Tarrakk Blackhand:
Hello everyone.
As you may or may not know, my store, Monster Hobbies was flooded out on June 20th, 2013 in the High River flood. (Visit www.monster-hobbies.com for pictures)
Before the flood occurred, my Warhammer Fantasy group and I were playing Blood in the Badlands and we had divided our 3000 point armies into three groups of 1000 points each. With these divisions, we were conquoring our Mighty Empires battle map and enjoying our campaigns.
I had my army units divided into three soda can flats (cardboard box bottoms) and two of these were stored in my supply room on the floor and one was stored on the back shelf, high up in the store’s gaming area.
When the flood happened, water rushed in at an extreme velocity and washed away those 2000 points worth of Chaos Dwarf figures. Tarrakk Blackhand, his Battle Babes, and his entire unit was destroyed. This unit included all my Blunderbuss crews, Hobgoblin Archers, Earth Shaker Cannon, and more.
Also destroyed were my unit of “Fast Attack”. This included my Bull Centaur Hero, two Hobgobin Wolf Rider units (25 figures), sorcerers, and more. As well as this, my “Spare Units” were also destroyed…including the Lore of Metal Lammasu and CD Sorcerer that I made from metal wire and Green Stuff.
As Tarrakk Blackhand was my first General (Finished the conversion in December 2008), you can imagine that we had a lot of gaming history together.
Over the 5 years that I knew him, we fought many countless campaigns together, many 1 V 1 battles, and a huge amount of “Personal Combat Challenges” and group battles against Chaos Warriors, High Elves, Wood Elves, Empire, Tomb Kings, Lizard Men, Skaven, Ogres, Orcs and Goblins and other foes. In the process, we met and sometimes defeated enemy generals such as Korhill, Goldtooth, Grimgore and others.
Yes, we didn’t win them all, but we went home, licked our wounds, reviewed our tactics and returned to fight another day with either a stronger or more balanced army.
We also explored all the different uses for power weapons, magic talismans, special armor, secret helms, mystical shields, special boots and more. Not everything worked well together, but some items were better than most.
Our exploits together lead us to many mystical lands, enchanted forests, mysterious rivers and bogs, high mountain peaks, and deep valleys. In the end, we always returned home to safety, ready for the next battle or exploit.
Sadly, on June 20th, 2013, Tarrakk Blackhand was lost forever, killed by an enemy that neither of us were prepared for. In fact, the enemy was so powerful that 80% of High River was affected by it…the flood waters that came in from the mountain peaks.
Now that he is gone, I am considering changing my user name and Avatar here on CDO to honor our fallen comrade. Out of respect for the dead, I don’t want to remake a new figure of Tarrakk Blackhand and try to pass it off as my fallen hero, nor do I want to continue using his image as my Avatar, having it carry on as a reminder of someone who has left us.
Tarrakk’s image and memory will live on in the CDO image gallery (Under Generals), but I feel that it is time for the grieving to end and time for new beginings. I will create some new generals and figures for the ones that were lost and set aside the models that survived the flood waters to form a new army, more powerful than the first.
As for the Tarrakk identity, I am wondering if it is possible for Willmark to transfer my post count and slave number onto a new “identity” or if I simply have to start all over again from scratch?
Also, does anyone have a link to the older Word of Hashut online magazines. I will have to look at that “Chaos Dwarf Name Generator” list again. I think that was in the first or second issue.
Thank you again - Trevor Ursulescu - AKA - Tarrakk Blackhand.
