As far as DL canon goes, LM Kupfer set of a number of them when he was there. So it could be that.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
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Mopman43
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Well, 6th edition has a bit written by an escaped slave (a human from Marienburg named Hargan) about his escape from captivity and joining together with other escaped slaves, written right before they're about to go into battle with a Dark Elf force hunting them that they'll almost certainly lose.
Not sure of any mention outside of that, but I'm not an expert.
About the Dark Elf cities:
So we can add once a year purge to the fun. Given they also are supposed to grow their food on Southern slave plantations (...) it's almost like they're supposed to be a flat out caricature(s).
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Yes they are very explicitly the North American anglophone settler colonies. I've been avoiding making that comparison since sparta comparisons are less current politics so engender less... strong feelings shall we say.
Godwinson
"Well, I've got nothing."
...I just had a truly horrible idea.
What if the reason why the Asur are an outlier among Elven societies for their declining population, and the Druchii who have a weird population surplus that they seem to want to kill off, is directly related?
Do Asur who give into nihilism secretly emigrate? Are there smugglers between Ulthuan and Naggaroth who will happily take that rival off the board for you? Are criminals exiled, and left with nowhere else to go that would accept them?
It's sure as fuck not like any Asur would ever admit to that, especially to outsiders.
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Possibly. The official line in the Druchii army books is that Asur are the only elves that are always slaves or sacrifices and can't become/be welcomed as freeborn. Similarly the official line in the Asur army book is that the shadow warriors kill every Druchii they find and there are no defectors but I'd be very surprised if there wasn't actually a degree of interchange between the two states.
I know people were asking why the Asur are dying off and not the Asrai/Druchii, and I think I can come up with a pretty good reason: they're too busy trying to keep the world turning with no back-up. Asur are constantly patrolling the oceans, sending armies to check on waystones, slapping uppity chaos incursions, and so on. They don't live in the giant wellspring of Ghyran that is Athel Loran, and they don't go out picking fights with helpless peasants like the Druchii do. They are consistently pulling off a patrol of an entire death world on both land and sea while fending off opportunistic kidney punches from their edgy cousins up north. That wears on them. A lot.
Codex
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Page 9 of Dark Elf 8th Edition Army Book under Naggarond, Tower of Cold:
"Indeed, Malekith provokes discord, for anarchy serves to weed out the weak and thus make his people stronger. To this end, he deliberately sparks contests that set one noble house against another, encourages revolt among the innumerable legions of slaves and sets the Hag Queens of the murder cults at one another's throats."
"Indeed, Malekith provokes discord, for anarchy serves to weed out the weak and thus make his people stronger. To this end, he deliberately sparks contests that set one noble house against another, encourages revolt among the innumerable legions of slaves and sets the Hag Queens of the murder cults at one another's throats."
Shard
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There really isn't a good reason. Ulthuan has the Everqueen and is pretty much never invaded due to being an island sea power. It also has a super fertile magic verdant land, a society actually suitable to raising children, etc.
Like, the Asrai should be the one dying off because they live in a magical death forest and constantly get into fights with the people around them, and actually are at risk of things like Beastmen, Chaos, Orks, etc.
But this misses the logic WHF runs under - The Asrai are assholes, and therefore have magical breeding powers. The Naggarothi are even more assholes and have offscreen magical portals of dark elves. The Asur are relatively nice, and therefore are emaciated and slowly dying.
Apply this logic further and you see how it functions - Chaos are evil, so infinite. Skaven are evil, so infinite. Undead are self destructive, so infinite. Once you understand the underlying logic, suddenly you realise that in order to survive in the world of warhammer you absolutely need to do acts of random evil, or at least random assholery in order to keep your population going, double so if you're on the 'good' side. Suddenly, the Asrai randomly attacking humans, or the Empire deciding to outlaw and genocide wizards, or the Brettonia dissapearing all guy magic users makes perfect sense - If they didn't, they would suffer a mysterious sickness on a population scale incurable by any in-universe method.
Mopman43
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I mean, apart from all the times Norscans and Dark Elves raid and invade them.
Shard
One and Many
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Well, yes but no. If that was enough a few raids by Ulthuan on Naggaroth every few years or so would reduce Naggaroth feom a threat to a slowly dying one. However, under GW logic, Naggaroth would just get stronger and more brave and more hateful etc.
Total War Warhammer is a much more realistic rendition of how things will probably end up if we used some logic: United order races have a burst of sanity (even in a game and setting intended to push people to DOW each other and fight) and 'Ordertide' all the evil factions away. That or if they remained dumb get squashed and actually lose.
Codex
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They don't suffer nearly as much attrition as the Empire or the Dwarfs though. They don't have any Greenskins attacking them outside of that one time Grom got in. They don't have any Skaven under lairs. They don't have any Vampires or Necromancers lingering in there to raise undead. Very rarely do they get invaded by non Norscan/Druchii forces, and hell even Norscan forces rarely manage to raid them in the Island. Sea battles are a different thing altogether. It's explicitly noted that the Red Pirate of Marienburg got absurdly lucky when he managed to land in Ulthuan to sack one of their cities.
The only significant source of consistent attrition they suffer, as in actual attacks on their homeland, are the Druchii. It doesn't make sense to me how the Asur are declining and the Druchii aren't, even assuming rampant hedonism, when the Druchii society is so self destructive.
EDIT: They don't even get attacked by Beastmen! And Beastmen are everywhere! It's weird I tell you.
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Mopman43
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I mean, I'm not arguing against any of that, I was just pointing out that "Ulthuan is never invaded" is categorically false.
As far as the quest goes, Boney already gave his interpretation on how to make it make sense.
Shard
One and Many
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Well that's why I used 'pretty much never'...
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Don't they have domestic Daemons that boil out of one of their mountain ranges periodically, or was that just Imrix's quest?
Codex
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They have monsters that boil out of their mountains, some of which are pretty vicious and have to be periodically eliminated, but not Daemons as far as I'm aware. That isn't to say that they don't suffer Daemonic invasions, N'Kari is obsessed with Ulthuan, but it's like a once every 100 years thing and often accompanies a host of Chaos Worshippers who can actually sustain them. Or the Daemons ally with the Dark Elves so they can actually enter Ulthuan and cause havoc, as occured with the Dark Elf invasion of 2300 IC.
Again, it's the fact that the Asur are constantly moving out of Ulthuan to put out fires about the world. They'll break Waaaghs, they'll snuff out chaos nonsense, they'll slap skaven that are looking at a Waystone too closely, and they'll do it around the entire world. All the time. And they're losing. Each time they do their grand tour of the Waystone network, fewer are intact than before. Each time they put out a fire, they know damn well another will soon arise. They see themselves as hedgemons of the world - a world slowly crumbling, when taking the loooooooong view the Asur have.
Codex
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I would understand this, but having read the Asur army book, that isn't what is being said? The Asur patrol the seas, but aside from that one time Eltharion goes on a quest to clear out the Greenskins of the Badlands, they never break up Waaaghs. When Eltharion realised that it would be impossible to wipe out all the Greenskins, he went back to Ulthuan to prepare it for the next invasion that would come from them. That only happened after they got invaded by Grom.
In terms of Skaven, the only major engagement I know of occurs around 2500 IC in the Gates of Cailith. The Asur don't seek out the Skaven and rarely engage with them, because the Skaven are cautious of the Elves and the Asur don't seek them out. It's never been mentioned that the Elves assist in the times when the Everchosen floods from the north. The only time they did was Asavar Kul, and that was primarily Teclis' personal decision. He brought himself and 2 archmages and that's it. Formidable but far from a full scale support. Before then the Asur barely paid attention to the Old World and rarely involved themselves in it outside of trading with Marienburg, primarily done by the "Sea Elves" of Cothique and Eataine.
When Nagash rose up, the Elves weren't there. When the Vampires rose up, the Elves weren't there. When the Skaven diseases rose up, the Elves weren't there. When Gorthor rose up, the Elves weren't there. When Jafar rose up, the Elves weren't there. When the Tomb Kings rose up, the Elves weren't there. When Pestilens rose up in Lustria, the Elves weren't there. They've been getting better about this lately, like helping out with Morghur very recently, but for thousands of years the Asur were largely concerned with themselves and their own waystones, not the waystones of the whole world.
Looking for sense in canon on elf population is generally a futile endeavor, because iirc GW has literally said that they don't care, and that there are however many elves are necessary for the story they want to tell.
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I know that this is an explanation adopted by Imrix in their Pheonix King quest, but is it a canon thing that they imported? I thought it was merely a plausible patch for GW's worldbuilding issue.
The reason for Ulthuan elves having a shrinking population doesn't need to be because everyone is being murdered or something. Japan is rather infamous for the same problem and they're hardly alone in the world.
There's a lot of potential reasons why but my guess is that's its simply how developed nations work. Low amounts of relative space, high cost of raising children, high education, access to lots of entertainment, low immigration and high prosperity seem to result in lower birth rates.
There's a lot of potential reasons why but my guess is that's its simply how developed nations work. Low amounts of relative space, high cost of raising children, high education, access to lots of entertainment, low immigration and high prosperity seem to result in lower birth rates.
Codex
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I feel like we're getting more and more off topic the further we get into this discussion tbh. I think we can just table the whole discussion and trust Boney to provide reasonable worldbuilding if the story ever gets around to the Asur as a polity. I honestly don't care too much outside of being annoyed by the whole "the Asur are the protectors of the world" thing. Like, yeah they're the protectors of the world. So are the Dwarfs, the Empire, Bretonnia, Kislev, the Lizardmen, the Asrai and the Eonir. The Asur maintain the vortex and their own personal waystones, the rest of the world maintains the waystones and or the spirits in their territory and destroys the forces of Destruction encroaching on them that would doom the world.
The Asur certainly aren't mobilising to solve all the world's problems and I don't expect them to. They're just one part of what makes the world keep ticking.
The Asur certainly aren't mobilising to solve all the world's problems and I don't expect them to. They're just one part of what makes the world keep ticking.
Sir_Travelsalot
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And a forest full of white lions, which are apparently so dangerous that being able to kill one single-handedly qualifies you for being one of the Phoenix King's bodyguards.
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They insist on killing those beasts with axes one on one with no support, mounts, or complex military tactics. I cannot stress how stupid it is to try to kill a beast of that level of ferocity with a weapon that requires you to get that close to the lion. If they were such a vital danger to the settlements, they would harry them with arrows and spears and fight in regiments and lead them to traps, maybe use magic to hold them down so they can be taken down.
EDIT: I should specify, the White Lions don't use hand axes with shields either. They use two handed greataxes. Korhil's (current Captain of the Guard) weapons are even dumber, as he dual wields two gigantic double sided axes that are almost halberd length.
EDIT 2: My bad, only one of those gigantic axes is double sided. The other has a flat edge on one side and an axe head on the other. He holds them close to the head too, not that he'd have any decent leverage dual wielding while holding axes close to the bottom of the shaft when they're that big.
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