Remove ads

An Exploration of the Mortal Realms: An Age of Sigmar Thread

Reader mode
Codex said:
Yes it means that Dark Elves are "Order", but I don't think that's inherently bad
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The Dark Elves' idea of "Order" is so different from other group/races they might as well be a Chaos Faction.

Hmm, now I wanna make a chart - Order vs Chaos & "Good" vs "Evil".

Tomb Kings would be high order, mid morality for example
 
On the one hand, I feel bad for the Tomb King fans that have to deal with All This.

On the other hand, Oh Thank The Lady They Did Not Do The Dumb.
 
Codex said:
Lizardmen are technically good guys and they're some weird mesoamerican mashup, Cathay is being developed and they're chinese, and Chaos Warriors, Beastmen and Orcs aren't non-white as far as we're aware.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The five I used were specifically the five examples GW gives as examples in the previously mentioned Old World Almanack lore article. It plays into my critique of the image GW seems to be giving off in regards to the product and potentially signaling to the old school reactionary types in the crowd.

The rest, yeah I totally agree. Personally speaking I think the biggest reason I never got into fantasy was that during the time I was most likely to be drawn to it (my formative teenage years) I was devouring every Terry Pratchet discworld book I could get my hands on and Discworld among many other things loves taking the piss out of overly serious overly grim for the sake of grim fantasy stuff ala WFB.
 
WHFB is not grimdark low fantasy; I have no idea where people got that idea. Well, I have an idea: 40k cross-contamination, grumble grumble grumble.

It's grim, sure, but nowhere near the 'bloodiest and cruelest regime imaginable'. Going down the list of good factions:

The morality of the Empire of Man is grey at worst, and Chaos et al. are unambiguously a civilization-ending force that exists only to destroy.

Dwarfs are memed as "le book of grudges", sure. But their enemies are the fascist rats, goblins, and Orks. On that note, Skaven have been memed into woobies by the fandom when their actual behavior is more akin to this passage from the Swords of Lankhmar, which inspired them:

What the Mouser had learned during the council session had been, simply yet horribly, the all-over plan for the grand assault on Lankhmar Above, which was to take place a half-hour before this very midnight: detailed information about the disposition of pike companies, crossbow detachments, dagger groups, poison-weapon brigades, incendiaries, lone assassins, child-killers, panic-rats, stink-rats, genital-snappers and breast-biters and other berserkers, setters of man-traps such as trip-cords and needle-sharp caltrops and strangling nooses, artillery brigades which would carry up piecemeal larger weapons to be assembled above ground, until his brain could no longer hold all the data.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Bretonnia is an interesting case. It is a medieval European society, or a pastiche of one, so it is highly oppressive for those not born into the 'right' station. But the Knights genuinely believe the chivalry stuff and they are blessed by the Lady. Bretonnia is not GOT; it's Prince Valiant.

I will admit to know only a little about High Elves and Wood Elves, but their biggest problem are the arrogance and the fact that the Wood Elves are overprotective of nature.
 
I think using terms like 'Low Fantasy' in a discussion would require us to be on the same page about what we mean by that. Which is frequently an issue.
 
It's def not "low fantasy" I would argue, don't see it at all

Edit: in the LOTR comparison magic is way more common and well known in say, the empire then Gondor
 
There is grey for a lot of WHF factions. Understandably enough to turn off people who're bigger fans of more upbeat fantastical settings. But a lot of it depends on the writer and edition.

A lot of the darkness in 6E (which is approximately the start of its final dark swing, with 5E having its own ups and downs) was more historical for factions like the Empire: A bulk of its population are subsistence farmers, charcoal sellers live on the fringes, nobles go through courts, etcetera. There are unique and new supernatural bads (some self-inflicted, like fanaticism with real gods), but there's also unique and new supernatural goods (Moor's Priests & Shallyans, alchemy that sometimes works, etc). The High Elves for example were almost unambiguously a force of good, whose main real hang-ups were that they were stifled by their own courtly intrigue [represented in-game by the fact that in many cases they couldn't choose their own general] and that Ulthuan was fairly isolationist until recently. Not "Sail in our waters and we fucking murk you" isolationist, but "Barring extreme circumstances you will not be setting foot on Ulthuan: If you need supplies we will row them out to you" and "Magically surrounded by a fuck-off barrier that keeps redirecting non-Asur away" isolationist.

It wasn't the Grim Dark of 40k. Ogres have a storied history of working alongside people of the Empire for centuries [arguably even millennia] as mercenaries, as do Norse, so they aren't irredeemably evil existential threats. Beastmen exist in the darkest corners of the Old World's forests, but it was more a "What if the rumors and folk legends of the things that go bump in the night were real? And what if some of them had once been just like you?" than "EVERY FOREST IS HOME TO AN UNENDING LEGION OF CANNIBALISTIC GOAT MUTANTS THAT CRAVE HUMANITY'S EXTINCTION! AND THEY'RE JUST THE FOE YOU RECOGNIZE!". It was no 3rd Age Middle Earth. Magic could blow people up yeah. But generally that didn't really happen anymore since the Colleges and even that seems to have been more a solution for highly magical people as Hedge Witches and such continued to Hedge Witch [but were frowned upon as surprise of surprises the Colleges also became guilds of sorts and there is limited space and the most immediately practical use for Human Wizards is Battle Wizards and- etc]. Lizardmen were more isolationist than earlier editions but the thrust of Lizardmen society [the Skinks and their, well, society] remained fairly unchanged.

Bretonnia is the obvious exception, yeah. But as pointed out even with the [often ignored and in places walked back] "Shit farmers farming shit" peasantry there was supposed to be a sort of "The realm none the less holds together due to people who actually give a damn in some capacity or another and the heroic deeds of those who live up to the virtues instead of use them merely as a cudgel / shield / carte blache".

Come later 7th and through 8th Edition Warhammer Fantasy started to slide more into the sort of "Grim Dark" people know and loathe love from End Times. But it still is often tarnished by the fact that this was an edition where GW's business plan was - in many regards - quite literally "Capture the 40K fans with a Fantasy MEQ people can't stop throwing money at 40K's Marines" and unfortunately while they didn't export the active players as they intended [the push to move into Age of Sigmar with its own early MEQs is clear enough] they did export the lore fans and as I've mentioned elsewhere the 40K fans heavily backported and hole filled with things they knew from 40K into fanon / common understanding of canon. Asur were Eldar were Biel-Tan. Wood Elves were Eldar were Biel-Tan but with trees. Hedge Witches who weren't grabbed by the college and sacrified at the pyre inevitably turn into Chaos agents. The Empire is monotheistic with only Sigmar [or, in Middenheim, Ulric]. Franz is revered as a sort of divine ruler. Orcs have a Waaagh! field. Norse are just medieval Blood Pact. All gods [except Sigmar, ofc] are actually Chaos Gods or aspects of the Chaos Gods. Etcetera.

Age of Sigmar did right by deciding "No, we actually have confidence in what we want to do". And was lucky that many of the 40K fans who were in it for backported 40K ideas wanted nothing to do with it because it wasn't "Feudal World 40K". But that also kind of poisoned a lot of the fan community post-End Times projects as perhaps ironically some of the most vested people were the successfully backported 8E new comers. Which were in many cases rarely directly contradicted by the various projects that followed [ex: Vermintide, TWWH] and so flourished in a sort of closed ecosystem.
 
What are MEQ's in this context? I am searching and getting something about diluting substances in chemistry but am not at all sure that such is what is meant here?
 
Would've been intresting if GW tried to make MEQs for Fantasy - knightly orders for the colleges anyone?
 
Dragonofelder said:
Would've been intresting if GW tried to make MEQs for Fantasy - knightly orders for the colleges anyone?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The Black Guard of Naggarond already exists. :V

Taken as children? Check.

Subject to brutal, inhumane training that kills most of the recruits? Check.

Indoctrinated to be fanatically loyal to an ancient god-king of a brutal empire built on slavery? Check!
 
Solarion said:
The Black Guard of Naggarond already exists. :V

Taken as children? Check.

Subject to brutal, inhumane training that kills most of the recruits? Check.

Indoctrinated to be fanatically loyal to an ancient god-king of a brutal empire built on slavery? Check!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yes, but I want you to consider exactly how the average Imprium Grognard is going to react to being told to play Elves.
 
Voikirium said:
Yes, but I want you to consider exactly how the average Imprium Grognard is going to react to being told to play Elves.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Then you will be happy to know that there is another option;
warhammerfantasy.fandom.com

Albino Stormvermin

"In a society as corrupt and perfidious as this, the law-makers must be protected from those over whom they rule." —The Skaven military elite.[2] Albino Stormvermin, also known as the Albino Guard and the Council Guard, are perhaps the deadliest of all Skaven warriors. They serve as the hulking...
warhammerfantasy.fandom.com warhammerfantasy.fandom.com
 
SinisterPorpoise said:
Then you will be happy to know that there is another option;
warhammerfantasy.fandom.com

Albino Stormvermin

"In a society as corrupt and perfidious as this, the law-makers must be protected from those over whom they rule." —The Skaven military elite.[2] Albino Stormvermin, also known as the Albino Guard and the Council Guard, are perhaps the deadliest of all Skaven warriors. They serve as the hulking...
warhammerfantasy.fandom.com warhammerfantasy.fandom.com
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The Imperium are Space Skaven anyway
 
SinisterPorpoise said:
Then you will be happy to know that there is another option;
warhammerfantasy.fandom.com

Albino Stormvermin

"In a society as corrupt and perfidious as this, the law-makers must be protected from those over whom they rule." —The Skaven military elite.[2] Albino Stormvermin, also known as the Albino Guard and the Council Guard, are perhaps the deadliest of all Skaven warriors. They serve as the hulking...
warhammerfantasy.fandom.com warhammerfantasy.fandom.com
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
My problem with the Marine/Dark Elves comparison is not the Dark Elf part of that equation, I can tell you that much.
 
I'm going to be real, I have yet to meet someone who likes Space Marines who plays Stormcast. Maybe it's just my circle and the people I meet and I don't hang around in circles where people tend to like Space Marines, which is good I suppose, but most people who like Stormcast that I've met usually don't fuck with Space Marines.
 
Codex said:
I'm going to be real, I have yet to meet someone who likes Space Marines who plays Stormcast. Maybe it's just my circle and the people I meet and I don't hang around in circles where people tend to like Space Marines, which is good I suppose, but most people who like Stormcast that I've met usually don't fuck with Space Marines.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If I was unclear, part of my point was they clearly tried selling Stormcast as a sort of fantastical alternative to 40K but that it clearly didn't work which is pretty clear in a number of spots from lore changes to discussion changes to "Just asking people who play Stormcast".

Ironically the last minute efforts to get 40Kers into WHFB poisoned the well for a lot of them towards AoS (instead of the clear "We get our cake of 6E's Chaos Warriors as SMarines in Fantasy and eat our AoS Stormcasts as Loyalists too"), which worked out in the favor of every party and consumer.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top