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Some thoughts I have been mulling over regarding the geography of Armageddon, especially as it is back in the limelight.

Most of Armageddon Primus and Secundus are shown as sandy regions or ash wastes (well, at least the bits we see regularly...). Naturally, this appears as hot deserts to someone who lives on Earth today.

Here is a page from Codex: Armageddon back in 2000 showing the typical terrain on those regions:


Looks like desert!

However... Primus and Secundus are riddled with major rivers:


Some flow out of the Equatorial jungle belt, but most do not and originate in the sandy regions.

Furthermore, there is plant life out in the wastes, albeit limited (not a comprehensive selection):


My suspicion is that most of these two regions are regularly rained upon and therefore not truly deserts, but the ground is so toxic the level of plant coverage is sparse, and near-enough non-existent in the ash wastes proper (these were marked on the original campaign maps in the 2000 campaign, see the pale areas on the map of the region around Infernus Hive below). We see alluding to this with mentions of acid rain. It gives a very different impression, to my mind, to be fighting through toxic bogs and mud instead of dry sands and ash, but that would appear to be commonplace across these regions.

Map of region around Infernus Hive- the pale regions to the left of the image show the ash wastes:


Worth noting the Season of Fire is probably the dry season on Armageddon, so likely to be little rain during the searing ash storms...

I don't think we have anywhere of a large scale on Earth today that receives good amounts of rainfall but remains devoid of much life due to sheer toxicity. There are small areas that appear this way, like the calderas of active volcanoes or the odd region poisoned by chemical and nuclear contamination from human industry. I think these are probably closest to how the surface of Armageddon Primus and Secundus looks.

Something like this image I found of an area poisoned in Romania (no particular focus on Romania, it is just this photo nicely showed where the toxins faded enough to allow plant life to grow again):


For a more moist example, this is an image of Lake Karachay in Russia (before it was filled in), which is thoroughly poisoned with radioactive waste:


Gave me some musings on how I'd want to model a board to represent terrain on Armageddon.

The "planet of hats" thing is definitely strong with 40k, all things aside, and I sometimes like to make a point to add some extra variety to show that my models are standing on a planet with all that entails.

Still, I like the info you have here. It's very useful. The second to last image seems broken however, it only works when opened in a new tab. The site may block embeds.

 Ashiraya wrote:
The "planet of hats" thing is definitely strong with 40k, all things aside, and I sometimes like to make a point to add some extra variety to show that my models are standing on a planet with all that entails.

Still, I like the info you have here. It's very useful.

Thanks To be fair, Armageddon does have quite a variety of climates shown, I just think it also had a widespread biome we don't have on Earth- temperate poisoned wastes...

The second to last image seems broken however, it only works when opened in a new tab. The site may block embeds.

Ah, not sure what is up with that. All images work for me.

Top quality post, and I very much agree with you. I'm also a big Armageddon fan and I've always thought the Ash Wastes themselves are mostly located around the Hives, with the rest of the planet clearly being much less desert-like. But the references to toxic air and acid rain make me think they must have fethed the atmosphere and have major problems with airborne pollution.

But what's pollution for us doesn't have to be a major problem for Armageddon's plant life - there could be species that can cope with whatever is in the atmosphere that would grow well while other more sensitive species died off. This is what happens with real world pollution any way.

Armageddon is one of the best developed planets in the setting.

 Da Boss wrote:
Top quality post, and I very much agree with you. I'm also a big Armageddon fan and I've always thought the Ash Wastes themselves are mostly located around the Hives, with the rest of the planet clearly being much less desert-like. But the references to toxic air and acid rain make me think they must have fethed the atmosphere and have major problems with airborne pollution.

But what's pollution for us doesn't have to be a major problem for Armageddon's plant life - there could be species that can cope with whatever is in the atmosphere that would grow well while other more sensitive species died off. This is what happens with real world pollution any way.

Armageddon is one of the best developed planets in the setting.

Thanks

There are references in the 2000 global campaign lore to living off the land (for example, the lore blurb for the Asgardian Rangers and why they are a good fit for deploying as scouts), and the Third War for Armageddon background book has several pages explaining what flora and fauna is and isn't edible, so I'm pretty sure much of Armageddon is not as desolate as commonly assumed, perhaps not surprising given nature has had thousands of years to adapt. I am lucky enough to have a copy of that background book, I'll get some pictures of the wildlife if I get chance.

You are absolutely correct about the true ash wastes being clustered near hives, presumably where the prevailing winds dump most of the ash. The original 2000 campaign maps highlighted this. You can still read some of them via the Wayback machine if you have a Flash plugin on your browser.

The old Guard primer had an Armageddon plant section with amusing updates as previous advice was found to be wrong

The_Real_Chris wrote:
The old Guard primer had an Armageddon plant section with amusing updates as previous advice was found to be wrong

Ooh, do you have a copy of that specific primer? I could never work out which edition was the Armageddon edition. If you do, could you tell me the cover colour and publication year?

The original edition of the Imperial Infantryman's uplifting Primer was published as generic, but was effectively Cadian-focused. The second edition was labelled as the Damocles Gulf edition. All the ones after that were also just sold as generic, but apparently each one had warzone-specific information with one being Armageddon. I missed this at the time and can't reliably work out which one it was. Given they sell for silly money secondhand I want to be really sure before I buy one.

I will go try and find out which one it is. I have three.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
I will go try and find out which one it is. I have three.

Thanks!

I have found my copy of the Third War for Armageddon background book and looked at the flora and fauna section. This is apparently an excerpt from the 1st edition before significant changes were made based on feedback... My suspicion from what you said above is that the primer contains said updated version!

The excerpt is behind the spoiler tags:

Interestingly, even the Fire Wastes have a widespread shrub, and that is a region I'm fairly confident is desert.

It amuses me that all of the animal life presented here is some variant of rat.

It has always been described as a hot world with deserts and jungles. Given the centuries of warfare though it has probably been reduced to a desert-like wasteland in many areas, so constantly showing areas like that is not incorrect. Anything will look like a blasted waste after the first hundred years of trench warfare. The war can't have been nice to the levels of pollution either.

I have also always suspected that Armageddon is partially Tidally Locked. The Fire Wastes and the "North Pole" are always facing the sun, while the Deadlands are always facing away. With the central continent being in a temperate band of habitable zones. Its not completely tidally locked, so its not as extreme as it could be, but it still explains why the southern continent is a frozen waste and the northern one is extremely hot.

You'd still have days and nights, but the sun would never rise much in the temperate band. It would peak up to a similar height to mid morning on Earth and then go back down again, tracing a half-circle in the sky. This would result in a very humid atmosphere as the oceans around the poles would be constantly evaporating while the humid air that rushed south would dump its water as it approached the cooler side of the planet. Massive storms would be the norm.

theres a reason they are called the ASH WASTES, those deserts aren't covered in sand!

I always assumed the desert parts were just covered in industrial waste.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It has always been described as a hot world with deserts and jungles. Given the centuries of warfare though it has probably been reduced to a desert-like wasteland in many areas, so constantly showing areas like that is not incorrect. Anything will look like a blasted waste after the first hundred years of trench warfare. The war can't have been nice to the levels of pollution either.

That is rather my point- Armageddon is _not_ routinely described as covered in deserts. I've looked through Codex: Armageddon, Warzone: Armageddon from Apocalypse (2nd edition), and several Imperial Guard codices. By far the most common description is wastelands or wastes. In all of them, I could only find one single reference to Armageddon having deserts from Warzone Armageddon:

Notably it still points out these areas are "lashed by acid rain storms". Given the aformentioned major rivers coming out of the wastes, I stand by my assertion that these areas are not actually deserts (which are defined by having low precipitation) but are merely wasteland that would be considerably greener if not for the massive levels of pollution.

I think the original global campaign maps are interesting here, because they show a lot of colour texture to the surface of Armageddon that most of the more recent maps do not (either due to less detail, or due to stylised colouration).

Take this image of the region around Hive Helsreach. The estuary of the Stygies river on the left of the image is noticeably greener than the surrounding wastes.

The same can be seen in the corresponding image of Hive Infernus- the Stygies river is now on the right of the image. In this image, you can also see an explicit region of "true" ash wastes in the pale areas to the north and west of the Hive.

The Plains of Anthrand seem to be sufficiently far from the major hives to be less polluted- there are actual forests extending along the western coast from the Equatorial Jungle.

I have also always suspected that Armageddon is partially Tidally Locked. The Fire Wastes and the "North Pole" are always facing the sun, while the Deadlands are always facing away. With the central continent being in a temperate band of habitable zones. Its not completely tidally locked, so its not as extreme as it could be, but it still explains why the southern continent is a frozen waste and the northern one is extremely hot.

You'd still have days and nights, but the sun would never rise much in the temperate band. It would peak up to a similar height to mid morning on Earth and then go back down again, tracing a half-circle in the sky. This would result in a very humid atmosphere as the oceans around the poles would be constantly evaporating while the humid air that rushed south would dump its water as it approached the cooler side of the planet. Massive storms would be the norm.

Yeah, this is fair. Having a very humid environment directly points against deserts though, and would account for the frequent mention of acid rains.

We actually have solid lore mentioning storms. Armageddon seems to have three major seasons- the Season of Fire (when the planet gets closest to the star), the Season of Shadows, and the Season of Storms.

Armageddon has a long history of visual language that calls to mind arid wastes and deserts, even if its general geography doesn't necessarily align with our scientific definitions of the word. "Wastes" in particular are quite amorphous in natural language that people use, ranging anywhere from wartorn moonscapes of world war one to regular undeveloped plots full of bushes.

Visually, the old Battle for Armageddon board game evokes pretty strong desert vibes, even if it calls the areas wastes as well:



Apologist's scholarly bloggings may be of interest for anyone interested in Armageddon's lore, as they are once again running a broad narrative network of enthusiastic hobbyists campaigning in the 3rd war.
https://apologentsia.blogspot.com/search/label/Battle%20for%20Armageddon and so on.