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I would love some full art/lore books inside Sigmaron and other places in the realms. It's hard to understand from that photo what that place would look like on the ground. It's got mountains, pyramids, flaming statues, seemingly you're able to walk on all sides of that place?? Crazy. The Old World burning in the middle looks hot.

It's unclear, or at least the information is not easily located, but the previous page has an image of Azyrheim which shows part of the red comet (or is that Mallus, the remains of the Old World?) and ring (along with the tiny planetoid with the star above it - I think that planetoid is Sigmarion, the celestial stronghold of Sigmar above which shines the High Star Sigendil). It mentions Azyrheim has mountains, so it would appear that it isn't the ring itself. It's possible that the ring is Sigmaron.

I legitimately can't make heads or tails out of it, and I have no idea what it going on in that picture.

My impression was Azyrheim is the city at the bottom of the celestial realm (I.e. actually built on land) and that Sigmaron was this space station floating around mallus, and sigmarion is? Erm yeah, its confusing. And even further out there are the slann flying around space in their empty space-temples dreaming of the skinks and sauruses. And beyond that is the star-drake hanging out, admiring the necklace Sigmar crafted for him (or wait is the necklace the mortal realms?)

The feeling I get from AoS, at least at this point in the fluff, is a bit of a fever dream. The explosion of the old world with all the winds of magic created some warp plane on the edge of a black hole or something, with realms popping up and things blinking in and out of reality and no one except maybe Sigmar/the gods really understanding what the heck is going on. I somewhat think all of the realms could be on the same planet, or all be the same planet, but for example you could be in the UK of Aqshy and take a realm gate and be in the UK of Ghur or whatever names they are. I think there's a picture somewhat like this in one of the campaign books, between metal and fire?

coldgaming wrote:
I think there's a picture somewhat like this in one of the campaign books, between metal and fire?

I know the one you mean - that is a link by Realmgate.

I _think_ the Realms are each their own universe, with each having their own planets and moons. The real question may be whether they are infinite or not...

Is that Sigmar's space dragon friend coiled around the planet on the right side?

Intrestestingly the incomplete ring of space cities looks very similar to the chaos crown worn by Archaon.

Do you thiink that is deliberate?

Does anyone have an idea what kind of scale Sigmaron is? Like, is it big enough for the different human cultures to each have their own kingdom like they did in the old world? Or are they all jumbled up together?

Well, it's surrounding Mallus which is the same size as the Earth... Or was until it got destroyed. Maybe that's just the molten core? Each spire looks like it could be the size of a skyscraper but then again those globes could be moon sized satellites.

In the beginning it says centuries have gone by and nations and civilizations began. So im assuming they live in the realm where they lived when the world was shattered

It is a magic realm of infinite extent, according to what I have gleaned from the fluff.

That would seem to fly in the face of it being a space station arced around the dead planet, but perhaps the other realms extend into alternate dimensions, like in "The Long Earth" by Terry Pratchet. If it was a space station of the form shown in the picture, gravity would draw it into the planet.

Anyway, it's magic and doesn't have to obey logic and rules of physical law. I think also the picture has to be regarded as an artistic interpretation or perhaps an allegory of the true state of affairs.

Only the Slann, in their orbiting battle stations, would be able to see the whole scene from a distance.

Tainted wrote:
Does anyone have an idea what kind of scale Sigmaron is? Like, is it big enough for the different human cultures to each have their own kingdom like they did in the old world? Or are they all jumbled up together?

I assumed it was Ringworld scale?

 Mr Morden wrote:

Tainted wrote:
Does anyone have an idea what kind of scale Sigmaron is? Like, is it big enough for the different human cultures to each have their own kingdom like they did in the old world? Or are they all jumbled up together?

I assumed it was Ringworld scale?

I am not sure there's enough information on this yet, but I haven't read the AoS fluff in depth.

Matt, can you help us with this? *Signals the Mongoose*

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

I am not sure there's enough information on this yet, but I haven't read the AoS fluff in depth.

Matt, can you help us with this? *Signals the Mongoose*

Hey, what, pardon?

There hasn't been a great deal written on this, and I am not sure there will ever be detailed info on the place as a whole (as opposed to specific areas of it), in much the same way as Terra is never really explained in 40k.

There was an article in White Dwarf that suggested some of the structures were BIG. As in 40k big. But total size? I don't think we will ever know. Once things go beyond the tabletop, GW get pretty vague about specifics (rightly so, in my opinion, I have seen what quantifying everything does for a gaming setting). Even the sizes of ships in Battlefleet Gothic have been fairly loose, and there are models for those...

However, we can see that this places rings the core of a dead world. Not sure how literal we can take that to be, but if we assume the World That Was used to be the same size as the Earth (a reasonable assumption) and assume that it was geologically similar (looser assumption with Chaos and magic present) and assume that what we are looking at in the picture above is the actual solid inner core (assuming, again, that the World That Was went through a similar process of differentiation when it was created), then it is about 1.217 x 10^3 km in radius (sue me, currently doing a degree in Planetary Science ).

Ah, just remembered that this core is not iron and nickel but Sigmarite.

Yeah, that may change things.

We know iron exists in the World That Was (from what weapons and armour were made from), but we also can presume from decent anecdotal evidence that Sigmarite is a denser material, so iron would have risen upwards.

Okay, the magnetic field of the World That Was might be a bit weird.

I might be over thinking this...

The answer could be 'no one knows.'

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It is a magic realm of infinite extent, according to what I have gleaned from the fluff.

That would seem to fly in the face of it being a space station arced around the dead planet, but perhaps the other realms extend into alternate dimensions, like in "The Long Earth" by Terry Pratchet. If it was a space station of the form shown in the picture, gravity would draw it into the planet.

Anyway, it's magic and doesn't have to obey logic and rules of physical law. I think also the picture has to be regarded as an artistic interpretation or perhaps an allegory of the true state of affairs.

Only the Slann, in their orbiting battle stations, would be able to see the whole scene from a distance.

I think you're getting mixed up with Sigmaron and Azyr. Azyr is the celestial realm which is infinite, and Sigmaron is merely a place in the Azyr realm where things like Stormcast are forged. This might be an artistic impression as you say, though. Because it begs the question of how it was built and how people travel from Sigmaron to Azyrheim (or if that is even possible).

If Azyr and every realm truly are infinite... Oh boy.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:
If Azyr and every realm truly are infinite... Oh boy.

That is, for me, the Big Question: Are the Mortal Realms infinite?

I think it is probably more useful to talk about 'accessible' Realms, because all sorts of issues start cropping up with infinite space (I mentioned in another thread that, if this were the case then, somewhere, a pre-End Times World That Was exists).

To keep things sensible, it might be better to talk about a specific area of the Realms, such as a planet (though we have already seen that at least one area of the Realm of Metal does not work that way), continent or (as in the Realm of Fire) peninsula.

It just makes things manageable without closing off other avenues for the future.

The white dwarfs for the Seraphon mentioned that every realm has its own starry sky, so in that respect they are all infinite because space is.

If the land mass is infinite I don't know. Don't the realms bleed into eachother in places? Or maybe it's like minecraft in that it's finite, but when someone reaches the edge it expands, and that expansion can be infinite...

Well, they are magic realms, after all.

Yes, Azyrheim is quite huge. I remember seeing an artwork of one "city door" and it was titan size. Like, titan in 40k. There are a lot of similarities with 40k "excessiveness".

That's still the core of the World That Was, and yeah it's the only source of Sigmarite. Fluff says it's becoming thinner as Sigmar uses even more Sigmarite to "forge" his Stormcast Eternals and their weapons.

So that may be the weakness of Sigmar's armies; seems like once there is no Sigmarite left, he will not be able to (re)forge any warrior again.

We don't know much more about it, though.

I wonder how the Sigmarite is mined. Seems a bit hot.

I perfectly understand this, and it's better for narrative campaign purposes (the campaign for the X peninsula or the Y citadel in Azyr) so that some degree of sanity can be maintained.

The thing is, however, if the true goal of Chaos/Sigmar/etc is to conquer X or Y realm - and let's just keep it at one realm for now - and said realm is infinite... well that isn't gonna ever happen, now is it? How do you conquer something that is infinite?

The metaplot implications of a possible infinity are... very frightening as it can reduce any engagement, no matter the size (it could involve millions of combatants, or billions!) to nothing more than petty squabbles since nothing can ever be truly gained.


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That Sigmarite shortage thing sounds pretty much the AoS Astartes gene-seed issue equivalent, so you can conveniently wave it away as in 40k no really profound implication has ever come from such shortage in 10,000 years.

 Bottle wrote:
so in that respect they are all infinite because space is.

That is an unproven assumption

 Bottle wrote:
If the land mass is infinite I don't know. Don't the realms bleed into eachother in places?

We haven't seen that yet, I don't think, though there are clearly links (not that people like Chaos, the Seraphon and small numbers of Stormcast need them).

 Sarouan wrote:

That's still the core of the World That Was, and yeah it's the only source of Sigmarite. Fluff says it's becoming thinner as Sigmar uses even more Sigmarite to "forge" his Stormcast Eternals and their weapons.

So that may be the weakness of Sigmar's armies; seems like once there is no Sigmarite left, he will not be able to (re)forge any warrior again.

Not sure that is a factor.

If the core is comparable to Earth's, with a radius of 1.217 x 10^3 km and it is all/mostly composed of Sigmarite, then there is 5.097 x 10^3 km^3 of it - if that were iron, that would be equivalent to about 40 million trillion tons (someone can check my powers, I normally miss one off somewhere ).

I don't think Sigmar is going to run out of Sigmarite any time soon

Honestly it all reads to me as just a magic version of a Dyson sphere, just subbing the winds of magic for a star.

There also does seem to be an outside or deep space part of it, where the world dragon and the Slann hang out.

Don't forget we don't know the time Sigmar spent to forge his armies. And we also don't know how many "chapters" were made. Since it's similar to some kind of mythology, it may be thousand of years. Fluff says the core was way bigger at the beginning and it was quite clear it will not last forever.

Since it's all about magic and myths, with a lot of symbolism, I think we can throw comparisons with real planets and space out of the window for Age of Sigmar.

About other realms "bleeding" over others, it's difficult to answer. Since there are portals linking them, it may be very possible the energy of the other realm can have an effect on its immediate surroundings - in quite a small scale, certainly.

What we know is that Chaos can easily corrupt the realms it is invading. May we assume it's actually the power of Chaos Realms melting into them, making a twisted reflection of what it was? Hmmmm.

 Sarouan wrote:

Since it's all about magic and myths, with a lot of symbolism, I think we can throw comparisons with real planets and space out of the window for Age of Sigmar.

I think you are right

 Sarouan wrote:
Don't forget we don't know the time Sigmar spent to forge his armies. And we also don't know how many "chapters" were made. Since it's similar to some kind of mythology, it may be thousand of years. Fluff says the core was way bigger at the beginning and it was quite clear it will not last forever.

Since it's all about magic and myths, with a lot of symbolism, I think we can throw comparisons with real planets and space out of the window for Age of Sigmar.

About other realms "bleeding" over others, it's difficult to answer. Since there are portals linking them, it may be very possible the energy of the other realm can have an effect on its immediate surroundings - in quite a small scale, certainly.

What we know is that Chaos can easily corrupt the realms it is invading. May we assume it's actually the power of Chaos Realms melting into them, making a twisted reflection of what it was? Hmmmm.

Presumably it's about 2,000 years because he started about the time that Chaos blew up Earth and began his "Take back the Mortal Realms" campaign 2,000 years later.

But I have to say I am completely confused about the set up.

Azyr is a magic realm in an sort of alternate reality, or side-band of reality? Sigmaron is inside Azyr, is it? Where are the Mortal Realms? If Azyr is infinite, why does anyone need to fight about it?

What is this chaos emblem shaped space station surrounding the exploded Earth's core? Where are the Slann's orbital battle stations? Is there a sun or does the physical space station-planet system float in free space, and if so, where does light and heat come from?

Who built the space station, and why?

Isn't it a bit funny that something like this is not nailed down yet in the fluff? Seems kinda important to nail down the visuals. This is all the foundation of the game universe. Literally.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Isn't it a bit funny that something like this is not nailed down yet in the fluff? Seems kinda important to nail down the visuals. This is all the foundation of the game universe. Literally.

All the fluff is hearsay and propaganda. Wait... wrong epic fantasy universe.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

What is this chaos emblem shaped space station surrounding the exploded Earth's core?

To be honest, I didn't think "it's a Chaos symbol!" when I saw for the first time the picture for Azyrheim. To me, it was just some kind of "space city" all around something that looked like a very small sun not very active.

Yeah, may look like one if you look at it from "above", but to me it's more like seeing shapes of known objects/persons in clouds.

There are still questions left unanswered. GW loves that kind of thing that may or may be not described in future books.


But to me, it's a "mythological - High Fantasy" setting. A lot of things seem impossible or excessive, but that's the point. That has nothing to do with SF, because nothing can be explained with "science". It's magical, and that's all you need to know.

The "infinite" or "vast" part, I believe it's to have some place for our own stories. So, it doesn't really bother me on that part - you can imagine your own factions or your own towns in these wide realms. And you can, of course, play your own campaigns. Sure, you can still follow the official ones, but I believe the strenght of GW games is still that you can make your own army if you want, with their own characters and their own story.

When there are "holes" in the fluff, that's something you can fill with your own imagination. That's the strenght of "loose" fluff, IMHO. That's something I can see in other games as well.

Of course, more fluff is always good to read if it brings something new. But yeah, since I feel AoS is more a "reboot" than a true "continuation" of the old WFB, given its relative youth, I believe there is still time.