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They could have been the Order Demons, and lizard men could have stayed the lizard men. And thus the Sigmarines could have been infinitely more interesting.

You could have a radical reaction to Chaos in these demons of order, where each one has no individuality; You can see it on their golden helms, those emotionless faces. All of them the same; a possible future for everyone, a new but different type of doom. All for the sake of Order and the destruction of Chaos.

Thus the forces of death and destruction leaving the side of order would make even more sense. After all, they won't join this new enemy.

Could have been so much more interesting, but alas... GW is lazy and uninspired.

I just don't like that a long running and rich history with lands, maps, citadels that had seen hundreds of years and many battles. The lands of each army with their own deep history and heroes just erased out of existence as if it were nothing. All those thousands of years of races history literally amounted to nothing in a matter of weeks.

Its like reaching the end of the return of the king and on the last paragraph Tolkien writes "and then the world was wiped away and a blank slate put in its place, everything that happened was totally pointless."

*tears off shirt dramatically* "Don't go warhammer world!!"



*obviously im over exaggerating here lol but the meaning still stands*

 Blobpie wrote:
They could have been the Order Demons, and lizard men could have stayed the lizard men. And thus the Sigmarines could have been infinitely more interesting.

You could have a radical reaction to Chaos in these demons of order, where each one has no individuality; You can see it on their golden helms, those emotionless faces. All of them the same; a possible future for everyone, a new but different type of doom. All for the sake of Order and the destruction of Chaos.

Thus the forces of death and destruction leaving the side of order would make even more sense. After all, they won't join this new enemy.

Could have been so much more interesting, but alas... GW is lazy and uninspired.

"Order Daemons" is a tired and old fan idea. I've read it over and over and over on these forums. It usually goes like "derp derp it would be awesome if da emprah/sigmar cud summon good guy daemons". Lazy and uninspired would be to just take this fan idea and run with it.

Taking great warriors at their time of death and reforging them into something stronger, but at the cost of most of their identity, throwing them into battle and resurrecting them over and over, each time at the cost of a little more of their essence until there is nothing left... that's a little more interesting to me than generic Order Daemons.

I also feel that this could have been a better design. While I dislike the End Times, what I'd like to have seen:

1. At the 11th hour, Archaon has a change of heart, because he sees what he's brought about. And in that moment of repetence, Sigmar returns and possesses Archaon's body, forging a new whole.
2. The new Sigmaron (since GW likes stupid names) is a complete rejection of all things chaos, and stops chaos, saving the Old World. Sigmaron becomes a God of Order in direct opposition to the Gods of Chaos, and equal in power to the individual four (for a real shakeup of the world).
3. SIgmaron creates his sigmarines (as much as I hate them) by collecting the warriors of law and order and forging them into his autonomous magic robots. This creates a nice dichotomy like Kriswall is talking about, and avoiding the simple concept of order "demons". Instead they're the opposite of a chaos knight.
4. Sigmaron now goes on a counter attack and pushes Chaos back to the wastes. At first everyone is like "go Sigmar woo," but then they start to feel the oppression of his lawful good regime.
5. All the old world emipires start to rebel, except the Empire. Sigmaron's unstoppable advance against Chaos stalls as he loses his supporting allies.
6. With the world at again at a standstill, everyone can fight everyone as nobody is exactly happy about living in lawful good land, but nobody likes chaos either. Most of Sigmaron's forces are stuck holding off chaos, so he can't enforce his will heavily against the rest of the world.

I'd have been "ok" with this sort of change.

You know, I'm still not clear on what exactly order demons are.

As characters and a faction. I think they are cool. I kinda got tired of old good gods are always vague or dead kinda fantasy. I do agree though the whole story with them is cheesy. I think it would of just been awesome if they stuck with them simply being a race of demi-gods.

 Los pollos hermanos wrote:
I just don't like that a long running and rich history with lands, maps, citadels that had seen hundreds of years and many battles. The lands of each army with their own deep history and heroes just erased out of existence as if it were nothing. All those thousands of years of races history literally amounted to nothing in a matter of weeks.

Its like reaching the end of the return of the king and on the last paragraph Tolkien writes "and then the world was wiped away and a blank slate put in its place, everything that happened was totally pointless."

Well, I think I will disagree with you - you say as if GW just erased it like it was nothing, but look at The End Times. That was a humongous storyline that threw the whole world into an all-out war - there were betrayals, plot twists, heroic last stands - it really was epic and with Warhammer always cheesily sitting at the 11:59, it finally gave us closure. You know, I grew up with Warhammer and it is as big in my life as Star Wars, WarCraft and others, but I grew tired of last second twists that somehow saved the world from utter destruction and/or the plot not progressing for years, just like Emperor's Golden Throne being broken and slowly deteriorating, which will eventually lead to death of the Emperor... EVENTUALLY.

End Times was finally what should've happened to the world and, oh boy, was I happy to find out that Chaos won! No stupid, shallow happy ending (a couple of my friends really whined about that), no pushing the Chaos back and locking the portals to realm of Chaos, no silly, childish good guy win - what happened was the most reasonable, going with the fluff. And now we're getting a new world. Or rather eight of them. A lot of people criticize it... okay, I admit, Sigmaron sounds slowed, but the world is very "new age" fantasy while the old one was extremely oldschool - I bet a lot of people will grow to like the new world over time, once they get over the loss of the old one.

Do I not feel bad for the loss of it? Of course I do - I grew up with it, I read books set in it, I played games set in it, I loved it. It's sad that it's gone, because over all those years it evolved into pretty great, distinct world, but I believe that the bang it went down with was a good funeral for it. Now there's another world to grow, have a long, running and rich history with lands, maps, citadels that had seen hundreds of years and many battles... let's give the new one a chance, the old one is gone anyway. :-)

Rule Two = Stay On Topic

The topic of this thread is GW should/should not have cast the Eternals as "order daemons."

Please take the general "AoS is good/not good" comments to the relevant thread:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/655877.page

I'll be deleting further off-topic comments posted ITT.

Thanks!

While the concept of "Order Demons" is interesting, you could simply turn around and say, that's what the Sigmarites ARE. They're angelic beings (the opposite of demonic ones).

The prosecutors are about as angelic as it gets...



I would not want to have to transport a box of 20-30 guys with wings like that, though. This sucker takes up a LOT of space and is quite delicate.

 Talys wrote:
While the concept of "Order Demons" is interesting, you could simply turn around and say, that's what the Sigmarites ARE. They're angelic beings (the opposite of demonic ones).

The prosecutors are about as angelic as it gets...

Spoiler:

I would not want to have to transport a box of 20-30 guys with wings like that, though. This sucker takes up a LOT of space and is quite delicate.

Try pins. :-) Would suggest magnets, but while the back is perfect for magnet work, unfortunately the wings' base doesn't have enough thickness to make room for one, but a pin would work - you could literally grab a thin nail, cut it, glue the flat head to the wings' clip and then drill a hole in the model's back to stick it in. :-)

But back to main topic - I don't mind them not being daemons, I mean... that's exactly what GW wanted - sigmar's space marines. Not angels. Sure, stylistics and wings scream of Diablo angels, but it's just deliberate similarity just like Saint Celestine in 40k is meant to look like an angel. Sigmarines are sigmarines, that's all. That's all they were meant to be and they are good at being themselves.

Now as to the question if lizardmen make good order daemons... to be honest I can't judge yet. I want to see their fluff, I want to see their models, then I can decide how do I find that decision.

 Kriswall wrote:

 Blobpie wrote:

Spoiler:

They could have been the Order Demons, and lizard men could have stayed the lizard men. And thus the Sigmarines could have been infinitely more interesting.

You could have a radical reaction to Chaos in these demons of order, where each one has no individuality; You can see it on their golden helms, those emotionless faces. All of them the same; a possible future for everyone, a new but different type of doom. All for the sake of Order and the destruction of Chaos.

Thus the forces of death and destruction leaving the side of order would make even more sense. After all, they won't join this new enemy.

Could have been so much more interesting, but alas... GW is lazy and uninspired.

"Order Daemons" is a tired and old fan idea. I've read it over and over and over on these forums. It usually goes like "derp derp it would be awesome if da emprah/sigmar cud summon good guy daemons". Lazy and uninspired would be to just take this fan idea and run with it.

Taking great warriors at their time of death and reforging them into something stronger, but at the cost of most of their identity, throwing them into battle and resurrecting them over and over, each time at the cost of a little more of their essence until there is nothing left... that's a little more interesting to me than generic Order Daemons.

Yes. This. Aside from their appearance, there is nothing glorious about the Stormcasts.

 toasteroven wrote:
You know, I'm still not clear on what exactly order demons are.

They would be supernatural spirits who fight for Order rather than Chaos, Angels if you will.

My copy of Warhammer 2nd Edition has Demons of Law in it...

...and yes, they were illustrated as angels... Got a couple of the models somewhere.

It's true the Stormcast Eternals are, in a way, the manifestation of Sigmar's Will (well, it's more like a "Take My Stormy Fist In Your Face" kind of Will, but whatever).

Yet, they're not spawned like demons since they're forged from human bodies and minds. It's not like the Warp, it's different.

To me, it's a mix of order version of Chaos Demons/Chaos Warriors. Sure, they look and sound like Space Marines, just with more magic, and yet I feel like it's not that badly done in the design.

Some things are lacking in the background, though. The fact they can be "revived" so easily makes their battles sound...a bit dull ("oh no, they lose a small part of their humanity at each revival...what a loss for warriors already sacrificing their whole life and leaving their families/tribes forever to serve in Sigmar's armies"). I mean, defeats don't sound so terrible to Sigmar since he can just spawn his fallen warriors and send them anywhere he wants with his lightning as he wishes.

Honestly, I still feel like they're akind to Order Warriors, in opposition to Chaos Warriors. But then, this whole "reforging" is getting in the way...this is way too much easy. You can't feel for them is they fail/die, since they can always come back later...

 Klerych wrote:

 Los pollos hermanos wrote:
I just don't like that a long running and rich history with lands, maps, citadels that had seen hundreds of years and many battles. The lands of each army with their own deep history and heroes just erased out of existence as if it were nothing. All those thousands of years of races history literally amounted to nothing in a matter of weeks.

Its like reaching the end of the return of the king and on the last paragraph Tolkien writes "and then the world was wiped away and a blank slate put in its place, everything that happened was totally pointless."

Well, I think I will disagree with you - you say as if GW just erased it like it was nothing, but look at The End Times. That was a humongous storyline that threw the whole world into an all-out war - there were betrayals, plot twists, heroic last stands - it really was epic and with Warhammer always cheesily sitting at the 11:59, it finally gave us closure.

Exactly. Agree. I've seen a lot of people say "they just shut down the old world without warning" (and variations of that), but they didn't. They actually gave it a heck of a send off.

Also, I like the Stormcast just the way they are tbh.

I have to agree with sarouan. It's really hard to care for the sigmarines when they just respawn over and over. Unlike the other races who are mortal, and when warrior priest A dies off in a battle, he's not coming back (unless sigmar Marines him up) fluff wise anyway. Tbh I only really have experience with whfb lore through the malus darkblade novels, so I cant really comment much about order demons.

The sigmarines seem like they fit that role of order demons though in a different manner then chaos demons.

I'd like to call them Angels instead.

Seriously, they're nothing like demons. They work differently, heck they didn't even ask for this. They were just taken by Zeus Sigmar because of His Will while others pious humans were not chosen (on a whim?).

I wouldn't expect their stories would tell anything else than war and battles, because their everyday life is certainly as blank and boring as one of a Codex Astartes Space Marine (I must say I'm not fond of stories about a Space Marine, so I'm certainly very subjective here ).

I finally took the big book and when I read the final "revelation" in the end is, in fact, told by a Stormcast Eternal who died in battle and got resurrected or something - I'm really thinking it's not that harsh or taking such a long time. Sigmar could be using this at his own advantage; sending just waves and waves of Sigmarines to their death, knowing the enemy will eventually be overwhelmed in the long term because the God King can respawn his whole warhost in no time. Hell, he can have valuable information by having one of his soldiers dieing in the enemy lines and asking what he saw there.

If Sigmar is that powerful, I expect him to take Ghal Maraz and beginning to hammer the three Chaos brothers in their realms by himself. Oh, and Stormcast Eternals will accompany him - but who really cares about them? They're just weapons you can re-use as you wish, anyway.

At least, the Chaos Champions aren't immortal and really have something big to lose. Demons aren't able to spawn again like they want - their "physical death" is something very humilating and it takes generally a lot of time before they can come back. With Stormcast Eternals...it doesn't feel that big a deal.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 toasteroven wrote:
You know, I'm still not clear on what exactly order demons are.

They would be supernatural spirits who fight for Order rather than Chaos, Angels if you will.

Ok. Just wasn't sure if there was more to it than that.

I should note, I never said they were good beings. They're pure "Order". Passionless, subservient and faceless.

A doom that threatens everyone just as much as Chaos, just a different doom.

How dark would that world be? Where the forces of Destruction and Death might be the closest things to the "Good guys".

 Blobpie wrote:
I should note, I never said they were good beings. They're pure "Order". Passionless, subservient and faceless.

A doom that threatens everyone just as much as Chaos, just a different doom.

How dark would that world be? Where the forces of Destruction and Death might be the closest things to the "Good guys".

I think its sort of a dumb duality. You're telling me that the only incentive between chaos and order comes down to organizational abilities? Chaos has to organize itself in a logical opposite of order after all. Wow, what an incentive to go fight for either cause.

And then you have the matter of destruction bringing order.... or order bringing destruction - riddle me that?

I try to ignore the silly & contradictory 'moral neutrality' overtones portrayed at times in the warhammer world, as the lack of good/bad - absolute justice- sort of makes things very shallow. Secularism really sucks in any universe.

 Blobpie wrote:
They could have been the Order Demons

40k already has that as the Eldar Avatar, defined as a Daemon.

Well reading the new book i have to say stormcasts act in a more human manner than space marines. They are pretty much the good/order version of chaos warriors. Plus they feel fear, horror and despair.

 Blobpie wrote:
I should note, I never said they were good beings. They're pure "Order". Passionless, subservient and faceless.

A doom that threatens everyone just as much as Chaos, just a different doom.

I can say, from reading Gates of Azyr, that the Stormcast do have passions and human wants and needs, and so far are portrayed as sparkling good-guys in every sense. In what little story AoS has right now, Chaos has reduced the realms to starving wretches, hiding from killer cannibal packs who are themselves running out of victims. In the context of the novel, the Stormcast show up, kick Chaos out, find surviving humans, take off their helmets to show that they're human too, and say "Hey, as long as we're alive, we won't let this happen to you again."

But, they don't then set up a restrictive government, or begin passing out Sigmar pamphlets on how to live your life - they roll on to the next Chaos stronghold, and leave it to the newly free humans to rebuild their lives in peace.

For that matter, they do seem to worry, recall elements of their former lives, and owe various deities other than Sigmar debts in one case. It's worth mentioning that their immortality isn't so much fun either - where demons will be back time and again, it seems the Stormcast have to be "reforged" every time they die. And, while reforging remains very vaguely described, it is said that it's an involved process, and not everyone survives it.

 kveldulf wrote:

I try to ignore the silly & contradictory 'moral neutrality' overtones portrayed at times in the warhammer world, as the lack of good/bad - absolute justice- sort of makes things very shallow. Secularism really sucks in any universe.

Not to be pedantic, but I don't think Secularism is the correct word here - Secularism would be the exclusion of religion from government, which is not the case here as both major factions in the starter box yell about their religion and gods to the exclusion of all else. I think what you may be referring to is a type of equivocation termed "Moral Equivalence," which "...seeks to draw comparisons between different, often unrelated things, to make a point that one is just as bad as the other or just as good as the other." (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moral_equivalence)

And, on that front, I agree - a lot of people seem to really enjoy pretending that the flaws and failings of the "good" guys are every bit as bad as the overt and intentional wrong doing of the "bad" guys, as it helps them feel like the story is more nuanced or complex, but at the end of the day its really question of unintentional versus intentional motivations for their "bad" actions.

Oggthrok wrote:

 Blobpie wrote:
I should note, I never said they were good beings. They're pure "Order". Passionless, subservient and faceless.

A doom that threatens everyone just as much as Chaos, just a different doom.

I can say, from reading Gates of Azyr, that the Stormcast do have passions and human wants and needs, and so far are portrayed as sparkling good-guys in every sense. In what little story AoS has right now, Chaos has reduced the realms to starving wretches, hiding from killer cannibal packs who are themselves running out of victims. In the context of the novel, the Stormcast show up, kick Chaos out, find surviving humans, take off their helmets to show that they're human too, and say "Hey, as long as we're alive, we won't let this happen to you again."

But, they don't then set up a restrictive government, or begin passing out Sigmar pamphlets on how to live your life - they roll on to the next Chaos stronghold, and leave it to the newly free humans to rebuild their lives in peace.

For that matter, they do seem to worry, recall elements of their former lives, and owe various deities other than Sigmar debts in one case. It's worth mentioning that their immortality isn't so much fun either - where demons will be back time and again, it seems the Stormcast have to be "reforged" every time they die. And, while reforging remains very vaguely described, it is said that it's an involved process, and not everyone survives it.

 kveldulf wrote:

I try to ignore the silly & contradictory 'moral neutrality' overtones portrayed at times in the warhammer world, as the lack of good/bad - absolute justice- sort of makes things very shallow. Secularism really sucks in any universe.

Not to be pedantic, but I don't think Secularism is the correct word here - Secularism would be the exclusion of religion from government, which is not the case here as both major factions in the starter box yell about their religion and gods to the exclusion of all else. I think what you may be referring to is a type of equivocation termed "Moral Equivalence," which "...seeks to draw comparisons between different, often unrelated things, to make a point that one is just as bad as the other or just as good as the other." (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moral_equivalence)

And, on that front, I agree - a lot of people seem to really enjoy pretending that the flaws and failings of the "good" guys are every bit as bad as the overt and intentional wrong doing of the "bad" guys, as it helps them feel like the story is more nuanced or complex, but at the end of the day its really question of unintentional versus intentional motivations for their "bad" actions.

Ah thanks for that little gold nugget correction. First time I've heard of the label 'moral equivalence' .... learned something new. I probably could have said 'relativism' as well?

Bad good guys? Good bad guys? Oh the humanity!

Anyways a neat idea along these lines would have been to cast Sigmar as the bad guy in a sort of Orwellian Big Brother fashion. Have the Sigmarines appear to be these shining demi-god heroes, but then... In reality they are just these trapped souls conned into serving a self destructive messiah. Each time a Sigmarine dies he or she is reborn, but as an increasingly more savage and remorseless killer than the last time. Sigmar thinks he is doing the work of Order by trying to purge Chaos, but then we'll, you peer into the darkness, right? Chaos on the other hand is slowly transformed into Order as the warriors of the old gods see more and more that what they really fight for is honour and freedom of choice, even if that choice is the wrong one.

Sigmar and his Eternals as a symbol of faceless all powerful authority that eventually corrupts and twists into evil. Chaos becomes free will and self determination.

 Los pollos hermanos wrote:
Its like reaching the end of the return of the king and on the last paragraph Tolkien writes "and then the world was wiped away and a blank slate put in its place, everything that happened was totally pointless."

Well, he kinda did that in the Silmarillion... And then again in the Akallabêth...

What if they had been Champions of Sigmar? Yes, in that way. Men and women and elves and dwarfs and so forth who go out and perform heroic deeds, dedicating them to the Heldenhammer's name...if they do well, they could be rewarded with a set of shining golden armor (that won't come off, but why would you want that?) or angelic wings (that your Sigmar Armor miraculously reshapes around) or a hammer that calls down thunder on your foes (and occasionally whispers about blood).

The goal is to eventually be taken into Sigmar's Realm, where he is assembling an immortal army of the worthy to eventually cast down Chaos...

Eventually.

Those who fall upon the Path to Righteousness are doomed to become emotionless, faceless killers, surely a fate too terrible to contemplate for those who follow Sigmar's way.

Make THAT the Sigmarine faction, set the game in the ruins of the Old World, and spend more than a single lunchbreak on the rules, and they might have me back.