Eventually, Tk'ya'pk and his handlers found a pair of enormous, spiney turtles. It took some work, but after a few days they managed to train the turtles enough to use them as mounts! Each turtle could carry a half-dozen skinks as general transport, but when they ran into some minions of the Chaos Gods, it became more practical to limit the number of riders to three per turtle. To their surprise, the turtles proved to be quite effective in melee, smashing their way through the Chaos warband with surprising speed!

At some point during the battle, they discovered that they weren't the only ones fighting the Chaos minions. A group of Free People soldiers were fighting the Chaos warband as well, coming from the other direction. When they met in the middle, there was a confused jumble for a moment before they realized what was happening. By then, the Chaos warband had been broken and was fleeing the battlefield.

Introducing himself, Tk'ya'pk (who had, by this point, been named unofficial leader of their little band), soon got to talking with the commander of the human force. While the humans didn't know a quick way to get to Hammerhall, they did have a job offer for the skinks: join them in hunting down the Chaos warbands in the area, in exchange for whatever directions and help could be gotten for them at the nearest human settlement.

It wasn't the best idea, but after discussing it, nobody had a better one, so they joined up with the humans. After another battle, one of the human swordsmen dubbed them the 'Terrible Terrapins,' and the name stuck. Tk'ya'pk's Terrible Terrapins had been born...

Now see, this pic is right way up. I wonder why the other one went sideways?!? Tk'ya'pk and the other skink handlers are plastic skinks with their spears lengthened by a piece of brass rod. The Terrapins are 20 year old metal minis I found when I was in college many years ago, by RAFM (I think) from their Reptiliads series.