How do I lore?

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TheCorsair
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How do I lore?

Post by TheCorsair »

I've been a 40k player for quite a while, and I hadn't really tried touching fantasy until a little over a year ago, which obviously was the perfect time for it with the destruction of the entire thing. The whole end times and sigmar thing didn't make any sense to me because I didn't have any previous perspective upon it.

Now I'm trying to do something with it again, and I've always liked the dark elf models and the scraps of lore I've been able to find, I dig Malekith's story, but when I get to the end times it sort of all falls apart.

What on earth are the dark elves doing in sigmar and where can I find out more? 99% of the lore I find is "Sigmar is being cool and orderly and those wacky chaos gods are trying to muck it up" and all this stuff about 'Realms' which don't make any sense.

I wanted to get into fantasy because of the smaller scale than 40k. One world. Everybody in their place. Neat. Sensible.
Sigmar just seems broken to me because it looks like they don't have the balls to quickly pull off the band-aid and say what's what.

So, to explain my question as quickly as I can; do the dark elves even really exist in sigmar? Where are they? What are they doing?
Is this all just a new franchise wearing the face of an old one?
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Calisson
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Re: How do I lore?

Post by Calisson »

Welcome TheCorsair to D.net! :)

There is not much about the Exile Lore. They are part of the Order, and do not make a coherent faction.
See more here: https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Warhammer:_Age_of_Sigmar#Order

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draxynnic
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Re: How do I lore?

Post by draxynnic »

I haven't read up on it in great depth, but I don't think there's great depth in the Aelf lore to begin with. Here's my understanding of it:

The Aelfs are still split up into three kindreds: The Exiles (who follow Malerion, now the God of Shadow), the Highborn (who follow Tyrion, now the God of Light) and the Wanderers (who at least followed Alarielle, now the Goddess of Life. Apparently she threw a big temper-tantrum when the Wanderers exercised the better part of valour on the Chaos invasion and disowned them). Malerion and Tyrion appear to be quite willing to cooperate nowadays, although they probably still have their differences, and the Aelf kindreds follow in kind: there may be rivalries and such, but they no longer consider one another mortal enemies as the High and Dark Elves did in WHF.

These three groups map pretty accurately to Dark, High and Wood Elves, except that the Sisters of Avelorn are now the Sisters of the Watch in the Wanderers faction. Of these, only the Wanderers are currently treated as a single coherent faction mechanically. Exiles and Highborn have a handful of minifactions that are basically equivalent to subfactions that existed in WHF - so the Exiles have the Daughters of Khaine (Witch Elves and allies), Scourge Privateers (Corsairs and monster-hunters), the Order Serpentis (an order of dragon-riding knights that responded to a shortage of dragons by breeding hydras and lesser mounts from dragon stock using dark magic), the Shadowblades (Assassins and Dark Riders), and the Darkling Covens (basically the 'miscellaneous' category: the lore is that the Sorceress covens mind-controlled Exile soldiers to fight for them).

Most of the forces of Order were kicked out of the various realms by Chaos and took refuge in Azyr, including refugees of all three Aelf kindreds (although it is indicated that Malerion might still be holding out in the Realm of Shadow): presently, all playable Exiles and Highborn are from these refugees. The Exiles are therefor part of Grand Alliance: Order, but aren't really trusted by the other Order factions. The Exiles still have the dark magic, cruelty, ruthlessness, and arrogance of the Dark Elves (although they generally refrain from turning it on other members of Order factions... unless they believe someone is corrupted by Chaos) and other members of Grand Alliance: Order tend to see this as being incompatible with Order's ideals and wonder if the Exiles are really loyal to Order.

If you're familiar with WHF lore, the Exiles might best be compared to the Nagarythe elves before the elven civil war that split the Asur and the Druchii. They're cruel and ruthless to their enemies and to each other (cull the weak, let the strong survive), but on they know who their enemies are, and they don't pick a fight with allies without good reason. All things concerned they're probably still evil... but to use D&D terms they're Lawful Evil, and their focus is on fighting Chaos rather than provoking Good.

EDIT: I just noticed that the Realms thing was part of what confused you. Soooo...

If you liked everything being in its place, that's gone out the window. As of release, all of Order was squeezed into one realm, Death (everything undead) in another, Destruction (orcs, sorry, orruks, and ogres, sorry, ogors) rampaging around fighting everyone as they do, and Chaos squatting on everything else. As the story develops, though, that seems to be changing: the impression I get is that as they develop a faction, they're likely to open up the Realm that faction called home. Ghyran, the Realm of Life, for instance, was largely retaken by Order after the Sylvaneth battletome released.

So, what are the Realms of which we speak?

Back in the original Warhammer Fantasy, most forms of magic apart from Chaos magic and Waaaaagh! magic was composed of eight different winds (some lores combined them in various ways, but basically, eight winds), each with different characteristics. During the End Times, in an effort to create champions that could stand up to the Chaos Gods, these winds were each bound to a champion. The champions failed to defend the world from Chaos, but those that survived became gods in turn in the process. (The champions of Fire and Metal didn't survive the End Times - it seems that these winds finally anchored in two of the dwarven ancestor-gods.)

It turned out, after the End Times, that each of these winds of magic also had a realm associated with it, where that world has the characteristics of the type of magic in question. So Ghyran, the Realm of Life, is a verdant jungle (when not corrupted by Nurgle); Aqshy, the Realm of Fire, is covered in volcanic terrain; and so on. These are the eight realms, each of which is ruled over by the god that absorbed the associated wind (but currently, most of them have been taken over by Chaos, and the associated gods are mostly in hiding or missing outright). How the realms are connected is a big vague: the primary means of travel is through magical portals called Realmgates, but there appear to be other ways of doing so.

By the way the trend is going, over time I expect that the majority of the realms will be reclaimed by Order, and at that point we'll have a nice ordered system by which everything has its place again. However, those realms will still be threatened by Chaos, roving orruks and ogors, undead, and conflict between Order factions, so there's still a lot of fighting to be had.

One way to look at it, from a 40K perspective, is that what we're seeing in the AoS story is basically the Great Crusade. The realms of Order had their golden age and fell into an Age of Strife, and Order's forces were beaten back to their last bastion... now the literal God-Emperor has made his Sigmarines and is reconquering the realms one by one. The distinction being that instead of Chaos being a lurking threat waiting for the right time to emerge, Chaos is the enemy in the open that is being pushed back.
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Saintofm
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Re: How do I lore?

Post by Saintofm »

Prior to this things slightly changed eddition to eddition, some changes making more sense then others but from what I can tell and what hasn't alreaday been said by previous posts:

ELfs: Currently one army. Prior to this they were split between 3 fractions: Technically the Good Guys (High Elves) Neutral (Wood Elves) and Never game and did I mention we were the bad guys (Dark Elves). Or more to the point: Rich pretty people that never workded a day in their life, Rich Pretty People that are Green Peace nuts that shoot on sight, and righ retty people on LSD. Wood elves were once largly split between Legolas and Treebeard and their extended family, but now the treefolk are lead by the Everqueen who rides on a giant Rhyno beetle.

Now adays: Largly one group, and do their own thing, but hate chaos so work for Sigmar but otherwise indipendnet.




Dwarfves: Now:

plit between two groups, one is a group of (nearly) naked berzerkers who act as mercinaies and care who they work for, and the rest of the dwarven peoples who have some steam punk tech, but otherwise are the blue collard working class that work hard, play hard, fight hard, drink harder.

Orcs and Goblins are Soccer Thugs/Raider Fans (Orcs/Orks/Ourchs/ Name that still makes me think of the ancester of the modern cow) and Squeekers on any online game (Goblins/Grots). Orcs have the cavemen type, the typicle type, and the ones that have lots of armor and weapons (because you just have to kill things in style and not all chappas are created equally. Some are made for poking, some for tenderising, and some that actualy chop). Goblins are normal (come in mass, generaly lack a spine, literaly so when a board orc gets a hold of one). These guys have most of the warmachines as well. Nigh Goblins that are subteranian in nature, ear cloaks and have a thing for moons as they don't like sunlight, and are on "magic Mushrooms," both literaly and the kind Jefferson Airplaine sang about. Forest Goblins have a thing for spiders of all sizes, ranging from ones the size of bloodhounds they can ride, the size of a large pickup truck that are meant for leaders, and something out of a Japanese Monster Movie for some real fun. Plaines Goblins have ride giant wolves like the warg riders int he Hobbit.

Tomb Kings: ANcient Egypt.
Now adays: GW denies they ever exhisted.

Vampire Counts: More on lines of Bram Stroker and 30 days of night, or Castlevania. The vampies an either be devilishly attractive or monsterous in apearance, and either case they can rip yur spine out and beat you to death with it. They use lots of skelitons, zombies, and various stains of ghoules and beastly vampires to do their bidding. Oh, and they are lead by the greatest soceror that ever lived and is now taking the form of a dragon sized skeleton. He dosn't like the living one bit, and has a bit of a cronic back stabbing disorder.

Chaos:

ot sure how the beastmen fit into this now, but they were chaotic cannon fodder in the old days, and I can see them being so now.

Warriors of chaos are still uber badassess, though they nolonger get anything god related to make them stand out save for a few cases. Khorn and Nurgle get all the love it seems. No one quite likes the Skaven, but they are part of the Offical Forces of the CHaos GOds now with the Horned Rat Assendign to their level (to everyone's dismay...Archon refises the Horned Rate's gifts).

Ogres are largly the same, thought they tend to be grouped in with the orcs and goblins now as both groups are just looking for a good time/fight.

Lizardmen are apparently angelic now. I think they are no longer Asexual eaither, but otherwise stil dinosour people riding dinosours and looking badass doing it.

Empire is still around as the free peoples, and what parts of Brettonia they will still keep is mixed in with them.

The SPace Marine looking guys undr Sigmar's comand are basicly Daemons in what they are but fight for the good guys. Its almost like the vikings once they reached valhala.
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draxynnic
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Re: How do I lore?

Post by draxynnic »

Saintofm wrote:and what parts of Brettonia they will still keep is mixed in with them.
They didn't keep any - the entire Bretonnian range got pulled like the Tomb Kings. Somewhat more justified, actually: the Bretonnian stuff was pretty old, while a lot of the Tomb Kings stuff was 8th Edition.
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The_Peacemaker
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Re: How do I lore?

Post by The_Peacemaker »

Since you are from 40k ill break it down for you.

Sigmar is tge Emperor. WFB and age of sigmar is the time when holy terra was engulfed in a warp storm and cut off from the galaxy.
In 40k fluff, during this time the Emperor is on Earth and creates his space marines. He then conquers earth.
Slanesh is the born which kills the Eldar and the warp storm around earth is blown out.

So basically, the world is a demon world caught in the warp. Time, space, everything is warped and in bubbles. The bubbles are the realms.

Where are the elves? The current story does not mention them much besides saying a few exist on the space station and sometimes fight. ...this is a narrative just so you can use your armies.
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