Who are the Kurgans? The story so far…

If you've followed Raging Heroes for a long time, you probably remember Ivanka Kurganova, among our very first miniatures, from well before our first Kickstarter The Toughest Girls of the Galaxy in 2013. Ivanka was an enormous success, back when we were still a tiny company taking its first steps in the world of miniatures. After a fair share of setbacks just to keep the company afloat, you could say quite literally that Ivanka saved Raging Heroes.

So who are the Kurgan Shock Troops, also known as the KST?

From the story of The Toughest Girls of the Galaxy, you may recall that it tells of a time when Earth went through great waves of intergalactic colonization, immense fleets leaving the planet in the hope of building new civilizations elsewhere in space. Two of those colonies sit at the heart of the story: the ones that would eventually become the KST and the Iron Empire.

The human colonists who founded the first settlements of what would become Kurgan civilization were lucky enough to find relatively fertile planets, worlds on which their society, in a sense, regressed into an agricultural culture steeped in powerful shamanic influences. 

So much so that, after several generations, the Kurgans began to develop genetic mutations. And for some of them, those mutations brought the ability to transform into animals, a little in the way of werewolves.

For a long time, their civilization knew how to absorb and live with this trait. But a turning point in their history tipped them into beast-like fratricidal wars so bloody, so destructive, that they nearly wiped the Kurgan people out entirely.

It was then that one man, Alexandr Kurganov, managed to unite the Kurgan clans, bring back peace, and put an end to the murderous frenzy that was bleeding his people dry. Faced with the violence of certain tribes, he chose to ban shamanism for good, outlawing the gene and the transformations it made possible.

But of course, nothing ever goes to plan. Deep down, Alexandr knew full well that a tradition this deeply rooted in his people could never be erased by a law, however drastic.

Around the same time, the Kurgans discovered a planet holding a mineral with absolutely unique properties: Ultrium. It propelled their technological development, carrying them from an age of peasantry to one of highly advanced technology in a few decades.

Because of all this, the Kurgan people have always been torn between a shamanic past, close to the earth and to nature, and a hunger for technological progress that was extreme, and probably far too fast. Add to that the iron grip of the Kurganov family, and the deeply mafia-like web of clans forever scheming to tip the balance of power, and you get a situation that's particularly explosive.

In the release we're showing you today, I made a deliberate choice NOT to push the Kurgans' shamanic side too far forward, because…

The traces are still there…

If you're not yet familiar with this faction, I wanted to give you an easy way in, by building characters you could happily drop into other universes if you wanted to. But the traces are still there.

There's the Yaga Soul Weaver, those shamanic witches, most of whom have now been brought into the service of the State, reinforced and augmented with cybernetic prosthetics that amplify their psychic powers. 

There are the giant wolf heads guarding the gates of the Kurgan fortress. And there are the bear-mounted troops. 

All signs of how close the Kurgans remain to nature, shamanism and the animals around and inside of them.

Today, what I'd really love is for you to let yourself be carried away by the sheer force of these characters and the singular charm of the video. 

For me, that video alone says everything about the tragedy and the epic grandeur of the Kurgan people: torn between their past and their future, crushed under a dictatorial power that was built to save a people racing toward self-destruction, battered by the extreme worlds they've settled on, and yet still carried by a tremendous breath of ambition and hope.

I think you can feel all of that in the wonderfully varied cast of characters we're bringing you this month.