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the wood elves havent really been explained much, so here ya go

When the high elves were retreating from the old world to go back to their island, the elves that lived away from the coastline who had never actually been from the island (being born in the colonies and what not) decided to stay as they had no ties left with the high elves. Those who lived near the massive woodland they now live in, slowly went deeper and deeper into the woods. While at first the great forest was reluctant to let them in, it learnt that a mutual benefit was available after they defended it from dwarfs who came down form the mountains to get wood. So it let them in and ergo, you got yourself some wood elves

Really, it's not a good description. Because at the rear of their mercenary nature is the fact that they will eat YOU if you don't pay. Neutral is looking out for yourself. But Ogres are by nature malevolent. A mercenary will work for whomever pays him. But they stop being mercenaries if they walk into a city and say if you don't pay me, we'll kill you all, then they're just invaders. And invaders aren't neutral, they aren't passive, they're active. That's O&G. You could call WoC neutral if your only criteria is that they're ultimately looking out for themselves and you don't take into consideration the consequences they have on others. It's just that Ogres are far less evil than the true evil races. But if your village was raided by Beastmen, Ogres, O&G, or WoC, maybe there would be more torture with Beastmen/WoC, but you'd still end up just as dead in every case.
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Read up on the 30 years war. Germany was depopulated by a quarter of it's population due to exactly this happening. During the period, as with most feudal kingdoms, Germany did not have a standing army, therefore a large portion of a Lord's army consisted of hired mercenaries. These mercs would often be paid in promises, ie; smash that town for me and you can loot the hell out of it after the battle is won. Of course when the defending Lord comes back with his newly raised army to reclaim the city, his mercs did exactly the same as the first lot. Whole towns were anhilated in this way. There are also countless tales throughout history of mercanaries not being paid so they turn on the cities they have been left behind to garrison and pillage them instead. It's academic really, if you open your gates to an army that is bigger and better armed than the town militia and then refuse to pay said army, there is very little to stop them from simply taking what is owed to them.

As for the Elves. It's not quite as black and white as High Elves=good Dark Elves=Evil. Originally Malekith turned the other cheek when he was passed over as the next King, he headed to the Old World and carved out the Elven colonies, forging alliances with the Dwarfs and pushing back the Orcs. After several centuries rumours hit the colonies of the weakness and decadence of the Elves in the homeland. Even worse was that cults to Slaanesh had began to spread and the Phoenix Lords spent too much time squabling between themselves to deal with the problem. The news was delivered to Malekith by his power hunger mother Morathi, who urged him to come back and reclaim his throne and unite the Elves again. Unbeknownst to Malekith however, was that Morathi was responsible for the cults and during her visit to the colonies had brought dozens of cultists that were already spreading their dark religion to the Old World.

Malekith returned home and was sickened to learn that it was his land, Nagaryth, that was the source of corruption in Ulthuan. He rallied the other Princes and crushed the cultists, even incarcerating his own mother for her part in the war. However, centuries of bitterness and his mother's whispers finally came to the fore. Malekith saw a weak and indecisive King on what should have been his throne. At the suggestion of Morathi, he assassinated the King and attempted a coup. Unfortunately for him, his claim was once again refuted and a bloody civil war broke out. Malekith attempted to pass through the sacred flame of Assuryan without the blessings of the other Princes and was immolated in the mystical fire.

Eventually the Elves of Nagaryth lost the war and fled, with a burned and bitter Malekith, to the barren and inhospitable land of Naggaroth. The cults of Slaanesh were still a problem within his new domain so The now self proclaimed "Witch King" was forced to ally himself to the cult of Khaine. The combination of the brutality of the cult, the harshness of the land and their now over reliance on slave labour, twisted the Elves over the centuries and made them hard and cruel. Malekith still fights for the throne of ulthuan but he's become so driven by hate, he himself has torn apart the Old Elven Empire, the exact thing he orginally stood against. Now even his dark Kingdom of Naggaroth is on the brink of yet another civil war as the cults of Slaanesh are beggining to surface again and challenge the ruling Khainites. Essentially Malekith's fall was a long series of events that twisted the once greatest champion of the elves, into the cold hearted Tyrant that he is now. i think Malekith's fall is infinitely better fleshed out than 40K's Horus (a magic sword did it) and is probably one of my favourite bits of background from either setting.

I'm not sure what you're saying. But yes, mercs were given looting rights. Or % profit. Which is what basically any thief or pirate is guaranteed up to modern day Somali pirates. Because thieves and pirates generally aren't wealthy enough to afford salaries or they wouldn't be thieves and pirates in the first place.

But a Somali pirate gets nothing for butchering a cruise ship full of people. And probably will get quite a lot of heat from a lot of cruise missiles. But for Ogres it's a coin toss whether eating an entire village is better than getting some cows and money or grain and such and doing that multiple times over a year.

Even in their own race they fight and kill and cannibalise for fun. You really don't see that anywhere in human culture at any time. It's pretty much against our instincts to destroy our own tribe once we've advanced the tribe stage. Because it's how we become stronger. I mean Stalin had huge purges and that arguably made his country much weaker, but him much more secure.

My point is that when you unleash mercenaries on a town to loot it, it becomes a free for all. People resist, people are killed, men fall to their baser instincts during the chaos and rape and murder are inevitable. With Ogres that problem is amplified because it is in the nature of Ogres to eat and destroy. That doesn't make them evil per se, just far more animalistic by nature. Also they are further less restrained because they are fighting a different race altogether, to them eating or killing humans is no different to eating cattle. They are all"lesser" races to be exploited. They are unrestrained, brutal even, but ultimately not neccesarily evil. Remember, they are based on the Mongol hordes of the middle ages, who were reknown for anhilating the cultures that they defeated, They aren't going for sustainablitly, just rampant expansion. Upon Ghengis Khan's death the mongols also broke up and turned on each other. Cultures that live by the sword tend to fall apart without a strong leader to unite them.

 KorPhaeron77 wrote:
it is in the nature of Ogres to eat and destroy. That doesn't make them evil per se, just far more animalistic by nature

Yes, it does make them evil. Or as evil as we can recognize. It is irrelevant if it's nature (like orcs/beastmen/DoC) or pleasure (like orcs/DE/whatever). Animals don't destroy stuff by nature, that's exactly the opposite of animalistic. Everything has a purpose. Any animal that evolved to waste its energy destroying stuff would lose out to a similar animal that used its energy and resources to reproduce and get food and fight--weeding out the weak. That's just biology. I don't know of any animal that "destroys" as a significant part of it's nature. An elephant is going to smush grass walking on it, but that's a byproduct. Bears aren't going to spend all day knocking over trees for the hell of it, they'd starve. Termites are just eating.

Humans are animals, and we trash everywhere we go...

So what are the orcs and gobboes doing?

 Eggs wrote:
Humans are animals, and we trash everywhere we go...

But we do it for a reason. Pollution is a byproduct, not a goal. We don't strip mine cuz we like giant holes in the ground, we do it to get resources. If there was no oil in Alaska we wouldn't drill there. And we wouldn't have oil spills nearby.

Orcs and gobbos are busy fighting everyone including themselves. They didn't really give too much on their biology. In a way that's kind of annoying because it's like WoC: if they are all killing each other sooo much, they would simply exterminate themselves. They have to be having babies and farming and doing normal people stuff quite a bit. Unless the chaos gods are making humans. But same thing with O&G. Orcs and gobbos are constantly fighting, but how do they replenish their populations?

According to Skarsnick(If you haven't read it be ready to be eaten by a giant cave squig)O&G have spores like in 40k.Food?Well the night gobbos eat mushrooms and runts.Don't know about the others.Each other?

 Necroshea wrote:
As for vampire counts, an interesting thing to note that is talked about in the Gortrek and Felix novels is that for the most part vampires do not want to conquer the world and bury it's inhabitants in seas of blood and undead. Quite the contrary, most are happy to just be left alone. and be happy with the little pocket kingdoms they keep in secret. Sadly, if the latest book is anything to go by, vampires consist of Carstiens and Strigoi ghoul kings, which is a bit sad.

Carstiens - Basically Dracula rip offs. The bloodline is known to carry madness.
Strigoi - Arrogant vamps who had their home kingdon destroyed by orcs. Shunned by other vampires because of their earlier arrogance. Had to feed on corpses and ghouls to survive. Lost their minds and because hulking horrific beasts that lurk in graveyards.
Lahmians - Mostly female vamps that use subtlety and charm abilities to get what they want.
Necrarchs - Basically liches. Vampires that spend all their time researching necromancy, hate living things, etc. etc.

Vampires are most assuredly evil, but I find it saddening how...dumbed down they made them in the army book.

I tend to agree - although interestingly Black Library are doinfg a lot of work to keep the diversity "Alive" ......

So we still Genevieve as a Hero of the Empire - calrified now that her bloodline is Lahmian
The Ulrika books are pretty good spin offs of the Gortrek/Felix stories and show more of the infighting and influence of the bloodlines - also brings in the mixing of blood lines.
The recent Nagash Triology and current Blood of Nagash books really brought to life Neferata and her blood children - plus loads of bits and peices about how, what and why they have been doing what they have been doing - really interested to find out what the link bewtween Abhorash and Myrimida..

Mst Vampires are natural enemies of Chaos, even the Nercrachs have no interest in Chaos ramapging their ordered world of only the dead - they are, however almost without exception arrogant and power hungry..................

 BattleCapIronblood wrote:
I hope this doesn't come off as silly, but can anyone give me a quick rundown of the Fantasy universe and what is currently going on?

I know there's wikis and other info stashes, but I like to ask questions directly and hear it from the players themselves.

I'm not very familiar with Fantasy since I only play 40k (for now...) and I hope some backstory can get me pumped for some fantasy goodness.

* Space Aliens come forth and start ordering the world.
* Space Aliens make Lizards, Manly Dwarfs and Pussies.
* Space Aliens' shenanigans attracts Chaos.
* Space Aliens' magic portals collapse and daemons surge through to feth gak up.
* Tzeentch is briefly the most powerful of the Chaos Gods.
* The other Gods get jealous and attack Tzeentch. Khorne succeeds in beating the gak out of him and throwing him off a mountain.
* Tzeentch explodes into precisely ten thousand pieces which became the spells used by wizards and is reduced to second most powerful god, right after Khorne.
* Dwarfs and Pussies try to fight Chaos. Pussies succeed in binding it to the North.
* Dwarfs and Pussies go to war. Pussies lose.
* Dwarfs can't take on Orcs and Gobbos. Karak Eight Peaks falls.
* Dwarf clans go north. Some stay in the Dark Lands and do the whole, Chaos Worship thing, some flee to Norsca (which is much closer to the Realm of Chaos) and somehow evade this fate.
* Nagash does stuff in the south, wipes out Nehekhara and essentially creates the Undead. He then dies at the hand of someone called Alcadizzar or Al-Khadizar. He also makes a Crown which he then loses to Orcs who take it north.
* Sigmar Heldenhammer is born and proceeds to kick ass and take names.
* Evil Death Metal Vikings called the Norsii surge down from the North to the tune of 'Valhall Awaits Me When I DIe" and slaughter their way through the Udoses, Cherusens and Taleutens. The latter two go to the Unberogens for help. Unberogens agree to help.
* King Bjorn (Sigmar's da) leads an army of three tribes to beat the Norsii, barely wins, and gets an axe through his skull for his trouble.
* Sigmar becomes king, gets pissed and proceeds to avenge his father, eventually shooing the Norsii above the Sea of Claws back to the Chaos Wastes.
* Sigmar unites the tribes.
* Battle of Black Fire Pass happens. Tribes of the Reik win.
* Sigmar recovers Nagash's old Crown of Sorcery.
* Death Metal Vikings regroup under the leadership of a Khornate Champion/tribal King and proceed to kick the Empire's gak in. They also manage to give Sigmar's his first and only defeat. Thus proving that rage ends all things and Vikings can kick anyone's arse. Vikings then attack Middenheim, Norse King becomes a Daemon Prince, Vikings lose.
* Nagash goes north to get his crown back. He fails.
* Morkar the Uniter is born and unites the Vikings yet again as First Everchosen of Chaos. He fails.
* Sigmar becomes a god.
* Johann Helstrum preaches the Word of Sigmar divine amongst the people, and gains many converts from amongst the nobles because he teaches that Sigmar's laws are sacred, the Emperor is his earthly representative and that the Empire's leaders deserve unquestioning obedience. Other cults are angry because there's no proof at the time Sigmar's a god, but that's irrelevant because the nobles want it bad.
* Johann Helstrum becomes the first Grand Theogonist.
* Cult of Sigmar supplants the Cult of Ulric in the southern Empire. Manly northerners tell the Church of Sigmar to go feth itself and keep worshiping Ulric.

If you're coming over from Warhammer 40k, you're going to find that there is more of a relative good vs. evil theme in Warhammer Fantasy compared to 40k where all forces want to shape the galaxy in their own image through any means necessary.

Dwarves, Lizardmen, High Elves, Wood Elves, and most humans belong to the Forces of Order, and for the most part they just want to be left alone to prosper with minimal aspirations for conquest outside of trade. In most cases they maintain civil if not friendly relationships with one another, and many armies have very strong trading partnerships. This is a pretty common theme across many genre's of Fantasy lore. That's not to say that these factions don't ever war with each other or even amongst themselves.

On the other end of the spectrum, The Forces of Destruction such as Vampire Counts (many not all), Beastmen, Warriors of Chaos, Deamons, Skaven, Orcs, Dark Elves, and Chaos Dwarfs want world destruction, domination, or just never ending war. A cordial relationship is virtually non-existant even amongst their own races, and the only trade I can think of is between Chaos Dwarfs and either Ogres or Warriors of Chaos. The only real natural alliance amongst the Forces of Destruction is Beastmen, Deamons, Warriors of Chaos, and Chaos Dwarfs, and that only happens when a truly inspiring leader takes the helm. Otherwise, the tribes and deamons of chaos are just as happy fighting amongst themselves.

On a more neutral front, the Tomb Kings largely keep to themselves, war amongst themselves, and have no real hidden agenda. Ogres are the world's mercenaries and are available to the highest bidder. Even some Vampire Counts have maintained peaceful and happy governments within the Empire, wishing to just exist without impacting the outside world, or the outside world impacting them.

riburn3 wrote:
If you're coming over from Warhammer 40k, you're going to find that there is more of a relative good vs. evil theme in Warhammer Fantasy compared to 40k where all forces want to shape the galaxy in their own image through any means necessary.

Dwarves, Lizardmen, High Elves, Wood Elves, and most humans belong to the Forces of Order, and for the most part they just want to be left alone to prosper with minimal aspirations for conquest outside of trade. In most cases they maintain civil if not friendly relationships with one another, and many armies have very strong trading partnerships. This is a pretty common theme across many genre's of Fantasy lore. That's not to say that these factions don't ever war with each other or even amongst themselves.

On the other end of the spectrum, The Forces of Destruction such as Vampire Counts (many not all), Beastmen, Warriors of Chaos, Deamons, Skaven, Orcs, Dark Elves, and Chaos Dwarfs want world destruction, domination, or just never ending war. A cordial relationship is virtually non-existant even amongst their own races, and the only trade I can think of is between Chaos Dwarfs and either Ogres or Warriors of Chaos. The only real natural alliance amongst the Forces of Destruction is Beastmen, Deamons, Warriors of Chaos, and Chaos Dwarfs, and that only happens when a truly inspiring leader takes the helm. Otherwise, the tribes and deamons of chaos are just as happy fighting amongst themselves.

On a more neutral front, the Tomb Kings largely keep to themselves, war amongst themselves, and have no real hidden agenda. Ogres are the world's mercenaries and are available to the highest bidder. Even some Vampire Counts have maintained peaceful and happy governments within the Empire, wishing to just exist without impacting the outside world, or the outside world impacting them.

Here we go! Concise, brief, and to the point. The answer I've been looking for. Thanks!

I feel bad for the tomb kings in the state of the world.

Its like they created the land of Nehekhara just so the TK's can do what they do without impacting the world around them. As long as a race doesn't plunder their stuff, they probably wont ever see them. The new book even describes them as farmers and merchants in some regards, just doing things they used to do in the sand (Where they once had fertile lands) for no reason other than they have eternity to do it.

They hint that Settra is mustering up for a big ballyhoo and Arkhan is trying to revive Nagash, but meh. For a race that once had conquered 2/3rds of the world, they do amazingly little.

Imagine how many different Kings claim the same area, even supposing some would go ahead and play Prince - their rule lasted quite a while. I would imaging that most of their time is spent competing with each other.
Until some fool shows up and grabs something important, then it's more of a "Fine fine, you run the place 'til I get back to kick your butt and take my land back from you."

TK are pretty young as empires go. Because you really got to scratch everything before they became undead. Because once 95% of your population becomes nearly-mindless skeletons, probably things change a lot. The kings might be somewhat like they used to be but none of their society is. They don't have a society. There's no skeleton marketplace where you buy fancy rugs and spices.

The army book actually hints the opposite. They load stuff up and sell them from big barges, not out of need, but memory. They have a society of sorts, because most of them aren't like VC undead, but left with free will. They set up little fiefdoms and warred amonst themselves for a long time until Settra put them all in check and established a "sleep until its your turn to be awake" sort of a rule.

The Mortuary Cult has shifted from everlasting life (Check!) to recovery of and everlasting youth. They DO have aspirations of reclaiming their old empire, which will never happen.

The shock of it would be brutal though. You were a living god while you lived, you die and expect to be a god again, and instead find yourself one of very very many. Talk about a punch to the ego!

TK's struggle to find a place though, I agree. Post-Nagash TK's are like Pre-Sigmar Empire.

Only the kings have free will. They basically copied Necrons. Or opposite. The skeletons might shamble around doing close to what they were doing, but that's not a society. You need to have a brain and emotions for that.

The people with actual real brainz and feelings is very small.

Your off.

Kings have free will. Priests have free will. Necrotects and Heralds too.

Then there's Tomb Guard, Ushabti, and a few others.

If you need, I can give book quotes.

Yes, as I said. Like 95% don't.

 raiden wrote:
does it have the same morale ambiguity of 40k, or are there "good guys" and "bad guys" respectively lol.

The book itself actually considers ogres and tomb kings to be neutral. Good guys are mostly the human looking factions except for the chaos tainted versions of such and lizardmen (which are good guys).

TanKol got most of the story covered in shortened form and f*ck I didn't even know that was possible as with 40k all you need to do is talk about the horus heresy and it doesn't even concern most of the xenos factions one bit though I suppose the great crusade does.

Nagash has died like twice already if I remember. First by the skaven's super desperate attack and second by sigmar.

Nagash started the whole undead thing and he discovered it after capturing some shipwrecked dark elves and I think torturing the crap out of them to spill secrets (since asking doesn't seem like something a bad guy would do). Basically the tomb kings used to be alive but they were obsessed with the afterlife and living forever. Of course nagash had a power play and used armies of undead and kept getting defeated by the living tomb kings until he was all like "feth it!" and just mass killed them by poisoning their water or something. Then he took the king of the living tomb kings (which was now the last living one) and then made him as his captive. This was all during the time nagash and the skaven fought each other till they both decided this war over the warpstone of cripple peak was a waste of the time of each faction. Nagash struck a truce with the skaven and offered warpstone if the skaven would spy for him. Eventually he grew powerful and the skaven started getting really uncomfortable and freaking out as he was probably going to take over the world and destroy them. So they spied that he was doing some great summoning in his temple and forged a great weapon to destroy him. This weapon is now considered the most OP weapon that any hero can take in the game. It was called the fellblade and it's one of the most bad*ss weapons ever created basically. However it eventually kills its own wielder and every skaven is too selfish for a self-sacrifice and also they were too cowardly to face nagash in single combat. They basically used the tomb king prisoner as some unwitting pawn to destroy nagash. At this point he didn't really know or care but was led up to nagash. The skaven's council of 13 (their most powerful leaders) did some sort of trance 'our power is yours' protection thing on the tomb king leader which fought nagash. Basically he was afraid until realizing the skaven council was protecting him (two council members died protecting him from one attack though) and basically seeing he was protected he wailed the f*ck out of nagash with his 'beat stick' until nagash was in a crap ton of pieces. Victorious but succumbing to the sword the king fell dead in a ditch somewhere. The skaven then basically destroy nagash's body parts with a vat of acid or something (probably laced with warpstone as skaven add it to everything) and destroyed every part except nagash's hand which crawled away adamm's family style. Yeah it's kind of stupid for skaven players to hear our victory was blemished by an adamm's family reference. Anyway nagash took 1,666 years or so to reform himself and then got his face smashed by sigmar's hammer (this is how it happened in my mind). Most find the story of the skaven and nagash to be funny as both wanted to take over the world but when nagash almost did it was up to them to prevent him from doing so and save the world so that they could possibly conquer it. During nagash's great summoning a side effect of raising so many undead was that some temple he had in the tomb king region irradiated the area with magic and brought the tomb kings back as undead which only served to anger them as they were now undead rather than eternally youthful and beautiful. You see who wants to jump your bones when you're just a pile of dusty thousands of years old corpses or dusty barely sentient skeletons. Nagash also indirectly sort of created the vampires which was started by some queen that tried to replicate his eternal youth potion. It sort of worked but forced them to drink blood creating vampires. Nagash was pleased when he came back but got all pissy when he lost against tomb kings a ton. I can't remember if vampires are now hunted by nagash or not. Either way they live eternal lives of being awesome but totally hated by everybody for good reasons (killing people to drink their blood tends to do that to you). As weird as it sounds Vampire counts only really started when vampires tried to be elector counts of the empire and believed they had a shot as the emperor of the empire. So whenever you hear a vampire being a vampire count it's probably because they tried to be an elector count of Sylvania as weird as that is.

I'm pretty sure the elves and dwarves fought because the dark elves manipulated them into fighting just as the dark elves basically gave the middle finger to the world and prevented the elves from completely preventing chaos from entering their world ever again.

If I remember dwarfs were created to counter elves and their magical abilities since dwarfs were resistant to magic. Also I think dwarfs were supposed to be more resistant to the corruption of stuff like magic though I could be wrong since there are chaos dwarfs. I can't quite remember the story on chaos dwarfs but I don't know just how chaos they are.

Also I find it crazy that dwarfs kicked the high elves *sses during a time when dwarfs had worse weapons of war and magic was more powerful (magic has gotten weaker in the warhammer world over time). Then again this was before the lizardmen re-aligned the dwarf kingdoms with their magic and the skaven created a big tunnel machine that caused great earthquakes and volcanoes to ravage the dwarf kingdom. I think according to the skaven book the slann record the earthquakes and volcanoes erupting and destroying the dwarf kingdom as their doing and didn't know skaven did it but I'm considering both to be possibly part of it.

Dark elves are basically what happens to elves when they become too arrogant and self-righteous partly in thanks to the gear that aenarion the defender (some great elf leader) wore to take out 4 massive greater daemons which would've smashed his elf face in had he not used it. So basically elves have this taint because he did that and now some go all evil and sh*t though this event being recalled alone generally makes elves all super arrogant and full of themselves. That's not to say high elves won't sacrifice some poor human maiden in secret (what I heard of one book). I think the reason for doing this was to appease khaine who dark elves worship more openly. Sorry if my knowledge is sh*t mostly.

The warhammer world is for most intents and purposes a fantasy version of the real world. Tilea is Italy, bretonnia is france, lizardmen are the new world indian factions except in dinosaur and lizard form (Aztecs, mayans and incans).

I can't remember much about the story of the wood elves other than that they fight alongside the bretonnians often as allies of convenience usually against things like beastmen (chaos mutated half men and half beast creatures). Wood elves are basically some offshoot of the high elves that decided they didn't belong to the phoenix king or something and weren't a part of the high elves any longer so didn't have to listen to the deal of going back to uthuan because the high elves lost the war against the dwarfs. Wood elves seem to be going the celtic wild natives of the forest route. Basically they became all super natural and high on pot and then started loving forests way, way too much. Currently if you play this army in the game people will feel sorry for you and you can get a lot of sympathy and extra help to boost the army's crappy placement. I hear the forest spirit part of the army can be very potent though esp. if you have tons of forests to hide them in and force the enemy into fighting them in which meshes with the lore pretty well I think.

Beastmen are basically savage chaos mutated people and animals in the beginning from a result of excess magic. I heard the origin story was super dark and not family friendly back when GW went balls out and didn't care about censorship. Something along the lines of beastmen being created through a means of chaos punishing a bunch of nobles that had a night of debauchery and bestiality (yep they f*cked animals as messed up as that sounds for lore).

Skaven are fun guys that were created in the greatest city of humans at the time in tilea. Basically it's a story of how even the greatest creations of man and dwarf can become corrupted. Skaven and greenskins sometimes have a contest to see who can kill dwarfs the best. I think skaven are the winners in a way since they tend to take more of the holds and great cities but outside of dwarfs orcs & goblins do more destruction. Thing is it even says in the skaven army book that skaven are a lasting threat so when they infest somewhere they're pretty much there forever (karak eight peaks= 'the city of pillars' which is mostly skaven owned) which is good since they tend to fail A LOT in direct war. Even with plagues skaven eventually end up infesting themselves and get turned back. Also sadly whenever the skaven use plagues to kill people some necromancer or vampire gets way too excited and starts developing an army in the flank of the skaven to piss them off. Of course skaven are so super awesome at assassination that vampires and tomb kings should be afraid just at the idea of facing them. I think dark elves are the only others with extensive assassins and their assassins are better I think but skaven assassins have more high profile kills I think (emperor mandred, nagash, sigmar reborn iirc and I think various other lesser known characters though I think van hal was killed by his apprentice or something but the skaven could have killed him!). Skaven are the most numerous living faction and possibly the most numerous faction by far. They fight each other more than other factions do and often most factions don't even know that they exist. Even after the skaven attack on nuln most thought it was either beastmen or a mutant uprising. Most of the cool things skaven have done happened yesterday sadly. They make cool inventions or more commonly steal them and then add warpstone to make them infinitely more unpredictable, dangerous and powerful and then say it was their great creation. However sometimes the skaven really do make some nice inventions that actually weren't stolen from dwarfs or the empire. The skaven have 4 greater clans and fairly great warlord clans. 2-3 of the warlord clans are important enough to know (clan mors owns 'the city of pillars', another owns some mountain pass I think and another was I think clan skurvy which owned most of the skaven's navy). The 4 greater clans which you need to know are clan pestilens (basically nurgle rats as that's by far the easiest way to think of them though they have some nasty frenzied warriors too), clan moulder (think Frankenstein's monster as they breed war beasts and monsters or just rat-ify them), clan eshin (the ninja/assassin clan that stays neutral but sells its services to the highest bidder and their art is mostly based around eastern culture but mostly just assassins and you could even go with a master splinter character from 'ninja turtles' if you wished) and finally clan skryre the most powerful of all the 4 greater clans currently (all inventions come from here so all the goofy steampunk inventions are from skryre and all sanctioned magic comes from clan skryre or the grey seers so keep in mind clan pestilens magic is technically not entirely sanctioned). When you think about it since the skaven are everywhere they could've developed and sort of had twisted, corrupted deviations of every culture they are near. It's entirely possible to see even more clans if they so wished and the idea of skaven pirates is incredibly possible (hell there may even be 'da vinci' inspired skaven with the pictured anatomy of a skaven instead of a human). Anyway I know a lot about the skaven and I feel that I have the general idea of most of the clans or what clans there could be since they basically steal from every culture.

Ogres were more normal till some comet smashed into them creating what is known as 'the maw' (some giant crater). This all made them super hungry I think and then they just travel the world as mercenaries trying to get money, life experiences, fighting and most of all eat things. I can't remember the story of it but I think gnoblars are greenskins that came to them to escape other dangers and possibly orc masters. Ogres are one of the more funny light hearted races though the humor of their faction is in many ways a bit childish (see: farting as a miscast result in the previous ogres army book)

I don't know much about orcs and goblins other than the fact they plunder human and dwarf empires a lot like some sort of game or something. Orcs consider goblins to be lesser than them so if there's an orc around then there's no way a goblin of any sort of leadership would lead him. Yep orcs are racists among their greenskin kind ;P. Goblins like gretchin are treated like crap generally. I will admit goblins so far offer more character than orcs do. You have night goblins, forest goblins (which have a spider fetish) and other such things. I'm somewhat surprised we don't have more assassin oriented goblins though the skulkers are probably as close as it gets. Orcs themselves have normal orcs and savage orcs which are obviously more primitive but have love the old ways and have ward saves and stuff. They tend to interest me more than normal orc boys.

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I'll leave the rest of the lore up to others as I have only about 3 more hours left of sleep before i have to get ready for work. I know the basic outline of the story and a good section of the vampire counts and skaven. If I had to get into the specifics of any faction other than the two i just mentioned I'd probably fail horribly.

 HoverBoy wrote:
That's pretty much right except for the orcs part.
They weren't created by the old ones, orcs where native to the warhammer world before they arrived, one of the few races to still be around from back then on account of them being so incredibly resilient the lizardmen couldn't exterminate them a task the saurus accomplished successfully many other times.

I was under the impression that orcs came through into the world by accident through a portal from the old ones. Basically they came in from somewhere else in the galaxy or universe. Kind of like accidentally bringing an invasive species to another area. Basically they just hitch a ride and infest an area and feth it up and would populate uncontrolled if left unchecked.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:


The book itself actually considers…
****Rambling****

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 HoverBoy wrote:
That's pretty much right except for the orcs part.
They weren't created by the old ones, orcs where native to the warhammer world before they arrived, one of the few races to still be around from back then on account of them being so incredibly resilient the lizardmen couldn't exterminate them a task the saurus accomplished successfully many other times.

I was under the impression that orcs came through into the world by accident through a portal from the old ones. Basically they came in from somewhere else in the galaxy or universe. Kind of like accidentally bringing an invasive species to another area. Basically they just hitch a ride and infest an area and feth it up and would populate uncontrolled if left unchecked.

HoverBoy is correct. Orcs were indigenous to the Fantasy world and couldn't be fully exterminated by the Saurus on account of their ability to re-produce quickly and adapt to a vast range of environments. Please don't post 'your impression' if it has no relevance or is just a huge slab of incoherent jargon. It isn't helpful to the OP.

I'm at work, so I don't have my book with me now Duke, but I think you are arguing on the sake of assumption.

There's a paragraph in the very beginning of the book that explains TK undead, and it says to some extent. (Complete paraphrase, as my book is at home.)

"Unlike the will-less and mindless undead of those who call themselves necromancers, Tomb Kings are an entirely different sort. They choose willingly to serve their former kings, out of respect and admiration for their works in life. It is not uncommon for a King to use a show of force to sway and convince the minions of other kings to swear allegience to him."

Doesn't sound like a 95% mindless undead. Even I was off in my correction of your assumption.

So it's not like you said, not at all. It's the very opposite of what you said.

During nagash's great summoning a side effect of raising so many undead was that some temple he had in the tomb king region irradiated the area with magic and brought the tomb kings back as undead which only served to anger them as they were now undead rather than eternally youthful and beautiful. You see who wants to jump your bones when you're just a pile of dusty thousands of years old corpses or dusty barely sentient skeletons. Nagash also indirectly sort of created the vampires which was started by some queen that tried to replicate his eternal youth potion. It sort of worked but forced them to drink blood creating vampires. Nagash was pleased when he came back but got all pissy when he lost against tomb kings a ton. I can't remember if vampires are now hunted by nagash or not. Either way they live eternal lives of being awesome but totally hated by everybody for good reasons (killing people to drink their blood tends to do that to you). As weird as it sounds Vampire counts only really started when vampires tried to be elector counts of the empire and believed they had a shot as the emperor of the empire. So whenever you hear a vampire being a vampire count it's probably because they tried to be an elector count of Sylvania as weird as that is.

Sort of:

Neferata, Queen of Lahmia used one of the immortals created by Nagash to create her own elixir of eternal life but it worked our differently and turned her and some of her court into Vampires - the most prominent members of which either stayed with her or set off on their own when her city was destroyed by the other cities. Each head of the Bloodline is reacted slightly differently and their bloodlines enhance those differences. When he destroyed the Nekharians, Nagash also tried to enslave the Vampires to his own will which worked well with some - W'sorn but less with others - Neferata. Nagash wants a world with just the dead - no living creatures of any kind - ie somewhere where the Vampires would starve.

Nagash has continually tried to use them in his wars against the living - with varied results - Neferata gave him a courtier who had betrayed her to use against Sigmar and create his own new army of Vampires but she does not officially bow to him (or anyone else).......she is still queen of Silver Pinnacle and attempts to control both the living and the dead from their through her bloodline - which does not always work as her Sisterhood (most of her bloodline are female) tend to plot and scheme against each other to gain favour with their Queen as much as anything else - see the recent Ulrika novels.

Most vampires are arrogant and self serving (bit like Elves) but many fight to protect their food source - relations with their "livestock" vary..... They are all very different in personality even within a bloodline .

Vlad Von Carnstein was the legitimate Elector Count of Sylvania and who revealed himself as a Vampire to try and become Emperor - which failed after a long conflict. The present undead holder of the title is Manfred who for some reason matt ward relegated to Nagash's butler in the recent Army Books :( The present living descendant and heir of the Carnstein family was last seen in Altdorf trying to live down his family name................

One Vampire, Genevieve Sandrine du Pointe du Lac Dieudonné is officially a Hero of the Empire but everyone (including her) tries to forget this............

Well, I do got my TK book.

[snipping here and there]

The Skeleton Warriors are not mindless automatons slaved to the will of an evil necromancer. The incantations of the priests..bind them into corporeal forms. However, without mummification the spirits do not retain the full memory of their former existence. Upon awakening the only things that every one of these soldiers can recall is their unswerving loyalty to their king

When the TK awoke they ordered their undead to rebuild the cities of old and fill them with markets, wares, boats and other things. Skeletal men walk the lands fulfilling seemingly pointless jobs such as fetching stagnant water, harvesting crops long since withered or else rowing barges across the mortis river.

I don't really see the difference. They say they are enslaved to a necromancer, but they are enslaved to a TK/Prince and Heirphant. They go out of their way to point that out. Most of the armies are simply asleep, waiting to be summoned.

Just because a guy has the rudimentary memory of what it did in life doesn't mean doing a parody of it in death is culture. That was basically every zombie movie ever made. Where zombos shamble around and go to grocery stores and buy gas even though there is no reason to do so.

@ VC


I do feel bad for Neferata. She was an amazing ruler during her time and Lahmia profited mightily. It was her inability to convince Alcadizzar that she wasn't an evil creature that snapped her into evil bitch mode.

@ TK

I guess I read that as choice and not command. I know it's not fluff based, but that the TK LD value is double that of VC units (Hell, Tomb Guard have higher LD than a Necromancer) also has always made me feel like they aren't just automatons.

If those are the passages then perhaps I spoke too strongly saying you were completely off. We just disagree again! =)

I read TK as Thuderfrog.
The random farmers and whatnot would be functionally similar to zombies, but without needing command to be "productive."

As for the sleeping warriors (et al), I had read that as them being eternally on guard, instead of wandering around for no reason. When they are not waiting for a commend, at attention, they are marching to war.
I read that as discipline rather than lazy spellcasting or an attempt to save power, as Necromancers are wont to.

But if you read a hierophant it's pretty much exactly the same as a necromancer. Without him, the undead go back to the land of the souls.

I haven't read much in the way of vc/tk. But I think of them both as automatons. I mean TKs even have the whole animated construct. It's just the basic TK units have 5 "programs" they run. Fetch water. Harvest. Etc. But TK farmers aren't going to hang out going, "so, do you think it will rain?" "Why don't you come over later for some lemonade."

Most of the entire TK armies are asleep. They mention sleep a lot. They aren't on guard at all, they are zonked-out. They do have other guards who wander around on patrol, but if you never summon TK they will never wake up. The heirophant specifically stuffs their souls into the bodies and if the heiro is killed, the soul goes away, aka crumble. That's not being vigilant and on duty. Their natural state of being is the soul is in the land of souls.

As for LD values, that's pretty much only used for crumble. Which makes sense. VC are kinda 3rd generation undead, or whatever. They didn't have lich priests build them.

I have talked with folk that read it that way too.

/shrug

I am probably thinking more of other fluff and previous editions. Cruddace is an total goon where Tomb Kings are concerned. He stated that they have no idea how their magic works and added their arch-enemy's general to their book.

edited for . . . posterity.

 Thunderfrog wrote:
@ VC


I do feel bad for Neferata. She was an amazing ruler during her time and Lahmia profited mightily. It was her inability to convince Alcadizzar that she wasn't an evil creature that snapped her into evil bitch mode.

I always feel bad for sexy bad girls Its very true - altthough she was always a bit capricious but constant betrayal by the men she selects has not helped her state of mind ..................have you read the new novels with her in - they are very good.