Malign Portents

[Soulsmith]

In terms of as people have mentioned about AOS and it's relatively... flimsy? characters, I would say give them time to find a place in the world and narrative as it is constructed.  Though I am always up for more anti heroes, my favourite fantasy ones were Genevieve, and Malus Darkblade. I mean the latter is one of the nastiest pieces of work ever, but still the hero of his own series. But AOS is finding it's feet.

Also, hate on 40K fluff all you like, but there is at least one narrative thread that is great - the Ynnari. Totally new, shaking things up.

[Guest]

10 hours ago, Redmanphill said:

I certainly don’t think we are going to see a sudden influx of heroes and heroines from the Old World. 

I too would be amazed if this happens, and yet I'm also amazed that they've dangled the possibility in the first place.

GW might flood the shelves with reimagined WHFB characters. Or they might never mention this game-changing revelation again. Both possibilities are equally likely, and equally insane. Only a certified madman would place bets on the outcome at this stage.

[Soulsmith]

I don't think a whole bunch of new characters is likely because games workshop will be thinking how it effects the game. More named characters is not necessarily a good thing.

[Sheriff]

1 minute ago, Soulsmith said:

I don't think a whole bunch of new characters is likely because games workshop will be thinking how it effects the game. More named characters is not necessarily a good thing.

Unless for stormcast. 

[Soulsmith]

11 minutes ago, Sheriff said:

Unless for stormcast. 

I definitely need to see more Knight-Synonymous

[Bloodmaster]

I am with @Redmanphill and @Jamie the Jasperon this. The jailbreak of the old souls won't result in an massiv influx of oldhammer characters. We might see a few heroes of old in due time and in reimagined form as we did with Morathi and to a certain extent with that in tree hag, if memory serves right.

But what this means, is a reason for selling named recast heroes of old and giving them rules via the app, similar to how swift hawk agends and wood elves exist. See thes characters more as fan service with an added reason for selling/buying them then as firmly anchored in the aos background. 

[NazbitWeirdstabba]

1 hour ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

I too would be amazed if this happens, and yet I'm also amazed that they've dangled the possibility in the first place.

GW might flood the shelves with reimagined WHFB characters. Or they might never mention this game-changing revelation again. Both possibilities are equally likely, and equally insane. Only a certified madman would place bets on the outcome at this stage.

It's strange to me that they've implied the possibility too. I'm actually wondering whether it is just GW severely overhyping the Warhammer Legends releases that are incoming, giving people an excuse and lore reason to add old heroes to their armies when they buy them. Something very interesting that we haven't discussed yet is this line from the community article:

Quote

Ancient heroes now return to their ancestral armies, and the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, in particular, have seen their ranks swell.

 

[EMMachine]

58 minutes ago, Soulsmith said:

I don't think a whole bunch of new characters is likely because games workshop will be thinking how it effects the game. More named characters is not necessarily a good thing.

57 minutes ago, Sheriff said:

Unless for stormcast. 

Hm, I think I would like it more if the game has more generic Heroes (or more options for them) than more named Characters.

While generic characters encourage creativity to create there own legacy in stories, this is not the case with named characters (like the 1000 clones of Skarsnik, because every moonclanlist had Skarsnik).

The worst case of this we saw with Gavriel Sureheart, not having a single line of background, but beeing another "goldenboy" of the Hammers of Sigmar. Why not having the option of a generic Lord Celestant with a Sigmarite Runeblade + Shield? I mean how many characters in the background were presented with the Warscrolls of the Lord Celestant, Lord-Celestant on Dracoth and Lord Celestant on Stardrake?

I really hope it won't be another floodwave of named chars, spamming them at any pointvalue und making generic ones rarely seen.

[Barkanaut]

3 minutes ago, EMMachine said:

Hm, I think I would like it more if the game has more generic Heroes (or more options for them) than more named Characters.

While generic characters encourage creativity to create there own legacy in stories, this is not the case with named characters (like the 1000 clones of Skarsnik, because every moonclanlist had Skarsnik).

The worst case of this we saw with Gavriel Sureheart, not having a single line of background, but beeing another "goldenboy" of the Hammers of Sigmar. Why not having the option of a generic Lord Celestant with a Sigmarite Runeblade + Shield? I mean how many characters in the background were presented with the Warscrolls of the Lord Celestant, Lord-Celestant on Dracoth and Lord Celestant on Stardrake?

I really hope it won't be another floodwave of named chars, spamming them at any pointvalue und making generic ones rarely seen.

Why not both?

[RuneBrush]

I actually think what GW has done is quite clever.  By saying that Nagash had a load of souls couped up and now released, it means that there's now cannon as to why a particular character who bears a striking resemblance to one from the old world has appeared.  Clearly Sigmar has nabbed loads already from the "lightning" part of the story update.  Also remember that it's Souls that were captured, not a physical manifestation (they probably have one whilst in Shyish/afterlife).  Bearing in mind that souls are the new warpstone, we might see those souls being captured and re-purposed by other factions.

[Redmanphill]

The jailbreak is a way to set up a new faction of undead that hunt souls down on Nagashs’ behalf... if only such a faction was coming!

[Gaz Taylor]

15 minutes ago, Redmanphill said:

The jailbreak is a way to set up a new faction of undead that hunt souls down on Nagashs’ behalf... if only such a faction was coming!

if only!  

With my hobby time at the moment, I suspect this new faction will be my new army as partially because they will have an brilliant background but also because they will be quick to paint! Although I will be torn between whatever rules they get and using the Legion of the Night rules to have Mortis Engines appearing behind enemy lines!  

27 minutes ago, xking said:

New  story. https://malignportents.com/story/the-ghosts-of-ensignfort/

I enjoyed that story. It's helping defining the Idoneth Deepkin as really nasty Aelves  

[Soulsmith]

1 hour ago, xking said:

Flimsy characters?  Callis and Toll, Sir Roggen of the Order of the Furrow,  Gardus the Steel Soul   and Hamilcar Bear-Eater.  Are not flimsy characters.

I mean no offense. Perhaps flimsy was not the right word. I mean I would like Black Library to knuckle down on several and flesh them out better. I liked Callis and Toll, sure, but they felt one dimensional. That said, Spear of Shadows is next on my reading list, so I am hoping it is the start of AoS' own badasses.

[Soulsmith]

Did that thing where it doesn't say it posted.

[Aeryenn]

I really enjoy those malign portents stories. Glad they release them regularly and free. 

[Redmanphill]

1 hour ago, Aryann said:

I really enjoy those malign portents stories. Glad they release them regularly and free. 

The latest one is great.

 

3 hours ago, Gaz Taylor said:

With my hobby time at the moment, I suspect this new faction will be my new army as partially because they will have an brilliant background but also because they will be quick to paint! 

They are likely to be mine too, depends on how much I have to add to them. I suspect it’ll be Nighthaunts or possibly Malignants that’ll be the new faction. Fleshing them out wouldn’t need many new kits really.

[Rogue Explorator]

One interesting snippets I have caught and some thoughts I have gotten retreading bits of LoN and reading the WD snippet just shared in the Rumor Thread:

-We have our first mention of the Soul Wars in Lore. Unsurprising, it is all about how Nagash is upset everyone and their grandma is using Souls to their own purpose. However, while we always had it on our screen as something yet to come, the snippet reads like we are already right in it (though it propably has yet to reach its high point)

-In LoN, it actually says the Age of Myth did not begin until Nagash awakened and Sigmar assembled his Pantheon. The snippet again tells of there being quite a bit of history in the Realms before Nagash awakened, the (uncorrupted) Underworlds and other Gods of Death had been fully formed by then. So heroes and legends from before the Age of Myth does not have to be a World-That-Was reference

-I wonder how Alarielles and the Sylvaneth are positioned in the Soul Wars. So far, they have been absent from all of Nagashes "grudge lists", but the Sylvaneth too are created by Alarielle from repurposed Souls. Does Alarielle have a claim on these Souls Nagash actually respects, is her offense somehow more minor, or did GW simply forget to include her?

-Aside from Waaghing through it all, Destruction really seems somewhat sidelined in this. Gorkamorka seems uninvolved in Soul shennanigans, the only questionmark is how similar Godrak is to Grimgor, leading to some speculation he to his being a repurposed Soul. Very big speculation time: If Destruction is tied more into the Soulwars and we also see Moonclan released: If Godrak, the Fist of Gork, is a "reforged" Grimgor, who sort of incarnated Gork in the Endtimes, could we then see the Endtimes incarnation of Mork recreated as not-Scarsnick as well?

 

36 minutes ago, Redmanphill said:

They are likely to be mine too, depends on how much I have to add to them. I suspect it’ll be Nighthaunts or possibly Malignants that’ll be the new faction. Fleshing them out wouldn’t need many new kits really.

Depends on the point of comparison. If we expect something on DoKs level, a few kits suffice.

On the other hand, if Death is to get a poster boy faction of its own (not comparable to Stormcast, but lets say Bloodbound), that would take a rather sizable release, even if it Malignants and already includes all the current Deathmage and Nighthaunt kits.

[shinros]

There is something amusing how all the gods are robbing Nagash blind. It's even more funny when Sigmar asked for alliance in the past by sending stormcast.  

[Sete]

Archeon kinda trashed Nagash, so I think for a while he could not really contest all that soul stealing.

[someone2040]

Hmm... I kinda dislike the latest story.

Not I guess because I think it's bad, but because it's more of the same from the one with the Swifthawk Agents. Group of X find city, think it's weird nobody is there, why's it all wet and goopy? The only difference between the two is that the Necromancer was killed in this one, while the Swifthawk Agents weren't.

Would rather a different kind of story. Victims of an actual Idoneth raid in progress, or some Wanderers fighting against the Idoneth. All of this stuff probably inevitably leads to a story which has an Idoneth ambassador making parlay with Sigmar's people and revealing themselves.

 

Anyway, that's just my thoughts. Felt it was a little too similar for two stories released closed together.

[RuneBrush]

16 hours ago, Rogue Explorator said:

I wonder how Alarielles and the Sylvaneth are positioned in the Soul Wars. So far, they have been absent from all of Nagashes "grudge lists", but the Sylvaneth too are created by Alarielle from repurposed Souls. Does Alarielle have a claim on these Souls Nagash actually respects, is her offense somehow more minor, or did GW simply forget to include her?

The impression I got was that Sylvaneth souls returned back to nature in the same way as Chaos Souls went to the respective Chaos Gods.  Nagash probably isn't happy, but knows them to be "tainted" or unusable for his purposes.  I believe the Sylvaneth were doing this before Nagash reformed too.

What I'm wondering is if the Idoneth (and other factions stealing souls) are able to steal and use the souls of Chaos factions and Sylvaneth?

[Inqy]

I wonder if mortal Gheistcallers are going to be a thing in-game? (Nighthaunt is notably missing any models with the Deathly Invocation ability despite having summonable units.) Alternatively they might just be another in-setting nickname for Necromancers I suppose.

[chord]

On ‎4‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 11:35 AM, shinros said:

There is something amusing how all the gods are robbing Nagash blind. It's even more funny when Sigmar asked for alliance in the past by sending stormcast.  

Sounds like everything in realm of death was ok till Nagash woke up and started taking souls...and now is upset others have jumped on the bandwagon.  

[Aelfric]

15 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

The impression I got was that Sylvaneth souls returned back to nature in the same way as Chaos Souls went to the respective Chaos Gods.  Nagash probably isn't happy, but knows them to be "tainted" or unusable for his purposes.  I believe the Sylvaneth were doing this before Nagash reformed too.

What I'm wondering is if the Idoneth (and other factions stealing souls) are able to steal and use the souls of Chaos factions and Sylvaneth?

In the short story " lost Souls", it seems that Morathi was taking souls from sacrificial victims to help bring her children back - I presume by bonding said souls to the reformed Aelves as the death mage says that " Each of their souls belongs to another " before exacting vengeance .  The DoK Leathanam, or Half-souls, may be those who did not receive part of a soul when brought back to life.  The souls mentioned were from hunters, which doesn't help much but are probably human.  I would have thought that the souls of chaos worshipping mortals are as usable as any other mortal.  It does beg the question as to how Malerion and Teclis have tried to overcome this problem with their later attempts, especially as Teclis has already failed once.

I'm not sure that Sylvaneth have souls in the same way as the other races.  Branchwyches gather the fallen Lamentiri ( essence? ) of Sylvaneth spirits which they then plant in the soulpod groves to grow again.  This cycle would preclude the need for an afterlife.  After all, they are Flora not Fauna, so they may not be compatible enough for other races to use.  What happens to Lamentiri not taken to a Soulpod grove is, as far as I'm aware, not known.

What I'd like to know is whether Aelves that die now are still going to Slaanesh and then being harvested by the Aelven Gods.

[Rogue Explorator]

New story is up, and it is quite a wild one:

https://malignportents.com/story/descent/

 

Loved the description of the Idoneth Warriors more civil duties.