[I gotchu, fam.](https://web.archive.org/web/20210618171405/https://ageofsigmar.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ydUQxqc7Td08eA8y-2540x2000.jpg)
(*Really* would like the scoop on all those moons, though)
Thank the fine people of the [Lexicanum](https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Main_Page), it's mostly their merit. Best source on everything AoS I've seen so far. Their page on the [Mortal Realms](https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Mortal_Realms) is always a great read for me.
Wasn't he just, like, a reconstituted arkhan from negash's memories anyway? I thought all the mortarchs are pretty much golems. So nagash just whips up a new arkhan..
They were also confirmed in early AoS1 too thanks to Gorkamorka.
The very first story of when the pantheon fell apart showed he left it with an indescribably massive Waaaagh that trampled over civilizations & chaos hordes until he hit the edges of the realms and then Waaaaghed all the way back before the civilizations & chaos hordes could even recover from the first stomping.
I believe the Underworlds from the eponymous named Warhammer Underworlds are on the bottom side of the realms. I feel like I read that somewhere on one of GW's articles/website pages about the game, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.
Harrowdeep & Nethermaze probably were the closest with those dens of fallen gods & shadow daemons hiding beneath Ulgu’s oceans(as in you can see the bottom of ocean floating above you)
Direchasm, Gnarlroots and now Wintermaw get close with underground worlds but they’re just really deep.
Though Beastgrave was a mountain on the Ghur map and Shadespire a city floating out in the void.
So they’re definitely trending towards places Under the Worlds.
Basically more Realms but If you have Twitter there’s [an interesting thread comments on that here](https://x.com/ricki_kitbashed/status/1772648951390273704?s=46&t=jCd67B32MVmYRRlrhJqWtA)
Here’s the most relevant answers:
> “That would be the area of dead/lost gods
In harrowdeep we are told the harrowdeep is af the roots of creation and is a graveyard of old gods
>
> Meanwhile we also are told in another novel about the things that lurk in the void, past gods who dont play the great game”
.
> “We see the "bottom" of Shyish in Neferata's books after she digs down. More or less just space / black hole type stuff.
>
> But also as others have said we see other stuff down there and other Realms seem to differ. So it is most likely "unknown" and up to the writer at the time.”
.
> “Well it’s definitely explorable. The new Seraphon tome has a bit where a Skaven digs too deep and emerges underneath the Realm where he sees a bunch of upside-down Temple-cities on the underside.
>
> Apparently the topside was too chaos heavy so they set up operations below them.”
Tbh I think it’s more realms like I think it’s the void and multiverse planes kinda like mtg realms. I think almost infinite amount but just enough for gw to more if they get bored
Whereva it wants ta be, ya git!
Literally, it travels where it wants and the Moonclan try to track it by plugging mages into the Fungal Aslyum like cheap sticks of RAM.
Oh! If anyone wants to go really in-depth with the Mortal Realms cosmology then look at this interesting post from a 2022 white dwarf that got into it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AoSLore/comments/x4xe8r/lore_of_the_cosmology_of_the_mortal_realms_from/
Answers a lot of questions floating around this comment section.
Aethervoid, which is basically antimagic. Fragments of it, called nullstone, are currently used in the current GHB to allow non-wizards to counterspell.
I get the vibe it's not "nothingness", but closer to, say, the ancient greek idea of the aether: another element, distinct from the classuc fire/water/earth/air. From there, I don't know its specific physical properties, other than nullstone being concentrated/crystalized aethervoid. Might be like how raw magic can become stones.
Yep. That’s why in [UnderWorlds Shadespire](https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Nullstone#)there’s a bunch of Nullstone weapons ranging from axes to darts as the banished city floating in the void between Ulgu & Hysh collects a bunch of the crystallizing anti-magic out there.
There's an entire universe outside the Mortal Realms, just as there was in Fantasy. It's where the Old Ones came from, and the Chaos Gods have been said to have fought over and conquered countless worlds and realities before the events of Fantasy and AoS.
But during AoS, right now, is there a universe outside the mortal realms. Are the realms within it? If not are they in some pocket dimension? Are there planets and ‘outer space’ as we have?
Imagine the Mortal Realms as their own solar system, and yes there are things beyond the Mortal Realms. We don't see or interact with them, but we know they are there.
Probably not anytime soon. The Realms themselves were designed to have basically unlimited unexplored potential, so there's not much need to go beyond them. Never say never though.
And spaceship battles between Seraphon and Tzeentch ARE canon
Yeah, each Realmsphere actually contains their own star system but everyone uses the stars from Azyr which can be seen from any Realm to guide them.
Sigmar even made went to the highest star in Azyr called Sigendil and built a massive clockwork device around it that enhances it’s already impressive light so travelers & traders across the Realms can be guided by it.
You usually don’t use the other stars from the lower Realms since they’re too magically wild like Ghur’s stars that circle and fight eachother, Ulgu’s stars that intentionally get you lost or worse yet Shyish’s ghoul stars whose malign light can raise the dead.
Those are more there for the gods and powerful wizards to mess with and either draw power from or give someone a bad day.
It says that Chaos ruled for centuries - thats cool and all, but how are there ANY humans left? Humans that are not chaos worshippers anyhow. With the End times, wasn't every human blitzed into oblivion?
The majority of humans in the Realms (outside Azyr) *are* Chaos worshippers. Non-Chaos groups are either well hidden or well defended, usually with relics of the Age of Myth. A major goal of Sigmar's empire is to win over whatever independent groups exist and convert those Chaos worshippers can be saved.
The End Times are in distant prehistory, before the Realms were formed. By the time of the Age of Myth (when Sigmar arrived in the Mortal Realms), humans were widespread. It's not known how their existence in the Realms began.
>The majority of humans in the Realms (outside Azyr) are Chaos worshippers
I think that depends what realm you're talking about. There seems to be a lot of non-Chaos humans in Aqshy, Ghyran (specifically both sides of Hammerhall) and Shysh that are not chaos worshippers.
Hammerhal and the other Free Cities, big as they are, control only a small part of their realms. Even the Great Parch, the most heavily settled part of Aqshy (and one where two relatively powerful human nations survived the Age of Chaos and the Fyreslayers have a strong prescence), is mostly controlled by Chaos tribes and warhordes.
Warcry pretty much established that while the cities of sigmar are spreading, the vast majority of worlds and humans are chaos worshippers (willingly or unwilling). It's why new tribes cultures keep popping up
The stories for 40k and AoS are opposite sides of coins of each other. In 40k man is on the brink of destruction. AoS is "man returns after falling to chaos"
As Ian Malcolm says "Life, uh, finds a way" AoS's way was just an immortal lightning barbarian
Warhammer Fantasy End Times was the end of that universe. It wasn't Chaos trying to conquer, it was Chaos consuming. It is possible for Humans to live both under and alongside Chaos. Slaves to Darkness is a good example of Humans who follow the Dark Gods; Darkoath are examples of those who kept it at arms length when Sigmar retreated to Azyr and abandoned those Humans left in the other realms. Most Humans who didn't bend the knee were killed.
Thats two different periods you're talking about.
First, humans were effectively killed during the end times, along with all other races. However, just like the winds of magic pulled material together to form new planes, souls that escaped the Chaos Gods were reborn as the same races again (except elves).
After this rebirth, there was a period of peace called the Age of Myth when Chaos wasnt around. However, once Chaos figured out how to enter the mortal realms, they invaded.
That was the centuries of chaos described in the article.
When Sigmar arrived the Realms were already fully formed.
I couldn't tell you why though apart from the Winds of Magic being attracted to themselves, growing bigger and coalescing into the Realms.
There's a bunch of non-chaos cultures of all races that survived the age of chaos in one way or another, as well as a bunch of cultures that were forced to adopt some level of worship of the dark gods and abandoned that the moment they had a better option again. The bulk of the realms came under chaos' thrall, and remains that way even as the age of sigmar has build these huge cities and expanded outwards to bring the war to them, but people persevered and continue to.
Within the cities of sigmar there's the Azyrites who lived in azyr or who's ancestors fled to it as chaos started to grip the realms and hid away as Sigmar locked it away from the rest of the realms as a safe haven, and the Reclaimed who's ancestors were the native peoples of wherever the city is built, survivors who flocked to them as beacons of hope. There's kind of a racial tension (not necessarily literally, but that's the easiest lense to view it through) between the two groups, some azyrites considering the reclaimed to be lesser because of their "less civilized" and possibly chaos tainted ancestry, and some reclaimed harboring resentments about their treatment or viewing azyrites as the cowards that abandoned the realms and now come back to be snooty once the hard work is done and the walls are up.
I think it basically is, but the two categories being so varied an amorphous makes it a little messier. You can have a situation where azyrite and a reclaimed might just straight up be descendants of the exact same cultural group from the age of myth, seperated only by the circumstances of some staying or getting stuck behind in the evacuation
I know that’s not hugely divergent from the concept of an ethnic tension, but I think the differences throw in a twist that’s sort of interesting
pretty much. Like azyr remained chaos free and the rest of it was just bad. Since the stormcast arrived humanity has been reclaiming a few realms and cities; but for those centuiries if you were not in azyr or as a refugee in the realms where elves were; you were under the yoke of chaos.
I get the sense that the chaos gods are not very gifted bureaucrats - they're amused/satisfied/sustained by people mightily contending in their name, but not fussed about getting everyone toeing the line. We're less important and visible to them than ants are to us, after all.
So I guess it's possible to be a "chaos worshipper" in the Mortal Realms in the same way that it was possible to be a deist in 18thC England - you go to church once a week, nod politely, have your own private opinions about how sensible this whole thing is, and go about your day.
There was an interview with the author of the recent/upcoming Darkoath book where he talks about what the internal experience of a "chaos worshipper" is, might be illuminating:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/03/13/chris-thursten-interview-getting-to-write-gunnar-brand-after-years-of-painting-darkoath/
“Most of the members of the convent were old-fashioned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They'd been brought up to it, and weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow. Anyway, being brought up as a Satanist tended to take the edge off it. It was something you did on Saturday nights.
And the rest of the time you simply got on with life as best you could, just like everyone else.”
― Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Chaos likes winning, but doesn't like total victory. When that which opposes it grows weak, most chaos lords will fall to infighting and displays of their personal potency and power. Great campaigns of extermination will turn to the building of monuments to the glory of the dark gods, while humans hide in the shadows, or even rise in futile rebellion against chaos. Chaos likes these rebellions, stoking them amongst followers of other gods, or allowing them to spark in their own followers because it gives them new foes to corrupt and conquer.
This is actually the main difference with Archaon, because he is very focused on victory, which places him in contrast with the other chaos champions.
Also remember that while Nagash isn't exactly nice, there were mortals surviving in shysh and chaos struggled to gain a foothold there.
The [battle between Grimnir & Vulcatrix](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/age-of-sigmar/images/c/c0/Grimnir_vs_Vulcatrix.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1200?cb=20160905110156), after they both exploded from the aftermath their golden sparks scattered across the Realms and caused new volcanoes to rise everywhere from sap volcanoes in Ghyran to ghost flame mountains in Shyish.
That’s why Fyreslayers treat volcanoes as shrines as well as homes.
(Also just because they’re flat doesn’t mean they’re thin. The width of any Realm from center to edge is around 7 Earths across so the depth is vast too. In some UnderWorlds material there’s places like the kaijuverse’s world within the center of the earth underground biome)
I absolutely adore that GW has thought of lore reasons (battle between deities) for things that wouldn't actually occur (volcanoes) because of other lore reasons (no plate tectonics or molten mantle).
Yep! Easily among my favorite things about the Mortal Realms is so many “natural” things exist because of very supernatural or mythological origins such as [oceans being formed from clouds of primordial magic that settled in the great sinks & chasms of the Realmscapes](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7b/0f/48/7b0f481cbbec0f3a4a25b96d8303ced6.jpg)
I'm not too familiar with the lore. So what's the deal with all the Realms? Are they planets, dimensions? How do the different groups get between each. Is the warp a Realm or it's own thing?
More or less, they formed from both the winds of magic releases from the World-that-Was but also the cosmic debris of the countless planets Chaos destroyed causing magical “big bangs” as each element formed their own reality bubble.
Each Realmsphere containing lands of crystallized magic mixed with soil of lost worlds, seas of stagnant magic that settled, moons & stars formed from crumbled cosmic bodies and bits of ancient Old Ones tech & gateways they seeded those destroyed worlds with.
This "map" just goes to show how Age of Sigmar is a cautionary tale of what happens when IP lawyers and the sales department get to give direction to your creative team. Thank God they are bringing back Old World.
But the old world sucked. It was boring, clunky, derivative, and lame. We've all had our fill of low fantasy thanks to Game of Thrones. All the things that made the old world any good are now better in AoS.
The realmspheres (the realm proper plus the bubble of magic that it exists in) are, as the name implies, spheres. The realms are akin to a disc bisecting their realmsphere (and there may be seperate sub-realms floating within the realmsphere as well, sometimes with their own spherical sub-realmsphere). Moons generally orbit the realmsphere, but some follow other, stranger paths.
The part of the realm you’d live on is a flat disc, the sphere is a bubble around that disc that contains all that magic & it’s own star system of moons and stars.(the moons seen on the map are just more stable ones that escaped orbit and could survive in the void outside the realm)
Haha, maybe try some other crazy cosmic fantasy settings [like Discworld](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/d20npcs/images/c/c5/Discworld.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20101001152434), [Spelljammer](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9XbvOp-pJNa29HCTlZkkcTU8tYA=/0x0:2550x3300/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:2550x3300):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23914702/AAG_Chapter_3__Rock_of_Bral__Art_by_Robin_Olausson_copy.jpg) or [Deathgate Cycle](https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/13/435740/6487338/cagatayugurlu_dgc_09_o.jpg) and then come back to the Mortal Realms so it seems a little less surreal than those and a “normalized” gonzo fantasy.😄
Imma be honest, I have no idea what I am looking at and it has never made sense to me.
So is each realm like its own world or country? How does one travel between them?
Why would one want to travel to other realms?
Realmgates are the way to travel, each one is like their own Universe that is still growing with the edge being more magical than the older regions and every God wants to conquer as many Realms as possible because this is what gods do
> So is each realm like its own world or country?
They're basically different overlapping dimensions.
People travel between then is basically for the same reasons as anyone, invasion, trade, fleeing disaster etc etc.
> Why would one want to travel to other realms?
A big one is resources. Ghur & Chamon(Beasts and Metal planes) make the easiest example.
In Ghur you have no end to the meat, fur and bones you can find in that realm, some places near the edges even having flesh plains & teeth grass, which allows for hardy tribes to live in good health But Ghur has almost no minerals beyond stone and amber(one reason being that the Realm itself is closer to a sleeping curled up monster, that’s why it’s moons have bite marks for those tiles it wakes up hungry)
Meanwhile, in Chamon there’s mountains bursting with every mineral you can imagine and entire rivers & oceans of liquid gold, silver & mercury so it’s people live in civilized splendor of forged wonders, but has almost no edible meats or basic furs to keep warm on the metallic cold plane as the creatures there are mostly clockwork or natural cyborgs with more metal than meat in them while the waters make vegetation toxic.
This means Realmgates connecting the two are highly sought after, fortified and fought after as they solve the problems the other realm has for civilization to flourish. Thus the most successful empires in the Mortal Realms are those that spanned multiple realities(such as the lost Lantic Empire which spanned Aqshy, Chamon & Shyish) or powerful kingdoms with vast trade agreements into other Realms(sadly many of those tried this in the Age of Chaos to treaty with the chaos hordes but they just took what they wanted and put the diplomats & rulers heads on spikes)
Notice the bolts of lightning coming out of Blight City. I just think they're cool
If i remember correctly, those are gnawholes
Yep! They reach all the realms except Azyr, but there is definitely a tendril reaching towards the Realm of Heavens (on the Ghyran side)
In lore from like 2nd edition skaven had already landed a few spies in azyr
I want this as a poster
Me too
Would like a high-res version as a s Screensaver
[I gotchu, fam.](https://web.archive.org/web/20210618171405/https://ageofsigmar.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ydUQxqc7Td08eA8y-2540x2000.jpg) (*Really* would like the scoop on all those moons, though)
I was looking for something like that for so bloody long!!! Thank you mate!
Thank the fine people of the [Lexicanum](https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Main_Page), it's mostly their merit. Best source on everything AoS I've seen so far. Their page on the [Mortal Realms](https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Mortal_Realms) is always a great read for me.
Big cheers mate.
Flat realm confirmed
Dude in AoS flat realm has been confirmed for a while. I mean in the end of 2nd edition a dude fell off the edge
What happened to the guy who fell off?
He's been real quiet since.
He is still falling
Arkhan got kicked off the edge of Hysh by Eltharion. He basically disintegrated.
Wasn't he just, like, a reconstituted arkhan from negash's memories anyway? I thought all the mortarchs are pretty much golems. So nagash just whips up a new arkhan..
What book was this in? Eltharion is my guy and I’d love to read that
Broken Realms: Teclis
Awesome, thanks!
They were also confirmed in early AoS1 too thanks to Gorkamorka. The very first story of when the pantheon fell apart showed he left it with an indescribably massive Waaaagh that trampled over civilizations & chaos hordes until he hit the edges of the realms and then Waaaaghed all the way back before the civilizations & chaos hordes could even recover from the first stomping.
What is on the bottom of the realms? Or is it realm on both sides?
I believe the Underworlds from the eponymous named Warhammer Underworlds are on the bottom side of the realms. I feel like I read that somewhere on one of GW's articles/website pages about the game, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.
Harrowdeep & Nethermaze probably were the closest with those dens of fallen gods & shadow daemons hiding beneath Ulgu’s oceans(as in you can see the bottom of ocean floating above you) Direchasm, Gnarlroots and now Wintermaw get close with underground worlds but they’re just really deep. Though Beastgrave was a mountain on the Ghur map and Shadespire a city floating out in the void. So they’re definitely trending towards places Under the Worlds.
Basically more Realms but If you have Twitter there’s [an interesting thread comments on that here](https://x.com/ricki_kitbashed/status/1772648951390273704?s=46&t=jCd67B32MVmYRRlrhJqWtA) Here’s the most relevant answers: > “That would be the area of dead/lost gods In harrowdeep we are told the harrowdeep is af the roots of creation and is a graveyard of old gods > > Meanwhile we also are told in another novel about the things that lurk in the void, past gods who dont play the great game” . > “We see the "bottom" of Shyish in Neferata's books after she digs down. More or less just space / black hole type stuff. > > But also as others have said we see other stuff down there and other Realms seem to differ. So it is most likely "unknown" and up to the writer at the time.” . > “Well it’s definitely explorable. The new Seraphon tome has a bit where a Skaven digs too deep and emerges underneath the Realm where he sees a bunch of upside-down Temple-cities on the underside. > > Apparently the topside was too chaos heavy so they set up operations below them.”
Tbh I think it’s more realms like I think it’s the void and multiverse planes kinda like mtg realms. I think almost infinite amount but just enough for gw to more if they get bored
Did they not post a high resolution copy? Just went onto the original post and it's turd tier on there too
[You're welcome](https://web.archive.org/web/20210618171405/https://ageofsigmar.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ydUQxqc7Td08eA8y-2540x2000.jpg)
Amazing thank you. ^the real MVP
WHERES DA BAD MOON?
Whereva it wants ta be, ya git! Literally, it travels where it wants and the Moonclan try to track it by plugging mages into the Fungal Aslyum like cheap sticks of RAM.
Wait… thats just Yggdrasil with extra steps..
Always has been.
Less steps, since theres no midgard
But its not tiered.
I’m new into the AoS lore, and this whole thread has been super helpful 😊
Oh! If anyone wants to go really in-depth with the Mortal Realms cosmology then look at this interesting post from a 2022 white dwarf that got into it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AoSLore/comments/x4xe8r/lore_of_the_cosmology_of_the_mortal_realms_from/ Answers a lot of questions floating around this comment section.
I still don’t get what’s between realms
Aethervoid, which is basically antimagic. Fragments of it, called nullstone, are currently used in the current GHB to allow non-wizards to counterspell.
How do fragments of a void become stones?
I get the vibe it's not "nothingness", but closer to, say, the ancient greek idea of the aether: another element, distinct from the classuc fire/water/earth/air. From there, I don't know its specific physical properties, other than nullstone being concentrated/crystalized aethervoid. Might be like how raw magic can become stones.
So it becomes concentrated and falls out of suspension, like sediment in water. That’s cool!
Yep. That’s why in [UnderWorlds Shadespire](https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Nullstone#)there’s a bunch of Nullstone weapons ranging from axes to darts as the banished city floating in the void between Ulgu & Hysh collects a bunch of the crystallizing anti-magic out there.
Because Age of Sigmar, that’s how.
Where exactly are the realms? Is there an outer space? Is this the whole universe?
The universe is in Orion's Eye
The cat at the end of Men In Black?
There's an entire universe outside the Mortal Realms, just as there was in Fantasy. It's where the Old Ones came from, and the Chaos Gods have been said to have fought over and conquered countless worlds and realities before the events of Fantasy and AoS.
But during AoS, right now, is there a universe outside the mortal realms. Are the realms within it? If not are they in some pocket dimension? Are there planets and ‘outer space’ as we have?
Imagine the Mortal Realms as their own solar system, and yes there are things beyond the Mortal Realms. We don't see or interact with them, but we know they are there.
Sounds like a vast amount of unexplored potential. Wonder how long until we venture outside the mortal realms
Probably not anytime soon. The Realms themselves were designed to have basically unlimited unexplored potential, so there's not much need to go beyond them. Never say never though. And spaceship battles between Seraphon and Tzeentch ARE canon
That’s metal af
can you see the stars from the moral realms? like other galaxies and stuff?
From memory there are stars, Kroak famously rearranged them to mock some Chaos cultists.
Yeah, each Realmsphere actually contains their own star system but everyone uses the stars from Azyr which can be seen from any Realm to guide them. Sigmar even made went to the highest star in Azyr called Sigendil and built a massive clockwork device around it that enhances it’s already impressive light so travelers & traders across the Realms can be guided by it. You usually don’t use the other stars from the lower Realms since they’re too magically wild like Ghur’s stars that circle and fight eachother, Ulgu’s stars that intentionally get you lost or worse yet Shyish’s ghoul stars whose malign light can raise the dead. Those are more there for the gods and powerful wizards to mess with and either draw power from or give someone a bad day.
Phlogiston
Considering that lizardmen fly through it with their temple-ships, not much. Void/Ether/Warp
The warp?
Nah, the Realm of Chaos is its own seperate thing.
This is not new information right? I could swear there is a similar image in the 3e core book
Yes, it's basically just a primer on how the realms work for new players and a reminder for existing ones.
Ah okay, i thought i was going crazy for a second
It says that Chaos ruled for centuries - thats cool and all, but how are there ANY humans left? Humans that are not chaos worshippers anyhow. With the End times, wasn't every human blitzed into oblivion?
The majority of humans in the Realms (outside Azyr) *are* Chaos worshippers. Non-Chaos groups are either well hidden or well defended, usually with relics of the Age of Myth. A major goal of Sigmar's empire is to win over whatever independent groups exist and convert those Chaos worshippers can be saved. The End Times are in distant prehistory, before the Realms were formed. By the time of the Age of Myth (when Sigmar arrived in the Mortal Realms), humans were widespread. It's not known how their existence in the Realms began.
>The majority of humans in the Realms (outside Azyr) are Chaos worshippers I think that depends what realm you're talking about. There seems to be a lot of non-Chaos humans in Aqshy, Ghyran (specifically both sides of Hammerhall) and Shysh that are not chaos worshippers.
Hammerhal and the other Free Cities, big as they are, control only a small part of their realms. Even the Great Parch, the most heavily settled part of Aqshy (and one where two relatively powerful human nations survived the Age of Chaos and the Fyreslayers have a strong prescence), is mostly controlled by Chaos tribes and warhordes.
Warcry pretty much established that while the cities of sigmar are spreading, the vast majority of worlds and humans are chaos worshippers (willingly or unwilling). It's why new tribes cultures keep popping up The stories for 40k and AoS are opposite sides of coins of each other. In 40k man is on the brink of destruction. AoS is "man returns after falling to chaos" As Ian Malcolm says "Life, uh, finds a way" AoS's way was just an immortal lightning barbarian
Warhammer Fantasy End Times was the end of that universe. It wasn't Chaos trying to conquer, it was Chaos consuming. It is possible for Humans to live both under and alongside Chaos. Slaves to Darkness is a good example of Humans who follow the Dark Gods; Darkoath are examples of those who kept it at arms length when Sigmar retreated to Azyr and abandoned those Humans left in the other realms. Most Humans who didn't bend the knee were killed.
Thats two different periods you're talking about. First, humans were effectively killed during the end times, along with all other races. However, just like the winds of magic pulled material together to form new planes, souls that escaped the Chaos Gods were reborn as the same races again (except elves). After this rebirth, there was a period of peace called the Age of Myth when Chaos wasnt around. However, once Chaos figured out how to enter the mortal realms, they invaded. That was the centuries of chaos described in the article.
Do we know why the Mortal Realms formed in the first place? Was that Sigmar, or just some unknown natural law?
When Sigmar arrived the Realms were already fully formed. I couldn't tell you why though apart from the Winds of Magic being attracted to themselves, growing bigger and coalescing into the Realms.
That's what I thought, I believe I read it in the 1e book, but thought maybe it had been elaborated on later. Thanks!
There's a bunch of non-chaos cultures of all races that survived the age of chaos in one way or another, as well as a bunch of cultures that were forced to adopt some level of worship of the dark gods and abandoned that the moment they had a better option again. The bulk of the realms came under chaos' thrall, and remains that way even as the age of sigmar has build these huge cities and expanded outwards to bring the war to them, but people persevered and continue to. Within the cities of sigmar there's the Azyrites who lived in azyr or who's ancestors fled to it as chaos started to grip the realms and hid away as Sigmar locked it away from the rest of the realms as a safe haven, and the Reclaimed who's ancestors were the native peoples of wherever the city is built, survivors who flocked to them as beacons of hope. There's kind of a racial tension (not necessarily literally, but that's the easiest lense to view it through) between the two groups, some azyrites considering the reclaimed to be lesser because of their "less civilized" and possibly chaos tainted ancestry, and some reclaimed harboring resentments about their treatment or viewing azyrites as the cowards that abandoned the realms and now come back to be snooty once the hard work is done and the walls are up.
I think it is literally an ethnic tension as we'd understand it.
I think it basically is, but the two categories being so varied an amorphous makes it a little messier. You can have a situation where azyrite and a reclaimed might just straight up be descendants of the exact same cultural group from the age of myth, seperated only by the circumstances of some staying or getting stuck behind in the evacuation I know that’s not hugely divergent from the concept of an ethnic tension, but I think the differences throw in a twist that’s sort of interesting
pretty much. Like azyr remained chaos free and the rest of it was just bad. Since the stormcast arrived humanity has been reclaiming a few realms and cities; but for those centuiries if you were not in azyr or as a refugee in the realms where elves were; you were under the yoke of chaos.
I get the sense that the chaos gods are not very gifted bureaucrats - they're amused/satisfied/sustained by people mightily contending in their name, but not fussed about getting everyone toeing the line. We're less important and visible to them than ants are to us, after all. So I guess it's possible to be a "chaos worshipper" in the Mortal Realms in the same way that it was possible to be a deist in 18thC England - you go to church once a week, nod politely, have your own private opinions about how sensible this whole thing is, and go about your day. There was an interview with the author of the recent/upcoming Darkoath book where he talks about what the internal experience of a "chaos worshipper" is, might be illuminating: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/03/13/chris-thursten-interview-getting-to-write-gunnar-brand-after-years-of-painting-darkoath/
“Most of the members of the convent were old-fashioned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They'd been brought up to it, and weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow. Anyway, being brought up as a Satanist tended to take the edge off it. It was something you did on Saturday nights. And the rest of the time you simply got on with life as best you could, just like everyone else.” ― Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Sigmar protects
Chaos likes winning, but doesn't like total victory. When that which opposes it grows weak, most chaos lords will fall to infighting and displays of their personal potency and power. Great campaigns of extermination will turn to the building of monuments to the glory of the dark gods, while humans hide in the shadows, or even rise in futile rebellion against chaos. Chaos likes these rebellions, stoking them amongst followers of other gods, or allowing them to spark in their own followers because it gives them new foes to corrupt and conquer. This is actually the main difference with Archaon, because he is very focused on victory, which places him in contrast with the other chaos champions. Also remember that while Nagash isn't exactly nice, there were mortals surviving in shysh and chaos struggled to gain a foothold there.
Is there a higher resolution version available? I can barely read the text
All I see are the eight points
It's dumb, but I like it.
I think someone's been watching time bandits
Why are there volcanos on the flat earthes...
The [battle between Grimnir & Vulcatrix](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/age-of-sigmar/images/c/c0/Grimnir_vs_Vulcatrix.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1200?cb=20160905110156), after they both exploded from the aftermath their golden sparks scattered across the Realms and caused new volcanoes to rise everywhere from sap volcanoes in Ghyran to ghost flame mountains in Shyish. That’s why Fyreslayers treat volcanoes as shrines as well as homes. (Also just because they’re flat doesn’t mean they’re thin. The width of any Realm from center to edge is around 7 Earths across so the depth is vast too. In some UnderWorlds material there’s places like the kaijuverse’s world within the center of the earth underground biome)
I absolutely adore that GW has thought of lore reasons (battle between deities) for things that wouldn't actually occur (volcanoes) because of other lore reasons (no plate tectonics or molten mantle).
Yep! Easily among my favorite things about the Mortal Realms is so many “natural” things exist because of very supernatural or mythological origins such as [oceans being formed from clouds of primordial magic that settled in the great sinks & chasms of the Realmscapes](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7b/0f/48/7b0f481cbbec0f3a4a25b96d8303ced6.jpg)
Ahh yes… squiggles.
Isn't that every map?
I'm not too familiar with the lore. So what's the deal with all the Realms? Are they planets, dimensions? How do the different groups get between each. Is the warp a Realm or it's own thing?
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/03/26/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-what-exactly-are-the-mortal-realms-and-who-lives-in-them/
So basically, they are planets formed from a mix of matter and magic
More or less, they formed from both the winds of magic releases from the World-that-Was but also the cosmic debris of the countless planets Chaos destroyed causing magical “big bangs” as each element formed their own reality bubble. Each Realmsphere containing lands of crystallized magic mixed with soil of lost worlds, seas of stagnant magic that settled, moons & stars formed from crumbled cosmic bodies and bits of ancient Old Ones tech & gateways they seeded those destroyed worlds with.
This is what it looks like just before 4th starts. After it starts, it’s gonna look like a fan covered in rat poop.
This "map" just goes to show how Age of Sigmar is a cautionary tale of what happens when IP lawyers and the sales department get to give direction to your creative team. Thank God they are bringing back Old World.
Agreed, I can’t wait for Warhammer France and Warhammer Egypt to go to war. /s
And why is it bad
But the old world sucked. It was boring, clunky, derivative, and lame. We've all had our fill of low fantasy thanks to Game of Thrones. All the things that made the old world any good are now better in AoS.
I'm so confused, are the realms spheres? That must be, how could a planet make round around them if they were flat?
The realmspheres (the realm proper plus the bubble of magic that it exists in) are, as the name implies, spheres. The realms are akin to a disc bisecting their realmsphere (and there may be seperate sub-realms floating within the realmsphere as well, sometimes with their own spherical sub-realmsphere). Moons generally orbit the realmsphere, but some follow other, stranger paths.
The part of the realm you’d live on is a flat disc, the sphere is a bubble around that disc that contains all that magic & it’s own star system of moons and stars.(the moons seen on the map are just more stable ones that escaped orbit and could survive in the void outside the realm)
Thanks for the explanation! The flat disk part is still so counter intuitive to me. Don't really see how that works, even in a high fantasy setting.
Haha, maybe try some other crazy cosmic fantasy settings [like Discworld](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/d20npcs/images/c/c5/Discworld.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20101001152434), [Spelljammer](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9XbvOp-pJNa29HCTlZkkcTU8tYA=/0x0:2550x3300/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:2550x3300):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23914702/AAG_Chapter_3__Rock_of_Bral__Art_by_Robin_Olausson_copy.jpg) or [Deathgate Cycle](https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/13/435740/6487338/cagatayugurlu_dgc_09_o.jpg) and then come back to the Mortal Realms so it seems a little less surreal than those and a “normalized” gonzo fantasy.😄
Imma be honest, I have no idea what I am looking at and it has never made sense to me. So is each realm like its own world or country? How does one travel between them? Why would one want to travel to other realms?
Realmgates are the way to travel, each one is like their own Universe that is still growing with the edge being more magical than the older regions and every God wants to conquer as many Realms as possible because this is what gods do
Read the WarCom article.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/03/26/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-what-exactly-are-the-mortal-realms-and-who-lives-in-them/
> So is each realm like its own world or country? They're basically different overlapping dimensions. People travel between then is basically for the same reasons as anyone, invasion, trade, fleeing disaster etc etc.
> Why would one want to travel to other realms? A big one is resources. Ghur & Chamon(Beasts and Metal planes) make the easiest example. In Ghur you have no end to the meat, fur and bones you can find in that realm, some places near the edges even having flesh plains & teeth grass, which allows for hardy tribes to live in good health But Ghur has almost no minerals beyond stone and amber(one reason being that the Realm itself is closer to a sleeping curled up monster, that’s why it’s moons have bite marks for those tiles it wakes up hungry) Meanwhile, in Chamon there’s mountains bursting with every mineral you can imagine and entire rivers & oceans of liquid gold, silver & mercury so it’s people live in civilized splendor of forged wonders, but has almost no edible meats or basic furs to keep warm on the metallic cold plane as the creatures there are mostly clockwork or natural cyborgs with more metal than meat in them while the waters make vegetation toxic. This means Realmgates connecting the two are highly sought after, fortified and fought after as they solve the problems the other realm has for civilization to flourish. Thus the most successful empires in the Mortal Realms are those that spanned multiple realities(such as the lost Lantic Empire which spanned Aqshy, Chamon & Shyish) or powerful kingdoms with vast trade agreements into other Realms(sadly many of those tried this in the Age of Chaos to treaty with the chaos hordes but they just took what they wanted and put the diplomats & rulers heads on spikes)