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I have seen a few places here and there where people have wondered where the "normal" people are in Age of Sigmar.

After all, we see demons and demi-gods battling on both sides, both exempted from death, and all we know about the realms is their theme and that Chaos is everywhere. So, what's really at stake, are there any normal villagers and farmers and things for these Stormhosts to "liberate?"

On that note, I wanted to say that the novel Gates of Azyr does present us with the "normal" people of Aqshy, the realm of fire. While I don't think any of this is really a "SPOILER" I will at this point say "POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD" for people who are sensitive to such things, and stick it in a spoiler box.

I expect the Tyranids ate them all.

Says in the starter box book that Azyr has human, elvish and dwarvish refugees, so that may be a good place to start.

I'm not sure we will ever see the traditional "empire" return as such. However, the book has nice pics of battle scenes with some old empire models in them, such as fanatics and warrior priests. I'm sure they will return on one form or another. Cant wait.

I find this singularly disappointing.

Yeah, I'm w/ yo OP. I'm getting the impression there are no more normal folk types.

The new AoS world seems to pretty much be a pseudo-fantasy version of 40k - there is only war (and everyone pretty much is contributing to the cause).

Yes, I can't wait for the "Free Peoples" to be introduced back into the game. I guess if the Stormcast Eternals establish a beachhead in another realm there will be Human settlers. And there must be countless cities in Azyr? Although Azyr is the most boring realm as it is just an invincible utopia blargh.

The Age Of Chaos seems more interesting than the Age Of Sigmar right now. I think all of my fluff battles will take place then at the fall of mankinds countless empires... (I.e. The End Times mkII)

I think your expectations are set far to high for a new background that's is two weeks old.

Of course it's all gods and demons, heroes and villains at the moment. The Karl the Grave picker and Celestial the barmaid joining with a wizard and a Trollslayer to fight Skaven level of detail for WHFB came out of 30 years of background (mostly RPGs) and will never be there on day 1.

Give it time and a few novels and I think you'll probably get what your after. At the moment they still need to set the general background and mythos for AoS.

 Bottle wrote:
Yes, I can't wait for the "Free Peoples" to be introduced back into the game. I guess if the Stormcast Eternals establish a beachhead in another realm there will be Human settlers. And there must be countless cities in Azyr? Although Azyr is the most boring realm as it is just an invincible utopia blargh.

The Age Of Chaos seems more interesting than the Age Of Sigmar right now. I think all of my fluff battles will take place then at the fall of mankinds countless empires... (I.e. The End Times mkII)

See, this kind of highlights what bugs me about this. When the whole realms thing was introduced, I thought, hey, there's a lot of potential for storytelling and open ended world building there. But by having basically everything conquered and destroyed by chaos, I feel like they've basically cut all of that off. Trying to invent your own human faction? Nope, too bad, they're all dead or evil. Only sigmarines matter, apparently.

 notprop wrote:

Of course it's all gods and demons, heroes and villains at the moment. The Karl the Grave picker and Celestial the barmaid joining with a wizard and a Trollslayer to fight Skaven level of detail for WHFB came out of 30 years of background (mostly RPGs) and will never be there on day 1.

Didn't Warhammer start out with Karl the Gravepicker levels of information? IIRC a lot of the WHFB background grew out of WHFRP which was very much concerned with the 'common folk'.

I am less than impressed with the AoS fluff. The game not only looks like a tabletop version of a Korean MMO but its background could have been ripped from one as well.

But if they don't have farmers what do they eat, including the mortal chaos dudes. Same thing with plains that don't have water. Undead or demons could fight there, but no mortal army.

I hope they explain how the world actualy works.

Makumba wrote:
But if they don't have farmers what do they eat, including the mortal chaos dudes. Same thing with plains that don't have water. Undead or demons could fight there, but no mortal army.

I hope they explain how the world actualy works.

GW sucks at writing about anything that isn't about war. Logistics are waved off, populations vague and numbers that don't make sense. Its my biggest problem with their fluff as it fails to adequately explain much. It just constantly goes on about how things suck, how peoples lives suck and how people either fight to the death or work to death or anything death related really.

I reckon all these flaws rampant in 40k fluff will be worse in AOS as I think they think people like Grimdark to the point of senselessness over normal fluff and have made it a large part of their new fluff. Kind like when a sequel to a movie makes a movie that goes too far into what people liked about the first movie and kills it.

Logistics is something usually hard to explain and hard to have worked out for real life, and even in most games logistics is dumbed down to a level we can all understand. But GW doesn't even have dumbed down logistics, so unfortunately we will never know how their societies properly work. Economics, normal life, logistics, numbers, explanations and so on will not be well thought out in AOS I reckon, we will just hear about how bad/crazy each realm is and constantly hear about war this and war that (despite the fact war is more about economies, logistics and so on than killing) so I would not hold much hope.

Makumba wrote:
But if they don't have farmers what do they eat, including the mortal chaos dudes. Same thing with plains that don't have water. Undead or demons could fight there, but no mortal army.

I hope they explain how the world actualy works.

Scavenge?
I mean we only of details on humans from 2 realms, Aqshy and Azyr. In one (the former) the normal people are fleeing for their lives and starved. Scavenging, and probably hunting would be their way to live and survive. Those who turn to Chaos probably wouldn't be opposed to cannibalism and would therefore most likely eat each other and those they kill in battle, plus scavenge and hunt.

In Azyr everything is probably created with magic because Sigmar or something, or there may be actual farms set up the refugees.

So far all the background is in what, 3/4 books? The introduction "Story since the End Times" book that introduces the events that lead to AoS and all that, then there's the Campaign book that focuses on the events of said campaign, and the 1/2 novels. There really isn't much background released as of yet, and I suspect as time goes on we'll get more. That said, without army books most of that background will probably be "X fighting Y when Z comes to help out X defeat Y". The most we'll probably get about farms is if X and Z happen to be fighting Y in a field.

 toasteroven wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Yes, I can't wait for the "Free Peoples" to be introduced back into the game. I guess if the Stormcast Eternals establish a beachhead in another realm there will be Human settlers. And there must be countless cities in Azyr? Although Azyr is the most boring realm as it is just an invincible utopia blargh.

The Age Of Chaos seems more interesting than the Age Of Sigmar right now. I think all of my fluff battles will take place then at the fall of mankinds countless empires... (I.e. The End Times mkII)

See, this kind of highlights what bugs me about this. When the whole realms thing was introduced, I thought, hey, there's a lot of potential for storytelling and open ended world building there. But by having basically everything conquered and destroyed by chaos, I feel like they've basically cut all of that off. Trying to invent your own human faction? Nope, too bad, they're all dead or evil. Only sigmarines matter, apparently.

From what i have read so far (gates of azyr, the mandrake bastion and the starter book) the impression i have gotten is that mankind (and other races) are not yet entirely wiped out and that there are pockets of resistance either hidden, dormant or on the run through out all the realms.



As for people, it mentions in the starter book (I think) that after sigmar closed the gates of heaven great crusades were launched to cleanse the lands of all bad things and great farming lands and pastors replaced them (as well as cities).

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 notprop wrote:

Of course it's all gods and demons, heroes and villains at the moment. The Karl the Grave picker and Celestial the barmaid joining with a wizard and a Trollslayer to fight Skaven level of detail for WHFB came out of 30 years of background (mostly RPGs) and will never be there on day 1.

Didn't Warhammer start out with Karl the Gravepicker levels of information? IIRC a lot of the WHFB background grew out of WHFRP which was very much concerned with the 'common folk'.

I am less than impressed with the AoS fluff. The game not only looks like a tabletop version of a Korean MMO but its background could have been ripped from one as well.

The common folk stuff was in WHFRPG circa 1985, it was a move away from allot of fantasy RPGs at the time in that they had careers rather than classes and the vast majority were low strata peasant and non-military careers. Adventuring was pretty leathal compared to more swashbuckling DnD affairs.

Quite a bit of the grittiness made it's into 3rd edition in 1987, so gods/religions were detailed (about a dozen human ones plus chaos plus some non-human ones) were in, breif description of various realms and regimes but not really anything of the lives of commonfolk. So no change there.

Also there were no Army Lists as such just bestiary that detailed races and points cost per archetype plus an equipment section also with points. You could have Dwarf pikemen, Elves with Handguns or Orcs on Horse if you so chose. army lists as were would recognise them came out later in the excellent Warhamer Armies book.

In allot of ways the freedom of choice was kinda similar to what AoS seeks to achieve.

Anyway I digress, I like the End Times stuff and an very keen to see where it leads in AoS. I'm sure the tales of little peop on big adventures will come along but for now you can't be surprised that it's all about the big names.

Makumba wrote:
But if they don't have farmers what do they eat, including the mortal chaos dudes. Same thing with plains that don't have water. Undead or demons could fight there, but no mortal army.

I hope they explain how the world actualy works.

In Gates of Azyr, even the low-end chaos guys appear to be starving themselves. The Bloodreavers (aka: marauders of chaos) hunt other humans for what they call (ahem) "Meat Orgies" in which the victims are eaten alive. And, the Bloodreaver who's point of view we switch to frequently laments how rare fresh meat is, and how they're resorting to worm riddles corpses most of the time in an effort to stay alive. The non-Chaos tainted humans, meanwhile, are doing even worse, and are describes with the gauntness of starvation, and severe thirst for lack of clean water. In short, Aqshy doesn't work, except as a Mad Max style post apocalyptic world. Honestly, they make it sound so bad that you'd assume if the Sigmarines just waited a few more months there wouldn't be much left but the Chaos champions, who would be duking it out to eat each other.

Of course, this doesn't match up with the miniatures very well - judging by the Bloodreavers in the starter set that human flesh they hunger for is supplemented with gallons of creatine powder and hours in a weight room, but I'll chalk that up to creative license.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 toasteroven wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Yes, I can't wait for the "Free Peoples" to be introduced back into the game. I guess if the Stormcast Eternals establish a beachhead in another realm there will be Human settlers. And there must be countless cities in Azyr? Although Azyr is the most boring realm as it is just an invincible utopia blargh.

The Age Of Chaos seems more interesting than the Age Of Sigmar right now. I think all of my fluff battles will take place then at the fall of mankinds countless empires... (I.e. The End Times mkII)

See, this kind of highlights what bugs me about this. When the whole realms thing was introduced, I thought, hey, there's a lot of potential for storytelling and open ended world building there. But by having basically everything conquered and destroyed by chaos, I feel like they've basically cut all of that off. Trying to invent your own human faction? Nope, too bad, they're all dead or evil. Only sigmarines matter, apparently.

I do have to agree with you guys on this. When the concept of the realms was first rumored, I built a narrative in my head, and it went like this:

"Sigmar survived the end times with his destroyed planet, and spun through the void. He meets a star dragon who halts Sigmar's drift and sets the planet back in the heavens. They become friends, and the dragon explains to Sigmar that his world wasnt the only one - there are actually eight other realms, and now nine if one includes the ruins of the old world. These realms are populated with familiar species - Humans, elves, dwarves, and even the more bestial races persist. This heartens Sigmar, who is glad the death of his world was not the death of life itself. But, when he looks upon those other realms, he is horrified to discover that, while he drifted, the bored Chaos gods moved on to conquer other realms, and bring the same fate to them that his world met. Enraged beyond measure, Sigmar gathers the souls of the dead that escaped being eaten by Chaos, those so pure they remained defiant up to the very end of their universe. These are the armies of Sigmar's vengence, which he sends to the realms to ensure they do not meet the same fate."

And, boy was I way off. The actual story seems to be that Sigmar made the new realms. Like, he just made them, easy peasy, that's a thing he could do. He could make eight more if he felt like it, it's no trouble. Also, he can create life it seems, and populate the realms with loads of species that he has no reason to perpetuate, although he decides to name them silly things like Orruks and Ogors. And then, everything is great, and everyone is happy for millenia. And then Chaos is like "Wait... did that guy just build eight planes of existence? Oh man, it took us forever to burn down just one... Okay, lets get to work..." and proceed to conquer every realm, again very easily, while Sigmar is caught off balance and takes untold eons to put together his armies, a process which takes so long that Sigmarines on their first deployment have already been reforged for so long that they can barely recall their mortal lives, which date back to the start of the Chaos invasion of the realms.

It's like... we fast forwarded to a second End Times. They took so long ending one world, then ended eight without telling us much about who they were.

Anyway, I like it well enough, I just have my own way I would have done it. By any chance am I wrong about Sigmar building the realms? That's the one part that seems especially "huh?" to me, because I don't see why he would populate them with species that are antagonistic to his favored races.

 notprop wrote:
I think your expectations are set far to high for a new background that's is two weeks old.

If it's not ready to be criticised, it's not ready to be sold.

The problem with AoS isn't just that there aren't any civilians to speak of, but that the two armies GW chose to focus on aren't people either - they're just soulless killbots.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 notprop wrote:
I think your expectations are set far to high for a new background that's is two weeks old.

If it's not ready to be criticised, it's not ready to be sold.

So because people are criticizing their perceived lack of insight into civilian lives, the product wasn't ready to be sold?

The problem with AoS isn't just that there aren't any civilians to speak of, but that the two armies GW chose to focus on aren't people either - they're just soulless killbots.

And yet, as other posters have mentioned the Bloodreavers seem to be (no pun intended) pretty fleshed out as not being "soulless killbots".

 Kanluwen wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 notprop wrote:
I think your expectations are set far to high for a new background that's is two weeks old.

If it's not ready to be criticised, it's not ready to be sold.

So because people are criticizing their perceived lack of insight into civilian lives, the product wasn't ready to be sold?

No, what I said is that if we're supposed to not criticise the product because GW hasn't developed it long enough, the product is not ready yet and should not be sold.

The problem with AoS isn't just that there aren't any civilians to speak of, but that the two armies GW chose to focus on aren't people either - they're just soulless killbots.

And yet, as other posters have mentioned the Bloodreavers seem to be (no pun intended) pretty fleshed out as not being "soulless killbots".

Why? Because they bitch about running out of living people to eat?

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 notprop wrote:
I think your expectations are set far to high for a new background that's is two weeks old.

If it's not ready to be criticised, it's not ready to be sold.

So because people are criticizing their perceived lack of insight into civilian lives, the product wasn't ready to be sold?

No, what I said is that if we're supposed to not criticise the product because GW hasn't developed it long enough, the product is not ready yet and should not be sold.

The problem with AoS isn't just that there aren't any civilians to speak of, but that the two armies GW chose to focus on aren't people either - they're just soulless killbots.

And yet, as other posters have mentioned the Bloodreavers seem to be (no pun intended) pretty fleshed out as not being "soulless killbots".

Why? Because they bitch about running out of living people to eat?

I can tell that we're not going to have a productive discussion here, so whatever.

Enjoy what you enjoy, I'll enjoy what I enjoy.

 notprop wrote:
The problem with AoS isn't just that there aren't any civilians to speak of, but that the two armies GW chose to focus on aren't people either - they're just soulless killbots.

Actually, this was exactly how I was feeling about the setting myself, and what caused my to read Gates of Azyr in hopes I would be wrong. The Stormcast look like faceless gilded clones, just a few hydrolics from fitting in with the Necrons, and Khorne warriors are not renowned for their complex thoughts and motivations. (I think a word or two in a fluff book saying "The stormcast wear identical magical masks to hide their identity from Chaos, such that their souls may return to Sigmar when they die and remain safe from consumption by Chaos" would help enormously with explaining why they look like that.

This said, the novel did give me some hope on that front, although future authors will really determine how much they continue or drop the humanizing elements found in Gates.

One Stormcast in the novel recalls his life prior to Sigmar taking him, recalling friends and his old civilization, and (god forbid) even the implication that he once loved a woman who is long lost to him. This caught me, as in Space Marine narratives they seldom if ever recall their life before they joined the chapter. And, Space Marines and women are so vaguely connected, its never really been clear in any Space Marine story that they have any sort of romantic or sexual nature. So, already the Stormcast are more human than space marines, if not as human as I would like. (As human as I would like would have meant five male stormcast, and five female stormcast in the starter)

As for the Bloodreaver, they do humanize him somewhat by explaining that he never wanted to join up with Chaos, but did so out of cowardice and survival instinct. They describe him traumatized, sick, and unable to sleep on his first occasion eating another person, and still afraid that if he shows any weakness or compassion in front of his fellows they'll immediately make dinner out of him as well, and we get the impression this is how it is for all of the low-level flunkies. So, with them you get that "what does a man gain, who saves his life but loses his soul?" kind of drama. Not amazing or deep fluff, but deeper than most Khorne worshippers get in novels, where they tend to be one dimensional "Blood! Skulls!" sorts.

In White Dwarf 77, there is a 2 page spread with a nice photo of Empire models (painted Simgar colors) on round bases.

WARRIORS OF THE BROKEN WORLD

Across the Mortal Realms, scattered human war-tribes still fight against the dark forces of the Chaos Gods. Descendants of those who once inhabited the Broken World...

And in the starter book, it says there are humans (refugees) in Azyr. So essentially, the short answer is, "everywhere". Does that mean the controversy of what happened to the average joes is over yet?

 Talys wrote:
In White Dwarf 77, there is a 2 page spread with a nice photo of Empire models (painted Simgar colors) on round bases.

WARRIORS OF THE BROKEN WORLD

Across the Mortal Realms, scattered human war-tribes still fight against the dark forces of the Chaos Gods. Descendants of those who once inhabited the Broken World...

And in the starter book, it says there are humans (refugees) in Azyr. So essentially, the short answer is, "everywhere". Does that mean the controversy of what happened to the average joes is over yet?

I don't think OP meant "normal" people as in non-lightning magic infused warriors. I think he just meant the farmers, traders, townsfolk, etc.

Like I said, it's like 40k now. There are no normal folk anymore. You're contributing to the war against Chaos, suffering from the results of war, or you're dead. So it seems.

... except for the fact that Azyr is mentioned to have farms.

And also in 40k there are Agriworlds that exist to farm food.

 Talys wrote:
In White Dwarf 77, there is a 2 page spread with a nice photo of Empire models (painted Simgar colors) on round bases.

WARRIORS OF THE BROKEN WORLD

Across the Mortal Realms, scattered human war-tribes still fight against the dark forces of the Chaos Gods. Descendants of those who once inhabited the Broken World...

And in the starter book, it says there are humans (refugees) in Azyr. So essentially, the short answer is, "everywhere". Does that mean the controversy of what happened to the average joes is over yet?

I don't think it's really a controversy, it's a discussion. And those are good details!

But they aren't much to go on. I mean, scattered war tribes... are these actual societies, or just bunches of dudes who are only there to get rescued by the Stormcast? And the human refugees haven't had much said about them either. I want to know more about what life is like in the other realms, and if it boils down to what's been shown so far (misery, death, murder, death, and barbarians, and death) well, I don't find that very compelling. And it doesn't leave much room for us to find out where our own armies might fit in to the world.

Well, I read on Naftka that AoS-ified Brets are in the works, so there's a good chance that they're "Badbutt-normals".

In some of the pics of realms that have leaked, like that one with the Nurgle floating island, there have been castles and such, and battlefields. Some of these have to be held by plain ol' folk. Also, GW's videos have shown flagellants and Warpriests of Sigmar with nice new Stormcast themed paintjobs, so we can assume there are devout bands who follow the Stormcast around once they hit a realm.

If there are just Chaos barbarians everywhere, I'm going to have to make up a nice realm. The thought of nothing but savages without good reminds me too much of the Road. That book made me cry, even though I couldn't have found the characters less interesting, just because the world was so horrible, and there simply had to be hope for everyone, and large groups of good folks, because people are just *better* than that, as far as I'm concerned. If there isn't a visible, active, and potentially potent good in a setting, I hate it. So there had better be nice guys actually down in the thick of it, not just in Azyrheim or amongst the Aelfs.

I think the reason why there aren't any 'normal' people are around in the current setting is because Chaos was victorious (again) and basically killed everyone. The timeline for Age of Sigmar goes like this:

The World That Was - The old Warhammer World is destroyed by the End Times.

The Age of Myth - Sigmar arrives at Azyr on his twin-tailed comet. He starts exploring the realms, discovering human tribes who worship him as a God-King. Sigmar also forms his pantheon of Gods from various divine beings he encounters (Nagash, Teclis, Tyrion, Grugni, Grimnir, Gorkamorka, Alarielle and Malerion). A "Brief Time of Utopia" occurs as everyone works together and civilisations are founded. However towards the end of this Age their alliance starts falling apart as Gorkamorka starts WAAAGHing everywhere, Alarielle gets bored of the constant bickering in the alliance and Tzeentch manipulates Tyrion and Malerion into abandoning their duties in order to go capture Slaanesh (so they can find out what happened to the missing Aelfkind).

The Age of Chaos - Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch ally together, with Archaon in charge of their armies, and invade the Realms. Their main goal is to control the nexus point of the Realm Gates, which is initially defended by Sigmar's Alliance until Nagash betrays Sigmar (possibly due to some misguided idea that Chaos will leave him alone). Sigmar enrages and abandons the battlefield to try to exact vengeance against Nagash, but Nagash manages to give him the slip. When Sigmar comes to his senses, he finds that the Chaos forces have taken the Nexus Point and are over-running the Realms. Sigmar is forced to retreat to Azyr and close his Realm Gates, effectively conceding the Realms to Chaos.

Nagash does manage to initially repel the Chaos invaders to his own realm, until he comes under a sneak-attack by the Skaven, and combined the Chaos and Skaven forces defeat Nagash. The Realms, bar Azyr, are all-but conquered by Chaos.

The Chaos forces cannot break through the Realm Gates into Azyr, and begin to turn on each other out of boredom instead of going the extra effort to utterly and finally subjugate the Realms. Sigmar has been watching and brooding at his defeat from behind the Realm Gates to Azyr, whilst building up his new army of Stormcast Eternals created from mortal heroes of the Age of Chaos.

The Age of Sigmar - Sigmar launches his assault to take back the Realms. The Stormcast Eternals advance forces arrive via Lightning Strike (ie Deep Strike....) to begin opening the Realm Gates to allow the bulk of Sigmar's new army through. The Chaos Gods recognise that their new territory is in danger, and finally rally again to meet the new threat. The isolated pockets of resistance that Chaos failed to subjugate are invigorated by the arrival of the Stormcast Eternal, and join in the fight. The new starter box for Age of Sigmar is set at this time, as it portrays the opening battles of the Age of Sigmar.

 GoonBandito wrote:
I think the reason why there aren't any 'normal' people are around in the current setting is because Chaos was victorious (again) and basically killed everyone.

From what I understand, even though Chaos was successful in gaining control of most of the Realms, they haven't completely taken over everything.

The Realm of Aqshy (Fire) is just the one most taken over by Chaos, and specifically Khorne, which leaves the "native" population of the Realm the most shattered and scattered. They exist and they survive, but just barely. I think the closest analogy for the experience would be either Mad Max or Terminator/Skynet post-Judgement Day.

The citizens of the other Realms are probably farther ahead, with Death being the most tenuous for Chaos (Nagash is just too strong there), and possibly Light as well, but that's just guessing. The cold realm of Death lacks the passions that Khorne feeds off of, the life the Nurgle relies on, and the unchanging nature of the dead is an anathema to Tzeentch. The Wind of Light was often used as an anti-Daemon tool, so that would allow their citizens more power to work with.

But again, all guesswork till they release more information.