The new edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar brings with it new threats. While the attentions of Sigmar were focused on the travails of the Twin-Tailed Crusade, the Skaven executed a cunning scheme: a series of rituals that have thoroughly corrupted the magical ley lines of the Mortal Realms.
The end result was a cataclysmic event known as the Vermindoom, in which the nightmare Skaven metropolis of Blight City was partially transposed from its subrealm, with the largest chunk violently shifting into Aqshy in an apocalyptic explosion. In an instant, the Mortal Realms were mutilated, chimneys and towers of brass and wood smashing through bedrock and mountains, and coils of greenish warp lightning scouring the land around them.
Nearly a third of the Great Parch was transformed by the foetid influence of Blight City. The unholy power radiating from this cataclysmic intrusion has turned the surrounding landscape of Aqshy into a warpstone-polluted wasteland now known as the Gnaw.Five terrible nexuses of Blight City’s intrusion stand within the Gnaw, each seized by one of the Great Clans, and they surround the grand formation at its centre known to outsiders as Hexneste. From the Gnaw, seemingly endless hordes of Skaven food forth, flotillas of rickety warpstone-powered seacraft swarm the seas of Aqshy, on a mission to conquer the Realm of Fire. Only in their squealing death throes is there a hint at a unifying mastermind behind this uncharacteristically single-minded assault – the enigmatic ‘Left Claw’.
Aqshy isn’t the only realm to have suffered an interdimensional rat infestation in the Hour of Ruin, and the tendrils of Blight City have punctured all of the realms from verdant Ghyran to luminous Hysh. Where these sores in reality appear, the surrounding environment is cursed, becoming known as the Lands Anathema. They have pockmarked the realms, and Skaven use them as footholds from which to launch their rabid assaults.
Thanks to his ascendency to a fully-fledged Chaos God, the Great Horned Rat's corrupting influence now spreads further than ever, though the rest of the pantheon is less than pleased with the arrival of their new backstabbing peer, whose treachery and duplicity know no bounds.
All across the Mortal Realms the Skaven swarm, their endless need to consume upsetting the natural order of each realm. In Ghyran, they pollute the wellsprings of Aqua Ghyranis and use giant threshing machines to clear vegetation. In the wake of colossal numbers of Skaven deaths, a hideous afterlife has risen to prominence in Shyish – an island of towering refuse called the Evergnaw. Only Azyr itself holds fast, with rumours of ratmen lurking in the shadows entirely baseless.
The forces of Order are stretched thin, as the Skaven assault presents opportunities for other nefarious forces to snatch territory, sack cities, and push back against the Sigmarite expansion – though the forces of Death, Destruction, and Chaos are not free from the frenzied gnawing of the Skaven hordes.
As the Hour of Ruin dawns in earnest, there will be dozens of upsets and developments in the Mortal Realms narrative – we’ll cover it all here on Warhammer Community, so make sure you check in to keep up with everything related to Warhammer Age of Sigmar.