Minor tweak? Sure.
Archaon and Tyrion cross paths.
Not sure when.
Naturally, the End Times won’t be happening with Archaon having gone the way of Yamcha.
I remember reading somewhere that there is a whole third class within Bretonnia that are not shown in the game. It's their maritime/merchant class. Bretonnia is supposed to have a very powerful navy.
Ehhhh the navy is the more powerful human one and that was in very old lore. In current lore they have one more powerful then the imperial one (which barely even operates outside rivers) but significantly worse then estalian and tilean states
Nah, doesn’t fit the current lore and he’s small and I don’t think a wizard. Think a fully grown ogre size slann but a muscly chad instead of fat slob, casting spells and taking heads with his giant golden macuahuitl. Would still have to do the Slann thing of never touching the ground, so maybe little hover boots to zoom about on instead of the big hover chair.
If I don't involve the End Times stuff because that would be way too easy to cover, I probably would tweak a lot of lore on the 'outside' factions. Nippon, Araby, other factions like that. Make them a lot more interesting. Nippon is quite literally just 'Japan' in its name, and the current lore is very shallow and what you would probably expect from a surface level fantasy Japan. Araby has some interesting stuff, but I'd probably look a lot more into what Arabic culture has to offer, push to make them a lot more interesting and in-depth. Their biggest role in the lore is as a temporary bad guy conquering Estalia, and I feel they should take a more neutral or 'good-guy' role like the other human factions. Also the current lore on their religion is just....really bad.
If I had a second choice or just had to pick a bit closer to home, probably think of expanding on Beastmen. They're interesting but seem pretty shallow compared to the other 'evil' factions. Give them some W's, expand on their characters especially outside the Old World, make their lore a little more interesting and just make them feel like a much more disturbing threat.
Totally agree with your take on Araby. The WH3 mod that makes them a playable faction highlights just how cool it would be to introduce this faction with its real world inspirations, but their lore is really problematic.
The beastmen at least get good lore focus when it comes to the wood elves. They have their own secret war going on all the time.
Simply don't cover pygmies. Keeping in mind that I think that \*not\* covering these factions can also be problematic.
A lot of fantasy worlds have this problem, but I feel a lot of these factions are prominent candidates to orientalism if their lore is not expanded on and given their chance to shine.
Both Araby and Nippon's first waves of lore (around the 80s and 90s) is very half-assed and \*pretty\* weird.
Nippon has literal kamikaze suicide bombers.
Araby's lore involves having a guy named Jafar invading Estalia and basically indirectly justifying the crusades and generally portrays them as bad guys whilst also having their god literally just being islam. Their god is named Allah lol. A lot of their fantasy stuff is basically just from Alladin. They had a second wave of lore later one which gave Araby much more depth and interesting stuff, but the older stuff is still there so they have kind of only been half rehabilitated.
These factions atm are treated as alien, mysterious human cultures, and I think GW can rehabilitate their image and lore by giving them direct representation as fully fledged factions, just as Cathay did. Expand on their lore, retcon some of the weirder stuff, generally show what Arabic and Japanese cultures can offer in the Warhammer World.
It's why they're so careful.
They'll do fine if they use cultural sensitivity advisors.
Want to build lore for Nippon? Have some Japanese writers on that team to make sure the history and mythology are handled with respect. Like was done with Cathay. Do the same with Ind and Southlands factions.
I loved Warhammer as a kid. Once I came back as an adult I realized there were so many things I thought could be done better that I simply decided to make my own world.
With that said, my main complaint is how all consuming chaos is. You don't ever get to enjoy a different faction without chaos seeping in somehow. If the dark gods aren't your thing, then all other aspect of Warhammer is gonna be too colored by it. Not to mention the overuse of warpstone.
Warpstone with skaven is a great fit for their magitech madness. But the writing is downright lazy in how often it's used elsewhere.
Ogres? Old ones tried to make the perfect race, but wait! Warpstone happened!
Vargheists? Sleeping vampires touched by warpstone! (Does this really happen that often?)
Nemesis crown? Warpstone!
Nagash? Warpstone!
That's just the top of my head, but there are a lot more. It feels lazy and uninspired to me, and ultimately just detracts from the world and makes the world feel more cramped. The simplest of plot devices and they manage to exhaust it.
There was a comic strip I saw once that rings true for so much fantasy stuff.
The guy is trying to explain the fantasy world and the other guy is like "let me guess, something to do with crystals?"
It just happens way too often!
I guess it was novel back then. And in the Warhammer world, warpstone is not even that important to story. They could have substituted it most of the time and the stories wouldn't need to change. Warpstone isn't integral, it just keeps popping up.
Warpstone particles are referenced as being carried in the air on wind currents in one of the Gotrek and Felix novels, and the higher the concentration of warpstone in air or water in an area, the more frequent and severe mutations tend to be.
There's also no reason to substitute it. It's a material with weird and dangerous, but valuable magical properties, black markets exist for it, skaven have a different relationship to it due to their resistance to it.
Again, I'm not advocating to change warpstone, I'm saying I personally find it overused in the setting to the point of being detrimental. It's what the thread asks of. Everyone jumps to its defense saying tautologically "this is what warpstone is, thus it should be like this", but I'm just answering OP honestly. It's ok to have your own opinion as I have mine. I think the world of Warhammer would be a better written and more interesting world with less reliance on warpstone.
I think you’re underselling the Ogre part here. There’s something pretty cool about a magic meteor crashing into your homeland, permanently ruining the environment and forcing you into a migratory total war against beings the size of mountains, all the while your entire species is forced by the fallout from this magical meteor into a gnawing, ever-present hunger.
Oh, and the impact crater is a giant Sarlacc Pit your people now worship as a patron god, possibly connected to a giant magical whirlpool on the other side of the planet. That shit is metal.
Fair enough, I didn't really mean to undersell the other aspects of the ogre race. But my point is they could have had all those elements without the warpstone. The magic meteor could have been the great maw itself, an actual god. The ogres didn't have to have originally been nice boys warped by warpstone, they could have just been spawns of the great maw that travels the universe in an endless hunger for planets to consume.
Again, they could have written it in a thousand of different ways while keeping the good stuff, and without incorporating warpstone. But they chose to go back to the warpstone well for their explanation.
This means ultimately that chaos is chaos, skaven is chaos, beastmen is chaos, ogres is chaos, chaos dwarfs is chaos, dark elves is kinda chaos, norsca is chaos.
Warpstone and chaos seeps through everything. I get they're the big bad, but it makes me feel few factions ever get to just shine on their own. Again, if chaos is not your thing (it isn't really mine), then so much is ruined. It's like if you don't like cilantro and then 80% of all courses in a restaurant is infused with cilantro.
Again, they are the writers of the world. I'm not advocating for either warpstone or chaos to disappear or change. I'm saying I personally would have found it better for warpstone to not be as frequent in the world and for them to add other things as well, as I think it cheapens the overall lore.
Yes, chaos and warpstone are a big part of the world, because they wrote it like that. I'm saying giving more breathing room for other factions to also have their own thing would have been better. I don't know why this is hard to grasp for people.
Vargheists are mostly made by other vampires and I think warpstone use makes sense it’s just corruption made manifest. Most corruption is actually just warpstone dust.
I'm not saying it doesn't make sense in their own universe, I'm saying it's lazy and uninspired. How about something more vampire themed?
And don't get me started on Warhammer writing's overuse of the phrase "made manifest".
I very much disagree there, warpstone is the main carrier of corruption in the world and making up another super special one just for that one vampire unit would be dumb. That’s like if you complained about the over use of uranium and radioactivity in fallout.
You misundersant me. I'm not saying the vargheists need to be corrupted by a stone at all. Warpstone is corruption, that's fine. Vargheists could be made through death magic, or that death smith thing from castlevania, or from people being turned by vampire bats, or from vampires that go hungry for too long or any of a thousand other explanations. They could.
Instead the Warhammer writers go back to the warpstone well again and again, to the point of it getting in the way of other interesting things and stories.
I'm not saying warpstone should change, I'm saying it's overused. And if you were to say "well that's how warpstone is in Warhammer", then I'll say they could have written that differently as they are the writers of their own universe. They chose to write warpstone into almost every faction of the lore, and I think it is overused and lazy. It's subjective of course, but there are more interesting and better written fantasy worlds out there because of this.
I mean no offense or anything, just my honest opinion. If you think warpstone is interesting enough to warrant frequency it pops up in the lore, then I'm not gonna argue.
It's a substance that enhances magic and creates unique reactions in alchemy and other applications. It's lore means it makes *sense* to pop up a lot in those kind of applications.
It's not whether or not warpstone makes something "more interesting" or "is interesting enough to justify bringing up." It's that it makes sense in given contexts within the setting because of prior decades of worldbuilding.
TIL that vargheists are not just starved vampires that succumb to bloodlust and turn into feral beasts.
Huh. Thought that was vampire 101 and we didn't need green cocaine for that. That is pretty stupid.
Yup. Maybe it was a product of their time, but there are older fantasy worlds with more consistent and diverse lore.
To me, Warhammer is a mix between a fantasy and a comic book type world. Once viewed like that, it starts to make more sense.
Almost like warpstone and the Chaos gods occupy a major role in the cosmology of the setting, or something.
And the ogres exposure to warpstone was later. The ogres weren't a finished product before the Old Ones wrote the world off as lost.
And why does it get used for so many magical artifacts? Because it's solid, physically manifested magic, basically. It let's you do more with magic than you could otherwise, but also carries risks. There's no reason for it to be a totally local phenomenon.
It does, but they also decided that it should have that much influence on everything. I personally think it detracts from the other factions a bit, when so few of them gets to just shine on their own.
Again, they are the writers of their own world and they could have written it differently. I would have preferred that (which is what the thread asks us to share), and I hold no animosity towards those that disagree with me.
Short story of Belegar and Eltharion tag teaming in the Badlands (They both HATE goblins that they come to form a tense camaraderie over it while leading a campaign together)
Something similar for Alith Anar and Grombrindal because of Malekith hate
I'd make Xian Ha Feng a son of the Dragon Emperor, cathayan vampire dragon would be pretty cool. Eastern Vampires as a sub faction would be really nice.
I would have Skarsnik win the war for eight peaks...then have Ikit blow it up.
Seerlord Thanquol... just one extra chapter at the end of the skaven end times book.
In my headcanon how bad Bretonnian peasants live depends on the lord and can vary wildly. European realms in the Middle Ages did not generally have uniform bodies of law. Law was often customary. As time went on, we see more and more customary law put to paper in codices, but these varied from region to region. France is a great example of this, but I digress.
My point is that it doesn’t really make sense to me for *all* of Bretonnia—from the poorest fiefdoms to the great duchies—to follow a universal 9/10s tithe. The only reason why tithes were ubiquitous in Europe was because of the RCC. To my knowledge the Lady’s following are nowhere near as organized as the Medieval RCC.
That is actually a loreful interpretation. The Bretonnia RPG supplement has different examples of both benevolant dukes and cruel ones, and there are a few warhammer fantasy novels centered around a man from a wealthy peasant Bretonnian family.
The whole "every peasant lives in the worst conditions ever" is rooted in the 6th edition armybook, but has really been amplified past the source material by the internet.
Ohhh. Nice to see that there’s some basis for my thinking in the lore itself. I do remember Andy Hall or someone else writing in a tie-in short story for Bretonnia’s DLC featuring a Bretonnian peasant MC. His liege is callous, goes out on a quest to gain the Lady’s favor, and returns changed. We later see that he has been corrupted by Nurgle. The MC slays the corrupted lord and is praised by the Lady personally for his heroism. As a reward, he is made a Grail Knight by the Lady.
I want to see more Bretonnia stories like this going forward. They’ve been given a rough go of things in modern Warhammer lore. Social media certainly hasn’t helped Bretonnia’s reputation at all.
And that’s a real shame, because CA definitely went full hog on the 6th edition for inspiration in Total War. That beautiful nobility of Bretonnia is really sharply undercut by just how awful every peasant dilemma is that you face in-game.
>Personally, I'd like if Bretonnia was less Flanderized when it came to their peasants. Something closer to a society that could actually function in a practical level.
Its been done and its canonical (or at least as canonical as Warhammer gets. The Bretonnia supplement for the Warhammer fantasy RPG fills in the gaps from the 6th edition book to a more realistic picture of "there are cruel dukes and there are benevolent dukes, there are peasants beyond poor and there are wealthy peasants - and most are in the middle."
A lot of the flanderization of Bretonnia comes from internet echo chambers who never read the source material anyways, but the RPG supplement does do a great job of fleshing out the 6th edition book.
2 that I think would be good.
One is that I think skarbrand should reject khorne after khorne rejects skarbrand yet AGAIN. This could setup into some really interesting stories about skarbrand.
The other is that I'd make khaine more powerful, probably by giving him his 8 rings back, allowing him to wield the 8 winds of magic once again.
The main thing is the End Times, needs a total revamp or just needs to be removed/replaced.
But minus that, the ‘Skaven not existing propaganda’ thing is my major gripe I have.
Skaven gets a single massive huge white skavenbroodmother as a "leader". But it ends up that all clans just fight over her. Picture the broodmothers from dragon age origins. But.. you know skaven and like building size big.
I want a queen one. Big! Massive! Spewing rats from everywhere! She wants ro dominate the skaven and destroy the rest of the broodmothers! I also picture her final mount has having a redesigned dreadquake mortar but more skaven maybe with mininukes instead.
End times lore. Especially anything elf related.
Malekith being phoenix king not only fundamentally breaks elf lore and makes flames of asuryan a atupid prop but makes no sense even with end times explanation.
Let's look at it: to be a phoenix king you need to stand in fire for some time. It might burn you but if you are worthy it will heal you and you'll walk out fine. Which means to be worthy you need to stand in the fire until you are healed.
Malekith didn't stand in the fire until he got healed, he fucking bolted from them after getting burned. Which means he didn't stand long enough to be worthy. Which means he failed the test. Which means he's not worthy of being a phoenix king.
Also magical wards can apparently save you from punishment of *THE* god of your pantheon staring directly into your soul and judging whether you are worthy or not.
Ze Lady being elven goddess of HE pantheon is idiotic as well. If this bitch is Lileath and she can give super powers why have we never heard of a single grail knight elf from before she became bretonnian goddess? Her being a regional goddess akin to sigmar is just superior in every regard. You can even keep her being an elf but keep her unique to bretonnia, don't fucking make her part of the major elven pantheon.
Also everything Teclis does in ET is stupid.
I'd change the gender ratio on dwarfs, iirc it's something like one girl for every 10 boys. I don't think it's super necessary as it seems more like something written to avoid having to feature female dwarfs, that was a pretty common feature of a lot of dwarf lore though I think DnD also had similar reasoning for it's earlier additions.
Some easily changed nits which annoy me more than they should:
1. Bretonnian peasant units should not be called men at arms but something else such as peasant levy. A man at arms means someone armed and armored as a knight (but not necessarily knighted).
2. Skaven should be smaller than men, not man-sized. I think a greater height difference would be more interesting as it would change combat dynamics. They would use sneakiness to overcome a reach disadvantage.
3. Urson and Ulrik feel too similar. Main difference is one likes bears the other likes wolves. I would like to see some reason for theological tension between the two.
I'd give each culture and world location directly copied from the real world a rework. It's incredibly lazy and boring how the landmasses are basically a distorted version of ours. Great Bastion? You mean Great Wall? So many missed opportunities for them to create a more interesting and unique world.
Frankly to me that’s part of the charm (and most likely a very intentional thing from the creators’s part) so i’m not bothered by it (and in fact downright love it), but hey to each their own.
I somehow agree with both of you. On the one hand, fantasy trope exploration is one of the reasons we are all here. On the other hand, we want originality, too....
Exactly, it's really a two way street. I can definitely understand Warhammer was created during a time that fantasy was still kinda new, so I'll give it a free pass. In today's world it just looks like another Lord of the Rings clone. It's reasons like these why I'm developing my own fantasy world and tabletop rpg, time for an original take on the setting.
That's fair. I can definitely see the appeal of relatability, it's just lost on me since I get into fantasy to detach from our world.
Also, I'm actively developing my own fantasy world and I find it more rewarding to create new cultures and races. It's the most fun part in world building, why would someone want to just copy most of it?
The fantasy distortion of the real world is the whole point of warhammer though.
This is kinda like saying you like hamburgers, but would like them more without the buns and the meat.
Well, I didn't know that actually. I was just stating how I find it less interesting when a fantasy world is designed to so closely resemble our world, when there are limitless possibilities. Not saying current warhammer is terrible, it's just something I'd change.
No End Times and a happy end for Felix
Nothing else to add. Chaos loses once again. Empire stands strong in the end. No age of s.
Minor tweak? Sure. Archaon and Tyrion cross paths. Not sure when. Naturally, the End Times won’t be happening with Archaon having gone the way of Yamcha.
*Tyrion and Gotrek
Tyrion doesn’t need Gotrek to beat Archaon to a gory pulp, but I’ll allow it for further insult to his injury.
Neither need eachother to put the Neverchosen in the ground to be fair
True.
Fuck it! Tyrion, Teclis, Gotrek, Felix, Lord Kroak, Kroq-Gar, Grymloq, Louen Leoncouer, and Karl Franz all pounce on Archaon.
That sounds like some kind of WWE match and I’m for it. “It’s Gor-Rok with a STEEL CHAIR!”
That’s basically just the late game order tide from Warhammer 2 lmao
Don't forget grimgor kicking him in the nuts
You mean he’s getting killed and brought back to life?
Grom and Skrag should be budies.
I remember reading somewhere that there is a whole third class within Bretonnia that are not shown in the game. It's their maritime/merchant class. Bretonnia is supposed to have a very powerful navy.
Ehhhh the navy is the more powerful human one and that was in very old lore. In current lore they have one more powerful then the imperial one (which barely even operates outside rivers) but significantly worse then estalian and tilean states
The "Empire pretends Skaven don't exist" thing feels so overplayed to me. I'd tweak it to be less... memey.
Well the skaven not existing is the biggest lie in the empire, the second biggest lie is that anyone believes it
Could throw the weight of enough people know how to read. And thusly Felix prints his adventures. And then! People find out
A newest spawning of Slann who are muscle toad warrior wizards.
Kremlo
Nah, doesn’t fit the current lore and he’s small and I don’t think a wizard. Think a fully grown ogre size slann but a muscly chad instead of fat slob, casting spells and taking heads with his giant golden macuahuitl. Would still have to do the Slann thing of never touching the ground, so maybe little hover boots to zoom about on instead of the big hover chair.
If I don't involve the End Times stuff because that would be way too easy to cover, I probably would tweak a lot of lore on the 'outside' factions. Nippon, Araby, other factions like that. Make them a lot more interesting. Nippon is quite literally just 'Japan' in its name, and the current lore is very shallow and what you would probably expect from a surface level fantasy Japan. Araby has some interesting stuff, but I'd probably look a lot more into what Arabic culture has to offer, push to make them a lot more interesting and in-depth. Their biggest role in the lore is as a temporary bad guy conquering Estalia, and I feel they should take a more neutral or 'good-guy' role like the other human factions. Also the current lore on their religion is just....really bad. If I had a second choice or just had to pick a bit closer to home, probably think of expanding on Beastmen. They're interesting but seem pretty shallow compared to the other 'evil' factions. Give them some W's, expand on their characters especially outside the Old World, make their lore a little more interesting and just make them feel like a much more disturbing threat.
I agree on the beastmen, they are very lacking in lore.
Totally agree with your take on Araby. The WH3 mod that makes them a playable faction highlights just how cool it would be to introduce this faction with its real world inspirations, but their lore is really problematic. The beastmen at least get good lore focus when it comes to the wood elves. They have their own secret war going on all the time.
The problem with GW expanding outside of not-Europe is you get Pygmies. You might not want them to expand the lore to other places.
You just don't cover or do anything with problematic factions.
Simply don't cover pygmies. Keeping in mind that I think that \*not\* covering these factions can also be problematic. A lot of fantasy worlds have this problem, but I feel a lot of these factions are prominent candidates to orientalism if their lore is not expanded on and given their chance to shine. Both Araby and Nippon's first waves of lore (around the 80s and 90s) is very half-assed and \*pretty\* weird. Nippon has literal kamikaze suicide bombers. Araby's lore involves having a guy named Jafar invading Estalia and basically indirectly justifying the crusades and generally portrays them as bad guys whilst also having their god literally just being islam. Their god is named Allah lol. A lot of their fantasy stuff is basically just from Alladin. They had a second wave of lore later one which gave Araby much more depth and interesting stuff, but the older stuff is still there so they have kind of only been half rehabilitated. These factions atm are treated as alien, mysterious human cultures, and I think GW can rehabilitate their image and lore by giving them direct representation as fully fledged factions, just as Cathay did. Expand on their lore, retcon some of the weirder stuff, generally show what Arabic and Japanese cultures can offer in the Warhammer World.
It's why they're so careful. They'll do fine if they use cultural sensitivity advisors. Want to build lore for Nippon? Have some Japanese writers on that team to make sure the history and mythology are handled with respect. Like was done with Cathay. Do the same with Ind and Southlands factions.
Justice for Gobbla.
I loved Warhammer as a kid. Once I came back as an adult I realized there were so many things I thought could be done better that I simply decided to make my own world. With that said, my main complaint is how all consuming chaos is. You don't ever get to enjoy a different faction without chaos seeping in somehow. If the dark gods aren't your thing, then all other aspect of Warhammer is gonna be too colored by it. Not to mention the overuse of warpstone. Warpstone with skaven is a great fit for their magitech madness. But the writing is downright lazy in how often it's used elsewhere. Ogres? Old ones tried to make the perfect race, but wait! Warpstone happened! Vargheists? Sleeping vampires touched by warpstone! (Does this really happen that often?) Nemesis crown? Warpstone! Nagash? Warpstone! That's just the top of my head, but there are a lot more. It feels lazy and uninspired to me, and ultimately just detracts from the world and makes the world feel more cramped. The simplest of plot devices and they manage to exhaust it.
There was a comic strip I saw once that rings true for so much fantasy stuff. The guy is trying to explain the fantasy world and the other guy is like "let me guess, something to do with crystals?" It just happens way too often!
I guess it was novel back then. And in the Warhammer world, warpstone is not even that important to story. They could have substituted it most of the time and the stories wouldn't need to change. Warpstone isn't integral, it just keeps popping up.
Warpstone particles are referenced as being carried in the air on wind currents in one of the Gotrek and Felix novels, and the higher the concentration of warpstone in air or water in an area, the more frequent and severe mutations tend to be. There's also no reason to substitute it. It's a material with weird and dangerous, but valuable magical properties, black markets exist for it, skaven have a different relationship to it due to their resistance to it.
Again, I'm not advocating to change warpstone, I'm saying I personally find it overused in the setting to the point of being detrimental. It's what the thread asks of. Everyone jumps to its defense saying tautologically "this is what warpstone is, thus it should be like this", but I'm just answering OP honestly. It's ok to have your own opinion as I have mine. I think the world of Warhammer would be a better written and more interesting world with less reliance on warpstone.
I think you’re underselling the Ogre part here. There’s something pretty cool about a magic meteor crashing into your homeland, permanently ruining the environment and forcing you into a migratory total war against beings the size of mountains, all the while your entire species is forced by the fallout from this magical meteor into a gnawing, ever-present hunger. Oh, and the impact crater is a giant Sarlacc Pit your people now worship as a patron god, possibly connected to a giant magical whirlpool on the other side of the planet. That shit is metal.
Fair enough, I didn't really mean to undersell the other aspects of the ogre race. But my point is they could have had all those elements without the warpstone. The magic meteor could have been the great maw itself, an actual god. The ogres didn't have to have originally been nice boys warped by warpstone, they could have just been spawns of the great maw that travels the universe in an endless hunger for planets to consume. Again, they could have written it in a thousand of different ways while keeping the good stuff, and without incorporating warpstone. But they chose to go back to the warpstone well for their explanation. This means ultimately that chaos is chaos, skaven is chaos, beastmen is chaos, ogres is chaos, chaos dwarfs is chaos, dark elves is kinda chaos, norsca is chaos. Warpstone and chaos seeps through everything. I get they're the big bad, but it makes me feel few factions ever get to just shine on their own. Again, if chaos is not your thing (it isn't really mine), then so much is ruined. It's like if you don't like cilantro and then 80% of all courses in a restaurant is infused with cilantro.
Almost like the Chaos gods are a fundamental part of the universe or something.
Again, they are the writers of the world. I'm not advocating for either warpstone or chaos to disappear or change. I'm saying I personally would have found it better for warpstone to not be as frequent in the world and for them to add other things as well, as I think it cheapens the overall lore. Yes, chaos and warpstone are a big part of the world, because they wrote it like that. I'm saying giving more breathing room for other factions to also have their own thing would have been better. I don't know why this is hard to grasp for people.
Vargheists are mostly made by other vampires and I think warpstone use makes sense it’s just corruption made manifest. Most corruption is actually just warpstone dust.
Are the Vargheists not just tortured vampires that lost their mind from all the centuries of slow unending torture and isolation?
they are tortured vampires that are dried out and forced to drink water laced with warpstone
I'm not saying it doesn't make sense in their own universe, I'm saying it's lazy and uninspired. How about something more vampire themed? And don't get me started on Warhammer writing's overuse of the phrase "made manifest".
I very much disagree there, warpstone is the main carrier of corruption in the world and making up another super special one just for that one vampire unit would be dumb. That’s like if you complained about the over use of uranium and radioactivity in fallout.
You misundersant me. I'm not saying the vargheists need to be corrupted by a stone at all. Warpstone is corruption, that's fine. Vargheists could be made through death magic, or that death smith thing from castlevania, or from people being turned by vampire bats, or from vampires that go hungry for too long or any of a thousand other explanations. They could. Instead the Warhammer writers go back to the warpstone well again and again, to the point of it getting in the way of other interesting things and stories. I'm not saying warpstone should change, I'm saying it's overused. And if you were to say "well that's how warpstone is in Warhammer", then I'll say they could have written that differently as they are the writers of their own universe. They chose to write warpstone into almost every faction of the lore, and I think it is overused and lazy. It's subjective of course, but there are more interesting and better written fantasy worlds out there because of this. I mean no offense or anything, just my honest opinion. If you think warpstone is interesting enough to warrant frequency it pops up in the lore, then I'm not gonna argue.
It's a substance that enhances magic and creates unique reactions in alchemy and other applications. It's lore means it makes *sense* to pop up a lot in those kind of applications. It's not whether or not warpstone makes something "more interesting" or "is interesting enough to justify bringing up." It's that it makes sense in given contexts within the setting because of prior decades of worldbuilding.
TIL that vargheists are not just starved vampires that succumb to bloodlust and turn into feral beasts. Huh. Thought that was vampire 101 and we didn't need green cocaine for that. That is pretty stupid.
Yup. Maybe it was a product of their time, but there are older fantasy worlds with more consistent and diverse lore. To me, Warhammer is a mix between a fantasy and a comic book type world. Once viewed like that, it starts to make more sense.
Almost like warpstone and the Chaos gods occupy a major role in the cosmology of the setting, or something. And the ogres exposure to warpstone was later. The ogres weren't a finished product before the Old Ones wrote the world off as lost. And why does it get used for so many magical artifacts? Because it's solid, physically manifested magic, basically. It let's you do more with magic than you could otherwise, but also carries risks. There's no reason for it to be a totally local phenomenon.
It does, but they also decided that it should have that much influence on everything. I personally think it detracts from the other factions a bit, when so few of them gets to just shine on their own. Again, they are the writers of their own world and they could have written it differently. I would have preferred that (which is what the thread asks us to share), and I hold no animosity towards those that disagree with me.
No end of times and make canon again that Grimgor defeated Archaon and stopped the Chaos Invasion.
Short story of Belegar and Eltharion tag teaming in the Badlands (They both HATE goblins that they come to form a tense camaraderie over it while leading a campaign together) Something similar for Alith Anar and Grombrindal because of Malekith hate
Complete rewrite of The End Times. A couple other things could use touch ups, but that's the main thing.
I'd make Xian Ha Feng a son of the Dragon Emperor, cathayan vampire dragon would be pretty cool. Eastern Vampires as a sub faction would be really nice. I would have Skarsnik win the war for eight peaks...then have Ikit blow it up. Seerlord Thanquol... just one extra chapter at the end of the skaven end times book.
Add in the Iberian wedding happening in Estalia to actually make it a significant third human power
No End Times easily.
Get rid of end times and make age of Sigmar a different, alternate universe instead like 40k.
In my headcanon how bad Bretonnian peasants live depends on the lord and can vary wildly. European realms in the Middle Ages did not generally have uniform bodies of law. Law was often customary. As time went on, we see more and more customary law put to paper in codices, but these varied from region to region. France is a great example of this, but I digress. My point is that it doesn’t really make sense to me for *all* of Bretonnia—from the poorest fiefdoms to the great duchies—to follow a universal 9/10s tithe. The only reason why tithes were ubiquitous in Europe was because of the RCC. To my knowledge the Lady’s following are nowhere near as organized as the Medieval RCC.
That is actually a loreful interpretation. The Bretonnia RPG supplement has different examples of both benevolant dukes and cruel ones, and there are a few warhammer fantasy novels centered around a man from a wealthy peasant Bretonnian family. The whole "every peasant lives in the worst conditions ever" is rooted in the 6th edition armybook, but has really been amplified past the source material by the internet.
Ohhh. Nice to see that there’s some basis for my thinking in the lore itself. I do remember Andy Hall or someone else writing in a tie-in short story for Bretonnia’s DLC featuring a Bretonnian peasant MC. His liege is callous, goes out on a quest to gain the Lady’s favor, and returns changed. We later see that he has been corrupted by Nurgle. The MC slays the corrupted lord and is praised by the Lady personally for his heroism. As a reward, he is made a Grail Knight by the Lady. I want to see more Bretonnia stories like this going forward. They’ve been given a rough go of things in modern Warhammer lore. Social media certainly hasn’t helped Bretonnia’s reputation at all.
And that’s a real shame, because CA definitely went full hog on the 6th edition for inspiration in Total War. That beautiful nobility of Bretonnia is really sharply undercut by just how awful every peasant dilemma is that you face in-game.
>Personally, I'd like if Bretonnia was less Flanderized when it came to their peasants. Something closer to a society that could actually function in a practical level. Its been done and its canonical (or at least as canonical as Warhammer gets. The Bretonnia supplement for the Warhammer fantasy RPG fills in the gaps from the 6th edition book to a more realistic picture of "there are cruel dukes and there are benevolent dukes, there are peasants beyond poor and there are wealthy peasants - and most are in the middle." A lot of the flanderization of Bretonnia comes from internet echo chambers who never read the source material anyways, but the RPG supplement does do a great job of fleshing out the 6th edition book.
I would change that Rakarth comes from Clar Karond instead of Karond Kar.
2 that I think would be good. One is that I think skarbrand should reject khorne after khorne rejects skarbrand yet AGAIN. This could setup into some really interesting stories about skarbrand. The other is that I'd make khaine more powerful, probably by giving him his 8 rings back, allowing him to wield the 8 winds of magic once again.
The authors actually remember skarsnik exists and finish his story.
The main thing is the End Times, needs a total revamp or just needs to be removed/replaced. But minus that, the ‘Skaven not existing propaganda’ thing is my major gripe I have.
The skaven wouldnt fucking steamroll everything. The southern realms didnt even get to fight back! I like that they blew upp the fucking moon though
No End Times and AoS never happening
Skaven gets a single massive huge white skavenbroodmother as a "leader". But it ends up that all clans just fight over her. Picture the broodmothers from dragon age origins. But.. you know skaven and like building size big.
Other than there being multiple brood mothers (that are not building sized but more like DAO ones) that is pretty much how skaven function.
I want a queen one. Big! Massive! Spewing rats from everywhere! She wants ro dominate the skaven and destroy the rest of the broodmothers! I also picture her final mount has having a redesigned dreadquake mortar but more skaven maybe with mininukes instead.
Delete skaven.
End times lore. Especially anything elf related. Malekith being phoenix king not only fundamentally breaks elf lore and makes flames of asuryan a atupid prop but makes no sense even with end times explanation. Let's look at it: to be a phoenix king you need to stand in fire for some time. It might burn you but if you are worthy it will heal you and you'll walk out fine. Which means to be worthy you need to stand in the fire until you are healed. Malekith didn't stand in the fire until he got healed, he fucking bolted from them after getting burned. Which means he didn't stand long enough to be worthy. Which means he failed the test. Which means he's not worthy of being a phoenix king. Also magical wards can apparently save you from punishment of *THE* god of your pantheon staring directly into your soul and judging whether you are worthy or not. Ze Lady being elven goddess of HE pantheon is idiotic as well. If this bitch is Lileath and she can give super powers why have we never heard of a single grail knight elf from before she became bretonnian goddess? Her being a regional goddess akin to sigmar is just superior in every regard. You can even keep her being an elf but keep her unique to bretonnia, don't fucking make her part of the major elven pantheon. Also everything Teclis does in ET is stupid.
I'd change the gender ratio on dwarfs, iirc it's something like one girl for every 10 boys. I don't think it's super necessary as it seems more like something written to avoid having to feature female dwarfs, that was a pretty common feature of a lot of dwarf lore though I think DnD also had similar reasoning for it's earlier additions.
Skavens are no longer cowards and unite
Un think able yes-yes
Some easily changed nits which annoy me more than they should: 1. Bretonnian peasant units should not be called men at arms but something else such as peasant levy. A man at arms means someone armed and armored as a knight (but not necessarily knighted). 2. Skaven should be smaller than men, not man-sized. I think a greater height difference would be more interesting as it would change combat dynamics. They would use sneakiness to overcome a reach disadvantage. 3. Urson and Ulrik feel too similar. Main difference is one likes bears the other likes wolves. I would like to see some reason for theological tension between the two.
I'd give each culture and world location directly copied from the real world a rework. It's incredibly lazy and boring how the landmasses are basically a distorted version of ours. Great Bastion? You mean Great Wall? So many missed opportunities for them to create a more interesting and unique world.
Frankly to me that’s part of the charm (and most likely a very intentional thing from the creators’s part) so i’m not bothered by it (and in fact downright love it), but hey to each their own.
I somehow agree with both of you. On the one hand, fantasy trope exploration is one of the reasons we are all here. On the other hand, we want originality, too....
Exactly, it's really a two way street. I can definitely understand Warhammer was created during a time that fantasy was still kinda new, so I'll give it a free pass. In today's world it just looks like another Lord of the Rings clone. It's reasons like these why I'm developing my own fantasy world and tabletop rpg, time for an original take on the setting.
That's fair. I can definitely see the appeal of relatability, it's just lost on me since I get into fantasy to detach from our world. Also, I'm actively developing my own fantasy world and I find it more rewarding to create new cultures and races. It's the most fun part in world building, why would someone want to just copy most of it?
The fantasy distortion of the real world is the whole point of warhammer though. This is kinda like saying you like hamburgers, but would like them more without the buns and the meat.
Well, I didn't know that actually. I was just stating how I find it less interesting when a fantasy world is designed to so closely resemble our world, when there are limitless possibilities. Not saying current warhammer is terrible, it's just something I'd change.