The first Twin-Tailed comet sighting in lore is (I think) the coming of The Great Maw; or at least Sky-Titan/Ogre pictographs show it as twin tailed...
That is unless the collapse of the Chaos Gates had a comet with it, which now that I think of it perhaps it did.
Either way, long predating Sigmar on both counts
The comming of one such comet could have caused the destruction of the polar gates.
Or a similar portent could've signefied the birth of aenarion who was the first champion of light we know of long before sigmar. hmm strange thta there was such a long time between them and then two so soon after each other in the last millenia. (Magnus and soon in the future by the current timeline Valten)
Still makes the Maw out of place, unless the Emperor of Cathay was a Champion of Light for a time
...and not 15 years ago either (or earlier, say 20-25 for the ususal mark), it is pure interwebs invention re-told over and over again until people think it was canon...Originally Posted by Londinium
Incidentally, (almost) all comets actually have twin tails, one made from pieces of debris left off in its wake, and one of ionized particles (that is the one always pointing away from the sun, regardless of the comets direction)... though I guess that was not what the author meant by twin tailed comet when they put it into warhammer lore long ago... =p
maybe it means nurgles getting ready along with his daemons to hug you all
Didn't the comet that heralded Sigmar happen at the same time as the Great Maw/Sotek comets? I'm probably worng but I always thought all these things happened at once.
-5,600 IC = Polar Gates collapse (maybe comet sighting)
-2750 IC = The Great Maw falls
-30 IC = Sotek, probably also Sigmar's comet
50 IC = Sigmar disappears (maybe comet sighting)
1,999 IC = Comet trashes Mordheim
2,522 IC = Valten and comet signs with him
These are the ones I know about. Is the birth of Aenarion mentioned have any comet sighting in the literature, or is that just speculation?
I know that most of you will know, but I think it's worth pointing out that there's a distinction between a comet and a meteor. Strictly speaking, what hit Mordheim wasn't a comet, but a meteor that was initially mistaken for a comet. The same goes for the Great Maw (although that wasn't strictly a meteor either) and anything that hit Sylvania. The comet that heralded Sigmar, Sotek, and so on is presumably still up there somewhere waiting to make a return pass.
I don't know if it's a booboo or not, but the date given for Sotek's comment is 0 IC in the Lizardmen book, while the one which heralded Sigmar was in -30 IC (I get the impression it's supposed to be the same event). This means it either passed twice in very close succession, it's a different comet, or the Lizardmen date is wrong.
If you were mad, you could try to work out the orbital period of the comet (ignoring the meteors) and whether it coincides with any other major events in history. Assuming it made a pass in around -30 and 2520(ish) then it's no longer than about 2550 years. If you go back 2500-odd years before the time of Sigmar then you get the rise of the civilisation (Tylos/Kavzar) that later became Skavenblight in the Blighted Marshes. Cutting those periods in half, that's about 1250 years, give or take a bit, which coincides with the eruption of Thunder Mountain. Coming forward from the time of Sigmar, there was a lot of daemonic activity in the early 13th century about 1250 years later. Going further backwards in time reveals little that's that interesting: nothing much happened in the -3700s and the collapse of the gates in about -5600.
Maybe somebody with more maths-fu (or astronomy-fu) could make more sense of it than me. However, I strongly suspect that (a) GW haven't put as much thought into it as this thread has (or I have in the course of this post) and if any thought has been put into it they've both confused comets and meteors and also cocked up the maths, hence the Great Maw appearing in -2750, which is well away from the projected -2580(ish) date unless the periods are much shorter than the whole background surrounding the comet seems to imply.
I think you're reading too much in to the orbital period and coincident of events, although that's your prerogative.I get the feeling that they haven't thought of any of the scientific implication of the fluff Athelassan. Not nearly as much as you or anyone else here that's for sure. My apologies for earlier, I indicated that is was a comet that hit Sylvania, that's clearly not the case, it was a meteor or possibly a meteor shower. This explains the widespread corruption over a greater distance although feasibly one meteor would kick up a of warpstone dust (particularly if in was indeed a chunk of Morrslieb). That being said, GW throws meteor impacts around an awful lot and the Warhammer World is lucky that no larger chunks of ice and rock land. It's lucky that the closest call to an extinction level event was the Great Maw, which by all accounts obliterated the Steppes West of the Moutains of Mourn as we know.
Awake O Dead, for there can be no rest for ye beneath the earth. Let the splintered bones burrow from the grave pall. Let cold fingers grip time-worn blades, and unseeing eyes survey the fields of slaughter. For your time has come once more. And the dead shall walk.
Sylvania and Tylos/Kavzar/Skavenblight were meteors but I've never seen 'twin tailed' mentioned with any of them specifically.
The Great Maw, however, is depicted as twin tailed in many of the pictograms (such as those on the Ironblaster). One could conceive, since those were made by the Sky-Titans, that they were made that way artistically or metaphorically: adding importance to it culturally instead of being actually the same comet. However, I doubt there is that level of subtlety in the fluff and instead suspect that they are indeed meant to be the same thing. Same goes for the Mordheim comet.
Yeah, I realise that my stuff is pretty much speculative and that, rather depressingly, nobody at GW has thought about it for any longer than it took to type the words. It is also entirely possible that the distinction between meteors and comets has escaped them. I expect you're right about its being meant to be the same thing.
In "reality", the twin-tailed comet is probably a sign from the gods that "something is about to happen" rather than an astronomical phenomenon and thus doesn't have to appear regularly (although there is a sort of regularity about appearances of "stuff falling from the sky"). There's also a question to be asked over which gods are sending them (it's not always necessarily the same ones). And which gods were interested in heralding the birth of Sigmar? (See Sotek/Sigmar conspiracy theories, etc.)
It's true that there seem to be a lot of meteor strikes in WHF history but I wonder whether it is in fact disproportionate. Warhammer history is of course longer than ours and there have been meteor impacts within the scope of our recorded history, so it might just be that their meteors are magic and thus have a disproportionate impact rather than their being any more frequent than ours.
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