Monday 4 December 2017

Advent Calendar Day-4

Death Knight

It seems like tradition (for my anyway) that any advent calendar has something in it that is at least mildly disappointing, today's addition is unfortunately that thing for me.

I wanted to add a Death Knight and not finding any great actual Death Knight models readily available I turned to the Games Workshop's undead line and chose their fantastic looking Wight Lord model.  The Wight Lord hits (as a Death Knight) on everything I'm looking for; armoured, regal, conveys might beyond a skeleton, crisp excellent detail...but there was one REALLY obvious thing missing to me; he's not Lord Soth.



Death Knights have existed in D&D since the beginning but with the release of Dragonlance in the late 80s Lord Soth became THE Death Knight.  In addition to featuring heavily in Dragonlance  fiction and modules Soth was eventually dropped into my personal favourite setting Ravenloft where he got two more novel and another published module.  There are certain characters who become so iconic (if I say "wizard" don't we all picture Gandalf in our minds?) that even when there are other versions of that same character you somehow just can't move past the image of the 'alpha' version.

Although my plan from inception with this project was that these models would be used for D&D this might be the one figure I can't quite muster putting on the table and declaring what he is because I can't shake the feeling my players will feel and think what I feel and think.  If he fails to see the table as a Death Knight in any of my games I'm sure he can return to his intended purpose as an Age Of Sigmar hero where I can appreciate him for how perfect he is rather being hung up on my own image of what a Death Knight should look like.

-Jay

1 comment:

  1. I know what you mean. Soth is THE death knight! BUT, I'm sure when this guy death touches some PC to death in a D&D game you will be happy with the figure choice. Just not my PC. OK?

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