A discussion of the lore of AoS after 7 years

[Kadeton]

6 hours ago, W1tchhunter said:

Isn't Arkhan fully dead now? As well as the other mortarchs mounts.

I was surprised that this wasn't followed up - in Broken Realms when Neferata's dread abyssal died, it seemed so specific and deliberate that I assumed it was supposed to be important. Then Soulblight Gravelords came out, and... she's still riding around on Nagadron with absolutely no comment as to whether the abyssal was somehow resurrected, or if this representation of her is meant to be from before those events. Either one would be fine, but at least acknowledge that something happened!

[GreyGrey]

12 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

I was surprised that this wasn't followed up - in Broken Realms when Neferata's dread abyssal died, it seemed so specific and deliberate that I assumed it was supposed to be important. Then Soulblight Gravelords came out, and... she's still riding around on Nagadron with absolutely no comment as to whether the abyssal was somehow resurrected, or if this representation of her is meant to be from before those events. Either one would be fine, but at least acknowledge that something happened!

Hadn't been following Neferata's story, but it kinda sounds like they're lining up the Mortarchs for new (possibly separate?) kits down the line.

Especially for Arkhan - his dramatic exit in BR seems like an opportunity for him to make a big return. Maybe he and the other Mortarchs (from their shared kit) get models with a bigger base size, to represent them gaining more prominence after Nagash's defeat?

 

[EntMan]

8 hours ago, Dawi not Duardin said:

Why was "Anvilgard" not spelled "Anvil Guard"? Why the super-oddly spelled "Misthåvn" (with a very odd umlaut)? Why are "Fyreslayers" spelled with a "y"?

So that the names are copyrightable would be my guess. 

[Overread]

9 hours ago, Dawi not Duardin said:

This is a very good topic. I was one of the old WHFB players who originally lost interest in the settings with The End Times, so I have a lot of opinions on this. In fact, the situation is worse than me losing interest with The End Times - I originally stopped with WHFB back in like 2004, got interested in WHFB again with The End Times as something finally was happening to that setting... and then they nuked the entire thing. It wasn't until I found I found myself with too much time on my hands in recent years - such as with Corona - that I started having a look at this again and started to reevaluate a bit. 

Here are some negatives in AoS:

• A lot of big picture metaphysical/natural-historical things aren't well-worked out, which makes me lose immersion. A pet peeve of mine is how Stormcast are reforged. It is unclear to me how their souls can grow new bodies. But there are also other big questions. Who built the realmgates? Which civilizations were there before Sigmar arrived (and why were there Dragon Ogres, of all things, there battling Drogrukh and Draconiths)? Is Dracothion Sotek? Why were the other gods imprisoned in various ways? There's too much myth and too little natural history.

Some of this is answered through various lore and stories some isn't. 

Eg the Stormcast reforging is covered quite well and Soul Wars story has a good segment that basically shows you most of the process of how souls are recaptured, stored, then reforged. Basically the process for a soul being reforged is broadly the same as a fresh soul being forged into a Stormcast for the very first time. Which is, in part, why many of them degrade in quality over time. Losing elements of their past and mind, sometimes becoming more and more indoctrinated with Sigmar's instruction to fight and defeat Chaos. Though its random, some are reforged over and over and seem to suffer less; others suffer more. 

Realmgates though do touch on one weakness of the setting which is that GW started a brand new setting in the 3rd age. The history of the Mortal Realms from the 1st age to the 2nd age is basically mostly untouched and that's a huge issue because those ages were what was set the setting up. Instead we jumped into the 3rd and that leaves huge gaps. Sure it creates a mysterious past ,but it also creates oddities. 

Eg it often feels like the Old World only blew up a few hundred years ago, when in reality its thousands of years ago. In theory many of the actual living races should have no memory of it. Only gods, some of the Undead and in general super long lived creatures and exceptions, like Gotrek, should remember it in any detail. Every other character is basically coming out of the Dark Ages of the Chaos Age (2nd age) with many having no memories of before. Even elves and dwarves are basically born either near the start or during the Age of Chaos and thus the knowledge and information lost should be extreme. Granted for many the Old World is kind of like how we might talk about Dinosaurs, however we at least have constant references to them (bones) dug up. Old World in the Mortal Realms is basically 1 hunk of rock that Sigmar hides up 

 

 

 

 

This actually reminds me of another oddity in the realms. Resources. There's a realm entirely made of metals. Where gold and silver is plentiful; where there are lakes of quicksilver and more. This is all super high fantasy right off the front covers of old Record Albums (metal) and is really thematic and cool. However it begs the question of how you can build societies that trade between realms when basically each realm has an abundance of resources in the extreme. It works when the realmgates are dead as the Realm of metal would be food poor but metal rich; however when they trade how do you balance goods when about the only limited material is Ur Gold, which is supposed to be rare and also gobbled up by Khadorans whenever they can get their hands on it .

[Togetak]

I'd be interested to see how much AoS stuff people responding to this thread have read, not in any kind of obnoxious "well if you haven't read X and Y books clearly you can't comment on the lore" way, but mostly because i'm pretty interested in where some of these perspectives and opinions come from.

Just, for example, from the first reply:

Quote

-No "regular human" perspective. All protagonists are supernatural/magical/immortal

What counts as a protagonist, here? The bulk of BL fiction, at least since 2.0, has been about some kind of CoS aligned human as a protagonist, stuff like the book Gloomspite (and Soulbound is all about this! There's sourcebooks for two major CoS and more on the way, and the entire thing approaches the setting from a ground level because you need that to run a ttrpg!), but I still see this as a fairly common criticism of AoS when people are voicing them. Does that come from the way the models present the setting? The core rulebooks or marketing? I think pinpointing what gives that perception of the setting is important, because it can be a pretty useful thing to specifically criticise for doing so.

Just to answer some specific stuff, though

1 hour ago, Overread said:

Eg it often feels like the Old World only blew up a few hundred years ago, when in reality its thousands of years ago. In theory many of the actual living races should have no memory of it. Only gods, some of the Undead and in general super long lived creatures and exceptions, like Gotrek, should remember it in any detail.

This is pretty much the case, the world-that-was isn't really relevant to anyone in the mortal realms and isn't mentioned much by people, just because it's basically mythology, even if it is factually real. Even the gods themselves are sometimes mentioned to not remember it all with perfect recollection, Nagash doesn't seem to remember much of anything of his first mortal life, for example. It's been maybe millions of years as far as the mortal realms are concerned, long enough for other races like the Draconith and Kragnos' people to have naturally formed there and have their own empires rise and fall before civilization evolved in the current mortal races, so the old world just isn't relevant to anyone in the realms that isn't from there, other than groups like the Idoneth who hold specific mythology about it and have specific cultural attachment to the idea of it. The Age of Myth is what gets mentioned a lot, because it's this kind of idolized halcyon days thing that lasted a few thousand years before it all fell apart into the age of chaos, and it is revelant to people in only being a couple generations into their past (or within one, for longer lived species).

 

2 hours ago, Overread said:

This actually reminds me of another oddity in the realms. Resources. There's a realm entirely made of metals. Where gold and silver is plentiful; where there are lakes of quicksilver and more. This is all super high fantasy right off the front covers of old Record Albums (metal) and is really thematic and cool. However it begs the question of how you can build societies that trade between realms when basically each realm has an abundance of resources in the extreme.

The overabundance is what makes inter-realm trade so important, Chamon has lots of precious metals but much less access to crops or agriculture, while Ghyran and Ghur respectively have a lot of those things, and much less metal. Different cultures and civilizations value those resources they have in abundance differently, which makes trade between them important. Most of the mortal realm's currency is functional in nature (commidity currency) because of that, Aqua Ghyranis (water from ghyran imbuned with healing and growth-encouraging properties) is the most prominent of them just because its ability to heal wounds and enhance crop growth is useful in most places, but it's worth much less in places like Ghyran in which there's whole oceans of the stuff. There's other examples of currency like that are a type of shyishian salt that preserves meat for very long periods of time and is valued near universally because of that, though moreso in ghur, but almost every free city also has its own form of centralized coin to ensure there's always some way to exchange currencies without just bartering.

 

Even within realms there's different resources available in different places. Someone living by the sea is able to sell fish to those that don't, even if the ocean is quicksilver or the fish are part plant

[Overread]

I think the thing is a lot of elements of the Mortal Realms are hard to place. Going back to resources and visuals its actually very hard to envision some of the realms and how they function. Remembering that Realmgate travel is rare. The vast majority of peoples are born, raised, live and die within one realm. If they happen to live near a major Realmgate then they might have more access to travel, but even then its just to one realm. 

So things like food are hard to envision when everything is extreme high fantasy. When realms like the Metal realm have living animals with mechanical like parts and mechanical parts to them roaming around.

 

 

GW has basically taken on multiple high fantasy settings all at once and this is a huge challenge to flesh them out into functional worlds and have that functionality something that the average person cna connect with and understand. 

In contrast Old World was basically your bog standard Middle Earth based fantasy setting. Which in itself is based on real world mythologies. So a vast amount of basic "how it works for the average person" information doesn't have to be established. We can work out pretty easily all the basics of how it works. Farmers tend fields; villages send trade to larger towns; most towns will have a pub; coins; trade; transport etc... We can pretty much work it all out. 

Mortal Realms is - really hard to work out. Eg are they using horses or oxen for transport and farm work? Are they using magic, or magical beasts, can they even farm at all. How do you farm in the Realm of Death; or in the Realm of Metal. How do you harvest; how do you tackle an iron rust blizzard going through your crops. What do you do when the fauna is huge hulking behemoths. 

In truth what I'd love to see is GW releasing a Realms Lore book that could answer these questions and more. 

 

 

 

Honestly at the core of the issue for me is that the MR was made as a setting with infinite options to allow GW to do what they wanted without being tied down to any kind of fantasy visual era or setting or style. It works great as a bare bones totally open setting. Thing is that makes it very hard to engage with because its so open. Because there are no limits, no structural elements or such its really hard to put together how it "works". It's hard ot add your own faction or write your own narrative when you've really no idea how to even start. Can you have farms; or hunting; what do they farm or hunt, how do you trade, what do you trade, how can you function if you don't have a realmgate nearby. 

IT also makes victories and losses harder to weigh the impact of. Take the recent event of Morathi taking a whole City of Sigmar. In Old World that would have been a REALLY Big thing. If Nuln fell entirely (as an example) to Skaven instead of resisting, then that would have been a massive impact. Maps would have been redrawn; lore and story elements would have had drastic changes; the political fallout would have been tremendous. Some of these things happen in the Mortal Realms, but also because of the scale of things its still just "1 city" 

 

[Dawi not Duardin]

7 hours ago, Overread said:

Some of this is answered through various lore and stories some isn't. 

Eg the Stormcast reforging is covered quite well and Soul Wars story has a good segment that basically shows you most of the process of how souls are recaptured, stored, then reforged. Basically the process for a soul being reforged is broadly the same as a fresh soul being forged into a Stormcast for the very first time. Which is, in part, why many of them degrade in quality over time. Losing elements of their past and mind, sometimes becoming more and more indoctrinated with Sigmar's instruction to fight and defeat Chaos. Though its random, some are reforged over and over and seem to suffer less; others suffer more. 

I'll just answer this bit because I'm happy to agree on the rest. One background issue here is that people might have different preferences for mythology contra explanations - for me it's not enough that GW says that something happens, in some way, but you want a plausible in-universe explanation of how the things hang together. (Tolkien was exceptionally good at providing this, btw, and I think that's why his universe has survived the test of time so well.) So when it comes to the Stormcast reforging, I think there is a fundamental problem with a Stormcast soul growing a body, and that problem appears both when the soul is taken up to Sigmar the first time and when it is reforged again. It seems to break the division between mind and matter which GW relies on very often in their storytelling. Though admittedly this is a problem in metaphysics/philosophy of mind/cognitive science/psychology that most people people were happy to ignore for ages in real life too, so I realize I have very stringent demands for explanations whereas others might be happier to move past this.

I actually posted a thread about that topic recently. I think we made some progress in that thread, but it's not quite enough because I would like something more explicit from GW than fan theorizing to fill in the dots. The thread is here: 

 

Edited June 4, 2022 by Dawi not Duardin

[Ferban]

I came to the Mortal Realms in 2020 (COVID hobby) near the end of 2.0.  So that may color my perception of things.  I didn't play in the world-that-was and so have no memory or nostalgia for it.  

That said, I think the lore has (mostly) successfully walked a tight line between having concrete events with "canon" events and leaving the world open enough for players to tell their own stories.  The lore feels an awful lot like RPG supplements that throw out a lot of settings and hooks but ultimately leave it to the players to decide where they will interact and what stories they will tell.  

I thought Enoby's rundown on the first page was great.  I wasn't reading those stormcast stories, but I agree if they consistently just showed up and punched people in the face, that would be pretty underwhelming.  Many of the stories I've read of them (including in Thunderstrike and other stories) generally has them barely saving the day and generally at great sacrifice.  So I've enjoyed the stories I've read.  (The Dominion novel is somewhat of an exception).  

I tend to think of the huge setting as a net benefit.  I can set my warriors up in any ol' place in the Realm of Fire (doesn't even have to be in the Parch) and I'm good to go.  And everything in the Realm is infused with fire, I have to think that there are parts of the land that are arable.  Maybe you can't grow rice (which takes a lot of water), but plenty of crops might grow and there are sure to be plants native to Aqshy that are edible. 

The large realms are great for the Path to Glory narratives and for anyone who wants to build significant head canon.  I toyed with the idea of getting into 30k because that starter box has a lot of models.  But there is so much "canon" about how guys have to be painted and what iconography they wear, etc.  It felt like I'd have to do a whole research project just to get my guys painted "right."  I definitely don't have that issue with the AoS.  

As for the story moving forward, by necessity it has to move forward in such a way that it doesn't invalidate people's armies or eliminate units.  If it did, there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth (or teef).  So with that restriction in mind, I think BR was overall positive.  Anvilguard becomes Har Kuron and the Stormcast and DoK have a strained relationship.  Rather than being allies, they now merely have a common enemy in Chaos.  This is a great hook that could be explored in novels and maybe might lead to DoK aligning with Malerian's dark elves (when they arrive) against Sigmar.  So it could be the seed to a greater conflict later. 

Belakor breaking the skies was cool, and that resulted in Grugni coming out to forge better armor for the Stormcasts.  So, while it has little impact on gameplay, it does show that Chaos and Order are escalating the war.  

The only negative for me was Kragnos and Excelsis.  Excelsis was nearly decimated, but ultimately it seems mostly fine?  And Kragnos wanted to destroy Excelsis because it was civilization built near his homeland.  But he gets teleported away and he's ... just fine with it, I guess?  Maybe that gets more explanation in the Kragnos book, which I have yet to read.  If Anvilguard was going away, it seems to me that Excelsis probably should have as well.  You could have had the "survivor of excelsis" if you wanted to have your CoS army from there so that you could keep the rules.  But it would be a great change and open up narrative opportunities if the Spear of Mallus was destroyed or maybe broken and carted off to various Orruk/Ogor/Behemat/Gitz camps.  

But with that gripe aside, I think the lore is moving forward at an appropriate pace and I'm looking forward to the next big shakeup.  Probably right around the time 4.0 launches. 

[Whitefang]

23 hours ago, W1tchhunter said:

Isn't Arkhan fully dead now? As well as the other mortarchs mounts.

Nah, Nagash could just resurrect him after he fixes himself 

Undead mounts are also revivable 

[Whitefang]

On 6/3/2022 at 10:31 PM, CommissarRotke said:

If it's got a model for tabletop, they aren't dying.

Hahah no

Don’t be too confident about that.

[Baron Klatz]

Age of Sigmar lore is simply: Superb.

AoS1 was set on a mythical stage that shown the mind blowing infinite boundaries of the setting and all kinds of tidbits to go off on what eldritch realmscapes, lost utopian architecture and strange cosmic bodies that affect the lands themselves like a low-flying moon in Aqshy that can catch mountain/volcano level objects in it’s orbit.

AoS1-2017 & AoS2 took that telescope into the god-filled heavens and directed it into a magnifying glass to see more of mortals living in those realms and their daily lives as we had won the Seeds of Hope campaign and gave Order & civilization a fighting chance to establish once more and tame the hellscapes Chaos left behind.

And now AoS3 is doing a wonderful balancing act of giving us the strange & surreal with the activities and politics of the gods, god-beasts and constantly changing faces of the living realm continents while also showing the mortals, demigods and creatures living in those lands, their extensive cultures and how they survive and thrive between the wars of gods and the volatile magical realms they settle and trade in.

Age of Sigmar is an incredible setting that gives you all the room you want to have anything from medieval bowman fighting alongside shadow snake women crystallizing daemons with their physical shadow goddess’ power while science fantasy troops in metal airships from a reality of liquid gold oceans and gigantic piston-legged Steam fortresses fire disintegration lasers at magical greenskins calling down meteor strikes from their jeering moon god overhead randomly turning cities into mushroom zombie hives alongside Shyishian Ghoulstars turning those touched by it’s light into undead and shadow daemon stars covering the battlefields in mists & madness.
 

It’s all explained and justified with limitless room to do whatever else you want from making up your own continents to just plopping entire other fantasy genres and videogame settings* into the Mortal Realms as everything can fit seamlessly via even recent lore of the gods(mostly Grungni) teaching their disciples how to forge entire sub-realm dimensions, the cosmic debris of the realms made from multiple worlds and not just the world-that-was, and the Seraphon hiding an entire empire of dragon folk across a realm in pocket dimensions so they can grow and re-establish themselves safely even “in” lands claimed and built over by other peoples centuries ago. Giving endless expansion material for whatever fans want.

*(shout-out to this guy’s Final Fantasy project in the Lumineth threads:

)

 

 

If anything I find the failings on fans/critics more than the setting(yes sorry if this sounds elitist but good lord look at Landohammer going off on the setting with a few books instead of even bothering with any of the wikis)

Like example one: “AoS1 was never grounded and was wacky over-the-top magic battles 24/7!”

Now let’s look at “Warstorm”, the 2nd book released after the first ever AoS book “Gates of Azyr” in 2015:

It was then that he’d be reforged into Thostos and go on the epic Realm edge adventures to protect those calmer innerlands kingdoms as he and the other Stormcasts ventured into places like the Hanging Valleys of Anvrok in the “Quest for Ghal Maraz” campaign whose city of Elixia and it’s silver banshees would be cited again and again to now in the new NightHaunt battletome who has a subfaction from there and continues to build on the lore of the setting established from the get-go:

https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Celemnis

(Also Warstorm is just a good read for it’s epic battles of Celestial Vindicators dual wielding swords to fight a swarm of flying sentient swords, ascend a hoarfrost covered ice mountain in the deserts of Aqshy and the first ever Hero/Stormcast death in the franchise via Khul’s reality cutting ax that sends enemies straight to the realm of chaos:

)

 

Then there’s Landohammer who only has to look at the Black Library site to see anything from Spear of Shadows, City of Secrets, Path to Glory and numerous Freeguild centered short stories like “Hammerhal and other stories” which has a human, lion ranger & ironbreaker guards patrol the city and fight cultists in the Skydocks to protect the various human, aelven and Kharadron trading airships there.

Big shout-out to Tainted Heart if you want a story on a Witch Hunter couple(the recent Hallowed Ground novel confirms this is the norm for witch hunters and Agents of Azyr to work alongside family members to remind them of mercy & humanity) that get to see a human native culture in the silver Chamonian deserts.

https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-age-of-sigmar/novels/ebook-the-tainted-heart.html
 

And then Overread is talking about foods when the 2017 materials established through “City of Secrets” and stories involving Gardus visiting villages that in the Age of Sigmar & Age of Hope the civilizations had to heavily depend on the fishing industry because chaos had tainted the lands so horrifically over the centuries. This would lead to why Deepkin have ample human coastal targets, Mega-Gargant Kraken Eaters are Order-aligned as fellow fishermen and Lumineth were heavily shown to purify the lands and allow wheat to grow again as they healed nature. And now the Dawncrusades where the Ghyran siphons allow crops to be grown on chaos lands as they’re cleansed. 
 

And that’s mostly just the Aqshy focus. 2015 Hammers of Sigmar had the Celestant-prime note that Chamon kingdoms grew grape vineyards(as they’re resistant to toxins), Ghyran has an abundance of foods from fruits, hops and bugs that Hammerhal Ghyra eat as a diet and Shyish in Malign Portents noted a famous inn for Order colonists known for it’s bread bakery as the wheat fields are stirred up by the dead as well the undead farmers in that realm that grow crops in the harsh lands to feed mortal thrall townships under the Soulblight Dynasties.

The Lexicanum has a pretty extensive list on the subject:

https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Cuisine_of_the_Mortal_Realms
 

and of course stuff from Soulbound like tilling the Aqshy deserts:

 

On 6/3/2022 at 10:39 AM, novakai said:

it probably why the dark sky event was resolve somewhat fast and that went into the expansionism of the dawnbringer crusade,

Ironically it was only resolved by the Stormcasts between the new armor, Lord & Knight Relictors being deployed more to empower souls to break the chaos blockage as they did in the Age of Chaos and the newish Soul Bridges in free cities that can pull  lost Stormcasts souls like a beacon and quickly shoot them back to Azyr.

(The Stormcast tome even notes them flexing on it a bit with Tornus the Redeemed and his brotherhood of chaos champions made into Stormcasts braving the Chamon lands under the Cursed Skies considered lost by Azyr in their old armor, slaying the daemon hosts there that destroyed the realmgates, burning their strongholds and raising monuments to all the Stormcasts lost to the Chaos and NightHaunt BR schemes) 

For the rest of Order the Cursed Skies are still bad news. The areas they’re in have the air and ground corrupted and daemons spontaneously manifest, many Dawncrusades get swallowed up by the dark skies and lost, Seraphon ships that fly too close short-circuit and crash while Starborne dissipate and fade away under them, they’re swallowing up aethergold streams and smaller Kharadron skyports, the Maggotkin are infecting leylines in Ghyran that draws the skies to them to counteract the life flood so they can retake & reinfect the lands and even underground isn’t safe as the Cursed Skies mix with the toxic magic air of realms like Aqshy and cause a chaos rain that seeps deep underground making duardin ill and warping Magmadroth nests forcing Fyreslayers to mercy kill the mutated fledglings.

If the Cursed Skies manage to go from a scattered and occasional threat to covering the majority of any Realmsphere then it’s gonna be as bad news as the Nadir threat was in sucking all life from the realms. Order has found some ways to ward them off like with the leylines(which Dawncrusades target) but they need to actually fix the problem before a new Age of Chaos happens.

On 6/3/2022 at 7:07 AM, Landohammer said:

Does anyone care/remember the Necroquake, broken realms, etc?

Oh definitely! The Quest for Ghal Maraz, the 2016 Godbeast Campaign that lead to the Sons of Behemat and global Seeds of Hope campaign too.

Necroquake was huge on shaking up the setting and doing things like unleashing the Deepkin, revealing the Stormvaults with Forbidden Power, having Lake Lethis besieged to free Katakros and lead the Ossiarchs, weaken the Eight-Points connection to the realms which made Archaon do the Warcry to consolidate the scattered & vulnerable chaos kingdoms among many other scenarios that a great deal of players use in their narratives and army backgrounds for why they fight as everything was changed for them.

And Broken Realms had so many epic space battles and god fights that it’s not hard to find  some really cool fan projects like this Nagash vs god-Teclis art in the Realm of Light:

https://www.deviantart.com/thevampiredio/art/Nagash-vs-Teclis-876981485
 

 

On 6/3/2022 at 5:50 PM, W1tchhunter said:

Isn't Arkhan fully dead now? As well as the other mortarchs mounts.

Oh, same thing as when End Times obliterated them. Josh Reynolds noted Nagash just regrows the Mortarchs from his rib bones as they’re apart of him and their mounts are naturally from the Underworlds where they stalk and eat souls in the afterlife.

They all just come right back. The perk of being cursed by the master puppeteer who at times makes your “personal” decisions for you. 
 

1 hour ago, Whitefang said:

Hahah no

Don’t be too confident about that.

I get you’re being cryptic there but yeah it’s gonna happen eventually. Especially now that there’s a bunch of mortal models running around like the Witch Hunters.

Just by the continuing narrative alone and passing decades if not nigh centuries they’re gonna croak unless made soulbound.(something I imagine might be a way around for possible CoS leaders)

Just like the famed Ironweld Architect Valius Maliti who founded the city in 2017 after the Seeds of Hope was noted to have vanished in the lore by 2020 after Malign Portents because him being secretly a Tzeentch champion would’ve been exposed for living over a century.

8 hours ago, Dawi not Duardin said:

Though admittedly this is a problem in metaphysics/philosophy of mind/cognitive science/psychology that most people people were happy to ignore for ages in real life too, so I realize I have very stringent demands for explanations whereas others might be happier to move past this.

 

Well that’s because with Stormcasts their metaphysical souls become physical as I noted on that thread(this how the Thunderbelly Ogors from Chamon are able to eat their soul-Lightning). Body and soul become one so they stop existing if they die, thus those who have problems on the Anvil get stored in statues instead. I likened it to the similar situation vampires have with their immortality being that they can come back from ashes but if truly killed their soul is destroyed and indeed I got the Stormcast tome sometime afterward saying that and Astreia now studies Soulblight for that very reason:

 

Sigmar & Grungni copied the process from Dracothion’s children who die, return to Azyr and their souls harden into Solar Gems to give you an idea where they’re getting it from:

There’s even stranger soul forging practices now like how Praetor souls are forged alongside those they protect to become like aspects of that being up to nearly losing their identity: 

Really love how bizarre that is that makes Stormcast less human and more surreal seraphim beings changing their bodies and souls around.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Baron Klatz

[CommissarRotke]

On 6/3/2022 at 8:02 PM, Dawi not Duardin said:

Why the Latin "Excelsis" in the middle of mostly English names? Why was "Anvilgard" not spelled "Anvil Guard"? Why the super-oddly spelled "Misthåvn" (with a very odd umlaut)? Why are "Fyreslayers" spelled with a "y"? 

Because AOS makes a point to show us that there is no singular Azyrite/Reclaimed/mortal/etc culture? I can get on board with Fyreslayers being for copyright but like... naming places has always been weird and inconsistent. Because that's how real people are. "Anvil Guard" sounds more like a regiment than a city. Misthåvn umlaut so you know to pronounce it as Misthaahven, etc..

[willange]

@Baron Klatz Thanks for your post!  You clearly know a lot more lore (especially 1st ed lore) than I, but the point is clear.  AoS lore holds up generally pretty well when you actually read the stuff!  I've been in this since 2nd edition and I've read every battletome, core book, lots of wiki, every campaign book made since 2nd edition's launch.  I've also read Dominion and plan to read "The Blind King" (or whatever the Idoneth one is called) soon too!  Even just with this relatively small exposure to the lore, it's pretty awesome. 

Honestly the narrative has progressed a lot and many people saying otherwise seem to just not know what happening.  Cursed skies is still a major problem for non-thunderstrike stromcasts (and it'll be the reason for Eternus' "reforgings" in the new StD book).  2 CoS got nearly destroyed which is a cool power-shift in the region (why does it have to be totally destroyed to "count"?).  

Kragnos hasn't been crazy interesting, but he's driving a lot of change in Ghur at least, certainly not nothing... and his arrival also heralded the "real" dragons for stormcast, which I thought was a really cool tie-in.  That same era even brought us the new Kroak model. 

We also had the Necroquake have very permanent effects both game-wise and lore-wise.  Lore-wise because endless spells continue to exist in lore (as of Season of War Thondia at least) and was the whole reason for the "life-quake" response and thus Kragnos and new Sylvaneth models.  Game-wise, 2nd edition (aka necroquake edition) brought us 2 "new" death armies which tons of new models NH and SBGL, plus OBR as a totally new army.  I suppose only NH was directly because of the necroquake, but it made for a really cool "death" edition of AoS with 3 hugely updated armies.

It's just hard for me to understand how people get "The narrative never goes anywhere and nothing ever changes" out of the last 4 years of AoS.  Even as a newcomer to warhammer, that's hardly what I've seen.  40k is cool too, but it has yet to grab my attention and interest the way AoS has, but that really is more of a personal taste thing, I believe.

 

[EccentricCircle]

47 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

Because AOS makes a point to show us that there is no singular Azyrite/Reclaimed/mortal/etc culture? I can get on board with Fyreslayers being for copyright but like... naming places has always been weird and inconsistent. Because that's how real people are. "Anvil Guard" sounds more like a regiment than a city. Misthåvn umlaut so you know to pronounce it as Misthaahven, etc..

I believe that circular accent on tje A comes from Norwegian so is a different stress to the German umlaut. I *think* its an "au", see Alesund in Norway for a pronunciation example.

[Saturmorn Carvilli]

As a very, very, VERY long time player of D&D, and victim of 101 1990s 'original' campaign settings in volumes of spiral bound notebooks which were all Tolkien but ___________.  I find Age of Sigmar a refreshing direction for a Fantasy Setting with a lot of untapped potential.

I applaud GW for creating AoS, their most original setting.  Both WHFB and 40k, did a lot of standing on the shoulders of giants with their cribbing homages of popular fantasy and sci-fi works.  I certainly know there was more to WHFB than: Tolkien but Holy Roman Empire.  However, that really did a lot of the heavy lifting and shorthand for the setting over anything GW actually created.  The same goes for 40k steeped heavily in Dune, Starship Troopers, The Foundation, 2000 AD and a whole host of others.  Both settings made use of more talented fiction with real world history to form both their frameworks and their safety nets to get them where they are today.  Though, certainly both are transformative to be their own thing.

Age of Sigmar doesn't have that.  Unless my gap in Fantasy and Sci-Fi fiction is that wide these days.  Surely, there are elements in AoS that can me compared to other works of fiction, but I don't see the DNA of Tolkien in AoS at all as clearly as I do with WHFB, or Dune with 40k.  Games Workshop is creating the setting far more with the talent they hire to do it.  And no disrespect to any of the authors that have worked on it, they're all more talented than I; but I am sure they'd all agree they pale in comparison to Tolkien, Herbert, Heinlein, Asimov, etc.  So the world building of AoS suffers for it.  And that's before getting into GW being far more of a corporation making 'safe' and marketable content than they were many decades ago. I argue that dark stuff is still there, just out in the margins and/or buried deep between the lines.

Without that framework or safety net, I fear that GW may go back to the grimdark well, like today's movies go to established franchises.  Because in a boardroom meeting it can be demonstrated this performed well and therefor is safe.  I don't want that.  I want GW to continue to work without that safety net and get creative.

The problem is, I have real concerns that GW can't attract and keep the kind of talent AoS needs.  I think Josh Reynolds had a pretty good idea on how to make the Mortal Realms interesting.  But GW let him go.  Which I think is something that will continue to happen, as I suspect GW is too cheap to keep the talent they manage to attract in the first place that could allow the setting to grow and develop in a crowd pleasing way.

Again, I see a lot of potential in Age of Sigmar, or as I like to think of it; Age of Chaos during an inter-Sigmar period.  As Sigmar and his forces have a long way to go before they actually close the Age of Chaos. 

AoS is one of few settings I'd want to use for a D&D game as the DM.  Where the players are tribes people forced to pray to malicious forces for their continued survival.  While told stories around the fire of golden clad boogeymen that ride lightning bolts come to take naughty children away.  As I like the idea of these tribes just trying to survive in a corrupted and evil land where even their would-be saviors are frightening, being both powerful and unknown to their way of life.  But then again, I like the idea of a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting where evil as nearly won with only a few pinholes of light and hope in an attempt to prevent the complete fall of everything.  And even the light and hopeful is unsure if it is too late already.

[Baron Klatz]

30 minutes ago, Saturmorn Carvilli said:

Without that framework or safety net, I fear that GW may go back to the grimdark well, like today's movies go to established franchises.  Because in a boardroom meeting it can be demonstrated this performed well and therefor is safe.  I don't want that.

Tbf, Age of Sigmar is officially a Dark Fantasy setting so there’s always gonna be some grimdark elements. 
 

Like some of the new books set that tone but we’re waaay far away from how Grimdark AoS2 went with every Malign Portent story being grim and full of tragic deaths and failed rescues.

I rarely visit them but even 1D4chan has Age of Sigmar 3rd edition marked down as NobleBright fantasy because it’s on a much more hopeful and lighter note(new golden demigods saving the day against swamp monsters while people settle the lands after a beneficial life magic flood) compared to grim AoS 2nd edition which was all about the huge rise of Death, the Shyish Nadir threatening to devour the entirety of the other realms while billions of tortured screaming NightHaunt flooded almost every fortress and even duardin holds as they went straight through the walls to kill and collect souls even the Stormcasts could lose theirs to and brought down to the black iron pits of Nagash’s afterlife prisons.

the Stormcasts tomes between 2nd & 3rd edition are very good ways to see the tonal shift from mortals made into living weapons in hellish wars to mortal Heroes made into divine immortals striking down on lightning bolts, from grim to bright:

The recent lighter hearted Hamilcar animation on Warhammer+ and how the Stormcasts aided the transformed villagers in the Thondia Tome also push towards a brighter fantasy than the older warhammer franchises of “purge the unclean!”

[Candlelight]

The Realmgate Wars was absolute garbage. Both rulebooks and novels, I'm really surprised the series survived that. I don't think I've ever read worse fantasy novels than those. It was a pure product-push material by GW. Even usually amazing writers such as Wraight and Reynolds were lost as what to do with it. This has always been one of the main GW issues. They use BL to sell plastic crack rather than use it to build interesting stories and create characters.

Luckily, it's getting better. There's a potential for a decent story-telling. Richard Strachan is, in a way, taking over Reynolds, and there are promising writers (Jake Ozga and now French joining AoS as well).

[Dawi not Duardin]

1 hour ago, EccentricCircle said:

I believe that circular accent on tje A comes from Norwegian so is a different stress to the German umlaut. I *think* its an "au", see Alesund in Norway for a pronunciation example.

Yes, that's right. I'm a native Swedish speaker and we use the Å/å (pronouned like "oh" in "Oh, I see") as well as the Ä/ä (pronounced like "ai" in "Claire"), whereas English obviously doesn't. The letters are also sometimes anglicized as "Aa" in the "Å" case or "Ae" in the "Ä" case.

This is actually a key part of why it bugs me: it doesn't fit the English context of Misthaven. ("Håv" in Swedish actually means "fishing net", but that is obviously not what they are going for.) I guess if they had spelled it "Misthäven" it would have made more sense pronounciation-wise, since the "a" in "haven" actually sounds a bit like the "ai" in "Claire". Or they could have gone down the anglicized spelling route to get Misthaaven or Misthaeven (or why not even Mistheaven for extra Sigmarite?). Whereas with the "å" you get a random fishing net in the middle of the word.

Side note: if you compare this to rock bands of decades past that used umlauts, Motörhead used it very skilfully because there it doesn't really change the pronounciation - you could even have written Motrhead and it would have sounded roughly the same - whereas Mötley Crue basically looks unintelligible to Scandinavians. It took me decades to understand that it meant "motley crew" and what that was. I guess Misthåvn is in Mötley Crue territory rather than Motörhead territory.

---

I think all things considered it would have been very easy for them to use a more fantastic names for trademarking purposes than odd English. The difference between names like Kharadron Overlords and Idoneth Deepkin on the one hand, hand Fyreslayers and Misthåvn on the other is immense. Why not stick with developing the in-world languages? They even do that in 40k now, so it comes off as a bit lazy and... well, cartoonish, to not do it here.

 

[Baron Klatz]

4 minutes ago, Dawi not Duardin said:

("Håv" in Swedish actually means "fishing net", but that is obviously not what they are going for.)

I mean it would still be fitting.

It’s a floating city made up hundreds of ships linked together to form islands that can spread out & disperse, it’s known for it’s marines and fishing magical creatures and it’s drug cartels are always spreading out their trades to new cities.

A lot of the city can be associated with a fishing net.

”Whilst normally the port is made up of a massive collection of ships moored to the shores of Cape Tenebrax, the city can be broken up or moved across the Penumbral Sea as necessary.”

“Every form of illicit or contraband goods takes place in the city, narcotics, dark illusory magic and even stolen Chaos weapons, are said to trade hands. Hagg Nar is a major trade partner despite tensions with Khainites and goods traded include shadow-woven silks, illusory charms and prisoners for Khainite sacrifices.

Hunting of sea birds such as gloomshrikes is common specially among the youth as mean of feeding their families. To shoot through the thick ever-present fog they must close their eyes and let their unique intuition guide the arrows. Resources such as wood, stone and metal are acquired through plunder which is a long standing cultural practice for Misthåvn.

One of the biggest exports are the strange and diverse Misthåvn Narcotics which first gained ground in the shadowy markets of Misthåvn. But over the years the drugs have swiftly spread to the black markets of many other Free Cities, and from these centers of trade they spread far and wide, to the point they, and drugs much like them, can be found in most major cities of the Mortal Realms. Scourge Privateers hunt down beasts with magical properties that dwell in the shadow-sea such as the abyssal glatch and the frenzied sawfang. Their corpses are then processed and broken down to produce magical narcotics that can give magical powers when consumed. While this narcotics industry is illegal the Conclave ignores them due to its importance to the city's economy.”

 

[CommissarRotke]

1 hour ago, Saturmorn Carvilli said:

And no disrespect to any of the authors that have worked on it, they're all more talented than I; but I am sure they'd all agree they pale in comparison to Tolkien, Herbert, Heinlein, Asimov, etc.  So the world building of AoS suffers for it.

I also want to point out that just because Tolkien (or any other writer) did X Y Z super well, doesn't mean every single fantasy series is required to check off all of the same boxes.

Hate to say it as a fellow writer but GW is getting what they want to pay for IMO; even the most diehard AOS fan isn't going to crank out awesome lore if they're underpaid. Like you said, Reynolds left BL and it was most likely over money.

 

55 minutes ago, Baron Klatz said:

I rarely visit them but even 1D4chan has Age of Sigmar 3rd edition marked down as NobleBright fantasy

I'd disagree that it's noblebright, and I've called AOS "nobledark" since I started reading lore and books. It is a great choice to make struggle mean something in AOS, however I don't think it's broken into being "noblebright" since it retains a lot of a Warhammer identity.

[Baron Klatz]

2 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

I'd disagree that it's noblebright, and I've called AOS "nobledark"

Oh 100%, they just have a Grimdark vs Nolebright chart and AoS1 & AoS3 ended up on the Noblebright side of things.

It’s definitely Nobledark or “Hopepunk” one Soulbound review called it as it’s still heavy metal demons and the hordes of darkness & undeath controlling the various magical realities that the Order gods have to slowly reclaim one step at a time.

The Rpg once again nailing those vibes that balance out the angelic and bright magi-tech stuff:

 

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QrXWVd

 

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

My basic sense is that for AoS “the lore is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”

GW has several mediums of lore distribution between codexes, “event” books, Black Library, etc.

When I read the comments above I do really get the sense that if your AoS appetite is omnivorous re:context and omnivoracious across all these mediums you’re getting a pretty satisfactory experience.

But either the narrower the focus of WHAT you are looking for and WHERE you’re looking the less likely you are to be satisfied.

From reading across both I think 40k/HH is more evenly distributed (arguably to the point of repetition) than AoS reducing that issue.

[derpherp]

As someone who has started looking into the lore, and has read this whole thread, my impression is that the lore is improving and becoming more likable, but a lot of that is locked behind the books and many people don't want to read the books because they heard the lore was bad. It's a kind of chicken and egg situation. I can't count how many people I've heard who say: "I've heard the gameplay is good, and I love the look of the models, but I don't find the lore likeable." These people have no interest in the time investment to learn the lore, and what little they do hear just isn't compelling enough to grab them and pull them in.

 

Strangely, I feel like what Age of Sigmar needs more than anything to grow and change opinions on the lore right now is a good and popular videogame. An accessible genuinely solid game that gets good word of mouth, a game that is respected by gamers in general and not just AoS hardcore fans, a game that helps solidify the feel of the universe, and if someone asks me where to start with AoS I can point them toward playing it as an introduction that shows the charm of the mortal realms.

 

Pretty much what Dawn of War 1 did for warhammer 40k.

 

I think Games Workshop came to this same conclusion which is why apparently Frontier games is working on a Age of Sigmar RTS due in late 2023.

 

So Age of empires 4 but an Age of Sigmar game? AoE4 was a pretty big success with 26k mostly positive reviews on steam on a full price game which approximately translates to a 100 million dollar plus game, so it does seem like the RTS market has made something of a come back and AoE4 could be the blue print to make an Age of Sigmar RTS. 

It doesnt have to be quite as successful as Age of Empires 4 of course, just being as popular as mechanicus with 8k mostly positive reviews would still be a fantastic thing for the universe and would help a lot to break down this reputational barrier problem it has.

Hopefully Frontier games pulls through and makes a genuinely charming and good game.

 

 

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by derpherp

[Bosskelot]

Having to seek out the "good" lore in black library books is already a failing on GW's part.

As I said in the rumour thread, if an idea is captivating and solidly executed right from the beginning it doesn't require massive amounts of supplementary material or 20 years of expansion to get good. Especially nowadays where, y'know, GW have been doing this for a while now. Or maybe that's the problem; compared to the GW of the 80's, 90's or even early 00's, there's obviously a lot less creative freedom and direct risk-taking going on, plus a more immediate market-based need to justify or provide context for certain model ranges which is being done out of obligation rather than any passion. FEC's lore is probably so barebones and undeveloped because, well, some writer was given a diktat that said "hey we're making the 3 ghoul kits from vampire counts their own faction, write something for it." In that situation you'll be lucky to get something truly compelling or with a lot of meat (HEH) to it. And it's not like you don't get the passion projects happening anymore; that's basically what bringing Genestealer Cults back was.... and it shows. It REALLY shows. Obviously they had some material to work with from 25 years previously, but it was basically an entirely new idea and they executed it flawlessly and created some of the best "new" lore 40k has ever had and one of the most interesting and characterful factions the modern game has.

But again, like I said in the rumour thread, I don't think the AOS writing team is really all that concerned with developing AOS as a setting outside of some very specific cases/factions. Or if they are their priorities and tastes in that respect are very different than what came before and also what a lot of modern fantasy fans are actually interested in. A big thing with WHFB was historical applicability and how a lot of the factions had very detailed histories (that were very much cribbed from our own history) but also had geography, societies and even economies that made logical sense and were easy to engage with. Go and look at a map of the Empire and notice how its settlements all make logical sense in terms of where they are physically and how you can kind of tell at a glance things like population density, likely important political locations, trade routes and even diversity of economies. Maps in AOS are just very haphazard, with some interesting coastlines drawn and some fanciful/evocative names plonked down here and there. Even descriptions of the various locales and realms are focused on high-concept stuff (Overread mentioned a lot of this stuff) that is hard to really relate to or visualise or really engage with beyond the surface level. Now, writing that I sound a little dismissive of that kind of style, but neither of these two approaches has to be good or bad or better than the other. They are different styles.

BUT I think that former style is something that modern fantasy enthusiasts gravitate to more, at least within the tabletop realm and certainly within the more nerdy/obsessive side of things. And I think this is why AOS struggles to really engage with more people. Not only is it a style that many just aren't into, even in Baron Klatz's examples above showing some more detailed expansion on the Realms, none of this stuff is really front and centre when it comes to presentation of the lore. GW just aren't interested in really focusing or shining a light on that sort of stuff; they want their big bombastic deity cosmic fantasy melodrama and they want it front and centre. So even though there might very well be instances and stories of more down to earth things that people can more easily relate to they're just not encouraged to seek it out.

And I do want to counter the idea that AOS is somehow this shining sea of creativity and uniqueness within the space. For one, dismissing WHFB as just ripping off history also ignores that the idea of 16th century HRE Landschnekts fighting Undead Egyptian Mummies is legitimately something you don't see anyone else doing. But on top of that the main posterboys for GW's flagship fantasy IP look like they're straight out of World of Warcraft, giant pauldrons and everything. Or maybe Diablo 3. idk the Blizzard style really just got very homogenized over the past two decades but regardless I've heard the criticism of SCE looking like they're out of Azeroth from plenty of people plenty of times to the point where I think it's a legitimate thing turning people away. Oh and while I'm here, and bearing in mind I like the Lumineth; they are ripping off the Eldar in 40k. Fall from grace linked in with Slaanesh, and Aspect Warrior temples (complete with animal theming!) they have created in order to create a system that can avoid their previous mistakes happening again. Like, High Elves and Craftworld Eldar used to legitimately be different things outside of shared God names and now Lumineth are just fantasy Eldar. Very unique.

[novakai]

56 minutes ago, derpherp said:

As someone who has started looking into the lore, and has read this whole thread, my impression is that the lore is improving and becoming more likable, but a lot of that is locked behind the books and many people don't want to read the books because they heard the lore was bad. It's a kind of chicken and egg situation. I can't count how many people I've heard who say: "I've heard the gameplay is good, and I love the look of the models, but I don't find the lore likeable." These people have no interest in the time investment to learn the lore, and what little they do hear just isn't compelling enough to grab them and pull them in.

 

Strangely, I feel like what Age of Sigmar needs more than anything to grow and change opinions on the lore right now is a good and popular videogame. An accessible genuinely solid game that gets good word of mouth, a game that is respected by gamers in general and not just AoS hardcore fans, a game that helps solidify the feel of the universe, and if someone asks me where to start with AoS I can point them toward playing it as an introduction that shows the charm of the mortal realms.

 

Pretty much what Dawn of War 1 did for warhammer 40k.

 

I think Games Workshop came to this same conclusion which is why apparently Frontier games is working on a Age of Sigmar RTS due in late 2023.

 

So Age of empires 4 but an Age of Sigmar game? AoE4 was a pretty big success with 26k mostly positive reviews on steam on a full price game which approximately translates to a 100 million dollar plus game, so it does seem like the RTS market has made something of a come back and AoE4 could be the blue print to make an Age of Sigmar RTS. 

It doesnt have to be quite as successful as Age of Empires 4 of course, just being as popular as mechanicus with 8k mostly positive reviews would still be a fantastic thing for the universe and would help a lot to break down this reputational barrier problem it has.

Hopefully Frontier games pulls through and makes a genuinely charming and good game.

 

 

 

Funny thing is that the topic that started this thread was the lack of AoS video games from the Skulls event. And most people said it because it’s the lore not being developed enough like 40K and fantasy. Now my opinion in this matter it isn’t the AoS lore that causing the lack of AoS video game but rather how GW licenses out and produce their IP video games and studio interesting in making these games. The two AoS games out currently where given to very small studio who don’t really have the budget to make polish games or a big title. The quality of Warhammer games are just all over the place.

with the Frontier RTS game, it maybe done under the Frontier foundry tag (like the recent Chaos Gate: Daemonhunter game) so it maybe done by a small studio under the backing of Frontier studio. Daemonhunter for the most part is a pretty good game so I do have hope for the AoS RTS if Frontier get a good studio to do it (since they don’t have much prior experience with RTS) or they are designing the game themselves.