall Poppies. I wore it as a badge of pride. 

Then primary school ended, and intermediate school began. 

The horrors of those dark times, and of the high school and university years that followed, are not stories for this blog. Some secrets are best left left undiscovered, the galaxy remains a better place for them being undisturbed. Suffice to say that much of the world began to damn well try it's hardest to cut this particular Tall Poppy down to size, or failing that to stomp it flat. And it's never really stopped. 

This is compounded by my discovery that, as that teacher long ago was probably trying to warn us all about, I happen to inhabit a country with a very, very deep distaste for ambition and high achievement. The urge to cut down the Tall Poppies is strong, most visibly illustrated by one of the most grievous insults in its cultural lexicon being 'Tryhard'. 

And in 2013, as I was drawing up plans for my Wood Elf army, it was this story, this overwhelming impression of the whole world trying to cut down this Tall Poppy, this tremendous desire to just see all the Tall Poppies grow free, that was the genesis for the Glade of Poppies, and the guardians who defended them. 

After I had enjoyed a much needed palette cleansing break working on Tau starships, I returned to the fantasy project and followed up my first full regiment with my second Warhammer regiment and my first ever metal Warhammer troops, the Eternal Guard. The reason for this choice for the next addition to the army was simple - I was working towards a very specific goal that was critically important to the army overall, but in order to make absolutely certain I would do a good job of it I needed to build up to it in a series of three distinct stages. The first of these stages had been getting some practice in on the basics of painting Wood Elves with the archers. The next stage would be to practice painting gold/bronze Elven armour, and there was no better unit to practice that on than 20 Eternal Guard models. 

Of course, quite besides such matters of practical convenience, I had also quickly grown to love the imagery and concept of the Eternal Guard as an elite anchor unit around which the nimble Glade Guard regiments pivoted and weaved. The awesome artwork of them battling skeletons in the snow that featured in the army book only sweetened the deal, as did the spectacular metal sculpts and the awe inspiring green and gold colour scheme the 'Evy Metal studio painted theirs in. 

Plus I really like the name Eternal Guard. It's very fun to say with the Rs rrrolled. "The EtEARrnal GuaRred." "The ETERNAL GUARD." 

I guess it's kind of hard to properly convey in text format, without being able to hear the full scenery chewing going on. But take my word for it. 

Painting the unit went much more smoothly than the Glade Guard. The largely prebuilt metal sculpts meant getting them to rank up was very easy, which left me free from worrying about making sure they lined up next to each other and let me work through them in batches. This resulted in getting through about one rank of them each week in what remains one of the most successful examples of assembly line painting in the modern era of my model painting. 

The colours were much the same as the rest of the Elves, with two notable exceptions being the lighter green cloth, painted with Warboss Green Goblin Green and highlighted with Nurgling Green Rotting Flesh, and of course the golden bronze armour which was done with a base of Hashut Copper Dwarf Bronze drybrushed with Ghenna's Gold Shining Gold and a final drybrush of Golden Griffon Tin Bitz to give a silvery finish to the gold. 

The bases were originally planned to be liberally covered in big tall red poppies, sculpted from greenstuff. Such an ambitious vision quickly proved to be well beyond the capabilities of my greenstuff skills and patience at the time, and at the time there was no source of pre-made red flowers available to me, so the initial concept was scaled back to just a single red poppy growing out of the base of the Guardian champion, the unit leader pointing down at it dramatically to remind the whole regiment of exactly what it is they are fighting for. 

The banner was much simpler to do, with the bigger surface area of the flag giving more breathing room for the device of a simple poppy. On the other hand, the banner is also why this unit was one of the two most painful and challenging headaches in the army. 

See, like I've mentioned before this army was started in 2013, and this unit was painted the same year. In 2013, I was still following what Warhammer rules GW currently sold, and that meant 8th edition Warhammer. 

Now, the important thing about 8th edition Warhammer is that it contains this massive collection of Common Magic Items, which are the commonplace magic items available to everyone. When you disembowel a giant spider or a troll or some other monster, it's normally one of these Common Magic Items that spills out of their carcass along with a healthy pile of gold and a healing potion or two. And in 8th edition Warhammer, the range of Common Magic Items is this enormous spread of colourful fun things like the Fencer's Blades or the Gambler's Armour or the Trickster's Helm or the Pidgeon Plucker Pendant or the Trickster's Shard or The Terrifying mask of EEEE! or The Other Trickster's Shard. And it's awesome and easily one of the best parts about 8th edition Warhammer (we don't talk about what the army books do with their magic items). 

Eternal Guard of course are able to take a magic banner, and for these ones I opted for a Razor Standard. This is mostly because I was still very new and unfamiliar with Warhammer and how a lot of the magic items fitted together, and the Razor Standard on Eternal Guard was a popular photocopy special at the time. It is hard to go wrong with some nice simple extra armour piercing on a regiment after all, especially one that throws out as many attacks as Eternal Guard in 8th edition do. 

Then from late 2014 to the end of 2015 I broke ties with what Warhammer rules GW was selling and began to pivot from 8th edition Warhammer to 6th edition Warhammer. This is important because the lineup of Common Magic Items in 6th edition Warhammer is different to 8th edition - there are fewer of them in those core rules. I was aware of this moving into 6th edition, but payed little heed to it, reasoning that the Common Magic Items I had chosen for the army would surely be in that edition too. 6th edition Warhammer might have fewer Common Magic Items sure, but it can't have that many fewer of them - after all, magic items are fun and cool, and you need lots of different Common Magic Items to fleece off to local merchant traders for gold, or to feed your blacksmiths and artisans for raw enchanted materials with which to craft more useful magic items with. 

Yes there was a sad pathetic little list of basic Common Magic Items in the Wood Elf army book, but surely that was just a bare skeleton list, a short little cheat sheet listing a few of the most basic ones for quick reference. It couldn't be the entire list of Common Magic Items for 6th edition Warhammer. No fantasy game could possibly have such a depressingly piddly number of Common Magic Items. There had to be a more comprehensive list in the 6th edition core rulebook where the rest were listed. 

Wait. 

What? 

Wait, WHAT? 

WHAT? 

What is this? 

No, seriously. 

What the HELL is this! 

Pirinen! Cavatore! Where's the fucking Enchanted Items!

Look at it. Just look at it. Only one page? And no miscellaneous Enchanted items at all? Where's the Pidgeon Plucker Pendant? Where's the Terrifying Mask of EEEE? Where's the set items? What kind of joyless Sour Prude who hates fun wrote this thing? 

The most serious problem here however was that this Common Magic Item list doesn't have any Magic Standards at all in it, except for the War Banner which is the most joyless and boring Common Magic Standard of the bunch. You would think that the Razor Standard, with its simple reasonable AP on the unit's attacks, would be safe and ubiquitous across all the editions, but no evidently even that one is too fun and interesting for whatever Sour Prude was in charge of the 6th edition Common Magic Items list. 

And so, just like that, my Eternal Guard were not usable in the 6th edition that had so captured my attention. 

This was enormously frustrating for several years. Eventually after a little experimentation I settled on replacing the Razor Standard with a Banner Of Dwindling, which is an army book item and thus guaranteed to be accessible in any Warhammer game I would be seriously interested in playing frequently. It also had the added advantage of being much more cinematic and evocative, and has generally been a much better magic standard all around, but still it's the principle of the thing that matters here. 

I was just fortunate that such a chance was even possible due to where this regiment comes from, the Glade of Poppies, which by now had crystalised into a major centre of learning and scholarship, as well as a powerhouse of artifice and magic item production in the chunk of Athel Loren I had carved out for myself, the Meadows of Heaven (because what else was it going to be called with the origin of this army). Being a centre for magic item production meant that they have plenty of Magic Standards available to take into battle. 

The Defenders of The Glade Of Poppies

Once the Glade of Poppies was the crown jewel of the Meadows of Heaven, second only to the capital of Imaginaerum in wonder. It was a centre of learning, knowledge and academia, filled with some of the wisest minds in the Meadows of Heaven, and for many leagues beyond, and many scholars could be found within it, passing their knowledge on and studying the world around them ever more. Its name came from the great blood red poppies that grew in the grass of its clearings and meadows. These were left to grow free, and so grew to be extremely tall, some even getting to be taller than the elf children that played around them. Some of the greatest and fairest Wishmasters of the Meadows of Heaven came from this place, and all studied in the Glade of Poppies at one point or another. The advancements and knowledge of those who dwelt there was put to good use in bettering the lives of all who resided in the Meadows of Heaven.

It was during Cyanathair's first attack against Athel Loren, at the very start of the Secret War, that the Glade of Poppies was ruined, as the glade became the site of one of the bloodiest battles of all those fought in the Meadows of Heaven. Hearing of the Glade of Poppies and its splendour filled The Corruptor with rage and hatred, and the creature sent a titanic horde of Beastmen and terrible monstrosities to raze and despoil the province. Massed rank upon rank of Eternal Guard stood against the onslaught, supported by hundreds of elven archers. Initially the battle went well for the Wood Elves, who struck down thousands of Beastmen and their vile allies. But still the horde pressed on, seemingly without number. The decisive turning point of the battle came when the strange shamans that accompanied the horde managed to work a great and horrific spell. With tremendous power fueled by the carnage and bloodshed unfolding around them, they managed to tear a hole between worlds, and from it poured a host of creatures born from nightmares, directly behind the elven lines. Caught between the two forces, the Wood Elves were trapped and the battle was lost. The elves fought on with the courage of true heroes, and slew scores of Beastmen and Daemons alike, but the combined forces arrayed against them were too large to fully overcome, and eventually only twenty Eternal Guard warriors remained, the tattered remnants from different regiments banded together for a final stand. They fought back to back against the overwhelming tide until all became blood and darkness. 

When dawn broke the next morning, they awoke in the centre of the Glade of Poppies, surrounded by blood, bodies, ash and destruction. The horde that had assailed the place was gone, but the Glade of Poppies was devastated. Countless trees had been cut down, burnt, or torn apart. Spites lay pinned up with nails and spikes of hell-forged black iron, their forms broken and mutilated. Sacred stones lay toppled and desecrated. The air was thick with choking cinders. And every single one of the great poppies from which the province gained its name had been cut down and stamped on.
As the survivors saw the desolation, their hearts were filled with despair and grief for their once beautiful home. And so it was that they vowed that never again while they still drew breath would the poppies be allowed to be cut down again. 

Since those dark times the Glade of Poppies has been healed, and blood red poppies once again grow free within it, though none have yet reached the height they once were. But the damage wrought in that fateful battle has left lasting scars amongst the Asrai of the Meadows of Heaven, and it is unlikely they will ever forgive themselves or the minions of Chaos for it. 

The Defenders of the Glade of Poppies were first formed from the original twenty survivors of the battle of the Glade of Poppies, formally grouped together as a single fighting unit. In the years since its ranks have been filled from a combination of their descendants and other Elves of the Glade of Poppies who have survived terrible battles. trained by the remaining original twenty not lost to attrition. 

The Defenders of The Glade Of Poppies typically carry into battle one of two banners. The Banner of Poppies is the only banner that did not fall in the battle of the Glade of Poppies, and was waved defiantly at the heart of the defence until the bitter end. The Banner of Vengeance was created to the same design in the aftermath of the battle, woven by the widowed maidens of the Glade of Poppies and given the most powerful enchantments to help their warriors in their quest to defend the Glade of Poppies forevermore. 

The Forest has not forgotten the promise that the Defenders of The Glade of Poppies made so many years ago, and wherever they step foot blood red poppies, of the same variety that grow in the Glade of Poppies, are known to spring up and grow, seemingly in reminder of their duty.

Since then the Defenders of The Glade Of Poppies have served with distinction, proving themselves to be one of my deadliest units and the star performer of the army by far. They don't always carry the game, but for every time they've been decimated by a wave of gunfire and boiling lead or scattered by Fanatics, there's two more times they've ripped the throat out of the opposing army by routing the opposing centre almost single-handedly. 

Needless to say this has made me awfully proud of them.