Age of Sigmar primer: The Silver Tower, Excelsis, Shadespire and witch hunters

With 8^th edition Warhammer 40K appearing tomorrow I’m getting ready to do a bit of sci-fi wargaming in the near future. Having said that, I’m going to finish my overview of the Age of Sigmar background first. This is the third and (for now) final installment of the background overview. In part one I’ve discussed theRealmgates, the transition from the Old World (the world that was) to the newand some of the other (global) changes to the realms, Slaanesh and other races. My second blog was a condensed version of the Realmgate Wars as described in the five hardcover source books (with a few bonus facts from the Black Library novels). This post will deal with the realms as they are now.

Age of Sigmar background primer: The Realmgate Wars

In an effort to give the Age of Sigmar background more love I previously madea post with a general Age of Sigmar background primer. Here you can read (a bit) about the fate of the Old World, the Mortal Realms and their gods and – most importantly – the realmgates and the setting in general. This post deals with the Realmgate Wars. These are the wars that kick off the Age of Sigmar, got us started on the current background story and are dealt with over the course of five sourcebooks.

Black Library published a number of novels and audio books on the Realmgate Wars. More importantly Games Workshop released five hardcover books telling the story, adding rules and giving rules for themed battles. I’ll be using these books as the basis for this post. In the books Games Workshop tells the story by jumping from one realm to the next, slowly following the timeline up to the finish. I’ll be summarizing in a slightly different fashion, giving descriptions of the events on a per realm basis. As with the other post here’s a ‘here be spoilers’ warning. I recommend getting the Realmgate Wars books. They are quite an entertaining read and a collection onto themselves.

I don't have any Stormcast painted up to show here, so I went with a nice old Skaven model instead. Ignoring the fact that this makes no sense whatsoever. 

Age of Sigmar background primer or: How I learned to stop worrying about Stormcast and love the setting

Sometimes I miss the Old World. I played a lot of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay adventures there, read the novels (even the early ones) and fought a lot of battles over bits and pieces of it. When the end-times was announced I was slightly miffed (hands off my setting!). Having said that, the End Times was a fantastic send-off full of fascinating twists and amazing revelations. What a lot of people don’t realize, is that End Times is also a misnomer. The Age of Sigmar background continues what started in the Old World and adds to it.

Chaos warriors of Tzeentch emerge from a realmgate.