After years of prepping guns, tightening surcoats, and oiling weapons, the Cities of Sigmar Army Set is finally going to be available to pre-order this weekend. Inside the box set you’ll find Battletome: Cities of Sigmar* which is packed with lots of new setting info on the Free Cities – you can even read about how this new lore was established in today’s Cities of Sigmar Round Table interview.
To help firm up your grasp on what life is like in the Cities of Sigmar, there is a host of Black Library novels that you can read right now, which focus on some of the most fascinating Free Cities in the Mortal Realms.
Excelsis was thrust into the spotlight in the Era of the Beast, as it became the focus of one of the biggest Waaagh!s ever seen. At the head of this thundering stampede was Kragnos, the End of Empires, a long-trapped god hungry for destruction.
The rift between The Reclaimed and the Azyrites is at the fore of this novel, but Sigmar demands they all come together to defend the City of Secrets from a living avalanche in David Guymer’s Kragnos: Avatar of Destruction. It’s the perfect novel to get a ground level view of these complex, bustling metropolises.
Once you’ve finished with that, you can go straight on to the aftermath of the Siege of Excelsis in Richard Strachan’s Hallowed Ground. As the city rebuilds itself, Galen ven Denst heads off into the wilderness of Ghur on a personal quest, and his daughter Doralia must follow him. This family of witch hunters are two of the most famed and fearsome members of the Order of Azyr, offering you a watchful and suspicious eye cast over city life in the Mortal Realms.
Even in Ghur, a realm where conflict and ferocity define each day, strange alliances can be formed. When the Colonnade, a city obsessed with purity and suspended aloft by titanic pillars, comes under threat from a warherd of rampaging beastmen, Councillor Atella Reigehren seeks the aid of a most unusual ally – Lauka Vai, the Mother of Nightmares and her Avengorii kin.
David Annandale’s A Dynasty of Monsters features not only a collaboration between undead and mortal, but a truly unusual Free City – one that quite literally divides the haves and the have-nots in a fashion that’s fittingly brutal for the Realm of Beasts.
Outside of Ghur, things aren’t any calmer. The friction at the heart of the Free Cities is only amplified by the atmosphere of the realms and the dictates of deities. Godeater’s Son by Noah Van Nguyen explores what happens to those who oppose the dogma and doctrines of the Cities of Sigmar, as overbearing Azyrites attempt to bring the kingdom of the Burning Valley into the fold, with disastrous results.
In Godsbane by Dale Lucas, the complex nature of Settler’s Gain is brought into focus by new rumours of an artefact with the power to kill a god. The Lumineth loreseeker Thelana Evenfall is drawn into its powerful orbit, and soon uncovers political machinations and betrayals nestled within betrayals – beneath the facade of unification, resentment boils…
There are dozens of other Free Cities to explore, each with their own character and idiosyncrasies – why not check out this handy travel guide to some of the top spots around the realms, and then let us know which you’d most like to visit over on the Warhammer Facebook and Twitter pages.
* In an exclusive edition, no less.