Chronology

In progress

## Age of Myth

* **The birth of new lands** - Intrigued by the unusual quirk of Verdia’s diverse ecosystem, Alarielle takes up residence within that subcontinent. There, all the life-forms are female, and every birth season they mate with the inhabitants of the land’s counterpart, Thyria, where all the life-forms are male. Thyria enjoys divine patronage too, for this is a land where the Hunter God is often seen, migrating over from the eastern land of Kurnotheal. Each spring the lands themselves mate, and the seeds of new domains are planted, the sub-continent of Verdia making geological congress with its neighbour, linking with Thyria via the stamen-like promontories known as the Triske Isles. From this union is born the spring island of Neos, a thriving new kingdom that rises from the waters in the east to reveal at its heart a huge geomantic birthmark in the shape of Ghyran itself. That same season sees the rise of Neos’ strange siblings – the Isle Decrepita, a land where the dwindling of years rules supreme, and the undulating island of Irridia, where even the soil itself is pregnant with new life.[0e]
* **Roots of discontent** - Though fertile Irridia is largely left to its own devices by Alarielle, the newborn nations of Neos and Decrepita are seeded with soulpods from the Everqueen’s amphorae. They are soon inhabited by fresh glades of Sylvaneth – the proud Oakenbrow in Neos, and the shadowy Dreadwood in Decrepita. A rivalry quickly springs up between the two lands, for the cold-hearted humans and bitter Sylvaneth of Decrepita are jealous of the joyful, youthful tribes of Neos, who live in harmony with the Dryad groves that sprout there. Over the years, this rivalry is to turn sour, with the Princelings of Irridia caught in the middle.[0e]
* **To steal away the young** - In freezing Decrepita, few children are born. Every new year the icepeople of that realm take to the Tendril Sea and raid the shores of Neos, capturing newborns and soulpods with which to give life to their own barren shores. The doe-eyed people of Neos are usually kind, naïve, and quick to forgive – though the theft of their children they cannot ignore. Over time they learn to hate the gnarled warriors of Decrepita and to fear the sight of their wolf-ship sails.[0e]
* **The Oak of Ages Past** - Perhaps attracted to Alarielle as an echo of old realities, the Oak of Ages Past drifts through the void, coming to rest in the south of Verdia near the hidden vale of Athelwyrd. Sigmar sees this strange visitation from High Azyr and, recognising the great oak as a symbol of defiance, he makes haste to Verdia, bringing the gift of civilisation to the humans there.[0e]
* **The Sowing** - Alarielle plants soulpod glades across the Realm of Ghyran from these come the first Sylvaneth, the Oakenbrow Glade and Gnarlroot Glade.
* **The Fall** - Morathi crashes into the Umbralic Sea in the Realm of Ulgu she conjures mist elementals and shadow daemons for company.
* **The Awakening** - Tyrion awakens in the Realm of Hysh with his brother Teclis and they begin to explore that realm. Malerion also awakens in the Realm of Ulgu and discovers his mother, Morathi.
* **Duel of the Great Wyrms** - At the dawn of the Age of Myth, the Solar Drake Ignax fights the father of serpents, Great Nagendra, for domination of Aqshy’s heartlands. The eastern isles are shattered, gnawed and scarred by their earth-breaking fight. Ignax shreds Nagendra’s flanks, the flesh falling away to form the serpents of the south. Exhausted by her victory, Ignax is caught by Grimnir and shackled to the Land of the Chained Sun so that his people might always have light and fire.[0a]
* **The Starless Gates** -The First Great Change comes upon Shyish when the Starless Gates – defended against the living by giant skeletal hydragors – are flung wide by the God-King Sigmar. The hydragor guardians are shattered by the mighty hammer Ghal Maraz, opening the way into the underworlds for the living as well as the deceased. Gnorros, the Father of Hydragors, is so enraged by the slaying of his guardians that he stabs his claws into the Prime Innerlands in an attempt to slay Sigmar. The God-King escapes, but the indentations form the Chained Lakes, as well as the giant whirlpools known as the Sea Maw and the Black Nihil. Luckily, Gnorros, who has a very short attention span, leaves for pastures new.[0i]
* **The quick and the dead** - Under Sigmar’s watchful eye, mortal folk settle and populate Shyish’s Prime Innerlands – those least saturated in the energies of death. Slowly, cities are built and civilisations thrive. Great obsidian towers are erected, the finest tall and grand enough to rival even the star-spires of Azyr. Amongst the most impressive regions are those of Stygxx, a mountainous underworld where gods and mortals freely interbreed; Hallost, the Land of Dead Heroes, where those who believe in eternal battle are reincarnated with each new day; and Athanasia, where the mortals live only a set span before willingly going to their deaths in a great rite of ending – only to be reborn with the next rising sun. The richest of the Innerlands are the Amethyst Princedoms – a domain where precious minerals glitter everywhere. The Amethyst Princedoms thrive above all, with the ven Denst dynasty acting as benevolent kings that trade through a well-defended Realmgate network. Ossia, another underworld of the Innerlands, thrives. It is a place of peace, with the living coexisting in harmony alongside the dead. Many thousands of graveyards cover its lands, and every ghost-soul that travels there from the mortal lands of Fleizch finds an echo of their grave transported with them. They feel little grief, for they are often sought out by living relatives visiting their true graves in Fleizch, and take succour in hearing of those still living as the news echoes into Shyish.[0i]
* **Bounty of the seas** - The waters of the Shyish Innerlands thrive with pale-skinned forms of life, amongst them massive eater-fish and greater scuttlefish that prey on all things that drift down to the sea bed. Though it takes the settlers of the Innerlands many perilous years to learn how to catch these omnipredators safely, they pull in hauls of such number that in the northern lands no soul need ever go hungry.[0i]
* **Life in the Realm of Death** - The people of the Innerlands, taught the arts of civilisation by Sigmar himself, thrive and innovate. Dirgesong, soulful music and amethyst sky-lanterns fill the underworld night. Gemstones, created from the crushing pressures of the subterranean strata and mined by gifted duardin and human guilds, become so commonplace that they are considered of less value than good meat – a fattened bull is worth a year’s wages in the Innerlands, for fauna is scarce. Trade with the Realm of Beasts, established by the Amethyst Princes via the Penultima Realmgate network, sees much saltedmeat and livestock imported every year. For several generations, the Innerlands enjoy harmony.[0i]
* **Then comes Nagash** - In the course of his travels, Sigmar finds Nagash’s soulless shell buried under a cairn of magical realmstone. After the demise of the world-thatwas, Nagash’s essence had been naturally drawn to Shyish. Sigmar deliberates long upon the correct course, but sensing an opportunity he chooses to revive the Great Necromancer, just as Dracothion had revived him in turn. It is a decision he will come to regret. Upon his awakening, Nagash swears to align himself with Sigmar’s agendas, but in secret he covets the power of the underworlds and wishes to consume them all. He makes his home at the exact centre of the Shyish realmsphere, and builds the fortress complex of Nagashizzar at its core. For long centuries he crafts his armies with bone, spirit, amethyst and the stuff of death itself.When his legions reach the heights of magnificence, he sends his undead minions across the Innerlands to locate and gather as much Shyishanrealmstone as possible. Over the course of long centuries, many monolithic deposits are unearthed by legions of skeleton slaves. Purpleblack structures of vitrified magical sand take shape at Shyish’s heart.[0i]
* **Lands of the Mortarchs** - Nagash sends his lieutenants, the Mortarchs, to expand their own realms. Arkhan the Black takes a stronghold beyond the sight of mortal men, whereas Neferata extends her dominion to an unclaimed underworld, naming it Neferatia, and builds the city of Nulahmia there as a memento of her old strongholds. Mannfred von Carstein also annexes a part of the Innerlands, naming it Carstinia, but the land is a mere echo of his former glories. Mannfred sits on his overly huge throne, corpses fashioned in the likeness of Vlad, Konrad and Isabella at his beck and call, but in his heart he knows it is an artificial thing he has made, a reminder of his failure to claim the old Empire for his own. He soon abdicates, leaving a hollow mockery of Sylvania behind him.[0i]
* **The fate of Sahadespire** - Penultima is a thriving and populous land of mortal men. Its people revere their ancestors and build great cities of learning and understanding. One of these is Shadespire, wherethe civic luminaries known as Katophranes lead the pursuit of science, alchemy and magic. The Katophranes even manage to harness the power of grave-sand, the near-black substance that is laced throughout the realmstone-dunesof Shyish, each rivulet representing the lifespan of a mortal creature in the realms. It is said that one who halts the flow of their personalsand-stream will put off indefinitely their own demise. The Katophranes succeed in this, vitrifying the sands of time into a brittle material known as shadeglass. With this invention, they live on in magical reflections long after their natural life’s end, the better to teach their pupils the secrets they long ago uncovered. Innovation and even technology becomes commonplace in Shadespire, as does the pursuit of the arcane. The city becomes famous, and its spires rise high indeed. Its thriving trade in ensorcelled items fills the city’s coffers to bursting, but over time, Nagash becomes incensed by the arrogance of the Katophranes of Shadespire and their methods of escaping his clutches. He works a great spell to wrench the essence of the city from its physical incarnation and hurl it into the aether, where it will abide forever as a ghostly echo of its former self. The city’s essence comes to rest in Uhl-Gysh, the Hidden Gloaming, the twilight realm between Ulgu and Hysh.[0j]
* **Quietus interrupted** - Assassin’s Rest, a land shaped like the hook symbol of Shyish, is hometo the ghosts of some of the most notorious killers of the age. These souls roam the island eternally, eachconvinced by the island’s peculiar magic that they are completely alone. They find a kind of peace as a result. Slowly, however, the land falls underthe sway of Nagash’s necromancers. With a legion of undead assassins at his command, he destabilises a dozen nations in a single night.[0j]
* **A deadly toll** - Nagash’s grip on Shyish becomes tighter and tighter. Many of the older, more traditional underworlds are conquered by legions of undead and their energies harnessed to feed Nagash’s undying hunger. Across the Innerlands, primitive civilisations cower as Nagash hunts down thelords of each underworld and devours them, one at a time. It seems that nothing can stop the Great Necromancer, for in the deathly lands of Shyish his power is magnified tenfold. The underworld nations pray, in their own ways, for something – anything – to break the curse of evil that has fallen across their homelands.[0j]
* **The God-King slayer** - Sigmar slays the Hydragors that guard the gates of the Realm of Shyish, he finds and releases Nagash.
* (other travels) - Sigmar finds Gorkamorka trapped within Drakatoa, the living avalanche who he releases but is then attacked by the enraged greenskin god, eventually after a long fight, they cease their violence, laugh and agree to fight alongside each other. Sigmar overthrows the volc-giants freeing the Realm of Aqshy.
* **A time of plenty** - With an ever-growing accord fostered between Alarielle’s Sylvaneth and Sigmar’s humans, great cities are built amongst the treetops and groves of the Everspring Swathe. The currency that comes into being across these nations is not that of coin, but labour. The people of the Swathe nations trade time – a minute, an hour, a day, or a week of hard work in exchange for goods and services, each promise kept by oral tradition and hearsay alone. At first, this loose honour system is all that is needed, such is the trust and harmony among the races.[0e]
* **From harmony, sloth** - For a while, the Swatheling honour system works, but human laziness and complacency sees hostility break out amongst several tribes as trade-covenants are broken. Old debts and accusations resurface – in all five of the Swathe nations, the darker Sylvaneth kindreds are accused of stealing animals and even snatching away human children in the night. Cracks appear in the relationship between the races, and some tribes begin to mistrust or even bear hostility towards certain others.[0e]
* **Invasion of the dead** - Decrepita, being a land where every living thing freezes and dies every year only to be reborn again each spring, is coveted by Nagash. Under the guise of a mass diplomatic visit he brings his armies to that region in person via the vast vertebral structures known as the Gates Mortis. At first, his vanguard is held at bay by the Dreadwood. However, seemingly endless undead pour through the gate and, ultimately, the Sylvaneth cordon is breached. A wide-scale eruption of violence is only halted by the direct intervention of Sigmar.[0e]
* **Celestial aligment** - As the God-King spreads human civilisation across the lands, he enlists the aid of Alarielle and Nagash – albeit separately – as part of his Pantheon of Order. They both agree to his requests, but essentially for selfish reasons, doing so in the interests of fostering civilisations that they can later harness and mould in their own images. During the dwindle-cycle after the summer of new growth, Alarielle seeks parley with Nagash. She points out they are both part of Sigmar’s wider plan, and they agree to a compromise – Nagash will take Decrepita as his sovereign territory, but in return he swears to be content to keep his legions there and stray no further. The spring isle of Neos, no longer raided and harassed by the wolf-ships of Decrepita, burgeons with new energies. The hyper-verdant realm gives rise to a thousand new species. Nourished by the Heaving Rapids, they cross the Great Shear to the motherlands of Erosia and southern Verdia. Alarielle’s lush green continent sings with life more than ever before, and for a while, all is paradise.[0e]
* **Twin liberation** - Sigmar finds the duardin gods, Grungni and Grimnir chained atop the Iron Mountains in the Realm of Chamon and he releases them.
* **Grungni’s gifts** - After being freed from his bondage by the God-King Sigmar, Grungni fashions the Nineteen Wonders of Chamon. His exertions are such that his breath mingles with the dust of his forges to form sky-borne clouds of aether-gold. Amongst his creations are the steel city of Maraz Drang, the cog-people of Odsin – later disowned after the Winding Storm – the World Hearth, and the perfectly straight Godwrought Isles. Each of these islands, pleasing in form and a rich paradise, is bestowed upon one of Grungni’s worshipper clans. The linear isles and ordered mountains of this region are soon linked by curving bridges, each a glorious and perfect arc. Trade between the duardin and the human smiths that seek to learn from them begins to thrive, as do magma farms and burgeoning forms of technology. Satisfied that his folk are walking the path to self-sufficiency, Grungni departs to repay his debt to Sigmar. He joins the Pantheon of Order and dwells long in Azyr to forge the fabled Sigmarabulum. Over eighty generations of prosperity and relative peace are to follow in the Godwrought Isles, but even Grungni could not fashion a society proof against the crippling curse of greed.[0m]
* **Cahmonite** - Across the most central regions of the Godwrought Isles, the globular, quicksilver-like realmstone of Chamon – known as Chamonite – is discovered in abundance. It is a source of near-limitless alchemical power for those with the art to manipulate it. After the invention of the syringe-like device known as the aether-glutton in the Azgal Mountains, Chamonite is harnessed in great measure. Siphoned, categorised and rationed by the gifted duardin aethermancers of Azgal and the Sigyorn, the ready supply of Chamonite ensures every clan of the western isles – be they duardin, gholemkind or human – has an abundance of magic with which to power their forges. It becomes a widespread currency of sorts, with a single droplet roughly equal to a good-sized chest full of gold coin. Claimant operations and land stakes reach fever pitch, with the tribal federations that shift and flow across the land competing and even warring amongst themselves to strip-mine the land of its magical resources before their rivals can do so.[0m]
* **The forge turn cold** - The far northern land used for Grungni’s forge finally cools from boiling volcanic heat to its former arctic climate. Only the strong survive as the lands of Cold Iron Anvil freeze over. Landmasses cleave off like ice chunks from a melting berg, forming the Brittle Islands. The tribes there are forced into a life of barbarism, hunting great white bears and taking their fur in order to survive the deadly cold.[0m]
* **Trade and progress** - Around the circumference of the region, the art of endrin-barter and trade in pure metal ingots of all kinds thrives. The duardin strike deals with the artisans of Azgal, the Sigyorn and the Crucible Prongs, collectively the most advanced engineers amongst all those who have made their homes in Chamon under the auspices of Sigmar. The ever-smiling Mintners of Azgal’s Royal Orchard, they who specialise in harvesting coin from the Glinting Groves, spread their influence far and wide through the ignoble arts of money-lending. A contract is struck between the trio of flourishing regions, with the nations of Azgal, the Sigyorn and the Crucible Prongs now known as the Brothers Adamant. It becomes the fashion of the Adamants to wear garments of sheeted flowstone laced with beads of this glittering substance.[0m]
* **The Gaze of Tzeentch** - Tzeentch catches sight of Chamon, a collection of glinting sub-realms hanging like fruit waiting to be picked in a colossal realmsphere of heavy and potent magic. Perhaps if the rich people there had not revelled so much in their wealth and sophistication, the change-prayers of those less fortunate would not have been so fervent, and not attracted the eye of the Great Conspirator in the first place. But with so many flaunting their wealth, the poverty-stricken – the northern tribes of Cold Iron Anvil foremost amongst them – are quick to pray for change. As Tzeentch’s eye lingers upon the Godwrought Isles, those who desire a new order hear the barely discernable whispers of daemons promising a better world at the cost of another’s misfortune. The seeds of disaster are planted, yet it is the arrival of another godly force that twists the land beyond all recognition.[0m]
* **A Godbeast descends** - Attracted by the glamour of glittering clouds and the shimmer of so much unearthed Chamonite, the zodiacal beast known as the lode-griffon descends from the void towards the Godwrought Isles. Chased from its home in the Hanging Valleys by the silver wyrm Argentine, the fortress-sized creature makes its nest upon the central island. The tremendous magical weight of the lode-griffon distorts the lands with pulses of raw magnetism. Over time, the straight landmasses forged by Grungni buckle and rip apart, forming the continental sprawl known as the Spiral Crux. As they change shape, every bridge and pipeline snaps and twists until it is wrenched into the sea, the molten realmstone they once transported floating free to gather as clouds in the Chamonic stratosphere.[0m][0n]
* **Reversal of fortune** - The tribes of Odrenn, Adayah and Viscid Flux – those islands furthest away from the site of the metallurgic apocalypse that surrounds the lodegriffon – capitalise on the downfall of the Brothers Adamant and the great reversal of fortune that has befallen the realm. Their artifice is largely unaffected by the coming of the lode-griffon, and their hallmarks become worth more than those of the Adamant Brothers in the space of a single moon. By securing beneficial contracts with the desperate refugees of the inner isles, the artisan tribes of Odrenn, Adayah and Viscid Flux rise to ascendancy in the arts of forging and alchemy. The liquid-core blades of Odrenn’s singing bladesmiths become famous amongst the warrior fraternities, second only in value to the living swords forged by Celemnis of Anvrok. Settlers from Viscid Flux found the nation of Prosperis, building high with their near-limitless wealth. Their prosperous trade in clockwork automatons and fluid-metal pets – from giant ripple-skinned ferrosaurs to small tin-dogs – sees their fortunes eclipse even those of the Azgal Mintners. The Fluxkin fund expeditions into the famously dangerous Impassable Peaks in search of yet more Chamonite. Their search is successful beyond their wildest hopes.[0n]
* **An untenable curse** - The Cruxian duardin, realising that their dream of a perfectly balanced society is in tatters, retreat to kingdoms high in the mountains to better escape the dread pull of the lode-griffon and the destructive greed of the human tribes. They become insular and divided, and trade amongst the duardin and human nations slows to a crawl. Coffers begin to empty around the Crucible Prongs, and tensions rise. With many tribes’ financial survival on the line, this territorialism leads to open conflict. To add insult to injury, the lodegriffon’s magnetic blood drives the instruments of duardin artisans haywire. Many of the duardin, robbed of their livelihoods, consider how they might end the lodegriffon’s curse upon the lands. As the moons above wax full, these dreams bleed into waking life. Vexed beyond measure, they gather their wealth and place a bounty upon the godbeast’s skull. Within the week, warbands of duardin monsterslayers fight their way to the lodegriffon’s lair and work to inflict adaz kronn – death by a thousand axes – upon the slumbering lode-griffon. Unfortunately, the metallic godbeast is all but impervious to mortal weaponry. Awoken in a rage, the beast slays its assailants and wreaks havoc on every tribe within a dozen leagues before retreating to its nest.[0n]
* **Death of a Godbeast** - The nations of Azgal, the Sigyorn, Patina, Prosperis and Viscid Flux convene a great conclave of their mightiest aethermancers, hoping to find a way to slay the godbeast in the midst of their realm. Together, nine of their representatives make the perilous trek to Griffon’s Eyrie. Each taking one of the points of a nonagonic ritual star, they work a powerful spell of transmutation. As the spell comes to its earth-shaking conclusion, a great avalanche is triggered, and eight of the nine magi are consumed in a wave of molten Chamonite. The ninth mage, revealed by the haywire magic to be the Gaunt Summoner known as the Watcher King, flees on a flying disc-daemon to his Silver Tower in the far west. Yet the great spell is cast. The godbeast is transmuted to solid gold inside its lair, and its magnetic curse ended. Though the duardin aethermancers rejoice to see their instruments and war devices restored to normal function, the act carries a cost so profound that it alters reality across the Spiral Crux forever.[0n]
* **The Sky-rift opens** - The lode-griffon’s death scream tears a hole in the sky high above the Crux, a rift through which spill legions of flying daemonic horrors. A new age of terror unfolds with horrible swiftness.[0n]
* **A new era dawns** - Sigmar, having been shown the splendours of the Mortal Realms by the celestial godbeast Dracothion, helps unite the scattered tribes of mankind and raise them from savagery to master stone, metal and fire. Though it takes many centuries, the indigenous tribes of the realms and those surviving cultures previously lost in time are united. Under Sigmar’s auspices they are given the impetus to create wondrous cities, and thriving nations spring up by the hundred. The Great Wonders of the Mortal Realms are built at high cost in blood, sweat, and even life, for these edifices are legendary in scale. Trade thrives through the networks of Realmgates that span the domains of the disparate races.[1a]
* **Rage of Grimnir** - After being freed by Sigmar, Grimnir fights the mother of salamanders, Vulcatrix, to the death. The volcano Vostargi Mont is formed from the falling embers of their mutual destruction. Ur-gold is scattered across the landscape, and the scorching of the lands cleanses them of the foul sulphurous dusts that had once rendered them barren.[0a]
* **Ruler of the Dead** - Early in this period, Nagash claims rule over Shyish and constructs his great citadel and seat of power, Nagashizzar. He charges his Mortarchs with enacting his will across the realm.[2a]
* **A new beginning** - Malerion, Morathi, Teclis, Tyrion and several cabals of sorcerers capture Slaanesh and imprison him in the Hidden Gloaming and begin to extract aelven souls. Teclis uses the reclaimed aelf souls to create a new race - the Cythai in the Realm of Hysh but they flee from him into the depths of the Gealus Ocean. Teclis the Illuminator reshapes this new race, teaching them magic in hopes of rebuilding the noble and glorious aelf empires of old.[3a]
* **Expansion of Hagg Nar** - Led by Morathi, the Daughters of Khaine spread outwards from the temple-city of Hagg Nar. The High Oracle has stolen the secret of Malerion’s shadow-shifting magic, and those shadowpaths allow swift travel over the vast distances of Ulgu. Fighting all manner of foes across all Thirteen Dominions, the Daughters of Khaine secretly expand, establishing dozens of new temples.[4a]
* **The Great Culling** - To purge new lands for settlement, monsters and orruk tribes are slain, alongside several clans of men. When Sigmar comes to avenge his peoples, Morathi points out that they had been tainted by Chaos, and that their deaths were necessary.[4a]
* **The blood strife** - The expansion out of Hagg Nar is not without growing pains, as each of the newly formed sects of Khaine seeks to dominate the others. Unchecked, natural rivalries descend into open battle. Morathi allows the civil war to run its bloody course, and uses it to weed out the weakest, as well as those she deems too ambitious.[4a]
* **Brothers in Arms** - Sigmar and Nagash wage war together and defeat many powerful entities including The King of Broken Constellations, the Devouring Light, The Abyssal Dukes and Symr, the First Fire.
* **The time of new beginnings** - During the alliance between Sigmar and Nagash, dozens of cities are founded across Shyish. In some – such as Gothizzar, Glymmsforge, Mortistan and Sepulchtan – their mortal citizens either pledge themselves to Nagash or sponsor a Cult of Death that earns the Great Necromancer’s favour. In others, such as Shadespire or Hawthorne’s End, their lack of proper respect for Nagash spells their ultimate doom. Such is the nature of Shyish, for it is a place of endings far more than new beginnings.[2a]
* **The Hunter God** - The far eastern island of Kurnotheal becomes the favoured haunt of Kurnoth – a land where he and his Wild Hunt can chase down spiralhorn, vernadyr and goliath alike, indulging their bloodthirsty instincts without fear of disapproval from his paramour Alarielle. Every spring, however, he makes his pilgrimage to Athelwyrd, the sacred valley where Alarielle makes her most beloved bower.[0f]
* **Violation of accord** - Neither Nagash’s lieutenants nor the native Dreadwood Sylvaneth abide by their truce with Neos for long. Violence breaks out amongst the evergreen forests, and a battle for Decrepita’s soul rages in the shadows. The shapeshifting dovemaidens of Neos watch with baited breath, fearing that the enmity that will emerge from the clash will be more terrible than ever before.[0f]
* **The coming of Behemat** -  Attracted by the rich herds of food that prowl Verdia, the titanic gargant Behemat strides through the sea to the Harmonis Veldt. He eats too much of the local fauna, bringing several bovine species to extinction. Stuffed to beyond even his capacity, he vomits forth entire tribes of wholly formed giants, known as the Sons of Behemat. The Sons of Behemat make a civilisation of their own across the Harmonis Veldt, ruling from the Great Green Torc high above that swathe of land. Behemat himself, exhausted from his great feat of procreation, rests upon the land. There his lumpen form crusts over and hardens into several mountain ranges.[0f]
* **Eruption and entrapment** - The giant geomantic birthmark upon Neos pulses with Ghyranite energy upon the Jade Equinox, causing life-quakes across the land and a rash of immaculate conceptions. In the north, the Sap Volcanoes of Erosia erupt, filling the skies with translucent tree-blood. In the west, the arboreal Quogmia Mountain heaves so mightily it splits its sides. Tidal waves of sticky amber entrap ancient Aelfgrove, a city elegantly built upon the mountain’s flanks.[0f]
* **Rise of civilisation** - Sigmar’s wanderings see order and culture brought to the Great Parch; crops take root and life begins anew as war and rivalry is put aside. Traders move further afield into different realms, and soon great cities are raised, especially in the western regions of Bataar and Aspiria. However, in the shimmering tracts of Brazier, Aridian and Capilaria, the populace is up in arms so often it falls backwards into atavism. Their barbarian tribes begin to worship Sigmar as a god of strength and self-sufficiency.[0a]
* **Seeds of evil** - In the east, the Raging Tyrant Dromm reigns for eight bloody years before he is torn from his throne by his own sons and devoured. It becomes the way of Drommsend to eat their enemies’ flesh in order to gain their strength.[0a]
* **The Twin Nations rise** - Bataar and Aspiria overcome their need to fight through heated negotiation, rivalry and athletic competition. Together they drive each other to new heights of progress. Soon the merchant kings of Bataar and the wizard lords of Aspiria are trading delicacies and artefacts ever further afield. The interior regions of the Great Parch are farmed for quaglid jerky and fever cactus, both excellent in a stew, and the spined fish known as the dappled efreet, which if prepared badly can cause the eater to literally catch fire. From the Adamantine Chain comes potent sulphur-vitriol, perfect for etching metal, and from Passion’s Gate comes fine vellum.[0a]
* **The Conclave** - Sigmar returns to the Realm of Azyr and levels the summit of mount Celestain to provide a venue to gather the Pantheon - gods, demi-gods and zodiacal monsters. The eight mortal realms are each appointed a protector.
* **Morathi revealed** - Attempting to seduce Nagash, Morathi is struck down by the enraged god and her true form revealed - she flees from the Pantheon.
* **Darkmess creeps in** - As nations are established and new powers thrive, the foibles, lusts and jealousies of mortals begin to sour cultures that were once united in a common goal. Those beings of emotion and malevolence entwined, the Chaos Gods, espy the Mortal Realms and find themselves half-mad with desire. Through hairline cracks of opportunity the gods of Chaos inveigle their influence into the minds of humans, duardin and orruks, goading them to deeds that are not wholly their own. Though their baleful schemes are slow to mature, the dark powers begin to erode the fabric of civilisation.[1a]
* **The Waters of Life** - The central regions of the Great Parch are so arid that in some places fresh water is considered more precious than gold. Barrels full are imported from every domain that can provide it, especially vials of the life-giving, super-nourishing stuff of Ghyran, traded through the Realmgate around which Hammerhal will one day be built. Aqua Ghyranis, as it is known, becomes a mainstay currency of the region – ranging from phials that might cure a cold to vast green steelvats that can turn a farm’s fortunes around in a single season.[0a]
* **Spiritual successors** - The Capilarian tribes, famous forsmith-lords that fight with heavy iron hammers, are favoured by Sigmar as an echo of the world-that-was. The clans of Aridian, who instead make their spears and blades from Vostargi Mont obsidian, feel a fiery jealousy as a result. This spills over into border disputes and open war before Varrus Blackfist of the Direbrands brokers a fragile truce.[0a]
* **The march of progress** - In the west, Bataar grows ever morepowerful due to its exceptionalmercantile skills. The region’slucrative firesilker textile farmsand mineral forges fund miningoperations across the VenalPeaks. The Gilded Track is pavedinto Aspiria and Vitrolia via theGatelands. Not content to waitfor other nations to come to itsbustling markets, Bataar builds aseaborne city of traders – knownas the Floating Market. In a granddeal with Aspiria’s mages, the fleetis ensorcelled, given the power offlight so it can trade in pastures new.Aspiria soon overflows with exoticgoods in return, and grows powerfuldue to its high number of wizardsand scholars of the exceptional arts.The sea to the north turns a rainbowof colours due to the alchemical runoffof their industry, and becomesknown as the Polychromatic Sea.[0a]
* **A savage division** - The land bridge that links Bataar and Aspiria to the tribal grounds of Vitrolia, Golvaria and Aridian is conquered by orruk warbands.The greenskins set out to slay the giant beasts that cross the bridge in search of greener pastures, but are happy to fight anyone they can find. Some bother to tax and extort their victims, others just slay for the thrill of bloodshed. Only when the Aspirians ignite the Kindling Forests – thereby consuming many of the orruk tribes – is the Beastbridge reopened for commerce between west and east.[0a]
* **The time of exodus** - The aelves moulded by Teclis prove volatile, first factionalising and then rebelling against their saviour. They grow to resent the god and shy away from his light of truth. Referring to themselves as the Cythai, or Awakened, these aelves flee, seeking sanctuary in the deepest place they can find – beneath the waves.They settle, albeit briefly, deep beneath the waves of the Gealus Ocean in Hysh, the Realm of Light. There they establish the city of Gealrachi, but the aelves are too divided to remain as a single people. Upon discovering the whirlways, they use them to spread out across the Mortal Realms. So are the first of the Idoneth Deepkin kingdoms founded.[3a]
* **Bleak Reality** - Now scattered across the Mortal Realms, each Idoneth faction makes the same discovery – no gods answer their calls. Worse is to come. To their horror, the aelves find that the vast majority of their offspring are born with withered souls. After many trials they find the means by which to steal replacement souls, and begin raiding immediately.[3a]
* **A power to rival Hagg Nar** - The temple at Ironshard – which will grow to become the major sect of Khelt Nar – is founded by Morathi, overtly because of its surrounding defensible lies upon the centre of a powerful spiral of shadow magic. To clear the surrounding lands, the shrine’s Daughters of Khaine are forced to hunt down and kill hundreds of the most monstrous creatures of the Shadowlands, as well as dozens of Bonesplitter tribes. It is a task they revel in, and which sees Khelt Nar develop rapidly.[4a]
* **The Fragmented God** - Although she secretly knows that she possesses the only surviving shard of Khaine, Morathi commands the god’s followers to hasten his return to full strength by finding more lost splinters, and so many war covens are dispatched on holy missions to scour the Mortal Realms.[4a]
* **The missing fleets** - Travel at sea has always been a perilous venture, for ships disappear without trace due to storms or sea monsters. The Idoneth hunt the shipping lanes of the rapidly growing civilisations that have sprung up across the realms. They ambush fleets, sending the wrecks of entire convoys sinking to the sea floor. Such is the demand for souls, however, that coastal raids soon begin.[3a]
* **The sleeping city** - The Ionrach enclave depletes all the fishing villages along the coast of Chósta-Fe, but they require more souls. Mustering all their forces, the Ionrach invade the underhalls of the duardin of Gronbek. The duardin fight hard to protect their treasure hoards, yet by the end of the battle, half the mountainhold inhabitants are dead and the remainder lie sleeping, never to awaken. Not a single gemstone or ingot of gold is taken.[3a]
* **The Burning Bridge** - Without the civilising influence of Bataar and Aspiria, the hot-headed tribes of the middle reaches descend into civil war. The traders and wizards decide to leave them to it, a decision which proves crucial in the years to come. The Kindling Forests burn on, a permanent barrier sustained by magic. The only other crossing, the Bridge of Brine – a short sea voyage between two peninsulas – is fortified and defended by the Aspirian military. The area becomes known as Steel Spike.[0b]
* **Blades and bone** - Soon after, Aspiria opens trade with Vostargi Mont, securing a source of powerful magic weapons by walking through the fires of the Beast bridge to deal with the famous blacksmiths of the Direbrand Tribe and their duardin allies in Vostargi Mont. Jealous of their power, the necromancers from nearby Golvaria seek to disrupt this trade route, but the wizards of Aspiria are always one step ahead. Golvaria becomes the butt of jokes and humorous tales across the Great Parch. The Golvarians make an alliance with the red-headed tribes of nearby Vitrolia, and cross the Skyheim Peaks to slaughter an Aspirian caravan with a tide of living skeletons. Battle lines are drawn. The merchants of Bataar, old allies of the Aspirians, purchase fickle Vitrolia’s allegiance with gold. This causes the latter to turn upon the Golvarians at a critical moment, and a deep and abiding grudge is formed.[0b]
* **A grim haven** - The Golvarians are edged out of their lands by fierce magic-wielding undead-hunters from the Aspirian academies. They flee to the eastern Isle of Ghouls, and for a while make common cause with the degenerate feudal courts that live there – an offshoot of an ancient dynasty whose generations of inbreeding have taken a terrible toll.[0b]
* **The Flotsam Isles War** - During a long campaign against orrukforces,Volturnos of the Ionrach earnsa Kingship. His destruction of theflotsam islands constructed by thegreenskins all but ends the threat theyonce posed, and begins the meteoricrise that eventually sees him namedHigh King.[3a]
* **Legends of the sea** - By this point every coastline and shipping lane near to an Idoneth Deepkin colony is rife with myths and legends attempting to explain missing convoys, ransacked towns and strange discoveries of villages with sleeping populations that will not stir. The Idoneth’s development of magics which centre around the repression of memories ensures that even those foes who witness the Idoneth Deepkin and live soon forget about the sea aelves. Most losses suffered by their victims are blamed on the rising Chaos powers.[3a]
* **The White Blade** - Gwyth Banríonic, the first, and many say greatest, of the Dhom-hain Queens, leads a soul raid on the Sylvaneth inhabiting the coasts of Ghyran’s Tendril Sea. The legendary general falls in battle after Alarielle herself arrives to aid the beleaguered forest-folk. The famous Bánmhar – the White Blade enchanted by Teclis himself – is lost during the hasty retreat from the enraged life-goddess. Since that time many questing parties have been sent out from Rúndhar seeking the lost sword, but no sign of it has yet been found. Some say that Alarielle herself keeps the heirloom, for the Everqueen proves immune to the Idoneth’s enchantments, and has not forgiven them since that day.[3a]
* **Day of the Daemon** - In a hundred troubled regions across the realms, the daemons of Chaos find ways to break into the Mortal Realms.[1a]
* **The Battle of Burning Skies** - The pall of Chaos falls across one nation, then another, toppling cities in a long-planned conquest that spills across the lands like blood across a map. When the daemonic scions of Chaos and their sorcerous thralls bring their supernatural powers to bear against Sigmar’s chosen people, the God-King takes up his hammer and casts them back wherever they are to be found. Decades of war sprawl on, with Chaos closing its pernicious grip wherever Sigmar’s back is turned. Only at the Battle of Burning Skies does the God-King realise his folly – though he can claim small victories through might of arms, he can never alone win the long war the Dark Gods are waging in every realm at once. After being tricked into losing his hammer Ghal Maraz in a duel with Archaon, the God-King resolves to withdraw to the Realm of Heavens, closing the Gates of Azyr behind him. There he broods long on the fates of the people he left behind, as the tyrants of Chaos are free to consume the lands he once protected.[1a]
* **Mirror of Bayla** - The most powerful mage of Realm of Ghyran Sanasay Bayla quests for Realm's End aided by many of the Pantheon. At the end of his long journey he discovers the growing threat of Tzeentch and crafts a magical mirror for the gods to view anywhere they wish.
* **The Blood Rose Prince** - The first Abhorrant Ghoul King fell from favour in Shyish, his mind broken he is transformed into a monster by Nagash, he rampages across the Nightlands before being confined in the Shroudcage.
* **The Great Waaagh!** - A campaign of destruction that wrecks the Mortal Realms is started by Gorkamorka after he grows tired of the order and laws of the Great Alliance.
* Alarielle becomes disenchanted with the Pantheon and retreats more and more to her Realm.
* Urrgrak Bonefist becomes the first champion of Gorkamorka and is given the magical axe Worldchoppa.
* **The Bonebark March** - The undead and sylvaneth march to war together to crush a horde of beastmen at Sunderstone Peak.
* The three remaining Chaos Gods take an interest in the mortal realms and incursions led by their greater daemons including Kairos Fateweaver and the Ghorgrax begin.

## Age of Chaos

* **Tzeentch’s hand revealed** - Though all the Dark Gods make their plays for regions of Chamon, Tzeentch concentrates his forces here more than in any other realm. He takes special interest in the sub-realms most saturated in magic – amongst them the Hanging Valleys of Anvrok, where the sorcerer Ephryx has hidden away the hammer Ghal Maraz; the Spined Sphere Golgeth, where time itself is malleable; and the Spiral Crux, where the air is laced with the stuff of change.[0o]
* **Salughter from above** - With the daemon hordes spilling out of the sky-rift, every fortress and bastion wall created by the rich nations of the Crux proves worse than useless – for with the daemons swooping down everywhere they can smell the magical perfume of Chamonite, the defenders find themselves trapped within their own defences.[0o]
* **The Kharadron code** - The duardin that escaped the coming of the sky-rift and the besiegement of their old mountain kingdoms spend years simply fighting for survival. At first, their insular defences hold back the scattered assaults, but over time Tzeentch’s minions begin to coordinate their attacks from within the mountains as well as without. The infestation of the ancestral holds leads to many duardin factions taking to the skies, militarising sky-ports and Gyrocopter launch platforms until they can lay claim to the satellite kingdoms that stand apart from each mountain peak. The science of air travel, further bolstered by the aether-gold mined by the steamhead pioneers, progresses to the point that several duardin holds boast entire fleets of skyborne vessels. A new conflict erupts as the disc-riding vassals of Tzeentch and their winged daemon allies seek to prey upon the duardin air navies, but duardin war-technology has advanced by an incredible degree since the opening of the sky-rift, and the armies of Chaos find themselves hurled back on dozens of fronts. Soon after, the disparate airborne forces forge a loose confederation for mutual protection. But, as the skyports grow, so too do their rivalries. All seek to mine the same aethergold that has laced the skies ever since the coming of the sky-rift – it proves a versatile power source and, though no substitute for Chamonite, it keeps their societies flourishing and afloat, not to mention hidden from the warmongers on the lands below. The competition for aether-gold becomes so fierce that relationships between many of the duardin clans turn sour. On the verge of civil war, the leaders of each sky-port meet in council. It is this Conference of Madralta – named after the floating isle where the meeting takes place – that produces the document known as the Code. The predecessors of the Kharadron Overlords are born, and their ancient culture of statutes and contracts put into motion. They retreat high into the Chamonic stratosphere, and are not seen again by the eyes of men or mutant for long generations.[0o]
* **The hand of the changer** - Pleased by the Chamonite his followers have consumed in his name, Tzeentch himself works a great spell that rains transmutative warpfire from the skies in a terrible cataclysm. The aether around the Spiral Crux is shot through with multicoloured meteors of tainted crystal and bloodglass. Jagged knives of translucent stone claim thousands of lives, whilst Whirling Bay and the Kaleidos Expanse no longer provide fresh water, but run thick with molten metal that boils at the touch of mortal flesh.[0o]
* **The lands transmuted** - The Crystal Isle is wrenched into being around the island Realmgate of Seedgate. A huge landmass of shimmering kaleidoscopic crystal, it surrounds the Seedgate Isle, choking the passage from the Alloy Ocean to the Amethystine Ocean and forming the Interrupted Sea. The central isles of the Crux are further twisted by the terrible change wrought upon them, becoming a tangle of jagged coasts and curling promontories. Sky-sharks and flying chariots haunt the clouds, and beasts of the land and sea are twisted into horrible new forms that take wing, or simply rise into the skies as if by invisible hands, to fall upon those duardin that have dared to stay and fight. A new age of oppression and madness takes root as Tzeentch claims the lands of the Spiral Crux with wave upon wave of daemon invaders, new tides of Horrors either tumbling from the skies or born from the still-burning warpfire at the heart of the lands.[0o]

* **A new world on high** - The Forge-City of Grungni is overrun with skaven when a gnawhole opens under the peaks now known as the Verminvaults. The last of the duardin’s Great Karaks falls during the battle of Zaruk. Forcing themselves to look forward instead of back, the Kharadron Overlords ply the clouds near and far in their search for new seams of aether-gold, their ingenious constructions seeing them slowly but patiently found the six aerial cities that will come to dominate the region’s skies. Within the year, the Hydrox Wars are brought to a victorious conclusion by the fleets and newfound wealth of the sky-port Barak-Nar. The corpses of the many-headed aerial predators known as hydroxes are piled high in Barak-Nar’s wake, though the fishy stench that results means they are soon jettisoned into the sea instead.[0o]
* **The wars of men rage on** - The wealthy and well-armoured armies of Odrenn, Ayadah, Viscid Flux and Prosperis go to war against the daemon hosts, the traitorous humans of the Kairic hordes and Tzaangor warflocks that pour across the lands, sacking and setting fire to every city or township they can find. The Steel Dervishes of Scimitar Point hold out for months against waves of Chaos Spawn and the Horrors that create them from the beasts of the land. Their fate is twisted when the Argent Nail, the vast Silver Tower of the Watcher King, descends from the void to loom over the Alloy Ocean. The Gaunt Summoner that rules the Argent Nail rains curses upon the Steel Dervishes for nine days and nine nights. They die to a man before the month is out.[0o]
* **A time of new strife** - The Dark Gods invade Shyish. Not content with his pre-eminence in Ghyran, Nurgle seeks dominance over the entire cycle of life and death, and sends his daemon hosts through the oceanic Realmgates that lead to Shyish. Plague fleets in great number emerge from the Sea Mawand the Black Nihil. Athanasia, the Amethyst Princedoms, Ossia and Stygxx are all invaded in one fellmonth as Nurgle’s power waxes. Khorne, for his part, covets the Land of Dead Heroes, and seeks an eternal war there. The quality of battle to be had in Hallost gives the Blood God a great source of power as deceased hero and daemon clash anew each morning in an unending war. Gravesites are raided, the heads taken from revered bodies and used to decorate the crenellated Chaos Dreadforts that are erected across the Innerlands. Some of the lands’ departed gheists are even forced to exhume their own mortal remains and to place their skulls in the walls of the cities they once inhabited. All across the Innerlands the yoke of Chaos weighs heavy indeed, and all joy and life seems to flee these deathly territories. The island of Ossia is invaded by the devoted of Nurgle, for the Plague God sees Ossia’s endless graveyards as a fitting annex for his garden. As the plague legions win battle after battle and the claw of Chaos grips the land, the once-vibrant populace of Ossia begins to lose hope. They are ill matched against the hosts of Chaos, and almost all of their warriors succumb to the daemon hordes. The remainder surrender, becoming slaves of the new order. Beneath Chaos oppression they become stagnant and mindless, trudging through each day without variation or rebellion. As the spined citadels of Chaos rise from basalt andground bone, spirits and hopes sink ever lower. As the people of Ossia lose their will to fight, the land itself grows stale under the heel of Chaos.[0j]
* **The War of Bones** - Nagash strikes back hard against the Chaos invaders and, for a time, he claims dominion over many fallen lands. The skaven, ever watchful and with an ancestral grudge against Nagash from ages past, counterattack the undead legions from newly burrowed gnawhole tunnels.The War of Bones erupts across Shyish and, though it is ultimately fought to a standstill, it leaves Nagash further weakened. Nagashizzar itself is toppled by Nurgle daemons immune to the morbid, desiccating curse of Shyish’s innate magic. For a time, Nagash is forced to relocate to a secondary base of command in dank and clammy Stygxx. The deathly rage he feels at this dislocation is so strong it could freeze mountains. Nagash sends Arkhan the Black to oversee the building of the Great Black Pyramid, and the legions of Deathrattle slaves labouring at the heart of Shyish redouble their pace, working night and day to complete their master’s grandest work.[0k]
* **Battle of Burning Skies** - The Amethyst Princedoms, holding out well in the battles against Chaos due to their wealth andinfrastructure, answer Sigmar’s call to action by sending a great many armies to the Battle of Burning Skies. The Princes of that realm acquit themselves well, but most are slain after Sigmar’s forces are overcome– facing the forces of Khorne and Nurgle at one time, they are outmatched on a dozen fronts.[0k]
* **A Storm God’s wrath** - Enraged at the failure of his pantheon Sigmar thunders into the Innerlands in search of Nagash, seeking to call him to account over the perceived betrayal. Many of Nagash’s lieutenants and heralds are obliterated at Sigmar’s hand before he finally relents and heads back through the storm to Azyr, leaving the mortals of Shyish to their fate.[0k]
* **The stolen heroes** - Sigmar musters a new army in the heavens. Hallost in particular provides the God-King with a great plunder of truly heroic souls to reforge. However, with their brightest and best taken up to Azyr, the people of Hallost feel fear and doubt for the first time. They fight hard against the Chaos invaders nonetheless. For a time, they manage to keep from being overrun.[0k]
* **The scourge inescapable** - Such is the strength and determination of the Chaos assault that they even hurl back the undead legions of Nagash. With the Dark Gods pouring their power into the realm through every Realmgate and summoning ritual they can utilise, the works of Nagash are torn down. Many of those lands in thrall to his magic are abandoned as a great exodus of people flees edgeward.[0k]
* **Raid and pillage** - In the far east, the unending festivalia of Satyr’s End is brought to a gory conclusion when the war for Hallost spills over onto that once-hedonistic isle. The sadistic warlord Thorro Splinterthigh turns to Khorne as soon as possible, and orders every captive crippled, rather than slain, that they might be bled anew each day. He rises high in the Blood God’s favour, for he understands the value of spilt gore. A similar spectacle unfolds inBacchanalia, at the southernmost point of Stygxx, though it is the Seekers of Slaanesh that bring doom to that land – and they do it through an excess of debauchery rather than its cessation. Bacchanalia becomes home to the court of the Great Pretender, a Slaaneshi warlord who hopes to wed the Stygxxian Goddess of Plenty and hence become the father of an entire tribe of demigods.[0k]
* **The Great Betrayals** - The members of Sigmar’s Pantheon become increasingly estranged and divided. Nagash finds evidence that Sigmar is withholding souls from the underworlds. At the Battle of Burning Skies the promised undead aid does not arrive, and Sigmar blames his ensuing defeat upon Nagash, abruptly ending their alliance. Even amidst the multiple Chaos invasions across all Mortal Realms there are battles between former allies, as the forces of Order feud amongst themselves.[2a]
* **Divine visitations** - The Plague Lord sets his rheumy eyes upon the Swathe nations, seeing a great crucible of life but a season’s journey from a region of wintery death. Nurgle is jubilant, for he has found prime territory waiting to be annexed to the garden. The Dark God sends out swarms of spy-creatures, the compound eyes of plague flies watching with avid interest whenever a relationship between Sylvaneth, human and aelf goes sour. They largely go unnoticed, for insects of all kinds are ever-present in these regions, and not even the Sylvaneth are aware of the infiltration at first. Nurgle listens with curiosity as his spy-flies whisper and buzz in his ear.[0f]
* **The dwindling begins** - As the season of the dwindling draws in, the invasions of Nurgle’s forces are unleashed. At first, they strike through captured Realmgates and the reality-splitting gnawholes of the Clans Pestilens. They gain a foothold with relative swiftness, for the lands have not seen their like, and Nurgle has learned well of the Everspring Swathe. In a matter of scant seasons their influence is such that they can be summoned by means of a relentless downpour, the storm of tainted water with which the Lord of Plagues often favours his chosen ones. In northern Thyria, the blessings of the Great Unclean One known as Rotigus drench the lands. Such is the violence of Nurgle’s Deluge that the once-sunlit upper lands, saturated with plague magic, crumble away to form the Slidecrown Isle. The land left behind is thereafter known as the Sog. Many human tribes, having long worshipped abstract rain gods as a source of fecundity, turn their loyalty to Rotigus within the passing of a single moon.[0f]
* **Swathe nations at war** - The Sylvaneth are the first to fight back hard against the Nurgle invaders. Bolstered by their allies, the human peoples of those lands and the aelves known as the Wanderers, their spirited counter-offensives cause tremendous damage upon the plague daemon hosts. However, when the Wanderers begin to contract Nurgle’s Rot – foremost amongst a clutch of sickening and disfiguring ailments spread by the legions of Nurgle – many aelven tribes gather in secret far from Sylvaneth ears, and discuss taking a different path.[0g]
* **Brother against Brother** - When Ionrach colonies begin probing the Ominod Sea near the Black Trough they spark a simmering feud that culminates in a brief but violent war between the Dhom-hain and Ionrach enclaves. Several additional Idoneth Deepkin factions take sides, but most remain neutral and call for peace. Several battles – including the infamous Battle of Tears and the ambush at Glyngulch – take place in Ghur, Ghyran and Hysh. The Dhomhain cease to attend the assembrals.[3b]
* **The beginning of the Cathtrar Dhule** - Although spared the brunt of the Dark Gods’ attention in the early days of the Age of Chaos, it is not long before a true assault upon Ulgu begins. Dozens of campaigns press inwards, assailing each of the Thirteen Dominions. The greatest nemesis of the Daughters of Khaine is the rapacious greater daemon Luxcious the Keeper.[4a]
* **The first Caillich Coven** - As the wars of the Cathtrar grow, Morathi is forced to call the first Caillich Coven – a summons where every Khainite temple sends a tithe of warriors to the High Oracle. Luxcious’ legions are halted at the Battle of Druchxar – too late, however, to save the temple of Neff-Taal from utter corruption at the hands of Chaos.[4a]
* **The Nautilar** - Following disagreements over the recent internal strife, nearly a quarter of the Akhelians and Isharann of the Ionrach split off to form the Nautilar. They establish a city atop the shell of a Great Scaphodon, a continent-sized beast that wanders the seabeds of Ghur.[3b]
* **The Red Feast** - A challenge of bloodshed is proposed by the Vanxian warlord Threx Skullbrand. Capilaria, Aridian, Demesnus and Flamescar, seeking an end to wasteful tribal war, send their champions to the contest upon the Aqshy Clavis Isles. However, Skullbrand has an ulterior motive. The Red Feast goes on and on, with the mighty lord Khorgos Khul of Aridian gradually fighting his way to the top. When the death toll rises to eight hundred and eighty-eight barbarian champions, the air screams, the bloodied water boils, and a great cataclysm erupts. So catastrophic is the maelstrom of blood and death that the Realmgate at the centre of the Aqshy Clavis Isles explodes, leaving a gaping hole in reality through which legions of howling daemons emerge.[0b]
* **The Goretide rises** - The daemon hosts invade the Great Parch as the Dark Gods seek new conquests. Khorne is the most prevalent, as he lays claim to the warlike nations and emotional turmoil of Aqshy; he even attacks Nurgle, Tzeentch and the Horned Rat to ensure his supremacy. The tribes of Golvaria, Capilaria, Aridian and Flamescar are brought to battle by the daemon armies of Khorne. Protected by their walls of fire and steel, the horrified lords of Bataar and Aspiria leave them to their fate. In desperation, many tribes turn to the worship of these ‘red gods’ in the hope of surviving the slaughter. Others turn quite willingly, seeing an opportunity to sate their savage lusts. First amongst these barbaric hordes are the warriors that call themselves the Goretide, led by the champion Khorgos Khul. By forcing their victims to choose between dying and partaking in the dark cannibalistic feast that occurs everyeventide, Khul and his man-eating fellows ensure their legions grow ever larger.[0b]
* **Aelf Wars** - Conflicts begin between the Daughters of Khaine and the Idoneth Deepkin. Several enclaves, notably the Fuethán and the Dhom-hain, show a preference for stealing aelf-souls over those of other races, whom they deem inferior. Although the temples of Morathi’s kin prove difficult to find, hidden as they are in the Shadowlands of Ulgu, several war covens are found by the Idoneth and ambushed. The Khainites known as the Kraith vow revenge upon all Idoneth Deepkin.[3b]
* **Curse of the Glotkin** - The eastern reaches of the Sea of Elemental Truths become infested when Ethrac Glott, the sorcerous eldest sibling of the Glottkin triplets, releases a shoal of cursed hagfish into the water. The piscine terrors grow to a colossal size by feeding on the sacred Aqua Ghyranis of those waters, and they attack in a frenzy any who stray near the coast, even wrecking ships when they gather in sufficient numbers. The killer shoal interbreeds and spreads further, forming an impassable barrier of diseased sea life that prevents Verdia from being reinforced by its allies in the north. The area is thereafter named the Gulf of Hags.[0g]
* **The swarm descends** - As Nurgle’s curse spreads further, the isle of Irridia (soon to become Invidia) is surrounded by the sentient seaweed known as spinebladder. Its western sea-link to Verdia is clotted to the point that it flows no more, and the island is cut off.Cold seeds bear no fruit - The wintery land of Decrepita is assailed by Bloab Rotspawned and his plague fly swarms, accompanied by hosts of Plague Drones and Pusgoyle Blightlords. Decrepita’s undead hold back the invaders whilst the still-living send their wolf-ship emissaries to the Dryads and nature tribes of Neos, seeking help in the face of a common enemy. The people of Neos turn a deaf ear – their habit of forgiveness has long been eroded by the violence of Decrepita’s raids.[0g]
* **Divided they fall** - Neos in turn is assailed, the south-eastern jungle becoming the Rotwoad when Morbidex Twiceborn summons a tsunami of Nurglings that turn the lush vegetation into rotting mulch. Without the tribes of the Everspring Sprawl standing united, the Nurgle invaders find them easy fodder for their rusting axes.[0g]
* **The wandering** - Those dissident Wanderers that believe the battle is already lost come into pre-eminence in Neos and Verdia, their arguments strengthened with each region overtaken by Nurgle. In the dead of night, they lead the population to the root-moulded Realmgate known as the Twining Portal. There they enter the Cascading Path, a mystical web of pathways that criss-cross Ghyran, and flee upon the hidden ways to Azyr. In doing so, they abandon the Sylvaneth to their fate. That slight is never forgiven.[0g]
* **The Skaven Wars** - The Realm of Shadows holds many secrets. Following a hidden path that spirals into a mist-labyrinth, Morathi seeks to establish a new colony, but instead discovers a lair of skaven assassins. So begins a series of retaliatory strikes that escalate into the Skaven Wars, a conflict that sees many Khainite temples raided by the elusive ratmen. From small, running skirmishes to vast battles, each side seeks to uncover and destroy the other’s secret strongholds.[4a]
* **Soulstorm** - At the Battle of Dirge Peak the undead suffer great losses and are unable to withstandthe massed onslaught ofBloodletters led by theBloodthirster Khazkhan.Khorne had ever coveted thelands of fallen heroes in theRealm of Death, and wishedto claim them as his own.In desperation, Nagash ripsforth the souls of a thousandmortal prisoners, using themto fuel a great summoning.In response, the spirits ofthe entire underworld ofNordyrie – a northerly sectionof the Endless Boneyard inHallost – answer the call. Inlife they were all once heroes,but had put down their swordsclaiming they would fight onlyfor a cause, never for pay. Indeath, Nagash’s curse had madethem ruthless mercenaries,who would combat any foe iftheir price in souls was met.The ethereal host not onlyhalts the daemons’ advance,but defeats them utterly. OnlyKhazkhan escapes destruction.The Nordyrie become the firstentirely Nighthaunt host to bemustered for a specific purpose,and their services are destinedbe called upon many times.[2a]
* **Discovered by Daemons** - The questing armies of Slaanesh grow more and more prolific. They seek any sign of their missing god, leaving no corner of the Mortal Realms unturned, but concentrating especially upon Ulgu. In the Realm of Shadows, an army led by the Keeper of Secrets Sslish the Depraved picks up the scent of an Idoneth Deepkin raid from the Aighmar enclave and follows them back to their colony. Sslish is defeated but more trouble is soon to follow.[3b]
* **Plague and strife** -  In the far west of the Great Parch, the forces of Nurgle invade from the hard-bitten northern land of Cotha – a region which has at its frozen heart a Realmgate leading to the now infested reaches of Ghyran. The Floating Market of Bataar, along with its escort fleet, the Iron Armada, is attacked by a vast Plague Fleet and its loyal pod of rotting great cetaceans from the depths of the Bladewhale Sea. The Bataar navy is destroyed in a week-long sea battle. Its wrecks line the coast in such number the region is known forever after as Armada’s Bane. Weeks later, the vials and urns of sacred water imported from Ghyran and transported by the Floating Market wash up on the shores of a dozen regions. They are recovered eagerly, but some have become tainted, spreading disease across the lands.[0b]
* **The teeth of tyranny** - The lands south of Godbeast’s Bite, lightly defended by the tribes that hunt there, are conquered by an army of brass-clad killers. The region is decimated, its surviving indigenes enslaved and forced to build strings of Chaos fortifications – the Dreadfort Spines – and the sadist’s paradise of Calder City.[0c]
* **The claim of hoticulous** - With a great ritual of sullying, Horticulous Slimux turns the Hind Sea to gelatinous mulch and sends packs of Beasts of Nurgle across it. Kurnotheal is assailed by waves of the plague beasts. The creatures once hunted by Kurnoth become infected as Slimux’s Beasts of Nurgle chase them down and slobber happily all over them. One dark night, the plagued herds turn upon those that once hunted them for sport. The invasion is timed perfectly, for Horticulous understands the passing of the seasons well – Kurnoth is in his wintering phase, and hence at his weakest right at the critical hour. Though he feels a great angst in doing so, Kurnoth withdraws to fight another day. Even as the Beasts of Nurgle infest Kurnotheal, the Gravidian Gate is breached by the forces of Horticulous Slimux. The Garden of Nurgle begins to grow across the island, its curse so potent that the Realmgate buckles and splits into three pieces. In doing so, it becomes three massive sores in the crust of the kingdom, known as the Canker Pits. The daemonic forces of Nurgle pour out from the fortresses that spring up around the Canker Pits like scabs around a wound. United behind the Grand Cultivator Slimux, they conquer the isle entirely. The kingdom is thereafter renamed Invidia, the Claim of Horticulous.[0g]
* **The giant sleeps on** - In the area that has become the Scabrous Sprawl – formerly the Harmonis Veldt – Behemat the World Titan sleeps on. Learning of his presence through the sorcerer Kraderblob, Archaon the Everchosen makes plans to wake the godbeast and bind him using the Great Green Torc. The gargants known as the Sons of Behemat, driven from their holdings by Chaos attacks, are forced into hiding within the Sweatswamp by the massed attacks of the Clans Pestilens and their Rotbringer allies. The tribesmen that traded with the gargants are slain or driven into the sea. Only a handful of tribes survive the slaughter.[0g]
* **The lands writhe in pain** - Repelled by the Hagfish Curse and the taint ravaging the forests of Slithid Jutt, a large fringe of coastline splits away from mainland Verdia. It forms the marshy crescent known as the Peel, and becomes a stronghold of the mist-dwelling Fimir race. The Triske Isles – the stamenlike isthmuses linking Thyria to Verdia – become divided into three sub-realms. They transform into the tri-lobe structure now known as the Squelchlobe Nations, becoming Vyras, Bloth and Undergut. Each of the lobes is conquered by one of the three self-aggrandising sorcerers that call themselves the Sons of Putrefaction. With the Spirits of Durthu that guarded the sites slain and put to the torch, the sorcerers are free to pursue their own arcane agendas, and constantly vie for supremacy.[0g]
* **A deadly harvest** - The War of Life intensifies as the Sylvaneth unite against the Nurgle invaders. The Glottkin and their rivals hunt for Alarielle across the lands, but she remains hidden in the under-realm of Athelwyrd.[0g]
* **An empire of blood** - Khul’s vicious tactics see him take a great swathe of land from Vostargi Mont all the way down to Vitriolus Reach beneath the Brimstone Peninsula. The southernmost regions are renamed Khul’s Ravage. The Isles of Gaitan – once the home of warrior monks who sought enlightenment through fury – are ransacked, and their ever-flaming pagodas extinguished with the blood of their keepers. Unopposed, Khorgos Khul stacks the bones of his victims high. He raises the Jagtooth Forts along the coastline of Khul’s Ravage in order to reinforce his coastal slave routes and protect his power-base from invasion via Vitriolus Reach. The Red Pyramid of Khul is raised, a structure made from millions of skulls taken from the tribes north of the Brimstone Peninsula. The lands between the Duardinia mountains of the Brimstein Hearthlands and the Flamescar Plateau become tough, cracked and brown due to the lakes of blood spilt there. They are knownt hereafter as the Scablands.[0c]
* **Aspiria besieged** - Far to the west, on the shores of Aspiria, a magical war rages between the scions of Tzeentch and the spellmasters of the native magocracy. The fighting is so intense that the land itself begins to crumble under the ceaseless onslaught. All along the cliff-line watched over by the Agloraxian Citadels, the land crumbles away, known ever after as the Disintegrating Shores. Aspiria itself is diminished, physically eroded by the violence of Chaos. Less than a week later Aspiria comes under attack from the legions of Khorne that have marched past the Obsidian Fortress to cross the Bridge of Brine. Steel Spike is besieged just as the invasions from Tzeentchian forces intensify. The magocracy finds it cannot fight on both fronts at once, and is forced to retreat to high ground, locking its citadel-cities behind magical wards and trusting to fate that the storm will soon pass.[0c]
* **The Red Century** - With Sigmar relinquishing his rule over the Mortal Realms, the nations and tribes that once thrived there are ground down and enslaved by the cruel minions of Chaos. Daily life becomes a hellish nightmare. In Aqshy, the war between the traitorous Bloodbound hosts and the barbarian tribes of the Great Parch reaches fever pitch as the daemons of the Clavis Eye wade from the Vitriol Sea. A hundred years of war stretch out, with the grinding attrition seeing the faithful of Sigmar slowly dwindling. Where once the seas teemed with aquatic life, now only waves of blood lap the shores, choking the beaches with grisly flotsam. Capilaria’s irrigation networks – once laced with potent Aqua Ghyranis – run with gore, choking the lush plant life that once fed the native tribes. The channels come to resemble veins and arteries filled with clotting blood. Worse still, the heroes of the most bellicose tribes vanish in the midst of war, stolen away in a flash of azure energy. Bereft of their leaders, the starving and desperate people are easily conquered and forced to resort to cannibalism.[1a][0c]
* **Red tides** - The Nautilar and Dhom-hain put aside old grievances to annihilate a massive Bonesplitter orruk fleet. Appearing amidst the greenskins’ vast raft-flotillas, the Idoneth smash apart the crude ships, dooming tens of thousands of orruks. So much blood is spilled in the water that it attracts all manner of Ghurish marine predators, which partake in a vast feeding frenzy.[3b]
* **Wrecker’s Isle** - All along the coast of Vanx in the south-west, warbands of Chaos worshippers lure fleeing Aspirian vessels to their doom upon Vanx Littoral and the reefs of Wrecker’s Isle. Emboldened, they join the fight to conquer Aspiria, taking many of the Aspirides islands on the south coast.[0c]
* **An ill omen** - Following seams of realmstone, a skaven army tunnels up into one of the lesser colonies of the reclusive Mor’phann enclave in Shyish. There, along the base of the sea floor of the Great Quagmire, the battle is swift and one-sided. The victorious Mor’phann are put on high alert, redoubling their protective measures around their capital of Mor’drechi.[3b]
* **Hunters of Chaos** - The Briomdar actively send raids into the thick forests off the Mantle Coast, not to secure souls, but rather to cull the rising numbers of beastmen that infest the once-verdant glades. The Idoneth Deepkin form no alliance with the Sylvaneth there, and sometimes prey upon them, yet even they cannot bear to see the Children of Alarielle fall to Chaos.[3b]
* **A road slicked scarlet** - The Gilded Track, once the main arterial route of commerce across the Beastbridge, becomes home to countless Chaos warbands. The merchants of Bataar, held captive and driven by the lashes of cruel Bloodstokers, are forced to walk barefoot along its sharp volcanic stones carrying all of their carefully marshalled gold – a commodity once valuable, but now worse than useless. This road becomes known as the Bloodied Track.[0c]
* **Fall of Dolorum** - Once the largest of Shyish’s civilisations, the empire of Dolorum falls during the Age of Chaos. The last ruler of those lands, Lady Olynder, is cursed upon her death by Nagash so that her spectre feels all the sorrows of the realms.[2a]
* **War in the Earthscar** - Over the course of an especially illomened year, the Bonesplitterz of the Klarikkaz Earthscar engage in fierce fighting with the daemons spilling north from the Clavis Eye. The orruks are slowly driven back into the depths of their canyon. Fighting a guerrilla war as best they can, the Wurrgog Prophets of the Klarikkaz tribes pray to Mork for a way out.[0c]
* **The Blood God strikes** - Above the Flamescar Plateau, the mage elite of Ahramentia – a province in the west of Aridian – eliminates an entire army of Khorne daemons with a vast doomsday weapon they call the Prismatikon. Thinking themselves safe on their flying island, the Agloraxi are tragically visited by cataclysm when Khorne himself takes exception to their posturing. The Blood God manifests a giant red fist in order to strike their island, and it crashes spectacularly into the arid lands below. Without the Agloraxi and their magical constructs to oppose him, Selpher Zaronax rises to prominence in the north-east of Golvaria after driving off the unquiet spirits there – even the dead fear the intensity of his rage. He begins a reign of terror under the title ‘the Hand of the Everchosen’, for it is none other than Archaon himself that has dispatched Lord Zaronax to keep a stranglehold over the Great Parch. Such is the success of Zaronax and his fellow lords that Khorne’s minions are forced to hunt far and wide for their victims – and in places, turn upon themselves to sate their addictive blood-lust.[0c]
* **A new army** - Inspiration strikes as Sigmar gazes in despair upon the Mortal Realms. Using all his artifice and the aid of Grungni, the Great Maker, the God-King fashions a new army with which to fight his eternal war. The spirits of those mortals who spit and rage in the face of Chaos are seized and taken up to Azyr, there to be reforged as Stormcast Eternals. Sigmar’s great work is concealed by the artifice of his aelven allies, Malerion and Teclis, their magic so well-woven that even the sorcerous scryers of Tzeentch cannot penetrate it. Though the forces of Chaos batter at the Gates of Azyr for decades, hurling everything they can at the ancient portals, they cannot force entrance. In time they stop trying, turning their attention to the other seven Mortal Realms instead.[1a]
* **The oak begins to rot** - As the war rages on, the Oak of Ages Past – a sacred link to the World Before Time – is defiled by Nurgle. The great lake around it is converted into a putrid, brackish slop, known now as Rotwater Blight. The once pure waters of the River Vitalis that poured from the great tree’s split trunk are tainted by the bathings of the Great Unclean One, Pupa Grotesse, and become the thick river of sludge known as Gelid Gush.[0h]
* **The toll of strife** - Across the Realm of Life the story is the same – with Nurgle’s power waxing, there is little the heavily outnumbered Sylvaneth can do to hold back the tides of decay that assail them. Alarielle becomes despondent, retreating further into her malaise until her lands are all but abandoned to their fate.[0h]
* **The brink of utter defeat** - With his job done and a great part of the Everspring Swathe now in thrall to Nurgle, Horticulous Slimux departs for a new mission – to bring the garden to the Coast of Tusks in Ghur. In his wake, the forces of Chaos hunt every day for Alarielle, to no avail. They begin to war amongst themselves as they run out of natural enemies to fight. Guerrilla attacks from Sylvaneth continue, but it becomes obvious that Nurgle has dominance in every isle of the Everspring Swathe. Whole generations pass, with Alarielle’s verdant fortresses found and conquered one by one. Only Athelwyrd is left, hidden under the waters out of the sight of its enemies.[0h]
* **Chainwraiths** - The Idoneth Deepkin of the Mor’phann enclave raid all along the borders of the Great Quagmire. In their quest for souls they enter the Vale of Chains, accidentally releasing a spectral host that was cursed by Nagash to be tormented there for eternity. Freed from their bondage, the Chainwraiths seek to kill the living, but also take their revenge upon any undead that serve Nagash.[2a]
* **The False King** - Kurdoss Valentian almostsucceeds in usurping the crownof Khajhi, but his coup is shortlived.Valentian’s backstabbingdraws Nagash’s ire, so thatupon his death the craven kingreceives a powerful curse…[2a]
* **Ruination** - At the height of multiple Chaos invasions, Nagash attempts to counter-attack. At the culmination of the War of Bones he is defeated by Archaon, and his physical form is shattered. While Nagash slowly reforms in the safety of a hidden underworld, the Chaos forces level cities, desecrate cairns, and even sack Nagashizzar. Amidst the ruins are raised the dread symbols of the Dark Gods. During this time of Chaos supremacy, only the Nighthaunts are effective in fighting the minions of the Ruinous Powers, for even the Mortarchs have slunk into hiding. Several Nighthaunt forces grow in notoriety during this time, including the Glowing Host – a strangely luminescent horde from the Glittering Marsh boasting no fewer than twelve Tomb Banshees – and the embittered Grimguard, outcasts from the now Chaos-controlled city of Gothizzar.[2a]
* **The long wait** - The years tick past. The first hosts of Sigmar’s warriors trainin his Gladitorium to be ready for the new era of war. A gift from Malerion, the enchanted dome of the Gladitorium enables the Stormcasts to fight each other, yet arise unharmed when battle is done. In the greatest exercises, entire Stormhosts are pitted against each other in thunderous war drills that make dust-storms of the arena’s sands.[1a]
* **The cleansing of Azyr** - When Sigmar withdrew toAzyr, he took a good manyrefugees with him to thesafety of Azyrheim. Now hesees that many of the rescuedtribes cannot set aside their oldrivalries, and in places this hasescalated to civil war. Worsestill, he sees that some are beingcorrupted by Chaos. Alongwith the refugees he welcomedinto the Realm of Heavenscame hundreds of covertworshippers of the Dark Gods,disguised amongst the free folk.Their insidious influence hasalready spread far through theunderbelly of society.Incandescent with rage, Sigmardescends in a blaze of lightfrom his godly palace. Withlightning crackling in a haloaround his brow, he bringsthe wrath of the Heavensdown upon the sorcerers anddaemon-worshippers who seekto taint his utopian city. Everyone of the Chaos agents isslain in a single night, and anycitizens who cannot let go oftheir old grudges against oneanother are burned to cindersby his gaze.To ensure no such corruptioncan recur in Azyrheim, Sigmartrusts the witch-huntingOrder of Azyr with the task oftracking down and executingevil-doers wherever they areto be found. He also sendsout the Shadowblades, aelvenAssassins that kill in secret.Their duty is the eradicationof any who stray towards thedarkness. From this point on,all of Azyr’s enclaves of orruksand creatures tainted by Chaosare hunted down, first by thebrave armies of Azyrheim,and then by the newlyformed Stormhosts as part oftheir training.Peace rules in Sigmar’s cityonce more. A new era ofprogress begins in Azyrheim– albeit a status quo enforcedby the fear of swift andfinal retribution.[1b]

## Age of Sigmar

* **The tempest roars** - Sigmar’s Tempest roils across the skies of Chamon, driving potent veins of aether-gold before it. The Kharadron Overlords scramble to mine this bounty before the storm disrupts their plans entirely.[0p]
* **Nothing but dust** - The agents of Sigmar seek the duardin across the Spiral Crux, hoping to reinforce ancient alliances that they might win a significant beachhead on the largest of the inner islands. Though they fight their way to the peaks of many ancient duardin holds, they find nothing but corpses and the echoes of an empire long forsaken.[0p]

* **Victories hard won** - The Stormcast Eternals strike the hateful tribes of Chaos with such speed and force that many strongholds are breached before their denizens can muster a cogent defence. The sorcerous warlords of Tzeentch are not wrong-footed for long, however. Working their arts of prophecy and foreknowledge, they anticipate where the next thunderous assaults will land and lay their traps accordingly. Teeming Tzaangor herds, armies of heavily armoured warrior thralls, and entire tribes of Ogroids rush from cave and swamp to fall upon the proud Stormcast Eternals wherever they appear, each cursed horde further bolstered by the pyrotechnic magic of the sorcerers themselves. Only when the sky is lit by dozens of columns of heavenly light do the Stormcast Eternals bring enough force to bear to scour the Tzeentchian legions from Scimitar Point, the Barrier Peaks and the Gnarwhal Coast, forming a strongpoint from which to expand their territory.[0p]
* **Unstoppable momentum** - Sigmar’s hosts are reinforced by those who fell in the first wave, reforged and sent back by Sigmar, but the grinding battle of attrition is only tipped in the God-King’s favour when the survivors of the indigenous people – the warriors of Ayadah, Odrenn, Azgal, Viscid Flux and even Cold Iron Anvil – emerge from hiding to swell the ranks of the faithful. Together with a host of Free Peoples from Azyr, they muster strength enough to hunt down and surround the fractious Tzeentchian warbands. Slowly, as one Realmgate after another is conquered, the seeds of civilisation are planted and begin to bear fruit once more. New cities sprout up around each island of sanity and strength, and trade routes – although frequently embattled – are established across the isles.[0p]
* **All the gold in the sky** - The Angelos Conclaves of the Hammers of Sigmar join the airborne wars that rage between the Kharadron Overlords and the flying daemons and Tzaangor disc-riders of Tzeentch. An alliance is struck between Captain Hrolf Alespitter of Barak-Zon and Vindt of the Gilden Pinion, Knight-Venator of the Hammers of Sigmar, resulting in the banishment of a large daemon horde from the skies above Spinrikk’s Forest. Such compacts become more and more common, resulting in the newly coined Aetherstrike Force battle formation entering the legislation of the Kharadron Code.[0p]
* **Fall of the Thantanik** - The mighty super-ship known as the Thantanik is hit amidships by a devastating sorcerous strike when engaged in aerial battle with the Silver Tower of the Watcher King. Scuppered and sinking fast, the Thantanik rams the Silver Tower with such force that the Tzeentchian citadel’s magical wards activate, sending it blinking out of existence as it teleports back into the void. The Thantanik ’s pyrrhic victory ends with the colossal ship plummeting down to crash in the north-east of Moltania. It is used as a salutary lesson against the practice of building too large a vessel – as the Overlords have it, only a rube puts all his aether-gold in one aerostill.[0p]
* **The Great Sky Purge** - Though the lands of the Spiral Crux are still infested by Tzeentchian daemons, cult uprisings and Brayherds, the airs above the inner islands are all but cleared of invaders by a united push from the Kharadron Overlords and their Hammers of Sigmar allies. Those duardin furthest from the war-fronts return to the business of sky-mining, abandoning most of the lands below to their fate.[0p]
* **Baleful revelations** - The Kharadron of Barak-Zilfin discover a chain of crystalline sky-castles near the edge of the Crux’s known atmospheric limits. The duardin high council’s fears of a Tzeentchian plot in the making prove well founded as the sky-castles descend and the war for Chamon reaches new heights of violence.[0p]
* **A ray of hope** - Sigmar’s Tempest breaks, and lightning strikes across the lands.The Hallowed Knights and the Anvils of the Heldenhammer invade in great strength, hurling back the legions of Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch on a dozen fronts. As the Age of Sigmar begins inearnest, the God-King’s debt to the people of the Innerlands is repaid in full – the Tempest strikes hard here, with Stormhost after Stormhost arriving to turn the tide wherever evil gathers darkest. In the northernlands of Stygxx, the Amethyst Princedoms and Hallost, Sigmar’s legions prove so capable at hurlingback the forces of Chaos that the mortals – and ghosts – of Shyish that fight alongside them begin to feel hope rekindling within them.[0k]
* **The devil you know** - The God-King seeks to re-establish the mutually beneficial alliance of the Pantheon of Order. Though he hates the Great Necromancer for his betrayal at the Battle of Burning Skies, he realises he cannot win against the Dark Gods without Nagash’s help, and so sends the Hallowed Knights to treat with him.However, after dealing with the Mortarchs and reaching Nagash’s stronghold, the Stormcasts leave without success.[0k]
* **The truth comes out** - After slaying a tide of monstrous Chaos beasts alongside the Astral Templars and Anvils of the Heldenhammer, the warriors of Hallost hold a great feast. There they find out that many Anvils were once Hallost warriors, and that they were torn away by Sigmar for this very counterstrike. The survivors of the original Hallost tribes feel a fierce hatred for Sigmar growing within their breasts upon learning this, and several tribes swear then and there to oppose Sigmar the Betrayer.[0k]
* **Back from the brink** - The living fight alongside the dead once more as the Stormcast Eternals settle old grounds in the name of hope and progress. Chaos’ grip on the Innerlands remains tight and unforgiving, but here and there the cracks begin to show as the forces of Order gain momentum. Realmgates are claimed and new cities are built in the far north of the Shyish Innerlands, while some of the more established underworlds begin to break free from the oppression they have endured for so long. A glimmer of civilisation is kindled, although the long dark night is far from over.[0k][0l]

* **The tragic fate of Ossia** - Upon Ossia, the Stormcast Eternals appear in a storm of lightning. They launch scores of retributive strikes against the forces of Chaos, casting down their citadels and freeing the land. The spell of Chaos over Ossia is broken. However, in post-battle parleys with the few surviving mortal leaders of Ossia, the Stormcast Eternals are told that they are too late. If they had arrived fifty years ago, perhaps Ossia would still have had a chance of redemption – but now it is a place of dark and haunted pain.[0l]
* **Battle of Gothizzar** - Chaos-seized Gothizzar is besieged during the battle of the All-gates. Nagash’s forces do not arrive to reinforce Sigmar’s hosts at the critical time. The Endgate remains in Chaos hands.[0l]
* **Sinister omens** - As Nagash’s secret schemes near completion, echoes of the future ripple through the Mortal Realms in an escalating series of malign and ominous portents. Visionaries, heralds and emissaries from each of the Grand Alliances gather armies bound for Shyish.[0l]

* **A magical singularity** - By channelling a great sorcerous spell through his carefully aligned black pyramid, Nagash reverses the flow of death magic so that it gathers not at the edge of the realmsphere, but at its centre. The hideous weight of all the gathered death energy collapses a hole in the centre of the realm, and the magical polarity of Shyish reverses completely.[0l]

* **The Shyish Necroquake** - As Nagash’s great work is completed, a thunderous pulse of aetheric energy roils across the cosmos, causing the spirits of the dead to rise in every Mortal Realm. The lands of Shyish begin to move towards its core, pulled by the irresistible weight of concentrated death magic into the Nadir like flotsam to the mouth of a maelstrom.[0l]

* **The End of All Things** - Those afterlives that have fallen into repetition and stagnation under the pall of Chaos slowly drift inward towards the Nadir. Most mortals are unaware of this at first – a man who is content simply to sweep the same floor day after day does not notice that his movements are becoming more synchronised and mechanical. Over time, he wastes away completely as his homeland is drawn closer to the Nadir. Eventually that man becomes little more than a skeleton with a broom, cursed to repeat the same task for eternity.[0l]
* **The search for eternity** - Years after Nagash’s act of betrayal left the Stormcasts without support at the battle of Gothizzar, Sigmar, having recalled his legions and delegations from the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, sends them to the Innerlands once more to enact a retributive strike against Nagash. This time, the God-King’s wrath does not burn out so soon. A new era of war between the factions of Order and Death begins. Some whisper that there is more to Sigmar’s agenda than simple vengeance, for the Stormhosts have a new breed of Stormcast with them. Appearing more wizard than warrior, they seek to uncover the true secrets of immortality in an attempt to perfect the reforging process.[0l]
* **Those who burn bright** - Hallost had long thrived above all as a vital and glorious place untouched by fear or doubt. Its warriors still fought the hideous creatures of Modrhavn every new day, and those who died were still reborn. Nagash once found he had little influence there – even his finest generals were seen as another military challenge for the fearless populace to overcome. Yet the Nadir’s pull is irresistible, and over time even Hallost slips slowly southward. Ossia also begins to descend to the Shyish Nadir, and becomes ever more terrible of aspect. In drawing nearer to that swirling, crushing vortex, the land becomes saturated with magic. Great armies of wraiths, banshees and spirits rise from the earth – the souls of those who called Ossia their home long ago – and attack their Chaos oppressors. Ill equipped to combat these ethereal hosts with blade and spear, the Chaos armies strike back with sorcery and daemonic power. Here and there the mortal populace rises up with blade and shield in hand, given hope by their ethereal ancestors, but most are too downtrodden and have already become half-dead husks. The fate of Ossia hangs in the balance.[0l]
* **By order of the Everchosen** - Archaon, Exalted Grand Marshal of the Apocalypse, has long suspected the deep waters of the realms to harbour some sort of aelven presence. Although it takes a great deal of time, the Everchosen wrings the knowledge he seeks out of Sslish the Depraved and a number of Verminlords. Archaon puts great pressure upon the skaven to plumb the realms’ oceans until they find definitive signs of the Idoneth.[3c]
* **Soul shattering** - Over the course of a decade, three new skaven tunnels are detected and destroyed by the Mor’phann before the Idoneth are discovered by the ratmen. Alas, Aighmar, a descendent enclave, does not fare so well. In a series of campaigns culminating in the Siege of Blackfire, Aighmar’s domains are breached and ultimately annihilated by the skaven, and its chorrileum is damaged beyond salvation.[3c]
* **Council of Disarmony** - When the Ionrach attempt to organise an assembral to aid the beset Mor’phann – who would never themselves ask for help – the Fuethán instead instigate what threatens to become a civil war. Staving off all-out conflict, the councils of the Ionrach steer the dispute towards de’comhrac, honour duels between Akhelian Kings. All too often, however, these ritual combats between Kings grow to larger battles where multiple phalanxes clash with one another.[3c]
* **The tempest breaks** - The powers of Chaos, after five-long centuries of dominance, have claimed the vast majority of the Mortal Realms for their own. Though his great work is not complete, Sigmar sends forth his warriors amid a clashing, roiling thunderhead that breaks into every realm at once. On columns of lightning they are borne to the battlefield, their assault so sudden and powerful that the forces of Chaos are hurled back from the sites Sigmar considers most vital. New war rages across the realms, with the God-King’sliving tempest never tiring. With the Realmgates of paramount importance to his long-planned conquest, Sigmar’s Stormhosts concentrate their efforts on reclaiming those sites and fortifying them at all costs. Sigmar casts his lightning over the lands of the Great Parch. Led by Lord-Celestant Vandus Hammerhand – formerly Vendell Blackfist of the Direbrand Tribe – and the Hammers of Sigmar, a dozen Stormhosts take battle to Khorgos Khul and his Goretide. Khul’s warriors are broken and the warlord himself defeated at the Red Pyramid, forced into exile by Vandus Hammerhand. Though the battle costs the lives of thousands of Stormcast Eternals, including that of Lord-Celestant Jactos Goldenmane, the Brimstone Peninsula is conquered and its Realmgates manned by the Lord-Castellants. By demolishing the Jagtooth Forts that secure the region and using the defensible peninsula as their staging post, Sigmar’s armies take the fight to the Chaos scourge in a hundred different theatres of war across the Great Parch.[1b][0d]
* **The Storm of Sigmar** - Sigmar launches his new war upon Chaos, but soon sending his armies to all the Mortal Realms. Envoys search Ulgu for Morathi, but her shadowspells keep all Khainite temples hidden from the God-King. When it finally suits her purpose, the two sides join forces for the first time at the Battle of Dolmen Heights.[4b]
* **The hammer strikes hard** - Through shock assaults, longrehearsed tactics and raw skill at arms, the Stormcast Eternals retake swathes of Aqshy whilst the Chaos forces are still reeling. From the renamed Hammerhand Coast in the south all the way to the Reclaimed Demesnes in the north-east, the Stormcasts stake their territory. Every Realmgate claimed by the Stormcast Eternals becomes the centre of a new fortified town, then a small city, as the Lord-Castellants of the Stormhosts perform their stalwart duty in conjunction with the Dispossessed duardin of Azyr and the Ironweld Arsenal. Soon, these centres of resistance become the crucibles in which new warrior tribes and foundling cities are forged – and hope with them. The cities of Hammerhal Aqsha, Tempest’s Eye, Anvilgard and Hallowheart are founded.[0d]
* **The Coast of Horns** - The Idoneth of Dhom-hain become the first of their kind to encounter the Stormcast Eternals when Sigmar’s Warriors arrive on the battlefield along Ghur’s Coast of Horns. The desperation of the situation as well as the Idoneth’s inability to sever the souls of the Stormcasts leads the two factions to form a temporary alliance.[3c]
* **A battle too far** - The courts of the Isle of Ghouls, now fully in the grip of the Flesh-eater delusion, sally forth against the Chaos oppressors. They intend to aid the Stormcast Eternals – seeing them as holy warriors and therefore potential kin – though in a tragic twist of fate, the Stormcasts attack them, thinking them to be yet more cannibalistic reavers. A powerful alliance turns into a deadly rivalry.[0d]
* **The cleansing begins** - Wherever Chaos is beaten back, the citizens of the Great Parch petition mages of the Aspirian tradition to burn those regions clean with magical flame. In many places this works – with the lands scoured, new life can grow, like plants that germinate after a wildfire. The Jagtooth Forts, erected by Khul’s bone masons and their legions of slaves, are replaced over painstaking years of labour by Azyr’s stonecutters. The new lighthouse-style buildings are known as the Brimstone Keeps.[0d]
* **At the Gates of Dawn** - The Hallowed Knights are the first Stormcast Eternals to enter Ghyran, crashing down before the Gates of Dawn to destroy the host of the sorcerer Kraderblob and the seven greater daemons led by the rotting monstrosity Bolathrax. Gardus of the Steel Soul forces his way into the Garden of Nurgle, Bolathrax hard upon his heels – the gate crumbles under the Great Unclean One’s bulk, preventing further Chaos reinforcements from coming through. Ultimately, it is Gardus’ miraculous reappearance that turns the tide for the Hallowed Knights.[0h]
* **The fading of the Everqueen** - The Hallowed Knights search for Alarielle, entering the hidden valley of Athelwyrd at the end of their long quest – and in doing so, lead the warlords of Nurgle straight to it. A massive battle breaks out, culminating in Alarielle fleeing along the Cascading Path in search of safety. Such is her despondency that she becomes little more than a magical seed, borne by her handmaiden the Lady of Vines. Aided by a Jotunberg, a walking winter mountain, they stay ahead of Torglug the Despised’s legions. By hastening across the frozen Sea of Serpents and shattering the ice floes behind her, she almost outruns her pursuers, but the sorcerous Slaugoth belches forth a bridge of frozen vomit across which the Nurgle hosts charge. Only the valiant efforts of the Hallowed Knights keep her from being overrun.[0h]
* **Vengeance long awaited** - During the Red Century, four almighty monoliths were raised over the once-great city of Thal’donn to commemorate a key victory for the forces of Chaos. Sigmar is determined to bring down these symbolic affronts. The Black Dracothians and the Lions of Sigmar lead a Stormhost coalition that levels the monoliths and every Chaos bastion and fort in the region. It is said in Azyr that upon this day, Sigmar smiled.[1b]
* **Vengeance long awaited** - As disaster looms, Alarielle is replanted in the Grove of Heroes, and there gestates into her war form, ready to wreak a terrible vengeance on the followers of Nurgle. With Alarielle’s resurgence and the defeat of the Glottkin at the floating Landshoals, the forces of Nurgle begin to break. Over the course of the now-fabled Season of War, the Everspring Swathe is painstakingly saved from the brink of utter damnation by the alliance of Sylvaneth and Stormcast Eternals. They take the fight to the Chaos intruders on a hundred different fronts, and though it costs millions of lives, islands of Order begin to emerge from the darkness.[0h]
* **The seeds of hope** - The three cities known as the Seeds of Hope are established as Nurgle finds his power waning. Fast-tracked by Alarielle’s life-magic, the cities of Greywater Fastness, the Living City and the Phoenicium spring into existence. Greywater Fastness becomes a centre of industry and an artillerist’s haven, boasting more cannons per mile of city walls than anywhere else in the Jade Kingdoms. Valius Maliti, the famed architect, encourages the gung-ho attitude of the city’s engineers, incentivising deforestation and thereby stoking the tension between the Free Peoples and Alarielle’s forces. The militaristic, industrialist mindset of Greywater Fastness drives Alarielle to the point of rage.[0h]
* **A bridge too far** - When the inhabitants of Greywater Fastness level the verdant ground around the city during the Season of War and turn it into a desolate, chemical-ridden swamp, Alarielle sends forth a host of the Dreadwood to encircle the city and protect what is left – now known as the Ghoul Mere. Led by a Treelord named Pale Oak, the Sylvaneth refuse to let the people of the city into the despoiled regions, and the Ghoul Mere becomes a deadly no man’s land. Only the Eldritch Council of Greywater Fastness are able to strike a deal to stop the city starving to death, ensuring that a single route in and out of the city can still be used without fear of reprisal. However, the region is shrouded in mist, and an unwary traveller who strays far from the heavily guarded trade road will be snatched away by vengeful woodland spirits, never to be seen again.[0h]
* **Azyrheim's hosts** - With many Gates of Azyr open, the paths into the Mortal Realms are once more accessible to the vengeful armies of Azyrheim. Many warhosts issue forth, fighting on their own or aiding the Stormcast Eternals to cast down the tyrant and the oppressor. Songs and stories of valour are dedicated to the memories of homes long lost and families long slain, yet the letting of blood can never truly heal those ancestral wounds.[1b]
* **Besieging the Black Rift of Klaxus** - A vile ritual takes place in the Sulphur Citadel, a vast fortress that overlooks the kingdom of Klaxus. At the ritual’s conclusion it rips open a dark passageway into the Realm of Chaos. To halt the outpouring of daemon legions from that weeping opening, Sigmar hurls down scores of thunderbolts, each bearing a phalanx of Stormcast Eternals to war. After days of battle, the Black Rift is finally collapsed.[1b]
* **Battle of Ossia** - Stormcast Eternals arrive throughout Shyish, and the battles in Ossia are particularly fierce. As the undead rise up, alliances are formed between the two estranged factions. The fighting wavers back and forth, but with the arrival of the Mortarchs the Chaos strongholds are eventually cast down. Nagash does not forgive those of Ossia for allowing themselves to be conquered.[2b]
* **The solemn and the dead** - In Shyish’s Innerlands the Anvils of the Heldenhammer fight through the living dead– and sometimes alongside them – to hurl back the greater evil of Chaos. Each Stormhost wins its own sagas and tales of heroism as the wars unfold. To the south of Nulahmia, the Bloodbound warbands of Knasvan Skullrender are annihilated when they are caught between the vast skeletal horde of Neferata and the unyielding shield-wall of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. Hope is renewed for a lasting alliance between the God-King and the Lord of the Dead.[1b]
* **The return of order** - Spurred on by Sigmar and his Stormcast Eternals, the forces of Order seize many pivotal Realmgates. It is not long before these beachheads are expanded into fortresses, and then rapidly grow into cities as free peoples flock to burgeoning civilisations.[2b]
* **The Heldenhammer Crusade** - In Chamon, Ghal Maraz is recovered from the Eldritch Fortress of Anvrok by the combined efforts of Thostos Bladestorm and Vandus Hammerhand. Unable to touch the sacred hammer, Tzeentch’s minions had built a stronghold around it to hide its whereabouts, but during a great battle against the sorcerer Ephryx, its divine light is uncovered. In the Hanging Valleys of Anvrok, it is the Celestial Vindicators that lead the charge, their thirst for vengeance unsated no matter how many of the Slaves to Darkness they slay. Fighting through skaven ambushes, evil sorcery, meddling daemons and the Goretide, the combined Stormhosts penetrate the Eldritch Fortress even as it begins to translocate into the Realm of Chaos. Thanks to betrayal amongst the Chaos ranks and the wrath of Lord Khul, Vandus Hammerhand of the Hammers of Sigmar is able to fight his way to the heart of the fortress and at last recover Ghal Maraz.[1c]
* **The Awakening** - A triumphal twelve-day feast is held for the warriors that played a part in returning Ghal Maraz to Sigmar. Upon receiving his almighty warhammer, the God-King strides into the spell-shielded Black Citadel. There, in the Chamber Extremis, Sigmar places Ghal Maraz into the hands of the recumbent figure within. With thunderstorms raging and lightning wreathing the Sigmarabulum, the Celestant-Prime arises. With this glorious figure leading them, the Stormhosts win many lasting victories.[1c]
* **The tide of filth** - The Briomdar stronghold of Green Gulch is invaded by Nurgle’s Plague Legions ,who seek the hidden refuge of Alarielle. Led by a triumvirate of Great Unclean Ones, the daemon armies threaten to contaminate the entire underwater fortress. Timely reinforcements are delivered by the Ionrach, led by High King Volturnos, who himself hunts down and slays the trio of greater daemons. Thanks to the magics of the Tidecasters, the filth is soon washed away. Following the battle, Volturnos seeks the Everqueen, hoping to make amends for the rift that lies between her and the Idoneth Deepkin. Alarielle, fearing a Chaos trap, remains in seclusion.[3c]
* **Raiders from the deep** - In Ghyran, bands of Idoneth Deepkin emerge from the mists to ambush and capture a war pilgrimage of the Kraith that is aiding Alarielle in the War of Life. Realising there are easier targets, the mysterious sea-beings attempt to strike a truce, but as ever the Kraith are unrelenting. The Kraith pursue their attackers, plunging headlong into the mists with their teeth bared.[4b]
* **The balance shifts** - In Ghyran, which has long stood upon the threshold of irrecoverable disaster, the Hallowed Knights join in alliance with the forces of the Sylvaneth to aid Alarielle the Everqueen. Having fought with everything in their power to protect Alarielle’s soulpod from Nurgle’s foetid hosts, Lord-Celestant Gardus, Lord-Castellant Grymn, their Hallowed Knights brethren and the martyrs of many other Stormhosts are vindicated when Alarielle re-emerges from dormancy in her warform. Full of wrath, she leads a merciless purge of her realm to free it from Nurgle’s taint that culminates with the defeat of the Plague God’s favoured triplets, the Glottkin. In the closing stages of this war, the Nurgle warlord Torglug the Despised is struck by Ghal Maraz, and the part of his soul that is still noble hurtles to Azyr to be absolved– and reforged as Tornus the Redeemed. Meanwhile, in Chamon, the Hammerhands seek to keep the daemonic oracle Kiathanus from Archaon’s clutches. The Everchosen’s might is too great, and upon the flanks of Mount Kronus they are slain to a man. Their sacrifice does not go unnoticed, however, and Dracothion roars his defiance.[1c]
* **Rise of the Godbeasts** - Archaon’s counter-attack is fierce. He sets out to compel the zodiacal godbeasts to fight for his cause, knowing that their might will make him all but unstoppable. In Aqshy, he binds the Solar Drake Ignax, though the enslavement of Behemat, the Father of Gargants, is foiled at the last by the Knights Excelsior and the divine lightning ritual that summons the Great Bolts.[3c]
* **Era Draconis** - The mighty energies unleashed by Dracothion empower and open the Extremis Chamber, that famous union of Stormcast Eternal and celestial beast. Before long, Dracoth riders and Stardrake-borne paladins hurtle down from on high to join the ongoing war. Their first major test comes as the siege of the Soulhaven Citadel enters its third season. Dozens of Varanguard take to the field, tasked by Archaon with the sacred site’s destruction. As the dread knights charge, stars rain from the sky, and the Dracothian Guard of the Hammerclaws burst out of the meteor strikes to launch a devastating counter-attack. It is the first instance of an onslaught that drives back the most formidable warriors of Chaos in all the realms – but not the last.[1c]
* **The Nexus Wars** - The final battle of the Realmgate Wars is fought at the All-gates. Determined to stem the endless tide of Chaos reinforcements flowing from the eight macro-portals of the Allpoints, Sigmar unleashes all of his available Stormhosts in an attempt to deny Archaon his greatest asset in the conquest of the realmspheres. After many terrible battles, the Genesis Gate and the Brimfire Gate are wrested from the Everchosen’s grasp. Though Chaos keeps its throttling stranglehold upon most of the Mortal Realms, in Aqshy and Ghyran it is weakened. The tales of valour from this time pass into myth, forming the basis of a thousand legends depicted in triumphal monuments in those lands reclaimed from Chaos.[1c]
* **Growing alliances** - With the conclusion of Sigmar’s offensive known as the Realmgate Wars, the forces of Order have gained many footholds across the Mortal Realms. As new cities are founded, the Khainites become ever more willing to join with the God-King’s forces in order to drive back the counter-attacking armies of Chaos. The Daughters of Khaine fight in dozens of campaigns and hundreds of battles alongside these new allies. Of the different Stormcast Eternal Stormhosts, some never grow to trust the Daughters of Khaine – notably the Hallowed Knights – while others, such as the Knights Excelsior, accept them gladly, even commending the battle zeal of their new-found allies. Amongst the sylvaneth, those of the Dreadwood Glade fight most willingly alongside the war covens. As for the people of Azyrheim, it is the Scourge Privateers who most often find common cause with their distant aelven kindred.Some battles break out between the Daughters of Khaine and other factions of Order – such as the Atrocity at Excelsis or the three-day war within Vindicarum – but Morathi is quick to offer amends and punish the most egregious of her own forces.[4b]
* **Rise of Draichi Ganeth** - Draichi Ganeth becomes the fastest growing of all the Khainite sects. They are the first to open shrines in the newly built cities of Order, and swiftly become the best known of the Daughters of Khaine due to their gladiatorial battles. Their armies frequently fight alongside Sigmar’s Stormcast Eternals and the armies that march out of Azyrheim. Draichi Ganeth’s destruction of the orruks outside the city of Kurnothea wins them many allies.[4b]
* **The opening of the Sky Bridges** - The Skyrealm – one of the twelve natural wonders of Ghur – has long been corrupted by Chaos. Instead of assailing the fortress-laden main islands, the Stormcast Eternals strike at the aerial bridges that connect that floating continent to the lands around it. In the end, the Sky Bridges are only claimed after all the Stormhosts sent to conquer it mass their Prosecutors for a single aerial strike. but the battle for the islands themselves is far from won.[3c]
* **The seeds of hope** - In Ghyran, the new cities known as the Seeds of Hope are brought into being, their growth accelerated by Alarielle’s boundless life magic. Though each city is markedly different to its counterparts, they all prove to be stoic enclaves of civilisation in a land once all-but destroyed by the vile attention of Nurgle. Word of these first cities spreads across the realms, and they become symbols of what the forces of Order can achieve even in the heartlands of the Dark Gods’ conquest.[1d]
* **A triumphal silence** - For the longest period since its creation, the mournful tolling of the Bell of Lamentations is stilled. The great tocsin rings for every new act of atrocity committed by the scions of the Dark Gods, and has not been quiet since the height of the Age of Chaos. Its total silence – though lasting only a few blissful hours – acts as a new kind of tribute to the fallen, signalling the first return of justice and Order to the Mortal Realms.[1d]
* **The ebon circle** - Lord-Relictor Tharnus Shrinesong hand-picks a force from the Lightning Hawks Stormhost that have been gravely scarred by their many reforgings. Dubbing his unorthodox brotherhood the Ebon Circle, Tharnus daubs their argent battle plate with pitch and leads them deep into the Silver Tower of a Gaunt Summoner. Each grim warrior proves anathema to sorceries that might have shattered more coherent minds, as Shrinesong had hoped would be the case. Together they banish countless foes with hammer and blade, though they never locate the tower’s master. Upon their eventual escape from the Silver Tower they take the fight to Chaos in a dozen differen ttheatres of war, but never seek to rejoin their Stormhost, for Shrinesong feels the reunion will not be a happy one.[1d]
* **The shattered siege** - When the siege towers of Dagramm Thule approach the Baeyrd lodge in Aqshy, twenty retinues of Decimators from the Sons of Mallus strike down into the Chaos horde’s midst. Led by Lord-Castellant Selithon Blackstar, they cleave their way towards the towering constructs before hacking the legs from the twisted gargants that push them. In doing so, they save the magmahold and forge an unbreakable bond between their Stormhost and the Fyreslayers lodge.[1d]
* **Running with the pack** - Raised by a pack of Gryphhounds in the lowlands of the Boralis Mountains, Arden Gryphkin becomes the first mortal to be reforged and inducted into the Vanguard Auxiliary Chambers without having previously served in the Strike Chambers. His Vanguard-Hunters, the Goldtalons, become famous for launching ferocious ambushes with the aid of their four-legged companions.[1d]
* **The Twin-tailed city** - Hammerhal Ghyra is established, becoming even larger and more influential than the Seeds of Hope due to its thriving trade with the other half of the Twin-tailed City, Hammerhal Aqsha. The magma streams channelled through the Realmgate from Aqshy keep back the endless growth of Ghyran, allowing the city and its lush gardens to be cultivated into one of the wonders of the Mortal Realms.[0h]
* **Purity without compromise** - After destroying a Tzeentchian cult that had infiltrated the silver city of Alshime, Lord-Veritant Mathius declares his work unfinished and the corruption not yet weeded out. He leads a Hammerstrike Force of the Knights Excelsior in a bloody purge of the city’s Freeguild and Collegiate Arcane leaders, lest the taint of Chaos lingers among them.[1d]
* **Laithirel cleansed** - Beleaguered by the dreadful war constructs of the Clans Skryre, Sylvaneth of the Harvestboon clans welcome the timely arrival of the Radiant Suns of Sigmar, whose Dracothian Guard descend upon the Vale of Laithirel in a gleaming phalanx. Wily even in defence, the skaven Arch-warlock Gleed signals an enfilade from a line of Warp Lightning Cannons he thought hidden – but even as he does so, the massive shadow of Lord-Celestant Orias’ Stardrake engulfs the skaven artillery crews from on high. Their end is swift.[1d]
* **Doompools** - Tzeentchian forces tamper with many of the whirlways, the deep-sea Realmgates that the Idoneth use to traverse the realms. Many whirlways spawn strange vortexes that spin away, spewing daemons. Several grow into vast doompools that threaten to suck everything nearby into the Realm of Chaos. Many enclaves band together to close these swirling portals, fighting numerous campaigns against the daemons that seek to keep them open.[3c]
* **Warden of the soul-ledgers** - Thanks to his exemplary work, Lotann,greatest of SoulWardens, is grantedthe title Warden of the Soul Ledgersat an historic Idoneth assembral. Thusdoes Lotann begin to aid not only theIonrach, but all the enclaves of theIdoneth Deepkin.[3c]
* **An alliance forestalled** - Stormcast Eternal emissaries visit the Ionrach capital of Príom, beseeching the aid of the largest of the Idoneth enclaves. An assembral is held, with many enclaves abstaining or voting against any such alliance, despite the impassioned pleas of High King Volturnos. So did Sigmar’s Stormhosts fight the battles of the Realmgate Warswith little to no help offered from the Idoneth Deepkin.[3c]
* **Siege of the Great Scaphodon** - Many enclaves report skaven incursions, but none are as damaging as the invasion of the Nautilar. The skaven fleet of decrepit submersibles and carc-ships, little more than the vermin-infested corpses of sea monsters, invade the Idoneth city-nation built upon the back of a Great Scaphodon. Spires are toppled, and the inner-whorl sectors of the titanic beast’s shell are overrun with ratmen. Using strange drills, the skaven burrow deep into the Nautilar’s capital. The battles last for six years, spreading through nearly all of the hundreds of miles of shell-structures built upon the Great Scaphodon. The stubborn defence of the Nautilar staves off defeat, but it is only the arrival of High King Volturnos and the Stormcast Eternals that allows the Idoneth to take the offensive. At last, the skaven leader –Grystleback the Grey – is slain, but the damage caused to the Nautilar’s empire is catastrophic, and the ratmen’s lingering taint remains. The Nautilar goon to join the Ionrach in allying with the Stormcasts in several key conflicts.[3d]
* **The seekers return** - The brief respite that followed the arrival of the Stormcast Eternals in Ulgu comes to an end as more and more mortal and immortal followers of Slaanesh pour into the realm. With the corruption of the shadowpaths by Chaos forces, the battles of the Cathtrar Dhule resume. Slaaneshi-led invasions strike over a dozen Khainite temples, and even Hagg Nar is besieged. The campaign to control the shadowpath network begins with the First Battle of the Murkfields. With swift invasions, Chaos armies rule the pathways initially, but counter-attacks by war covens reclaim many of the major routes. Across the Shadowlands, such battles still rage, absorbing a great deal of Morathi’s attention.[4b]
* **Visions of undeath** - It is Vandus Hammerhand, Lord-Celestant of the Hammers of Sigmar, who first witnesses visions of malign manifestations and deathly conjurations spilling across the Mortal Realms. He foresees that in their wake will come superstition and strife, and after that, the hideous phenomenon of undeath. In Vandus’ troubled mind, the figure of pure celestial energy he comes to think of as the Lightning Man visits him in the dark of night, drawing closer each time until his whispers become an audible warning. He imparts a dread truth – that Nagash seeks to harness all the magical energies of Shyish, and thereby change it from the natural destination of every departed soul into a domain of Undeath, where every single entity is bound in thrall to Nagash’s bidding. Vandus brings this message to Lord Sigmar, and the God-King’s great brow furrows deep.[1d]
* **The umbral sea ambush** - Hoping to bring an end to hostilities between the Idoneth Deepkin and the Daughters of Khaine, High King Volturnos accepts a meeting with their leader, Morathi. He is eager to work out a truce between the two aelf peoples, but Volturnos is deceived. He has been lured into a meeting not with the High Oracle of Khaine, but with the Masque – a powerful daemon of Slaanesh. In the ensuing battle Volturnos loses an eye, but escapes with his life.[3d]
* **Malign portents** - Deities and wizards skilled in the arts of augery read malign portents in the air. Nagash’s long plan of domination is at last detected and many armies rush into Shyish to halt the Great Necromancer.[2b]
* **The dead rise up** - Portents of evil abound as the forces of Shyish gather in strength. Wherever there is a great concentration of Scáthborn, the spirits of the dead rise and attack. Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead, seeks to claim those errant aelven souls that have escaped death, for he considers them to be rightfully his. At the same time the Daughters of Khaine are called upon by their Order allies to help defend the major cities from the baleful forces that assail them. Only where political, territorial or monetary gains are to be made does Morathi command the war covens to join the fighting. There are, however, exceptions – whenever the enemy is Slaaneshi or undead in origin, the High Oracle orders her kin to enter the fray with vengeful zeal, for she will never forgive the masters of those two foes.[4b]
* **Growing civilisations** - In many places across the Mortal Realms the forces of Chaos have been beaten back. Sigmar’s Stormhosts lead the way in establishing settlements where none have stood since the Age of Myth. Despite the obvious signs that the seeds of hope have been planted and are sprouting, the majority of Idoneth Deepkin remain isolationists. Only the Ionrach and their direct offshoots make any real effort to form alliances. Instead, the new cities raised by the resurgent forces of Order prove too tempting a target for the Fuethán, and the enclave launches a series of raids to claim the souls of their inhabitants. The trade routes that stretch from Azyrheim to the newly founded colonies become rich hunting grounds.[1e][3d]
* **Descent of meteors** - Sigmar resists the urge to goburning with indignation into Shyish to hunt Nagash and bring him down in person, for he has learned much from the Realmgate Wars. Instead he gives the people of the realms the means to save themselves. He climbs the spiralling ascent to the High Star Sigendil and, with a sweep of his hand, catches meteors rich in the prophetic realmstone celestium. These he hurls into the Mortal Realms, each magical monolith burning like a twin-tailed comet as it plummets to earth. The celestium meteors dig deep into the soil of the Mortal Realms, where they bring prophecies and visions of salvation to magisters and simple folk alike. Sigmar sends out emissaries from his Sacrosanct Chambers – his Lord-Ordinators, masters of scrying and leaders of men – to find where the meteors have come to land. Sequestering them from would-be soothsayers seeking to mine them for celestium, the Lord-Ordinators use them to divine possible futures. They read the fates of each land and prepare accordingly for what is to come, marshalling armies to march upon Nagash’s holdings – their intent to disrupt and even thwart his grand plans before they come to fruition.[1e]
* **The draining of the Khaphtar Sea** - When a skaven gnawhole drains the Khaphtar Sea, the Idoneth Deepkin who dwell there are exposed. Although the enclave cunningly escapes destruction with the aid of their kin from the Laebrean Basin, they are revealed to Nagash for the first time. Upon learning of a new race that steals the souls he regards as rightfully his, Nagash marks a new target for extermination.[3d]
* **The stirring of Slaanesh** - The greatest of threats to aelven kind begins to stir once more. Due to the machinations of Morathi, the self-proclaimed High Oracle of Khaine, the trap that has long held the Chaos God Slaanesh has begun to shift. Sensing their patron more than ever, Slaaneshi armies grow more daring in their searches, and dread fills the hearts of the Idoneth. The Ionrach call an emergency assembral, beseeching their disparate kin to join forces with the Stormcast Eternals and the growing coalition of Order. It is not so much the fact that the enclaves all share the same enemy which sways more of them to join, but that the undersea kingdoms no longer offer the unassailable sanctuary they once did.[3d]
* **The harbingers march out** - Sigmar is not alone in his desire to halt the doom of Shyish. Many of his rival gods have become aware of the dangers, and send their own emissaries into Shyish at the heads of massive armies. By the time Sigmar’s Lord-Ordinators pass into Shyish to march upon Nagashizzar, harbingers of the Dark Gods are already there – and Nagash, having learned of the intrusion into his domain, sends his fell agents to stop these intruders. When the forces of Order and Chaos converge upon Nagashizzar, a tragic irony unfolds. If either one had successfully laid siege to the Supreme Necromancer’s fortress, perhaps his works could have been stymied, or even torn down. But the Stormcast Eternals were created specifically to fight Chaos. The hosts from Azyr have nothing but hatred in their hearts for those that long ago slaughtered their kin, and the forging of an alliance is out of the question. As Sigmar’s faithful and their Chaos-worshipping adversaries give in to their bone-deep enmity and fight in the shadow of Nagash’s citadel, the Supreme Necromancer’s great ritual has time enough to reach a conclusion. Only a small party of skaven make it to his inner sanctums, and though they disrupt the ritual, they do not halt it.[1e]
* **The Shyish Necroquake** - With the Great Black Pyramid completed and Nagash’s ritual put in motion, Nagash nearly succeeds in fending off those who would invade Shyish and wreck his plan. However, skaven agents contaminate the Great Black Pyramid. The resulting is a cataclysmic, epoch-shattering implosion of magic causes the heart of Shyish to collapse like that of a dying star. The pyramid burrows down into realmsphere until it pulls the fabric of Shyish into a vast funnel-like maelstrom with Nagashizzar at the bottom. The Shyish Nadir is born, a cursed sinkhole in reality to which all the deathly magic of the cosmos is drawn. The Ymmerloc Idoneth of the arctic Helfrost in Shyish send warnings to their kin, but enclaves throughout the realms have already begun to feel the spell’s effects. Even as the domains of the Idoneth Deepkin are assailed by the undead, pleas for aid begin to arrive from the surface worlds as many of the nascent cities of Order find themselves sorely pressed by the legions of the Great Necromancer. Reluctantly, many enclaves send some of their phalanxes to aid the land dwellers. The Briomdar and Motlynians go to Alarielle’s aid, whilst the Mor’phann and Ymmerloc join forces to aid the Stormhosts in Shyish.The Ionrach send troops everywhere, diverting significant resources to help their deep-sea kin and Order allies alike.[1e][2b][3d]
* **Green tide rising** - Tempest’s Eye is besieged from below when an infestation of Spiderfang Grots finds the hidden crystal paths that lead through the mountain’s heart. The city’s garrison is forced to abandon large portions of the lower levels. Bolstered by their Kharadron Overlord allies, every one of the city’s masons and engineers take to the tunnels in order to shore up the routes by which the grots are entering the city.[1e]
* **A queen shall rise** - After a long search that saw Nagash peer into every underworld known to him, the Great Necromancer selects Lady Olynder and appoints her as his Mortarch of Grief.[2b]
* **Battlefield Shyish** - Lady Olynder’s first task is tobegin the long task of driving back the Chaos forces that still dominate Shyish. Over one hundred Nighthaunt processions are hurled into the fray, fighting alongside Nagash’s legions. Each of the existing Mortarchs sees the opportunity to take Lady Olynder’s measure. Although Mannfred von Carstein and Neferata resent the newcomer’s share of power, all of the Mortarchs quickly realise she is a formidable addition to their ranks.[2b]
* **Cloud raiders** - An enterprising sky-fleet of Kharadron Overlords attempts to build a base from which to plunder the aether-gold that drift high above Shyish. Their ability to remain above the clouds had kept them safe from many foes – but not Baroness Ravenblack and her Blackguard procession. The duardin are swept over by packs of Dreadscythe Harridans. One by one, the guns of the Kharadron fall silent, and their ships plummet from the sky.[2b]
* **Brief alliance** - In many places the newly-anointed Nighthaunt processions join forces with Flesh-eater Courts in order to destroy Chaos invaders. Such alliances are of convenience only. At the Battles of Lake Lethis, the Grymfens, and throughout the campaign of Ossia the tale was the same – after the common foe was defeated the spectral hosts turned upon the vile cannibals and destroyed them also.[2b]
* **The Briar Queen** - The Briar Queen – nemesis of the cursed city of Shadespire – is unleashed by Nagash to menace other lands. She is tasked with claiming certain souls that have cheated Nagash. With the aid of her spectral army – the Thorns of the Briar Queen – she visits each of the Mortal Realms, always bringing back her target’s soul. Between missions the Briar Queen returns to Shadespire, for her need for vengeance there remains unsatisfied.[2b]
* **Near disaster at Ghrun** - The last battle to cleanse Lyria of Chaos is almost Lady Olynder’s undoing. Although victorious in the end, her near destruction at the hands of a Bloodthirster draws censure from Nagash, who both punishes and rewards his new Mortarch with her betrothal to the Craven King, Kurdoss Valentian.[2b]
* **The Soul Wars** - Nagash deems it is time to launch his long-planned crusade to reclaim all those souls he sees as rightfully his – that is, all souls that ever were. Strikes are levelled against the factions that have betrayed Nagash by withholding the spirit-stuff of their dead – the followers of Chaos, the Stormcast Eternals, the Idoneth Deepkin, the aelves of Hysh, the Sylvaneth and the Daughters of Khaine among them. The first wave is conducted by the Nighthaunt processions. Thus, even in the wake of the necroquake, a further tide of undead attacks sweeps across the Mortal Realms. Led by the Mortarch of Grief, every major free city is assailed. The Nighthaunts prove themselves beyond doubt to be the tip of Nagash’s spear of terror.[2b]
* **The Battle of Glymmsforge** - The necroquake sweeps across Shyish, consuming lands held by the forces of Order and Chaos alike without discrimination. A Sacrosanct Chamber of the Hammers of Sigmar is tested sorely when two of its foremost arcanists are sent to defend the city of their birth, Glymmsforge, from the forces of the traitor knight Malendrek. They keep the city from being completely overwhelmed by Nighthaunt hosts, but are forced to watch helplessly as much of the land around is swamped by the energies of undeath.[1e]
* **The Lord Nihilat** - Lord Andrus Nihilat of the Hammers of Sigmar, reforged thirteen times over the course slaughters a large part of the Skullfiend Tribe just as they are set to overwhelm a pilgrimage to Hammerhal. He leads the rescued pilgrims across the Reaver Wastes in a punishing, ceaseless march. Refusing to modify his Stormhost’s pace, he ignores the refugees’ entreaties to slow. Only a third of the rescued pilgrimage reaches Hammerhal, the rest having died from exposure, hunger or the attacks of jackal-like scavengers that harried their column from behind.[1e][1f]
* **The Purge of Vindicarum** - In the caldera-city of Vindicarum, events come to a head when the Celestial Vindicators execute several citizens on the spot as punishment for thievery – for to them, acts of crime and rebellion are but the first step on the road to open Chaos worship. This summary judgement sends ripples through the city, and soon civic unrest turns to rioting and disorder. The sparks of conflict turn to an inferno as the Celestial Vindicators answer with limitless force, bringing a terrible retribution that sees three quarters of the city slain in a single night. The survivors seek solace and safety by joining the ranks of the Devoted, with more than a few driven mad by their experiences. Word of the purge spreads through the free cities, causing many to question the true relationship between the Stormcast Eternals and those they are said to protect.[1f]
* **Desperate measures** - Several of the most beleaguered Sacrosanct Chambers, knowing the hour of their duty is upon them, resort to increasingly devastating sorceries to hold back the armies of Nagash and the daemon hosts that spill from Chaos territories. They unleash magical maelstroms and searing tornadoes that have a life of their own, tapping into the endless magic unleashed by the Shyish necroquake. Some of these sorceries escape the control of their casters, ravaging the lands around and even taking a toll on those who stray from the nearby townships. It becomes common practice for city elders and aldermen to employ spell-hunters whose duty it is to locate and dispel these rogue manifestations – but they rarely return from such missions.[1f]
* **The Spire of the Lost** - A new tower is raised near the Bell of Lamentation in Sigmaron. Known as the Spire of the Lost, this cork-screwing obelisk is engraved with the full names of all those Stormcast Eternals that have met their final death in service to the God-King. At the top are Jactos Goldenmane, slain by the axe of Khorgos Khul, and Thostos Bladestorm, devoured by Dorghar, Archaon’s daemonic steed. Hundreds of other names have been engraved beneath them.[1f]
* **The Resurrection Crusade** - In the campaign known as the Resurrection Crusade, Sigmar charges his Lord-Arcanums with the task of reclaiming the Shyishan territories lost to the necroquake. The Sacrosanct Chambers of fifty-five Stormhosts are despatched to the Shyish Innerlands, each hoping to find a way to hurl back the tide of undeath. Furthermore, they seek to fulfil their secret agenda: to find a way to reverse the reforging flaw that assails their kindred.[1f]
* **The legacy of glory** - Statues to Vandus Hammerhand, Ionus Cryptborn and Jactos Goldenmane are raised across the land now known as the Brimstone Beachhead. The Stormcast Eternals consolidate their grip on the southern territories of the Great Parch. As the wars against Chaos proceed, some tribes see the Stormcast Eternals as abominations, for they do not truly die and turn to ash as all things must, but come back again. Others see them as saviours, and do everything they can to fight alongside them. Few indeed realise that the Stormcasts pay a hidden cost with each death and rebirth.[0d]
* **Hope from the ashes** - New cities thrive in those lands reclaimed by Order. Art, philosophy and fashion begin to develop once more, not just in Aspiria and Bataar but in Hammerhal Aqsha and Callidium also. The oranges, yellows and reds long favoured by the Great Parch tribes are still much in evidence, though the richest and most privileged dress in the whites, blues and silvers of Azyr in the hope of being thought as civilised and celestial rather than fiery and volatile. But whatever pretensions the city-dwellers might adopt, they find that Aqshian emotion still simmers beneath, their lives burning as bright and short as ever before.[0d]
* **The looming orb** - Just as civilisation is re-establishing itself, a terrible sight grows large in the skies – it is Orb Infernia, power-base of the once-banished Khorgos Khul and his daemon legions. Blood rains across the lands as the forces of Khorne muster for a massive counter-offensive. Khorne does not really want the Great Parch utterly and completely for himself, but rather the war for it to continue indefinitely. In many ways Khul sees the coming of Sigmar’s new civilisation and order as a boon – it gives his legions something to attack, and more blood to spill.[0d]
* **The redeemed** - As the Celestant-Prime continues to lead Sigmar’s crusade, he encounters more and more souls he believes can be turned from Chaos with the power of Ghal Maraz. Tornus the Redeemed is joined by more of his kind, each one soul struck by Sigmar’s hammer and sent to Azyr to be remade as a worthy warrior.Those who have been granted this salvation receive few accolades, however, for their brothers look askance at them no matter how many times they prove themselves. Recognising the problem, Tornus rallies a small army of the Redeemed from a number of Stormhosts and leads them in a series of raids upon Nagash’s holdings. Lord-Castellant Grymn formally petitions for the brotherhood to be disbanded, concerned that they may turn one another rogue as their old ways rise to the surface. He is overruled by the judgement of the Celestant-Prime himself.[0d]
* **The God-King's brand** - Though warded against the predations of Chaos, Azyr is not so protected from the malevolent hauntings that now plague the realms. In the city of Azyrheim, it is ruled a crime to shirk from the fight against the rising undead. Acts of cowardice and treachery are severely punished, and such wayward individuals are rounded up by the Lord-Veritants of the Stormhosts and the Order of Azyr to be judged. Their flesh is given the God-King’s Brand, a symbol so redolent with sacred celestial energies that it drives out any evil thought and ensures they remain loyal to Sigmar’s throne. With its citizenry rendered utterly devoted, Azyrheim becomes stable once more.[1f]
* **The Grimhailer** - During the Nighthaunt attacks, none are more active than Reikenor. Time after time, the Grimhailer uses the shock of his spectral assaults to crush his enemies utterly, claiming many souls for Nagash.[2b]

## Sources

* 0 Age of Sigmar: Core Book (Second Edition).

	+ 0a pg. 86
	+ 0b pg. 87
	+ 0c pg. 88
	+ 0d pg. 89
	+ 0e pg. 92
	+ 0f pg. 93
	+ 0g pg. 94
	+ 0h pg. 95
	+ 0i pg. 98
	+ 0j pg. 99
	+ 0k pg. 100
	+ 0l pg. 101
	+ 0m pg. 104
	+ 0n pg. 105
	+ 0o pg. 106
	+ 0p pg. 107
* 1 Order Battletome: Stormcast Eternals (2018).

	+ 1a pg. 20
	+ 1b pg. 21
	+ 1c pg. 22
	+ 1d pg. 23
	+ 1e pg. 24
	+ 1f pg. 25
* 2 Death Battletome: Nighthaunt.

	+ 2a pg. 18
	+ 2b pg. 19
* 3 Order Battletome: Idoneth Deepkin.

	+ 3a pg. 20
	+ 3b pg. 21
	+ 3c pg. 22
	+ 3d pg. 23
* 4 Order Battletome: Daughters of Khaine.

	+ 4a pg. 12
	+ 4b pg. 13