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Stormcast should lose their immortality


Icegoat

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I think the Age of Chaos is said to have been 500 years in duration. That said the onset of it was very fast. The Mortal Realms at the time were just not ready and Chaos had spend ages. The Age of Chaos was a vast invasion of Chaos and corruption that swept the lands at an insane speed. Almost all the realms were corrupted very quickly; leaving behind only pockets of resistance; especially once gods like Nagash and Sigmar withdrew and the Everqueen became infected through her link to her people which drove her into hiding.

Essentially the Age of Chaos isn't very long compared to the Age of Myth and the already several hundred year Age of Sigmar. However it was brutal and the corruption goes deep into the ground. It's going to take far longer to cleans the realms than the 500 years it took to corrupt them. 

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On 6/27/2020 at 12:45 PM, Icegoat said:

I've been listening to a lot of the audiobooks of stormcast lately having read the majority of non stormcast aos books and these guys really need some stakes. The fact they cant die begins to bear down  on the reader as you make your way through the books. Like a couple are captured or trapped and basically all the stormcast cry about it because of how sad it is.

But that's not interesting I mean space marines die. Grots die. Aelfs die. The  whole Losing their personality seems to make them better soldiers and less human. So what? surely that is absolutely ideal for waging war against innumerable hordes of madmen.  Sigmar should be delighted. They need to lose the immortality completely even fighting them on the tabletop its hollow because of this. The legions of death with their grinding inexorable undeath are a classic trope having them fighting unearthly godlike sigmarines means realistically sigmar wouldve already won. Stormcast need to be bought down. They just dont fit age of sigmar anymore as they currently are.

I don't know, as someone with a family history of dementia and Alzheimer's, the thought of losing myself more and more hits a really deep-seated fear. Sure, it isn't a mechanical failing, and they are technically immortal, but what a horrible way to exist.  I love that part of their lore and I really love how things like Soulbound explore that even more. 

Also Im not sure how fighting them on the tabletop can be hollow when their immortality isn't linked to any actual rule? Do you mean that it doesn't feel good to 'kill' a bunch of little painty men that don't stay dead once they get packed back up into their cases? Aren't all Warhammer models immortal after a battle, unless you step on them? 

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1 hour ago, Euphanism said:

s? Aren't all Warhammer models immortal after a battle, unless you step on them? 

I never felt more like a god of thunder saying this:  But those ones I truly reforge 😂

 

by which I of course mean convert. 

Edited by Kramer
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Well a big thing lately is narrative campaigns and creating a story through linked games. And when one guy can just say All my army was magically healed back to life it does detract somewhat. The aos rpg will have the same problem. Anyone playing as a stormcast never dies. The fyreslayers not so lucky. I mean spoiler alert but I think everyone thought the end of that everchosen book with katakros was a way big cop out. I get the big gods and demons never die. That's fine.  Always been the case. But when every single liberator and ballista crew can all just be resurrected it is a hollow experience.

I mean gw are never going to make a zombie unit of too many reforged stormcast so it's just always invincible supermen vs thing about to get killed.

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10 minutes ago, Icegoat said:

I get the big gods and demons never die. That's fine.  Always been the case. But when every single liberator and ballista crew can all just be resurrected it is a hollow experience.

If AoS has proven anything with the plethora of returning Old World heroes, it's that you don't have to be a daemon or a demigod to come back from the dead in this universe. 

 

9 minutes ago, Icegoat said:

Well a big thing lately is narrative campaigns and creating a story through linked games. And when one guy can just say All my army was magically healed back to life it does detract somewhat.

A simple conversation can sort that out.  It's a narrative game after all, just agree on a reason that they cannot benefit from reforging. Piece of cake. GW has made a point of showing many ways in which Stormcast can be perma-killed, and the beauty of the Stormvaults is that they're filled with artifacts and beings that Sigmar himself was afraid of! That's pretty much open season for people who want to see Stormcast die for real. You got options man.

 

 

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31 minutes ago, Icegoat said:

Well a big thing lately is narrative campaigns and creating a story through linked games. And when one guy can just say All my army was magically healed back to life it does detract somewhat. The aos rpg will have the same problem. Anyone playing as a stormcast never dies. The fyreslayers not so lucky. I mean spoiler alert but I think everyone thought the end of that everchosen book with katakros was a way big cop out. I get the big gods and demons never die. That's fine.  Always been the case. But when every single liberator and ballista crew can all just be resurrected it is a hollow experience.

I mean gw are never going to make a zombie unit of too many reforged stormcast so it's just always invincible supermen vs thing about to get killed.

I'm certainly not trying to start a fight here, but I really don't understand what you are saying.  I don't know how much of Soulbound you've read but there are absolutely detrimental effects for Stormcast that get reforged too many times. Plus, as it is a TTRPG, your DM can easily control how quick, or long, that reforging takes. (this is ignoring the fact that your DM could literally make everyone immortal if they wanted...or birds...its imagination, yo) Sure, it's not a Real Big Mechanical Drawback when they die, but the memory loss plays amazingly into the role-playing part of the, uh, role-playing game. Imagine meeting a Stormcast that your mother fought with against chaos for many years once you are a full grown adult, but not only does the Stormcast only have faint memories of who she was, he's nothing like the stoic and honorable warrior she told you about. Instead, he's a brutish and cold killer, obsessed with removing even the slightest hint of corruption.

For a 'canon' example of this, the Soul Wars novel also has a Stormcast interacting with her actual child and husband from before she was reforged. To him especially, she's a horrifyingly similar lighting golem to the wife he lost years ago. So yes, immortal, but with a drawback.

In a reverse story, imagine being a Stormcast, and knowing that this little group of people in the city are actually your relatives. But then, you die, and return years later. To you it was an instant, but to them, your name has passed into whispers. You barely recognize their leader, an elderly wizard, as the little girl you waved goodbye to so many years ago. Except now she's waving hello with a tome covered in eyes and feathers...and the impact of your absence is made clear as you cut down your family line permanently. 

Their immortality, in a storytelling sense, is no more or less powerful than anything else. Numerous SCE have been slain permanently, or in at least one case, corrupted by Nagash. To get even more nerdy, my personal lore for my SCE army is that they are the first drafts of reforging, sent away by Sigmar to fight in some obscure areas of Shysh. Each one shows a little too much of their past life as warriors for far less noble causes; a set of purple chains worn as a cape, an avian-blue tint to their eyes, a tendency to enter a rage once blood is scented, and so on. Sure, they are immortal...but considering how Sigmar sees them, do they risk it? What happens if the God King simply decides not to reforge them, and further hide his early attempts? Or what if, because of their original reforging, they are simply so 'broken' that they might only get one more?  So even the concept of immortality can be turned into an interesting story point.

Also if you think the Stormcast are invincible superman I'd like to introduce you to my win/loss ratio. 🙃 But then again, nothing about their immortality plays into the actual game mechanics at all. 

 

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You have to speak troggoth to understand what icegoat is saying. ;)

Immortal =/= invincible as we've seen with even a chaos god being captured.

Stormcast just equal the playing field as Sigmar's champion of Order to match the immortal champions of Chaos. It's that simple and why it's a non-issue.

6 hours ago, Maddpainting said:

We are now in the Age of Sigmar, it was the Age of Myth then the Age of Chaos, we are only starting the Age of Sigmar and winning over against Chaos.

In fact the Age of Sigmar started in 2015 when the Stormcasts began turning the tide in the Realmgate Wars to 2016's All-gates campaign.

This ushered in the beginning of the Age of Hope and about a century timeskip as the Seeds of Hope bloomed into the free cities that began to bring civilization back.

Then came the Age of Intrigue in 2017 that was heralded by Tzeentch using the new cities to further his schemes and Sigmar countered with the outrider/witch-hunter chamber of Vanguards to safeguard the cities and begun the Logisticar chamber for this new age.

Then after the Firestorm campaign seeing new troubles arise for the fledgling fire cities we jump to the Time of Tribulations where Nathan's Necroquake shook the realms to their very aetheric foundations.

AND NOW we've moved even farther ahead into that aftermath with the Soul Wars, Forbidden Powers and the Ossiarchs new siege in the Eight-points which itself took some time as instead of advancing Katakros decided to dig in by having his Harvestors flay the chaos legions and build a line of bone forts to hold their gains.

So we've already gone a few centuries since the first Stormcast blasted down to realms bringing the first clean rains in 500 years and the rays of hope and much of those very Stormcast continue the valiant fight to this day. Age and battle never deterring the faithful Eternal.

6 hours ago, Overread said:

However it was brutal and the corruption goes deep into the ground. It's going to take far longer to cleans the realms than the 500 years it took to corrupt them. 

Indeed and that's why the Age of Hope opened with so many villages and cities focused on the fishing industry since the lands are so corrupted.

A Hammerhal herald article even implied many ales need aetherquartz with the realmstone's purification properties just to be safe to drink.

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9 hours ago, Icegoat said:

I mean gw are never going to make a zombie unit of too many reforged stormcast so it's just always invincible supermen vs thing about to get killed.

I would think its very likely they will at some point.  It's just waaaaaaay to early in the narrative life cycle.

Look at Space Marines in 40K -  Blood Angels have the Red Thirst;   Space Wolves have the Wulfen;   Dark Angels have the Fallen etc.  There is no reason this wouldnt happen to individual Stormhosts.    The thing is that GW have had 30 years  to diversify the SM chapters.  AOS is still only 5 years old (with a somewhat rocky start).  The most, i believe, that we have got so far is a collection of named SE characters from the Hammers of Sigmar.

My guess is that Sigmar will hit that big red button one more time and release a fourth SE chamber, before they diversify stormhosts.  Until then, loose ends are left hanging in the fiction and lore for possible development in future.  If the lore moves forward too quickly, many players wont have enough time / resources / money to enjoy the story as it proceeds.  Again, looking at 40K, the 9Ed boxset shows that the Primaris are changing, too.  They were the clean cut new boys, but as of this summer they will be sporting crusade honors. 

There is still lots of design room in SE.   Personally, I'd like to see a couple of units of  lightning gheist released.  Perhaps, something goes wrong with reforging when the Orruks smash their way into Azyr. 
 

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