Warhammer Fantasy (setting)
Many events are lifted and modified directly from history, including the Black Plague and the Moorish invasion of Spain, and others from original fantasy sources.
Like Middle-earth, Warhammer’s Dwarfs are declining in population, the Elves have mostly departed for homelands in the West, and a Great Necromancer is reborn after the defeats in his Southern stronghold.
Many factions, such as the Elves, the Lizardmen, the Ogres and the Halflings, have been created by the Old Ones: star-travelling gods responsible for the creation of most of the setting’s sentient races.
Both are resistant to the mutating effects of Chaos energies (fuelled by hearty appetites and efficient metabolisms), but have opposite physical templates.
[citation needed] Orcs, Goblins, and their kin (also known as Greenskins), are relatively primitive and disorganised, but their instinctive belligerence threatens the various nations.
The Orcs and Goblins represent a generic Dark Ages warband army with little internal cohesion and discipline, and relying on the ferocious charge and individual fighting skills rather than organised generalship.
In issue 203 of Dragon #203 (March 1994), Bob Bigelow liked the fact that the details were told through stories that “details animosity levels between orc and goblin and the importance of shamans.” He also noted that “The armies list is split between the different types of orcs and goblins, as well as monsters’ allies.” Bigelow concluded that the book has “excellent line drawings and action illustrations as well as [its] practical game value [...] well worth the price to anyone who wishes to campaign.”[4] Living underneath much of the known world are the Skaven, diabolical ratmen living in a subterranean dog-eat-dog Machiavellian society, called the “Under-empire.” They are divided into clans such as Clan Eshin, master assassins, or Clan Skryre, master engineers.
It is believed that they are so numerous that if they worked together they would be able to destroy the world, however their innate predilection for cowardice and betrayal makes long term cooperation unlikely.
– also published by Black Library – a magazine which compiled short stories and occasional unconnected illustrations set in the fictional backgrounds of Games Workshop.
This Portal spews dangerous, raw magical energy into the physical world, causing mutations to any person or creature in the north, and even to the land, climate and flow of time.
It is culturally, technologically, and geographically based on early modern Germany, with its name being an allusion to the historical Holy Roman Empire.
The Empire was originally founded thousands of years ago, when the Warrior-King Sigmar Heldenhammer (a Conan the Barbarian and Charlemagne-type figure) united several bronze-age tribes, and allied with the Dwarfs, to face the greater threats of Orcs and Goblins, Undead and Chaos.
The centre and north of the country is dominated by huge forests, which often house bandits, Chaos cultists, Orcs/Goblins or Beastmen who prey on isolated settlements.
The nobility are supposed to follow a code of chivalry, and a small number eventually complete religious pilgrimage, becoming virtuous Grail Knights.
[10] Kislev’s military is primarily composed of rotas of the Streltsi (firearm-welding infantry, hence the name) and the Winged Lancers – also known as “the Riders of the Dead,” for “they are mourned as if already deceased.”[6] The country’s recently established official religion is the Great Orthodoxy.
The country’s northern frontier position means that it often bears the brunt of devastating Chaos invasions, as Kislevite warriors spill their blood to keep the southern lands safe.
It is not greatly developed in the published games or fiction, but there are human civilizations there, specifically Ind, Grand Cathay, and Nippon (which are equivalents of India, China and Japan respectively).
Grand Cathay have long ago constructed an enormous fortification called the Great Bastion on their northern border, to guard against incursions from Hobgoblins and the forces of Chaos who dwell on the Eastern Steppes.
Many former Dwarf cities and Underway sections are now occupied by Night Goblins and Skaven (a race of evil, intelligent anthropomorphic rats, about the size of a human).
Despite their bestial appearance, the Lizardmen are actually staunch opponents of Chaos and protectors of Order, although they are often apathetic towards the other races and hostile to those who trespass on Lustria.
With the ritual gone awry, the mummified Nehekharan Kings and their skeletal soldiers awoke not to the promised afterlife, but to a nightmare of living death, and were very angry about this.
Slaves to Darkness, by Gav Thorpe, also shows the Norse tribes as important supporting characters to the Imperial born Chaos Champion protagonist.
The Norse are, like the historical Norsemen, great seaborne explorers, traders, reavers, and slavers who have built and maintain colonies in Lustria (the Warhammer world’s version of South and Mesoamerica).
Due to centuries of separation from their Lustrian brothers, the spawnings of saurus have become slightly rare and so skinks dominate in both civil life and warfare.
The High Pass is the northernmost route traversing the range, and descends into the lands of the Troll Country before its road leads eventually into the city of Praag in Kislev.
It is overlooked at its eastern starting point by the greenskin fortress of Gnashrak’s Lair, and at its western end by the Dwarf Stronghold of Karak Kadrin.
In the present times it must be guarded vigilantly for invading Orcs and Goblins moving from their eastern lairs use it as one of their main attack routes.
Mad Dog Pass, alternately known as Varag Kadrin, was in the days of the Dwarf’s greatest power, the chief thoroughfare to the isolated mines of the Dark Lands and the eastern front of the ranges.
The temples of the venerable Ancestor Gods are here, and is also home to the Great Book of Grudges, a vast account of all wrongdoings and breaches of faith against the Dwarfen race.
Nagash ordered the mountain to be mined for all of its Warpstone for his use in Necromancy, by his legions of undead and local human tribes which pledged allegiance to him out of terror.
