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Mostly is what I am looking for is whole faction evil and not just, "this one guy is a jerk so they're all jerks!" Cygnar isn't out to commit genocide, Lael is pretty much the same after Khador took it, Menoth might be pushing it being a little, uh, burney... I haven't read all of the stories, just the ones in the armies of books. Am I missing something or is Immoren really not going to fall apart if one of these factions destroys the other?

Cryx is the only wholly evil faction in Warmachine IMO.

The Protectorate is more lawful neutral with some tendencies toward lawful evil on the part of some individuals, but not Menoth himself.


On the Hordes side of things its a little darker.

Trolls are mostly good. Nothing really evil about them.

Circle are followers of Oboros, who is the Destroyer. That's not really good, although they realize that they can't allow him to become too powerful as that would upset the balance between him and Menoth.

Skorne are a little iffy, but I would define them as mostly evil. if only because they are without any purpose beyond just fighting and conquering.

Blindwater is definitely evil. Bunch of necromantic lizards with delusions of world conquest.

Legion of Everblight may be mostly evil as well, although ridding the world of the Torek is not a bad idea. Hopefully they destroy each other in the process.

Thornfall alliance. Chaotic neutral. Brigands and thieves, nothing more.

Mostly evil? I'm pretty sure Legion could be considered fully evil

Depends. Everblight isn't interested in turning everyone undead. He's more than willing to accept the services of new followers and he delights in them and his creations. he's kinda like Papa Nurgle almost.

 Grey Templar wrote:

The Protectorate is more lawful neutral with some tendencies toward lawful evil on the part of some individuals, but not Menoth himself.

Pretty much this with Menoth, though in the previous version of IKRPG, it was actually a requirement to be Lawful Evil if you wanted to be a Scrutator.

My interpretation is that Menoth is the god of Lawfulness. Scrutators are Lawful Evil; Paladins of the Wall are Lawful Good; most are Lawful Neutral. But the creed of Menoth is the Law above all else, a la Judge Dredd. I consider the Protectorate to be fairly unfriendly, though not pure evil.

Anyway. Of the Warmachine factions... Khador is on the darker side of imperial tropes? I consider them mostly neutral, but their corrupt aristocrats exploit and murder Khadorans and non-Khadorans alike, the Empire is prone to murderous displays of dominance, and they're generally engaging in a big, violent war of conquest for the sake of national aggrandizement. Good guys like Harkovich kind of feel like they're struggling to reform the system from the inside, rather than being the mainstream.

For Mercenaries, the Four Star Syndicate deserves a mention. They're a shadowy organization of crime lords and pirates with less honor than the Mafia.

Other than them, though, my main candidate for the evil non-Cryx Warmachine faction would be the Retribution. They're engaging in a genocidal war against humanity on the terrible assumption that because the gods started dying correlates with the rise of human magic, there must be causation as well. They don't really have the power to do anything really evil yet, but their unfriendliness and general xenophobia makes them one of the less sympathetic factions to me.

On the Hordes side, yeah, Skorne, Legion, and Blindwater are all pretty freaking evil. The pigs aren't very nice, either. The Circle Orboros is a bit of an odd case. My impression from their fluff is that they have a monopoly on the destructive power of nature, and are thus focused on keeping Menoth and the Devourer Wurm fighting so that nobody takes that away from them. Kind of jerkish, but maintaining this balance also keeps the world from ending. The push to raze all human settlements is not so nice, though.

If conquest is the mark of evil, several factions are evil (Menoth, Skorne, Khador, Thornfall).

If bloodshed/genocide for a specfic end is the watermark, other factions are evil. (Everblight, Retribution, Circle, Blindwater, Talion)

Cryx can either be described as the most evil, or the most amivalent; they care not for your pitiful lands, empires, or riches. They seek only to reunite the Dragonfather with his progeny.

Everyone is Evil
Everyone is Good

Its a matter of perspective

Retribution just want all the human mages dead, and anything else that stands in between both...

Retribution of Scyrah is definitely on the evil side. "Humans got magic around the same time our gods died, therefor humans killed our gods with their magic, so we're going to kill all humans out of revenge."

 Talamare wrote:
Everyone is Evil
Everyone is Good

Its a matter of perspective

Perspective works if you like Coke more than Pepsi. In the case of these want to harvest all of you squishy human parts and these guys want to add your lands to theirs but will rebuild what they blew up I would say the latter isn't so evil. Jerks, sure, but not all jerks are evil. That is my opinion though so lets agree to disagree there. Thanks for all of the replies guys.

Here's a handy Warmahordes faction alignment poster.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Here's a handy Warmahordes faction alignment poster.

That awkward moment when your 3 Favorite Factions are all Psychopaths

Throwing this out there as I'm a circle player, and that's because their fluff is the most interesting to me in all of warmahordes.

They don't follow orboros. That's the tharn, the bloodthirsty barbarians who mostly serve the circle. It's pretty well explained that while the tharn see orboros/the devourer worm as a diety, the Druids see it as a tool to be used. Druids experience the wilding at some point in their lives, and this gives them an attachment to the devourer worm so that they can draw on its power.

The problem the Druids face is two fold, and it revolves around menoth and the devourer fighting in heaven or wherever. If the Druids kill everyone, then the worm wins in heaven, then comes back to this dimension and destroys everything. However, if they allow civilization to prosper, and choke the ley lines in the ground that serve as a kind of circuit for the worms powers, then the worm will feel that something is wrong back on earth, and promptly come back and destroy everything.

Most of the Druids believe that civilization is growing too quickly, and they can no longer hold back the apocalypse.

Thus they're called the janitors of the apocalypse, and have the coolest army fluff I've ever read.

Expanding on Orboros, there is also a straight-up self-serving factor for a lot of druids. They are motivated in keeping the Wurm at bay less out of wanting to protect humanity. Instead, because being a druid is itself a position of personal power and authority, they want to keep being able to use that power. Everyone dying because of a pissed off god of chaos is generally detrimental to that.

And expanding on Legion of Everblight, it's pretty evil. "Ridding the world of Turok" isn't a result of wnating to help the world but because Turok will eat Everblight if he ever were to go into rampaging dragon form. Everblight actually wants to eat Turok, and become more or less a god incarnate on Caen. Conscription into the Legion is more or less done via parasitic blight enslaving his soldiers, and he has more or less destroyed Nyss society and thousands of lives in order to do this. His blight also tends to exasperate the worst features of a person's personality, and his warlocks range from brainwashed (Absylonia, Bethayne), opportunistic (Thagrosh), self-diluted (Lylyth) or outright self-serving no matter the costs (Saeryn, Vayl). About the only "good guy" in their Faction to me is Kallus, who is more or less ambivilant about most people.

And stuff.

IMO, Menoth is the most evil and Cryx is the least evil.

But that is just my personal views.

Looks like someone needs a good Wracking.

Anyone who is against the Mother Land is evil and should be slain on site.

 The Foot wrote:
Mostly is what I am looking for is whole faction evil and not just, "this one guy is a jerk so they're all jerks!" Cygnar isn't out to commit genocide, Lael is pretty much the same after Khador took it, Menoth might be pushing it being a little, uh, burney... I haven't read all of the stories, just the ones in the armies of books. Am I missing something or is Immoren really not going to fall apart if one of these factions destroys the other?

read the stories.

it all comes down to perspective. any and all factions, ultimately, are practical moreso than anything else. ruthlessly practical, essentially. they all have factions or individuals who will be quite happy to get their hands dirty to acheive their ends.

Cygnar. well, they had the inquisition for a start. and we all know how "nice" those guys are. they also made a peace treaty with the trolls and gave them lands. it just so happened that those lands were along the path of a skorne invasion, and the trolls ended up being used as a buffer. when it came time to give them their dues, they didnt make peace. they didnt make ammends. they sent in the 4th. if anything, cygnar are more akin to 18th century americans with their treatment of the native americans than anything else. Also, while cygnar prides itself on a "good" army, then why do they constantly hire disreputable mercenaries who loot, pillage and burn in the name of the cygnus? see thyra's backstory for an example.

Cygnar are "grey". they're like israel. surrounded by enemies that want to see them dead, so they end up being just as ruthless in order to keep afloat.

Khador. angry russian imperialists. they've spilled their share of blood over the years. quite a ruthless place, and life is quite cheap. they're not evil in the traditional one-dimensional cartoon villain kind of way, but they're aggressive, expansionist, and dont mind steamrolling any one or anything that gets in the way of reforging the great khardic empire. again, think any great empire in history. from the romans to the mongols and the nazis. its fine if you're on their side, but if you're on the other side of the gate, and the Butcher of Khardov is knocking on the door with his doom reaver buddies, well, khador are about as far from "nice" as youre gonna get.

Protectorate. they worship a god of law. the fact that his laws arent that nice and pretty is irrelevant. you follow the law. and if you dont, you get wracked, burned and turned into focus for a warcaster. a whole nation enslaved and humbled by an aggressive, militant and omnipotent priesthood. and not just any priesthood. its a scrutator dominated priesthood. and scrutators are baaaad folks. you see, back in the day when worship of menoth was the big thing (basically before the birth of the twins) you had your warrior priests, and your king priests and all manner of other stuff. the scrutators were divorced from humanity. they were a cross between judge, jury, executioner, interrogator/torturer, inquisitor, investigator and so on. Judge dredd, essentially. and for the most part, whilst not shunned they were kept apart. they needed to be, because of their harsh and ruthless duties. and because of said duties, they're likely to attract the most zealous, venemous and outright vindictive folks around - the guys who think its good to punish "bad guys" in the name of menoth. the guys who, even if you're not guilty of one sin, will keep twisting the screws until you confess to another. and you get burned for that one instead. and in the protectorate, these extremists rule. its like the taliban, except they have an angry god behind them, quite happy to manifest miracles and give them divine power to chuck fireballs at people.
so to them, theyre doing a harsh but "right" thing. morrow and thamar are upstarts. the true law is all that counts. but to anyone else, its the apocalypse. stryker spoke of whole towns and villages razed on a whim by these extremists. good by their perspectives, evil by everyone elses.

cryx. an evil empire, that encourages necromancy, sacrifice and the dark arts, all in the name of toruk, to wage his great war against his progeny. he's not evil. just selfish. selfish in a way that will destroy the world. life. death. nations. football matches. these things are insignificant and mean nothing. you see, toruk doesnt want to laugh while the world burns. he just wants to devour his progeny. the rest is ants beneath his feat. you mean nothing to him. so how can he be "evil"? Now, to be fair, he and his followers do like a lot of nasty tricks. suicide troops, necromancy, pulling drmons from the abyss and giving them armour and weapons and directing their hate to kill their enemies. towns and cities razed, corpses by the thousands. the results are terrifying, true. but the source is not "evil". its all just collateral damage. then again, when its your village that has been wiped out, and your family torn up, mutilated, their bodies turned into mechanithralls or drudges, and their souls used to fuel a lichlord or a helljack, youre gonna think they're some of the nasties, wrongest most evil things ever. and you'd be right.

retribution. angry elves, with genocidal tendencies. their gods have disappeared (bar two - one is in a coma, the other is sealed in a block of ice), their culture is waning and their whole race faces extinction within a hundred years. those gods disappeared right at the time that magic began appearing in humans. So they took the leap that suggests that human magic and the disappearance of their gods are linked. from there, they leaped to "kill all human mages". its a very twisted, very skewed perception of the world. very one dimensional, and very much ignoring a lot of other things. but yeah, anger, despair and a siege mentality will do that to you. Some individuals take "kill all human mages" to mean "kill all humans" like garryth, for example. so the genocidal nature of the war theyre waging - thats quite evil and nasty, isnt it?

Now, look at the hordes side.

Look at trollbloods. some are OK. some were raised amongst the humans, and generally have nothing all that much against them. Madrak, for example. he doesnt really want to be a jerk about what hes doing. the sad thing is, circumstances forced him into this roll. practicalities, and nothing more. then again, youve got doomshaper. who despises humans and would be quite happy to see them wiped out. heck, he had mulg go on a feeding rampage through a whole trainload of wounded cygnaran soldiers. the dire trolls they use as living weapons are evil monsters straight out of nightmares. again, harnessed out of practicality, but when these things come down from the mountain and tear your village up and eat everything in sight, you're not going to be thinking that the trollbloods fighting for a homeland are doing it for a righteous cause. they might be in their eyes, but the cost to other races is very high. again, evil is a perspective that can be taken.

Circle. angry druids who are custodians of the apocalypse. these guys will poison wells, salt fields whip up storms, break dams and drown whole cities. heck, they raised the rip lung disease which all but wiped out the orgoth back in the day. their motivations are sinister. civilisation is the enemy. they want to bring humanity back to the dark ages - back to living in caves, when humans were part of nature, instead ofcontrolling it. they want to turn farmland into wild, trackless forest. they want to see the great cities- the great bastions of humanity turned to dust. all their acheivements, all their glories and progress - they want to destroy it all because civilisation threatens the natural order. and the natural order, or course, is harnessed and controlled by them too.

the druids are evil. make no mistake about it. they want to destroy the whole modern way of life and make everyone live like a barbarian.

Skorne. angry, expansionist and ruthless. sounds like khador, right? in every way, shape and form. Now factor in a bushido-like code of honour, a society bent on warfare, their mages fuel their magics from torture, death and pain of their enslaved warbeasts, and yes, you also have slavery as an integral part of their whole culture. in fact, their magic-morthituergy is a close cousin of necromancy. i asked on the PP forums why they didnt have orcs in their setting one. One poster pointed out that they have pork instead (farrow), and then seacat (the main writer) chimed in saying the skorne were the angry militant society based on conquest, and were meant to fill that void normally held by orcs in other settings. they're just far more disciplined about it. bu yes, you've got death magic, slavery, torture, and conquest. pretty much everything you need to be considered evil.

and everblight. another dragon. Like Toruk, he's extremely selfish. interestingly, the blighted nyss are very similar in scope to tolkiens orcs when you think about it (blighted, tortured, twisted elves). Everblight himself has destoryed whole cities, and civilisations. his magics and manipulations create twisted mockeries of life, with only one goal. either youre protein for the beasts, or you're a blighted monstrosity. talk to the nyss refugees fleeing northern khador. the legion is terrifiying. just like toruk, he will destroy everything in his path to get what he wants, and he's doing it in a far faster fashion than any dragon has ever acted on in the past. essentially, to use a 40k comparison, he is the hive mind, directing a swarm of engineered monsters to his own goals. yes, they're evil.

and a brief mention for gators and pigs. barnabus wants to ascend to godhood at the pinnacle of a terrifying battle involving the slaughter of countless thousands of individuals. lord carver wants to see human civilisation turned to dust, and his own raised in its place.

So yeah, they can all be considered evil

I dont think theres any "redeeming" points for the 2 Minion mini factions so they're pretty darn evil.

Gators want to beat up everything (with the head honcho wanting to become a god via slaughter and his 2nd in command being a really smart Starscream) and the Pigs want to smash everything and are pretty much created by your stock evil scientist (of course thats my opinion!)


They are also my 2 favorite factions

Everyone else has their good guys and bad guys. Even the Highborn Covenant has some people who dont really believe in freedom and only care about killing Khadorians

The alignment skew in WM/H is less about 'good' and 'evil' labels like D&D and more about selfishness versus selflessness, and lawfulness versus lawlessness (in this respect somewhat similar to D&D).

The afterlife in WM/H is not some vague concept. When you die, your soul leaves your body. If you were a loyal Menite all your life and hewed to His commandments, then you get to go to his giant walled city in the sky (literally) and your soul will remain sheltered from the horrible, demon-spawning wasteland that surrounds it. If you don't follow His commandments, then likely you will die a painful death by burning (as you are shunned by society) and then your soul will be rended to little bits by demons as you have no patron deity to intervene on your behalf.

The Dragons (Cryxian civilisation under Toruk and Legion of Everblight under Ethrunbaal/Everbllight) factions are those that most closely resemble Classically Evil alignments in normal fantasy settings.

 The Foot wrote:

 Talamare wrote:
Everyone is Evil
Everyone is Good

Its a matter of perspective

Perspective works if you like Coke more than Pepsi. In the case of these want to harvest all of you squishy human parts and these guys want to add your lands to theirs but will rebuild what they blew up I would say the latter isn't so evil. Jerks, sure, but not all jerks are evil. That is my opinion though so lets agree to disagree there. Thanks for all of the replies guys.

You are forgetting the part where Khador turns their convicts into insane murdering psychopaths and is actively torturing and murdering thousands of innocents to create new Fellblades. Not exactly a very nice thing to do!

Circle can be viewed as evil but their fluff gives reason to this. The wurm is in a perpetual battle with Menoth, we already know Menoth receives strength from his followers and if he wins the battle mankind will drown the world in their cities (i'm thinking 40K type forge worlds ). If the Wurm wins he"ll return and release natural disasters all over the world so in any case the world will eventually end.Fluff says The Circle must keep the balance to stop the world from ending even if it means wiping out entire towns and villages so its really a trade off of a few hundred to save millions but they're still losing.

The thing about the Circle to remember, however, is that most druids don't do it to save the world. They do it because they don't want to die, and they like personal power. At least to me that's always seemed liek the biggest motivator than any true selflessness in their curation of the Wurm.

And stuff.

Can someone point me to where it outright says all Druids are selfish?

Mohsar - He despises everyone, including his fellow Druids.
Krueger - Had a menoth priest as a father. When the wilding happened his dad tried to burn him but he was rescued by Druids. Hates Menites and I imagine menoth. Wants to see the world wipes clean.
Cassius - Really doesnt count for much. Ancient being that uses Druids as a conduit to communicate.
Kromac - Not a Druid. Worships the worm as a god.
Baldur - Probably the most level headed and gentle of the Druids. Maintained a strained friendship with a few other factions like trolls to share stone secrets. Master stone shaper, doesn't care much for Druid politics.
Kaya - Wild child that cares little for circle politics.
Grayle - Hates circle politics. Heck, his quote revolves around men following courage, not deception.
Morvahna - The only playable Druid that cares for politics. Selfish and sees everyone only as tools.

If the Druids don't screw with civilization, everyone dies. They are trying to prevent that. Some are more selfish than others (morvahna), some are more psychotic than others (Kruegar), but from everything I've read in mk2 calling them an evil faction is naive. They aren't righteous by any means, but I hardly see trying to stop the end of the world from happening evil.were they trying to cause it I could understand them being evil but that's not the case.

They're like trolls. Doing bad things because choosing to not do them means everyone dies.

Except they are on the side of destruction.

Menoth is the god of creation and order. The Devourer only exists to destroy.

Neither winning would be the best thing, but one would definitely be preferable to the other.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Except they are on the side of destruction.

Menoth is the god of creation and order. The Devourer only exists to destroy.

Neither winning would be the best thing, but one would definitely be preferable to the other.

No, they're not. They're not on any bodies side. They dislike menoth, but it explicitly states that Druids do not worship the worm. They use its power as a tool and no more.

Yes, neither winning is what the Druids want. It, again, explicitly states they don't want menoth or the worm to win. There is no second best option. If one wins everyone gets killed.

I'm assuming you don't think law is always good and destruction is always bad. If you think that's the case just say so and we can skip discussing this any further.

I guess it is less so much selfish but self-motivated. Nothing I ever got out of the Circle stuff is the "keep the Wurm from coming back and killing everything" felt to be in a tone that it was for the good of everyone else. "Come back and kill everyone" includes "kills me".

Also note that while not many of the actually playable warlocks are in the above boat, there's obvious instances of druidic politics influencing their actions. Krueger, for instance, doesn't so much want everyone to die. Rather, he things things were better off when humans were in a stone age since druids were more or less god-kings and had a lot easier time doing their job. He seems to think at this point the only way to get back to that is outright disastor for human civilization on an apocolyptic scale. Mohsar is about the status quo. That status quo includes getting rid of people pushing the Wurm too much. And so on.

The organization exists, as I see it, primarliy to perpetuate it's own existance. The thing is that part of that mission statement includes "Not getting eaten by the cannibal god."

And stuff.

Stealing babies isn't exactly what I would call "good". They sacrifice human life to try and achieve their goals including literally human sacrifice! Eating the hearts of their enemies is kind of frowned upon by most people. A tree that drinks human blood can't be all good, either.

They claim their overarching goal is to save the world, but they sure are destroying, killing, murdering, sacrificing a lot to do it. And from the fluff I have read most of them are caught up in much more petty things than saving the world. There own politics in particular and gaining more power. And Morvahna is far from the only one.

I think the circle fluff is awesome, but they are far from your goody goody hippy druids forced to do a couple bad things.

 Necroshea wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Except they are on the side of destruction.

Menoth is the god of creation and order. The Devourer only exists to destroy.

Neither winning would be the best thing, but one would definitely be preferable to the other.

No, they're not. They're not on any bodies side. They dislike menoth, but it explicitly states that Druids do not worship the worm. They use its power as a tool and no more.

Yes, neither winning is what the Druids want. It, again, explicitly states they don't want menoth or the worm to win. There is no second best option. If one wins everyone gets killed.

I'm assuming you don't think law is always good and destruction is always bad. If you think that's the case just say so and we can skip discussing this any further.

Yeah, thats what I meant. I also was saying that if one had to win I'd pick order over destruction, lesser of 2 evils and all.