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Hi All!

I've been thinking to Maybe start collecting some AoS stuff (Lizardmen are my preference) And whilst I'll mostly be painting them as I don't think there is much of a scene for playing etc. where I am I'd like to know more about the Lore.

From what I understand the new universe is divided into "realms" which are interconnected via portals, how big are these realms? Is it ever mentioned? Is everything "mystical" now or does the old world grim-dark slog still exist?

My second question is from a terrain building perspective, Like I've seen in the art lots of strange worlds (like the undead realm) but never like a normal human village or a Lizard men temple-city type thing.

cheers!

I'll take a crack at some of these though I may be wrong.
From my understanding, the size of the realms hasn't been explicitly stated but they aren't infinite. They each have a "Realm's End" which essentially leads to the Realm of Chaos and then the various gates leading to the other realms. I think they also have an ultimate end, I'm basing this on the story of GorkaMorka's Great Waaghh where he rampaged from one end of the Mortal Realms to the other, spat off into the void and turned back around to do it all over again.

The realms are pretty mystical, the Realm of Fire is literally lava, flame and emboddied anger all the time. However within those realms there is definitely the possibility for Grim DarkTM.

Take Hammerhall, the city from the latest Warhammer Quest box. It's a twin city with part of it built in Aqshy, the Realm of Fire and a part in Ghyran, the Realm of Life all built on a Realmgate connecting the two sections of the city. Hammerhall Aqshy, supplies metal and heat while Hammerhall Ghyran keeps the city fed. But within the city you have the poor and maimed begging on the streets, Chaos cults infiltrating the city and plotting it's downfall.

On the terrain, remember a lot of the Battletomes and fluff to date only really covered the start of the Age of Sigmar. But we're now seeing fluff set around 50-80 years after that where regular human cities and Kingdoms are being reformed or formed anew after Chaos has been pushed back.
I haven't read the Seraphon Battletome so it might address where they've been living during the Age of Chaos but I would suspect that human villages in Ghyran or Ghur would resemble more traditional human settlements, even if they needed to take additional precautions to keep back encroaching plant life or a transient Maw'Krusha.

Seraphon have not been living anywhere, to befrank. The majority of th army is memories made manifest, while the Slann are the only 'true' living creatures in th army. Barring anything they summon and cobtinues to linger.

Where they live is on High azyr, in their temple-city ships. These ships are the old cities in space. Basically.

It seems nobody in-game really knows just what the Mortal Realms actually are, and so far they've not had an especially cohesive description in the background - which I suspect is entirely deliberate.

Settlements? Few and far between for now, but then we've barely begun exploring the Mortal Realms. The various background books make it clear that some civilisations endured the Age of Chaos, but these seem much reduced, perhaps a City State at most.

This thread might help

At the start of the age of sigmar there weren't many human cities outside of the realm of heavens(forgot the name). But they are slowly coming back. Like in the book city of secrets, there is a city with a port and everything. This saturday will bring the kharadon overlords, which have flying city ports, which they build during the age of chaos/sigmar.

 Voodoo_Chile wrote:


On the terrain, remember a lot of the Battletomes and fluff to date only really covered the start of the Age of Sigmar. But we're now seeing fluff set around 50-80 years after that where regular human cities and Kingdoms are being reformed or formed anew after Chaos has been pushed back.

The time jump does make me wonder if we'll ever have a set "present time" or whether they intend the setting to be divided into perhaps ages that you can set your army in.

 amazingturtles wrote:

 Voodoo_Chile wrote:


On the terrain, remember a lot of the Battletomes and fluff to date only really covered the start of the Age of Sigmar. But we're now seeing fluff set around 50-80 years after that where regular human cities and Kingdoms are being reformed or formed anew after Chaos has been pushed back.

The time jump does make me wonder if we'll ever have a set "present time" or whether they intend the setting to be divided into perhaps ages that you can set your army in.

Having (briefly) read through the thread that Mad Doc linked, It seems they're building up to it...but 2-3 years is a long time to set the setting, isn't it? I got the feeling from reading the Thread that they're trying to make Sigmars Realm a "heaven" and Nagash's one a "hell/underworld" which would mean the remaining/ excluding chaos are the ones where people would live? Have they addressed what normal people have been doing in the AoS?

I'm finding it all quite confusing to grasp without visuals! Having never really looked at the new universe in detail it's a bit of a shock!

A few topics down I made a general lore thread, that pretty much answers these questions.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/710601.page

The relevant posts is city of secrets overview, Pantheon and my warhammer quest hammerhal post.

Your posts are great shinros, and very helpful! but while they do tell what the current present is, it doesn't tell how long that will remain the present, if you get what i'm saying. Unless i missed something

 amazingturtles wrote:
Your posts are great shinros, and very helpful! but while they do tell what the current present is, it doesn't tell how long that will remain the present, if you get what i'm saying. Unless i missed something

Lord Kragan made a general time frame of the events sorta. AOS starts right after end times and begins the age of myth.


Age of Myth: 1300 years divided in two periods.
Age of Chaos: 500 years in a single period.
Age of Sigmar: from 68 to 80 years. Current period.


In the city of secrets novel they note since the age of sigmar started it's been about 50-80 years, since they say at most a generation as passed since the cities have been set up.

Voodoo_Chile wrote:Take Hammerhall, the city from the latest Warhammer Quest box. It's a twin city with part of it built in Aqshy, the Realm of Fire and a part in Ghyran, the Realm of Life all built on a Realmgate connecting the two sections of the city. Hammerhall Aqshy, supplies metal and heat while Hammerhall Ghyran keeps the city fed. But within the city you have the poor and maimed begging on the streets, Chaos cults infiltrating the city and plotting it's downfall.

Hammerhall is awesome.

Though Aqshy can't all be a desolate waste of lava and death, there are humans (both chaos worshippers and the nomads who flee from them) who live there. I'm sure slaves work in Khorne's forges there. Despite all the desolation described in the novels and game books, people actually are born, live, have children and die there.

Every realm is filled with diverse biomes from what I've read. Even Aqshy has grasslands and tundras. The main difference between each realm is that each is dominated by one of the Winds of Magic, so Aqshy is mostly warm with heavy geothermic activity, Ghyran is very verdant, etc.

Indeed, one thing to remember is that the realms were severely messed up by chaos with the realm of fire probably more than others since Khorne himself showed up there.

The "Hammers of Sigmar" novel gives a really good look at how messed up things are from a terrified priestess' perspective.

Bored Khornites building bridges of spiked cages filled with maimed birds that get pulled up by a passing moon's gravity so they feebly fly on bloody stumps, animals corrupted by chaos being trapped in ravines of warp fire, tattered tribes worshipping their conquerors by crudely dressing as them, any bloodshed having a chance to bring a swarm of manticores down on you.

Contrast to background hints given of noble knight kingdoms, great empires and fantastical cities of massive size, rivers (some held sacred) and vast plains, the sky titans walking amongst the mortals.

So yeah, chaos has alot to answer for.

Also, to the OP, you should check out Wellofeternity's artwork collection on his blog if you want some visuals.

Baron Klatz wrote:
Indeed, one thing to remember is that the realms were severely messed up by chaos with the realm of fire probably more than others since Khorne himself showed up there.

The "Hammers of Sigmar" novel gives a really good look at how messed up things are from a terrified priestess' perspective.

Bored Khornites building bridges of spiked cages filled with maimed birds that get pulled up by a passing moon's gravity so they feebly fly on bloody stumps, animals corrupted by chaos being trapped in ravines of warp fire, tattered tribes worshipping their conquerors by crudely dressing as them, any bloodshed having a chance to bring a swarm of manticores down on you.

Contrast to background hints given of noble knight kingdoms, great empires and fantastical cities of massive size, rivers (some held sacred) and vast plains, the sky titans walking amongst the mortals.

So yeah, chaos has alot to answer for.

Also, to the OP, you should check out Wellofeternity's artwork collection on his blog if you want some visuals.

I mean that alone gives me many ideas for potential terrain projects!

In the Everqueen novel there was a small mentioning of the lizard peeps. Basically there were craters with egg fragments that were a sign they were involved in a battle. I haven't read anything at all about the Seraphon in the Mortal Realms beyond that, but perhaps there's a terrain project there. I don't know what the eggs were for or how the craters were made. Or how big the eggs were.

That's pretty neat to hear. Seraphon are looking to be the "behind-the-scenes" guys, a mysterious force working to stop far worse things from occurring that everyone's in the dark about. So good guy Lovecraft.

About the eggs, I don't think I've heard of Lizardmen/Seraphon laying eggs as they come from spawning pools/Slaan's powers. Maybe there's something about in the Seraphon battletome that mentions it but my best guess would be portable spawning pools in containers that are made to look like eggs.

So if I did terrain for them I'd make large craters with large broken eggs covered with multi-colored Aztec lines to give a artificial alien look to them.

 Henry8362 wrote:

Baron Klatz wrote:
Indeed, one thing to remember is that the realms were severely messed up by chaos with the realm of fire probably more than others since Khorne himself showed up there.

The "Hammers of Sigmar" novel gives a really good look at how messed up things are from a terrified priestess' perspective.

Bored Khornites building bridges of spiked cages filled with maimed birds that get pulled up by a passing moon's gravity so they feebly fly on bloody stumps, animals corrupted by chaos being trapped in ravines of warp fire, tattered tribes worshipping their conquerors by crudely dressing as them, any bloodshed having a chance to bring a swarm of manticores down on you.

Contrast to background hints given of noble knight kingdoms, great empires and fantastical cities of massive size, rivers (some held sacred) and vast plains, the sky titans walking amongst the mortals.

So yeah, chaos has alot to answer for.

Also, to the OP, you should check out Wellofeternity's artwork collection on his blog if you want some visuals.

I mean that alone gives me many ideas for potential terrain projects!

Glad to hear it, AoS has no shortage for terrain inspiration.

A fun fact is the realm of fire has Oriental elements to it as it's largest empire was the Steppe Khanate and the Hammerhal map shows a area that resembles a landmass in Asia.

So if you ever wanted to make a Chinese castle surrounded by lava moats then this would be the opportunity.

Part way through the book they come across a battlefield and it's all mysterious. I have no idea what the egg like fragments are or were, but a character takes as confirmation that it was the seraphon.

I think the Egg fragments are the 'drop pods' of the Slaan.

Essentially, a Slaan descends, and then summons their forces from dreams/memory - so Lizardmen, Skinks, Kroxigor etc are all daemons now. And they're not just dreams of form, but of mind. So Inci-Winci the Skink might be slain in one battle, and then 'remembered' for the next, and return fully intact.

What I'm really enjoying about AoS is that it's a developing setting. And I'm fairly sure once Sigmar has opened all his Chambers (at least another two, possibly three or four to go) we'll get to see how everyone else is developing

Another thing is to see Chaos on the backfoot for once, meeting foes more than capable of slaughtering a Chaos Warrior in a one-on-one fight. I know other opinions vary, but for me that's a welcome change to the traditional 'not if but when' chaos victory.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I think the Egg fragments are the 'drop pods' of the Slaan.

Essentially, a Slaan descends, and then summons their forces from dreams/memory - so Lizardmen, Skinks, Kroxigor etc are all daemons now. And they're not just dreams of form, but of mind. So Inci-Winci the Skink might be slain in one battle, and then 'remembered' for the next, and return fully intact.

What I'm really enjoying about AoS is that it's a developing setting. And I'm fairly sure once Sigmar has opened all his Chambers (at least another two, possibly three or four to go) we'll get to see how everyone else is developing

Another thing is to see Chaos on the backfoot for once, meeting foes more than capable of slaughtering a Chaos Warrior in a one-on-one fight. I know other opinions vary, but for me that's a welcome change to the traditional 'not if but when' chaos victory.

I agree about chaos being on the backfoot for once lol, It makes a nice change!

They seem much more Mystical than Chaos Daemons (Tzeentch Daemons being my other choice of army to build) I think either way i'm covered on Miniatures and Terrain, although I don't see myself building a Seraphon city any time soon as it would probably not be a very viable battle location! (Or does manifested stardust still need to eat/Sleep!?!?))

Decisions, Decisions!