A background material misstep?

[TheAntsAreBack]

I’m someone that to be honest was slightly traumatised/baffled by the annihilation of the old world and it’s taken a couple of years of Sigmar's development as a game and as a universe for me to come around to it and to really buy-in and get aboard. Playing catch-up with the background material has been fun but amongst the various questions I have, there is one aspect that I can’t get my head around.

It starts with the place that Old World characters and armies have in the Mortal Worlds. When AoS was released, it seemed to me that GW took the position that they didn’t want to alienate players and their collections so we are asked to buy-in to the idea that these armies exist in the Mortal Realms as well as on the Old World. I can understand that this is a stop-gap really and I can imagine that as time goes on well have more and more armies completely revamped and redesigned for the AoS setting, and that Old World design will gradually drop away. In the meantime we have a few years where armies such as Empire, High Elves, Undead etc and their old design exist in the Mortal Realms. 

I can just about understand this if we think of the Old World as a fragment of the Mortal Realms. We know that the Mortal Realms are vast and varied and that would help reconcile the question as to how these old World designs exist in the eight/nine realms, separated as they are by the cosmos and the planes. We know for example that even the Realm of Life is made up of thousands of regions, some as small as a valley or glade, but some as large as huge continents. If this is the case of all the Realms, then the old world is a pretty insignificant fragment of existence and helps explain, in my mind anyway, how we have our armies in both “universes”.

However, the AoS starter set book says that the Mortal Realms themselves were created out of the destruction of the old world. This makes everything far less coherent and makes little sense. It seems that the eight Realms and everything in them including all those thousands of enormous continents etc were created out of the core of the destroyed Old World. Also that races such as Empire, Elves, etc that existed in the old world were created again from nothing  to exist in the Mortal Realms. 

Surely from a narrative and design point of view it would have made more sense to have had the Mortal Realms and the Old World exist concurrently, and then destroy the Old World, leaving the Mortal Realms as a setting to set AoS? Is not the big-bang element that is the problem in my eyes, it’s the fact that after the spawning of the Mortal Realms, the old designs re-spawn there too.

TL:DR How come GW spawned the entire Mortal Realms out of the Old World in their timeline rather than have the two settings exist concurrently before destroying the old world? Doing the latter would solve a lot of narrative problems.
 

[Killax]

Well... To start out I don't really know what your on about in regards to narrative problems. To me it isn't a problem that the Old World, WFB, is used as a reference for Age of Sigmar. What is much more important to know and realize is that Age of Sigmar largerly is a universe, not a world, which has some fragments of WFB in it.

Fist things first, as you might have missed a reference. The current Mortal Realms of Age of Sigmar are based on the Magic Winds/Lores of WFB. We have Fire, Light, Beast etc. In essence the thing that used to be magic is now enlarged in a whole realm, universe if you will. The difference in this instantly is that Age of Sigmar is much more fantastical as Warhammer Fantasy was. 

The prime reason as to why Games Workshop did not choose for two settings is because it would have two fantasy miniature games thaking up shelf-space. All the while WFB did not sell well at all. The prime reason as to why Age of Sigmar incorporates WFB models is because they did not sell.

Games Workshop is a compagny, they sell miniatures first, games second and all the cool community stuff that has been added now is purely too confirm that GW is all about the more competative/casual mindset, not just competative or tournament focused. See how the Age of Sigmar books are filled with Narrative ideas and how these directly reflect in the game. GW basically put lore first and rules second, something that hasn't been done for WFB since 4th edition.

Quote

How come GW spawned the entire Mortal Realms out of the Old World in their timeline rather than have the two settings exist concurrently before destroying the old world?

1. Warhammer Fantasy didn't sell well enough
2. Age of Sigmar is a new game, which can be played with WFB models aswell, (these models are still thaking up shelf space after all)
3. GW knows that WFB is what also made the compagny big in the good old days. There are enough ideas, sketches and designs made for WFB who translate perfectly to AoS, even better one could say because AoS is allowed to have blends of armies unseen for WFB. The prime advantage there is that you can now play what you want to, so you buy what you want to
 

[TheAntsAreBack]

Sorry Killax, perhaps I didn't explain myself well, because you've missed the point I was making. Of course I understand the relationship between the Realms and the winds of magic and I wasn't suggesting that the two game systems should exist side by side. I'm not arguing that WFB should continue at all and I well understand GW's reasons for killing it off. My point was one of lore. 

 

It seems to me that GW missed a big opportunity to make the timeline make a lot more sense than it does now. The lore as it stands is that the Old World was destroyed during the End Times and the eight Realms were subsequently created in their entirety out of the fragmentary remains of Mallus. This means that all those Old GW designs such as Empire and High Elves etc are said to have been spawned again from nothing into the newly created eight Realms, after the events of the End Times in a different plane and different part of the cosmos. Which leads to the elephant in the room "how did Empire soldiers get here" and "how did High Elves get here". 

If GW had instead chosen to write that the Old World was simply one fragment of the vast eight Realms which in turn are all (and have always been) populated by the traditional GW races, then they could have destroyed it and taken Sigmar and the storyline across the cosmos to other places for the Age of Sigmar game without asking us to buy into the narrative that there was Old World, which was destroyed, and then the eight realms spawned and became populated with Elves, Skaven, Orcs etc. 

 

It's one small change in timeline that solves one of the main narrative elephants in the room of AoS.

 

 

[BaldoBeardo]

I think rather than destruction & rebirth, it's more that Mallus was refracted through each of the winds of magic.
That's how stuff looks similar - there are realm-ed versions all over the place.

The fluff does make reference to survivors from the world-that-was as well.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

[awcamawn]

2 hours ago, TheAntsAreBack said:

It seems that the eight Realms and everything in them including all those thousands of enormous continents etc were created out of the core of the destroyed Old World. Also that races such as Empire, Elves, etc that existed in the old world were created again from nothing  to exist in the Mortal Realms. 

2 hours ago, TheAntsAreBack said:

Is not the big-bang element that is the problem in my eyes, it’s the fact that after the spawning of the Mortal Realms, the old designs re-spawn there too.

 

The Grand Alliance: Order book first goes through the lore and warscrolls of the 4 main Order factions at the time: Stormcast, Seraphon, Sylvaneth, and Fyreslayers. These factions all fit neatly into the mortal realms. Then, before going into the older models they still sell it has a neat section, "The Glory of Azyrheim," where it takes a couple pages loosely explaining the history of Azyrheim and why the various little mini-factions of order (still) exist. In that section there's a mysterious little passage that may even explain some compendium armies and old world stuff:

"Alongside [the hosts of Order] came armies of older, stranger heritage. As Azyrheim had been built to last forever, some called it the Eternal City. However, there was another reason for the moniker. In several quarters of Azyrheim time traveled slowly, or perhaps not at all. There, the folk spoke the common tongue with accents that came not from the vastness of the Mortal Realms, but from a time older still. Few recognized such elder signs and only Sigmar and the Eldritch Council knew the truth, but there could be no doubt those armies were eager to sate long-held vendettas against the Dark Gods." 

There's a lot about the nature of the mortal realms that we do not understand, that maybe even the gods do not fully comprehend, and just about anything is possible. Even armies out of the mists of time marching to "sate long-held vendettas." It's this sort of mystery and sprawling possibility that made the Age of Sigmar lore intriguing for me.

Spoiler

Also I believe in one of the Realmgate books, "Warbeast," it's heavily implied that one character is a/The ice witch/Queen of Kislev (or something, have not read it myself). Maybe some particularly strong souls besides just the gods arrived intact into the birth of the mortal realms?

Not sure about the other Alliances and their books but Order goes on to give a page of fluff for each subfaction and their place within the hosts of Azyrheim and the larger Alliance. The tiny Shadowblades faction with only two units even gets a pretty cool 2 page spread. If you're not satisfied by the blurb of fluff for each kit on the GW webstore, you may check the corresponding Grand Alliance book. Ultimately I don't think there's anything on their webstore that feels like it doesn't belong in the mortal realms. As for compendium stuff, the fey nature of the realms allows many possibilities for creating your own story for how they fit into the world.

Furthermore, (and a little off topic) I do think having somewhat grounded factions (ie the older stuff) like Free Peoples, Dispossessed, and Slaves to Darkness in a high fantasy setting serves to make factions like the Kharadron Overlords and Khorne Bloodbound all the more cool and fantastical. They play a good straight man and provide a foil for the more outlandish stuff and also add scope and breadth to the world, instead of all duardin being either sky duardin or fiery duardin. If there were no 'regular' orruks how would you know the Ironjawz are the biggest and fightiest? You really get a sense for the might of even a lowly Liberator when he's standing next to a Freeguild Guard.

[TheAntsAreBack]

I think the issue for me stems from the passage "In the age of Myth gods walked the lands as men. Sigmar explored eight new magical realms that had been born from the destruction of the world before time". Pg12 of the starter box book.

[BaldoBeardo]

I think the issue for me stems from the passage "In the age of Myth gods walked the lands as men. Sigmar explored eight new magical realms that had been born from the destruction of the world before time". Pg12 of the starter box book.

That doesn't preclude anything surviving though.
The old world was destroyed by being turned inside out and spat out the other side of a magical vortex.
It's not impossible that actual remnants from the old world made it through the process.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

[Nick in York]

I think that much of the current lore of AoS is being told almost from the point of view and understanding of the people living in the Mortal Realms. This means that whilst we know about the Old World and the events there, we are now being told that story as it has been handed down, most likely orally, over 1000s of years.

In this context the passage quoted could be seen as a creation myth. Sure, there maybe some truth in it - perhaps "the world before time" was the Old World or maybe there some stories from the Old World which have got mixed up with other events. Or due to the Age of Chaos, people are drawing on stories of how Chaos led to the destruction of a previous existence to give them hope that there is a possible future after Chaos - the Old World was destroyed but it gave rise to us type of thing.

[Greyshadow]

I remember being riveted when I read the origin story of the Old World for the first time. I didn't expect this would be ever made clear, as most of the history was from the point of view of the Empire. Revealing this lost history of the Old Ones made the setting more compelling. It also inspired me to collect Daemons as I could see history through the eyes of the Chaos Gods. I hope one day, when GW is ready, they will reveal the origin of the Mortal Realms in full.

I have always felt the Moorcockian idea of the coalescing emotions of mortals shaping reality (i.e. the nature of Chaos) is allegorical of the real world development of the Warhammer setting. When the next edition of AoS arrives, expect to see the elements that resonated with the community being amplified, whilst the elements that didn't work as well are diminished. One good thing about the ambiguity we have now is that we can imagine what we like.

My own head cannon:

- It took years for the Old World to tear apart and survivors from all classic races escaped through realm gates

- The Realms are physical planets albeit infused with magic

- Birth of the realms until present day is about 1,500 to 2,000 years

- Proper flesh and blood Lizardmen will return when their exodus is complete

- Artwork by the genius John Blanche is the most authoritative source of information on anything Warhammer and always will be

[Killax]

12 hours ago, TheAntsAreBack said:

Sorry Killax, perhaps I didn't explain myself well, because you've missed the point I was making. Of course I understand the relationship between the Realms and the winds of magic and I wasn't suggesting that the two game systems should exist side by side. I'm not arguing that WFB should continue at all and I well understand GW's reasons for killing it off. My point was one of lore. 

It seems to me that GW missed a big opportunity to make the timeline make a lot more sense than it does now. The lore as it stands is that the Old World was destroyed during the End Times and the eight Realms were subsequently created in their entirety out of the fragmentary remains of Mallus. This means that all those Old GW designs such as Empire and High Elves etc are said to have been spawned again from nothing into the newly created eight Realms, after the events of the End Times in a different plane and different part of the cosmos. Which leads to the elephant in the room "how did Empire soldiers get here" and "how did High Elves get here". 

If GW had instead chosen to write that the Old World was simply one fragment of the vast eight Realms which in turn are all (and have always been) populated by the traditional GW races, then they could have destroyed it and taken Sigmar and the storyline across the cosmos to other places for the Age of Sigmar game without asking us to buy into the narrative that there was Old World, which was destroyed, and then the eight realms spawned and became populated with Elves, Skaven, Orcs etc. 

 

It's one small change in timeline that solves one of the main narrative elephants in the room of AoS.

It's very possible Im still missing the point  But the thing with the lore now is that ultimately it's also not the most relevant part of the game. In many cases it's a supplement. For Age of Sigmar it's the base to continue armies upon, because there allready is a lot of WFB lore and models, I think GW kept it because Age of Sigmar contains a lot of WFB models.

I think that 'more sence' is not really what Age of Sigmar is about. As discussed in other narrative topics, Age of Sigmar is very high fantasy, it is akin to He-Man, Storm and other comics who blend the mythical with fantasy worlds and sci-fi worlds and everything in between. Everything goes in Age of Sigmar (now) because it's a new game with largely new narrative. Removing the WFB narrative could also mean that AoS would be too detached for older WFB fans. 
If you want to get awnsers on how WFB army X or Y get where they are now, the awnser to that is simply said magic. As it isn't explained into detail yet and to me it doesn't feel like a massive gap that it isn't. As before, the 8 mayor Magical Lores became realms, so what is to say that the Faction specific Lores cannot be formed into civilisations? What we see is that there is no 'WFB sence'.

One of the reasons as to why I personally like the way GW has adressed their realms now is because it isn't unlike how GW explained their races and realms back in 1st to 3rd edition. A Fantasy game doesn't have to be a historical correct Fantasy game. Knowing that WFB grew into that, it isn't where the game started at all. 

Having a fantastical explanation as an 'elephant in the room' is not what AoS is about. What AoS is much more about is to let you see how much more magical the place is as WFB. The biggest advantage of this is that armies (and we see that) can be created in completely different styles which caters to any players flavour. Logic is what the narrative tells you is logical. 

[Silchas_Ruin]

Seems like one of the issues you have is the old world turning into 8 realms, and size missmatch. If I remember right the actual physical old world is the moon? above sigmars realm? Which says something about the size compared to each other.

The other thing is they seem to have commited to building the backstory of age of sigmar from the point of view of the people who live there. We are not as much told the actual story of the 8 realms as the myths the people who live there tell each other. Which seems to now be changing as the newest fluff seems to be settling down into creating the time where age of sigmar games are actually happening. while the fist books and stuff are myth for the people who live there now

[TheAntsAreBack]

It's all interesting stuff. Personally I'm looking forward to the time when all the races have been 're-deigned and brought into the high fantasy of AoS. I can't wait to see what they do with Dark Elves for starters :). Seeing Holy Roman Empire State Troops or Brettonians on an AoS table still looks kind of wrong.

[awcamawn]

I am very interested in seeing what they do with aelves for AoS myself!

35 minutes ago, TheAntsAreBack said:

Seeing Holy Roman Empire State Troops or Brettonians on an AoS table still looks kind of wrong.

But the mortal realms are so vast and varied! Who's to say there isn't room for plucky humans and chivalric knights? Especially when some of them ride Pegasuses and hippogryphs and gryphons and such. If Azyrheim has been thriving essentially untouched by chaos for centuries, if not a couple millennia, then there would doubtless be thousands upon thousands (possibly millions) of humans running around. And if the men of those Freeguild Regiments bear some resemblance to some mythic forgotten 'empire' then perhaps that is through some influence of Sigmar's? I can understand where you're coming from though, I just think part of what makes the setting so cool is that practically anything fantasy that GW can dream up could fit into the mortal realms somewhere.

[Killax]

10 hours ago, TheAntsAreBack said:

It's all interesting stuff. Personally I'm looking forward to the time when all the races have been 're-deigned and brought into the high fantasy of AoS. I can't wait to see what they do with Dark Elves for starters :). Seeing Holy Roman Empire State Troops or Brettonians on an AoS table still looks kind of wrong.

Well the thing is that some of the redesigns will not be that much relatable to some WFB fans (Kharadron Overlords as the latest example). A lot of it seems to focus onto a particular unique aspect and expand it. Same with Bloodbound, same with DoT and the upcomming Rotbringers. They all gain the character of some models you used to know but this also means that they are very different from the original or general concept that WFB brought for such armies/models.
I do agree with you that some stuff still looks kind of wrong. But considering the way GW still promotes AoS Im quite happy they didn't drop it altogether. Some might not like that idea but honestly it is an option GW could have went for. 

Moral of GW to me is that 40K is doing extremely well and is extremely unique. WFB on the other hand became a blend of fantasy and historical design. Because of that it also lacked a very specific character 40K had. The Stormcast are indeed the Space Marines of this setting and Chaos is Chaos but what we see now compaired to old WFB is that factions are gone, grand alliances are in and all the armies that make up a grand alliance have a ton of character where in WFB the faction system basically prevented GW from ever going too far in terms of design. 
In my opinion WFB turned out have a creative cap the moment they decided to put a heavy historical influence in there. As before, this wasn't how WFB started out. 

For AoS to completely sink in and be something of itself all we really need is extra patience. I think GW has some great plans for AoS which will come to light the moment it is picked up well enough. To me the designs of AoS globally are good but there multiple small things to improve upon which I hope will happen in the future.