In this thread I'm going to take a look at the history of the Mortal Realms, the setting of Age of Sigmar, with an eye to the major undead factions that were active at various points, and from the biased perspective of Nagash. The first post will cover all the setting backstory leading up to the Age of Sigmar. The second post will cover the narrative developments through the first and second editions of the game, bringing readers roughly up to date with the start of the current third edition of the game. The third post will take a look back at the various undead factions that have been playable throughout the course of the game.
Before the Age of Myth: The End of the World That Was
Before the Age of Myth: The Mortal Realms
Before the Age of Myth: Shyish in the Early Realms.
The Age of Myth: The Return of Sigmar and Nagash.
The Age of Myth: Settling the Realms.
The Age of Myth: the Mortarchs.
The Age of Myth: the Vision of Nagash
The Age of Myth: A Mortarch's Fall
The Age of Myth: Cracks in the Grand Alliance
The Age of Myth: The Return of the Everchosen.
The Age of Chaos: Blood, Fire, and Plague
The Age of Chaos: The Grand Alliance Broken
The Age of Chaos: Surviving Under Archaon's Heel.
The Age of Chaos: Nagash in the Shadows, and the Missing Souls.
Before the Age of Myth: The End of the World That Was
There are few who can remember the World That Was, but those who do tell of a single realm governed largely by physical laws. There the raw destructive magic of chaos was refracted like light through a prism into eight distinct winds of magic, and the flow of these purified winds, inimical to the frenzied and disordered powers of the warp, granted the World That Was and the souls that lived there some defense against the depredations of Dark Gods. But the Dark Gods of chaos are not easily denied, and their power infiltrated this realm of eightfold order in the form of twisted servants committed to their own world's undoing. The greatest of these was Archaon the Everchosen, who led a massive army of chaos warriors, beastmen, and daemons. With this mighty army he smashed aside the Human, Elf, and Dwarven nations, before preparing a terrible ritual that would spell the undoing of the World That Was. The forces opposed to Chaos launched a mighty counter-offensive, led by eight incarnate demigods, each soul-bound to one of the purified winds of magic. The greatest of these were Sigmar, the Incarnate of Azyr - the golden magic of the Heavens; and Nagash, the Incarnate of Shyish - the amethyst magic of Death. These ancient enemies could not be more opposed to one another in aspect and temperament, yet when the world needed them most they put aside their mutual hatred to fight side by side in defense of their world... and in the end they lost.
At the last possible moment the Alliance of the Incarnates was betrayed by one of Nagash's lieutenants. This momentary distraction allowed Archaon's ritual to grow out of control, creating a warp rift that tore the Old World apart and siphoned the remains into the Realm of Chaos. The eight winds of magic were blasted thought the rift, billowing out into the realm of chaos in great swirling stormclouds. The physical forms of those nearest to the event were reduced to atoms, their souls alone making it through the rift. As the rift grew and reached further away, great chunks of the old world were torn through at a time. Entire Cities, islands, and subcontinents were sent through the rift with survivors yet alive, only for the daemons of the warp to descend upon them in an endless tide - or for the dark gods themself to snatch up hundreds at a time in great handfuls to feast on alive. The last piece of the Old World to pass into the Realm of Chaos was the great iron core of the planet, which was sent rocketing out into the distance far from the nascent moral realms.
The Dark Gods feasted on the souls of the Old World until they were swollen to bursting - none more so than Slaanesh, who for reasons none yet remember had exclusive claim to the souls of the elves. When they could consume no more, each retreated to hidden places in their own realms for an age to digest the souls they had consumed, and as they did so they turned their thoughts and ambitions to other worlds.
But the annihilation of the Old World was not quite complete. The rarefied energies of the winds of magic, now raging in eight great eldritch storms, were still anathema to the dark gods. They still repelled the wild disordered magic of chaos, creating a relatively stable region even within the Realm of Chaos itself. And within these winds there remained refugees from the World. Its not clear if these were living survivors clinging to the shattered remnants of their world or merely souls of the dead that had escaped consumption, caught in the swirl of the great magical storms, but there were survivors none the less, and chief among these were the Incarnates, bound forever to their respective winds as a new kind of divinity. In time they were able to pull together new physical manifestations for themselves, even as the storms of their respective winds slowly coalesced. Within these storms the physical remnants of the old world slowly collected, drifting inward to form great disc worlds in the center of each, and in this way the Mortal Realms were born.
At the last possible moment the Alliance of the Incarnates was betrayed by one of Nagash's lieutenants. This momentary distraction allowed Archaon's ritual to grow out of control, creating a warp rift that tore the Old World apart and siphoned the remains into the Realm of Chaos. The eight winds of magic were blasted thought the rift, billowing out into the realm of chaos in great swirling stormclouds. The physical forms of those nearest to the event were reduced to atoms, their souls alone making it through the rift. As the rift grew and reached further away, great chunks of the old world were torn through at a time. Entire Cities, islands, and subcontinents were sent through the rift with survivors yet alive, only for the daemons of the warp to descend upon them in an endless tide - or for the dark gods themself to snatch up hundreds at a time in great handfuls to feast on alive. The last piece of the Old World to pass into the Realm of Chaos was the great iron core of the planet, which was sent rocketing out into the distance far from the nascent moral realms.
The Dark Gods feasted on the souls of the Old World until they were swollen to bursting - none more so than Slaanesh, who for reasons none yet remember had exclusive claim to the souls of the elves. When they could consume no more, each retreated to hidden places in their own realms for an age to digest the souls they had consumed, and as they did so they turned their thoughts and ambitions to other worlds.
But the annihilation of the Old World was not quite complete. The rarefied energies of the winds of magic, now raging in eight great eldritch storms, were still anathema to the dark gods. They still repelled the wild disordered magic of chaos, creating a relatively stable region even within the Realm of Chaos itself. And within these winds there remained refugees from the World. Its not clear if these were living survivors clinging to the shattered remnants of their world or merely souls of the dead that had escaped consumption, caught in the swirl of the great magical storms, but there were survivors none the less, and chief among these were the Incarnates, bound forever to their respective winds as a new kind of divinity. In time they were able to pull together new physical manifestations for themselves, even as the storms of their respective winds slowly coalesced. Within these storms the physical remnants of the old world slowly collected, drifting inward to form great disc worlds in the center of each, and in this way the Mortal Realms were born.
Before the Age of Myth: The Mortal Realms
Over time the Mortal Realms stabilized, resolving into the eight disc-worlds known today. At the edges of these disks, the wind of magic that dominates them still swirls in a terrible and endless storm. Though these storms are sources of great arcane power, it is impossible for mortal creatures to survive here, and even the gods find it difficult to control the fierce magic. Within these raging winds are chunks of physical matter - some left over from the World That Was, some newly created in response to the thoughts and emotions that mortals associate with a particular Wind of Magic. This happens because Mortal Realms still exist within the wider Realm of Chaos, and reality here is governed by symbolism and metaphor rather than physical laws. As an idea is shared by more and more mortals, as it becomes more concrete and stable in their minds, a new object, creature, or entire region representing that thought or idea drifts inward from the wild border of the Mortal Realm, joining the more stable inner regions. Also formed within the winds of magic at Each Realm's perimeter is Realmstone, a unique material that embodies and contains tremendous reserves of a Realm's energies. This material filters out from the storms at a Realm's edge like snow, and draws many foolish mortals to the edges of their Realm in search of riches or reserves of arcane power.
The Inlands of the Mortal Realms are great disk worlds, governed by what seem to be more natural laws - though even these are manifested by shared mortal conviction rather than physical laws. Each of these worlds is huge - with great oceans and multiple continents. And while they are stable enough for mortals to survive, they are still fundamentally strange and magical places, dominated by their respective wind of magic. Additionally, while the people of the Old World thought the Realm of Chaos was entirely dominated by the Dark Gods and their daemonic legions, in truth the greater Realm of Chaos is populated by a dizzying variety of strange and ancient entities, creatures mortals never knew simply because they had no interest in invading and consuming mortal worlds. And while the Dark Gods and their daemonic legions had lost interest in the mortal realms once they had consumed their fill, many other strange entities were drawn to the new Realms and chose to make their homes there - beings that might not be as malevolent as the Dark Gods and their daemonic hosts, but are often no less dangerous. Further majestic, terrible, and godlike entities were imagined into existence by the mortals of the Realms in the same way as the physical spaces of the realms were formed. Whether warp-born or shaped by the minds of mortals, the greatest of these entities came to be called 'Godbeasts', and their power in some cases dwarfed even the Incarnate Gods themselves.
The Mortal Realms float within something of a void in the Realm of Chaos, the wild magic of Chaos seemingly calmed by the eightfold Winds of Magic. There are many thousands of miles of nothing between most of the realms, and each would be completely isolated from the others were it not for the Realm Gates. These arcane portals connect two different points - which can either be within the same realm or can be two entirely different realms. The greatest of these gates, large enough for an army to pass through shoulder to shoulder, each connects one of the reams to a continent-sized smaller Realm called the All Points, formed from magic swirling into a central point from all eight Mortal Realms.
How the mortal races first came to inhabit the Mortal Realms is a bit of a mystery. Some sources say there were living survivors of the World That Was, clinging onto chunks of their world and somehow surviving until those chunks settled into the Inlands of a Mortal Realm, though this seems unlikely. Others say the mortal races didn't appear until the Incarnate Gods reformed, and that the gods then set about plucking the surviving souls from the storms of magic surrounding their realms to create new mortals to serve and worship them. However they came to be, these first Humans, Aelves, Duardin, Orruks, Grots, Ogors, Seraphon, and more found the early Mortal Realms to be a dangerous place, already overrun with strange creatures, Godbeasts, and most of all the Children of Chaos - great roving tribes of Beastmen, who considered the Mortal Realms to be their inheritance and birthright, gifted to them by their Dark Gods. The mortal races spread and formed civilizations, but the realms overall remained wild and untamed, far too inhospitable for any one people to settle on their own, even with the power of an Incarnate Deity behind them.
The Inlands of the Mortal Realms are great disk worlds, governed by what seem to be more natural laws - though even these are manifested by shared mortal conviction rather than physical laws. Each of these worlds is huge - with great oceans and multiple continents. And while they are stable enough for mortals to survive, they are still fundamentally strange and magical places, dominated by their respective wind of magic. Additionally, while the people of the Old World thought the Realm of Chaos was entirely dominated by the Dark Gods and their daemonic legions, in truth the greater Realm of Chaos is populated by a dizzying variety of strange and ancient entities, creatures mortals never knew simply because they had no interest in invading and consuming mortal worlds. And while the Dark Gods and their daemonic legions had lost interest in the mortal realms once they had consumed their fill, many other strange entities were drawn to the new Realms and chose to make their homes there - beings that might not be as malevolent as the Dark Gods and their daemonic hosts, but are often no less dangerous. Further majestic, terrible, and godlike entities were imagined into existence by the mortals of the Realms in the same way as the physical spaces of the realms were formed. Whether warp-born or shaped by the minds of mortals, the greatest of these entities came to be called 'Godbeasts', and their power in some cases dwarfed even the Incarnate Gods themselves.
The Mortal Realms float within something of a void in the Realm of Chaos, the wild magic of Chaos seemingly calmed by the eightfold Winds of Magic. There are many thousands of miles of nothing between most of the realms, and each would be completely isolated from the others were it not for the Realm Gates. These arcane portals connect two different points - which can either be within the same realm or can be two entirely different realms. The greatest of these gates, large enough for an army to pass through shoulder to shoulder, each connects one of the reams to a continent-sized smaller Realm called the All Points, formed from magic swirling into a central point from all eight Mortal Realms.
How the mortal races first came to inhabit the Mortal Realms is a bit of a mystery. Some sources say there were living survivors of the World That Was, clinging onto chunks of their world and somehow surviving until those chunks settled into the Inlands of a Mortal Realm, though this seems unlikely. Others say the mortal races didn't appear until the Incarnate Gods reformed, and that the gods then set about plucking the surviving souls from the storms of magic surrounding their realms to create new mortals to serve and worship them. However they came to be, these first Humans, Aelves, Duardin, Orruks, Grots, Ogors, Seraphon, and more found the early Mortal Realms to be a dangerous place, already overrun with strange creatures, Godbeasts, and most of all the Children of Chaos - great roving tribes of Beastmen, who considered the Mortal Realms to be their inheritance and birthright, gifted to them by their Dark Gods. The mortal races spread and formed civilizations, but the realms overall remained wild and untamed, far too inhospitable for any one people to settle on their own, even with the power of an Incarnate Deity behind them.
Before the Age of Myth: Shyish in the Early Realms.
Before the Age of Myth, there were no living mortals in Shyish, the Realm of Death. Governed by mortal beliefs and emotions about their own inevitable ends, Shyish was uniquiely inhospitable to the living. Even as mortal races began to appear and their civilizations spread among the other realms, none could travel to Shyish, for the Endgate leading from the All Points to Shyish was guarded by terrifying Hydragors, the spawn of the Godbeast Gnorros. Any unlucky mortals who happened to stumble through smaller, more obscure Realmgates were quickly overtaken by the Realms many dangers - from horrific godbeasts to hungry ghosts to terrain and weather conditions that were simply incapable of sustaining life. The peoples of the Mortal Realms knew of Shyish, and that the souls of the departed were drawn there from all the other realms, but in the absence of direct knowledge they were left to imagine what the Realm of Death was like, and these imaginings took on a reality of their own as ghostly afterlives and underworlds in the storm of amethyst magic surrounding Shyish. When faith in a particular afterlife spread and solidified, this caused the afterlife that faith created to take on a more stable physical form and drift inwards, leaving the wild magic of the Realm's perimeter to join the more stable Inner Heartlands of the realm, eventually settling among the other afterlives that preceded it. If faith in that afterlife eventually faded away, then the afterlife and those spirits who existed there likewise faded away, leaving behind empty wastelands.
These afterlives were as varied as the peoples who imagined them. Hallost, the Land of Dead Heroes, where the spirits of warrior tribes spend their days battling an endless tide of great monsters and beasts, dying each night only to be roused again to glorious battle the next day. Athanasia, an afterlife of peace and enlightenment where Souls rest and study and await their rebirth. The Latchkey Isle, a paradise filled with wonderous treasures protected by devious traps, intricate locks, and watchful guardians, where the spirits of the greatest adventurers and thieves spend eternity challenging themselves to ever more daring heists. Ossia, a land of endless toil where those who spent their entire lives serving priest-kings in life continued to serve those same priest-kings in death, forever expanding their grand necropolis temples and building ever greater monuments in their monarch's name. Many of these afterlives were ruled over by their own god or gods of death, imagined into being by the faith of mortals just as the afterlives they ruled were, but none the less enjoying powers rivaling that of Incarnate Gods and Godbeasts, at least within their own afterlife or underworld.
When mortals died, their souls were drawn to the afterlife most closely matching their own beliefs, and in this way many mortals granted themselves eternal rewards, or unwittingly cursed themselves to damnations of their own choosing. However, they didn't always find themselves in quite the hereafter they expected. As the various afterlives settled together in the heartlands of Shyish, they came into contact and could influence each other. In some places this resulted in peaceful coexistence or open trade, but in other places wars broke out as the masters of one underworld attempted to conquer or exterminate another. In this way a mortal soul expecting an afterlife of quiet contemplation could find themselves drafted into a war between heavens and hells they had never heard of. Other afterlives weren't the only threat, either. Shyish had it's own menagerie of strange creatures and terrible godbeasts, and as the Realm of Death, governed by mortal emotions about their own inevitable ends, these beasts were far more terrible than those found in any other Mortal Realm.
What Shyish did not have was an Incarnate Deity of its own, for while the other incarnates were reborn as deities in their own Realms, and set about fostering their own followers, Nagash was mysteriously absent. Without the Great Necromancer, in these early days Shyish was left to its own devices, with no guiding hand to impose order upon it.
These afterlives were as varied as the peoples who imagined them. Hallost, the Land of Dead Heroes, where the spirits of warrior tribes spend their days battling an endless tide of great monsters and beasts, dying each night only to be roused again to glorious battle the next day. Athanasia, an afterlife of peace and enlightenment where Souls rest and study and await their rebirth. The Latchkey Isle, a paradise filled with wonderous treasures protected by devious traps, intricate locks, and watchful guardians, where the spirits of the greatest adventurers and thieves spend eternity challenging themselves to ever more daring heists. Ossia, a land of endless toil where those who spent their entire lives serving priest-kings in life continued to serve those same priest-kings in death, forever expanding their grand necropolis temples and building ever greater monuments in their monarch's name. Many of these afterlives were ruled over by their own god or gods of death, imagined into being by the faith of mortals just as the afterlives they ruled were, but none the less enjoying powers rivaling that of Incarnate Gods and Godbeasts, at least within their own afterlife or underworld.
When mortals died, their souls were drawn to the afterlife most closely matching their own beliefs, and in this way many mortals granted themselves eternal rewards, or unwittingly cursed themselves to damnations of their own choosing. However, they didn't always find themselves in quite the hereafter they expected. As the various afterlives settled together in the heartlands of Shyish, they came into contact and could influence each other. In some places this resulted in peaceful coexistence or open trade, but in other places wars broke out as the masters of one underworld attempted to conquer or exterminate another. In this way a mortal soul expecting an afterlife of quiet contemplation could find themselves drafted into a war between heavens and hells they had never heard of. Other afterlives weren't the only threat, either. Shyish had it's own menagerie of strange creatures and terrible godbeasts, and as the Realm of Death, governed by mortal emotions about their own inevitable ends, these beasts were far more terrible than those found in any other Mortal Realm.
What Shyish did not have was an Incarnate Deity of its own, for while the other incarnates were reborn as deities in their own Realms, and set about fostering their own followers, Nagash was mysteriously absent. Without the Great Necromancer, in these early days Shyish was left to its own devices, with no guiding hand to impose order upon it.
The Age of Myth: The Return of Sigmar and Nagash.
In these early days when the Mortal Realms were first taking form, Mallus - the molten core of the World That Was, was still streaking through the Realm of Chaos like a mighty, twin-tailed comet. And clinging to that comet for dear life was Sigmar, the Incarnate Deity of Azyr.
Just how long exactly Sigmar traveled like this is unclear, especially since time in the Realm of Chaos drifts in strange ways the further one wanders from the Mortal Realms. Eventually though, Mallus was plucked out of the sky by the Godbeast Dracothion, the Celestial Drake and friend to Sigmar, and placed in the firmament above Azyr, the Realm of Heavens, to which both Sigmar and Dracothion are mystically connected. From here Sigmar was able to pass into the All Points, and from there the God of Storms proceeded to visit each of the Mortal Realms in turn, even slipping past the monstrous hydragors to visit the Realm of Death.
He found his fellow Incarnate Deities - some still sleeping, others struggling on their own to foster their chosen peoples. He saw civilization struggling to survive in the corners while all around the Realms disorder, beasts, and monsters reigned. And, after seeing so much of the Realm of Chaos on his celestial voyage, Sigmar knew that time to establish and fortify civilization within the Mortal Realms was limited, for eventually these new worlds would attract the attention of the Dark Gods just as the Old World had, and in their current fractured state there would be no way to defend them.
Sigmar knew he needed to re-forge the Alliance of the Incarnates, but to begin this new Alliance he would need at least one ally not already overwhelmed with the task of protecting their own struggling people. And for this, to his own everlasting regret, he eventually turned to his old enemy, Nagash.
Sigmar found Nagash sealed away beneath a great mountain cairn of Gravesand, the realmstone of Shyish. The entropic properties of so much Gravesand was enough to immobilize even the Great Necromancer. How Nagash came to be this way is unclear. Some early stories say the Dark Gods went out of their way to find and seal the spirit of Nagash before they had even finished consuming the souls of the old world, for among all who had opposed them it was Nagash alone that they feared. Others suggest that a great quantity of Gravesand was naturally drawn to Nagash's soul during the formation of Shyish by the sheer gravity of his dark power and malevolent will.
In any event, the Mortal Realms would never have known the curse of undeath had Sigmar not made the fateful decision to free Nagash, in exchange for the Great Necromancer's pledge to join Sigmar's Grand Alliance against the Dark Gods, and to help Sigmar bring order to the Mortal Realms. This Nagash readily swore, for he has always sought to impose his own terrible order upon the world.
In time the differences between Sigmar's and Nagash's vision of what 'order' meant for the Realms would prove to be fundamentally incompatible, but in the early days of the alliance the two gods, so unalike in aspect, fought side by side as brothers, laying low the horrors of the Realms, bringing unexpected salvation to their peoples, and bringing their fellow Incarnate deities one by one into Sigmar's Grand Alliance - though some, as with Gorkamorka, required persuasion by force of battle. Still, there seemed no foe, no godbeast, no power in the Realms that could match the might of Sigmar and Nagash working together, and it was this alliance of opposites, even more so than the greater allience they came to spearhead, that truely ushered in the Age of Myth.
Just how long exactly Sigmar traveled like this is unclear, especially since time in the Realm of Chaos drifts in strange ways the further one wanders from the Mortal Realms. Eventually though, Mallus was plucked out of the sky by the Godbeast Dracothion, the Celestial Drake and friend to Sigmar, and placed in the firmament above Azyr, the Realm of Heavens, to which both Sigmar and Dracothion are mystically connected. From here Sigmar was able to pass into the All Points, and from there the God of Storms proceeded to visit each of the Mortal Realms in turn, even slipping past the monstrous hydragors to visit the Realm of Death.
He found his fellow Incarnate Deities - some still sleeping, others struggling on their own to foster their chosen peoples. He saw civilization struggling to survive in the corners while all around the Realms disorder, beasts, and monsters reigned. And, after seeing so much of the Realm of Chaos on his celestial voyage, Sigmar knew that time to establish and fortify civilization within the Mortal Realms was limited, for eventually these new worlds would attract the attention of the Dark Gods just as the Old World had, and in their current fractured state there would be no way to defend them.
Sigmar knew he needed to re-forge the Alliance of the Incarnates, but to begin this new Alliance he would need at least one ally not already overwhelmed with the task of protecting their own struggling people. And for this, to his own everlasting regret, he eventually turned to his old enemy, Nagash.
Sigmar found Nagash sealed away beneath a great mountain cairn of Gravesand, the realmstone of Shyish. The entropic properties of so much Gravesand was enough to immobilize even the Great Necromancer. How Nagash came to be this way is unclear. Some early stories say the Dark Gods went out of their way to find and seal the spirit of Nagash before they had even finished consuming the souls of the old world, for among all who had opposed them it was Nagash alone that they feared. Others suggest that a great quantity of Gravesand was naturally drawn to Nagash's soul during the formation of Shyish by the sheer gravity of his dark power and malevolent will.
In any event, the Mortal Realms would never have known the curse of undeath had Sigmar not made the fateful decision to free Nagash, in exchange for the Great Necromancer's pledge to join Sigmar's Grand Alliance against the Dark Gods, and to help Sigmar bring order to the Mortal Realms. This Nagash readily swore, for he has always sought to impose his own terrible order upon the world.
In time the differences between Sigmar's and Nagash's vision of what 'order' meant for the Realms would prove to be fundamentally incompatible, but in the early days of the alliance the two gods, so unalike in aspect, fought side by side as brothers, laying low the horrors of the Realms, bringing unexpected salvation to their peoples, and bringing their fellow Incarnate deities one by one into Sigmar's Grand Alliance - though some, as with Gorkamorka, required persuasion by force of battle. Still, there seemed no foe, no godbeast, no power in the Realms that could match the might of Sigmar and Nagash working together, and it was this alliance of opposites, even more so than the greater allience they came to spearhead, that truely ushered in the Age of Myth.
The Age of Myth: Settling the Realms.
With the Grand Alliance of the Gods newly forged, Sigmar turned his attention to the Settling of the Mortal Realms, and Nagash and his Undead Legions were instrumental to this effort. Uncountable throngs of skeletal laborers working day and night without end at the Great Necromancer's command built the early cities, fortifications, roads, and walls of Sigmarite Civilization in all eight Realms. The ruins of these great works still bear reliefs depicting the contributions of the dead.
Fearless, tireless, and pitiless, Nagash's armies fought back the hordes of beastmen mile by mile, and brought the Realms to heel. Even the Endgate was thrown open and the terrible Hydragores slain, allowing Sigmarite civilization to populate the inner heartlands of Shyish - much to the consternation of some of the spirits who resided there.
But the residents of Shyish's afterlives had more immediate problems to contend with than unwanted human settlers. Once free of his Gravesand tomb, Nagash would tolerate no rivals within his domain. He quickly set about conquering Shyish, pitting the undead against the dead in the Wars of the Dead. Resist as they might, though, the forces of the various afterlives could not hope to oppose the unliving embodiment of Shyish itself, especially as they were too divided against one another to unite in mutual defense. One by one they fell, and their gods were consumed by Nagash. Even mighty Ossia fell, after their greatest general, Katakros, defected to Nagash's side, becomeing the Great Necromancer's foremost battle tactitian and seige engineer.
In this way the Mortal Realms brought into the order of the Grand Alliance of Sigmar, and, together with the foremost Slaan wizards of the Seraphon, the Incarnate Gods were able to seal away many otherwise unkillable terrors of the realms - including the earthquake god Kragonos. For a single, glorious, golden age, it seemed Sigmar's plan had succeeded, and the people of the Mortal Realms would forever be free from the terrible fate that befell the World That Was.
Fearless, tireless, and pitiless, Nagash's armies fought back the hordes of beastmen mile by mile, and brought the Realms to heel. Even the Endgate was thrown open and the terrible Hydragores slain, allowing Sigmarite civilization to populate the inner heartlands of Shyish - much to the consternation of some of the spirits who resided there.
But the residents of Shyish's afterlives had more immediate problems to contend with than unwanted human settlers. Once free of his Gravesand tomb, Nagash would tolerate no rivals within his domain. He quickly set about conquering Shyish, pitting the undead against the dead in the Wars of the Dead. Resist as they might, though, the forces of the various afterlives could not hope to oppose the unliving embodiment of Shyish itself, especially as they were too divided against one another to unite in mutual defense. One by one they fell, and their gods were consumed by Nagash. Even mighty Ossia fell, after their greatest general, Katakros, defected to Nagash's side, becomeing the Great Necromancer's foremost battle tactitian and seige engineer.
In this way the Mortal Realms brought into the order of the Grand Alliance of Sigmar, and, together with the foremost Slaan wizards of the Seraphon, the Incarnate Gods were able to seal away many otherwise unkillable terrors of the realms - including the earthquake god Kragonos. For a single, glorious, golden age, it seemed Sigmar's plan had succeeded, and the people of the Mortal Realms would forever be free from the terrible fate that befell the World That Was.
The Age of Myth: the Mortarchs.
Nagash was a busy god in the Age of Myth. Conquering Shyish, slaying cosmic horrors and rampaging godbeasts, driving back the beastmen hordes, managing diplomatic ties with gods and mortals that feared and distrusted the undead, building the infrastructure of Sigmarite civilization across all 8 Mortal Realms, and even making time for a few personal projects. The God of Death can spread his mind far and wide, but even he cannot be everywhere at once.
Nagash needed lieutenants that could work his will where he was not, so he chose a number of supremely talented and powerful undead to serve as his Mortarchs. Each was already a legendary undead warlord in their own right, with long and bloody histories. As part of their ascension they are soul-bound to Nagash himself, and share in a sliver of his own nightmarish power. This dark blessing expands their own necromantic abilities, dramatically increases their dominion over other undead, and renders them not just undead but truly deathless - for their souls cannot be destroyed while the dark god they serve yet endures.
However, these gifts come at a terrible price, for Nagash's dominion over the Mortarchs is absolute. They may have their plots and plans, they may seek to subvert him in subtle ways, but any action they might wish to take against the explicit will of Nagash must be made through cat's paws, as the Mortarchs are physically incapable of directly defying the Great Necromancer's word. Such is his dominion over them that Arkhan the Black, the first of the Mortarchs, has openly wondered whether the Mortarchs are really themselves at all, or whether perhaps they are simply pieces of Nagash shaped in the likeness of his favored servants of old.
Though the exact number and identities of the Mortarchs in the Age of Myth have been lost to the fog of time, Five in particular are remembered, their cruel legacies persisting into the modern day.
First among the Mortarchs, as it has always been, was Arkhan the Black, the Liche King, the Mortarch of Sacrament, and the Left Hand of Death. Arkhan is the closest thing the megalomaniacal Incarnate Deity of Shyish has ever had to a friend, and is the only creature in all the Realms that the Great Necromancer trusts with the full scope and detail of his dark designs.
A supremely skilled necromantic adept who has studdied at Nagash's foot from time immemorial, Arkhan's innate talents are supplemented by artefacts of fell power hand crafted by Nagash. With these tools, Arkhan is capable of working necromantic rituals of a scale and subtlety surpassed only by the Great Necromancer himself. He applies these tools and talents to Nagash's most critical and sensitive missions, those that cannot be trusted to lesser Mortarchs, and in this way the Mortarch of Sacrament advances Nagash's terrible designs in the shadows, keeping them hidden until it is too late for his enemies to stop them.
Arkhan's very first task was to build Nagashizaar, Nagash's terrible fortress capitol, at the dead center of Shyish, and it is from here that the forces of undeath launched their campaign to unify the Realm of Death in the Great Necromancer's dread image.
Three of the Mortarchs were Vampires. Among the strongest varieties of undead, Vampires are unliving focal points of death magic, invigorating lesser undead around them by their very presence. Vampires also retain all the knowledge and cunning of their once living minds, and supplement this with an instinctive understanding of necromantic sorcery and a ceaseless hunger for mortal blood that made them among the foremost foes of the living in the World That Was.
Less helpfully to Nagash's designs, vampires are also deceitful and ambitious to a fault, and tainted by further vices retained from their mortal lives. Furthermore, they are constantly on the edge of being overwhelmed by their own dark, predatory hunger and fell magical nature. Many vampires, perhaps even all of them eventually, are doomed to lose their human minds and bodies, degenerating into nightmarish beasts. Even so, the strengths of vampires were too great for Nagash to ignore, and he had long ago learned to mitigate the runaway ambitions of vampyric servants by playing them off of one another. Unable to truly die, the souls of several vampires had survived the Old World's destruction, and three of these Nagash is said to have pulled from the void to serve as his generals, introducing the Soulblight Curse to the mortal realms. These were:
Neferata, The Mortarch of Blood and the Queen of Mysteries. The very first vampire, Neferata is a being nearly as ancient as Nagash and Arkhan. While a formidable general in her own right, directing her warriors in battle from high above the fray on the back of her Dread Abyssal, Nagadron, Neferata's true talents are in diplomacy, espionage, and political manipulation. No other undead had ever been so adept at managing information and disinformation networks, using the Soulblight Curse to spread her agents throughout the World That Was.
In the Mortal Realms she turned those same talants to managing the alliance between Nagash's undead and the other god's mortal followers, undermining those who advised caution when dealing with the undead, planting her own agents among the leadership of the other races, turning their attentions towards whatever Nagash wished them to see, and away from what he did not. She also managed the governance of the mortal outposts within Shyish, cultivating an elite aristocracy devoted to her alone and founding the nation of Nefertaria, and its grand capitol Nulahmia, in the glorious goldan image of her long-lost homeland.
Ushoran, the Lord of Masques, the Carrion King, and the Mortarch of Delusion. A blood relation of Neferata in life, Ushoran was once a fell prince of the undead, resplendent in his dark glory. In time, however, he and his bloodline were hounded to the margines of the Old World by their fellow vampires for a perceived slight against the Queen of Mysteries. Though Ushoran's line survived, the extremes they were forced to resort to, including subsiting on the blood of beasts or even corpsesblood, twisted them into hideous monsters clinging to the ragged edge of their sanity. Yet such was Ushoran's mastery of vampyric illusions that he was able to convince both himself and his followers that they retained their exalted nobility and their finery of old. It was this supernatural power of deception which motivated Nagash to revive Ushoran in the Mortal Realms.
With hypnotic powers greatly enhanced by his fell master, Ushoran founded and cultivated a devoted cult among the mortals of the Realms, compelling them to see Nagash as a belevolent deity of rightful endings and peaceful rest, and to see Ushoran himself not as the hideous monstrosity he was but rather as the Sombre Paladin, a divine exemplar chosen to preserve and defend the natural order of Shyish and its Underworlds. None were more completely beguiled by this deception than Ushoran himself - a break from reality that may have been responsible for the Mortarch's eventual fall from Nagash's favour when the dark reality of Nagash's ambitions diverged too far from the noble fantasy Ushoran had constructed for himself.
Mannfred von Carstein, the Mortarch of Night. While Mannfred was the spawn of a much younger generation of vampires in the Old World, as a survivor of the World That Was Mannfred was none the less unspeakably ancient by the standards of the Mortal Realms. A singularly selfish and duplicitous creature, it was Mannfred who betrayed the alliance of the Incarnates and doomed the World That Was. That Nagash would willingly choose to revive such an untrustworthy servant is testament to just how useful Mannfred can be.
The Mortarch of Night is a necromantic prodigy of strength and skill second only to Nagash himself - even Arkhan the Black would be no match for Mannfred's raw power without the prodigious arcane treasures and secret rites bestowed by his fell master. Mannfred is also blessed with a cruel tactical cunning, able to draw foes into deadly traps, or identify and strike at unexpected weaknesses. Mannfred is such a master of deceit that he's often able to anticipate his opponents traps and evade them with ease.
Where Neferata's gifts were turned on Nagash's allies, and Ushoran's influence held sway over the Death God's worshippers, Mannfred's talents were unleashed on the Great Necromancer's enemies, sapping the strength of beastman hordes and rebellious underworlds alike before swooping in for the kill on his Dread Abyssal, Ashigaroth. In the wild outskirts of Shyish he carved a dominion of his own, Carstinia, forged in a petty, self-serving parody of his homeland in the World That Was. However, Mannfred's memories of home were mostly bitter and filled with regret, so in the end he spent little time there, and left its governance to his progeny.
The last Mortarch still remembered from the Age of Myth is Katakros, Mortarch of the Necropolis. As the brilliant general of the underworld of Ossia, Katakros successfully repelled Nagash's forces for many years, deflecting the attacks of even Nagash's Mortarchs, until Nagash himself was forced to intervene directly.
Katakros soon saw that the Great Necromancer's overwhelming power was beyond any strategy he could devise. With no hope of victory, he instead defected to Nagash's side, bringing with him all his battle plans, treatises on the art of war, and designs for seige engines, war machines, and fortresses, along with hastily drafted notes on how these designs might be further enhanced through the necromantic arts.
Nagash was greatly impressed by these works, and by Katakros's successes against his favored generals, and so rather than destroy the Ossian for having opposed him for so long, the Great Necromancer instead elevated Katakros to the rank of Mortarch, and placed him in charge of the campaign to unify Shyish, as well as the consolidation and ordering of the various afterlives into a single great Necropolis of the Undead once the Wars of the Dead were complete.
Nagash needed lieutenants that could work his will where he was not, so he chose a number of supremely talented and powerful undead to serve as his Mortarchs. Each was already a legendary undead warlord in their own right, with long and bloody histories. As part of their ascension they are soul-bound to Nagash himself, and share in a sliver of his own nightmarish power. This dark blessing expands their own necromantic abilities, dramatically increases their dominion over other undead, and renders them not just undead but truly deathless - for their souls cannot be destroyed while the dark god they serve yet endures.
However, these gifts come at a terrible price, for Nagash's dominion over the Mortarchs is absolute. They may have their plots and plans, they may seek to subvert him in subtle ways, but any action they might wish to take against the explicit will of Nagash must be made through cat's paws, as the Mortarchs are physically incapable of directly defying the Great Necromancer's word. Such is his dominion over them that Arkhan the Black, the first of the Mortarchs, has openly wondered whether the Mortarchs are really themselves at all, or whether perhaps they are simply pieces of Nagash shaped in the likeness of his favored servants of old.
Though the exact number and identities of the Mortarchs in the Age of Myth have been lost to the fog of time, Five in particular are remembered, their cruel legacies persisting into the modern day.
First among the Mortarchs, as it has always been, was Arkhan the Black, the Liche King, the Mortarch of Sacrament, and the Left Hand of Death. Arkhan is the closest thing the megalomaniacal Incarnate Deity of Shyish has ever had to a friend, and is the only creature in all the Realms that the Great Necromancer trusts with the full scope and detail of his dark designs.
A supremely skilled necromantic adept who has studdied at Nagash's foot from time immemorial, Arkhan's innate talents are supplemented by artefacts of fell power hand crafted by Nagash. With these tools, Arkhan is capable of working necromantic rituals of a scale and subtlety surpassed only by the Great Necromancer himself. He applies these tools and talents to Nagash's most critical and sensitive missions, those that cannot be trusted to lesser Mortarchs, and in this way the Mortarch of Sacrament advances Nagash's terrible designs in the shadows, keeping them hidden until it is too late for his enemies to stop them.
Arkhan's very first task was to build Nagashizaar, Nagash's terrible fortress capitol, at the dead center of Shyish, and it is from here that the forces of undeath launched their campaign to unify the Realm of Death in the Great Necromancer's dread image.
Three of the Mortarchs were Vampires. Among the strongest varieties of undead, Vampires are unliving focal points of death magic, invigorating lesser undead around them by their very presence. Vampires also retain all the knowledge and cunning of their once living minds, and supplement this with an instinctive understanding of necromantic sorcery and a ceaseless hunger for mortal blood that made them among the foremost foes of the living in the World That Was.
Less helpfully to Nagash's designs, vampires are also deceitful and ambitious to a fault, and tainted by further vices retained from their mortal lives. Furthermore, they are constantly on the edge of being overwhelmed by their own dark, predatory hunger and fell magical nature. Many vampires, perhaps even all of them eventually, are doomed to lose their human minds and bodies, degenerating into nightmarish beasts. Even so, the strengths of vampires were too great for Nagash to ignore, and he had long ago learned to mitigate the runaway ambitions of vampyric servants by playing them off of one another. Unable to truly die, the souls of several vampires had survived the Old World's destruction, and three of these Nagash is said to have pulled from the void to serve as his generals, introducing the Soulblight Curse to the mortal realms. These were:
Neferata, The Mortarch of Blood and the Queen of Mysteries. The very first vampire, Neferata is a being nearly as ancient as Nagash and Arkhan. While a formidable general in her own right, directing her warriors in battle from high above the fray on the back of her Dread Abyssal, Nagadron, Neferata's true talents are in diplomacy, espionage, and political manipulation. No other undead had ever been so adept at managing information and disinformation networks, using the Soulblight Curse to spread her agents throughout the World That Was.
In the Mortal Realms she turned those same talants to managing the alliance between Nagash's undead and the other god's mortal followers, undermining those who advised caution when dealing with the undead, planting her own agents among the leadership of the other races, turning their attentions towards whatever Nagash wished them to see, and away from what he did not. She also managed the governance of the mortal outposts within Shyish, cultivating an elite aristocracy devoted to her alone and founding the nation of Nefertaria, and its grand capitol Nulahmia, in the glorious goldan image of her long-lost homeland.
Ushoran, the Lord of Masques, the Carrion King, and the Mortarch of Delusion. A blood relation of Neferata in life, Ushoran was once a fell prince of the undead, resplendent in his dark glory. In time, however, he and his bloodline were hounded to the margines of the Old World by their fellow vampires for a perceived slight against the Queen of Mysteries. Though Ushoran's line survived, the extremes they were forced to resort to, including subsiting on the blood of beasts or even corpsesblood, twisted them into hideous monsters clinging to the ragged edge of their sanity. Yet such was Ushoran's mastery of vampyric illusions that he was able to convince both himself and his followers that they retained their exalted nobility and their finery of old. It was this supernatural power of deception which motivated Nagash to revive Ushoran in the Mortal Realms.
With hypnotic powers greatly enhanced by his fell master, Ushoran founded and cultivated a devoted cult among the mortals of the Realms, compelling them to see Nagash as a belevolent deity of rightful endings and peaceful rest, and to see Ushoran himself not as the hideous monstrosity he was but rather as the Sombre Paladin, a divine exemplar chosen to preserve and defend the natural order of Shyish and its Underworlds. None were more completely beguiled by this deception than Ushoran himself - a break from reality that may have been responsible for the Mortarch's eventual fall from Nagash's favour when the dark reality of Nagash's ambitions diverged too far from the noble fantasy Ushoran had constructed for himself.
Mannfred von Carstein, the Mortarch of Night. While Mannfred was the spawn of a much younger generation of vampires in the Old World, as a survivor of the World That Was Mannfred was none the less unspeakably ancient by the standards of the Mortal Realms. A singularly selfish and duplicitous creature, it was Mannfred who betrayed the alliance of the Incarnates and doomed the World That Was. That Nagash would willingly choose to revive such an untrustworthy servant is testament to just how useful Mannfred can be.
The Mortarch of Night is a necromantic prodigy of strength and skill second only to Nagash himself - even Arkhan the Black would be no match for Mannfred's raw power without the prodigious arcane treasures and secret rites bestowed by his fell master. Mannfred is also blessed with a cruel tactical cunning, able to draw foes into deadly traps, or identify and strike at unexpected weaknesses. Mannfred is such a master of deceit that he's often able to anticipate his opponents traps and evade them with ease.
Where Neferata's gifts were turned on Nagash's allies, and Ushoran's influence held sway over the Death God's worshippers, Mannfred's talents were unleashed on the Great Necromancer's enemies, sapping the strength of beastman hordes and rebellious underworlds alike before swooping in for the kill on his Dread Abyssal, Ashigaroth. In the wild outskirts of Shyish he carved a dominion of his own, Carstinia, forged in a petty, self-serving parody of his homeland in the World That Was. However, Mannfred's memories of home were mostly bitter and filled with regret, so in the end he spent little time there, and left its governance to his progeny.
The last Mortarch still remembered from the Age of Myth is Katakros, Mortarch of the Necropolis. As the brilliant general of the underworld of Ossia, Katakros successfully repelled Nagash's forces for many years, deflecting the attacks of even Nagash's Mortarchs, until Nagash himself was forced to intervene directly.
Katakros soon saw that the Great Necromancer's overwhelming power was beyond any strategy he could devise. With no hope of victory, he instead defected to Nagash's side, bringing with him all his battle plans, treatises on the art of war, and designs for seige engines, war machines, and fortresses, along with hastily drafted notes on how these designs might be further enhanced through the necromantic arts.
Nagash was greatly impressed by these works, and by Katakros's successes against his favored generals, and so rather than destroy the Ossian for having opposed him for so long, the Great Necromancer instead elevated Katakros to the rank of Mortarch, and placed him in charge of the campaign to unify Shyish, as well as the consolidation and ordering of the various afterlives into a single great Necropolis of the Undead once the Wars of the Dead were complete.
The Age of Myth: the Vision of Nagash
Sigmar's vision of harmony and order for the Mortal Realms seemed to be a great success, but Nagash knew that it couldn't last. Chaos and disorder is the fundamental nature of all life, most especially that of the intelligent mortal races. All living things die, and yet so too do they struggle against their inevitable end. The fundamental irrationality of that struggle is the fuel that powers Chaos. The Dark Gods themselves are, at their core, mere manifestations of the mortal races' defiant will to live. As long as life persisted, the threat of Chaos would inevitably return. But that return needn't come soon. Nagash would honor his pact with Sigmar for as long as order within the Realms endured, even as he prepared for the day that it would all fall apart.
During his long imprisonment beneath the cairn of gravesand, Nagash had been carefully examining his failures in the World That Was, up to and including the final failure that led to the world's destruction. He knew that all life must be extinguished in order to obtain final victory over the Chaos Gods, but his attempts to achieve this end had all met with misfortune and disappointment. After long contemplation, Nagash concluded that, loathe as he was to admit it, the root of these failures was himself.
As powerful as he was, he was not powerful enough to wipe out life without relying on a great Legion of undead soldiers to act as his hands. He could raise - had raised - impossibly vast armies of the undead, legions more than capable of stamping out all life, but lesser undead like skeletons and zombies lacked the independence necessary to operate on their own, and Nagash could not be simultaneously present to lead all the forces he could raise on every front at once. Greater undead like Vampires, Wights, and Liches boasted superior physical and arcane powers, while retaining the intelligence and awareness needed to lead Nagash's armies where he could not. However, they also retained the petty vices and personal failings they had in life, emotional weaknesses and selfish ambitions that constantly undermined the Great Necromancer's work. Now as in the past Nagash delegated power and authority to a handful of Mortarchs, over whom he maintained direct control and who in turn could keep lesser generals and lieutenants in line, but this top down chain of authority made Nagash himself a single point of failure. And, time and again, he had failed.
Time and again, Nagash had underestimated the strength and cunning of his foes, had acted too brazenly in the mistaken belief that none were mighty enough to oppose him. Yet always some unforeseen champion - Alcadizaar, Settra, Sigmar, Archaon - had managed to strike him down. Though these defeats were always temporary, though the Great Necromancer always returned in time, in his absence his mortarchs would turn on each other, the lieutenants beneath them would scatter, and the greater undead hoard, left in leaderless disarray, would collapse. Yes, Nagash was a god in truth now, but then again so too were some of the very rivals who had laid him low in the past.
The interdependence between Nagash and his Undead Legions was the weakness he needed to expunge. Either he needed to be strong enough to personally snuff out all life, or else he needed a legion of the dead that could be trusted to continue working towards that purpose even should Nagash himself be temporarily struck down. With two paths open to ultimate victory, Nagash devised two plans to pursue.
The first plan was to absorb the entire power of Shyish into Nagash's person, which would make the Great Necromancer powerful enough to personally wipe all life from the Mortal Realms, before tearing the Dark Gods from their thrones with his boney claws. Nagash had attempted something similar to the first plan in the closing days of the World That Was, setting his mortarchs and their undead legions to delay the forces of the Dark Gods while he absorbed the Wind of Shyish through his Black Pyramid. But this method had been too slow, and too obvious, giving his enemies the opportunity to disrupt the ritual and destroy the pyramid. The new Realm of Shyish, and its peculiar realmstone, gravesand, presented a unique opportunity though. By shifting the bulk of Shyish's gravesand from the perimiter of the realm to its center, Nagash could work a ritual to invert the natural flow of magic within shyish, causing it all to suddenly cascade into Nagash in a single terrible moment. So long as the gravesand was collected and the ritual prepared in secret, Nagash's enemies would have no time to react.
To enact his ritual, Nagash would need a huge quantity of gravesand transported thousands of miles from the perimeter of Shyish to its very center. Furthermore, the gravesand at the realm's edge was so saturated with death magic that even an already-dead skeleton could transport but a single grain at a time or else it would be ground to dust by the realmstone's entropic energies before it could reach its destination. To move so much of it, so far, and in complete secrecy, would be the work of millennia. None the less, Nagash tasked Arkhan with collecting the needed gravesand, and so in the hidden pathways of Shyish trains of millions of skeletons began traveling in single file from the perimeter of the realm to Nagashizzar at its heart, each clutching a single grain of precious gravesand in their bony fingers. In the mean time, Sigmar's Grand Alliance was the best chance of holding Chaos at bay long enough for the work to be completed.
While time meant nothing to Nagash, the scale of time involved meant that, no matter how carefully and quietly he proceeded, there was a real chance that his enemies would discover the work before it was finished. If they did, then Nagash's rivals within Sigmar's Grand Alliance of Order would unite against him, potentially overwhelming and imprisoning him, or perhaps even banishing his spirit from the Mortal Realms altogether. Nagash deemed the potential for complete victory to be worth this risk, and yet to insure against the possibility of such failure Nagash also pursued a second plan in parallel to the first, one that could succeed even if Nagash himself were removed from the picture. This would be a new kind of undead army, comprised of a new kind of undead soldier - one that retained the 'positive' qualities of intelligence, independence, drive, and hatred from life, yet was simultaneously devoid of the 'weaknesses' of willfulness, greed, ambition, honor, regret, and compassion. The Great Necromancer had already been experimenting with new forms of undead in the latter days of the Old World, creating the Morghasts - monstrous undead atrocities to act as his personal bodyguard and the vanguard of his armies. These concepts he refined further into the Ossiarch Legions.
An ossiarch's body would not be limited to the haphazard remains of an individual creature. Rather they would be hand-crafted constructs assembled from magically reshaped bone taken from many sources and reinforced with enchanted metals to create bespoke forms according to Nagash's purpose for them. Their souls would be similarly hand crafted - with dozens of mortal souls carefully teased apart, the qualities most useful to Nagash retained and re-combined to form a single ossiarch soul that would then be bound to an indestructible soul stone affixed to its construct body. Retaining mortal intelligence but devoid of their personal weaknesses, the Ossiarch Legions would be the perfect undead army - one that would continue to labour tirelessly towards Nagash's vision even without Nagash's direct oversignt to direct them.
Early experiments proved promising, but the process of constructing even a single ossiarch warrior would prove incredibly time and resource intensive, so accumulating a Realms-conquering army of them would again be the work of millennia. Once more this most sensitive task was assigned to Arkhan, so while Nagash's undead were building Sigmar's cities, Arkhan's were secretly carving out vast underground tomb complexes in the most inhospitable corners of the Mortal Realms, where construction of the Ossiarch Legions could continue in secret, even if Nagash's enemies discovered his planned betrayal and scoured Shyish from top to bottom to undo his works.
While Nagash trusted Arkhan with the task of assembling the Ossiarchs, and keeping them secret, he knew he would need another to lead them once they were ready for war. Arkhan's loyalty and arcane talents were without flaw, but while he was a veteran field commander with ages of experience, he was no battlefield genius. Meanwhile the Vampire Mortarchs simply could not be trusted with command of Nagash's perfect army.
This was of little concern to Nagash - The construction of the Ossiarch Legions would take countless centuries. There would be time to find - or create - a general suited to them. But it turned out Nagash didn't have to wait long, for Katakros proved to be exactly the general Nagash desired. Supremely talented in the art of war, yet utterly devoid of greed or ambition. Alone among all the Ossiarchs, Katakros's soul possessed no flaws that needed to be excised, nor were any traits lacking to be filled by bits of other souls. Furthermore his conceptual designs for war machines and siege engines provided significant improvements to existing Ossiarch designs.
With Katakros joining the ranks of the Mortarchs as Nagash's warmaster, gravesand pouring into the hidden vaults beneath Nagashizzar, Ossiarch construction underway in the distant corners of the Mortal Realms, and the vampire Mortarchs keeping Nagash's mortal followers, allies, and enemies in check, all seemed to be proceeding according to the Great Necromancer's will.
During his long imprisonment beneath the cairn of gravesand, Nagash had been carefully examining his failures in the World That Was, up to and including the final failure that led to the world's destruction. He knew that all life must be extinguished in order to obtain final victory over the Chaos Gods, but his attempts to achieve this end had all met with misfortune and disappointment. After long contemplation, Nagash concluded that, loathe as he was to admit it, the root of these failures was himself.
As powerful as he was, he was not powerful enough to wipe out life without relying on a great Legion of undead soldiers to act as his hands. He could raise - had raised - impossibly vast armies of the undead, legions more than capable of stamping out all life, but lesser undead like skeletons and zombies lacked the independence necessary to operate on their own, and Nagash could not be simultaneously present to lead all the forces he could raise on every front at once. Greater undead like Vampires, Wights, and Liches boasted superior physical and arcane powers, while retaining the intelligence and awareness needed to lead Nagash's armies where he could not. However, they also retained the petty vices and personal failings they had in life, emotional weaknesses and selfish ambitions that constantly undermined the Great Necromancer's work. Now as in the past Nagash delegated power and authority to a handful of Mortarchs, over whom he maintained direct control and who in turn could keep lesser generals and lieutenants in line, but this top down chain of authority made Nagash himself a single point of failure. And, time and again, he had failed.
Time and again, Nagash had underestimated the strength and cunning of his foes, had acted too brazenly in the mistaken belief that none were mighty enough to oppose him. Yet always some unforeseen champion - Alcadizaar, Settra, Sigmar, Archaon - had managed to strike him down. Though these defeats were always temporary, though the Great Necromancer always returned in time, in his absence his mortarchs would turn on each other, the lieutenants beneath them would scatter, and the greater undead hoard, left in leaderless disarray, would collapse. Yes, Nagash was a god in truth now, but then again so too were some of the very rivals who had laid him low in the past.
The interdependence between Nagash and his Undead Legions was the weakness he needed to expunge. Either he needed to be strong enough to personally snuff out all life, or else he needed a legion of the dead that could be trusted to continue working towards that purpose even should Nagash himself be temporarily struck down. With two paths open to ultimate victory, Nagash devised two plans to pursue.
The first plan was to absorb the entire power of Shyish into Nagash's person, which would make the Great Necromancer powerful enough to personally wipe all life from the Mortal Realms, before tearing the Dark Gods from their thrones with his boney claws. Nagash had attempted something similar to the first plan in the closing days of the World That Was, setting his mortarchs and their undead legions to delay the forces of the Dark Gods while he absorbed the Wind of Shyish through his Black Pyramid. But this method had been too slow, and too obvious, giving his enemies the opportunity to disrupt the ritual and destroy the pyramid. The new Realm of Shyish, and its peculiar realmstone, gravesand, presented a unique opportunity though. By shifting the bulk of Shyish's gravesand from the perimiter of the realm to its center, Nagash could work a ritual to invert the natural flow of magic within shyish, causing it all to suddenly cascade into Nagash in a single terrible moment. So long as the gravesand was collected and the ritual prepared in secret, Nagash's enemies would have no time to react.
To enact his ritual, Nagash would need a huge quantity of gravesand transported thousands of miles from the perimeter of Shyish to its very center. Furthermore, the gravesand at the realm's edge was so saturated with death magic that even an already-dead skeleton could transport but a single grain at a time or else it would be ground to dust by the realmstone's entropic energies before it could reach its destination. To move so much of it, so far, and in complete secrecy, would be the work of millennia. None the less, Nagash tasked Arkhan with collecting the needed gravesand, and so in the hidden pathways of Shyish trains of millions of skeletons began traveling in single file from the perimeter of the realm to Nagashizzar at its heart, each clutching a single grain of precious gravesand in their bony fingers. In the mean time, Sigmar's Grand Alliance was the best chance of holding Chaos at bay long enough for the work to be completed.
While time meant nothing to Nagash, the scale of time involved meant that, no matter how carefully and quietly he proceeded, there was a real chance that his enemies would discover the work before it was finished. If they did, then Nagash's rivals within Sigmar's Grand Alliance of Order would unite against him, potentially overwhelming and imprisoning him, or perhaps even banishing his spirit from the Mortal Realms altogether. Nagash deemed the potential for complete victory to be worth this risk, and yet to insure against the possibility of such failure Nagash also pursued a second plan in parallel to the first, one that could succeed even if Nagash himself were removed from the picture. This would be a new kind of undead army, comprised of a new kind of undead soldier - one that retained the 'positive' qualities of intelligence, independence, drive, and hatred from life, yet was simultaneously devoid of the 'weaknesses' of willfulness, greed, ambition, honor, regret, and compassion. The Great Necromancer had already been experimenting with new forms of undead in the latter days of the Old World, creating the Morghasts - monstrous undead atrocities to act as his personal bodyguard and the vanguard of his armies. These concepts he refined further into the Ossiarch Legions.
An ossiarch's body would not be limited to the haphazard remains of an individual creature. Rather they would be hand-crafted constructs assembled from magically reshaped bone taken from many sources and reinforced with enchanted metals to create bespoke forms according to Nagash's purpose for them. Their souls would be similarly hand crafted - with dozens of mortal souls carefully teased apart, the qualities most useful to Nagash retained and re-combined to form a single ossiarch soul that would then be bound to an indestructible soul stone affixed to its construct body. Retaining mortal intelligence but devoid of their personal weaknesses, the Ossiarch Legions would be the perfect undead army - one that would continue to labour tirelessly towards Nagash's vision even without Nagash's direct oversignt to direct them.
Early experiments proved promising, but the process of constructing even a single ossiarch warrior would prove incredibly time and resource intensive, so accumulating a Realms-conquering army of them would again be the work of millennia. Once more this most sensitive task was assigned to Arkhan, so while Nagash's undead were building Sigmar's cities, Arkhan's were secretly carving out vast underground tomb complexes in the most inhospitable corners of the Mortal Realms, where construction of the Ossiarch Legions could continue in secret, even if Nagash's enemies discovered his planned betrayal and scoured Shyish from top to bottom to undo his works.
While Nagash trusted Arkhan with the task of assembling the Ossiarchs, and keeping them secret, he knew he would need another to lead them once they were ready for war. Arkhan's loyalty and arcane talents were without flaw, but while he was a veteran field commander with ages of experience, he was no battlefield genius. Meanwhile the Vampire Mortarchs simply could not be trusted with command of Nagash's perfect army.
This was of little concern to Nagash - The construction of the Ossiarch Legions would take countless centuries. There would be time to find - or create - a general suited to them. But it turned out Nagash didn't have to wait long, for Katakros proved to be exactly the general Nagash desired. Supremely talented in the art of war, yet utterly devoid of greed or ambition. Alone among all the Ossiarchs, Katakros's soul possessed no flaws that needed to be excised, nor were any traits lacking to be filled by bits of other souls. Furthermore his conceptual designs for war machines and siege engines provided significant improvements to existing Ossiarch designs.
With Katakros joining the ranks of the Mortarchs as Nagash's warmaster, gravesand pouring into the hidden vaults beneath Nagashizzar, Ossiarch construction underway in the distant corners of the Mortal Realms, and the vampire Mortarchs keeping Nagash's mortal followers, allies, and enemies in check, all seemed to be proceeding according to the Great Necromancer's will.
The Age of Myth: A Mortarch's Fall
It was during this time that Ushoran, the Mortarch of Delusion, chosen champion of the Benevolent Nagash and defender of the underworlds of Shyish, heard rumors of a great theft taking place at the very edges of the Realm of Death - massive quantities of Nagash's holy gravesand were being stolen by some mysterious unknown enemy. Enough of Shyish's realmstone was being taken that the absence could potentially destabilize the flow of magic through the entire Realm. This was clearly a threat to the balance of Shyish significant enough to demand the Sombre Paladin's direct attention. Unfortunately, the wild magic swirling at the Realm's edge was too much for his followers to endure, so Ushoran went on alone to investigate this threat to the Nagash's domain. It is unknown what exactly transpired there on the edges of Shyish, but when Ushoran returned his mind was broken, even his devoted and deluded attendants perceiving his speech as maddened, blasphemous ravings.
The enraged mortarch rampaged across the hinterlands of Shyish, hunting and feeding on grim cthonic beasts and taking on a massive and monstrous form. Where once Ushoran was the most devoted of Nagash's mortarchs, now he toppled the works of Nagash wherever he found them and scattered the armies sent to contain him. In the end his fellow mortarchs were forced to work together to capture their errant peer and drag his monstrous bulk raving and screaming back to Nagash.
Accounts of what followed vary. Ushoran's abhorrent progeny, at least in their more comprehensible moments, claim that Nagash placed Ushoran in a great fortress called the Shroudcage in order to slowly reconstruct the Mortarch's mind. Such was the damage that the healing process would be long and agonizing, but in time Ushoran would be returned to his full glory and Nagash's hidden enemy, the mysterious thief who had maimed his most cherished servant, would be rightfully identified and hunted down. The progeny of Mannfred and Neferata agree that Ushoran was taken to the Shroudcage, but they say this was a prison intended to punish Ushoran for his failure to defeat the thief and his subsequent rebellious rampage. According to their telling, the Shroudcage inflicted a unique psychological torture - reflecting back at Ushoran the damning truth behind every lie he had ever told, especially those he told to himself.
What seems most likely, however, is that there never was a thief. That Ushoran instead encountered Arkhan's servants at the realms edge, collecting realmstone in secret for Nagash's great ritual, a ritual that could in time spell the doom of all life and the end of all Realms, including Shyish. Perhaps this led to a duel between the Mortarchs of Sacrament and Delusion, and Ushoran's mind was broken in the battle. Or perhaps the irreconcilable contradiction between the benevolent Nagash Ushoran had deluded himself into worshiping and the true Nagash who held the reigns of his soul was in itself enough to break the Mortarch's mind. Either way, in this version of events Ushoran's imprisonment in the Shroudcage would have been neither healing nor punishment, but rather a simple necessity to ensure the secrecy of Nagash's apocalyptic ambition.
Regardless of the true nature of Ushoran's madness, in the wake of his imprisonment the delusion that held sway over Nagash's cult faded. Once freed from their enthrallment, the horrified mortals turned on Ushoran's Abhorrent progeny, who were now revealed as the twisted monsters they truly were. They found now respite among their Soulblighted kin, who considered them traitors to Nagash after their mortarch's short lived rebellion, and so the Abhorrents were hounded by mortal and undead alike, forced to survive on the edges of society like wild beasts of the hinterlands, in an ironic echo of their Srigoi forebearers in the World That Was.
The collapse of Nagash's cult, and revelation that soulblight monsters had been enthralling mortal populations, likely strained relations between Nagash and the rest of Sigmar's grand alliance. It should perhaps be considered testament to Neferata's diplomatic skills that the alliance didn't fall apart then and there. Thankfully, Ushoran's rampage against Nagash made it seem as through all of the Mortarch's misdeeds had been a rebellious plot, while the hounding and persecution of Ushoran's surviving followers by the Legions of Blood and Night would have lent further credence to Nagash's claims of innocence.
The enraged mortarch rampaged across the hinterlands of Shyish, hunting and feeding on grim cthonic beasts and taking on a massive and monstrous form. Where once Ushoran was the most devoted of Nagash's mortarchs, now he toppled the works of Nagash wherever he found them and scattered the armies sent to contain him. In the end his fellow mortarchs were forced to work together to capture their errant peer and drag his monstrous bulk raving and screaming back to Nagash.
Accounts of what followed vary. Ushoran's abhorrent progeny, at least in their more comprehensible moments, claim that Nagash placed Ushoran in a great fortress called the Shroudcage in order to slowly reconstruct the Mortarch's mind. Such was the damage that the healing process would be long and agonizing, but in time Ushoran would be returned to his full glory and Nagash's hidden enemy, the mysterious thief who had maimed his most cherished servant, would be rightfully identified and hunted down. The progeny of Mannfred and Neferata agree that Ushoran was taken to the Shroudcage, but they say this was a prison intended to punish Ushoran for his failure to defeat the thief and his subsequent rebellious rampage. According to their telling, the Shroudcage inflicted a unique psychological torture - reflecting back at Ushoran the damning truth behind every lie he had ever told, especially those he told to himself.
What seems most likely, however, is that there never was a thief. That Ushoran instead encountered Arkhan's servants at the realms edge, collecting realmstone in secret for Nagash's great ritual, a ritual that could in time spell the doom of all life and the end of all Realms, including Shyish. Perhaps this led to a duel between the Mortarchs of Sacrament and Delusion, and Ushoran's mind was broken in the battle. Or perhaps the irreconcilable contradiction between the benevolent Nagash Ushoran had deluded himself into worshiping and the true Nagash who held the reigns of his soul was in itself enough to break the Mortarch's mind. Either way, in this version of events Ushoran's imprisonment in the Shroudcage would have been neither healing nor punishment, but rather a simple necessity to ensure the secrecy of Nagash's apocalyptic ambition.
Regardless of the true nature of Ushoran's madness, in the wake of his imprisonment the delusion that held sway over Nagash's cult faded. Once freed from their enthrallment, the horrified mortals turned on Ushoran's Abhorrent progeny, who were now revealed as the twisted monsters they truly were. They found now respite among their Soulblighted kin, who considered them traitors to Nagash after their mortarch's short lived rebellion, and so the Abhorrents were hounded by mortal and undead alike, forced to survive on the edges of society like wild beasts of the hinterlands, in an ironic echo of their Srigoi forebearers in the World That Was.
The collapse of Nagash's cult, and revelation that soulblight monsters had been enthralling mortal populations, likely strained relations between Nagash and the rest of Sigmar's grand alliance. It should perhaps be considered testament to Neferata's diplomatic skills that the alliance didn't fall apart then and there. Thankfully, Ushoran's rampage against Nagash made it seem as through all of the Mortarch's misdeeds had been a rebellious plot, while the hounding and persecution of Ushoran's surviving followers by the Legions of Blood and Night would have lent further credence to Nagash's claims of innocence.
The Age of Myth: Cracks in the Grand Alliance
Despite the unfortunate situation with Ushoran, everything still seemed to be proceeding according to Nagash's plans. Both of his grand designs presented a viable path to absolute victory, and while both would be ages in the making, Sigmar's Grand Alliance seemed strong and stable, fully capable of keeping the dark powers at bay until Nagash was ready to destroy friend and foe alike. Unfortunately, the alliance was not so stable as either Nagash or Sigmar supposed. Even as the Great Necromancer was laying the groundwork for his long term plots to betray the other gods, far more immediate cracks were appearing.
As the godbeasts were tamed or laid low and the beastmen tribes pushed to the fringes of the Mortal Realms, the battle lust of the twin headed god GorkaMorka and their greenskin children drove them to turn on their Sigmarite allies. Though GorkaMorka themselves were defeated and imprisoned, the now leaderless greenskins quickly became as dangerous and disorderly a threat as the beastmen had been before them, especially in Ghur, the Realm of Beasts, where they were the most numerous.
While GorkaMorka's betrayal had been quite damaging, it had not been altogether unexpected. Far worse, and a surprise to all, were the actions of the Aelven Deities - Tyrion, Teclis, and Malerion.
Very few aelven souls had survived the end of the World That Was, and the ravenous hunger of Slaanesh. The Aelven Gods had attempted to foster new aelven peoples in the Mortal Realms, but they had so few souls to start, and aelven populations expanded so slowly, that their peoples were faced with a grim future. Even if their tiny populations proved viable - far from a sure thing - the shorter lived and faster multiplying races would surely have settled and occupied all the realms before the nascent aelven civilizations could really even get started.
Alarielle, goddes of Life, accepted this as the natural course and instead channeled her attention, favor, and share of precious aelven souls into her new plant-like Sylvaneth people. Tyrion, Teclis, and Malerion, uncompromising deities of Light and Darkness, would not abandon the aelves, though, and eventually an opportunity presented itself in a most unlikely form.
Morathi, Malerion's mother, who had been consumed by Slaanesh in the destruction of the World That Was, reappeared, claiming to have clawed her way out of Slaanesh's gullet and traveled in secret to the Mortal Realms. She knew where Slaanesh was hidden and vulnerable, still digesting the souls of the Old World's aelves even now, and she proposed a daring plan - capture Slaanesh in their torpor, bring them back to the mortal realms, and extract as many aelven souls as might yet be saved, possibly numbering in the millions.
Tyrion, Teclis, and Malerion supported this plan, desperate as they were for any chance of reviving their peoples. The other gods, especially Nagash, opposed the plan as unthinkably reckless. Even were it possible, capturing one of the Chaos Gods would surely attract the attention of the rest. Furthermore, Nagash argued, according to the pact sworn by the deities of the Grand Alliance, the souls of the dead belonged to Nagash and Nagash alone. Even the aelven gods had sworn to this - thinking their oath largely meaningless since aelves are without age or natural death regardless. Nagash had already shown tremendous grace in forgiving the use of souls of the dead by the various gods in establishing their peoples before the Alliance had been sworn, but now that they had all acknowledged his claim, by all rights any souls of the dead still being digested within the Dark Prince belonged to Nagash, and it was his will that they should rot there rather than risk everything the Incarnate Gods had built together (and everything Nagash was building in secret).
Still, the aelven gods appealed to Sigmar's greatest weakness - his hope. Sigmar would do anything, risk anything, for his own people. Could he in good faith deny the aelven gods this last desperate chance to save their own? For her part, Morathi reminded Sigmar of all the evils Nagash had done in the World That Was, of the enemy he had been to all life, and characterized the Great Necromancer's wise counsel as petty cruelty. For a trembling moment, it seemed as though the Storm God would break the tie in favor of this foolhardy plan. In anger and desperation, Nagash struck Morathi in her lying face. The terrible blow tore away the illusion she had woven around herself, revealing her true form - hideous, snake-like, and clearly tainted by the corruption of Slaanesh.
As Morathi slithered off into the shadows, swearing revenge for the insult, Nagash made his final argument, tailored to snuff the flame of hope that the aelven gods had fanned in Sigmar's heart. Just as Morathi was so clearly tainted by chaos, so too would be any aelven soul dredged up from the Dark God's gullet. Corruption is the very nature of chaos, and no mortal soul could persist within the body of a Chaos God for so long and not be irrevocably tainted by that corruption. Not only would the aelven gods' plan place all the Mortal Realms in jeopardy, it would be - could only be - for nothing. Finally bowing to the Necromancer's superior wisdom, Sigmar sided with Nagash, and the Grand Alliance ruled that Slaanesh, and any aelven souls trapped within, would be left to their fate.
But if Nagash had imagined this disaster to be averted, he was wrong, for just as the Aelven gods had intended to defy their oath to Nagash, so too did they defy the will of Sigmar and their oaths of loyalty to the Grand Alliance as a whole. They proceeded with Morathi's plan in secret, despite Nagash's wisdom and Sigmar's command. And while their daring raid was successful in capturing the Dark Prince, the result was exactly as Nagash had said it would be. The other Dark Gods immediately noticed the disappearance of their peer and rival, and, rising from their convalescence, turned their dread gazes towards the Mortal Realms.
As the godbeasts were tamed or laid low and the beastmen tribes pushed to the fringes of the Mortal Realms, the battle lust of the twin headed god GorkaMorka and their greenskin children drove them to turn on their Sigmarite allies. Though GorkaMorka themselves were defeated and imprisoned, the now leaderless greenskins quickly became as dangerous and disorderly a threat as the beastmen had been before them, especially in Ghur, the Realm of Beasts, where they were the most numerous.
While GorkaMorka's betrayal had been quite damaging, it had not been altogether unexpected. Far worse, and a surprise to all, were the actions of the Aelven Deities - Tyrion, Teclis, and Malerion.
Very few aelven souls had survived the end of the World That Was, and the ravenous hunger of Slaanesh. The Aelven Gods had attempted to foster new aelven peoples in the Mortal Realms, but they had so few souls to start, and aelven populations expanded so slowly, that their peoples were faced with a grim future. Even if their tiny populations proved viable - far from a sure thing - the shorter lived and faster multiplying races would surely have settled and occupied all the realms before the nascent aelven civilizations could really even get started.
Alarielle, goddes of Life, accepted this as the natural course and instead channeled her attention, favor, and share of precious aelven souls into her new plant-like Sylvaneth people. Tyrion, Teclis, and Malerion, uncompromising deities of Light and Darkness, would not abandon the aelves, though, and eventually an opportunity presented itself in a most unlikely form.
Morathi, Malerion's mother, who had been consumed by Slaanesh in the destruction of the World That Was, reappeared, claiming to have clawed her way out of Slaanesh's gullet and traveled in secret to the Mortal Realms. She knew where Slaanesh was hidden and vulnerable, still digesting the souls of the Old World's aelves even now, and she proposed a daring plan - capture Slaanesh in their torpor, bring them back to the mortal realms, and extract as many aelven souls as might yet be saved, possibly numbering in the millions.
Tyrion, Teclis, and Malerion supported this plan, desperate as they were for any chance of reviving their peoples. The other gods, especially Nagash, opposed the plan as unthinkably reckless. Even were it possible, capturing one of the Chaos Gods would surely attract the attention of the rest. Furthermore, Nagash argued, according to the pact sworn by the deities of the Grand Alliance, the souls of the dead belonged to Nagash and Nagash alone. Even the aelven gods had sworn to this - thinking their oath largely meaningless since aelves are without age or natural death regardless. Nagash had already shown tremendous grace in forgiving the use of souls of the dead by the various gods in establishing their peoples before the Alliance had been sworn, but now that they had all acknowledged his claim, by all rights any souls of the dead still being digested within the Dark Prince belonged to Nagash, and it was his will that they should rot there rather than risk everything the Incarnate Gods had built together (and everything Nagash was building in secret).
Still, the aelven gods appealed to Sigmar's greatest weakness - his hope. Sigmar would do anything, risk anything, for his own people. Could he in good faith deny the aelven gods this last desperate chance to save their own? For her part, Morathi reminded Sigmar of all the evils Nagash had done in the World That Was, of the enemy he had been to all life, and characterized the Great Necromancer's wise counsel as petty cruelty. For a trembling moment, it seemed as though the Storm God would break the tie in favor of this foolhardy plan. In anger and desperation, Nagash struck Morathi in her lying face. The terrible blow tore away the illusion she had woven around herself, revealing her true form - hideous, snake-like, and clearly tainted by the corruption of Slaanesh.
As Morathi slithered off into the shadows, swearing revenge for the insult, Nagash made his final argument, tailored to snuff the flame of hope that the aelven gods had fanned in Sigmar's heart. Just as Morathi was so clearly tainted by chaos, so too would be any aelven soul dredged up from the Dark God's gullet. Corruption is the very nature of chaos, and no mortal soul could persist within the body of a Chaos God for so long and not be irrevocably tainted by that corruption. Not only would the aelven gods' plan place all the Mortal Realms in jeopardy, it would be - could only be - for nothing. Finally bowing to the Necromancer's superior wisdom, Sigmar sided with Nagash, and the Grand Alliance ruled that Slaanesh, and any aelven souls trapped within, would be left to their fate.
But if Nagash had imagined this disaster to be averted, he was wrong, for just as the Aelven gods had intended to defy their oath to Nagash, so too did they defy the will of Sigmar and their oaths of loyalty to the Grand Alliance as a whole. They proceeded with Morathi's plan in secret, despite Nagash's wisdom and Sigmar's command. And while their daring raid was successful in capturing the Dark Prince, the result was exactly as Nagash had said it would be. The other Dark Gods immediately noticed the disappearance of their peer and rival, and, rising from their convalescence, turned their dread gazes towards the Mortal Realms.
The Age of Myth: The Return of the Everchosen.
At first the remaining Dark Gods - Khorne, Tzeentch, and Nurgle - didn't know what to make of what had happened. Slaanesh was gone, and the Dark Prince's domain was in a panicked uproar. Perhaps their initial thought was a gleeful inclination to take advantage of the weakness and claim part of Slaanesh's holdings, only... where had Slaanesh gone? Was this some sort of trick?
Following the traces, they were drawn to the Mortal Realms, and looked in wonder and greed at these new worlds that had sprung up right under their nose. Had Slaanesh merely found these Realms first? Were they there already, consuming as many souls as they could before the other Dark Gods could stake their claims? Such would be poor sportsmanship in the great game... but no, Slaanesh's trail led to these Realms, and then vanished.
And there was something familiar about the Mortal Realms. There were presences here that they had not felt since their last great feast, little godlings of light and shadow, fire and metal, beasts and forests. There was the golden godling Sigmar, who had defied them to the last. And one more besides, a dark presence, darker even than the Dark Gods themselves. The memory came like a voice on the winds of chaos, a voice that whispered the name "Nagash," and for the first time in an age the Gods of Chaos knew fear.
Nagash, who had transcended death. Nagash, who had torn mortal souls away from the warp and tainted them with the blasphemous curse of undeath, turning succulent meals for the Dark Gods into bitter poison. Nagash, who had come closer than any other entity all the histories of all the worlds to not just defying the will of the Dark Gods, but destroying them altogether and usurping their thrones. Nagash had not been not destroyed after all, nor even imprisoned, he was here, free, now more powerful than ever as a god in truth, young and weak by the standards of the Dark Gods but growing in power and with an entire array of fellow godlings dancing on his puppet strings. Had this upstart deity of death discovered a way to kill even a Chaos God?
This could not be allowed, could not even be imagined. These Mortal Realms must be smashed, these new gods - especially Nagash - destroyed. More than anything else Slaanesh's fate had to be discovered and understood. Yet the Dark Gods would not attack directly. They couldn't risk suffering whatever fate had befallen Slaanesh. Indeed, the entire situation might be a trap to lure them in. Furthermore, if there was some weapon or tool capable of defeating a Chaos God, they couldn't want to risk it falling into the hands of their remaining siblings, either. They needed a neutral pawn to lead the conquest of these Mortal Realms and the hunt for Slaanesh. Since they now knew these Realms were born out of the remains of the World That Was, they dredged up from the well of souls the dark champion who had led the destruction of that world and defeated these same Incarnate Deities once before - Archaon, Lord of the End Times - and heaped upon him a greater share of dark blessings and unholy gifts than they had dared lend to any one champion since the time of Be'Lakor, the First Prince.
So it was that the Daemonic Legions of Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle, under the command of Archaon Everchosen - the most terrible chaos warlord ever seen on these or any worlds, crashed down on the Mortal Realms in an apocalypse of blood, fire, and plague.
Following the traces, they were drawn to the Mortal Realms, and looked in wonder and greed at these new worlds that had sprung up right under their nose. Had Slaanesh merely found these Realms first? Were they there already, consuming as many souls as they could before the other Dark Gods could stake their claims? Such would be poor sportsmanship in the great game... but no, Slaanesh's trail led to these Realms, and then vanished.
And there was something familiar about the Mortal Realms. There were presences here that they had not felt since their last great feast, little godlings of light and shadow, fire and metal, beasts and forests. There was the golden godling Sigmar, who had defied them to the last. And one more besides, a dark presence, darker even than the Dark Gods themselves. The memory came like a voice on the winds of chaos, a voice that whispered the name "Nagash," and for the first time in an age the Gods of Chaos knew fear.
Nagash, who had transcended death. Nagash, who had torn mortal souls away from the warp and tainted them with the blasphemous curse of undeath, turning succulent meals for the Dark Gods into bitter poison. Nagash, who had come closer than any other entity all the histories of all the worlds to not just defying the will of the Dark Gods, but destroying them altogether and usurping their thrones. Nagash had not been not destroyed after all, nor even imprisoned, he was here, free, now more powerful than ever as a god in truth, young and weak by the standards of the Dark Gods but growing in power and with an entire array of fellow godlings dancing on his puppet strings. Had this upstart deity of death discovered a way to kill even a Chaos God?
This could not be allowed, could not even be imagined. These Mortal Realms must be smashed, these new gods - especially Nagash - destroyed. More than anything else Slaanesh's fate had to be discovered and understood. Yet the Dark Gods would not attack directly. They couldn't risk suffering whatever fate had befallen Slaanesh. Indeed, the entire situation might be a trap to lure them in. Furthermore, if there was some weapon or tool capable of defeating a Chaos God, they couldn't want to risk it falling into the hands of their remaining siblings, either. They needed a neutral pawn to lead the conquest of these Mortal Realms and the hunt for Slaanesh. Since they now knew these Realms were born out of the remains of the World That Was, they dredged up from the well of souls the dark champion who had led the destruction of that world and defeated these same Incarnate Deities once before - Archaon, Lord of the End Times - and heaped upon him a greater share of dark blessings and unholy gifts than they had dared lend to any one champion since the time of Be'Lakor, the First Prince.
So it was that the Daemonic Legions of Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle, under the command of Archaon Everchosen - the most terrible chaos warlord ever seen on these or any worlds, crashed down on the Mortal Realms in an apocalypse of blood, fire, and plague.
The Age of Chaos: Blood, Fire, and Plague
While Sigmar's Grand Alliance had already been stretched to the breaking point by the rebellion of GorkaMorka and the betrayal of the Aelven Gods, It did not collapse all at once. The Gods of Order held out for centuries, fighting a slowly losing campaign against Archaon's seemingly endless daemonic hordes. But the daemonic legions were forced to tear their way in from the fringes of the Realms, while what remained of the Pantheon of Order held the stable innerlands, and in particular the crucial All Points. The great Realmgates in the All Points allowed the forces of order to swiftly move vast armies from one Mortal Realm to another, responding with overwhelming force wherever Archaon's legions were able to amass themselves.
Yet the Dark Gods were relentless and their Daemonic Legions seemingly without number. The war dragged on, and the Mortal Realms suffered terrible atrocities, sometimes at the hands of their own desperate deities. This was especially true in Shyish, thanks both to the intensity of the Chaos onslaught there and to Nagash's lack of care for the suffering of any innocents that might be caught in his counter-attacks.
Hallost - the afterlife of great heroes and champions, was attacked by Khornate Daemons, drawn by the eternal battles that raged there. The warrior spirits of Hallost welcomed battle with the Blood God's daemons as much as they did with the cthonic beasts they had spent their afterlives hunting, but the demons were themselves invigorated by this pure and honorable combat, and the Blood God's daemons began to overwhelm their foes, dragging the souls of these mighty heroes back to Khorne's throne one by one.
Furious at this usurpation - especially knowing the souls of Hallost's great warriors were exactly the kind of raw material his Ossiarch Legions would require - Nagash brought a thousand living prisoners to Hallost and sacrificed them all in a single terrible necromantic ritual. The souls of these victims were transformed into into the first true Nighthaunts - spirits of the dead twisted and tortured by necromantic magic into horrors that exist only to spread their suffering to others. These Nighthaunts, lacking honor or battle pride or even true blood lust, possessing only a hatred so pure and relentless that even the Blood God's daemons could find no nourishment in it, were able to repel the daemons, at least for a time.
Meanwhile the mortal nation of Dolorum in Shyish was beset by a legion of Nurgle daemons. At the time Dolorum was led by the ruthless and ambitious Lady Olynder, but she came to power through deception and political machination and had no way of fighting daemonic armies and daemon-borne plagues. Seeing no alternative, she decided to surrender her nation to the forces of chaos in the hope of buying a position of privilege on the enemy side. But Nagash learned of her betrayal before any bargain could be struck and descended upon Dolorum in his wrath, destroying the entire nation himself rather than letting it fall to the enemy. With no more carriers the plagues died out, and the Nurgle daemons were weakened enough for the vengeful ghosts of Dolorum to push them back. For her treachery, Nagash cursed Lady Olynder's spirit to wander her dead land forever, suffering the combined sorrows and regrets of all the Mortal Realms.
While vast daemonic armies ran riot on Shyish's surface, the Everchosen himself at their head, beneath the ground countless millions of rat men began to pour through their gnawholes, attacking the underworlds of Shyish directly. Long had the Skaven been waiting in the corners of the Realms, dismissed as mere beastmen by Sigmar's Pantheon, and now they hoped through aiding in the conquest of Shyish to make way for the Great Horned Rat to fill the vacuum left by Slaanesh. Nagash's great work was at risk, and his legions were so overwhelmed by the ferocity of this battle on multiple fronts that the Great Necromancer was forced to call out to Sigmar for aid. Even if the Pantheon they had forged was collapsing, surely Sigmar, the self-styled God of Heavenly Order, would honour his oaths to Nagash, sworn before the rest of the Grand Alliance was even formed?
As decades of warfare rolled into centuries, the already strained Grand Alliance had reached a breaking point. Attrition had taken its toll on the forces of Order, until they barely had enough strength to protect their own realms, with nothing to spare for mutual defense. Sigmar himself had committed his final reserves to the defense of the All Points, which only barely held. Perhaps Sigmar didn't hear Nagash's call for aid. Perhaps he did and chose not to answer. Either way, Sigmar's failure to act was the final betrayal that Doomed all the Realms to an Age of Chaos.
Yet the Dark Gods were relentless and their Daemonic Legions seemingly without number. The war dragged on, and the Mortal Realms suffered terrible atrocities, sometimes at the hands of their own desperate deities. This was especially true in Shyish, thanks both to the intensity of the Chaos onslaught there and to Nagash's lack of care for the suffering of any innocents that might be caught in his counter-attacks.
Hallost - the afterlife of great heroes and champions, was attacked by Khornate Daemons, drawn by the eternal battles that raged there. The warrior spirits of Hallost welcomed battle with the Blood God's daemons as much as they did with the cthonic beasts they had spent their afterlives hunting, but the demons were themselves invigorated by this pure and honorable combat, and the Blood God's daemons began to overwhelm their foes, dragging the souls of these mighty heroes back to Khorne's throne one by one.
Furious at this usurpation - especially knowing the souls of Hallost's great warriors were exactly the kind of raw material his Ossiarch Legions would require - Nagash brought a thousand living prisoners to Hallost and sacrificed them all in a single terrible necromantic ritual. The souls of these victims were transformed into into the first true Nighthaunts - spirits of the dead twisted and tortured by necromantic magic into horrors that exist only to spread their suffering to others. These Nighthaunts, lacking honor or battle pride or even true blood lust, possessing only a hatred so pure and relentless that even the Blood God's daemons could find no nourishment in it, were able to repel the daemons, at least for a time.
Meanwhile the mortal nation of Dolorum in Shyish was beset by a legion of Nurgle daemons. At the time Dolorum was led by the ruthless and ambitious Lady Olynder, but she came to power through deception and political machination and had no way of fighting daemonic armies and daemon-borne plagues. Seeing no alternative, she decided to surrender her nation to the forces of chaos in the hope of buying a position of privilege on the enemy side. But Nagash learned of her betrayal before any bargain could be struck and descended upon Dolorum in his wrath, destroying the entire nation himself rather than letting it fall to the enemy. With no more carriers the plagues died out, and the Nurgle daemons were weakened enough for the vengeful ghosts of Dolorum to push them back. For her treachery, Nagash cursed Lady Olynder's spirit to wander her dead land forever, suffering the combined sorrows and regrets of all the Mortal Realms.
While vast daemonic armies ran riot on Shyish's surface, the Everchosen himself at their head, beneath the ground countless millions of rat men began to pour through their gnawholes, attacking the underworlds of Shyish directly. Long had the Skaven been waiting in the corners of the Realms, dismissed as mere beastmen by Sigmar's Pantheon, and now they hoped through aiding in the conquest of Shyish to make way for the Great Horned Rat to fill the vacuum left by Slaanesh. Nagash's great work was at risk, and his legions were so overwhelmed by the ferocity of this battle on multiple fronts that the Great Necromancer was forced to call out to Sigmar for aid. Even if the Pantheon they had forged was collapsing, surely Sigmar, the self-styled God of Heavenly Order, would honour his oaths to Nagash, sworn before the rest of the Grand Alliance was even formed?
As decades of warfare rolled into centuries, the already strained Grand Alliance had reached a breaking point. Attrition had taken its toll on the forces of Order, until they barely had enough strength to protect their own realms, with nothing to spare for mutual defense. Sigmar himself had committed his final reserves to the defense of the All Points, which only barely held. Perhaps Sigmar didn't hear Nagash's call for aid. Perhaps he did and chose not to answer. Either way, Sigmar's failure to act was the final betrayal that Doomed all the Realms to an Age of Chaos.
The Age of Chaos: The Grand Alliance Broken
With Sigmar's alliance broken by the golden god's own betrayal, Nagash could see that there was no hope of victory against the Dark Gods, at least not in this battle. Instead, Nagash would do as he had often done in the World That Was - retreat into the shadows and wait out his enemies. This time, though, he wouldn't just be waiting, for his two great plans could continue in secret.
The Ossiarch tomb-complexes were well hidden in the other realms, their locations too inhospitable for mortal chaos worshippers to stumble across them and their staff lacking any living souls to draw daemonic attention. But the monstrous reserves of gravesand that Nagash's great ritual would require were under threat, particularly from the Skaven burrowing through the underworlds, and so Nagash removed all his forces from every non-essential field of battle, and dedicated their efforts to preparing a crypt to conceal his trove of realmstone, a refuge where Nagash himself could wait out Archaon's dawning Age of Chaos. For this he chose a sunless abyss beneath the underworld of Stygxx.
This sub-realm within the damp, rocky landscape of Stygxx proved an ideal hiding place, for it could only be accessed via the Starless Gates - a set of Realmgates with one side opening into the Abyss of Stygxx and the other side appearing only briefly, infrequently, and at locations that none but Nagash and Arkhan could predict in advance. This benighted Abyss was so inimical to life that even the accursed Skaven would find it impossible to access via their gnawholes. The nature of the Starless Gates would greatly slow the accumulation of gravesand, but this was still preferable to its discovery by Chaos forces.
By withdrawing his undead legions from the field of battle, however, Nagash had left the all important Death Gate exposed. Jumping at the opening, Archaon took the gate and streamed into the All Points. Sigmar's forces were taken completely by surprise, having barely enough time to register the undead withdrawal before Archaon's forces smashed through. From their perspective it seemed as though the undead had willingly turned the gate over to Archaon, and there were even some reports of undead joining the daemonic hordes in attacking the living, though these are surely mere slander. With the All Points no longer under Sigmar's control, the last defenses of the other Realms began to fall.
The long dying hope of victory was finally lost, and Sigmar had only himself to blame. Yet his pride was such that he refused accountability for his broken oaths and blamed Nagash instead. Overcome with a blind idiot rage, Sigmar took on the aspet of a brutish Barbarian King and smashed into Shyish, ignoring the forces of Chaos to instead attack the undead, all the time calling out Nagash to face the Storm God's fury. This Nagash hadn't expected, forcing him to work with even greater haste. He sent Katakros to delay Sigmar, only for the Storm God to smash the mortarch and, seemingly, destroy him outright, something Nagash hadn't even thought possible. This was a terrible blow, as Katakros was crucial to one of Nagash's great plans. Even if he did complete his Ossiarch Legions, he now had no general worthy of leading them, and Nagash was unlikely to find a worthy replacement while waiting out the Age of Chaos beneath Stygxx.
Sigmar also discovered and smashed the Shroudcage containing Ushoran, and if the fallen Mortarch's imprisonment had been meant to heal him, then this sudden release came far too early. Still thoroughly insane, the monstrous vampire-beast immediately embarked on his own indiscriminate campaign of destruction, scattering the forces of Order, Chaos, and Death alike. Maddened as he was, Ushoran was still a Mortarch of Nagash, and might have been brought to heel, even put to productive use, if Nagash had time to deal with the creature personally. Alas, there was no such time.
Eventually Sigmar came to his senses and retreated to defend Azyr, but the damage was catastrophic. The Skaven continued their assault from below, daemons ran roughshod over the surface, and Ushoran rampaged through the hinterlands, preventing Nagash's remaining forces from collecting for any sort of coherent counter offensive. Finally, Nagashizzar was beseiged by Archaon himself, at the head of a great host of nurgle daemons, immune to the undead capitol's entropic aura. In the Battle of Black Skies, the Everchosen cleaved Nagash's body in twain and cast the burning remnants to the ground.
Luckily for Nagash, they landed amid his own forces - though a rogue Vampire Lord named Prince Vhordrai attempted to destroy the remains by hurling them through a corrupted Realmgate. It was only through the swift, desperate actions of Nagash's remaining Mortarchs that his remains were saved at the last moment and spirited in secret to the Stygian Abyss.
Archaon went on to conquer all the Realms save Azyr only, where Sigmar and Grungni - the Duardin God of Smiths, incarnate to the fallen Realm of Metal - managed to fight back the forces of chaos and seal every single Realmgate leading to any of the other Realms. Archaon settled down for a seige of Azyr that would last for an entire age, while his forces scoured the Mortal Realms, burning and pillaging where they willed, but also searching for any sign of what had happened to Slaanesh.
The Ossiarch tomb-complexes were well hidden in the other realms, their locations too inhospitable for mortal chaos worshippers to stumble across them and their staff lacking any living souls to draw daemonic attention. But the monstrous reserves of gravesand that Nagash's great ritual would require were under threat, particularly from the Skaven burrowing through the underworlds, and so Nagash removed all his forces from every non-essential field of battle, and dedicated their efforts to preparing a crypt to conceal his trove of realmstone, a refuge where Nagash himself could wait out Archaon's dawning Age of Chaos. For this he chose a sunless abyss beneath the underworld of Stygxx.
This sub-realm within the damp, rocky landscape of Stygxx proved an ideal hiding place, for it could only be accessed via the Starless Gates - a set of Realmgates with one side opening into the Abyss of Stygxx and the other side appearing only briefly, infrequently, and at locations that none but Nagash and Arkhan could predict in advance. This benighted Abyss was so inimical to life that even the accursed Skaven would find it impossible to access via their gnawholes. The nature of the Starless Gates would greatly slow the accumulation of gravesand, but this was still preferable to its discovery by Chaos forces.
By withdrawing his undead legions from the field of battle, however, Nagash had left the all important Death Gate exposed. Jumping at the opening, Archaon took the gate and streamed into the All Points. Sigmar's forces were taken completely by surprise, having barely enough time to register the undead withdrawal before Archaon's forces smashed through. From their perspective it seemed as though the undead had willingly turned the gate over to Archaon, and there were even some reports of undead joining the daemonic hordes in attacking the living, though these are surely mere slander. With the All Points no longer under Sigmar's control, the last defenses of the other Realms began to fall.
The long dying hope of victory was finally lost, and Sigmar had only himself to blame. Yet his pride was such that he refused accountability for his broken oaths and blamed Nagash instead. Overcome with a blind idiot rage, Sigmar took on the aspet of a brutish Barbarian King and smashed into Shyish, ignoring the forces of Chaos to instead attack the undead, all the time calling out Nagash to face the Storm God's fury. This Nagash hadn't expected, forcing him to work with even greater haste. He sent Katakros to delay Sigmar, only for the Storm God to smash the mortarch and, seemingly, destroy him outright, something Nagash hadn't even thought possible. This was a terrible blow, as Katakros was crucial to one of Nagash's great plans. Even if he did complete his Ossiarch Legions, he now had no general worthy of leading them, and Nagash was unlikely to find a worthy replacement while waiting out the Age of Chaos beneath Stygxx.
Sigmar also discovered and smashed the Shroudcage containing Ushoran, and if the fallen Mortarch's imprisonment had been meant to heal him, then this sudden release came far too early. Still thoroughly insane, the monstrous vampire-beast immediately embarked on his own indiscriminate campaign of destruction, scattering the forces of Order, Chaos, and Death alike. Maddened as he was, Ushoran was still a Mortarch of Nagash, and might have been brought to heel, even put to productive use, if Nagash had time to deal with the creature personally. Alas, there was no such time.
Eventually Sigmar came to his senses and retreated to defend Azyr, but the damage was catastrophic. The Skaven continued their assault from below, daemons ran roughshod over the surface, and Ushoran rampaged through the hinterlands, preventing Nagash's remaining forces from collecting for any sort of coherent counter offensive. Finally, Nagashizzar was beseiged by Archaon himself, at the head of a great host of nurgle daemons, immune to the undead capitol's entropic aura. In the Battle of Black Skies, the Everchosen cleaved Nagash's body in twain and cast the burning remnants to the ground.
Luckily for Nagash, they landed amid his own forces - though a rogue Vampire Lord named Prince Vhordrai attempted to destroy the remains by hurling them through a corrupted Realmgate. It was only through the swift, desperate actions of Nagash's remaining Mortarchs that his remains were saved at the last moment and spirited in secret to the Stygian Abyss.
Archaon went on to conquer all the Realms save Azyr only, where Sigmar and Grungni - the Duardin God of Smiths, incarnate to the fallen Realm of Metal - managed to fight back the forces of chaos and seal every single Realmgate leading to any of the other Realms. Archaon settled down for a seige of Azyr that would last for an entire age, while his forces scoured the Mortal Realms, burning and pillaging where they willed, but also searching for any sign of what had happened to Slaanesh.
The Age of Chaos: Surviving Under Archaon's Heel.
The Great Necromancer was dead, his armies broken, his works undone, his power banished, and any threat he might have posed to the Dark Gods ended forever. Or so it seemed, for this was all according to Nagash's plan. He had willingly allowed himself to be "defeated" by Archaon in order to create a false narrative of his own death, and further had intentionally arranged for his own Realm of Shyish to be the most completely destroyed and overrun by Chaos so that the Dark Powers would turn their gaze elsewhere and fail to detect his ruse.
Even so, this clever deception had cost Nagash dearly. Not just his body, but also his mind and soul had suffered grievous injury, scattering his thought and purpose. It would take an Age for Nagash to pull himself back together, but that was no matter, for it would take an age for Arkhan to prepare the Great Work. The other gods, for their part, followed the path that Nagash had chosen, withdrawing into their own hidden refuges, abandoning their peoples to the depredations of Chaos.
In the mean time, Nagash's mortarchs were left to their own devices. Arkhan the Black, ever loyal, continued preparations as instructed, pausing only long enough to track down Prince Vhordrai and seal the traitorous vampire within a realmstone coffin to wait for Nagash's return, so that the Great Necromancer could personally choose a suitable punishment.
Neferata returned to Nefertaria, where she fought a centuries long defense of her chosen lands, slowly loosing ground until all that was left was her capitol of NuLamia, locked in a perpetual siege.
Mannfred abandoned his own lands to their fate and disappeared into the mists of history. His actions and whereabouts during the Age of Chaos are known only to himself.
For a time Ushoran roved the wild places of shyish in the form of a great beast, hunting the servants of Nagash and the Chaos Gods alike. Whether any vestige of his former identity still existed in his madness clouded mind, none could say, and once his anger was spent he disappeared entirely.
With the Soulblight Mortarchs missing or preoccupied, many Soulblight Vampires throughout the realms were cut off from any chain of command and left to struggle for survival in whatever way they could. Some, following in the traditions of Carstinia or Nefertaria, claimed particular mortal hold outs as their own and attempted to rally the defense of their chosen mortal chattle. With the gods abandoning their people, the vampires who stayed to defend them were often worshipped as gods themselves, and lived in unimagineable luxury - at least until Archaon's armies came to topple their little kingdoms of the night.
Others formed isolated knightly orders, honing their combat abilities and animating tireless undead steeds to carry them into battle against any roving chaos warbands who discovered their refuge - or to help them flee from any chaos forces too large to defeat through martial skill alone.
Still others embraced the monstrous nature of the Soulblight Curse. Placing base survival above all other virtues, these vampires deliberately triggered their own beastly transformations in order to gain the strength needed to persist against the powers of chaos, even at the cost of their minds.
There were also those who retreated from cities and settlements as the chaos armies burned them, and spent the Age of Chaos skulking in the wild places, beasts in behavior if not in body. In the frozen forests of Shyish, a woman named Volga was visited by a huge wolf that gifted her and her progeny the vampiric strength to survive and fight back against raiding chaos marauders.
In this way the bloodlines that the Vampire Mortarchs had founded blended and diverged, giving rise to a number of new Soulblight Dynasties.
The mortal peoples of Shyish struggled to survive. Those in the stable inner heartlands were mostly overrun, or turned to chaos worship themselves. In the more remote regions of the Realm, there were societies that managed to avoid the notice of chaos, at least for a time, some abanding their homes and becoming nomadic or simply moving further out towards the unstable rim. But as the centuries under Chaos rule dragged on, there were fewer and fewer places where such refugees could go unnoticed.
As those who managed to hold off Chaos armies were locked in prolonged seiges, and those who fled from Chaos armies sought refuge in less and less hospitable regions, food became scarce. Many were driven by desperation to cannibalism. Where such acts, while taboo, might be understandable, even justifiable, in a world without magic, the Mortal Realms exist within the wider Realm of Chaos. The physical properties of reality are fundamentally magical and symbolic in nature, and breaking powerful cultural taboos invites real physical and spiritual corruption. Death Magic slowly collected within the souls and bodies of those who resorted to such unsavory meals to survive until they were little removed from undead themselves.
Ever eager to see themselves as the defenders of the weak and the downtrodden, the Abhorrant progeny of Ushoran were drawn to such cannibal communities, spreading their unique variant of the Soulblight curse and with it their patron's delusion of chivalric nobility and honour in undeath. Primed by the death magic they had ingested, the influence of nearby Abhorrents triggered a final transformation from mortal humans to Mordants - horrific ghouls with twisted bodies and broken minds. Mordant communities sprang up in the isolated regions of all the realms, but most especially in Shyish, where Death Magic and necromantic energies were already abundant and mortal food was scarce even before the coming of Chaos.
Yet it was in Ghyran, the Realm of Life, that Ushoran himself would eventually settle after his initial fury was spent. Perhaps he arrived there by chance, wandering through some obscure Realmgate in his madness, or perhaps his mind had recovered enough to deliberately settle in the Realm of Life, where the power of Death is at its weakest, in order to hide from Nagash's wrath. Regardless, in Ghyran Ushoran found his refuge, slowly recovering what passed for his sanity while feasting on the corpses left in the wake of titanic battles between Alarielle's Sylvaneth and the followers of Nurgle. In time a following of Mordants and Abhorrants were drawn to him, founding the ghoul kingdom of New Summercourt.
Even so, this clever deception had cost Nagash dearly. Not just his body, but also his mind and soul had suffered grievous injury, scattering his thought and purpose. It would take an Age for Nagash to pull himself back together, but that was no matter, for it would take an age for Arkhan to prepare the Great Work. The other gods, for their part, followed the path that Nagash had chosen, withdrawing into their own hidden refuges, abandoning their peoples to the depredations of Chaos.
In the mean time, Nagash's mortarchs were left to their own devices. Arkhan the Black, ever loyal, continued preparations as instructed, pausing only long enough to track down Prince Vhordrai and seal the traitorous vampire within a realmstone coffin to wait for Nagash's return, so that the Great Necromancer could personally choose a suitable punishment.
Neferata returned to Nefertaria, where she fought a centuries long defense of her chosen lands, slowly loosing ground until all that was left was her capitol of NuLamia, locked in a perpetual siege.
Mannfred abandoned his own lands to their fate and disappeared into the mists of history. His actions and whereabouts during the Age of Chaos are known only to himself.
For a time Ushoran roved the wild places of shyish in the form of a great beast, hunting the servants of Nagash and the Chaos Gods alike. Whether any vestige of his former identity still existed in his madness clouded mind, none could say, and once his anger was spent he disappeared entirely.
With the Soulblight Mortarchs missing or preoccupied, many Soulblight Vampires throughout the realms were cut off from any chain of command and left to struggle for survival in whatever way they could. Some, following in the traditions of Carstinia or Nefertaria, claimed particular mortal hold outs as their own and attempted to rally the defense of their chosen mortal chattle. With the gods abandoning their people, the vampires who stayed to defend them were often worshipped as gods themselves, and lived in unimagineable luxury - at least until Archaon's armies came to topple their little kingdoms of the night.
Others formed isolated knightly orders, honing their combat abilities and animating tireless undead steeds to carry them into battle against any roving chaos warbands who discovered their refuge - or to help them flee from any chaos forces too large to defeat through martial skill alone.
Still others embraced the monstrous nature of the Soulblight Curse. Placing base survival above all other virtues, these vampires deliberately triggered their own beastly transformations in order to gain the strength needed to persist against the powers of chaos, even at the cost of their minds.
There were also those who retreated from cities and settlements as the chaos armies burned them, and spent the Age of Chaos skulking in the wild places, beasts in behavior if not in body. In the frozen forests of Shyish, a woman named Volga was visited by a huge wolf that gifted her and her progeny the vampiric strength to survive and fight back against raiding chaos marauders.
In this way the bloodlines that the Vampire Mortarchs had founded blended and diverged, giving rise to a number of new Soulblight Dynasties.
The mortal peoples of Shyish struggled to survive. Those in the stable inner heartlands were mostly overrun, or turned to chaos worship themselves. In the more remote regions of the Realm, there were societies that managed to avoid the notice of chaos, at least for a time, some abanding their homes and becoming nomadic or simply moving further out towards the unstable rim. But as the centuries under Chaos rule dragged on, there were fewer and fewer places where such refugees could go unnoticed.
As those who managed to hold off Chaos armies were locked in prolonged seiges, and those who fled from Chaos armies sought refuge in less and less hospitable regions, food became scarce. Many were driven by desperation to cannibalism. Where such acts, while taboo, might be understandable, even justifiable, in a world without magic, the Mortal Realms exist within the wider Realm of Chaos. The physical properties of reality are fundamentally magical and symbolic in nature, and breaking powerful cultural taboos invites real physical and spiritual corruption. Death Magic slowly collected within the souls and bodies of those who resorted to such unsavory meals to survive until they were little removed from undead themselves.
Ever eager to see themselves as the defenders of the weak and the downtrodden, the Abhorrant progeny of Ushoran were drawn to such cannibal communities, spreading their unique variant of the Soulblight curse and with it their patron's delusion of chivalric nobility and honour in undeath. Primed by the death magic they had ingested, the influence of nearby Abhorrents triggered a final transformation from mortal humans to Mordants - horrific ghouls with twisted bodies and broken minds. Mordant communities sprang up in the isolated regions of all the realms, but most especially in Shyish, where Death Magic and necromantic energies were already abundant and mortal food was scarce even before the coming of Chaos.
Yet it was in Ghyran, the Realm of Life, that Ushoran himself would eventually settle after his initial fury was spent. Perhaps he arrived there by chance, wandering through some obscure Realmgate in his madness, or perhaps his mind had recovered enough to deliberately settle in the Realm of Life, where the power of Death is at its weakest, in order to hide from Nagash's wrath. Regardless, in Ghyran Ushoran found his refuge, slowly recovering what passed for his sanity while feasting on the corpses left in the wake of titanic battles between Alarielle's Sylvaneth and the followers of Nurgle. In time a following of Mordants and Abhorrants were drawn to him, founding the ghoul kingdom of New Summercourt.
The Age of Chaos: Nagash in the Shadows, and the Missing Souls.
The forces of Chaos scoured the Realms, warring back and forth against survivors, breaking apart into smaller tribes and warbands that slaughtered each other. Everywhere they went, the dead piled high in their wake, and in Shyish the dead do not rest easy. Soon every field hid a mass grave ready to erupt in a tide of deadwalkers. In every ruined fortress and city an army of skeletons stood ready to defend walls long ago breached and families long since dead. Cthonian monsters soared on ethereal winds, undying beasts stalked the woods, and vengeful ghosts haunted the night, eager to share their suffering with any living soul they encountered.
As hard as life was for the struggling survivors in Shyish, it was a nightmare for the invaders as well. Prideful Chaos Champions proclaimed that Nagash was dead, that the Great Necromancer was no more, that the Everchosen had ground his bones to dust, but the warriors and marauders who followed them still whispered in their tents that perhaps Nagash was not truly dead at all.
And they were right to fear, for Nagash was not dead. His broken body reclined unmoving upon a great basalt throne in the Abyss of Stygxx, but the remnants of his mind and spirit soared on the winds of Shyish. This vestige of Nagash roamed to and fro, back and forth across the far reaches of his realm, stirring the dead and the undead to action against the forces of the enemy wherever he happened to find them. But these were merely incidental acts of frustration, it was not his true purpose. It was not quite time to rise up against the powers of Chaos. No, Nagash was searching for a thief.
In all the long centuries since he feigned defeat at Archaon's hands, Nagash's great works had proceeded as planned. Under Arkhan's guidance, a mountain of Gravesand had been brought from the edges of Shyish to the inner heartlands one grain at a time, and deep in the Abyss of Stygxx this Gravesand was being processed and refined into great blocks of vitrified black shadeglass. Furthermore, in the hidden places of the other realms, the catacombs of the Ossiarch Legions were nearly full to bursting with finely crafted undead soldiers waiting only for suitable souls to animate them. However, a bottleneck had formed in the supply of those souls. The Realms were blanketed in the dead, there were no end of mortal souls to comb through, but souls with the specific attributes needed for Ossiarch soldiers - courage, valour, military training, tactical acumen, the strength of will to face down the forces of Chaos - in a word, heroic souls? These had all but disappeared.
There were yet champions to be found in the Realms. While surviving communities were few, centuries of war and hardship had honed those remaining populations to a razor's edge. Yet where these heroes fell, Arkhan's nighthaunt psychopomps found no fresh heroic souls to carry back to his workshops, only scorch marks and a hint of ozone. Someone or something was snatching up the heroes of the Realms, including those of Shyish, in the moment of their deaths. And not just living heroes, either. With supplies of living souls cut off, Arkhan had turned to the tattered soul-vestiges of skeletal wight champions, but there too he was often stymied, with several deathrattle kingdoms that had continued the war against Chaos even after death left leaderless when their champions had simply vanished.
If the souls of dead and dying heroes were out of reach, Arkhan was more than willing to turn to the souls of the living, his Legion of Sacrament appearing from the darkness to slaughter entire communities of survivors in order to harvest a mere handful of heroic souls brave enough to stand against them. Yet even here thieves had stymied his efforts, as several such communities - populations Arkhan had expended considerable resources to keep hidden from the forces of Chaos specifically so he could harvest them himself - were found soulless and deserted, the population vanished but their treasures left behind and their buildings left undamaged. The only clue to their fate was a mysterious dampness and a crust of ocean salt.
The situation was desperate enough to wake Nagash from his sleep early, an action that had involved inviting an army of Nurgle warriors and demons to the very threshhold of Nagash's hidden sanctum in order to force the Great Necromancer to consciousness out of sheer desperate self defense. A risk, certainly, but a calculated one, and exactly the sort of judgement call Arkhan existed to make.
Once awakened, Nagash had cast sentence on Prince Vhordrai, whose rebellous spirit had been well and truly cowed by his long imprisonment, and yet who impressed Nagash by holding onto his human form and the last vestiges of his martial dignity despite the centuries of starvation. The Great Necromancer freed the vampire from his coffin, but bound him instead forever to his castle, never to be caught outside it by the light of day lest his soul be utterly destroyed. The castle itself, however, Nagash unmoored from its physical foundations and cast adrift on the winds of Shyish. Henceforth it would appear from the night mists wherever Nagash wished, unleashing Vhordrai and his followers, now called the Kastelai, upon the Great Necromancer's unsuspecting foes.
That business resolved, Nagash's invisible will, conscious but still fractured, still not fully recovered, now ranted silently to itself as he scoured his Realm, seeking the identity of these Soul Thieves. Soon enough he found them. One of them, at least. For even as Nagash hunted for the lost souls that belonged to him, a handful of those same stolen souls had been sent to Shyish to seek Nagash.
Sigmar's stormcast had arrived.
As hard as life was for the struggling survivors in Shyish, it was a nightmare for the invaders as well. Prideful Chaos Champions proclaimed that Nagash was dead, that the Great Necromancer was no more, that the Everchosen had ground his bones to dust, but the warriors and marauders who followed them still whispered in their tents that perhaps Nagash was not truly dead at all.
And they were right to fear, for Nagash was not dead. His broken body reclined unmoving upon a great basalt throne in the Abyss of Stygxx, but the remnants of his mind and spirit soared on the winds of Shyish. This vestige of Nagash roamed to and fro, back and forth across the far reaches of his realm, stirring the dead and the undead to action against the forces of the enemy wherever he happened to find them. But these were merely incidental acts of frustration, it was not his true purpose. It was not quite time to rise up against the powers of Chaos. No, Nagash was searching for a thief.
In all the long centuries since he feigned defeat at Archaon's hands, Nagash's great works had proceeded as planned. Under Arkhan's guidance, a mountain of Gravesand had been brought from the edges of Shyish to the inner heartlands one grain at a time, and deep in the Abyss of Stygxx this Gravesand was being processed and refined into great blocks of vitrified black shadeglass. Furthermore, in the hidden places of the other realms, the catacombs of the Ossiarch Legions were nearly full to bursting with finely crafted undead soldiers waiting only for suitable souls to animate them. However, a bottleneck had formed in the supply of those souls. The Realms were blanketed in the dead, there were no end of mortal souls to comb through, but souls with the specific attributes needed for Ossiarch soldiers - courage, valour, military training, tactical acumen, the strength of will to face down the forces of Chaos - in a word, heroic souls? These had all but disappeared.
There were yet champions to be found in the Realms. While surviving communities were few, centuries of war and hardship had honed those remaining populations to a razor's edge. Yet where these heroes fell, Arkhan's nighthaunt psychopomps found no fresh heroic souls to carry back to his workshops, only scorch marks and a hint of ozone. Someone or something was snatching up the heroes of the Realms, including those of Shyish, in the moment of their deaths. And not just living heroes, either. With supplies of living souls cut off, Arkhan had turned to the tattered soul-vestiges of skeletal wight champions, but there too he was often stymied, with several deathrattle kingdoms that had continued the war against Chaos even after death left leaderless when their champions had simply vanished.
If the souls of dead and dying heroes were out of reach, Arkhan was more than willing to turn to the souls of the living, his Legion of Sacrament appearing from the darkness to slaughter entire communities of survivors in order to harvest a mere handful of heroic souls brave enough to stand against them. Yet even here thieves had stymied his efforts, as several such communities - populations Arkhan had expended considerable resources to keep hidden from the forces of Chaos specifically so he could harvest them himself - were found soulless and deserted, the population vanished but their treasures left behind and their buildings left undamaged. The only clue to their fate was a mysterious dampness and a crust of ocean salt.
The situation was desperate enough to wake Nagash from his sleep early, an action that had involved inviting an army of Nurgle warriors and demons to the very threshhold of Nagash's hidden sanctum in order to force the Great Necromancer to consciousness out of sheer desperate self defense. A risk, certainly, but a calculated one, and exactly the sort of judgement call Arkhan existed to make.
Once awakened, Nagash had cast sentence on Prince Vhordrai, whose rebellous spirit had been well and truly cowed by his long imprisonment, and yet who impressed Nagash by holding onto his human form and the last vestiges of his martial dignity despite the centuries of starvation. The Great Necromancer freed the vampire from his coffin, but bound him instead forever to his castle, never to be caught outside it by the light of day lest his soul be utterly destroyed. The castle itself, however, Nagash unmoored from its physical foundations and cast adrift on the winds of Shyish. Henceforth it would appear from the night mists wherever Nagash wished, unleashing Vhordrai and his followers, now called the Kastelai, upon the Great Necromancer's unsuspecting foes.
That business resolved, Nagash's invisible will, conscious but still fractured, still not fully recovered, now ranted silently to itself as he scoured his Realm, seeking the identity of these Soul Thieves. Soon enough he found them. One of them, at least. For even as Nagash hunted for the lost souls that belonged to him, a handful of those same stolen souls had been sent to Shyish to seek Nagash.
Sigmar's stormcast had arrived.
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I don't think I can hold of until it's completed, I think I'll have to start reading!
Hope the workload eases!
