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Transitioned Characters- Ever Explained?


Sleboda

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So,  I'm finally sitting down to read all the Realmgate Wars volumes and then will look at other background materials,  but for now,  I'm confused. 

While I enjoyb seeing all the old names and the evolution of things (honest, I like it), I'm feeling like I missed something.  I mean,  at the end of The End Times,  everyone except Sigmar OR Archaon was dead. 

We know this new world is in continuity with the old,  so it's not like they just hit reset and "reimagined" the World-That-Was.  These are the same characters,  but ...

 

How?

 

Did I miss a story somewhere?

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I believe the jist is that there were pockets of the world that was which were saved or protected in some way. Possibly their descendants becoming the current realm populations. 

With the named characters they are all dead except ones which:

Are a god of something

Were transported to the realm of chaos

Were undead and transported to the underworld

Took of in their space pyramid

Some other extravagant method of surviving the destruction of the world

 

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We don't know the specific reasons for many of the surviving elements. The gods survived, as far as we know, because of their affinity with the winds of magic. As the reams are literally made up of the winds, the Incarnates more or less carried over. As did some of the surviving WTW gods (Grimnir and Grungni mostly). A number of Undead and Chaos characters "survived" becuse their souls belong to either Chaos or Nagash.

The Lizardmen are the only real exception. They escaped in their temple-spaceships. Only the Slann survived the journey though, and are now tens of thousands years old, if not more.

 

The other things that carry over, with the exception of named characters, are easter eggs. A few of the BL authors have mentioned this. They can hint and nod to Old World stuff, but it cannot be truly significant (as in, you don't need to know anything about the Old World for the item's place in the story to make sense). Everything has to be rooted in the AoS-end of the continuity. The specific fluff for WTW-characters barely mention their pre-destruction lives, and then only in the vaguest ways possible.

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Right I shall explain to the best of my ability. Now in end times as you recall Teclis says all the incarnates are essentially gods at that point the winds of magic melded with their souls. Do also recall it is revealed in end times that it's a cycle the old world's pantheon were humans, elves etc who fought against chaos lost and became gods. 

Now when sigmar fell through the rift he was drifting through the void clutching on the core of the old world, until he met a certain dragon who is a god beast now he showed sigmar the mortal realms. Of course because they are tied to the winds of magic the new gods resurged into their respective realms. Since they themselves are tied to the winds of magic now. 

Now for sigmar he did find some souls from the old world and he reincarnated them hence why some of his people have some ancestry with them. One other reason why they keep some of the old style so to speak. Now for the returning characters? The only characters that are fully returning are chaos and death for obvious reasons. 

From where we are now? That was several thousand years ago. 

On recurring characters like glottkin, Valkia and the Mortarchs?

The chaos gods own the souls of their followers and can bring them back whenever they want and considering this time they want to destroy and gain 8 worlds worth of souls they want their best to do it. 

Death? Well nagash, since the dead belong to him vampires, skeletons etc they all belong to him and now that he is the Death god(he was pretty much a god in the old world anyway) bringing back his servants is not that much of an issue. Hence why nagash is very angry at sigmar for creating stormcast since the dead belong to him. 

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Manfred has a really cool part in the Nagash audiobook where he basically says he's been pinned to a wall for thousands of years for pissing Nagash off but then gets back in his good graces in a really cool Manfred sort of way. Which is what engaged Nagash, his Mortarchs, and his 999 legions of the dead in the current AoS storyline.

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13 minutes ago, Somnicide said:

Manfred has a really cool part in the Nagash audiobook where he basically says he's been pinned to a wall for thousands of years for pissing Nagash off but then gets back in his good graces in a really cool Manfred sort of way. Which is what engaged Nagash, his Mortarchs, and his 999 legions of the dead in the current AoS storyline.

Well...now I must know this story!

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56 minutes ago, daedalus81 said:

Well...now I must know this story!

I can PM you the longwinded spoiler filled bits if you want, but it is worth getting. Manfred is a major character in the piece and has awesome lines and somewhat hammy delivery which annoyed me at first but I kind of grew to love.

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Thanks, all, for the replies.

I had been thinking of the whole Chaos/Death thing as an answer for some as well, and certainly the gods transitioned, but so much of the whole thing feels too glossed over for my liking.  Maybe that's the plan - to reveal ties as time passes - and I know we don't need to be spoon fed and that the new Mortal Realms are mostly their own thing, but I guess I'm just saying I would like there to have been a liiiiiiiiittle bit more "hand off" from The End Times to the Age of Sigmar. 

You know?  Some sort of "...and as the gods of this new world fought their age old foes, they reached back into the void of souls and reclaimed the greatest heroes, nations, and people of The World That Was, giving them another chance to prove their mettle against the Eternal Foe..."

 

I dunno, just something to say "Yeah, these old things are still part of the world and here is why."

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7 hours ago, Somnicide said:

Manfred has a really cool part in the Nagash audiobook where he basically says he's been pinned to a wall for thousands of years for pissing Nagash off but then gets back in his good graces in a really cool Manfred sort of way. Which is what engaged Nagash, his Mortarchs, and his 999 legions of the dead in the current AoS storyline.

Well actually he was on the "wall" for a different reason and it was not nagash who put him there. Mannfred is pretty awesome in the audio drama and I suspect him and the lord celestant will have a part to play in the future considering nagash is planning something. 

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9 minutes ago, Umjammerlama said:

How did Thanquol and Boneripper survive the-world-that-was? If they have survived, as I haven't heard any lore about them in AoS.

We haven't heard about them yet the great horned rat seems to have not bought them back. Considering the popularity of Thanquol I suspect when we get to a great horned rat story arc is when they may appear again. Chaos characters are slowly being bought back. We recently got the glottkin and Valkia appearing in the main campaign books. 

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I know it's meant to be a continuation from the world-that-was but for me I take it as basically a universe reboot, or a separate entity in its own right. And as much as I liked the Old World I really like the Mortal Realms too and just view each as a separate universe with shared characters.

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Some chars just survived the remaking of the world. They Have to be immortal to have made it. For Daemon or undead - anything is possible. Alarielle is the aspect of immortal wood elf gods. Thanquol is a Plagelord, all of which were granted immortality by the Great Horned Rat. Some chars have scrolls but these are for playing the new rules in the old age. Anyone could have survived but they need a reason to be alive 10,000 years later to be in the AoS.

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7 hours ago, bottle said:

I know it's meant to be a continuation from the world-that-was but for me I take it as basically a universe reboot, or a separate entity in its own right. And as much as I liked the Old World I really like the Mortal Realms too and just view each as a separate universe with shared characters.

Well you are correct in a sense the old world is like the HH era now for 40k. To most people it's shrouded in mystery of sorts, the only people who would REALLY know all the events are those that hang around sigmar's library all day. The events of the old world don't really matter in the day to day lives of those who are not fighting chaos. 

Sigmar only it set it up for his soldiers to gain understanding on their defeat and not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Oh and skaven since they say they have a great book detailing their alliance with chaos. It is somewhat revealed that for the chaos characters that returned their memories are somewhat fuzzy on the events of the old world save Archaon. 

Undead I feel most likely most have clear memories considering the name of Neferata's capital city. 

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I think the point is that this new setting makes some nods to the old world (for us veterans who remember White Dwarf columns such as "Painting with the Average Joe" ;) ), but is meant to be entirely new. The new game will slowly grow its own lore/art/background without ties to Tolkein, D &D, or any other fantasy realms. 

Jeff

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I don't think the new setting is meant to be "entirely new". It is obviously linked to the old setting, but the link is indeed rather week. In some cases it feels like an excuse. That is however not always the case; in the case of the gods/incarnates and the nature of the mortal realms, they are only understandable in the light of WHFB and the ET. Now, no good explanation has been produced by GW regarding the nature of the Mortal Realms and the connection to the gods/incarnates. GW has formed rather a connection in a mythological language. But I think it can be explained in this way:

-Mortal Realms were formed with the explosion of the winds of magic in the ET. They are worlds made exactly of the substance of each wind of magic.

-All surviving incarnates at the end of ET (that means also: not "killed" through the vortex explosion) became gods of the corresponding nature and attuned to the corresponding mortal realms. Their identity mediates between their mortal origin and their connection to their new nature.

-In the case of winds of magic whose incarnate died (Beasts: Grimgor; Metal: Thorgrim then Balthasar Gelt; Fire: Ungrim then Caradryan), surviving gods of the old world which were already connected to the corresponding wind of magic took the form of the new gods of the mortal realms. 

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On 7/12/2016 at 10:05 AM, Umjammerlama said:

How did Thanquol and Boneripper survive the-world-that-was? If they have survived, as I haven't heard any lore about them in AoS.

Small update, he is in the chaos grand alliance book as a named character so he made it, its a matter of time before we see him in a major book.

9 hours ago, Turgol said:

I don't think the new setting is meant to be "entirely new". It is obviously linked to the old setting, but the link is indeed rather week. In some cases it feels like an excuse. That is however not always the case; in the case of the gods/incarnates and the nature of the mortal realms, they are only understandable in the light of WHFB and the ET. Now, no good explanation has been produced by GW regarding the nature of the Mortal Realms and the connection to the gods/incarnates. GW has formed rather a connection in a mythological language. But I think it can be explained in this way:

-Mortal Realms were formed with the explosion of the winds of magic in the ET. They are worlds made exactly of the substance of each wind of magic.

-All surviving incarnates at the end of ET (that means also: not "killed" through the vortex explosion) became gods of the corresponding nature and attuned to the corresponding mortal realms. Their identity mediates between their mortal origin and their connection to their new nature.

-In the case of winds of magic whose incarnate died (Beasts: Grimgor; Metal: Thorgrim then Balthasar Gelt; Fire: Ungrim then Caradryan), surviving gods of the old world which were already connected to the corresponding wind of magic took the form of the new gods of the mortal realms. 

I like that explanation Turgol, I always felt the incarnates when they looked into the void they did not try hard enough to survive so to speak. Arkhan who is connected to nagash looked into the void and going by the description and what he said I think he saw the mortal realms. Hence why he did not seem all that bothered to die. Perhaps nagash saw that as well hence he did not seem to try all that hard in maintaining his form. I also suspect mannfred is still around in a way because he gave nagash true god hood XD. 

Teclis did make a point that the incarnates when the winds of magic melded with their souls that they are now essentially gods in a sense. 

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I don't think GW intends, or really wants, hard links between the WTW and the Mortal Realms. In-universe, the WTW isn't understood by anyone save the characters who were there. Even the Stormcasts don't understand it. They, and by extention, we, aren't meant to. It's a mythical object with a significance that we can find by going out of the setting itself to understand. There's links, if you care to look. But they don't really mean much. Heck, even Archaon is considered mythical by several Chaos characters, and he's actively trying to murder everything.

 

As such, expecting a definite explanation for each of the returned characters is a bit much. If we hadn't known there was a link, we wouldn't ask "how did the gods become gods". They are. I feel that's how GW wants to treat it, because AoS is a setting with new premises. We're more likely to get an explanation about the Old Ones than the gods at this point.

 

Not trying to be negative here. I think GW has a lot of setting left to flesh out. But with mythological settings like this, delving too far into the divine renders them impotent and lame. We're far more likely to get a Midichlorians situation than anything else.

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20 hours ago, Turgol said:

I don't think the new setting is meant to be "entirely new". It is obviously linked to the old setting, but the link is indeed rather week. In some cases it feels like an excuse. That is however not always the case; in the case of the gods/incarnates and the nature of the mortal realms, they are only understandable in the light of WHFB and the ET. Now, no good explanation has been produced by GW regarding the nature of the Mortal Realms and the connection to the gods/incarnates. GW has formed rather a connection in a mythological language. But I think it can be explained in this way:

-Mortal Realms were formed with the explosion of the winds of magic in the ET. They are worlds made exactly of the substance of each wind of magic.

-All surviving incarnates at the end of ET (that means also: not "killed" through the vortex explosion) became gods of the corresponding nature and attuned to the corresponding mortal realms. Their identity mediates between their mortal origin and their connection to their new nature.

-In the case of winds of magic whose incarnate died (Beasts: Grimgor; Metal: Thorgrim then Balthasar Gelt; Fire: Ungrim then Caradryan), surviving gods of the old world which were already connected to the corresponding wind of magic took the form of the new gods of the mortal realms. 

I can understand your point, but these characters did great things to become so mythical just as you said stormcast/humans know sigmar was just a man at one point but the rest is clouded in mystery. Or new chaos characters know that Archaon has destroyed a world at some point but they don't know how.(Which chaos characters think is bloody awesome) As someone who is obsessed with warhammer lore I just like looking more into things than most people. xD 

It's like greek and roman myth's mortals do great things to ascend to god hood. Which nagash, sigmar etc did in spades before they finally achieved it. All their trails and tribulations that they suffered and went through during the old world made them rise above the rest. 

I personally like the tiny nods to the old world, imagine what the gods of the old world did to get in that position? It makes the whole god thing and cycles of destruction and rebirth very interesting. 

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  • 1 year later...
22 minutes ago, NurglesFirstChosen said:

Do the Glott brothers still exsist in the mortal realms or did they die at the end of the realm gate wars? 

They still exist in the mortal realms. Nurgle shoved them into storage (in 3 clay? pots) at the end of the End Times: Glottkin book as punishment for failing him. Presumably, sometime during the Age of Chaos or Age of Myth, he let them back out.

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THE VENGEFUL SONS OF AZYRHEIM/WD 76

 

Azyrheim. The Celestial City. The Eternal City. The heart of Sigmar’s Celestial Realm, vestige of a Broken World and last sanctuary of the free peoples. How came it to be, this marvel amidst the stars…?

 

 

The Gods of Chaos were triumphant. The doom they had wrought upon the world consumed it, stripped it to its core, tore it from the firmament and sent it spinning across the cosmic reaches of reality. They had secured their ultimate victory, and the heavens rang to their cruel laughter.

 

 

Yet in their pride, in their complacency, they had not destroyed it utterly.

 

 

There still remained of that broken world a metallic core, every mote of its substance saturated with powerful magic. It was to this last hope that Sigmar clung, the final remnant of a reality that the Dark Gods had sought to capsize entirely.

 

 

The spinning core caught the eye of the monstrous constellation Dracothion, the Celestial Drake, whose coils cross the sky like a river of glimmering gems. The great beast saw a kindred spirit in Sigmar. He caught the remnant of the world-that-was in his colossal claws, named it Mallus, and set it in the firmament so he could better admire it. The friendship that grew between God-King and zodiacal dragon began the history of Sigmar’s world anew, and that of many more realms besides.

 

 

THE BROKEN WORLD

The Ruinous Powers had counted their victory complete. But by letting part of the Broken World survive, they had left a dangerous legacy. Its core was an anchor against the storm, a lodestone for the echoing souls of those who sought to deny Chaos its ultimate victory. Memories have great power, especially those of vengeful souls. Those of embittered gods are the most potent of all.

 

 

Like seeds that weather winter to sprout anew in spring, Sigmar and the other lost divinities of that world began to grow stronger once more. All bar the God-King himself slumbered in an unknowable limbo, but the fallen were nourished nonetheless by the ever-shifting magics that saturated Mallus. Their memories and dreams slowly shaped the grand sphere’s eldritch aura, coalescing into forms that had a presence in the material universe. When the suns and moons of the heavens glowed bright, the surface of Mallus surged and flickered with the light of a billion lost souls, hosts of the vengeful that were one moment corporeal, the next as diaphanous and incorporeal as ghosts.

 

 

 

These shadows of a bygone age were not alone. There remained those warriors and seers who had escaped the unbridled destruction of Chaos, who had sheltered in otherworldy havens, passed into mirror dimensions, or been swallowed by the Realm of Chaos only to fight their way back out. But for every soul that somehow clung on to existence, there were thousands who were gone forever. In many ways, it was this grand outrage that gave the survivors a sense of purpose, a bitter need for vengeance, and a material form.

 

 

 

THE GREAT FOUNDING

In his wanderings through the new realms shown to him by Dracothion, Sigmar won the awe and allegiance of these scattered peoples. He led the strongest of them in the Great Founding of Azyr. They laboured under the light of new suns and moons, unceasing in their determination to defy the fates. Slowly, incredibly, the city of Azyrheim was raised upon the mountainous domain bathed by the strange light of Mallus. Its grandeur rose to eclipse that of the ancient cities of man, elf and dwarf. Over long millennia, Azyrheim became the stellar metropolis that now shines bright at the heart of Sigmar’s Celestial Realm.

 

 

 

The Celestial City’s golden spires and citadels reached ever higher, glinting in the benign starlight. Every iota of the old races’ artifice was bent to its creation, their ambitions and ancestral skills combining with those of refugees from other realms to form a domain fit for the God-King himself.

 

 

 

THE DEFIANT FEW

The mortal people were given free rein to form nations within star-spanning Azyr, and many clung to lost cultures and traditions. Those who had long worshipped Sigmar gathered together into religious war-tribes, wishing to do violence in his name. Dour duardin laboured to construct grand fortresses alongside exiled aelf artisans and muscular human masons, all animosities put aside in the name of survival – that, and the everlasting defiance of the Chaos Gods.

 

 

 

Sigmar bent his own godly will to awakening Mallus, to making its power whole, and to unifying his ever-growing peoples under the kingly sigil of Ghal Maraz. Statues and monuments beyond counting were raised to his glory, armies raised once more in his name.

 

 

 

As generations came and went, Azyrheim, the Eternal City, became the fortress of the lost, the stronghold of the dispossessed, the pride of Sigmar’s vengeful sons. The echo of that which had come before had grown not softer, but ever louder and more strident until the clamour of warlike souls filled the heavens. Though some had been driven from their homelands, and others cast adrift on the tides of time, every one of them dreamed of taking their revenge upon the forces of Chaos.

 

 

 

FOR LIFE IS TENACIOUS…

A new history was stitched like a tapestry across the fabric of space, with entire civilisations rising and falling throughout the magical realms that Dracothion had revealed to Sigmar. Wars were fought against the living and the dead, the monstrous and the cunning. Battle was joined across a thousand sprawling continents as Sigmar’s people matched their razored blades against the brute strength of greenskin and gargant, ogor and troggoth. These new realms were not short of horrors, and many of mankind’s ancestral foes had found their own ways back to reality, fighting for supremacy against even stranger denizens – for life is tenacious, no matter how vile.

 

 

 

The Gods of Chaos, ever hungry to corrupt and despoil, looked upon Sigmar’s new reign as it spread across the Mortal Realms and smiled. They sent forth their hordes once more to destroy – and for a long and tortuous time, they were victorious. The lands ran red with blood and the skies burned high above. Wars beyond counting were waged on a monstrous, reality-spanning scale; empires were reduced to bone-strewn ruins and ancient landscapes were twisted and reshaped. Few peoples survived the Age of Chaos and did not bow to the will of the Dark Gods – and of those, even fewer reached the safety of Sigmar’s Celestial Realm.

 

 

 

And yet the shadows of a vengeance long-awaited had not dissipated, but clustered thicker and darker, building like thunderheads upon the horizon of these new realms. When that tempest broke, it would do so with a violence that mortal eyes had never seen…

 

 

 

THE WARS OF THE LOST

The wars between the free citizens of Azyrheim and the monstrosities assailing the Mortal Realms have been waged with merciless fury; only a few have survived to speak of them, and still these are spoken of in hushed whispers when the evening fires burn low. Veteran warriors show the horrific burns they sustained in the Magmadroth Peaks, where the banners of eight daemon legions were raised over the bodies of the brave. Only the arrival of a stampede of lava-beasts ridden by strange duardin bought time enough for a few good men to escape.

 

 

 

Sages bent by the weight of harrowing memories frown upon those who ask of the Night of Madness, when every land save Sigmar’s own was beset by the Riddling Hordes of Tzeentch. As the moons above blazed green-black with warpfire, steadfast allies turned upon each other and even the mightiest cities tore themselves apart. All those old enough to wield a blade know of the Bleak-year, when battlelust spilled from one realm to the next like a fever. Even those tribes and nations who wrested victory from the infected hordes were reduced to shrivelled corpses within a matter of months, consumed from the inside out by their own bloodthirsty desires.

 

 

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On 11-7-2016 at 9:21 PM, Sleboda said:

So,  I'm finally sitting down to read all the Realmgate Wars volumes and then will look at other background materials,  but for now,  I'm confused. 

While I enjoyb seeing all the old names and the evolution of things (honest, I like it), I'm feeling like I missed something.  I mean,  at the end of The End Times,  everyone except Sigmar OR Archaon was dead. 

We know this new world is in continuity with the old,  so it's not like they just hit reset and "reimagined" the World-That-Was.  These are the same characters,  but ...

How?

Did I miss a story somewhere?

I don't think your missing much, it's just important to keep in mind that in the epic Age of Sigmar fantasy saga being dead doesn't mean it's the end. It applies to Order, Chaos and Death for certain and while it's a bit less the case for Destruction Sigmar did work with several different gods from the several different allegiances and their return mend a return of their race and thus characters aswell.

So with this in mind it's even more important to highlight the differences in fantasy setting between WFB and AoS. In WFB being dead mend your mostly dead and this is why 6th to 8th edition no relevant and playable special character really died. WFB didn't even cover what happend to the 5th edition characters all the time, which is why some of them suddenly showed up at the End Times.

In AoS the epic fantasy saga is much like many other myths and this means dying is only one of the many phases a figter can go through. As there are also many daemons in Age of Sigmar there are many warriors who's energy can be disrupted upon death but isn't lost to the aether, in many cases either the Order god (Sigmar), Chaos god or Death god can re-use their warriors spirit again in one way or another.

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