To celebrate the release of the Cities of Sigmar Army Set, the WarCom team called a Grand Conclave to discuss all things about these brave humans venturing into the Mortal Realms.
In the first part of our round table chat the Marshalls of the Warhammer Studio revealed the secretive work that went into the miniatures range.
Today, our esteemed council delves into the background and lore of the new book, and reveals what it’s like to be a Steelhelm in a setting full of Stormcasts. So grab yourself a long-chew, get comfy behind your pavise, and prepare for part two of the Cities of Sigmar Round Table.
Phil – Head Writer: We were talking from early on about what makes humans tick in the Age of Sigmar. We pushed some boundaries, and looked at some odd avenues, but kept coming back to this idea that the Cities were like islands in a sea of Chaos and darkness that is the Mortal Realms. The only real places of somewhat flimsy safety are the Cities of Sigmar, and that was where most people would flock.
We started bedding those concepts in, and we wanted lots of Cities that have their own flavours, character, heraldry. We wanted to use the range – which was designed to be agnostic rather than from a specific city – to let you build an army from either side of Hammerhal, or Settler’s Gain, or Misthåvn, and beyond. This meant supporting them with lots of lore and background, to give people a framework to work from.
Ben – Product Developer: Whenever we make a brand new range, or a battletome we always have a limited amount of space and resources. By getting everyone together early on in the process you have the opportunity to play to people’s strengths, and this happens with the writing process too.
Phil: One of the things we included in the book is a series of letters which take you from the beginning of a Dawnbringer’s Crusade, across a series of battlefield situations. To really nail that tone of what humans experience, we got author Nick Horth to write them for us. He’s an expert in conveying what it’s like to be a human in the Mortal Realms – especially in his work at Black Library with City of Secrets and Callis and Toll: The Old Ways. The story tells of this war correspondant's life and history and what she’d left behind to keep the Great Wheel turning - as well as giving us a ground-level view of the Cities.
As Seb has previously said, these are Cities that are on a war footing, your mother is the blade, and your father is battle and you have to fight whether you like it or not. You’ll get hand-me-downs, and you’ll pick up the fight from previous generations as the wheel of progress, of industry, attrition and inevitability turns. And that’s quite a sinister image, there’s no glamour here.
Ben: And that’s something we talked about in those early days, the hungriness, the dirtiness, the way the art depicts them - the victory pose is a hard won one. You’ve got this guy with a broken shield, they’ve set up the nexus syphon and now the next stage is building and protecting that settlement. There’s no resting. That’s what winning looks like.
Sam – Miniatures Design Manager: We talked early on with the background writers about what we wanted this faction to be. These are people who are having a tough time, but they’re still soldiers, and they have to look like they’re on campaign; they’re still fighting, and so the map of what we could create got a bit more defined.
Phil: Because these new miniatures are quite different from the previous Cities of Sigmar miniatures, and the colours that Max and the ’Eavy Metal team worked on ended up so different, we realised we had an opportunity to create an in-world event that caused this change.
When the manticore-riding character was being developed we realised she was a perfect opportunity, synthesised with the miniatures and the painting. Originally Hammerhal’s colour scheme was Blue and Gold because that was the colour of Azyr, the Stormcast Eternals, and they were the humans that fought for them.
But Max had realised early on that amongst the 11 main Free Cities there were no strong red or orange cities, and we weren’t making full use of the wide palette we had access to with this many Cities.
Tahlia Vedra’s military coup, and the resultant reformation created the perfect opportunity. The traditionalist blue and gold people are still out there, but this reformation, they could be a new colour. She’s killed a bunch of corrupt officials from the Grand Conclave in a very Aqshian move without any politicking, and stuck the heads in her throne.
Seb – Miniatures Creative Lead: The four different weapons you can equip her with in the kit are linked to the coup too. There’s a magic sword which pairs with the wizard’s head in the throne, a mace resplendent with gems that links to the Treasurer's head who has coins stuffed in his mouth. The old Baron who was garrulous and boastful is now – bound and gagged, and his weapon is the slightly ostentatious axe. For the zealot – he has a warrior priests’s circlet and a shaved head, and his hammer – for Sigmar, naturally – has a Gargoylian carved into the pommel.
Sam: I liked how the character developed the longer we worked on it, she’s one of the people – but she’s unpleasant, she’s committed a coup, she’s riding a creature which in Warhammer has close ties to Chaos. She’s Order, but she’s dangerous.
Phil: Exactly. We ended up creating this character who was a maverick who is a hit with the soldiers for handing out playing cards and cigars because she’d rather be in the mess hall with the troops. She’s quite sympathetic as she cares about the soldiers in a way the Grand Conclave doesn’t, but she’s also an absolutely ruthless tactician which is why she can win the loyalty of a manticore, and how she was the in-universe reason for the Castelite formation.
She could see that sending convoys out in big long lines without adequate forces to protect them wasn’t working. The attrition rate was too high, so she decided to make these large shields (pavises) and improvised defences, and carry them with the army. It worked so well that word got back to Azyr and then the tactic got expedited everywhere…
But now these troops all have to carry heavy defences and equipment through war zones that might not be so sympathetic to that weight. Instead of going with the first wrong answer they’ve come up with a better one – but it’s still not a one-size-fits-all situation, much to the annoyance of Vedra. There’s still some dysfunction in this faction, a grand plan that requires back-breaking labour.
Ben: It also reinforces the fact that when it does work, it’s not because of one big strong person, that’s Stormcast territory, it’s because of ten people who all work together, it’s the strength of multiple people.
Seb: Aside from the regular humans, I think the Gargoylians added a lot of flavour. With any range I work on I want to find the little critters that add colour – people love them almost to the point of distraction. These Gargoylians are like manuscript marginalia come to life. They’re just a little thing that hangs around, and is very strange.
Ben: I like that it injects that very Age of Sigmar fantastical-ness to an otherwise somewhat grounded range, that you can have these dirty, tired, normal people co-existing along a little snail shell with legs. It’s not something that you would expect. Phil: We liked the idea that they are sort of Incarnates of faith, that they come into existence in a similar way to the Incarnates born after Alarielle’s Rite of Life but through the devotion and faith of the Cities of Sigmar rather than the magic of the realms, but that’s just one interpretation really. Regardless of where they come from, they absolutely hate Chaos, and would happily charge down a greater demon even though they’d probably get splattered in the process.
Seb: I wanted all of them to look creepy, or malevolent or dangerous in some way, and I did a big page of illustrations and let the designers pick from them, and so many just went “Ah, I’ll do my own thanks!” so we ended up with a lot on the cutting room floor because they looked too cute. We wanted them to be eerie, not adorable, the kind of thing you might probably try and shoo away with your foot if it came too close.
Max: At one point we talked about the idea that maybe you have a bad dream, and one might just appear, but also we talked about the idea that if you’d grown up around these all your life they’d maybe be a little more normal to you, because that’s just how the Mortal Realms are.
Tomorrow’s round table covers the work that went into designing the extensive iconography and heraldry for each of the eleven major Cities of Sigmar. Don’t miss it!
