Ahead of the announcement of the new edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar, we were able to sit down with some key figures from the Warhammer Studio and talk about the direction they are taking the new edition and Skaventide launch box. With the pre-order of that box just over the horizon, we’re here to give you a glimpse behind the scenes.
Today, we’re talking about the changes to the lore, and what that means for the Age of Sigmar.
Warhammer Community: The new edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar starts with a bang – how did we get to this point?
Phil, Warhammer Age of Sigmar Creative Lead: To talk about Skaventide and the Hour or Ruin, we first need to talk about the prelude. In the Dawnbringers series, we saw boots on the ground, the people of the Mortal Realms going through trials and tribulations, in an attempt to settle two cities – one in Aqshy and one in Ghyran. Both parts of the Twin-Tailed Crusade set off from Hammerhal, with the Aqshian side setting off East into Aqshy, and the Ghyranite Crusaders heading North into the verdant wilds of the Realm of Life.
Sigmar needed to succeed here, it was a statement of intent because in the wake of the Era of the Beast the Cities of Sigmar were in more trouble than ever. We said from the very beginning that one city would rise and one would fall, and over the course of the series, we got to enjoy seeing the crusades journeying across various war-torn lands, fighting new enemies and threats, knowing that ultimately there would be both triumph and tragedy… (You can find out what happened with this handy recap!).
Bubbling underneath the Dawnbringers series, there was also a great master plan that has been long in the making, not just for us as readers, but for Archaon the Everchosen and the Great Horned Rat. This terrible pair have set in motion a scheme to destroy a large part of the Mortal Realms by bringing the Skaven sub-realm of Blight City – which is essentially another dimension – into reality. They’ve slammed it into reality with a huge bang, creating a calamity on an unprecedented scale. They’ve managed this by polluting the leyline nexuses, spiking them and poisoning them with warpstone to corrupt the land, and plotting out a gigantic ritual pattern. Of course, this is Warhammer so it doesn’t go entirely according to plan for the Skaven, but they did manage to manifest a very large chunk of Blight City into Aqshy, to the east of the Great Parch.
That event was called the Vermindoom, and it’s somewhere between a titanic teleport accident and an unfathomably large volcanic eruption. Blight City has erupted into Aqshy, bringing green warp flame into the red Realm of Fire, creating the Gnaw. The Skaven are now no longer lurking in the shadows or skulking around in the sewers, and they now have their own land and own nation. The entire eastern seaboard of the Great Parch has fallen.
This is quite a sizable area to lose. The realms aren’t infinite in size, and the maps you see of the settled areas we focus on are areas that are roughly a twentieth of the size of the whole realm, so to lose such a large part of one of these footholds is a massive blow to the enemies of Chaos.
This isn’t just Aqshy’s problem though – this has happened all over the Mortal Realms with smaller versions of the Gnaw appearing suddenly and Skaven pouring out in their billions. These aren’t the schemers of yesteryear who are reduced to plotting comedically in backrooms, this is an absolute onslaught of ratmen. The horror aspect of Skaven is played up here, and we still have that slightly amusing treachery that Skaven are defined by, but this is seeing them on the front foot*.
Matt, Warhammer Age of Sigmar Lead Rules Writer: It’s got to the point where this is arguably the Second Age of Chaos. Across the Mortal Realms, things have really gone wrong. The Hour of Ruin is the backdrop for the Skaventide launch box, and both the Stormcast Eternals and Skaven have rules that reflect this new narrative. Not only do the Skaven return to the battle in droves, but their Gnawholes now pop up across the battlefield, representing the reverberating effects of the Vermindoom.
Phil: In Aqshy, the forces of Order – the Cities of Sigmar, the Stormcast Eternals, and the Fyreslayers – are now trying to make a stand using the Adamantine Chain mountains as a natural bulwark, while Skaven flotillas made of ramshackle craft breach the southern shores. This battleground is one of the many Lands Anathema, the places where the Skaven have forced their way into the Mortal Realms and polluted the surrounding land with their malign corruption.
The doomsayers across the realms are indeed saying that it’s the second Age of Chaos, but if you utter something like that in front of a Stormcast Eternal, you might get taken away, thrown into a pit, and forgotten about, because no one wants to admit this is on the cards. But the writing is on the wall – there’s been a sizeable power shift, and now we enter the Hour of Ruin.
WarCom: What does this mean for the Great Horned Rat and the existing pantheon of Chaos?
Phil: Part of the shift with the new edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar is that we have a fifth Chaos God in the pantheon. The Great Horned Rat is finally a fully-fledged god of Chaos – he’s reached the big leagues! There’s no doubt that he has always been an evil deity and has skirted around the edges of the Great Game played by the big four, but now he has truly ascended and four becomes five. Part of how he managed this was that the Ruinous Powers’ favoured champion Archaon helped him, even though the Grand Marshal of the Apocalypse despises the Great Horned Rat. In doing so he has destabilised the rest of the Pantheon – who are frankly very unhappy – and their plans have been thrown into even more turmoil as the most treacherous and double-dealing of all the gods is now right up there at the table with them.
We see this play out in the story of Gunnar Brand. He’s effectively our everyman Chaos follower, doing his best to try and protect his home and family. He got drawn into the scheme of the Horned Rat and was poisoning leyline nexuses with warpstone, unwittingly helping the Skaven, but over time he and his ally Warqueen Tanari put together the pieces and worked out they were helping create a horrible ritual for some kind of evil rat god. They turn on the Skaven at the last minute, trying to stop what they’ve put into motion.
There have been hints towards this endgame for a while if you’ve been looking closely at the stories told as part of the Dawnbringers narrative – Trugg the Troggoth king has been going around smashing open leyline nexuses, letting the Skaven get into previously defended Cities of Sigmar bastions, before wandering off to find another and try and cure his migraine. The ratmen have figured out that leylines nexuses also reside deep in the ground, and float high upon metaliths, essentially waging a three-dimensional war while most people have focussed on the ground level. That’s how they’ve managed to pull off this mega coup – for every land nexus that gets taken by the Cities of Sigmar, another three have been claimed elsewhere. The Kharadron had figured this out, but way too little too late, and the Gnaw surges into reality.
Sam, Warhammer Age of Sigmar Rules Writer: The Skaventide box also reinforces this seismic shift in the narrative of the game. The scenery in the previous edition of the game, the domicile shells and so on, were all designed to represent the settlements that the followers of Sigmar were going out and founding. They were all created to look like habitations under construction alongside the Guardian Idols that protect them and the Nexus Syphons that draw power from the leylines, representing the focus on going out and reclaiming territory in the Mortal Realms. The core scenery in the Skaventide launch box shows the aftermath of the Vermindoom, so all of that terrain is now ruined, broken down, and scarred from constant warfare, and most importantly it’s all covered in rats…
Matt: Skaven ascendency is also reflected with the changes to their Battle Traits. Gnawholes will now continue to burst out of the ground over the course of the battle, and endless tides of Skaven pour out of them to overwhelm their foes. The new terrain rules also let you smash those Gnawholes to pieces, allowing you to physically try and stem the tide by reducing them to rubble, but just as you’re doing that another might pop up on your flank and create a whole new problem.
WarCom: So what malignant soul is in charge of this newly energised Skaven threat?
Phil: No normal Skaven leader could unite the fractious Great Clans, but there are whispers of a uniting force behind the recent wave of frenzied Skaven that are pouring out of the rents in reality. Very little is known about this shadowy figure. As for those frenzied Skaven – old school fans might remember the death frenzy spell which turned Skaven into a frothing nightmarish creature where their life expectancy dramatically shortens, but they fight with a hyperactive fury, becoming far more deadly than usual. Will we see the emergence of this eldritch skaven mastermind? Only time will tell.
WarCom: You’ve talked a lot about the Skaven and the Mortal Realms at large – what do these changes mean for the Stormcast Eternals taking up the fight?
Phil: Over the course of the Hour of Ruin we will see the forces of Sigmar essentially try and stem the bleeding, trying to desperately hold back the Skaven tide. It’s not going to be easy and they need a very tight gameplan too, and the Stormcast Eternals have deployed extreme measures to ensure they succeed, opening the doors on the Ruination Chamber.
The Stormcast Eternals are the Heldenhammer’s finest warriors, and over the years we have become familiar with the concept that over time Stormcast Eternals slowly lose part of what makes them who they were before Reforging. It starts with them perhaps losing their memory, maybe the humanity in their voice, or love of music. Eventually their personality gets eroded over the course of Reforging. Immortality is essentially a curse.Eventually, they will become more like their weapon or their armour than the human beings they were before their first Reforging, and for many this was not the bargain they thought they were entering into. After many deaths, they can sometimes find a place of harmony called the Storm’s Eye where they level out a little and become more stable, but when they go beyond that point their fate is sealed – there are only a few more Reforgings left before they are no longer human.
Many Stormcast Eternals are starting to become more aware of what’s happening to them – people like Ionus Cryptborn, the Warden of the Lost – and have been forming communities with other veterans of this fate, sealing themselves away in places called Bleak Citadels. These are somewhere between a prison and a monastery, with the important distinction that the population are there of their own volition. This is their best hope for some peace before the end, and collectively they are known as the Ruination Chamber.
When things get really tough, like when innumerable Skaven pour out of a huge wound in Aqshy, these battle-hardened Stormcast step forward. These are veterans with unparalleled experience who are extremely tough, and those countless Reforgings have given their souls a kind of resilience. They can go places where even a normal Stormcast Eternal – who are already many times more resilient than a normal mortal – cannot go because baleful magics simply have less of an effect on them. There’s not much for the magic to take hold of, their souls are eroded, so a warpstone blast might just dissipate on them.
Matt: As part of making the game feel as accurate to the narrative as possible, we have given them a unique ability – Ruination Chamber units can resist any non-core ability once per turn, these effects have no purchase on them at all. They’re so far gone and jaded that debuffs and curses just slide off them. Some horrible wizard casts an evil hex and they have a chance to just ignore it and keep on walking – “I’ve been through ten times worse already!” That doesn’t mean they’re immune to harm, and they know that they’re close to their last, that they know they shouldn’t go in, but they’re still Stormcast Eternals at the end of the day. They have a duty.
Phil: If a Stormcast Eternal continues to go down this horrible loop of death and Reforging, then one of their ultimate fates is to become a lightning gheist – effectively a formless, mindless spirit. But there is a way out: total oblivion. This opportunity is provided by the Lord-Terminos, a kind of executioner-type Stormcast Eternal, and members of the Ruination Chamber who decide they can take no more can petition a Lord-Terminos to execute them. With a solemn funeral rite, they are put to rest once and for all, and nobody – not the Lord Terminos, and perhaps not even Sigmar – knows what happens to those souls.
WarCom: What does the lore and background information in the Faction Packs look like?
Ben, Age of Sigmar Product Developer: Every single Faction Pack comes with its own lore – we want these to be products that anyone can pick up and have a thorough understanding of the overarching aims of the faction, and the background behind each unit. Every warscroll card is double-sided and contains a lore explanation on one side and the rules on the other.
The only place that isn’t the case is with the Spearhead warscrolls, which combine rules and lore on one side, though there is a little explanation behind the formation of these discrete fighting forces as well to give some flavour to your battles. The other addition is the digital battletomes that are coming out for the Sacrosanct Chamber, Beasts of Chaos, and Bonesplitterz, which are much closer to existing battletome formats, but in digital form.
Phil: We’re retiring the Sacrosanct Chamber who have spent a long time battling against Nagash and the Nighthaunt. On the whole, they have returned to Azyr to help with the Reforging, to try and stop too many people sliding down the path of descent towards the Ruination Chamber. That was their original purpose, rather than fighting gheists and ghouls on the frontline.
As far as the Sacrosanct Chamber are concerned, this is a failure for them. They never found a cure for the flaw in Reforging, and so they’ve returned to the original plan, up in the Soul Forges and Anvil of Apotheosis – but some of them haven’t given up so easily, and they’re still going around the Mortal Realms fighting the tough fight. You can expect similar lore in all three digital battletomes, bringing those factions up to date for players who have collections they want to use.
WarCom: How much of this information will people be reading in the Core Book?Phil: In the past we’ve explained the Mortal Realms in a kind of encyclopaedic way, from a more omniscient perspective. With the introduction of the Cities of Sigmar and Darkoath, these very human elements in a more fantastic world, we thought it would be valuable to provide a perspective that grounds you in the Mortal Realms. Lots of the lore is presented from the perspective of people in an everyday setting who are just talking about their experiences – how you talk to your mates.
We’ve got Callis and Toll, these Order of Azyr agents who are normal people who go for a pint in a pub, chatting over a diagram and asking questions like “How do realmgates work?”, “How do they teleport you?”, “What's the deal with the suns and moons?“, and getting an explanation in layman's terms.
Each of the eight realms is explained from the perspective of characters that live there, telling you about flora and fauna, local traditions, specific sayings and so on – it just adds to the richness that has been building up over the last nine years. Characters like Callis and Toll, Neave and the Blacktalons, and Gunnar Brand are going to be one of the ways that we help introduce concepts and stories in the Mortal Realms too. There’s at least one perspective for each Grand Alliance – and you’ll learn about the ones we haven’t talked about later! For now, these parts of the Core Book are a step away from the ‘word of god’ approach to background – that’s still there, but this is an exciting new angle too.
Thanks all! We’ll have more background details from the creation of the new edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar coming up in future articles. Keep an eye out for them on Warhammer Community, and don’t forget to pre-order your copy of Skaventide on Saturday. It contains the Warhammer Age of Sigmar Core Book, which is packed with tons of lore and background information, and the perfect introduction to the incredible world of the Mortal Realms.
*Or front paw, depending on your perspective.