This post is on the work in progress for an article that will appear in Wargames Illustrated in the not-too-distant future (and perhaps we will do something more with it too, let’s see). That article is meant to wargame the monstrous creatures of the Arabian Nights, which is also known as the One Thousand and One Nights, starting with ghouls. That is, after all, where ghouls, and many other fantastical creatures of modern fiction, come from, although their modern progeny has sometimes evolved beyond recognition, as it is the case with ghouls. Today we discuss ideas for miniatures and conversions to be used to represent the ghoul king of Sinbad’s Fourth Voyage.
To recap, our journey to Dragon Rampart: Arabian Nights started while writing Lion Rampant: A Viking in the Sun. Researching Middle Eastern medieval banditry revealed connections with ghouls (which the article in Wargames Illustrated will explain further). That ignited my interest on the origins of those creatures, which brought me to the Arabian Nights and this project.
In the Arabian Nights you can find solitary ghouls, entire warbands made of ghouls, ghouls who fight among humans, and sometimes ghouls who lead humans.
This post is about ghoul leaders of humans, and it is inspired by Sinbad’s Fourth Voyage, in which we find a ghoul king ruling over a remote tropical island inhabited by ‘naked men’ (I am quoting the latest translation published by Penguin Random House). Those humans rescue Sinbad and his companions from a shipwreck, but give them drugged food that turn Sinbad’s companions into mindless human-cattle. They then pasture their guests on the island and feed them to their ghoul king one by one.
The ghouls of the Arabian Nights are a very diverse bunch, and eating human flesh is one of their few shared characteristics. Contrary to the ghouls of modern fiction, they do not feed on decomposing corpses. They rather eat fresh meat, and sometimes they even cook it! The tale of Amine, which includes a grave-dweller ghoul, is probably a later addition to the Arabian Nights, and modern scholarly editions often exclude it.
It goes without saying that Sinbad is the only member of his group who survives that encounter. He mistrusts his hosts and refuses to eat and drink. Having lost weight and looking emaciated, his captors lose interest in him (he would not be a good offering for the ghoul king), which allows him to escape.
The tale justifies having a ghoul as the commander of a human warband. Let’s say that Sinbad came back to avenge his companions, or that the ghoul king and his subjects encounter a more warlike group than Sinbad’s shipwrecked one. It would not be such a diversion from Sinbad’s tale to give the king a unit of ghoul bodyguards, if you wish.
In the article you will find some suggested rules to use ghouls with Dragon Rampant, but here we can discuss miniatures. It is difficult to find suitable ones on the market because Arabian Nights ghouls not only have different feeding habits when compared to their modern progeny, but they also looked different. Generally speaking, they rather resemble beastmen, trolls, or ogres, but with apparel and equipment suitable for the world of the Arabian Nights. Indeed, they often use clothes, weapons, and armour that are just like human ones.
Because of that I decided to experiment with conversions. Alas, there is no suitable image of that section of Sinbad’s Fourth voyage that I could use. It is also very difficult to find medieval representations of Arabic ghouls in general. If you google them, what you get are images like the one below, which is from Wikipedia. However, the few images of medieval Arabic ghouls that you get on the internet are not actually ghouls! They are divs, which are different creatures from a different work, that is, the Persian Shah Nameh. Close, but not close enough for someone as pedantic as me! Divs have different characteristics from ghouls, and I plan to do something on them at some point in the future too! So let’s keep them separate.
Then we came across an image of a ghoul’s head in an Arabic medieval astronomical treatise from the Bodleian Library in Oxford (you can find it here). It shows the constellation of Perseus holding the head of a monster, which is labeled in Arabic (at the left) ‘ras al-ghul’ (head of the ghoul). It is perfect, because that head looks quite similar to that of some old Games Workshop plastic beastmen! I had a box of those that has been sitting on my shelf, unused, for many years. I added a beastman’s head and his cloven feet (Arabic ghouls often, but not always, have cloven feet) to the torso of a Gripping Beast Arab spearman. In my interpretation the ghoul king is an outsider to the tribe who took over it. After all, in the tale he is the only ghoul in that community of humans. Besides, I plan to use him for scenarios set in other locations on the mainland too.
For the ghoul king’s retinue in the image above I used miniatures from the Frostgrave tribals. After all, Sinbad’s ‘naked men’ live on a fantastical island loosely based in the tropics. Those miniatures belong to James Holloway, who very kindly painted them for this project. I painted the ghoul king myself, and you can see that my painting skills are not as good as James’.
More updates soon!
SUGGESTED READING
If you are looking for a good version of the Arabian Nights, which also includes a helpful introduction, I suggest the one below, which features Sinbad’s voyages. By the way, the flying giant creature of that cover is a Marid, a creature that I will discuss in a future post.
If you are from the EU you can find it here.
From the USA you can find it here.
History and Games Lab Productions Blog 
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