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Good morning,

I'm cooking up a Soulbound campaign but I'm not sure if I should place them in the timeline as it is, or back in the beginning of some of the major lore developments over the past few years. They are newbs to AoS, and I thought it would be neat to catch them up on all of the major plot points by having them take part in it. Howerver, IIRC, the Realmgate Wars took a long time, like a few hundred years? Is that correct? And how much time existed between the events of Malign Portents, Soul Wars, and Wrath of the Everchosen? EDIT: I asked because I was concerned that the human and duradin players would die of old age. Though I remember know that Soulbound characters do not age - though still, it should be relevant to know if Wrath of the Everchosen takes place a few years from Soul Wars or a few decades.

Afaik we do not have an exact timeline. At any rate, playing through the Realmgate Wars would be tricky because there were no free cities then, it was the during that time that they were first founded. So the infrastructure of civilization and even things like currency would not be there. Not to mention the centuries between the Realmgate Wars and the Necroquake.

Every setting has wars and major events that happened in the past. Be it D&D, LotR, or WHFB. Having it be something the players did not experience themselves and only know from second-hand knowledge helps to immerse them in the setting because their characters also did not experience it themselves and only know from second-hand knowledge.

Wrath of the Everchosen is a solely Chaos-Death conflict, we do not know how much the forces of Order even know about it (if at all).

IIRC the major events of the RGW happened in more or less rapid succession (the 5 campaign books). Though it is said that the RGW are over it addresses more the events of the 5 campaign books while the ongoing conflict after them may have persisted actively for an unknown amount of time and even to the present day (most people just aren't aware of the conflict). In AOS there are no time periods,but rather series of events each leading to the next. If I could conjure a time table out of my memories it could look something like this.

The RGW - lasting a couple of years at most, certainly less than a decade.

The major free cities are founded as soon as order gains a stable foothold around the gates. Probably a decade or two for the "cleaning up" and then another decade for the founding of the actual city (which IIRC were said to sprout very fast due to mutual collaboration)

The ongoing gate conflict continues for say a couple of centuries, but concetrated at different times on different realms so to the average human it seems that the war passed away and everything is now ok while in fact it is still going active on some other plane. After that concrete (more or less) spheres of influence are drawn while the powers lick their wounds and prepare for their next major move

Some generations after the founding of the cities (not few but not that many as people still remember who's family came from Azyr and which did not) achaos cults begin infiltrating them - more or less not long after the establishing of the post RGW status quo. Roughly at the same time Sigmar and the other "playas" starts looking into the Malign Portents omens and Nagash triggers the Necroquake. In the days and years that follow it, let's say the next decade, people start begin aware of the consequences, Sigmar launches the quest for the reforging cure etc.

You can wrap these in about 300 hundred years which should ok for a RPG campaign as events are still fairly close one to another, but "hundreds of years" in the past.

Someone with fresher memories than mine can interject and correct me.

The Realmgate Wars definitely lasted many years, likely more than a decade. Just one of the campaign books (Godbeasts) explicitly states the events within occur over multiple years. Then there was enough time for completely new cities to be built (which had chaos cults in them from the very start--see the Tzeentch battletome) before the Season of War happened, after which an unknown amount of time passed before the Malign Portents kicked up leading into the Necroquake. Novels happening pre-Portents mention the RGW being centuries prior so that gives an estimate.

As for when the Necroquake hit, people were immediately aware something had happened. It was about as subtle as an actual earthquake.

I think the lore has some cities being able to survive the chaos onslaught, if just barely.

It would make.sense, as all that stuff was written in the Kirby era when they just wanted to port 40k to fantasy.

I believe that was the original fluff, and it was with second edition they changed it to state that no cities survived. I can track down the exact quote if you like.

The age of Sigmar timeline is pretty good for this sort of thing.

https://ageofsigmar.com/timeline/

But, for main events.

Realmgate wars.

Starting with the opening of the Realmgates in the realm of Fire, Life, and Metal which lead to the battle for the gates to the Eightpoints.

Next was the Season of War/Seeds of Hope, which decided the fates of the founding cities of Sigmar. (worldwide campaign, which ended with Order in control of all the cities).

The Malign Portents was the next, with armies of all four grand alliances drawn to the realm of Death, sometimes inadvertently, to stop whatever Nagash was up to. This was another worldwide campaign, with players deciding the course of the story.

Now we are in the Soul Wars. The Necroquake, although not fully successful, has brought Death into resurgence, and Undead and Geists assail all the realms, and Endless Spells spill across the realms, causing all sorts of havoc.

Carlovonsexron wrote:
I think the lore has some cities being able to survive the chaos onslaught, if just barely.

It would make.sense, as all that stuff was written in the Kirby era when they just wanted to port 40k to fantasy.

I think their Battletome is pretty explicit that the only peoples of Order who survived with their civilisations intact were the Fyreslayers (who were very bloodied).

The recent White Dwarf actually has an article on this which includes the first half of a timeline used by the developers to keep events in order. Second half to be in the next White Dwarf.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Second half to be in the next White Dwarf.

Along with some Spiderfang goodness, via The Tome Celestial!

 nels1031 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Second half to be in the next White Dwarf.

Along with some Spiderfang goodness, via The Tome Celestial!

My main army is Spiderfangs. I AM SO STOKED!