Flower of Chivalry

Greetings all!

It's been a while since my last post but now (finished with the new fancy look of the blog and all) I actually have something to show you. I've been digging into my stronghold's deepest vaults lately, where my hoards of plastic lie dormant. Dusting off a few reinforced chests and prying them open I discovered my long-lost Svedonnia project which I've now brought back to the painting table!

Svedonnia? Yes, that's what I call my Sweden-themed Bretonnians, led by King Birger Pepperberg. I even name each and every one of my units in Swedish. Gotteborg Gummilansar, Trolleholm Trevliga and Stuckholm Stammare to name but a few.

I'm not from Sweden myself, by the way.

Let's start off with some Knights Errant to inspect the heraldry. This particular unit is called Gotteborg Gummilansar, which roughly translates to Gotteborg Rubberlances. Sweden is known for its display of three yellow crowns, so I decided to include two in my realm's coat of arms, yellow on blue. The same pattern is repeated on the barding of their warhorses and the unit's banner. 8 Knights, 84 free-hand crowns.

In Svedonnia, knights do not have their own personal heraldry and are all bound to use different variations of their liege's colours. This was sagely decreed by the mighty and benevolent King Birger to avoid confusion on the battlefield, as well as to prevent anyone from inventing a more attractive coat of arms than that of the king.

These knights are currently racing through a black void, or so their unfinished bases suggest. They'll get their fancy bases as soon as I've tested the effect I have in mind on some of my Men-at-arms. Nobility should not touch the filthy soil before pox-ridden peasants have tried it out first!

Speaking Typing of peasants, here's a bunch. They're called Vätteby Väktarna, Guards of the Goblin Village. Well, "vätte" actually means a small grey-haired inhabitant of the underworld that lives under the buildings of people's farms (a common element of folklore up here in the north) rather than the malevolent little green-skinned menaces all Warhammer fans know and love, but that inconvenience is just the way of translations.

These miniatures are old Perry sculpts from Wargames Foundry, sold as Hundred Years War Billmen. To my eye they look a lot like some older Bretonnian Men-at-arms models so I decided to include some in my collection to get some variation in my infantry masses.

Being the poor innocent shits they are, these peasants bear no proud heraldry on their person. Their equipment is paid for by their liege knight on whose lands they farm their muddy patches of barren land, as no peasant could ever afford mail and billhook with their sorry income. "And no more than a tenth-share shall you keep for kith and kin" says the Peasant's Vow, meaning that 90% of their produce and income goes to the landowner. Not many parties can be thrown with that salary!

Fortunately there aren't that many opportunities for a peasant to throw any parties in the first place. The flower of chivalry grows from soil saturated with the blood of the common folk. The duty of these brave (or dim-witted) men in battle is to take on enemy charges and soak up damage, often getting slaughtered in the process, while the nobility in their shining armour gallop across the field to hammer the foe's formations senseless and driving them from the field. Any surviving peasants are paid handsomely (compared to their usual fee, I mean) for their military service, enabling them to march back home proud and perhaps purchase a cow or a goat for their families.

Here are a few peeks into what I'm currently working on, giving you some idea of what I'm adding to my Svedonnian force in the near future:

Kit-bashed Questing Knights with bits from Bretonnain Knights, Freeguild Greatswords and Freeguild Miltia

Shovels, swords, barrels, pouches, shields, scrolls, bedrolls... anything you might need in search of the Grail

Men-at-arms (still WIP in this pic), mounted Damsel, Field Trebuchet and villagers (Battle Pilgrims)

We'll see what I get painted up next. Until then!