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That is why Nagash is able to threaten victory, yes. The reason he has not done that already is that his bark is worse than his bite. He does not control all of Shyish even though he lays claim to it. Shyish is full of all manner of afterlives created by the faith of mortals, and while he has devoured many, his dominance is not as utter as he pretends.

That, and his ability to actually control all the dead is limited. The vampires squabble and scheme behind his back. The Flesh-Eaters are beyond mad and difficult to control. The Nighthaunt and Ossiarch are obvious efforts by Nagash to create more obedient forces, and they have proven effective, but Ossiarch are onerous to create in vast numbers and Nighthaunt have very real strategic limitations, being a very blunt tool.

At the same time he's very angry about Sigmar stealing souls from him and doesn't want to see Chaos invade his realm.

I think on some fronts Nagash doesn't care, but on others fronts he realises he has to care because if Chaos wins then the souls of the realms go to Chaos and Souls in the Chaos Realm are basically lost to him.

Hence why he'd even bother building something like the Ossiarchs

It is a shame if they do away with the multiple realms. I think that was a neat part of the AoS lore. I think it was a mistake to make the realms infinite though. They should have been finite and defined, so battling over them would feel more concrete. And whilst you cannot never detail the million worlds of the 40K Imperium, you could have actually detailed eight about Earth-sized realms.

 Gert wrote:
Nagash still has rules about that sort of thing because he's order taken to its utmost extreme.

Nagash also just doesn't really care because in the long term, everything dies. So what if the realms are overrun for ten thousand years? Nagash plans for one hundred thousand years when everything eventually dies out.

Undying King highlights it really well where Nagash doesn't care about a host of Nurglites advancing on a gateway to the underworld he is hiding in because, eventually, the host will be stopped before it gets there. Then a Necromancer breaks his Law, and he gets very angry about it.

Of all the Gods that were once Mortal? Whilst I don’t disagree with the posts above about his shortcomings? Nagash is easily the most used to planning centuries, even millennia ahead. Because he was the first to become functionally immortal, after a fashion.

He’s also shown he’s adaptable. The whole Nighthaunt thing came about after the Skaven interfered and at least partially ruined the creation of Shyish Nadir. The Necromantic energies unleashed caused the mass manifestation of spirits, and he took some advantage of that by shackling them back to him and controlling them. At least after a fashion.

Oh the Vampires do scheme, but each is still only free to do what they want until Nagash decides otherwise. Even Mannfred and Nerefata aren’t immune to his total mental domination should the mood take him.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I now wonder if he’s also the one God most used to having his head kicked in?

The Skaven did it. Sigmar did it. Archaon did it.

OK, none put him down for good. He still came back.

Monstrously arrogant as he is? He still learns from such kickings. Such as how to allow for at least the possibility.

Nagash getting kicked & coming back is a major theme of his WHFB novel series, so yeah, he's used to it.

 Crimson wrote:
It is a shame if they do away with the multiple realms. I think that was a neat part of the AoS lore. I think it was a mistake to make the realms infinite though. They should have been finite and defined, so battling over them would feel more concrete. And whilst you cannot never detail the million worlds of the 40K Imperium, you could have actually detailed eight about Earth-sized realms.

Exactly, making them basically infinite in size and having no maps and no dating system means its insanely hard to really grasp how important events are; or how they relate to each other.

We are slowly getting some maps but its still a setting where you really have no clue nor foundation for understanding if an event in Realm A lines up to one in Realm B or if your favourite character could ever have appeared at an event. Heck we don't even really have a great grasp for how long its been since the Age of Sigmar lasted We know the Age of Chaos was about 400 years, but we have no clue what so ever how long the AoS era is. Sometimes it feels like its only a few decades; other times the way cities are talked about and populated and so forth it sounds like multiple generations have passed (even for long lived races like Elves and Dwarves). Plus we've no clue if the books come out in some kind of chronological order or if some might be set generations in the "future" from the main timeline of events.

About the only temporal reference points we get are things like the Necroquake as an event things can be before or after.

Heck I can't even tell how long Gotrek has been exploring the realms - some books it sounds like its a matter of months; other times it feels like he's been wandering at random for year upon year with nothing of note happening.


Even for fans its a setting that's really hard to connect the dots between stories Throw on that the realms operate on wild-magic and it begs even more questions. How do the inhabitants of regions in Ghur survive when their land can be a meadow in the morning; a mountain in the afternoon and a riverbed the next day? How do you cope farming in a realm where there are storms of toxic iron dust and lakes of quicksilver. Even if you're further out from the interior there's still going to be impacts from things like that. Just why aren't the cities built on the backs of vast walking titanic creatures featuring much in the story right now. Heck look at Cities of Sigmar - lore wise they are oft depicted as closer to steam-punk levels of technology yet model wise they are closer to 1st generation black powder weapons and clockwork engines.

The setting has amazing imagination and a wild "70s rock music album cover art" feel to it. It's wild and free and epic in all senses, but its also very hollow as a setting. There's no connections between stories; there's no relations in the world setting. I'm sure this also impacts the writers because whilst on one hand they are super free; on the other they are hobbled because of how things link together.
What it sorely needs, no matter how the lore evolves, is a plan and structure. It honestly need limits; order and a sense that it can pull itself toegther; that stories can flow one to the next; that you can relate stories, characters, places and events; that there's depth to the building of how societies function and so on and so forth.

 Crimson wrote:
It is a shame if they do away with the multiple realms. I think that was a neat part of the AoS lore. I think it was a mistake to make the realms infinite though. They should have been finite and defined, so battling over them would feel more concrete. And whilst you cannot never detail the million worlds of the 40K Imperium, you could have actually detailed eight about Earth-sized realms.

Yes, I completely agree. 8 realms with interesting locations and some blank space to do your own thing would have been perfect. Make me a set of nice maps, and give me a brief couple of lines about some cool and evocative locations that prompt gaming ideas and I'd have been absolutely sold.

Maybe something like that came later, I don't know. But for me at the start at least I felt nothing but wasted potential, and from what I read only a few realms were ever given any real detail. What a shame. When you compare it to the creativity on display in models at least, the world building seems haphazard.

If it’s even true. I’m not sold on the description of it and how it apparently got there background wise.

But then, early rumours about the death of WHFB and AoS did not do how the mortal realms actually work any justice at all.

So, whilst I doubt the veracity of the rumours as they stand? Even if they are based in some form of the truth? It doesn’t mean it’s all accurately described.

I am, as ever, happy to be wrong.

 flaherty wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
GW trying to wrestle with the inherent contradiction of trying to both idealise your cake and satirise it has definitely left modern 40k lore feeling rather uncomfortable with itself.

Crimson is barely exaggerating. Ultramarines are called noble heroes, verbatim. The Ultramarines, paragons and upholders of the "cruellest, most bloody regime imaginable". Those Ultramarines.

A subset of fans is wrestling with the fact that "satire" hasn't meaningfully driven the narrative in 25+ years. Since the Nightbringer era, Space Marines have stopped being grotesque exaggerations and have become straightforward heroic protagonists.

The reality is that GW's most successful IP is built on the premise that theocratic space fascism is not only necessary in the world of the story, it's also cool as hell aesthetically. You can tell this bothers almost everyone, from the suits to the creatives. They can say "Warhammer is for everyone," but the story is the story.

In some ways, this is life imitating art. In the lore, the Chaos Gods spring forth on planets through a seed of doubt or corruption in the mind of a mortal. In Nottingham, an overwhelmingly liberal group of creatives has spent decades refining, cultivating, and evangelizing an aesthetic that they abhor ideologically.

The warp can breach the materium in many ways, including artists who believe they're pursuing a noble cause.

Blessed is the mind too small for doubt.

I mean, they could just chill out and remember that fiction isn't reality. I mean really guys, what are we, a 1990's American "concerned parents" group lobbying against videogames because if we let our kids play GTA they'll somehow be brainwashed into being violent criminals?

No, but I'd rather the setting not actually -unironically- glorify insane fascism, for hopefully obvious reasons.

GTA doesn't call you a noble hero and paragon of humanity for running over some pedestrians.

 YodhrinsForge wrote:

 flaherty wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
GW trying to wrestle with the inherent contradiction of trying to both idealise your cake and satirise it has definitely left modern 40k lore feeling rather uncomfortable with itself.

Crimson is barely exaggerating. Ultramarines are called noble heroes, verbatim. The Ultramarines, paragons and upholders of the "cruellest, most bloody regime imaginable". Those Ultramarines.

A subset of fans is wrestling with the fact that "satire" hasn't meaningfully driven the narrative in 25+ years. Since the Nightbringer era, Space Marines have stopped being grotesque exaggerations and have become straightforward heroic protagonists.

The reality is that GW's most successful IP is built on the premise that theocratic space fascism is not only necessary in the world of the story, it's also cool as hell aesthetically. You can tell this bothers almost everyone, from the suits to the creatives. They can say "Warhammer is for everyone," but the story is the story.

In some ways, this is life imitating art. In the lore, the Chaos Gods spring forth on planets through a seed of doubt or corruption in the mind of a mortal. In Nottingham, an overwhelmingly liberal group of creatives has spent decades refining, cultivating, and evangelizing an aesthetic that they abhor ideologically.

The warp can breach the materium in many ways, including artists who believe they're pursuing a noble cause.

Blessed is the mind too small for doubt.

I mean, they could just chill out and remember that fiction isn't reality. I mean really guys, what are we, a 1990's American "concerned parents" group lobbying against videogames because if we let our kids play GTA they'll somehow be brainwashed into being violent criminals?

Yep. Its a concerning tendancy that a rising number of players seems to conflate the 40k setting with real life politic.No, liking the darkest and most retrograde elements of the setting doesnt mean it's a projection of how you would like our society to be organised, contrarly to what many keyboard psychologists and puritans claims

There's no need to start throwing pejoratives around.

Depiction is fine and always has been. There are numerous films about Hitler, even made in Germany where laws about depicting the Nazis are specifically in place.

Don't conflate that with the real issue which is glorification. The Imperium existing is fine. The Imperium doing everything it's doing is fine. Omniscient narrators, magazine intros written from the author's perspective, community articles and so on calling them noble and heroic, that is decidedly less fine.

It's -hopefully- easy to imagine why - imagine the worst political ideology you know (which one you think is worst isn't important, this isn't a politics debate thread about which one takes the podium, this is just to make the point) and imagine a game where the faction of that ideology is as glorified as the Imperium is, constantly called righteous paragons in dev blogs and so on.

Wouldn't that feel a bit off?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, maybe it's time to steer this back to Age of Sigmar again (which is a setting that pointedly does -not- have this problem).

Yeah, getting back to the topic of N&R for AoS would be a good plan.

All bangers from the Slaves to Darkness art, imo

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/hsxyww8f/warhammer-art-through-the-years-slaves-to-darkness/

and more Chronicles of Ruin:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/hvfv4cnz/chronicles-of-ruin-heart-of-blight/

Did that Last World rumor ever pan out?

No signs of anything for the moment.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Did that Last World rumor ever pan out?

We won't know until 5th edition releases which won't be until next year.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Did that Last World rumor ever pan out?

We won't know until 5th edition releases which won't be until next year.

Oh. That changes things then. Why all the hubbub about it then?

Because someone on the AoS forums with a positive track record for leaks leaked the changes and set the forum off and started the whole thing

We won't know for sure probably until this time next year as GW starts the pre-release marketing for the new edition of AoS.

We "might" get more heads up around Christmas for a change this big if GW are goign to do a long pre-release buildup of marketing

The lead up to it will probably be the end of edition narrative.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Did that Last World rumor ever pan out?

We won't know until 5th edition releases which won't be until next year.

Oh. That changes things then. Why all the hubbub about it then?

Because why fork over a load of money keeping up to date with the game between now and then on the chance they are just going to just up and end times it in a year. GW have proven they are happy to scrap settings even after people have forked out money for new rules only weeks after release. They did it with WFB end times, plenty of people have army books they saw only mere weeks before it was scrapped for AoS.

This rumour is going to have people be more careful with their money if they have gone through it before.

Which does make me wonder, as people have been saying the rumourmonger has a very negative opinion towards AoS, so I'd not be surprised if the rumours turn out to be a lot less drastic than they sound through their negative-tinted glasses.

Either way, I'm not affected. I dropped the GW rules churn years ago. I love AoS but I was quite happy with first edition, it didn't need a new edition every three years. I had no intention on keeping up with major rules changes and I'll happily wait out new model updates until this is all cleared up next year. Either nothing much will change any new models will be bundled in to next years battleforces, or there will be huge changes people will hate it and drop the game and sell of their models super cheap much like last time there was an end times. Both mean cheap models for me and I have plenty to get on with between now and then. The only 'person' affected is GW as I won't be buying direct for a over a year.

Thanks for the update. My only connection to AoS is my love of WarCry (the game no one plays ).

I have more army books (whatever they are called) for AOS than I would like to admit. The rumor of a redux for the setting makes me want to load up of my fav armies and as many armybooks I can afford over the years to next edition.

I honestly can't see GW outright killing armies in AoS right now. At worst we'll see

1) Moving to Old World - beastmen and most likely Dark Elves

2) Rolling/expanding into another - seems to be the going rumour for Fyreslayers

 Mallo wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Did that Last World rumor ever pan out?

We won't know until 5th edition releases which won't be until next year.

Oh. That changes things then. Why all the hubbub about it then?

Which does make me wonder, as people have been saying the rumourmonger has a very negative opinion towards AoS, so I'd not be surprised if the rumours turn out to be a lot less drastic than they sound through their negative-tinted glasses.

I'd be very wary of that characterisation. Having been on the sidelines enjoying copious popcorn since this all started, that framing of the situation largely seems to be coming from people coping *extremely* hard. Boole is ostensibly releasing information from an actual core book for 5th they've gotten an extended look at, and while I suppose they could - intentionally or not - be putting a negative spin on things or have been fed a document with some inaccuracies as part of a GW molehunt, the broad strokes have been backed up by other similarly credible leakers. Unless the whole thing turns out to be a complete fraud - which given that corroboration seems unlikely - the best case scenario is a "Bubblehammer vs how the actual Mortal Realms turned out" level misunderstanding, and again given they're supposed to have seen basically-production-ready text that seems unlikely as well.

 Overread wrote:
I honestly can't see GW outright killing armies in AoS right now. At worst we'll see

1) Moving to Old World - beastmen and most likely Dark Elves

2) Rolling/expanding into another - seems to be the going rumour for Fyreslayers

Ogres maybe? Not a whole lot of investment there. If GW sticks to a cycle for edition boxes, it would be Death up next though. Then again, maybe not, maybe Ogres are the next edition launch army?

 Gert wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I honestly can't see GW outright killing armies in AoS right now. At worst we'll see

1) Moving to Old World - beastmen and most likely Dark Elves

2) Rolling/expanding into another - seems to be the going rumour for Fyreslayers

Ogres maybe? Not a whole lot of investment there. If GW sticks to a cycle for edition boxes, it would be Death up next though. Then again, maybe not, maybe Ogres are the next edition launch army?

Maybe roll Ogors in with Behemat? They're all big, hungry dudes anyway, right?

Battletome: Hungry Lads Brigade

I imagine sylvaneth could be canned. Lots of old models in the range that dont match the more recent style. No obvious way to develop the range. Horrible lore for any interresting narratives.
Also, I have a big collection of them.

 Gert wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I honestly can't see GW outright killing armies in AoS right now. At worst we'll see

1) Moving to Old World - beastmen and most likely Dark Elves

2) Rolling/expanding into another - seems to be the going rumour for Fyreslayers

Ogres maybe? Not a whole lot of investment there. If GW sticks to a cycle for edition boxes, it would be Death up next though. Then again, maybe not, maybe Ogres are the next edition launch army?

Weren’t there rumours for Ogres getting a revamp?
Anyway, of some army is getting canned, it’s not 100% they get to live on a farm. (TOW)
I’m still annoyed that savage orcs haven’t been chosen for the migration for some reason.