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Malifaux Lore guide

Malifaux Lore guide

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Project Blog by shadykx125 Cult of Games Member

Recommendations: 211

About the Project

Im doing a video series on the lore of Malifaux and the related universe! Its a really underrated fiction with a lot of cool characters. Each video will highlight a specific master, and go through their backstory and summarize each story they are featured in. This is meant as a jump off point for people to get into the lore, a summary for people who don't have access to all of the books or don't want to read all of the stories, or just a refresher for people who are familiar with the story but haven't read it in a while.

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Ep. 30 Euripides

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Euripides is a new member of the ensemble. He barely had any lore before the newest book come out, but nows hes one of the starts of the show since hes being influenced by the burning man. I had a ton of fun painting up this crew since they are very different from most of the Faux stuff. Unfortunately, im still a terrible photographer…

Ep. 29 Rasputina

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Raspy is one of the most requested characters. As one of the originals from 1st edition, shes definately a fan fav and a fav of mine. She has some cool stories where she does battle with a god, and also starts beef with her fellow Arcanists. Shes a bit of a wildcard, looking forward to see where her story goes in the future.

Ep. 28 Yan Lo

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One of my first masters and an all time favorite! Yan Lo has always been a bit mysterious, and its not clear where his loyalty lies. But, now that its about to go down with Lingxuzi, we might be getting a lot more info about Yan Lo. The Oni are going to be a faction in The Other Side, Wyrds other game, and im looking forward to finding out if he will be involved!

Ep. 27 Mah Tucket

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I wont lie, when I first got into the lore of this game, I didn’t like the Gremlins. The Faux verse is kind of dark and deals with some serious topics like terrorism, totalitarianism, slavery etc. so having a comic relief faction seemed like a bad idea to me. However, the more Ive read of their lore, the more I think that they have used these little green guys to explore some of their own more serious topics, just in a different way.

The Gremlins have a hard time uniting to face their common enemies, because of generational conflict between families. That has a lot of echos in real life situations.

I just want to see Wyrd incorporate the Gremlins into the larger story a bit more, since most of them barely ever leave the Bayou.

Ep 26 Basse

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Basse is one of the more interesting new characters to me. I like how he is a lawman, but is still skeptical of the Guild, it really shows how this setting has complicated morality with very few “good guys”. That being said, Basse might be one of the few who are actually good. I also love the relationship with his daughter. Bernadette reminds me of a few people I know in real life, and I think that is a sign of a well written character.

Ep 25 Nekima

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It was really fun to paint Nekimas model and those blood soaked bases. Her character is really cool, and I love the story where she defeats Lilith. I cant wait to see what they do with her story in the future. Who did you root for in their showdown?

Ep 24 Sandeep

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Sandeep is one of my favorite masters to play. He doesn’t have a ton of lore, but the two stories he is in are really interesting. I wonder how his relationships with the other Arcanists are going to be after this?

Ep 23 Seamus

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Oh boy this video took a long time. I underestimated how many stories Seamus plays a key role in. These videos are really helping me better understand some of the characters though, something about seeing all of a characters stories back to back, rather than reading them mixed in with all of the other characters, gives you an interesting perspective. I hope it does the same for the viewers.

Ep 22 Hamelin

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More Tyrant shenanigans! The Tyrants are an interesting element of the Malifaux lore. They influence things and have secret plans, but we only know about a few of them. As far as Hamelin goes, hes posessed by the Tyrant plague, and they try to destroy the world. Good thing for prositutes and necromancers and ghosts, or else we would all be doomed!

Ep 21 Wong

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Unfortunately, a lot of the bayou masters do not have a ton of important lore. They are sort of a comic relief faction, but Wyrd has started hinting about some of them having a larger role to play in the future. For example, Wongs bag is full of Oni demons, which means he may have a part to play in some of the events going on Earthside with the Obsidian gate and Asami’s Oni “friend”. Stay tuned for more on her!

Ep 20 English Ivan

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Ive finally gotten around to English Ivan! He is one of the most requested characters, since hes brand new to the game, but actually appeared in the lore 10 years ago! Hes only made a few appearences, but hes a really cool character who works as a secret agent who may be a double agent. All together hes very mysterious, and now hes got magic shadow powers. Very. Cool.

Ep 18 Shenlong

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Somehow I forgot to post this one, so they are out of order, but oh wells.

Shenlong is really cool, I like that they take characters from different Asian cultures, not just Samurai and Ninjas… Even though im a sucker for Samurai and Ninjas. Unfortunately Shenlong is a bit neglected in the lore, only really having one big story. Considering he is posessed by a pseudo-god, I hope we see more of him in the future.

Ep 19 Nellie

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Nellie might look like one of the good guys, but as with everything in Malifuax, its more complicated than that. Im really happy with how her crew came together with the paint jobs and bases, but unfortunately most of them didnt show up in any of these stories. Maybe ill use them as backgroud characters in future videos.

Ep 17 Pandora

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Pandora is easily one of the weirdest characters in Malifaux. Her stories are strange and hard to parse, but I think I did an okay job representing them here. I did a rush job on her crews bases leading up to shooting this video, but im pretty happy with how they turned out.

Ep 16 Nicodem

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Wyrd decided to put some masters in “dead mans hand” for 3rd edition, meaning they are out of the story for one reason or another. Nicodem’s reason is he got murdered. This made a lot of people mad, but I think its a cool idea. It makes it feel like the story actually has consequences.

As a 1st edition master, I expected Nicodem to have a lost of lore. But I was surprised to find that isn’t true. He has an arc with Kirai, and a few more appearences, before they start setting up his final battle. At least he took some of the guild with him when he went.

Ep 15 Zipp

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The Gremlins in Malifaux are basically southern American white trash. Zipp is what would happen if a person like that accidentally got an education by listening to the radio… and then decided he wanted to be a pirate. His story is really fun, and the writers came up with a good reason for him to join the Outcasts faction. Looking forward to seeing more about him.

Ep. 14 Charles Hoffman

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Charles seems like a pretty vanilla master compared to the whoremongering serial killers and blind necromancer swordswomen that are typical of Malifaux, but when you go deeper he’s actually a really interesting character. I wonder if they planned out the explanation for his accident 10 years ago, or if they decided that when they wrote the newer stories.

Ep. 13 Jakob Lynch

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As far as back of the box pitches go, Jakobs is pretty good. A compulsive gambler, who begrudgingly works for the mob and helps the ancient creature that posesses him to spread its power by drugging people in his casino/brothel. My favorite thing about Wyrd is that they take common tropes that get overused in other fantasy settings, and put a big unique spin on them. Makes me wise the OTT crew would get more into malifaux. I think the stories and setting would really appeal to Warren, and the mechanics and tactics would appeal to some of the other guys.  Too bad you cant actually run a whole crew of bunny cav…

Ep. 12 Titania

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Ive finally gotten some Neverborn painted up to do a video on them! Titania is a really interesting character, she defeated the Tyrants in the ancient past but was betrayed by her people and locked in a prison. What kind of chaos will she cause now that shes back?

Ep. 11 Jack Daw

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This was one of the harder videos to make, since Jack Daw does not have any dialogue. You sort of have to infer what is going on in a lot of the stories, but I think that’s why he is an interesting character, and he has been requested quite a bit.

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