Chaos is getting more interesting (largely spoiler free)

Fog up - I do mean largely spoiler free. I'll be referring to stuff that happens in the various books, but hope to steer away from specifics.

Right, caveat out the way.

Age of Sigmar is now well underway, with The Realmgate Wars seemingly being the opening gambit of the new background. I've been keeping up to date with the new books, and as the thread title suggests, I'm impressed with the way Chaos is now being portrayed.

I've been following the old Warhammef background for ages now - all the way since the now ancient Realm of Chaos books. And sadly over the years, perhaps due to over familiarity with the background I've found Chaos becoming blander and blander. Even during the End Times series, the vast majority, if not all Chaos characters largely boiled down to frothing maniacs out to attract the attention of their chosen Deity/Deities - but little was made of their motivations - why did they turn to Chaos?

For many, they were simply born in Norsca, so Chaos worship went with the territory. Now to me, that's just not particularly compelling.

Age of Sigmar has expanded upon this somewhat. So far not one of the Chaos protagonists is all 'from t'grim North'. They're victims of the Age of Chaos. For some, it was a simple survival choice. Embrace Chaos, or die.

And apart from the slightly tiresome Khul (just kill him off already), they're actually fairly sympathetic characters - to the extent I found the main character from 'The Solace of Rage' to be really quite cool, despite Khorne stuff usually leaving me cold due to overuse of 'Blarg, gribble I LURRVE SKULLS AND DEF AND THAT'. He has a very, very different motivation - one of revenge.

Nurgle? Absolutely loving it. Helps he's my favourite of the Four of course, so please take the following with a pinch of salt. The characters are about more than snot and vomit for all. One of them, from 'Under The Black Thumb' is a gardener first, warrior second. In 'Ghal Maraz' the Glottkin, Maggoth Lords and newcomers really shine. There's banter between them - some of it fraternal bickering, some of it veiled threats.

Tzeentch? Oh the plotting and scheming!

Now this is of course just an opinion piece, so do check them out for yourself and chime in. I can't guarantee you'll agree - but I'm fairly sure you'll enjoy the stories, so long as you're next expecting classic fiction. It's pulp Fantasy nonsense, but enjoyable pulp Fantasy nonsense.

Still need to read all that stuff (got derailed with Star Wars: Aftermath, which is killing my urge to read even more than the story of AoS was*), but this sounds like they're just going back to how things were. Which just shows that WFB probably could have been saved if they'd stuck with interesting fluff rather than just not really trying, because "We're a minis company, not a company that makes interesting back story and games and all that." Hopefully for the AoS fans they won't drop the effort too quickly.



*It's not the writing or anything that gets me as much as just the general story as a whole makes less and less sense and feels more and more implausible the more I read. This isn't the topic to do a detailed point on that, but basically, my suspension of disbelief is so far gone that it makes it hard to invest in the stories. Personal opinion, of course.