Clash of Rhyfles: Neuheiten

Zombiesmith hat eine gemischtes Packet an Neuheiten für Clash of Rhyfles veröffentlicht.

Clash of Rhyfles: Crusader Lamplighter – 9,00$

Lamplighter (multi-part) and Lantern Models

Painted by Varundin28

The Lantern Lighters of Staengi Station

Officially, they were just the Third Watch, the unlucky sods who drew the duty of maintaining the trench lanterns through the night hours between the evening stand-to and the dawn patrol. Nobody remembers who started calling them The Lantern Lighters. Or when.

But Milwer Gareth took the nickname seriously.

„A proper light,“ he’d tell the new kits, „isn’t about seeing. It’s about being seen. Your mate three traverses down needs to know you’re still there. Needs to know he’s not alone out here in the dark.“

The lanterns themselves were well worn, temperamental things, brass and glass contraptions that burned everything from proper lamp oil (when supply remembered them) to rendered hogrub fat (when it didn’t). Each one had its personality. The lamp at Junction Four flickered in a steady rhythm like a heartbeat. The one by the latrine trench burned blue when the wick got damp. The big storm lantern at the command post, the one Gareth called „the Sylwedl“, could be seen from half a mile away on clear nights.

Tending them was fiddly work. You had to time your rounds between the Crymuster sniper shifts. You carried your oil can with spare wicks in a haversack and everything clinked and sloshed with every step. You learned to trim a wick by touch, in the dark, while standing in three inches of cold water.

The Coftyrans across no-quar’s-land had their own lantern lighters. Some nights, when the shelling quieted and the machine guns cooled, you could see them moving along their line, small, purposeful shadows carrying steady flames. An unspoken agreement held on both sides: you didn’t shoot the lantern lighters. They were just quar helping keep the dark at bay.

On Gareth’s last night, the night the big push came and most of Line 34A was buried under a Coftyran artillery barrage, he was three lanterns into his round. They found him next morning with his oil can still in hand, “Sylwedl”, the storm lantern, somehow still burning beside him.

The Third Watch still calls themselves the Lantern Lighters. They still tend the lanterns with Gareth’s fussiness. And on quiet nights, when you’re standing watch and feeling very alone in the vast dark of the war, you can look down the line and see those small, steady flames, each one saying the same thing:

We’re still here. You’re not alone.

Clash of Rhyfles: Ergydwir Trench Raiders – 20,00$

4 Ergydiwr Raider Models

Painted by Varundin28

Ergydiwr Trench Raiders

Ergydiwr raiders don’t wear armor like the Maebwysh. Can’t move quiet in plate, can’t slip through wire wearing half a museum, and when you’re crossing no-quar’s-land before dawn you need speed more than protection. So they wear what works: heavy knit sweaters dark enough to disappear against mud, caps that don’t gleam under flare light, and soft boots to muffle footsteps. They look like farmers headed to morning chores, which most of them were before the war. The difference is the hardware.

Every raider carries a pistol and a billhook knife. The same hooked blade that the Ergydiwr have used for hedge cutting and harvest work for generations. In the trenches, it serves the same purpose it always did: cutting through obstacles, clearing paths, and dealing with problems up close. Milwer Cabalt carries a billhook spear, the shaft cut down from an old pike found in some estate armory, the blade still sharp enough to punch through a Maebwysh breastplate if you know where to aim. It’s practical. It’s quiet. And when the Maebwysh raiders come clanking across no-quar’s-land in their antique steel, Ergydiwr’s raiders slip around them in the dark, fast and silent, and remind them that sometimes the old ways work better without all the weight.

Clash of Rhyfles: Fidwog Wounded – 12,00$

3 Fidwog Wounded (or drunk?) models!

Clash of Rhyfles: Gwynt CH11 Heavy Shotgun – 16,00$

2 Crew, Gun and 50mm base.

Painted by Varundin28

CH11

The CH11 heavy rotary shotgun represents an attempt to solve the problem of sustained close-range firepower through mechanical simplicity rather than automatic operation. Built around a hand-cranked mechanism driving multiple rotating barrels, the weapon fires heavy shells as fast as the gunner can turn the crank.

The rotating barrel assembly features four barrels arranged around a central axis, each fed from a common double stack magazine. As the gunner cranks the firing mechanism, barrels rotate through a cycle of loading, firing, and ejecting spent shells. The system’s genius lies in its mechanical reliability with no complex gas operation to foul, no recoil springs to fail, just gears, cams, and a quar turning a handle. Rate of fire depends entirely on how fast the gunner can crank, typically achieving 60-80 rounds per minute with a competent operator, though sustained fire at that rate tends to overheat barrels and exhaust even the strongest gunner.

The weapon requires a two-quar crew for effective operation: one to crank and aim, another to feed magazines and spot. Tactical employment focuses on defensive positions where the weapon’s bulk proves less problematic than its devastating close-range firepower proves valuable: trench defense, bunker emplacements, or chokepoint coverage where concentrated shotgun fire can stop an assault cold.

Clash of Rhyfles: Maebwysh Raiders – 16,00$

3 Maebwysh Raiders

Painted by Varundin28

The Steel Rhyflers of Maebwysh

When Yawdryl Cadoc’s trench raiders needed protection for a night raid that the quartermaster couldn’t provide, they stripped a nearby ancient clan motte hauling down breastplates and pauldrons that had hung as decoration for generations. The armor worked, barely, but they were relics worn by quar who weren’t built like the Bors of old. So the army’s smiths got practical: they used the Bors‘ steel as templates, hammering out new plates based on old patterns but sized for modern rhyflers.

What they came up with was something neither ancient nor modern. The awkward plate armor looked like it belonged in a history book but could deflect a bullet and flying debris. It was too heavy for long marches but perfect for the short work of night raids. And it was functional enough for quar who needed to crawl through wire and fight in close quarters. Cadoc, now a caerten, has trained an entire company of raiders. Many of the rhyflers have added their clan crests to their breastplates copied from the old steel and proudly, and with a bit of mockery, have dubbed themselves the Steel Rhyflers.

Clash of Rhyfles: Toulmore Wire Layer – 8,00$

Wire Layer Model

Painted by Varundin28

Every defensive position needs wire, and every catrawd has its wire layers, rhyflers equipped with heavy spools, mallets, stakes, and the particular kind of stubborn patience it takes to string obstacles under fire.

The work is methodical and dangerous. String the wire in overlapping belts, angle the barbs to catch advancing rhyflers, anchor the stakes deep enough that they won’t pull free under pressure, and do it all while trying not to become the enemy’s favorite target. Wire layers work at night when possible, during lulls when available, and sometimes just in broad daylight when the position needs fortifying and there’s no time to wait for better conditions. The heavy spools are awkward to carry, the stakes need driving with mallets that make noise, and every quar stringing wire knows they’re creating an obstacle that announces exactly where the defensive line sits.

When the enemy assault breaks against the wire and the defensive fire cuts them down, it’s because some wire layer spent hours in the mud and dark, building obstacles that turned empty ground into a fortress.

Clash of Rhyfles: Toulmore Wounded – 12,00$

3 Toulmore wounded. (Or is it a bellyache?)

Clash of Rhyfles: Western Arnyaran Lamplighter – 9,00$

Lamplighter (multi-part) and Lantern models.

Painted by Varundin28

The Beacon at Crossroad Station

The Nodd Ffae didn’t call them lanterns. They called them Goleuni, a word that meant something closer to „keeper of the flame“ but also had older meanings about promises and persistence and not abandoning your post. Something almost mystical to the Quar of old. Over time those that tended to Goleuni were also called Goleuni.

But Bosun Mairwyn wasn’t supposed to be a Goleuni. She was supposed to be leading her fire team.

The Foskyldae advance had stalled three miles short of the old crossroad station. Close enough to see it but not close enough to take it. The Creevish held the station itself, but the Foskyldae needed that junction to supply the land trains headed east. So someone had to keep eyes on it and mark it for when the advance resumed.

The observation post was nothing fancy. A reinforced dugout on a low rise, with a periscope and a signal lantern mounted on a pole. The lantern was supposed to burn every night as a navigation point for the Arnyaran trains and patrols.

Mairwyn had drawn the duty after Bosun Gethin took a Gwyldyfin round during a probe. Three ables, one bosun and rotating shifts to watch the station and keep the lantern burning. It was simple but also boring work.

Then the supply line was cut by a partisan raid, or maybe just the land trains were bogged down in bad weather. Nobody was quite sure. What mattered was that fresh lantern oil stopped coming. When Mairwyn did the math she found they had four nights of oil left, maybe five if they burned it dim.

„We could go dark,“ said Able Carys. „Save what’s left for emergencies.“

„The navigation beacon goes dark, patrols think the position’s been overrun,“ Mairwyn replied. „Then they don’t know where friendly lines are. That’s how you get shot by your own side.“

„So we burn what we have and hope supply catches up?“

„We burn what we have and make it last.“

Mairwyn started rationing. She dimmed the lamp as low as it would go while still being visible. Trimmed the wick precisely every two hours instead of four. Kept the glass spotless so every bit of light got through. They even stopped heating rations to save fuel for the lantern.

On the third night, Able Rhion came back from a patrol with half a canteen of lamp oil he’d „found“ somewhere. Wouldn’t say where and Mairwyn didn’t ask.

On the fifth night, with the oil nearly gone, Carys suggested rendering fat from their rations. „Hogrub tallow burns, doesn’t it?“

It did. It smelled terrible, smoked worse, but it burned.

The lantern stayed lit.

On the seventh night, an Arnyaran patrol came through. Two freshly repaired telu-harn and a column of rhyflers who’d gotten turned around in the dark. They navigated by Mairwyn’s lamp and found their way back to the main line.

„Thought you’d been overrun,“ their train lord had said. „The lantern was burning so dim.“

„Conserving oil,“ Mairwyn had replied. „Supply’s late.“

„Supply’s three days out. We’re the advance scouts for the train.“

Three more days. Mairwyn looked at her remaining oil. It was maybe one night’s worth if she burned it barely brighter than a candle.

She made it last two.

When the land train finally arrived, the bosun in charge of their lead iron house climbed up to the observation post with a fresh barrel of proper oil. He found Mairwyn sitting next to a lamp burning with a flame so low you could barely see it, surrounded by empty oil cans, rendered tallow tins, and precisely trimmed wick scraps.

„How long you been running on fumes?“

„Lantern’s still lit, isn’t it?“

The bosun looked at the lantern, at Mairwyn and at the careful accounting marks on the wall tracking every drop of oil burned.

„The Goleuni is getting a commendation for this.“

„This Goleuni is a getting a full oil ration and eight hours sleep,“ Mairwyn corrected. „You can save the commendations for when Aber’s born.“

She refilled the lamp properly, trimmed the wick one more time, and watched it burn bright and steady.

Then she went to sleep, knowing that tomorrow night she’d climb back up and tend it again.

Because that’s what a Goleuni did.

You kept the flame burning. No matter what.

Quelle: Zombiesmith