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Goldthrone Trollkin Gallery and Lore
🕑 Added 2023-04-02 15:02:00 +0000 UTCEvery month Battle Yak Miniatures will release a new Battle Pack, featuring 3D printable miniature files! The April Battle Pack is the Goldthrone Trollkin, ancient warriors that wield primal power in battle!
Become a Patron now and gain access to the Goldthrone Trollkin release!
Enjoy this gallery of Goldthrone Trollkin miniatures and a glimpse into the lore behind the faction!
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"This world is a dream. Let us trade it for another. Let the wings of Tilja'zan cradle us and our kingdom in dreaming. Let the nightmares we have foreseen devour the world as it is, and grind our enemies into the ashes of history. Until the long night breaks, and we are ready to wake and live the long dream anew..."
-King Kipactil'otl, the Dreaming Monarch, Lord of the Throne of Gold
The trollkin are a race thought long extinct, having left nought but curios and relics dredged from their fallen cities for scholars and archeologists to ponder over. Pre-dating even the rise of the first and greatest civilization of the eldarch, the fate of the trollkin race has long been a mystery, for they seemingly vanished almost overnight and with no sign of war or plague or whatever kind of sudden diaster swallowed them from the world.
The mystery is solved. The trollkin did not die, but have lain dreaming in lands beyond the world. And now, they have returned.
The trollkin serve the monarch of the Throne of Gold, the most sacred idol of their ancient kingdom. This great symbol of authority is blessed by the gods of the trollkin, and their monarch has used its divine power to craft a kingdom from his dreams, a kingdom that the trollkin used to retreat from the world an eternity ago. Now, the armies of the trollkin march from realms of dreaming to wage war upon the waking world as they did in ancient times.
Thronesworn are trollkin warriors that have bowed before the Throne of Gold and sworn oaths of fealty and service to the great monarch that sits upon it. In doing so, a tendril of their monarch's dreaming power has been invested in them and their armaments. Weapons and armor wrought of dreamspun gold are imbued with divine potency, and the precious metal that is so soft in its mundane waking form becomes impossibly durable and strong, turning aside the fiercest enemy blows and shattering the thickest armor.
The trollkin ride into combat atop innumerable breeds of frightful beast that the world has not seen since its earliest primordial age. Extinct in the waking world, they endure in the dreaming of the trollkin, and so live again to walk the earth and hunt and kill now that their masters have awoken. Fierce, swift, and intelligent, the reptizar are prized steeds for trollkin warriors. The reptizar bond more completely with their riders in every battle, and the reptizar's form changes and evolves to become deadlier, reflecting the dreams of their rider and becoming the imagined incarnation of their perfect steed.
The power of the trollkin flows through the monarch of the Throne of Gold, but ultimately from the gods, the great spirits that are dream and dreamer of the world itself. Sustained by the dreams of mortals, the trollkin bask in their majesty and partake of their power, to raise both people and god ever higher.
The most honored of the manifold pantheon is Tilja'zan, the Great Dreaming Serpent, whose scales are both the rainbow colors of dreaming and the infinite shades of darkness that underlies the waking world. Fed by land and dream and devotion, Tilja'zan is honored with the sacrifice of mortal life. The serpent's priests and priestesses conduct ritual sacrifices without cease, shrieking prayers to Tilja'zanon the field of battle with bloody hearts clutched in their hands. These ritual killings are relived over and over in the realms of dreaming, a never-ending nightmare hymn to the Dreaming Serpent.
The earliest eras of Jerra's history are lost to time, but before the eldarch arose to dominate the world with their spellcraft, their primitive bird-like ancestors warred with brute ogur and skulking krog in jungle valleys and atop mountain peaks that hosted the great temple-cities of the trollkin. The trollkin made sacrifices of races weaker than their own, drowning idols to the dreaming gods in blood, keeping their dreams rich and powerful so that their bounty overflowed to their mortal worshipers. They made uneasy peace with the samani, mighty dwellers in the deep earth, and fought bitter wars against the hated inhabitants of the dark and dreadful land of Iznadnost to the cold south.
The ages passed, and things changed little for the trollkin. Nothing challenged their way of life - they lived and warred and died at the whim of the gods, making real their timeless dreams, as it should be. But though time had stopped for them, the races beyond their cities had different dreams. The eldarch began a meteoric rise to prominence, discovering a talent for spellcraft that surpassed the dreaming of the trollkin. As the wandering tribes of eldarch came to be ruled by cabals of powerful magi, the monarchs of the trollkin stirred upon their thrones, their dreams filling with war and bloodshed.
Bitter wars broke out, armies of trollkin and eldarch battling for supremacy over the ancient world. Trollkin warriors and their primordial beasts, the divine blessings of their bloodthirsty gods, clashed against the eldarch and their strange new sorceries, the monsters they built from the flesh of beasts and their own dreams. Dark pacts were sworn, strange and terrible allies called upon by both sides. For every enclave of the eldarch rooted out, more would take root elsewhere and return to menace the trollkin anew. The hungry new dream of the eldarch race seemed unkillable.
The kings of the trollkin turned to their dreaming gods, beseeching them for an answer. Tilja'zan, the Great Dreaming Serpent and king of the dreaming gods, came to the mightiest of the trollkin kings, Kipactil'otl of the Golden City. It warned the king that the eldarch would not be stopped, but their hungry dreams would grow beyond them and devour them and the world, a nightmare leaving nothing but black ashes in its wake.
The king begged the Dreaming Serpent for an answer to how the trollkin might survive this terrible devouring nightmare. In answer, Tilja'zan gnashed at its own prismatic scales with its great ebon fangs until golden blood flowed freely and fell upon the earth at the king's feet. Horrified by this omen, Kipactil'otl watched as the golden blood flowed into symbols, revealing to the king the secrets of how the gods dreamed. Kipactil'otl awoke and brought this knowledge to his people, giving them one command that took priority - the construction of a great golden throne...
The throne was completed to Kipactil'otl's exact designs, inlaid with the marks of the gods, and when Kipactil'otl was seated upon it, he dreamed as the gods dreamed and his dreams became real. The city he ruled became the city of his dreams, and his subjects left the world of the waking to inhabit this new kingdom of dreams that he had made for them. In his wake the other trollkin monarchs followed his example, each of their thones an aspected idol of the one true Throne of Gold that had been shown to Kipactil'otl by the gods and bore their markings. The trollkin civilization abandoned the world to the eldarch - they would live in the dreams of their king, leaving the eldarch to be consumed by their own nightmare.
The eldarch marveled at their sudden victory, as their bitterest enemies vanished from the world seemingly overnight. As their powers of magic increased, they sought to uncover the truth of what had happened, but their spellcraft dealt in the nature of the waking world, and they never discerned the realm of dreaming.
They speculated for generations on what had become of the trollkin. And then forgot them.
Centuries passed. Then millennia. The eldarch golden age saw them spread across the world and their glorious citadels dominate every land. Then the Age of Hunger came, and devoured their greatness, the world crumbling into poisoned ruined. More centuries. More millennia. The land healed, and new races emerged, new empires have been founded, new conflicts have erupted. Nations and armies clash over resources and land and the magical power that fills the world.
Into this new age, the trollkin have reappeared. Their cities, long-empty, stir with activity once again. Lands they once claimed are contested once again. The slumber of the dreaming king upon the Throne of Gold has grown fitful, and his people are starting to awaken back into the world. But something is wrong.
The Age of Hunger that shattered eldarch power was not the time of nightmare that Kipactil'otl foresaw. That time is yet to come - another far greater calamity that will fall upon the world in the future. The trollkin have awoken too soon, but cannot return to their dreaming kingdom so long as their king's fitful sleep is disturbed. They will find whatever disturbs the dreams of the monarch of the Throne of Gold - whatever race or nation or upstart godling is responsible, and make of it a sacrifice to their bloodthirsty dreaming gods.
For the king upon the Throne of Gold, and the kingdom of his dreams.
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Comments
Battle Yak
Modular feet are an intruiging prospect! But I'm afraid that's an undertaking that would require too much time from me at present - gotta be moving forwards, sculpting the next set.
JK
Love the gear, though WoW-style trolls are something I've never been a fan of. I'm sure I could find some heads that would work, but the feet are a trickier issue. (I haven't got the blender skill to sculpt them, and bare feet aren't the easiest thing to come by - much less in the appropriate style and poses.) If I asked very, VERY nicely, what are the chances of getting human-footed versions? The don't even need to be supported. Hell, I'd take just the feet if need be; I can kitbash them on myself.
Thannak
These are great. I think its my favorite release.
