Maps of Age of Sigmar

[HorticulusTGA]

Well @Cèsar de Quart I agree with you : one big problem GW had was that the lore was dispatched on too many places. 

It's not the case anymore thanks to 1. the Malign Portents website (with the awesome Traveller's Guide to the Mortal Realms and a timeline : https://malignportents.com/timeline/) and 2. the MP campaign book (with a good summery of the existing Ages, and of the Age of Sigmar different phases), and more importantly, 3. the new Age of Sigmar website (with another good video in Exploring the Realms, as well as an expanded Timeline : https://ageofsigmar.com/timeline/ and faction guides). The BL novel Hammerhal & Other Stories is a good introduction too, without, of course, taking in consideration the MP short stories (all for free and at the same places). 

About the Great War and the "how long ?" questions : 

- The Age of Myth probably lasted more than 20'000 years (aka Ulgu & Hysh revolutions) ; the Realmgate Wars mention a Deathrattle empire lasting more than 12'000 years, and Arkhan the Black said that Nagash's Grand plan may have took 10'000 to 20'000 years to succeed. We know Nagash planned his ritual  a few time after he took control of Shyish, so after Sigmar found him, so the Age of Myth was already on its way when the millennia long ritual started. 

- The Age of Chaos should have lasted around 1000 years ; the Gates of Azyr where closed during 500 years (info from RGW : All-gates notably), and that is said to have happened "midway through the Age of Chaos", so 1000 years (there was already many Chaos incursions during the Age of Myth, of course).

The first century after the Gates were closed is called the Red Century and saw much of the Realms being destroyed (including the collapse of the Lantic Empire). 

- The Age of Sigmar : the Realmgate wars took "many decades" ; probably around 50-60 years ; then the foundation and expansion of the Free cities also took like 50-60 years. According to Spear of Shadows (BL Book), the current status quo (so the Time of Tribulations leading to the Soul Wars) is set "around 100 years" after the reopening of the Gates of Azyr. 

The Great War mentioned is indeed the Realmgate Wars, and the state of constant warfare that followed for the Free cities (the Season of War, the Blazing Crusade, the War of Life, etc.). Hammerhal is the first city founded after the 3 Seeds of Hope during the last stage of the Realmgate Wars, so it should be 50-70 years old (maybe more after the Time of Tribulations). 

Anyway. The Core Book will solve the fluff "explosion" problem by bringing (almost) everything so far in one place, and expanding on it. 

[Cèsar de Quart]

Thanks! 70 years seems... not much. I guess Sigmar transported population from Azyr straight away.

[michu]

19 minutes ago, Cèsar de Quart said:

Thanks! 70 years seems... not much. I guess Sigmar transported population from Azyr straight away.

That's right, big fraction of Free Cities population are azyrite colonists. There are even conflicts because of it: Azyrites thinks that natives aren't trustworthy, because in their minds if you have survived in the Chaos- touched Realms you can't be untainted.

[EccentricCircle]

Here's a question. How many people draw their own maps in order to create background to their campaigns?
If feels to me as though the mortal realms gives you a lot more freedom to create a region of your own devising than the Old World did. With near limitless space you can pretty much fit any kind of nation or region you can imagine somewhere into the world. However, I don't get the impression that many of the people I game with actually do create much of a background for their armies.

I always name my armies, and come up with a bit of a history for them, but don't usually write up too much lore of my own devising, partly because I always feel a bit limited by the established canon. I'm more of a roleplayer than a wargamer, so like telling stories with the games I play.

When I play D&D I tend to avoid published settings, and much prefer fleshing out a world of my own creation. I've been tempted to try to use Warhammer in a similar manner, as a tool box to play out battles in my own world, but some aspects of the setting make that tricky. In some ways this is more true in the mortal realms, where the way magic works has a far greater impact on the feel and rules of the game.

Ironically the generic nature of the Old World means that it would be far easier to transplant the factions and setting details, and adapt them to fit the unique background of my own settings. In summary it seems to be far easier to fit something original into the Age of Sigmar setting, but the Fantasy setting had serial numbers which were easier to file off, and use the rules for something completely different!

[Bloodmaster]

18 hours ago, Cèsar de Quart said:

Thanks! 70 years seems... not much. I guess Sigmar transported population from Azyr straight away.

70 Years are acctually quite a long time in settlement development. Look at how fast urban regions grew since WWII, It's something along "If you build it, they will come". And 70 years are roughly 3. generations, even nowadays with a much longer live expactanc. Three generations make for a hugh population growth, if the conditions are at least a bit well meaning.  There isn't that much of colonist numbers needed to spread civilisation.

[Cèsar de Quart]

On 6/27/2018 at 1:28 PM, Bloodmaster said:

70 Years are acctually quite a long time in settlement development. Look at how fast urban regions grew since WWII, It's something along "If you build it, they will come". And 70 years are roughly 3. generations, even nowadays with a much longer live expactanc. Three generations make for a hugh population growth, if the conditions are at least a bit well meaning.  There isn't that much of colonist numbers needed to spread civilisation.

After WW2 with modern means and technology... the rules in AoS are somewhat vague in the terms of how to travel (there are skyships but no railroad, and be it as it may, it's always more effective to use trains than boats; trains can fill more cargon in a long line than a ship could in its bowels) and what tech is available, and what isn't, and where is it available (we know that some cities use power from their realmgates... but this can't be available to all towns of course). 

Three generations are not the super metropolis you're implying. Compare Rome, Paris or London in 1800 with New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Mexico... Were there cities that grew immensely in 50 years? Yes, like Potosí, a mining town in Peru built besides a literal mountain made of silver; it was one of the biggest towns in the worlds, and a reportedly hellish place of disorder, crime and revulsion, until the silver was mostly depleted (and the Spanish monarchy bankrupted because of unpaid depts and rampant inflation) and the town lost its reason for existing.

So, Hammerhal better be a rabbit's nest of hellish living conditions, otherwise there's no way a city spanning for miles and miles could have expanded that fast and still have kept its relatively tidy look (judging from the images). I mean, 70 years is not impossible to picture, it's not a bad idea by any means, but the descriptions fo Hammerhal don't make it sound like it's still a colonial city like Philadelphia; more like it's the new Altdorf, with its hundred years old towers and storied statues and crossroads filled with stories and events...

I don't know, I imagined that Sigmar's Tempest had begun hundreds of years ago and that now we were already at a time where Phoenicium, the Living City and Greywater were already venerable towns with centuries in their backs. Maybe not Jericho or Çatal Huyuk, but a Paris or Nuremberg of sorts.

Well, I guess we'll get a bit more centuries on the setting every summer. 

[michu]

If you think Hammerhall doesn't look like Philadelphia you haven't seen Cinderfall district. It was great sea port once, but now it's wretched hive of scum and villainy with occasional Chaos uprising. It's described in the Warhammer Quest: Shadows over Hammerhal.

[Cèsar de Quart]

12 minutes ago, michu said:

If you think Hammerhall doesn't look like Philadelphia you haven't seen Cinderfall district. It was great sea port once, but now it's wretched hive of scum and villainy with occasional Chaos uprising. It's described in the Warhammer Quest: Shadows over Hammerhal.

Thanks for the information. Quick followup: is it a seaport? I thought Hammerhal Aqsha was divided by a great chasm. Or am I mistaken? I do remember flying skyships over Hammerhal. They're really embracing the Final Fantasy VII crazy whateverpunk aesthetics.

[michu]

http://whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/Hammerhal

Here, map of Cinderfall and article about Hammerhal from Lexicanum. Cinderfall is a trade district with  big market, slums, thieves' guild and Red Yugol's reverie - city's carnival full of masked entertainers and enigmatic soothsayer Red Yugol. 

[EccentricCircle]

Ooh, very Ankh Morpork-esque.

I was tempted by Shadows over Hammerhall, but decided to wait for them to do a full RPG, as I can't see myself actually playing Warhammer quest itself, and its a bit too pricey to get for the minis and resources.

[Gorks Pokin' Finger]

On 6/27/2018 at 6:34 AM, EccentricCircle said:

Here's a question. How many people draw their own maps in order to create background to their campaigns?
If feels to me as though the mortal realms gives you a lot more freedom to create a region of your own devising than the Old World did. With near limitless space you can pretty much fit any kind of nation or region you can imagine somewhere into the world. However, I don't get the impression that many of the people I game with actually do create much of a background for their armies.

I always name my armies, and come up with a bit of a history for them, but don't usually write up too much lore of my own devising, partly because I always feel a bit limited by the established canon. I'm more of a roleplayer than a wargamer, so like telling stories with the games I play.

When I play D&D I tend to avoid published settings, and much prefer fleshing out a world of my own creation. I've been tempted to try to use Warhammer in a similar manner, as a tool box to play out battles in my own world, but some aspects of the setting make that tricky. In some ways this is more true in the mortal realms, where the way magic works has a far greater impact on the feel and rules of the game.

Ironically the generic nature of the Old World means that it would be far easier to transplant the factions and setting details, and adapt them to fit the unique background of my own settings. In summary it seems to be far easier to fit something original into the Age of Sigmar setting, but the Fantasy setting had serial numbers which were easier to file off, and use the rules for something completely different!

Completely agree with you @EccentricCircle I have been doing this since AOS started and love trying to make new lands to explore for my characters. With the near-limitless scope of the Mortal Realms, it gives us the ability to create our own narrative and shape the sandbox we play in. Here's hoping the AOS RPG will further expand on the story-building settings 

With AOS 2.0 coming this weekend, I decided to revamp the setting for my armies lore. I play Ironjawz and Dispossessed, so my armies usually fight in the Realm of Ghur. This is likely to be altered in a week once I get my hands on the corebook and read the intangibles about the realm and its people

The Northern Kingdoms of Zarcosia

For those who are interested, I used the Map Creator on http://rollforfantasy.com/tools/map-creator.php 

It's a great site for generating maps and names for all kinds of fantasy races, characters, towns, kingdoms and such  

[EccentricCircle]

Looks great. I quite enjoyed the random free cities tables they released on warcom last year, I randomly rolled up cities until I had suitable ones for all my (order) armies to call home. I don't often map the actual mortal realms, instead finding a place for my armies, or something similar in my other rpg projects.

[Kirjava13]

I haven't drawn a map yet, but maybe I should... I have spent time thinking about where in Chamon all my armies are from, though, based on piece I posted in the Inspirational Art thread a while ago from a Polish artist. I always felt too limited by existing settings- better by far, IMO, to make one's own playground.

[Cèsar de Quart]

 

Another quick question:

We've all seen the map of the Realms with Phil Kelly taking about night and day and the spheres, etc. My question is: when someone looks up to the sky in Shyish, Ghur or Chamon... what do they see? Azyr? In that case, is Azyr not a sphere like the others, but the surrounding space dotted with stars and sometimes planets upon which cities can thrive? 

I've always seen Shyish in night-time, moonlit, or with its sun eclipsed. Is the Realm of Death beyond the reach of Azyr's glow and Hyish' light?

If one travels upwards with a skyship... what happens? 

 

[EccentricCircle]

That's an interesting question, I wouldn't mind knowing more about that too.

I've generally been assuming that it works much like the Planescape cosmology does in D&D, albeit lacking a Prime Material Plane. Clearly you can only go so far by drawing comparison between different franchises, but both have a lot of the same DNA, so it might be a useful analogue to consider.

So, in D&D terms, my hypothesis would be that Chamon, Shyish, Gyran, Aqshay, and Ghur are all separate from one another, but all are "coterminous" with Hysh, Ulgu, and perhaps Azyr. This means that they "touch" that plane/realm, and that one can affect the other in some way (such as causing day and night). It also means that travel between those planes would be possible in some circumstances, such as in locations where they were particularly close together, or the walls between them were thin. In Eberron the planes of existence wax and wane in relationship to the Prime. This causes "manifest zones", regions which are close to the other plane, to become less like the Prime. That could  thus be a good analogue for the Hysh/Ulgu cycle.

However Azyr might be coexistent, rather than coterminous, this means that all points within that realm touch all points in the other. Thus Azyr would literally be the heavens above each of the other realms. The downside is that this would (in D&D terms at least) make travel between them quite easy, and make sealing off Azyr much harder.

All of the planes (with the possible exception of Azyr) are definitely coexistent with the Realm of Chaos. This means that one can thus travel between the two relatively easily, and thus summon daemons with impunity.

In Planescape you need a "transitive" plane in order to travel between planes which don't themselves touch. Thus the Realmgates and Allpoints might provide this link, as probably would the Realm of Chaos.

[Baron Klatz]

I can't remember where I read it but I do know it's said every realm can see the realm of heavens. However, the realms have their own self-contained and magically inclined bodies as well such as Shyish's black sun or malevolent Wyrmstar as well as Ghur being noted to have a sun that's infused with it's wild magic which causes it to travel the sky at it's own accord(much to the annoyance of the scholar who was trying to use it to measure the time) then there's a fire realm moon that travels close to the plane's surface and pulls unfortunates into it's gravitation.

 So Azyr might just have the significance of being a stable constellation others can see while Hysh and Ulgu maintain night and day. The rest of the realms have varying and unpredictable astronomy created by their own magics.

Also, that's a great looking map, Gorks Pokin' Finger.

I love the infinite range of landscapes as well. I need to post them here still but I've made some side-view maps that have ranged from a Shyish campaign that went across a long narrow bridge amongst a sea of dead that lead to a vampire's floating castle of exhumed skeletons(with an alternate path through monster infested crags) to mountains of crystal that has a city held aloft by a steel gargant created from a chaos corrupted factory in an entire mountainside.

[Cèsar de Quart]

On 6/29/2018 at 10:26 PM, EccentricCircle said:

That's an interesting question, I wouldn't mind knowing more about that too.

I've generally been assuming that it works much like the Planescape cosmology does in D&D, albeit lacking a Prime Material Plane. Clearly you can only go so far by drawing comparison between different franchises, but both have a lot of the same DNA, so it might be a useful analogue to consider.

So, in D&D terms, my hypothesis would be that Chamon, Shyish, Gyran, Aqshay, and Ghur are all separate from one another, but all are "coterminous" with Hysh, Ulgu, and perhaps Azyr. This means that they "touch" that plane/realm, and that one can affect the other in some way (such as causing day and night). It also means that travel between those planes would be possible in some circumstances, such as in locations where they were particularly close together, or the walls between them were thin. In Eberron the planes of existence wax and wane in relationship to the Prime. This causes "manifest zones", regions which are close to the other plane, to become less like the Prime. That could  thus be a good analogue for the Hysh/Ulgu cycle.

However Azyr might be coexistent, rather than coterminous, this means that all points within that realm touch all points in the other. Thus Azyr would literally be the heavens above each of the other realms. The downside is that this would (in D&D terms at least) make travel between them quite easy, and make sealing off Azyr much harder.

All of the planes (with the possible exception of Azyr) are definitely coexistent with the Realm of Chaos. This means that one can thus travel between the two relatively easily, and thus summon daemons with impunity.

In Planescape you need a "transitive" plane in order to travel between planes which don't themselves touch. Thus the Realmgates and Allpoints might provide this link, as probably would the Realm of Chaos.

Interesting take, thanks for the answer. I hope they try to flesh out more how do the planes work, more or less. 

My guess was that other realms could see Azyr, but accessing it directly would bring about the same fate as walking into Realm's Edge (when magic overtakes you and something funny happens, leaving you dead to all physical effects). This is important since we've got skyships and stratospheres.

I had drawn a rough map of the Realms based on the descriptions I've read, in which Chamon, Aqshy, Ghur and Ghyran are four spheres orbiting the binaries Hyish and Ulgu (the eclipe is day and night, the orbit is the year), with Azyr being the backdrop starfield (as in Medieval charts) and the Realm of Death behind Azyr, hidden to reality but connected to it (since it's said that Shyish' geography is impossible to understand, I'm guessing it's not just a plain or sphere. I'd love it if they went the Dante route and gave it the meta-shape of a downward spiral with separate circles).

 

On 6/30/2018 at 4:00 AM, Baron Klatz said:

I can't remember where I read it but I do know it's said every realm can see the realm of heavens. However, the realms have their own self-contained and magically inclined bodies as well such as Shyish's black sun or malevolent Wyrmstar as well as Ghur being noted to have a sun that's infused with it's wild magic which causes it to travel the sky at it's own accord(much to the annoyance of the scholar who was trying to use it to measure the time) then there's a fire realm moon that travels close to the plane's surface and pulls unfortunates into it's gravitation.

 So Azyr might just have the significance of being a stable constellation others can see while Hysh and Ulgu maintain night and day. The rest of the realms have varying and unpredictable astronomy created by their own magics.

You're probably right.

[EccentricCircle]

That sounds like a good model to me. I like the idea that There are three planes coexistant with all the others. Azyr is (metaphysically speaking) above the realms, and that the Realm of Death is below. Then Chaos surrounds and permeates everything.

The remaining "free" planes are isolated from each other, but coterminous with the Ulgu/Hysh binary which they orbit.

In reading the new rulebooks over the weekend i've also found references to the Aetheric void, which probably forms a cosmic matrix in which all the others float, and thus forms the transitive plane linking the otherwise seperate ones. The Allpoints are then pocket planes within that transitive plane.

[Gorks Pokin' Finger]

On 7/1/2018 at 9:07 AM, EccentricCircle said:

That sounds like a good model to me. I like the idea that There are three planes coexistant with all the others. Azyr is (metaphysically speaking) above the realms, and that the Realm of Death is below. Then Chaos surrounds and permeates everything.

The remaining "free" planes are isolated from each other, but coterminous with the Ulgu/Hysh binary which they orbit.

In reading the new rulebooks over the weekend i've also found references to the Aetheric void, which probably forms a cosmic matrix in which all the others float, and thus forms the transitive plane linking the otherwise seperate ones. The Allpoints are then pocket planes within that transitive plane.

Good points. There is still so much of the mortal realms we have yet to explore, including Azyr and those realms between realms (like where Slaanesh is being held).

The thing I love is that the realms are still growing as well, so new lands are being created and can be used for singular campaigns, kind of like how 40k works with a small spectrum in the galaxy