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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Sorry for returning here with general Warhammer Fantasy questions but as has been established no one seems to visit the general threads for such.

Does anyone know why Naggoroth is written the way it is? Like I mean in terms of being just one big polity. Why is it that the Dark Elves a playable army have only one real rival in the High Elves?
Have any black library authors or game scenario writers ever publically touched on the question?

This one rival/competitor/actually dangerous enemy on the border thing is something literally no other faction shares. And no I don't count their very rare hostilities towards the Lizardmen because that hoostility seemingly is just one sided. EDIT: ...and happened about only one time I can find canonically?
Yes I get that they get attacked by the Hung....rarely but the Hung don't rival them any more than Gnoblars rival anyone and they never seem to take ground within Naggoroth itself.

High Elves get invaded by Norscans and Dark Elves.
The Empire gets invaded by everyone with a stake in things west of the worlds edge mountains.
Even the Ogre Kingdoms presumably have to deal with Cathay, Warriors of Chaos and Skaven and...orcs sometimes I think?


Like why aren't there any native greenskins in Naggoroth? They are notoriously difficult to kill off or enslave long-term (just ask the chaos dwarves or brets) and I think are found everywhere else....but I never hear about the dark elves needing to deal with them, it's really really odd.

There are technically Skaven on Naggoroth(clan sleekit) but I don't think they ever get to y'know impact Druchii history at all.

The Dark Elves are written in such a way that having two nations founded by Malekith and Morathi feels plausible and would have been more interesting but oddly was not a route taken when writing them.
EDIT: Heck malekith gets trapped in the Warp for years doesn't he? How come his realm doesn't splinter at all during that time?
Naggoroth could have had centaurs, or been a refuge for fleeing giants or had enclaves of greenskins or amazons or anything but for doyalist reasons unknown to me it does not.
 
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16 characters said:
Does anyone know why Naggoroth is written the way it is? Like I mean in terms of being just one big polity. Why is it that the Dark Elves a playable army have only one real rival in the High Elves?
Have any black library authors or game scenario writers ever publically touched on the question?
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16 characters said:
This one rival/competitor/actually dangerous enemy on the border thing is something literally no other faction shares. And no I don't count their very rare hostilities towards the Lizardmen because that hoostility seemingly is just one sided. EDIT: ...and happened about only one time I can find canonically?
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That's not even the worst problem. Their society should immediately collapse from all the backstabbing and paranoia.
 
16 characters said:
EDIT: Heck malekith gets trapped in the Warp for years doesn't he? How come his realm doesn't splinter at all during that time?
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While I can't answer the rest of your question, I can point out that a few years is practically nothing to an elf, and they were concerned about Malekith rolling up while they played extra silly buggers with his kingdom. Also Morathi was still there to smack everyone that got too uppity. So they just didn't.
 
Boney said:
He'd be willing if there was an actual immediately apparent use for it that would let him get some mileage out of it in the very near future, rather than you just throwing him at months of exhausting study on the off-chance that it might come in useful some day.
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Got it. Unless we find a more public/non-dangerous Nehekharan text to study, it's not worth doing just for the extra action - it'd be frustrating for him, and rightly so. It'll have to remain a personal action.

I assume we'll see a push to start learning High Nehekharan next turn, under the excuse that we'll be investigating the Nehekharan network at some point. May play havok a bit with our personal action priorities, but we're in no particular hurry to finish AV, and as much as I'd like to finish Branarhune, it's got less of a chance of winning against those two.
 
16 characters said:
Does anyone know why Naggoroth is written the way it is? Like I mean in terms of being just one big polity. Why is it that the Dark Elves a playable army have only one real rival in the High Elves?
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I think that's mostly because they are a bad-guy faction.

The Empire, Dwarfs, High Elves need lots of enemies to struggle against, but the evil faction exist to be that rival they struggle against.
Just like Norsca isn't really attacked by anyone but itself, or the Greenskins rarely face meaningfully challenges against their claim to the Badlands.
 
From a worldbuilding perspective, Naggaroth doesn't need dangerous neighbours to get it involved in the conflict that the setting is based on the way that the Empire or the Dwarves do. The Black Arks give them the means and their appetite for slaves and plunder gives them the motive to show up just about anywhere looking for a fight.

That said, they do have Chaos to the north, Lizardmen to the south, High Elves to the east and Beastmen in the mountains.
 
The greenskins have to deal with both the Border Princes and Tomb Kings competeting for entry into the Badlands, just because they rarely suceed doesn't mean they face no competition strong enough to impact them. They have it of course much worse in the Dark Lands.

Norsca I'm pretty sure actually does get raided from time to time by the Dark Elves, Ettins kind of really hate Norscans and share the Peninsuala with them pretty sure it's ditto with the Fimir most of the time so do actually face some level of external threat beyond that one-time Settra decided to collectively spank their bums for being naughty and genre blind.

TLDR: All those dudes still face way more competition than Malekiths Groupies do, so they still stand out in a particularly weird way.

EDIT: Wait what beastmen in the mountains? Where was this revealed? Lizardmen in the (faaar) south are only a threat if the D-Elves go south as far as I've seen? I've never heard of them trying to push north.

EDIT 2: Bigger question is how they still have any Black Arks left after so much time? I get the impression that they are the sort of vessels that can't be replaced and a good number of them have in fact been destroyed over the years.

EDIT 3: Badland Greenskins also get raided by Ogres unless I am mistaken.
 
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There's a map of Beastmen population centres that if memory serves has a big splotch in Naggaroth. And though there's no major cities in the southern half of the continent, the Dark Elves have Shade Clans and military outposts there to keep pressure on the High Elf settlement of Arnheim, which puts them within conflict range of the isthmus of Lustria.
 
I don't know about that, Hexoatl and Arnheim look only about as close together as southern Mexico and Newfoundland IRL, so not that close.

That said I saw description of Arnheim on the Dark Elf timeline page implying it was in Lustria, so maybe the HE's built a city there and later were forced to flee north by the DE's?
Sorry Warhammer lore often confuses me.
 
16 characters said:
Does anyone know why Naggoroth is written the way it is? Like I mean in terms of being just one big polity. Why is it that the Dark Elves a playable army have only one real rival in the High Elves?
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The only thing I remember being said about the Dark Elves is that there are always enough that they are a real threat to the HElves and that their realm is stable because it needs to be to be that. And that we should stop asking questions about logistics and realism in a Fantasy Game. Dont know exactly where/when this came from, but I think it was mentioned and possibly linked somewhere in the dead Helf Quest where we played as Phoenix King.

As to other neighbors? Boney already mentioned that they dont need them to have an excuse to fight just about anyone anywhere.
For a more Watsonian reason the whole region is more or less northern Canada. Meaning the weather goes from cold to really cold to frozen. Theres nothing really growing there and the whole region is more or less overrun with monsters. I mean besides the Delves. Its where they get all the monsters in their armylist from. So its all wilderness that contains at least numerous beastmen, manticores and whatever crawls out of all these entrances to the underworld sea.
They also border the chaoswaste. From where they get constant low to high level raiding, hence all those watchtowers were not getting in Warhammer Total War.
All in all its a mixture of they dont need to for it to be possible to use them, theres just no reason for anyone else to be there and they are just one of the most atrociously written races there are in Warhammer (note that they are my second favorite race just behind vampire counts).
Dont get me started on we sustain a large enough population to credibly threaten Ulthuan while only maintaining exactly seven cities that somehow sustain themselves only from raiding while also constantly backstabbing ourselves.

TLDR: Theyre basically build on plot convenience and liberal handwaving and I am salty about bad worldbuilding
 
The easiest way to fix things is to just posit that the average Druchii isn't a sadistic murder-fiend in the same way that the average Roman citizen wasn't a Caligula or a Crassus. They pay their taxes and love their kids and go to edgy church and like to see some bloodsport at the arena every now and then and their extended family pools funds to buy a slave to sacrifice to mollify the Gods once a year or so.
 
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Belkar said:
Dont get me started on we sustain a large enough population to credibly threaten Ulthuan while only maintaining exactly seven cities that somehow sustain themselves only from raiding while also constantly backstabbing ourselves.
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Possible correction for most setting material by the Time of Karl Franz it's actually down to a very threatening six cities. To my understanding, Malekith himself Massacred one of them wholesale because they were being uncooperative.

I guess, I'm also salty because some scenarios where Lizardmen or Skaven or beastmen tried to strike at them and get foiled would be really cool but we just aren't given any to my knowledge.
 
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Boney said:
The easiest way to fix things is to just posit that the average Druchii isn't a sadistic murder-fiend in the same way that the average Roman citizen wasn't a Caligula or a Crassus. They pay their taxes and love their kids and go to edgy church and like to see some bloodsport at the arena every now and then and their extended family pools funds to buy a slave to sacrifice to mollify the Gods once a year or so.
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That fixes a lot of it, though it also helps if you just... y'know, make sure they exist in an area that is economically viable, so that normal economic activity can proceed, rather than doing what GW did and parking them on the coastal strip of a frozen tundra or whatever.
 
Clar Karond is as far south as Estalia and Chrace and further south than the whole Empire, and is in the middle of a huge temperate forest. Its lore focuses on it being the shipyard for the Druchii, but if they're planting crops in the wake of their lumberjacks they could easily be a breadbasket.
 
Thats another thing that bothers me, why does Naggoroth appear to so much colder and less temperate than IRL upper North America? Overall I mean, obviously not every inch of it is horrible in this regard.
Why did G.W decide against giving them some nice arable land on the west coast and or very huntable great plains style analogue?

Did those responsible for creating the Dark Elves as we know them do most of their work in a 20 hour crunch window or something?
 
16 characters said:
Thats another thing that bothers me, why does Naggoroth appear to so much colder and less temperate than IRL upper North America? Overall I mean, obviously not every inch of it is horrible in this regard.
Why did G.W decide against giving them some nice arable land on the west coast and or very huntable great plains style analogue?

Did those responsible for creating the Dark Elves as we know them do most of their work in a 20 hour crunch window or something?
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Didn't the dhar elves specifically do terraforming on the continent to cause the winds to congeal into dhar?
The cold wasteland might be a side effect.

Edit, from the wiki: At the bidding of their insane Witch King Malekith, the Dark Elves have bent all their arcane knowledge to creating throughout Naggaroth an environment where True Dhar can form more easily than almost anywhere else in the known world.
 
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