So, you’ve found yourself interested in playing Age of Sigmar, or just the grand and ever-expanding story of the mortal realms? With a wealth of information covered via various media: Battletomes, Black Library, Audiobooks, and the rulebooks themselves it could feel a little overwhelming to find yourselves in a totally new world without a clue of how we got to the stage we are at now.
In this series of articles, I will attempt to give a brief history of how the mortal realms came into being, the key players of the realms, catching up with the stories of various races and going into the stories of the very realms themselves.
So, without further ado, let’s start!
The world-that-was and The End Times.
Where would we be without the world-that-was? The End times were the canonical end of the Warhammer Fantasy game system.
This universe had a very rich, detailed history and may be covered in future articles.
To sum it up, the world ended. Why? Ultimately, the gods of chaos claimed victory and a cataclysmic apocalypse destroyed the world-that-was with the exception of its core, taking the lives of almost every inhabitant that remained by the end.
Some souls, bodies, essences, and spirits did manage to avoid destruction along with the old world, but these are few in number, there however is one key figure who survived this, and helped to form the very realms today.
Sigmar Heldenhammer
Sigmar Heldenhammer was a man who had ascended to become a god in the world-that-was and was the lead religious figure of the human empire. When the world was torn apart, via pure grit and willpower he managed to cling on to the metallic core of the world-that-was as it hurtled through the voids, in time he would arrive in the first known of the new realms- Azyr.
It was when the core flew into the realm of the heavens that it would be discovered by a being that called it home.
Dracothian
Dracothian is one of many godbeasts; these are creatures who contain such power that they can almost rival the true gods of the mortal realms. Seeing a glinting object hurtling through the Aether of the realms, he became enthralled by it. To make it his, he plucked it from its course and placed it in the heavens to observe what had captivated him so. He named his find “Mallus” and whilst gleaning over his prize it was then he saw the bettered form of the god Sigmar attached to it, feeling a faint connection to the being, he restored Sigmar to life.
Now able to speak with Dracothian, Sigmar in appreciation of his saviour, took a piece of the world that was and fashioned it into jewelry so Dracothian could appreciate its calming glow for all time. Sigmar then learned of where he had come to be, The 8 Mortal Realms. The pair would go on to become friends and Dracothian would show him the secrets of the worlds, and the passages to travel between them.
This event heralds the first age of the mortal realms, the Age of Myth which we will start to explore in the next article.
