Various lore questions

[Longinus]

(I already posted this on Dakka, but I'm crossposting it here too, as this seems to be the AOS place of the internet.)

Okay I continue my efforts to make sense of the lore of this setting. Questions mostly relating to the Free People. 

1) Free Guilds, is there more information about them anywhere except the tiny blurb in the Grand Alliance Order book? What do they actually do, who rules them where are they located? How they relate to the cities? Some names and examples? Anything really. In my head they're some mix of noble houses and mercenary companies, but I really know nothing about them... 

2) Governments. Are there kingdoms? Are free cities independent city states? Who rules them? 

3) Realmagates. Who made them? How common they are? Are there any limitations about their use? Do Stormcast need them or can Sigmar just lightning teleport them from Azyrheim to their destination? 

4) Azyrheim and Sigmar. Is Sigmar physically present in Azyrheim? Is he a literal bloke like Thor in Marvel? Does he stoll around and can you interact with him? Does he personally rule things? Is he in fact the leader of all humans? And how is life in Azyrheim? It must be a literal paradise, why would anyone want to leave? Seem to be pretty safe, so why conquering the other realms is such a big deal? 

5)Wanderers and Sylvaneth. In FB wood elves and dryads used to be pals, but not anymore. So what's the relationship here? Apparently the aelves fled from Ghyran to Azyrheim, which Alarielle didn't like... All of them fled? This seems unlikely, there were humas remaining in the realms during the years chaos was freely stomping around, right? One would imagine some aelves would have stayed as well...

[Nin Win]

I can only partially contribute:

1) Hammerhal and City of Secrets are two books that deal more with these types of cities.  Malign Portents has some stuff as well, though most of it is in short blurbs.

3) Who made the realmgates?  I don't think it's spelled out.  Dracothian shows Sigmar the mortal realms and then realm gates are talked about.  I guess you could claim that Sigmar and the other gods made them, but it's also possible they did not and when Dracothian showed Sigmar the realms, that already included realmgates.

They can do a variety of things, like be corrupted to open directly into the realm of chaos rather than their original destinations.  How common they are is hard to talk about as the realms are gigantic and largely unexplored by the fiction so far.  Sigmar can cast his forces, but the realm gates would allow them return to Azyr to be cast again.  As well the very first AoS story is about the securing of the Gates of Azyr as that would allow far more stormcast to be sent forward more rapidly.

4) Yes, Sigmar is in Azyrheim.  He walks around and talks to people.  

[Ollie Grimwood]

Sigmar can teleport Stormcast without the need for Realmgates but only from Azyr (Sigmaron more precisely I believe)  to other places but not from other places to him. It’s a one way trip so they need to Realmgate it back or die and get reforged.  

The Realms are really diverse they encompass a vast array of Governemental types quite a few interesting ones have been mentioned in the various sources. 

Not all humans worship or follow Sigmar. Quite a few follow the Chaos gods. Spear of Shadows has a human follow of Alarielle and Human followers of Nagash have been heavily hinted in the Malign Portents stuff. It’s highly likely they follow all sorts of gods in the Pantheon

[Greyshadow]

1) Free Guilds. As others have mentioned, you can find more about them in the Black Library books. City of Secrets (cracking book) gives a fairly detailed account of them, as does the start of Spear of Shadows (also great). The Free guild are the professional human soldiers of Sigmar's people. They are organised in to companies and regiments and have corporals, sergeants, junior officers and generals like you would imagine any army. I believe the 'guild' in Free Guild comes from the fact their high command is based in Azyr and that they are independant of the cities they garrison. Their supporting artillery, tanks and air corps are not part of the Free Guild but are from a separate organisation run by the Duardin but do include some human gun crews and engineers too. The city of Excelsis in Ghur has 10 regiments of Freeguild each with different livery. Examples include the Bronze claws, Firewolves and the green jacketed Iron Bulls of Tarsus. The Freeguild are also expeditionary and do go on campaign when they are not defending the free cities. They are a mix of Noble Azyr born men as well as the hardy survivors of the Age of Chaos.

2) Governments. The Free cities are often independent city states but are part of Sigmar's Grand Alliance. Excelsis is ruled by a High Arbiter for example.

3) Realmagates. The origins of these gates are all but lost although the Seraphon do seem to have an understanding of them I believe. These gates are rare and if active are of immense strategic value. Many gates have been corrupted by Chaos and are dangerous to use. Some gates are only partially active and may only work in one direction. The Stormcasts do need Realmgates. They can descend as bolts of lightening from Azyr into the mortal realms but can not return this way except at the moment of their death. They need Realmgates to achieve the return journey when their mission is complete,

4) Azyrheim and Sigmar. Sigmar is physically present in Azyrheim - he is indeed a literal bloke you could meet. You could interact with him. Does he personally rule things? His war is so vast that he leaves the minutiae to others. Their are humans who are not aligned to Sigmar such as the Nagashites of the Crawling City or of course those who worship Chaos. Life in Azyrheim is grand but Sigmar sees the Mortal Realms as his lost empire and is bent on reclaiming them so has ordered his followers to go to war.

5) Sylvanth - I don't know much about them I'm afraid.

Hope that helps

[HorticulusTGA]

To add to my answer on Dakka Dakka...  :

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/756547.page 

...today's MP story gives another look at the Freeguild and how government and alliances may function in the Realms (here, about the Greywater Fastness Free City, found in Season of War : Seeds of Hope, and Season of War : Firestorm). 

https://malignportents.com/story/iron-and-oak/

[Longinus]

That was an interesting story. I am intrigued by those cog-forts, they have now been mentioned several times in the Malign Portents stories, are there more info on them in the BL books? There probably isn't any illustrations of them anywhere? I'm imagining something like Howl's Moving Castle. I hope we will get some point a model for a small cog-fort.

[HorticulusTGA]

16 minutes ago, Longinus said:

That was an interesting story. I am intrigued by those cog-forts, they have now been mentioned several times in the Malign Portents stories, are there more info on them in the BL books? There probably isn't any illustrations of them anywhere? I'm imagining something like Howl's Moving Castle. I hope we will get some point a model for a small cog-fort.

We all hope that ?

The cog-forts where first mentioned in Season of War : Seeds of Hppe, about Hammerhal Aqsha (the campaign booklet, page 2, from the 2016 global campaign) and in Warhammer Quest : Shadow over Hammerhal (the short story introducing the adventure). No artwork as of now.

I hope we'll see Stormkeeps and Cog-forts one day !

 

[Longinus]

What's a Stormkeep?

[HorticulusTGA]

4 minutes ago, Longinus said:

What's a Stormkeep?

Stormcast Eternals fortresses, usually the very first building of a new Free city. It usually evolves into something like this after a few years of magic-sustained engineering, with the help of the Ironweld Arsenals and Dispossessed worker gangs :  

(EDIT : it's the Order equivalent of the Chaos Dreadhold)