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How do?

Postie has been, and I’ve got Kragnos in hand. Both book and model.

About to head out for a pub lunch and a dashed read of this final volume of Broken Realms. I’ve greatly enjoyed this series, so I’m hoping it goes out with a bang!

Well, that was a pretty good read.

Nice to see the BL novels cited, and the whole shebang go out on a high.

I like how the novels are actually incorporated into the main fluff, even if it is simply a footnote it is a confirmation that those events happened canonically and that they mattered.

I did love another excellent rendition of Destruction diplomacy

What are the cliffnotes on Kragnos?

-Alarielle does her song of life, sending a wave of life magic across the realms. Some beastmen try to stop her but fail. This has an effect of 'awakening' the magic of the realms themselves, and Alarielle isn't sure how it will all play out but feels that it is needed because of all the Chaos & Death.

-Kragnos, who has been imprisoned since early in the Age of Myth, is able to break free after his prison is damaged as a result of the life magic wave. He isn't happy. He runs off to his old homeland, which is now a crumbled ruin.

-Meanwhile, Gordrakk is leading a massive mixed-destruction force towards Excelsius. Skragrot is a part of this force. Their path intersects with that of Kragnos by chance, Gordrakk immediately decides to kill him and a duel ensures with the Bad Moon peeking over the horizon to watch. Kragnos gets the upper hand but Skragrot interrupts the killing blow by sending a spell to land between the two. Kragnos then stops, looks at the Bad Moon, thinks, then points his mace at Excelsius (visible in the distance) and is now the leader because that's how Destruction diplomacy works.

-During all this, Excelsius has a cult spin-off from the Sigmarite faith that hates magic users. There is a good description of how this cult comes about, following the IRL tradition of well-meaning common folk slowly sliding into extremism. As they get excessive it attracts the attention of Slaanesh and at some point in its progression the Newborn start pulling the strings. Things get to a point where the cult is abducting aelves (who at this point have become labelled as deviant magic users by the common populace) and killing them inside a room full of mirrors so they have to watch their own death. Though it is worth noting that at no point does the cult realize they are actually serving Slaanesh.

-A pyromaniac Skaven Warlock-Bombardier hears a voice from a pink fire one day offering him fantastic rewards if he goes and sets Excelsius aflame. He decides this is a great idea. This results in gnaw-holes opening up inside Excelsius and Skaven pouring into the city. They are pushed back and the damage repaired but a large number of Skaven disperse and hide underground where they are more or less impossible to eradicate entirely.

-During the Skaven invasion a group of Eshin assassins hired by the Newborn go to the sacrificial hall of mirrors (the cult is not present at the time) and use aelven blood to conjure daemons, including the Newborn themselves, into the city. Further, this portion of the city is quarantined and literally walled off because of corruption caused by the Tzeentch invasion years previous (see City of Secrets novel). As a result the daemons are able to lay low and go undiscovered, particularly because the city is pre-occupied with the incoming Destruction horde.

-Said horde arrives, and thanks to Skragrot being able to think strategically things go extremely well despite how thoroughly prepared the defenses are for this exact situation. There is a lot here about how this plays out, the defense, the offense, and the tactics used. It was pretty fun to read.

-While Destruction attacks from the outside the Slaanesh forces jump out from the inside, moving towards the governing palace and seducing people into their service along the way. It is revealed that the Newborn intend to take control then use mind-shenanigans to manipulate Kragnos for their own ends. This is eventually foiled by the Ven Densts and the local Lord Veritant, the Newborn being banished to the Realm of Chaos. The city is still thoroughly screwed by Destruction though, until...

-Morathi shows up in a Black Ark full of DoK, providing the aid needed to push back against destruction. She ends up in a face-off with Kragnos and it isn't going well for her, so she works together with Kroak (who has been hidden in the city during the battle, providing subtle magical aid) to create a portal that *looks* like it goes to the homeland of Kragnos' worst enemies. Kragnos sees this, tells Morathi he'll be back to finish her sometime, then dives through. The portal actually goes to some random Chaos dreadhold so one can imagine Kragnos is not enthused upon emerging. Order is able to retake the city, not that there is a lot of city left to actually retake.

-After the battle there is a city council meeting with the surviving officials but mostly its between the Celestant Prime and Morathi. The gist is CP saying 'thanks for the help but you still backstabbed us and took Anvilguard give it back' and Morathi says 'I'm a god I do what I want' then they are about to fight when Grungni himself strolls in and says 'get over it guys I got a plan'.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
-Alarielle does her song of life, sending a wave of life magic across the realms. Some beastmen try to stop her but fail. This has an effect of 'awakening' the magic of the realms themselves, and Alarielle isn't sure how it will all play out but feels that it is needed because of all the Chaos & Death.

-Kragnos, who has been imprisoned since early in the Age of Myth, is able to break free after his prison is damaged as a result of the life magic wave. He isn't happy. He runs off to his old homeland, which is now a crumbled ruin.

-Meanwhile, Gordrakk is leading a massive mixed-destruction force towards Excelsius. Skragrot is a part of this force. Their path intersects with that of Kragnos by chance, Gordrakk immediately decides to kill him and a duel ensures with the Bad Moon peeking over the horizon to watch. Kragnos gets the upper hand but Skragrot interrupts the killing blow by sending a spell to land between the two. Kragnos then stops, looks at the Bad Moon, thinks, then points his mace at Excelsius (visible in the distance) and is now the leader because that's how Destruction diplomacy works.

-During all this, Excelsius has a cult spin-off from the Sigmarite faith that hates magic users. There is a good description of how this cult comes about, following the IRL tradition of well-meaning common folk slowly sliding into extremism. As they get excessive it attracts the attention of Slaanesh and at some point in its progression the Newborn start pulling the strings. Things get to a point where the cult is abducting aelves (who at this point have become labelled as deviant magic users by the common populace) and killing them inside a room full of mirrors so they have to watch their own death. Though it is worth noting that at no point does the cult realize they are actually serving Slaanesh.

-A pyromaniac Skaven Warlock-Bombardier hears a voice from a pink fire one day offering him fantastic rewards if he goes and sets Excelsius aflame. He decides this is a great idea. This results in gnaw-holes opening up inside Excelsius and Skaven pouring into the city. They are pushed back and the damage repaired but a large number of Skaven disperse and hide underground where they are more or less impossible to eradicate entirely.

-During the Skaven invasion a group of Eshin assassins hired by the Newborn go to the sacrificial hall of mirrors (the cult is not present at the time) and use aelven blood to conjure daemons, including the Newborn themselves, into the city. Further, this portion of the city is quarantined and literally walled off because of corruption caused by the Tzeentch invasion years previous (see City of Secrets novel). As a result the daemons are able to lay low and go undiscovered, particularly because the city is pre-occupied with the incoming Destruction horde.

-Said horde arrives, and thanks to Skragrot being able to think strategically things go extremely well despite how thoroughly prepared the defenses are for this exact situation. There is a lot here about how this plays out, the defense, the offense, and the tactics used. It was pretty fun to read.

-While Destruction attacks from the outside the Slaanesh forces jump out from the inside, moving towards the governing palace and seducing people into their service along the way. It is revealed that the Newborn intend to take control then use mind-shenanigans to manipulate Kragnos for their own ends. This is eventually foiled by the Ven Densts and the local Lord Veritant, the Newborn being banished to the Realm of Chaos. The city is still thoroughly screwed by Destruction though, until...

-Morathi shows up in a Black Ark full of DoK, providing the aid needed to push back against destruction. She ends up in a face-off with Kragnos and it isn't going well for her, so she works together with Kroak (who has been hidden in the city during the battle, providing subtle magical aid) to create a portal that *looks* like it goes to the homeland of Kragnos' worst enemies. Kragnos sees this, tells Morathi he'll be back to finish her sometime, then dives through. The portal actually goes to some random Chaos dreadhold so one can imagine Kragnos is not enthused upon emerging. Order is able to retake the city, not that there is a lot of city left to actually retake.

-After the battle there is a city council meeting with the surviving officials but mostly its between the Celestant Prime and Morathi. The gist is CP saying 'thanks for the help but you still backstabbed us and took Anvilguard give it back' and Morathi says 'I'm a god I do what I want' then they are about to fight when Grungni himself strolls in and says 'get over it guys I got a plan'.

Thanks for the great summary! I'm surprised to see that they even gave Gordrakk and Kragnos a duel to begin with. That or Morathi showing up to help save the city even though she just recently pulled the ol backstab switcheroo at Anvilguard. Great stuff!

I hope this means Gordrakk playing a bigger role now that he has competition with Kragnos. I also like hearing that Skargrotti has definitely been the spiritual successor of Skarsnik from being able to do proper battle planning.

My favorites are putting the trolls in the front to soak up cannon fire and hiring a bunch of Ogors to go offer their services to Excelsius as mercenaries in its defense then betray them at a specific signal.

A pretty good summary.

In its way, it doesn’t feel as expansive as the first three, given the vast majority takes place in just one location. But it does setup Kragnos really nicely.

His background is pretty cool too. His before prison rampages were so impressive, Bonesplitter Orcs would offer him beast marrow and realmstone, the consumption of which took him to the brink of Godhood. My takeaway is he’s a sort of natural Daemon Prince of Ghur itself.

I think my favourite bit is seeing magic being of no use against him. Given a lot of solutions in the past were “guess I’ll just cast a spell”, it’s fun to see that just not working. At least, as Morathi and Kroak’s trick showed, not directly.

I rather enjoyed Allarielle's "that's it, I'm sick of this now" moment and she just casts the spell and hang the consequences.

It’s definitely been satisfying to see three flavours of Elven arrogance.

Sure Morathi is selfish and proud of it. But Teclis and Alairelle both followed suit, doing whatever they’d convinced themself was best and arseholes to the lesser races.

Whilst I’m sure opinions will vary, this is one of AoS strengths as a setting. Every release ties in to an ever continuing narrative, and regardless of who takes a given action, there are usually consequences of various degrees.

It took a bit of getting used to when it first launched, because we just weren’t used to it from GW. And for my money, they’ve not quite pulled it off for 40K yet. Certainly I found Broken Realms far more interesting than Paycheck Awakening (and I bought all of both series).

I just hope Grungni has some great things in store for us model-wise in 3.0 His influence has already greatly improved stormcast--can't wait to see what's (hopefully) in store for other duardin.

Hm, I have never gotten a big sense of arrogance from Alarielle. Especially in BR Kragnos, she is very well aware that there will be negative consequences of her actions. She recognizes that she doesn't know how it will all play out but instead feels that it is something which needs to happen. I saw it as a nice foil to the other aelven gods who planned and schemed and wholly believe everything will turn out a certain way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Quasistellar wrote:
I just hope Grungni has some great things in store for us model-wise in 3.0 His influence has already greatly improved stormcast--can't wait to see what's (hopefully) in store for other duardin.

Yes please!

All I want is a classic style dwarf army to play in AoS, so I hope Grungi's return will give us something closer to that.

Classic? Gw? Aos? Good luck.

Gw being gw you are lucky if new dwarves aren't tree huggieg sneaky fast archers

Hey if they do what they did for High Elfs for Dwarfs I am 100% down with that. But I can get if people don't like that.

tneva82 wrote:
Classic? Gw? Aos? Good luck.

Gw being gw you are lucky if new dwarves aren't tree huggieg sneaky fast archers

So my prediction is that they'll make dwarves into forest dwarves that go around on stilts to be A) taller and B) able to walk faster. Also they'll be given spellcasters who hate gunpowder and pickaxes.

Upon saying that, dwarves on stilts would be pretty damn funny to see.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Hey if they do what they did for High Elfs for Dwarfs I am 100% down with that. But I can get if people don't like that.

Funny thing is apart from magic lumineth plays very much like dwarves did. Slow, lots of shooting, gets charged more than reverse and prefers it and durable.

So if high elves turned into dwarves with magic maybe dwarves turn into elves without magic

cody.d. wrote:Upon saying that, dwarves on stilts would be pretty damn funny to see.

Dwarves on stilts are 'classic' GW, though...

(From 1987 if anyone cares.)

EDIT: Apparently I cannot do quote tags today.

Ahh, the Dwarf with an Inferiority Complex.

tneva82 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Hey if they do what they did for High Elfs for Dwarfs I am 100% down with that. But I can get if people don't like that.

Funny thing is apart from magic lumineth plays very much like dwarves did. Slow, lots of shooting, gets charged more than reverse and prefers it and durable.

So if high elves turned into dwarves with magic maybe dwarves turn into elves without magic

Uh, okay.

tneva82 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Hey if they do what they did for High Elfs for Dwarfs I am 100% down with that. But I can get if people don't like that.

Funny thing is apart from magic lumineth plays very much like dwarves did. Slow, lots of shooting, gets charged more than reverse and prefers it and durable.

Huh. I knew a lot of High Elf armies that played like that by default in Fantasy.

Lots of shooting and tending to remain stationary preferring to get charged (due to having ASF as an army wide rule). They had a few units that could charge or threaten flanks but were more than capable of just peppering with shots and remaining stationary between longbows, bolt throwers, magic, sea guard and shadow warriors and happily taking charges on ASF White Lion, Phoenix Guard and Spearmen blocks.

Todays short story raised Gordrakks stock up in my mind.

I had 2* big problems with this book, and one was that Gordrakk felt kind of sidelined when Kragnos entered the picture. He got beat up and almost killed, then his super weapon was Kroaked as soon as it went to do its job. Seemed like Skragrott did all the thinking, while Gordrakk was just a buffoon and whatever he did, Kragnos did better.

But this short story now painted a picture that Gordrakk just had a “I recognize my failling and will be sure to correct it” moment, with some otherworldly/godly help. I liked the callback to the Realmgate Wars with the line : “Find the gate you lost, then find yerself the Mouth of Mork.” Nice little nod to previous lore, with the promise of new adventures ahead.

*The second one was that this books overall plotline( in my opinion) felt the most “Psychic Awakening”-esque. Not that its a bad thing, as it was a fun story,but it just seemed like nothing really big happened even with all the moving parts. Aside from Kragnos’ rise, nothing really shook me. Compared to the previous books, this one maintained the status quo.