Baron Klatz

Sword-wise, I’m going with Hedonites warband. It has the Persian flair they’re rocking now with their nomadic journeys around the endless realms in search of harems, foods, and the occasional clue for their God’s prison. I imagine Warcry warband to tie in with the failed Slaanesh attack on Excelsis. Remnants scattering away into the hungry wilds which leads them into the Gnarl Wood and see the celestial object as a way to contact Slaanesh(Seraphon did hide many artifacts that could reveal the prison, afterall. 2017 had a short story of them teleporting in a dungeon specifically to foil cultists that found a scrying artifact that could reveal the trapped god) As for AoS this year, I imagine July will be the big announcement for further Thondia developments with the GHB and that rumored next spider-like Ghur Elemental (I hope the legs are made from realmstone, would be a fun contrast to the Krondspine’s central crystal) before it goes back to the update schedule.

Very interesting! Well let me just say you and Darius Hinks did phenomenal jobs crafting such fantastic backgrounds despite the first step restrictions in the Realmgate Wars. His “Hammers of Sigmar” novel really fleshed out how the Bloodbound turned the once civilized and magical realms into hellscapes with the horrified viewpoint of the Aqshy priestess seeing the once prosperous villages turned into hollow ghost towns with the tribesmen wearing daemon costumes to appease their masters while a small drop of spilt blood can cause a swarm of manticores to come down like sharks on lava sailing barges sailing to void-shattered cities where once organized Titans dwelled with only their ghosts left to file in front with massive spears to a repel a assault that happened centuries ago. Your works on the Crawling City from the first Pestilens book was really great for that flavor too as was your work on the Black Rift crater kingdoms that got such positive reviews back when: “The story opens with Orius Adamantine leading his Warrior Chamber of the Hammers of Sigmar against the bloodbound. They are assaulting the crater kingdoms of Tephra in Aqshy, which had very recently been conquered by khorne’s warriors. The world building in this is fantastic. You really get a sense of what this place was like back when it was a functioning kingdom. We only see the kingdom of Klaxus, but all of the other kingdoms got a ton of name drops, and it seems like their is a jungle inside this crater that separates the kingdoms. In fact, it seems like this crater must be massive in size. The world building is never presented to you all at once in an exposition dump either, it’s slowly built up as the Stormcast push their way through the city. It all felt very organic and completely believable within the Realms of AoS.” Your work on that stuff and how willingly you answer fans is a humongous boon to the AoS lexicanum: " Hey Josh, could you help me out with the geography in Black Rift? There's the Tephra Krater, Uryx, Ytalan, Klaxus, and I'm just not sure I have it all straight in my head. Thanks!"-Alex Polimeni “The Tephra Crater contains the Crater Kingdoms, the largest of which is Klaxus, which occupied the northern slopes. Uryx is the capital of Klaxus. The Rim-Citadel of Ytalan is a massive bastion built atop the crater's southern edge, guarding the Great Southern Way into the nameless minor kingdoms below. The Kingdom of Raxul occupies the western slopes of the crater, and is reachable through the ancient lava-tubes which were once the magmahold of a Fyreslayer lodge, now long extinct. The Steam-Ramparts of the rim-kingdom of Balyx provide entry to the eastern slopes, and the arboreal kingdom of Vaxtl. Those are the major points, named in the book.” I don’t think you and the other writers truly realize how much great work you put in to make Age of Sigmar feel like a living breathing setting of that infinite potential you love. I dunno man, even since the start of AoS I was able to sell people on Stormcast and the setting with all the comparisons you can make to Dark Souls with their Ornstein & Looking Glass Knight designs alongside their reforging process making them “go hollow” until they become Lightning golems as living storms encased/contained by the armor with their past identity lost as pure weapons of Order. That stuff draws a lot more heads than you may think with how many people I converted into the Faithful between Reddit and even the salty Dakkadakka forums. At least there’s steps towards it with the transforming Dove maidens of Neos and Sigmar encasing God-beast voices in crystal to empower some of his Stormcasts like the howl of Ulfdengnarl giving the Vanguard their wind & teleport powers. “They are imbued with the death cry of Ulfdengnarl, the Great Wolf of the Howling Winds, a godbeast slain by Sigmar in the Age of Myth whose final wail was encased in crystal. As Stormcast Eternals, they continue their hunt for enemy officers, whilst demonstrating all of the Great Wolf ’s instincts for pursuing and destroying prey.” -Soulbound, Champions of Order. Also did you notice how close the new Krondspine Incarnate looks to your AoS horror descriptions of Ghur spirits?

Basically. Another big factor is that GW didn’t hand out the videogame licensing rights until half-way in 2017. They were waiting until after the global event of the Seeds of Hope campaign to see where players wanting to take the setting(thus Order winning an Age of Hope and building up civilizations and backgrounds) before announcing at the end of 2016 that they had the next 5 years of AoS planned out and would soon give out the license which companies like Cubicle7 grabbed up to start developing the Rpg. And even then the license buyers saw a new edition was in the way so delayed further to see what Malign Portents was about which is what caused Soulbound to get delayed over and over while Stormground & Tempestfall were then set in the new timeline instead of right after the Realmgate Wars. Add the 2020 quarantines and you can see why AoS videogames are taking forever to start up with only the small budget stuff able to use 3 years of dev time instead of the usual 5-6 years. Regardless, the floodgates will open soon for AoS with Frontier’s RTS on the way* and Nexon’s AoS MMO (yeah yeah I know Korea’s bad MTX rap but they did just get a new CEO so he might prove better about it) now that those license and development time hurdles are in the past and we can see more things coming out in the years ahead. Personally would like to see some RPG’s. Deathgate’s point-and-click story adventure in Earth destroyed by a magic vortex and spread into 4 magical realms is Very similar to Age of Sigmar and a great way to show off the lore to a big audience with magic puzzles like going into painting worlds, counting the phase of floating continents to unlock a secret thief guild door or possessing a color-blind dog with necromancy and figuring out how to tell the difference between bottles of colored poisons to save your original body in a zombie prison.(seriously cool ideas like it’s Realm of Fire being the hollow interior of a planet with three suns made from the core causing huge jungles and giant trees to grow) Less on my list but could still be cool with some factions(like Stormcast Vanguard explorers, Kharadron grappling hook marine, acrobatic Lumineth loreseeker, etc) would be something based of the Indie game Dread Delusion, an first-person action platformer in a very surreal reality of floating lands, demons, sky ships, machine gods, seedy towns and wandering benign undead. *(on the RTS I’m completely okay if they just rip-off Dawn of War. Sure I’d love to see something like Age of Empires, Warcraft 3 or Rise of Legends but can’t argue with a system that works. Just replace the desolate landscape maps with bright magical realmscapes with more terrain than just Cover and we’re golden as Sigmarite.) Edit: Oh, also I’m happy the RTS wasn’t in the Skulls event. With it delayed towards the end of next year it’s better they continue putting max effort into it rather than waste time on a teaser trailer now. I’d prefer a really nice trailer in December with the other big games for 2023.

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

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.”

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!”

One metallic step closer to Kharadron getting Gholemkin allies. edit:oh, love the art too. Very industrial alien

Two Heads Ups, 1 is that Cubicle7 has hinted that we should be seeing the cover of the new Era of the Beast supplement soon and it’s new archetypes(like Stormcast Knight-Vexillor and DoK Melusai) 2 is that the Soulbound Sale ends tomorrow so better hurry if you’re gonna! Do it for them 😿:

Trade and Kharadron do go hand in hand(along with a hefty sum of aethergold). Also shout-out to this guy who made a Aetheric Mercenary for his Kharadron. Really shows how nicely the newest 40k stuff can gel with the Kharadron even if not Duardin:

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: 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. 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 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. 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. 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.

Heads up, last week before the sale is over!

Fully agreed. It was really good of them to use the AoS3 announcement trailer and even the first Anvil of Apotheosis customization to link people towards it but stuff like the Soulbound humble bundle and all these great books that let people dive further into the Mortal Realms really need to be advertised more on their front pages. Also, tweet by Elaine Lithgow on her work with The Grund.

You probably already got an answer elsewhere by now but yeah. You can go directly to their store site to get the physical: https://cubicle7games.com/product/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-soulbound-shadows-in-the-mist/ On that note it’s Soulbound’s anniversary so there’s a sale on the Corebook, game master screen and other goodies for a few more days now. @KingBrodd You might be interested in the sale: https://cubicle7games.com/product-category/warhammer-aos/ Also Foundry news! Lastly in case it was missed, Kharadron airship adventure has been out for a few weeks now: The recent Kharadron white dwarf update has some excellent parts that can add to the adventure including the magazine’s climax of ships flying into Chaos to blow up a shield generator and then destroy their older superweapon(a orbital “satellite” aethercannon) so Chaos can’t use it.

I kinda hope it hints that a Maggotkin Underworlds reboot isn’t far off, would love a new Nurgle force that embraced the transformations they found under the Direchasm: But yeah, super happy TGA is back up and the new Warcry Nurglites defending their twisted Ghurian forests & bogs is a treat.(even if it’s chaos vs chaos it’s cool to see the chaos forces outside the Eight-points aren’t gonna welcome the Varanspires advances with open arms but have their own reasons to make civil war rather than just fight for Archaon’s approval) They remind me of the Slagtoth armors from the Monster Hunter series you make from hunting Slagtoth swamp beasts:

Icarus flew too close to the sun but the Lumineth literally Live on it!

Unfortunately not much yet. Hysh only recently opened up to the other realms and I imagine Sylvaneth trying to settle in to a realm where almost every boulder, river, cloud and moon has a sentient spirit in it is a bit crowded for the tree spirits of Ghyran to move in too quickly. The first Lumineth tome does note a procession of Ironbark Sylvaneth traveling there(likely in pilgrimage or to establish an embassy) whose metal veins and affinity for minerals would get along swimmingly with Ymetrica’s mountains and hardy far-traveling monks. https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ironbark_Glade I imagine with the life flood and cosmic roots spreading through the realms we’ll probably see more on them there in the upcoming battletome and vice-versa with the possible Lumineth tome having it’s aelven pilgrims & light spirits go to other places. Just as the Kharadron did who started as solely in Chamon before spreading their skyports to other realms. From the invaluable skydock trades needed for Aqshy & Ghur settlements to flourish to the shadier operations in the port black-markets of Shyish and even the major piratical Skyport of Mhornar recently moved it’s entirety from a mapped region of Chamon to Ulgu: “One really cool new bit is about Barak-Mhornar, which has voluntarily left Chamon. To get to it now, Kharadron have to fly through a realmgate of umbral magic situated where the city used to be, then get led through a series of mist shrouded floating islands before coming to the Skyport itself. The KO of that city also refuse to tell anyone where the skyport is actually located,” (knowing Kharadron maybe they wanted a monopoly on information of Malerion Shadow aelves first. )

Sometimes but even then it can feel like just allies of convenience ready to break their accords with the unnatural Stormcast immortals who break the cycle of life: (And TBF, the abandoning thing keeps getting brought up to bite Alarielle, Sigmar and Grungni in their collective godly arses as it has caused some groves to go rebel against their mother creator, all kinds of tribes to turn against the God-king and go either chaos or literally haunt him as NightHaunt and why the vast majority of duardin give Grungni the stink eye) But yeah, it’s pretty clear the writing from then to the current lore that Wanderers are just in a void of “kinda useful” but don’t fit anywhere and aren’t gonna be pushed for sales when Revenants, Spites and even possible future Kurnothi can do everything they do but better and literally be apart of nature(Lumineth* even take up the “aelves attuning to nature” niche making Wanderers even more redundant). Though for me that fits because even in the world-that-was origins they were gonna get kicked out of the forests by the tree spirits but “fortunately” winter rolled round which put the spirits to sleep and left them super vulnerable to an greenskin Waaagh that nearly made it to the Oak of Ages if the Asrai didn’t return and save them. This convinced the tree spirits they needed them to shore up that weakness. But now that’s not even a worry anymore since Sylvaneth are full elemental spirits able to adapt to literally any environment. Chamon has Sylvaneth with metal in their bark that wield weapons of steel and grow metallic iron-oak tree forests for their duardin allies to shape into fortresses. Aqshy has ash forest Sylvaneth with smoldering charcoal bodies that burn their enemies who threaten their eternally burning woods. And every realm has frost Sylvaneth that excel in the ice and wintry deep snows. The Winterleaf glacial tundras of Ghyran and the vicious Spite-revenants near the frozen forests of northern Thondia in Ghur especially noted for being able to scurry and swarm after trespassers in chest-deep snow they lightly run over the top of and freeze their victims alive in magic ice rivers as a warning to others. Edit: for added insult on that Wanderer General having to give orders outside the Living city thing. I like to imagine it’s the Rootking Duardin who act as messengers to the Sylvaneth authorities just to show off their closer ties than with the aelves. https://sometimesminis.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/root-king-duardin-concepts/amp/ Edit edit: *and Lumineth do a banger job on rocking the nature powers:

Yeah, the 40k vibes match up pretty well with the meteoric javelin crystal-head and clean magi-tech armor from Direchasm. They’re leaning really hard on the space alien/star daemon premise with the recent Space Battles, Lord Kroak’s “Stargate” glow-up and the white dwarf update revealing many of the stars(and a number of moons & planets) in Azyr are actually magi-tech mecha-planetoids they inhabit and control ”The stars are not distant suns but rather distant orbs of pure celestium, devices of stone and gold made by the Old Ones, and other "cosmological bodies". “Also since many of the stars are celestium, they are prophetic in nature. So Astrology is a real, founded, and sensible science in the Mortal Realms. Rather than the invention of scammers” The magazine also noted that several temple ships have crashed due to either the new Ghur magic flood Kragnos unleashed which has caused coalesced pilots to go fully feral or those flying too close to areas infected by the Cursed Skies. To counter this the Seraphon have began sending down increased sorties of Starborne on missions(as they’re less affected by Ghur) to re-establish the Astro Matrix and fix the Geomantric ley-lines to both calm Ghur down and repel the Cursed Skies which are drawn towards the ley-lines. (a nice subtle detail that went kinda unnoticed was the 2019 Seraphon could ally with Sylvaneth but not in 2021 after Broken Realms. The life flood Alarielle caused may have done mostly good but in their eyes it’s just as disruptive to the Astral Matrix balance of the Realms as Kragnos beast flood is that’s turning animals, greenskins and Seraphon feral or making vampires spontaneously mutate into new Vengorian Lords) So it Could be a Warband as Dinojon speculated since there’s plenty of reasons a Seraphon space ship can crash in the Realm of Beasts between the bewildering magic radiation and shifting cursed skies but the sci-fi aesthetic has me wondering if it’s another big push to reboot Seraphon towards their new star daemon glory that AoS gave the badass constellations of space dinos. Pretty much just dried up. 🤷 Fyreslayers did get a new commander trait that let allied duardin use Fyreslayer runes as part of the Duardrazhal though as the half of the Fyreslayers that see Grungni as Grimnir’s kin, with the other half saying he still can’t be forgiven for abandoning his people.(the Kharadron are way worse about it with all the Sky-ports putting listening to Grungni to a vote. Only Barak Thryng voted yes. The rest the Kharadron stick to progress or will even work with the Lumineth when they need a magic-focused solution instead) Not by the Sylvaneth themselves, they still see them all as weak traitors. That’s why they either hang out in the Living City where Alarielle’s pardon protects them or in Greywater with the industrial powers aiding them against the hostile forests. So far Sylvaneth(usually the more wild ones) will slaughter Wanderers and their villages if they get the chance. There’s a reason Sylvaneth have better relations and can ally with the duardin instead of the “traitor marked” aelves that hide in cities.

Recent thread on that here that lists them all: Orders on ones out of stock say it’ll take 180 days so looks like they’re moving to every half-year to help with the storage problems that both 40k & LotR already had to do rotations to assist with. If the ones you want are already gone then you can save up for a spending splurge then. That’s what I did when this news dropped for a bunch of the original Shadespire ones.

You can use a Vengorian Lord for that bit. Some of them rather than embrace their new form as mastery over Death & Beasts will go to extreme lengths of self-denial for their egos that they aren’t total monstrosities. Including making massive elaborate costumes to hide their centaurian half. ”To deny the truth of what has become of them, Vengorians order their minions to do any number of things to hide any reflection of their monstrous form; they will be ordered smash mirrors in advance of their arrival, to construct elaborate ballroom masks and monstrous, form-fitting gowns from the stitched-together flesh of the dead, and to sorcerously rust the armour of enemy troops. Even a goblet of fresh vitae might lead such a beast to catch sight of their dreadful appearance, and so they feed near exclusively upon scabbed and clotted blood.” (That’s my head-canon of certain Victorian killer puppet games like the upcoming “Lies of P”, Realm of Metal city taken over by Death so all the corrupted toy robots/soldiers/ballet dancers are either possessed or Deathrattle in metal & plastic coverings)

This bit of lore from the box is interesting: ”Luckily for the Sylvaneth, Skrittat was always doomed to fail. Unbeknownst to him, his trusted assassin, Deathmaster Virrtik, had been hired by another party keen to see to Skrittat’s downfall. All it took was a well-laid trail of clues allowing the Sylvaneth to follow them back to Aqshy and take their revenge – and stopping the overambitious Skrittat’s rise to power. Leaving her realm for the first time came the Lady of Vines, legendary commander and daughter of Alarielle herself. Cut off from the goddess in her warlike summer aspect, the Lady and her army reap a bloody path straight to Skrittat’s retreating forces, triggering an all-out battle.” My initial theory was daemon Skaven erupting from the cosmic roots digging into Aqshy for this box but they went and made a new narrative that dragged them all into the Realm of Fire anyway. Third box set in Aqshy alongside Fury of the Deep with the acidic coasts of Riftmar and Arena of Shades with ghosts taking Khainite souls on gladiator holiday in former-Anvilgard. Can’t help but think this is pointing to a realm shift next year or next edition being the Realm of Fire now with 3(and possibly more) sets of narrative realm rules and battleplans they could be testing for the new Core Aqshy battle pack.(hope they pick Riftmar realm rules the most, Acid Rains increasing damage and Sulphuric Quicksands hobbling troops make some really fun fights )

Indeed. Also it’s (unfortunately) fair you don’t know the game. It was a super hidden gem of it’s time. I’d say at least give the music a listen. Super Good for something from the Nintendo GameCube era.

Took me a bit but I just realized what they remind me off. They look a lot like the Digger bots from the Metal Arms game(I adored that game) That could be a fun project mixing them with some tech bits & Deathrattle(for the skinny line-limb connections) to make a Glitch Cogmunculus.

Yeah. That wasn’t the pessimist part, he was bashing on all the AoS reveals(which is a good thing in my book. If he doesn’t like them that means AoS is going in the right direction. Yes I very much don’t like him 😛 ) and saying those things as “good news to cheer everyone up”. So there’s little salt on these and likely accurate. We’ll see what happens but it’s about what I expect. There’s already tons of rank-and-flank competitors out there that straight up took advantage of the lose of Brets and TK. They’re not gonna want to waste money trying to capitalize on generic knights and mummies everyone else is doing when the cheap nostalgia option will suffice.

Probably ruins. They were the big heroes and last bastion of Order before everything just kept going down hill for them to comical proportions. Had the known largest empire that spanned multiple realms. From vast metalworks and forges in Aqshy, golden roads through Chamon to their stark Iron fortresses and large holdings even in the Realm of Death. It all got rocked hard by the initial Chaos invasion and shattered it. Their Fyreslayer allies that built their massive defense steambulk walls turned on them for Chaos’ Ur-gold and hit the weak spots of the Great walls with Magmadroth herds had to rally as the last defensive so the countless millions of refugees from the other realms could escape to Azyrheim as Archaon and United Chaos fell upon the last Lantic Bastion. their scattered empire remnants in Shyish that held out on the new hellscapes are infected by Ushoran’s spreading madness and become the first major Flesh-Eater Courts thanks to all their starving peasants. Their empress is zapped up by the God-King to be reforged leaving them even more divided and confused on what’s going on. And the final note on them was after the 2016 Seeds of Hope campaign lead to the Age of Hope and civilizations being built up again in the realms with fleets of Cogforts reclaiming vast tracts of land in Aqshy, the Lantic remnants began a new settlement with them there only for a maw-gate to open and ravenous Ogors to rain down on them snuffing it out. They had the mother of all bad days. Left behind lots of fancy ruins, shattered steamworks and glittering roads tho.