This post is a special one. Some might still remember the What Can We Learn from the Duardin? -pondering I wrote some time ago, wondering about the mindset and world-view of the mountainfolk and thinking what we could learn from them. This is something very similar.
In this post I will take a close look at what the Khorne Bloodbound are and how their society might work outside the battlefield. They can't just be raging foam-mouthed maniacs all day and all night, now can they? The aim of this post is to speculate what the lives of these skull-hunting, blood-grazed barbarians might look like when there are no freeguilders around to behead.
This post does belong to my Ponderings-category, so read on at your own risk. You have been warned.
- Subsistence Strategy
- Habitation Model
- Population
- Social Structure
- Worldview
We'll go through the list one topic at a time, slowly establishing a wholesome bigger picture of who these servants of the War God truly are. To support my deductions and speculations I use the models and background information provided by Games Workshop.
When you have warbands of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of ferocious warriors roaming the realms in search of a fight, settling down to farm a patch of land seems inconvenient. When the Bloodbound are on a campaign, invading the civilized lands, they off course have access to the granaries and storages of their enemies. Taking over a city and sacking it for supplies will keep the hordes going for weeks, even months, whereas even a smaller town or village might offer sustenance for several days, depending on the size of the Bloodbound forces.
In addition some of Khorne's followers, like the cannibalistic Bloodreavers, can sustain themselves by eating the corpses of the slain. A messy and apparently unhealthy practice, as these feasts seem to drive them deeper into chaotic madness with each meal. Oh well, at least these most numerous members of their warbands are easy to feed when there are battles to fight!
What if there are no battles around? What if the horde is guarding a realmgate or asserting their dominance and cruel rule over some patch of land? How do the Bloodbound find food when they do not see actions for weeks or even months? So far these barbarians have been living off the work of others, toppling empires and raiding their surroundings for supplies. They most certainly do not farm. Not by themselves, at least. They might use slaves.
There are many examples of the Bloodbound using the defeated population of vanguished civilizations as slaves for building mighty fortresses of bone, iron, brass, obsidian, skulls or some other readily available resource. So why wouldn't they use those poor sods for some other useful activities besides raising fortifications? Once the captives have built you a nice little bone-fort so sit in, why not make them till their fields to supply your hordes! That might work in the more fertile areas of the realms, but for example in Aqshy one might be better off raising cattle or hunting local wildlife. Herding cattle could be done by slaves, under the cruel whip of a Bloodbound slaver of course, but hunting would be better done by the invading warriors themselves. They'll grow bored if you don't give them something to do, so hunting salamanders or ashgoats or lavalizards might pass for sport.
A lot of questions, a lot of hypothetical courses of action. Any conclusions?
The Bloodbound are aggressive hunter-gatherers and raiders, taking what they need from the calloused hands of their hard-working enemies. When in motion, their military successes will fuel their forces on the field. When stationary, utilising the prisoners of war in a slave-driven local economy will keep the warriors fed and in good shape, while embarking on occasional excursions to surrounding lands for even more stealing.
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| Picture by JiHunLee, DeviantArt. Used without permission for decorative purposes. Sorry. |
It seems that while the slaves provide for the raw working force in raising the foundations of buildings and fortifications, there are some members of the Bloodbound who know a thing or two about architecture. How else could most of the Dreadholds and other Chaos constructions look so much alike in their design? There are some truly skilled construction site overseers and designers in all Bloodbound warbands, most definitely.
My theory is that these barbarians have a couple of more artistic souls travelling along everywhere they go. Whenever slaves are acquired and forced to raise forts and settlements, these architects oversee the process and do the necessary calculations. Otherwise it would be impossible to build a castle in the shape of an eight-pointed star! Even as some of these architects are guiding the working masses, others produce artistic touches to be added to the construction. Brazen skulls, grinning gargoyle statues, beautifully carved curses and insulting runes ingraved in the stoneworks.... There is a lot for them to do. I suspect these architects are working closely with the smiths and craftsmen of the warband, as metal skulls and daemon-statues are quite difficult to produce without the know-how.
The materials for these decorations can be acquired in the same way as the Bloodbound acquire their food: ripping off others. Captured wargear, from blades to breastplates, can be melted and their metal can be repurposed for casting skull-motifs in molds. Pieces of enemy buildings can be torn off and reshaped to make statues and pillars more to Khorne's liking. And all this can be done while waiting for the slaves to finish the building itself!
Then how is this skill of skull-full architecture passed on from generation to generation? One might have difficulty imagining the Bloodbound jotting down the plans and instructions on pieces of parchment and storing them away in some mobile archive. I'm not saying that could not be the case at times, but it seems more likely for the barbarians to pass it down the line verbally: over the evening campfire and every construction site the tribe comes across, the architect might instruct and advice the future architect-to-be in the fine intricacies of the profession.
When not in conquered or slave-fuelled cities, the Bloodbound most likely erect makeshift encampments of bone, wood, leather and skin on the go. Spending a night on the open Aqshyan plains? Huts and tents it is! And probably some wooden palisades or eathworks for defense, unless the warriors are actively seeking to get attacked to break their boredom. From where do the materials come for these camps? Wood, bone and stone can sometimes be found on-site, and scavenging the surrounding area will usually provide for some measure of building materials. It is more efficient, however, to carry most of them with the moving horde. A baggage train (yes, everybody needs one) might have some wagons or pack-animals laden with wooden poles and giant bones, whereas others might have sewn manskin-covers or hides in them. From these once-produced components the Bloodbound can easily set up a camp anywhere very fast.
The conclusion?
The Bloodbound utilise the infrastructure of defeated empires if they are required to stay put for longer periods of time. These taken cities are then reshaped and strengthened with slave labour under the strict scrutiny of the horde's "architects" by producing new skull-decorated (and sometimes daemon-infested) buildings. On the move they set up makeshift camps of hide-huts and manskin-yurts from handy components that most likely travel with them everywhere. Any of these forms of settlement act as excellent bases for launching raids and new conquests, as well as nice stockades for captives.
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| Picture by Games Workshop. Used without permission for decorative purposes. Sorry. |
Size
For starters, let's take a look at size. In natural conditions, groups of non-verbal primate mammals consist of up to 70 members each. If the group grows any larger than that, it splits into two or more smaller ones as suspicions flare and fights break out. Why? Because in such groups every individual can only intimately know up to around 70 others. An individual's natural memory can only contain strong emotions of love, hate, like and dislike in such quantities, meaning that beyond those people it is impossible to keep close ties to. What people the individual hates, loves, likes or dislikes in its group is irrelevant; those strong emotions still make those 70 people known to it. They're familiar, and not at all scary.
What is scary, then? The unknown, the unfamiliar. Groups larger than mentioned above break due to individuals not being able to stand the insecurity of having unfamiliar people stroll around. Luckily verbal primate mammals have a solution to this: gossip. Once the group has a common language, a complex means of communication that can create and transmit abstract concepts, they can gossip about people. Oh yes! One can only know up to around 70 people intimately, but there are always more people beyond that one can gossip about, thus making them not-unfamiliar/half-familiar to it and bringing the society member maxmimum up to 150 individuals!
Yet the Bloodbound tribes are much larger than that. These worshippers of Khorne are more than just verbal primate mammals. They are humans. Humans (and all the other humanoid races) have such a highly evolved mind and language that they can overlay the objective reality not just with subjective inner experiences like feelings, hopes or imagination, but inter-subjective realities like nations and gods! People who have common imaginary friends, or in other words, believe in the same nation or god-like entity, have no reason to fear each other even if they are not familiar. Their common belief in an inter-subjective entity makes them half-familiar enough to be able to work together.
The best thing about these inter-subjective entities is that there is no limit to the number of individuals they can bind together. Boom! Numberless hordes of Bloodbound are yours to command. They all believe in Khorne and they all feel connected to the tribe's narrative and identity, thus making them capable of working together towards similar goals.
This mechanic also works in real life, but in Age of Sigmar those inter-subjective entities that take the form of gods are actually objective reality, facts that have nothing to do with imagination. Is that something we should envy these denizens of the Mortal Realms for? That, my friends, is a topic for some other blogpost.
Composition
Right, so what do these unlimited tribes consist of, then? Men, women and children, hopefully. What we mostly see are the fighting class: the muscular chaos-blessed violent killers that can take on two freeguilders and come out on top with their hearts in hand. However, given the foam-mouthed battle-frenzy of the Bloodbound men and the violent style of their lives, there has to be some Bloodbound women to give birth to new generations of warriors. How else could these hordes be so numberless even when they are slain by their thousands each day on countless battlefields across the realms?
A small portion of the population growth can be explained by corruption and turncoats. Some weak-minded, impatient or power-hungry individuals turn to Khorne and pledge their souls to his service for a (seemingly) quick way to power. The Bloodreavers even have a tradition of offering the survivors of a battle a chance to join their ranks by participating in the cannibalistic post-battle feast, thus swelling the Bloodbound numbers with those who do not want to die just yet. Still I find it hard to believe that these would be the only ways to grow barbarian tribes.
Being humans after all, the Bloodbound might well have families outside the battlefield. Perhaps a wife, maybe two, and some little barbarian kiddos running around the family yurt. And slaves to serve them, of course. One warrior might have anything from 2-8 people waiting for him back at camp. Lovers, slaves and future generations all, as I believe the elders are... dealt with... quite fast if it becomes apparent that they would slow the tribe down.
I admit that when asked about the Bloodbound one's first mental image isn't that of a huge bloody-handed warrior walking into a tent and picking up the small kids that run to greet him. The man carries the children in his strong arms and laughs as they play around with the fresh skulls hanging from his gore-drenched armour. He walks up to his wife and lands a passionate kiss on her lips before asking how the daily foraging went, and grimaces as he hears that today it is his turn to drop the kids at Skarnak's clay-skull molding club at sundown.
I mean yeah that sounds a bit out of character, but who are we to deny them a happy family life when they're not slaughtering enemies?
Conclusion:
Being verbal primate mammals, and humans at that, the Bloodbound societies are not bound by numerical member limitations. They grow fast due to their living-in-the-moment mentality and restless nature, and while the warriors die on gory battlefields there are always more bloodthirsty toddlers growing up back at the nearest Bloodbound settlement, brought up by their fierce warrior-mothers. I'm thinking of something along the lines of viking women or samurai wives.
Speaking of which, I do not think the ferocity of these barbarians goes from father to son. The men are all spending most of their time running around in violent dude-gangs and killing stuff, often getting slain themselves too. Who grows all the kids? The women. Why is it that each generation of the Bloodbound is as violent as the previous one, even though the men are off to fight more often than not? It's because the ferocity comes not from the father, but from the mother. Imagine what kind of upbringing these children go through when their adulthood looks like this! Pretty tough ladies they've got back there in Khorneland.
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Division of Labour & Specialization
What kind of professions are available in a Bloodbound society? Who makes all the decisions? Well, as for professions, there are always lots things to do in a tribal society. Butchers, architects, storytellers, barber-surgeons (might double as a butcher), bonesetters, warpainters, seers, smiths, animal tamers, manure-pitchers, slavedrivers and priests. All of which also function as the tribes fighting class, the warriors. Then there are lots of other jobs like farmers, herders, builders, scribes and walking meals that are usually performed by the tribe's slaves.
People might work handicrafts on their free time, shaping small amulets or statues or similar trophies. Women might sow together new tent-hides and canvases or produce pieces of clothing. There might be some trade inside and outside the tribe, some exchange of loot and handmade trinkets between families or other tribes.
There are also two professions that I'd like to pick out for closer scrutiny, first of which is the role of the smith. Bloodbound smiths, also affectionally known as Skullgrinders, must be very important to the tribe. See how all of their armour and weapons are covered in skulls? Even the blades of their axes sometimes have skulls in them. That wouldn't be the case if they just stole other people's weapons, now would it? Not everyone likes skulls. But the Bloodbound most certainly do, and that is why I believe these Skullgrinders posses a great deal better smithing skills and artistic eye than one might first think. It's not easy to shape metal into a skull using nothing but a hammer and an anvil.
These smiths are deeply respected in the society, and for good reason: even though they forge and repair weapons and armour while off the battlefield, they also regularly join the fray. These hulking towers of muscle attach a chain to their anvils and charge their enemies, causing death and destruction with the very same instrument they use every day for innovative creation.
The other interesting profession is that of the priest. Known in the Bloodbound tribes as Slaughterpriests, these (un)holy men are in favour of the Blood God and receive some seriously disturbing visions that they can interpret to find out the god's will. The Bloodbound draw great courage from the presence of these demagogues on the field of battle, and it seems they are the ones responsible for the tribe's spiritual welfare outside of combat.
As a sidenote, the priests also grow much larger than the ordinary barbarian. Might just be the favour of Khorne empowering them, or the fact that big men can bully themselves more food to eat than others.
System of Decision Making
A Bloodbound society is often led by a Mighty Lord of Khorne, a powerful chieftain that binds feuding warbands under his iron rule with sheer willpower and threat of violence. Under him serve his lieutenants, the Gorechosen: eight champions who have earned their lord's favour and now lead warbands and tribes under their master's banner. Under the eight champions are many more lesser warlords and chiefs, all keeping an eye out for a chance to claim themselves a place among the Gorechosen.
Without this cruel chain of command the hordes would collapse into a storm of blood as the tribal feuds and circles of revenge sparked. This is why decisions are made by one powerful individual and orders are delivered by a chosen inner circle of the leader, keeping the reaction time of even the greatest of hordes manageable. Imagine how long it would take to make a tribe of Bloodbound vote, not to mention the chaotic calculation of votes and the inevitable fights that would break out over the result!
Hierarchy & Equality (or lack thereof)
Is there equality in the Bloodbound society? No, definitely not. They might have something along the lines of brothers-in-arms equality going on inside smaller warbands, but on the tribe level the society is heavily stratified and subject to a strict hierarchy.
Lowest of all are the slaves and the Chaos Spawn. They're just mindless resources among others. Then would most likely come the non-fighters, meaning women and children (the sick would just be gotten rid of, I believe), then the warriors. Yet the warriors are not all equal: lowest of the fighting class are the Bloodreavers, cannibals and turncoats that usually act as diversion and cannon fodder for the horde. Then come the Blood Warriors, ferocious armoured barbarians with skill and determination beyond that of most mortals. Beyond even them are those with associations to daemons: Skullreapers and Wrathmongers, half-daemons or mutants that are thought of as "elevated" beyond the rest of the society for their dealings with the denizens of the Realm of Chaos.
The hierarchy of the decision-makers we already went through above. In the heavy categorization of the warrios class it is notable that one always has the opportunity to raise up a rung on the ladder. Performing glorious or outrageous acts on the battlefield might earn any Bloodbound an opportunity to be noticed by their patron god, the gifts of which (mutations & magical artefacts) are the key to rising up the tribal hierarchy.
Conclusion:
Bloodbound societies are stratified tribal hierarchies led by a single chieftain and his eight chosen champions. It is possible for any member of the tribe to climb up the classes, but it is almost as likely that they are turned into a mindless Chaos Spawn on the whim of their patron god. Such an incident could see anyone sent back to the very bottom of the ladder from which there is no coming back.
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In the name of their god the Bloodbound conquer empires, topple cities and steal from others as much as they can; they see themselves more powerful than anyone else, thus thinking it is their right to take what they can. If you're strong enough to acquire something, they think you have the right to possess it. This ideology has led to the survival of the fittest, making Bloodbound hordes very dangerous indeed.
Although they make notable adversaries, the Bloodbound tribes are not a particular joy to live in. People's life expectancies are short and depend solely on individuals strength or utility within the tribe. Their culture mainly involves fighting in all its different forms and scales, which leaves little time or space for anything more sophisticated. The tribes are largely self-sustained so even trade is at minimum, comprising of small exchange in trophies, trinkets, debts or blood-money at most. This has led to a situation where these people who already think they're better than anyone else actually have proof of the fact that they need nothing from others.
Conclusion:
Might is right, and the fittest shall survive. The Bloodbound see themselves as the very best there can be, which according to them, entitles them to everything everyone else has. They believe their god is the only right choice, based on the experience that they got what they wanted when trading their souls for a chance at more personal power.
So, what are the Bloodbound in the end?
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