A guide to the AoS setting

[Lexington]

Well, imho this setting can't improve since its foundations are totally awkward.

I don't know that it's quite that bad. They had something with the revised Warhammer Quest - a ragtag band of protagonists with varied, interesting visuals, running around in a low-context dungeon scenario. AoS might've worked a lot better if it had been introduced this way, rather than plopped down as a single chunk of winding mythology and tongue-twister naming conventions. That Star Wars-y mix of low-context, limited POV worldbuilding with a lot of dangly bits left unexplored was something that got GW very far in the past. It's unfortunate that they can't seem to pull it off anymore, aside from dropping Mysterious Place Names every other sentence. That gets real old, real quick.

I think GW could improve AoS' background, but they'd need to take a deeper look at how they're telling their stories anymore. Right now, they seem to be responding directly to short-sighted concerns like "lack of civilization," which is really just treating the symptoms rather than the disease.

[Memnos]

Well, the setting's not that bad. Basically, in the old world, Archaon(In his novels) decided to destroy the Chaos Gods.

When that world was destroyed, he inherited the Daemon World(Which are the home of heroes, legends and Gods as per the Warhammer 40K Daemon book, pg reference available on request)and set the world rules to create the creatures that could destroy the Chaos Deities - In this case, Sigmar and the rest.

All the weird physics? Daemon World. A Daemon world that is becoming steadily more and more 'real' and whose rules have been set specifically to help his war on the Chaos Deities. We're just in the prologue right now.

[Lexington]

Well, the setting's not that bad. Basically, in the old world, Archaon(In his novels) decided to destroy the Chaos Gods.

The "facts" of a setting are almost entirely secondary to how the setting is presented. AoS (and, by extension, modern-day GW) has big problems with both, but I don't think they're nearly as aware of this distinction as they should be.

[Lord Malorne]

As was pointed out though, its hard to get into it when it still has remnants of the old world, Nagash for example... and Mannfred :confused: as its a new game based off shattered realms being maintained by magic *wink wink nudge nudge* powers new characters would have been arguably better than name dropping some old worlders.

[shinros]

As was pointed out though, its hard to get into it when it still has remnants of the old world, Nagash for example... and Mannfred :confused: as its a new game based off shattered realms being maintained by magic *wink wink nudge nudge* powers new characters would have been arguably better than name dropping some old worlders.

They are not maintained by magic 8 new worlds the size of the old world(if you look at the realm of life map) were created from the winds of magic. Hence why each realm has aspects of each wind they function as normal worlds, you still have your fields to farm for normal people etc but the magical area's of the realm are heavily influenced by the wind it was born from. Plus the normal area's are affected slightly like the realm of metal as more iron in the tree's or something.

Now on old characters? Do remember the way the lore is written it's like part 2 of the fantasy series even recently since I wanted to read the legend of sigmar in the ebook version they have all the main times of legend novels listed in order up to end times then a few starting AOS books. The only factions that have returning characters is Death and Chaos for obvious reasons. Plus the reason why old characters are now gods is lore from the end times it's like cycles. Ulric, Khaine etc were all once mortal elves, humans etc that fought against chaos and lost and ascended to be gods of the new world aka the old world.

The plan for the elven god I forgot her name the lady of the lake she intended for the bretonnian kings and powerful damsels to be the new pantheon for the humans of the new old world but as you know that plan when to crap when bret's found out their whole religion is somewhat a lie and they were pretty much used through out their history.

The reason why old characters of the old world also the gods of AOS nagash, sigmar etc came back was because their souls were bound and interwoven into the wind of magic itself teclis said in the end times the incarnate's are essentially gods at that point.

Now if you like the part 2 of the lore that is up for debate, people like different things.

[Lost Egg]

Thanks for the write up as I've just found this thread.

It's bugged me that GW haven't really explained what's happened, the fluff I've read so far has been very vague. How can I be expected to feel much for a setting if they give little away? They seem to want you to buy an endless list of books just to know whats going on.

The factions still feel like they need to settle down. Despite 6 attempts to get into AoS so far I've yet to do so, each time I've just sold on whatever I bought. GWs site has an endless list of allegiances or factions or whatever and it all seems very confusing. I'm hoping they can bring it under control.

To me there feels like there are only a few 'real' AoS factions right now (Inronjawz, Sylvaneth, Stormcast, Fyreslayers & Bloodbound). I expect that once a few more are released then some of the 'lesser' factions will become Mail Order only, many feel like they are just filler till a 'real' faction arrives.

I expect that until things settle down more I'm unlikely to take the dip...

...plus I really want to see some new AoS elves...

[mot666]

Good read OP.

Would also recommend the article below for a FAQ for the new setting:

http://www.tronhammer.com/2016/03/ag...f-edition.html

[Lost Egg]

Thanks for that mot666, I'll have read

[malisteen]

There has been some update to Nagash's motivation and game plan since it last came up in discussion.

While his motivations in originally betraying Sigmar remain frustratingly opaque (thinking Archaon would honor any deal with him still kind of portrays Nagash as a terrible judge of character, if not an outright idiot), his more recent actions now make an acceptable amount of sense.

Mannfred, it turns out, has been working for Nagash all along. Whatever punishment Nagash felt compelled to meet out to his errant mortarch for the Betrayal at the last battle of the old world was dealt and suffered long ago. Rather, Mannfred has deliberately portrayed himself to the stormcast as a traitorous influence on Nagash, while Neferata has been built up as their ally in Nagash's court, and as long as Sigmar and his allies believe this characterization, they can bargain with Neferata in the hopes that she'll be able to sway her master to their side, or at the very least not join forces with chaos, while blaming any failures on Nagash's part to deliver on Mannfred's influence without necessarily concluding that Nagash is completely against them.

In this way, Nagash can, for the most part, hold back from committing his strength to any side while he appears to waffle, and both sides of the war between Order and Chaos will be discouraged from striking against him, both since they have more pressing targets in combating their active foes and for fear of driving him into their enemy's camp. This in turn allows Nagash to channel the necromantic energy that would otherwise need to go into raising his armies into a major construction project instead.

Yes, once again, Nagash's plans revolve around yet another new black pyramid (each bigger and blacker than the one before). Nagash may be clever, but he's not overly creative.

Nagash has been extremely frustrated by all the other gods, mortal and chaos, stomping all over his 'lord of the dead' role, chaos powers recycling their favored champions, Sigmar and his Sigmarines, the elven gods dragging back the souls of the Aelves from Slaanesh only to give them new life instead of handing them over to Nagash as is his due. To that end, he's been researching how the other gods have defied him, and has developed new black shards capable of overcoming the pull of whatever divine patron might claim the soul of a dying warrior and redirect the soul to the shard instead. With these shard's he's managed to capture some Sigmarine and Chaos Warrior souls already. With an entire massive Pyramid built of the stuff in the heart of his underworld, he'll be able to re-assert his dominion over the dead, and grow massively in power as the forces of Order and Chaos expend the lives of their followers in battle with each other. By the time they notice that their soul coffers aren't refilling, Nagash's power will be too great to oppose.

Or, at least, that's the plan. In practicality, the Skaven are probably just going to nuke the new pyramid like the old one.

Anyway, that explains his failure to live up to commitments to the forces of Order, his forces making minor, targeted strikes against all sides during the recent global campaign (testing out the black shards), the place of the Mortarchs in his plans, etc.

I don't know if this was planned all along, or was a sort of author saving throw meant to explain Nagash's actions after the fact, but either way it works well enough for me.

[Rogue Star]

Good read OP.

Would also recommend the article below for a FAQ for the new setting:

http://www.tronhammer.com/2016/03/ag...f-edition.html

It's a nice blurb by Josh Reynolds about the difference between a Stormcast Eternal and a Space Marine, but it's not... entirely accurate. Despite Mr Reynolds' statements, we have more often than not seen the Adeptus Astartes presented in an extremely heroic light in most lore. They're often seen as the closest the setting has to a wholly good group defending mankind, and they're diverse enough of a faction for multiple stories to exist where they barely resemble the indoctrinated trained killers version cited above.

Even discounting the more moral forces, things like the actions of the Crimson Fists in the Rynn's World novels or the Ultramarines' saga of Uriel Ventris and a number of short stories show them to be upstanding and caring defenders of humanity rather than the Imperium. The dominance of this over the more traditional semi-psychotic super soldiers they were intended to be - and Games Workshop's desire to milk this to have more people buy them - means that there isn't enough to really differ them from one another. Plus, let's face it, we've seen them ally with certain xenos races more and more often as the years go by (Blood Angels/Necrons vs Tyranids, etc).

On many Imperial worlds, feudal or otherwise, it's considered an honour to be selected by the Adeptus Astartes and they only choose the greatest among them to be worthy of entering their ranks. It's often joked, to place some real emphasis upon the Astartes' overly elite nature that Conan would be one of their basic recruits, but it's not really far from the truth. They would have selected someone like him in his younger days, someone powerful, bloodthirsty and skilled, to be worthy of ascension, and to them that would have been akin to being raised among the gods. The Space Wolves and many others have traditions which directly resemble this, and once you pick out that point the similarities start to become more and more distinct. Replace Sigmar with a Primarch/Emperor and his Reforging power with gene-seed/conditioning, and you end up with a vast number of parallels between the two forces.

Not saying the Stormcast Eternals are carbon copies of the Adeptus Astartes, just that the latter has so many Chapters which vary in their attitudes and traditions (Ultramarines, Space Wolves and Salamanders are worlds apart from Marines Malevolent, Mortifactors and Executioners, for example... and even the former are very different from each other) that you can't just lump all Space Marines into the "brainwashed and weaponized monastic murder machines".

What the Stormcast Eternals need is a similar level of depth.

[malisteen]

Yeah, it's been quite a long time since loyalist marines have been portrayed as anything other than entirely virtuous, upstanding individuals in the lore. Even in cases where different loyalist factions are in conflict with each other, nowadays that always turns out to be the result of subterfuge and manipulation by the 'real bad guys', who are inevitably exposed in time for the 'good guys' to make up, rally, and win the day. See Battle for Fenris / Wrath of Magnus for an example.

At the risk of veering into political territory, where there used to be an element of satire - and thus criticism - of the inherently fascist nature of the space marine concept, the unapologetically uncritical portrayal of space marines in more recent fluff gives the game as a whole this passive, pro-fascist undercurrent that I find very off-putting.

[Lost Egg]

That't the trouble with both marines and stormcast for me, they are a bit dull. I want more troubled souls less swot, more Tony Stark & less Captain America.

[Rogue Star]

It's worth adding that if anyone has read the latest (January 2017) White Dwarf article on Tzeentch Arcanites, it is revealed one of the brand new "Seeds of Hope" cities was founded based on Tzeentch's designs; the Changling masqueraded as it's chief architect, and convinced them to use realmstone at it's core to power it - it seems to be similar in nature to warpstone - which will fulfill it's function, but the inhabitants of the city will suffer rapid mutations, Chaos taint, etc. Well played Tzeentch.

[Cèsar de Quart]

"Lack of culture"

This is what kills it for me. Lack of "anything that makes sense or makes the setting relatable". I cannot imagine myself or anyone living in Aqshy or Hysh or Azyrheim, therefore... I just don't care about it.

It's a pity because I like, really like, the Sigmarines' design. I hate their name ("Eternal Corps" or "Immortal Guard" sound like better names, but of course, they can't be IPd...) but I like their aesthetics (too generic, but ok) and their concept (broken souls of dead warriors cast into a hollow armor, which we know now it's not hollow, they're actually dudes inside). But I just don't buy the whole idea of Sigmarines that aren't there to defend anything. Space Marines, I understand them, they're a small force fighting against unsurmontable odds to protect Mankind. But Sigmar is not defending Man or even any Empire I can understand, he's just defending his Godhood. Which is odd.

Why didn't the first AoS book begin by showing us what's like living under Sigmar's rule? Then we'd have something to fight for. Sorry, I'm not a crunchy player. Warhammer is not a 1-hour setup game, it's a hobby that drains much of your time and money. If I have to spend so much of both, I need it to mean something, to make sense and to appeal to me. AoS fluff, for now, is generic, dull and feels utterly dead to me. I don't see these realms with no political entities, no defined cultures and no geography. I don't know who lives there, I don't understand the worlds, I just don't buy it. A poor excuse of a setting living off the fossile nostalgia of familiar names and very, very old "high fantasy" ideas that aren't very good to begin with.

Don't get me wrong, I'm dying for the fluff to be good, I'd like to see how interesting can it get in five years time, but for now... more narrative just isn't what we need. What we need is culture, political entities and common people we can identify with. A well fleshed out world we can believe. Even if it's weird dimensions, they need to matter. If there's no end to supplies and men and the realms can be occupied and torn apart in an instant... then what are the stakes? What's the point?

I was perfectly happy with an Old World set at five minutes to midnight.

[Lost Egg]

I cannot imagine myself or anyone living in Aqshy or Hysh or Azyrheim, therefore... I just don't care about it.

Why didn't the first AoS book begin by showing us what's like living under Sigmar's rule? Then we'd have something to fight for. I don't see these realms with no political entities, no defined cultures and no geography. I don't know who lives there, I don't understand the worlds, I just don't buy it.

What we need is culture, political entities and common people we can identify with. A well fleshed out world we can believe. Even if it's weird dimensions, they need to matter. If there's no end to supplies and men and the realms can be occupied and torn apart in an instant... then what are the stakes? What's the point?

Well said.