Where and what are the mortal realms?

[Mr Mystery]

How do?

So currently for me, one of the most intriguing mysteries in Age of Sigmar is the new realms of the setting.

What are they, and indeed where are they?

My ponderings have thrown up a theory, which I now put to the wider community for critique and rebuttal.

Ready?

Put simply - they're the home plane of the Old Ones.

The main basis of this theory is to do with how the Old World/World That Was wound up destroyed. Namely, there was a third 'polar' gate, underneath Middenheim. Archaon cracked it open, shattering the Old World.

Now, we know from the background these gates were used by the Old Ones to travel, though exactly where was mostly theory over fact. Being gates, they had to go somewhere.

And having been sucked through such a gate, I think we have just found out where they lead to.

However, this leads me to another question - was The Old World/World That Was the experiment, or the refinement? We know the Old Ones created most of the species found, with the possible exception of the Orcs, and the definite exception of the Skaven.

Were the ancestors of Man, Elf, Dwarf etc taken from what is now called the Mortal Realms, or did they originate on the Old World?

Right, that's about it for now. Having a few beers tonight, so expect more thoughts some time tomorrow, hangover allowing.

[Erik Setzer]

It's... really confusing, at best.

It's more like an "echo" of the Warhammer world. A lot of the heroes woke up and found themselves being basically gods. There were races that mimicked those on the Warhammer world, but without recollection of who they were (not just in terms of name, but culture and all). Not all of them made it, either.

Sigmar ended up in the portal, too, but survived, and was found by the celestial "dragon," who then took him and introduced him to the "realms." It's not really clear if the realms are planes, planets, or different areas of one planet.

It gets more confusing with what seems to be Sigmar building a massive space-fortress around a planet core, which is apparently the remains of the Warhammer world, being rebuilt over time. And if that's happening in the "Realm of Heavens," that would suggest different planes.

The presence of Chaos suggests that it's not the Old Ones' core plane/planet/whatever. Chaos shouldn't have been able to invade that so easily, especially without more resistance from the Slann and the "Seraphon." Also, they'd be more likely to bust the gates and use them as portals to pull in more Daemons, not leave them intact (since that's basically how the Chaos Wastes came into being). That suggests the "realmgates" aren't actually warp portals, but some other kind of portal technology (or "magic").

Other hints scattered around include that the duardin created at least one Realmgate (the Silverway), and a map of Chamon shows an area called "the Void" where the land ends and it's just star-filled darkness. Similarly, the map of the realm of Life shows broken chunks of land disconnected from the others.

Hmm... Okay, I'm going to borrow an idea from a website I love (Blizzard Watch), and do a "Tin Foil Hat" theory:



When the Warhammer world was destroyed, it exploded into chunks. As it was being torn apart, heroes and people and even the winds of magic were being violently torn asunder. The Lizardmen who'd escaped brought in aid (perhaps an alarm had trigger some Slann to come from distant worlds), and as much of the planet was saved as possible. Chunks of the planet were wrapped in a protective barrier, with winds of magic being "attached" to each one, protecting the magic as well. Across those "realms," the Slann deposited the heroes they could save, and tried to remake their creations. The results were imperfect. Some of the heroes they saved had changed. Others still suffered ill effects from watching their world destroyed. The peoples of the land were a mixed bunch, cultures intermingled, not even all on the same level in terms of capabilities (i.e. there were some humans who were barbarians without any concept of fashioning complex tools and weapons, but there were also "technomancer" nomads, which suggests humans that knew technology perhaps even beyond the Empire's level). It saved their creations for the most part, though, so it was "good enough." (Unfortunately, since Slaanesh went hardcore for the elves, they didn't have much to remake them with, and the imperfect merging of Malekith and Seraphon, along with Tyrion's blindness, showed that it wasn't a simple matter of just reforming the elves from what little was left.)

Into their creations they also tried to impart necessary knowledge, like granting the duardin the knowledge of how to create gates to traverse the great distances between the "realms."

Dracothian was likely either an ally or even servant/creation of the Old Ones, so he had an idea of what was going on, and he recognized Sigmar's desire to make right what had happened, as well as that Sigmar held the key to rebuilding the world. So he brought him to these "realms," which were really the remains of the Warhammer world ("world-that-was").

The long goal is to work to reunite the "realms" with the still-burning core of the world, eventually rebuilding the world and creating a new world in its place. When everything's "proper," the realms will attach themselves back to the core, the winds of magic will bind themselves into a tapestry covering the world, the land will reshape to better suit normal life, and the world will begin again.

[Mr Mystery]

That's an interesting theory.

My money is on Dracothian actually being an Old One - and I'm interested to see where's it's nicked off to....

See, I'm wondering more if the Old World was a top secret lab world - somewhere outside of the Realm of Chaos and wherever the Old Ones came from, used to develop species which could resist Chaos for a war elsewhere. This also introduces the outside possibility the Old Ones sabotaged their own Warpgates to better judge their works - or even to distract the Chaos Gods from other Realms where they were at work.

If however the mortal realms are the home dimension of the Old Ones, it could be the very presence of Old World survivors that enabled the Chaos Gods to locate it and begin their invasion.

I'm actually kind of hoping it's never fully explained. I like the mystery of GW backgrounds, where it's more myth, legend and rumour than absolute fact (hence I'm bitter sweet about the Heresy - on occasion it explains too much).

[Erik Setzer]

Yeah, Dracothian might be an Old One... He's a "drake," which is close thematically to the Slann and Seraphon, so there's likely a tie there somewhere, though I suppose that would also mean the dragons and wyverns and salamanders of the world might be tied to the Old Ones (but then, that's actually possible, as they're all basically evolutionary steps forward over the standard reptiles).

I don't know that it'll ever be fully explained, because there's no need to (given that they'd probably prefer to just keep moving fluff "forward"), and it's also possible they don't even really have an explanation for it. (Not meant as a knock on GW, it's something that happens a lot with new settings, and the odd disjointed presentation of the fluff jumping back and forth in time in the core book tends to promote the possibility that they're still trying to figure out what they want the story to be.) Even if they don't have explanations now, you can always fill in a story later when it's an overview.

I feel like the core of the Warhammer world is going to be really important to the story, especially as Sigmar built a protective ring around it.


A bit off the topic of the discussion... There's some possibility with some of the stuff they've included, if they did it purposely or at least catch that they did it, to get a bit "out there" with the setting. You've got chunks of earth in space, you've got spaceship-flying dinosaur-riding warriors, you've got "technomancer nomads," you've got a guy with the ability to build what's basically a massive space station... Why not just go all out and thrown sci-fi elements in with the fantasy elements, toss it all in a blender, mix in some '80s rock sensibilities, and see what comes out the other end? There's already some of it going on with some of the Sigmarites' weapons, the dwarfs/duardin are ripe for that kind of stuff. If you're trying to avoid generic fantasy tropes, just skip steampunk altogether and start throwing out mechanized walkers and stuff. Heck, I already want to mix together some AdMech stuff and Dwarf stuff and see if I can make some crazy creations and then just use existing warscrolls for "counts as" (unless I can talk people into less me make up rules for units, but that's not that easy). Onager Dunecrawler as a Duardin Battlecrawler? Modified Kastelans as Technogolems? Or just go really wild, if people will agree to it... Modify a Necron Monolith to be a floating Black Pyramid that summons Undead from Shyish, use rules for a realmgate but make it somewhat mobile, a way for Nagash's legions to quickly summon aid (beyond just raising the local dead). Probably should stop listing ideas, because the bank account won't agree with trying to take on too many projects.

[Anthrax ion pusscabe]

My theory is the realms are the actual origin point of each wind of magic, because I'm pretty sure I've seen a "wind of chaos" mentioned as a ninth wind of magic in a novel (may have been a thanquol and bone ripper one I think but am unsure) so in my mind they expand and contract as each wind grows stronger/weaker, and may be near limitless expanses even at their smallest, which could be why chaos hasn't managed to completely eradicate everything in them, though I don't believe they are the origin point of the old ones, even though they are a higher plain then the world that was, like I imagine a pyramid of different levels of reality, old ones origin point at the top, then the nine realms, then who knows how many plains like the world that was, and potentially yet more plains below that, the reason the core of the world that was ended up in the celestial realm may have been the celestial realm being where the path to the lower plains resides, though I haven't gotten the first campaign book yet and am basing this off what's been put in the what's new today while the book was on pre order

[grimmas]

I'm in agreement with Anthrax very much the Realems are the embodiment of their representative winds of magic. It's also the Winds of magic that "saved" the various ascended incarnates is really rather telling that the ones who were killed before the portal opened have stayed dead.

One question that really needs to be answered for me is, where did all the Aelves cone from? Now there is mention of Signar helping the survivors from the World before time, however when Tyrion and Teclis awake they are aghast because they can't sense any Aelves in the realms. They are mentioned as being in Sigarmon but no explanation is give for how they were found. I'm hoping for an interesting campaign book on that one.

I think this is possibly my favourite part of getting the total rework that sense of explaration with the whole thing. It's hitting the same area for me as HH does with 40k, and Rogue Trader did all those moons ago

[Mr Mystery]

It's certainly opened up far more avenues.

Being just a single world, The Old World was somewhat limited in that regard.

As for the Aelves? I think they're in Slaanesh, and he's about to get a shadowy enema/stomach pump off Malerion, Tyrion and Morathi to sick them back up again.

And given what Sigmar has been up to, I have a funny feeling other Gods will produce their own Stormcast Eternal equivalents - reforged mortals imbued with their power. Which could be very cool!

[grimmas]

Yeah it's definitely a possibility I think we have already seen it with Sylvaneth so it's likely we'll see it again. I felt the trouble with the Old World was that it was a RPG setting rather than a Wargame setting, of course AoS is the exact opposite.

I like the Slaanesh thought, I am kind of hoping that they'll kill him/her off it'll add something to the narrative if the Gods could actually be defeated

[Mr Mystery]

I dunno.

The whole 'too adult' thing seems a daft explanation, as there are other scantily clad units in the game, and I wouldn't exactly define any of them as pornographic by any stretch of the imagination.

What we're going to see, I'm not sure. But I don't think Slaanesh is going anywhere!

- - - Updated - - -

I'm also hoping we might see active invasions of the four Chaos Realms. Perhaps to rescue Nurgle's prisoner?

[grimmas]

Maybe killing off is a little strong but making them a little less all powerful would help. Yeah the Witchelves (witchaelves?) are pretty scantily clad as are most of the female DE models much more risqué than the Slaanesh stuff and that won't be going anywhere.

Khorne did make a personal appearance in The End Times, there's a definite move to get them involved more directly.