Warhammer: Age of Sigmar

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar is a Wargame created by Games Workshop.

The game's setting is set after the events of Warhammer: The End Times, after the Forces of Chaos succeeded in destroying the Old World of Warhammer. Sigmar, last seen wrestling with the Lord of the End Times Archaon over his Warhammer Ghal Maraz, survived and joined the remaining Incarnates of the Winds of Magic and Gods in creating civilizations in the Mortal Realms, a reality free from the taint of Chaos that formed after the destruction of the World That Was. This reality is made up of eight realms, each representing the Winds of Magic. Sigmar lorded over all the realms from his own, the Realm of Azyr (Heavens), and all was peaceful... for a time. This was the Age of Myth.

The Forces of Chaos then invaded these realms while Sigmar's Pantheon of Order fell apart from the inside, forcing Sigmar to seal off his own realm and leaving the rest and its inhabitants to fend off the Chaos tide by themselves. This was the Age of Chaos.

As the Forces of Chaos ravaged the nine realms, Sigmar created the Stormcast Eternals, powerful warriors forged from magic, as his means of retaking the realms from the Chaos Forces, coming along with them is the Grand Alliance of Order: the armies of Aelves, Duardin, Man, Seraphon and Sylvaneth. This is the Age of Sigmar.

For the tie-in roleplaying game, see Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound.

This game provides examples of the following:

• 13 Is Unlucky: The holy number of the Great Horned Rat is 13, so anyone looking into Skaven lore and rules is bound to find this a lot. They're ruled by a body called the Council of Thirteen, although there are twelve Skaven on it (the empty chair is for the Great Horned Rat). They also have exactly 13 spells (guess which one is the strongest and most terrifying?). There are 13 Great Plagues, Verminlords have 13 Health, a lot of their spells and abilities have a range of 13". Even their bells chime 13 times. They even used to have a rule that if you rolled a 13 for the Screaming Bell, you immediately won the game (of course, you only rolled 2d6 with no modifiers, so it wasn't physically possible to roll a 13, but it's the thought that counts).
• A Commander Is You:
  • Beasts of Chaos: Spammer/Guerilla. The epitome of Guerilla in the game, Beasts of Chaos have historically capable of such feats as setting up their entire army in reserves in order to ambush the opponent, using a mixture of units to counter their foes and bring down civilisation.
  • Blades of Khorne: Elitist/Beserker. Khorne cares not from where the blood flows, and this army understands that, getting access to buffs any time any unit on the board is slain, leading to clever commanders bringing units with the explicit intention of killing them themselves. While they hate magic and ranged combat, they make liberal use of priests to achieve similar results.
  • Bonesplitterz: Spammer/Brute. These naked orruks charge across the battlefield with reckless abandon, relying on sheer number of attacks and certain gimmicks to bury the opponent under their enthusiastic advance.
  • Cities of Sigmar: Balanced/Generalist. Bringing together humans, aelves, and duardin, Cities can lean into basically any playstyle, all while using specialised buffs to get more out of their otherwise somewhat-mediocre units.
  • Daughters of Khaine: Spammer/Brute/Berserker. If you're worshipping the god/dess of murder, you're not going to sit back comfortably. The Daughters are generally fragile, but are fast and hit hard, their attacks only growing more powerful as the game goes on, even before heroes apply other buffs.
  • Disciples of Tzeentch: Balanced/Turtle. The followers of the Changer of Ways want to hide their casters behind waves of infantry, focusing on blasting the opponent with magic while their screens slowly die.
  • Flesh-eater Courts: Balanced/Technical/Gimmick. Noble warriors out to protect the lands, the Flesh-eater courts can bring hordes of ghouls, squads of powerful knights, and undead monsters to prepare the enemy for a feast under a vast number of low-quality attacks. While the army is fast, it relies on its heroes being in melee to generate points for recursion and buffs, relying on careful decision-making given the general fragility of their units.
  • Fyreslayers: Elitist/Unit Specialist (Melee Infantry). If you like half-naked dwarves with axes, this is the army for you. Using runes to grant your forces different buffs, these warrior monks can be absolute blenders in combat, though their short legs make it more difficult for them to get there.
  • Gloomspite Gitz: Balanced/Generalist. Chasing Da Bad Moon bound these grots, who can specialize in either Elite (Troggoths), Spammer (Moonclan), Gimmick (Spiderfang), and Ranger (Squigs), or can create a mix. They've got access to potent wizards, and get buffa if they are in an area lit by Da Bad Moon.
  • Hedonites of Slaanesh: Spammer/Ranger/Technical. The Hedonites are fragile units that hit surprisingly hard, and can buff themselves up even further by tempting their opponents army. They typically like bringing blissbarbs for ranged to soften up or kill enemy units before engaging in melee, while using the armies high speed to cover ground and complete objectives.
  • Idoneth Deepkin: Balanced/Generalist/Gimmick. These soul-stealing aelves can bring soulless thralls that hit surprisingly hard, flying fish cavalry, decent ranged, mighty heroes, and decent magic, all while relying on an evershifting tide that gives them different buffs in different rounds, forcing you to play to a strict tempo.
  • Kharadron Overlords: Balanced/Ranger/Gimmick. The Kharadron are the most shooting-heavy army in the game, blasting the opponent with guns and cannons every chance they get, all while using their flying ships to move troops rapidly around the battlefield. If their manoeuvrability is limited or their ships destroyed, they become very slow and can be overrun by a force that can finally keep up with them.
  • Lumineth Relamlords: Balanced/Generalist/Technical. The Lumineth aim to be the best in all areas, and they bring that to the tabletop, being able to bring infantry, ranged, monsters, cavalry, and some of the strongest magic in the game. However, they rely on spells and buffs to be effective, so if they aren't played carefully they can fold like paper.
  • Maggotkin of Nurgle: Elite/ Turtle. Grandfather's blessings manifest themselves in an incredibly durable army, ignoring 1/3 of all incoming damage, all while infecting the opponent with diseases that slowly kill their troops. Their biggest weakness is generally being very slow.
  • Nighthaunt: Spammer/Gimmick. Channelling the ultimate spooky power, the Nighthaunt can be a nightmare for the foe, with every unit having fly, being incredibly fast (8" movement is the average) and an army-wide ability to ignore rend, making higher-quality attacks less useful against them than sheer numbers. As a Death army, they can also resurrect lost models if the unit survives. Their biggest weaknesses are an inability to benefit from cover and typically not having a lot of health, so if attacks can get through they tend to drop quickly.
  • Ogor Mawtribes: Elitist/Brute. These big boys are bringing all the health, with even their basic infantry troops having four health per model and hitting like a Gargant. They want to use buffs to ensure they can charge their enemies, dealing extra damage, while the Beastclaw can bring priests and monsters to further empower the army.
  • Orruk Warclans: Elitist/Brute (Ironjawz) or Guerilla (Kruleboyz). Split into two factions, this army fights either following the doctrines of Gork (Brutal but Kunnin') or the sneaky tricks of Mork (Kunnin' but Brutal). They have different weaknesses, but since you can't play them together they can't cover each other.
  • Ossiarch Bonereapers: Elitist/Brute/Technical. Slow-moving and as inevitable as death itself, the Bonereapers focus on expensive units that can be healed and resurrected by other units, as well as heroes buffing up the soldiers. Their only ranged capability is a catapult, so added with their slow movement they can struggle to deal with faster opponents.
  • Seraphon: Balanced/Brute (Saurus) or Technical (Skink). You've picked this army because you want to play lizardmen riding dinosaurs, and they bring a lot of that. Seraphon have access to basically every type of unit and style you could want to play. Whether you want magic, ranged, melee, debuffs, cavalry, speed, monsters, they've got you covered. Their biggest weakness is that they tend to want to specialize into one of two categories: Brute (Saurus) and Technical (Skink), with mixes struggling due to lack of synergy.
  • Slaves to Darkness: Elitist/Brute/Unit Specialist (Melee Infantry). Mostly slow-moving but very durable and hitting like a train, Slaves to Darkness are an army that wants to kill the apposing heroes and monsters to make their units even stronger. They've got access to a surprising number of screens and fast objective grabbers, nearly leading them to be Balanced, but ultimately they lean heavily intosmall but powerful troops to get the job done.
  • Sons of Behemat: Elitist/Brute/Unit Specialist (Monster). Sons of Behemat are a purely-monster army, where a typical 2,000 point force might have 6 models on the board, split between massive Mega-Gargants and merely large Gargants. Mega-Gargants come in a variety of flavours, each bringing different abilities to the table in addition to having massive amounts of health and devastating melee with a hint of ranged capabilities. Your biggest weakness with this army is having fewer units to respond to your opponent with.
  • Soulblight Gravelords: Balanced/Gimmick. The successors to the Vampire Counts can bring a surprising variety of undead with them, be it waves of zombies, giant undead dragons, powerful vampire knights, and a range in-between. The army is generally constantly healing, with undead minions resurrected while vampires drink blood to recover from damage dealt, though the army is typically very slow.
  • Stormcast Eternals: Elitist/Balanced. The poster-boys-and-girls of the game, the Stormcast Eternals can fit any playstyle except spammer, with their baseline units costing 100 points for 5. With quality saves and decent health combined with consistent attacks and quality damage, as well as priests, magic, and cavalry, the chosen of Sigmar are a force to be reckoned with, though they have little defence against Mortal damage.
  • Sylvaneth: Balanced/Elitist/Guerilla. Movement shenanigans, the army. Sylvaneth love to teleport between their Wyldwoods, moving hordes of dryads or the more common, more powerful units like Kurnoths. They have access to lots of buffs and healing, though if they get stuck in combat they will struggle to keep up with other armies.
• Adventure-Friendly World: Its a Warhammer world, which typically means that it has to be so dangerous and treacherous because every faction needs to be able, in canon, to fight every faction, including itself.
• An Adventurer Is You: The heroes in Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower qualify:
  • Knight-Questor: Tank — A dedicated brick wall who can pull enemies closer and keep them there indefinitely.
  • Knight-Venator: Archer/Blademaster — Fast, agile and equipped with heavy armor. He can shoot even in melee and his arrows are accurate and powerful.
  • Lord-Castellant: Jack — Can do everything from fighting in melee, dealing some ranged damage, stunning and healing. There are lots of heroes who can do each of these individual tasks better, but few who can turn their hand to so many.
  • Excelsior Warpriest: Healer/Beastmaster — He is capable of healing and smashing heads alike, and is also accompanied by a Gryph-hound companion.
  • Mistweaver Saih: Debuffer/Nuker — Focuses on throwing magic missiles, stunning and annoying the hell out of enemies.
  • Sorceress: Nuker — All about blasting enemies to smithereens with magic missiles, which can be further fuelled if necessary by sacrificing wounds.
  • Tenebrael Shard: Scrapper — An assasin that can jump from shadow to shadow and has supernatural skills for assasination.
  • Fyreslayer Doomseeker: Blademaster — He wants to get stuck in and gets better if enemies are hitting him and when he's killing stuff.
  • Auric Runemaster: Buffer/Nuker — A support hero with mediocre weapons but useful defense buffs and splash damage attacks.
  • Slaughterpriest: Scrapper/Healer — A beatstick who can heal himself and his friends by chopping up enemies and who can make enemies' blood boil.
  • Bloodstoker: Buffer — He is able to whip allies to fury but otherwise has very mediocre attacks.
  • Lord of Plagues: Regenerator/Blademaster — A meatshield who can keep himself in the fight for a long time and his attacks have some nasty side effects.
  • Tzeentch Sorcerer Lord: Nuker/Mezzer — He has a powerful missile weapon that can cause splash damage and since he also serves Tzeentch he can control enemies to an extent.
  • Great Bray-Shaman: Debuffer/Buffer/Mezzer — Capable of buffing allies, as well as stunning and controlling enemies to some degree but has very weak damage by himself.
  • Necromancer: The Minion Master — His main gimmick is to overwhelm enemies with hordes of weak skeletons.
• Age of Titles: The timeline for the game is split into various ages, beginning with the Age of Myth. The title for the game itself comes from the part of the timeline that the game takes place in, the Age of Sigmar, where the God-King Sigmar, his followers and allies begin their quest to free the Mortal Realms from Chaos. Then there's the Era of the Beast and the Hour of Ruin (Age of Sigmar really likes these kind of titles).
• The Alliance: One the reasons for the End of Times happening was the failure of the races of the world-that-was to bring this. Now, Sigmar leads the "Grand Alliance of Order", formed by the civilised races of the Realms, consisting of Aelves, Duardin, Man, Sylvaneth, and Seraphon; and their gods, consisting of Sigmar, Alarielle, Gurungi, Malerion, Teclis and Tyrion. Gorkamorka and Nagash were members briefly, but that didn't work out.
• All Trolls Are Different: Given teir innate ability to heal from damage, its no surprise that different varieties of troll, now known as troggoth, managed to survive to the Mortal Realms. The most common types you'll typically meet are:
  • Rockgut Troggoths, whose stone-like hide can protect against most forms of attack, mundane or magical. Though they typically eat the heartstone of the Realms, they're willing to supplement their diet with something more squishy. Rockguts also have the ability to magically manipulate the earth around them, allowing them to gouge tunnels or easily scoop up a boulder to chuck at a particularly annoying enemy.
  • Fellwater Troggoths, who inhabit swamps and fens. Fellwaters are famous for two key traits: Their body odour, which is considered offensively bad even by other members of Destruction, and even has a mechanical effect in-game; and their ability to projectile-vomit incredibly corrosive acid, which rapidly eats through metal, stone, and flesh.
  • Dankhold Troggoths, towering creatures who feed on Realmstone and embed their flesh with loonstone, making them terrifyingly resistant to magic. Fortunately, most of them just want to sleep in a dark, dank hole, but woe betide anyone who wakes one from their nap.
• Always Accurate Attack: The Arcane Bolt spell, the basic offensive magic spell available to most Wizards, can magically seek out its target and thus automatically hit, dealing mortal wounds.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Skaven, the Daemons of Chaos, Beastmen, and Goblins. All of them seek to dominate or destroy the other races (and each other) and reject such notions as mercy or compassion. Notably subverted by the Orruks, Ogors, Gargants, and Undead.
  • While most Orruks in the setting are amongst the most violent factions in the setting, they can occasionally be found living somewhat-peacefully in the Cities of Sigmar. This is common enough that a city's drunk tank having an orruk in it working off a hangover isn't considered a particularly unusual sight.
  • Ogors might be constantly hungry and worship Gorkamorka as The Great Maw, but they're also quite willing to work for other factions as mercenaries, if the pay is good. This has reached such an extent that, like Orruks, there are multiple generations of Ogors who have lived in cities amongst the other races. There's even a Cities of Sigmar unit that incorporates an Ogor working with them.
  • Gargants are mostly dumb brutes, but some have worked out how to be mercenaries (considered by them to be the biggest breakthrough in history), with some even preferring to work alongside the forces of Order (Kraken-Eaters are famous for working with humans, though this may be due to magical influence increasing their intelligence).
  • The Flesh-Eater Courts are an entire faction of deranged cannibals and insane vampires, but their sheer insanity and desire to be good means that they occasionally actually are good. There have been numerous instances of ghouls marching to the aid of cities against the other forces of Death, and leaving without even taking a bite of the local populace. It helps that the Courts are quite literally unaware of the monstrosity of their actions, so most of the damage they inflict is misguided at worst.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: In an effort to try and keep armies balanced, most editions so far have had minimum and maximum limitations placed on armies.
  • In 2nd and 3rd edition, armies had Battleline units, which were considered the core backbone of the army, and every army had a minimum number of Battleline units that had to be included for the army to be legal. Notably, there was no upper cap to the number of Battleline units you could bring.
  • In 3rd edition Matched Play (which was more balanced than Narrative and Open Play) there were strict limits on how many Monsters, War Machines, Endless Spells, Reinforced Units, and Heroes you could bring in an army. It was possible to get around some of these limitations, but it required using specific rules to make them count as Battleline units instead (see above).
  • In 4th edition they changed army building entirely, and had armies built out of multiple "Regiments", each containing a hero and their retinue. However, a Regiment can only contain a hero and up to 3 other units (4 if the hero is your general), so even if you're a literal god, you can't bring any more units in your regiment than a random human hero.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: When it comes to the insectoid people known as the Silent People, the scholars of Azyr will be happy to inform you that they have long gone extinct. Annoyingly for the scholars, eye-witnesses keep popping up, claiming that the Silent people are still around and currently migrating, but that is of course ridiculous.
• The Armies of Heaven: Arguably, the Stormcast Eternals. Not only are they supernatural beings literally from the Realm of the Heavens (Azyr), not only do some of them have angelic wings (Prosecutors), but they are also direct counterparts to The Legions of Hell, being a combination of supernaturally empowered mortals (the Slaves to Darkness) and immortals that return to their home realm on 'death' (daemons).
• Ascended Demon: Tornus the Redeemed, as well as any other redeemed Stormcast Eternal, was once a champion of the Chaos Gods, sworn body and soul to the Dark Gods. Then he had a battle with the Celestant Prime, who proceeded to cleanse them of Chaos corruption and allowing them to become Stormcast Eternals to fight against the Ruinous Powers they once served.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence:
  • Though he is already a God, the Horned Rat has ascended to an even higher plane of existence after the capture of Slaanesh. With the Dark Prince absent, the Horned Rat filled out the space left out in its place and became the new fourth God of Chaos (even calling himself "The Great Horned Rat"). The remaining three are not pleased by this, and see the Horned Rat as nothing but a verminous upstart.
  • During the events of Broken Realms, Morathi broke into Slaanesh's stomach to devour the souls of ancient elven kings, which combined with draining the Heart of Khaine allowed her to fully ascend to godhood, though the soul of Aenarion managed to split her into two forms in the process, Morathi-Khaine and the Shadow Queen.
  • The Lizardmen/Seraphon have gone through a species-wide ascension, going from being a particularly magically adept mortal (well, biologically immortal but can still die in battle) race to Daemons of Order. Although the new codex added a second sub-faction of Seraphon that have become a mortal race once again.
  • Various Chaos Champions of the World That Was have ascended to Daemon Princedom when said world fell and new ones that were born in the Mortal Realms can still ascend.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: A surprising number of factions subscribe to this method of thinking. The Ironjawz, naturally, since they embody Gork's "Brutal but Kunnin'", but also the Slaves to Darkness, the Blades of Khorne, the Sons of Behemat, and the Ogor Mawtribes all put stock in the strongest leading. This line of thinking even pops up amongst the Order factions, with the Idoneth Deepkin having a meritocracy which requires the best military leaders to also be capable of fending off any threats to their power (marking Volturnos as particularly impressive, as being High King of the Deep naturally means he had to be able to beat all challengers).
• Ax-Crazy: Where to begin? Even on a factional level, you've got Orruks, Gitz, Khornates, Daughters of Khaine, Fyreslayers, Skaven (in the right circumstances), Nighthaunt, and the Flesh-Eater Courts. If there's one thing the Mortal Realms are not lacking, it's people who want to violently kill you, and very much enjoy doing it.
• Axis Mundi: The centre of Shyish, Realm of the Dead, is marked by the Shyish Nadir, a gargantuan vortex potentially hundreds of miles across made of pure Death magic. Somewhat of a subversion, in that the Nadir isn't supporting Shyish, but consuming it, though its existence has also called into question several things that were thought true of the Realm, like its disk-like nature and Nagash's claim to rule all of it.
• Badass Army: There's over 20 factions in Age of Sigmar, and they're all some flavour of epic badass. That said, there's probably a few notable examples:
  • Stormcast Eternals are 8-foot-tall demigods empowered by Sigmar. Every single one of them is far stronger than a mortal human, never ages, resurrects on death, barely tires, has trained for decades if not longer, and wear arrmour forged from metal carved from the heart of a dead world. They only grow more badass from there.
  • The Blades of Khorne are warriors dedicated to the Blood God. Each is a violently powerful bezerker, whose hatred of sorcery can be potent enough to turn off spells, and they simply will not stop until blood is spilled and skulls are collected.
  • The Slaves to Darkness are essentially what the Stormcast are mimicking, though they get their power from the Chaos Gods themselves. Their armour is thick, their weapons sharp. The average Chaos Warrior is roughly the size of a Chaos Space Marine from 40k, and those guys started as genetically engineered super soldiers. Chaos warriors, meanwhile, are badass enough to reach that level of power on their own terms.
  • The Ironjawz are massive orruks who follow Gork's way of Brutal but Kunnin'. To get an idea of how tough they are, the lowest rung on their social ladder are the Ardboyz, who are as big as the Black Orcs from Fantasy (themselves the strongest and most dangerous orcs in that setting), because the Ardboyz aren't strong enough yet to forge their own armour by punching the thick, cold pig-iron into shape with their bare hands. Which, of course, means that every other member of the Ironjawz is strong enough to do that.
• Badass Normal:
  • The humans of the Cities of Sigmar are this. Whether its hordes of shambling undead, swarms of grots, towering gargants, armies of sorcerers, or even gods, they will hold the line with nothing more than cheap metal armour, fire from their gonnes (basically hand-cannon precursors to proper guns), and faith.
  • The Order of Azyr (basically Sigmar's CIA) can also fit this, notable examples being the famed Callis and Toll. Make no mistake, these two are totally unenhanced humans, who nevertheless use their expertise, skill, and preparation to take on threats that by rights should slaughter them. Toll is so used to dealing with supernatural threats that hanging from a chandelier above a teeming swarm of thousands of gnashing rats doesn't even elicit a change of tone.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: Servants of Chaos can wield a huge variety of truly horrific abilities, which is quite fitting given that said power comes from what is effectively hell. Interestingly subverted with necromancers, who while many are aligned with Nagash, the use of necromancy isn't considered an automatic sign of being evil.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Many characters who have supposedly died during the End Times have returned, alive and well. This includes Nagash, Tyrion, Drycha and Neferata to name a few.
  • The Stormcast Eternals as a whole, considering that, in order to be forged (and later be re-forged) their bodies are destroyed by Sigmar. The prime example is Balthas Aurum, Balthasar Gelt reborn as a Lord-Arcanum. He is still is a master of the Wind of Chamon.
• Barbarian Longhair: The Darkoath are really channeling their Conan inspirations, and that naturally includes long luscious locks. Another notable example of the trope would be amongst the Sylvaneth, who technically meet both the literal requirements and are tough as old wood to boot.
• Barbarian Tribe:
  • Nothing really changed for the Warriors of Chaos in the regard. The question remains, however whether these tribes are the Norse, Kurgan and Hung of the original setting. As a whole however, they are still Viking-esque tribesmen in service to Chaos, even if there technically isn't a Norsca anymore.
  • Most of the Stormcast Eternals are the resurrected spirits of fallen barbarian tribesmen slain by the Warriors of Chaos.
  • The Darkoath is a broad term used to describe the multitudes of tribes that worship the Chaos Gods, though they generally don't understand them or even know their proper names. The people of these tribes swear oaths in blood on specially prepared oathstones they carry, and if they are successful in completing the oath they are often rewarded by the Chaos Gods, though these gifts are fleeting, and failure is duly punished.
• Barrier Warrior: Every single Wizard in the Realms (except Stormcast Evocators) is capable of protecting allies with the universal Mystic Shield spell, at least until 4th edition removed it.
• Bat Out of Hell: Both the Flesh-Eater Courts and the Soulblight Gravelords make use of these, from Fell Bats the size of a person to Terrogheists the size of a dragon, not to mention the bat-like vargheists and the flightless nightshriekers used as mounts by the ghouls.
• Battlefield Flagbearer:
  • A few units, marked with the Standard Bearer keyword in 4th Edition, have a number of standard bearers proportional to the size of that unit. As long as at least one standard bearer remains standing, the unit receives a +1 bonus to control score (in 4th Edition) or another bonus that varies from unit to unit (in the first three editions).
  • Some armies have one or more Heroes, marked with the Totem keyword in 1st to 3rd Editions^note the keyword was depreciated in 4th Edition, but the units were not; note that not all units with this keyword are actual standard bearers, that carry that army's unique battle flag(s) or equivalent into the battlefield. This banner can apply its bonuses to any nearby friendly model instead of to a single unit and/or can activate a powerful ability useable once per battle.
  • Certain armies also had access to enchanted banners in 3rd edition, like Slaves to Darkness (which had banners dedicated to each of the different Chaos Gods) and Flesh-eater Courts (though whether an enchanted piece of flayed skin counts as a banner is a matter for interpretation).
• Beast Man: The Beasts of Chaos are completely made of these, typically looking like some variant of a minotaur or centaur, but there are also the Ogroids, natives of Gur who turned to Chaos, and the Drogrukh, gargantuan centaur-like creatures that are mostly extinct (except for Kragnos and rumored other survivors).
• Beneficial Disease: The Maggotkin of Nurgle are positively overflowing with Grandfather's "gifts", i.e. horrific diseases. However, they're not only not weakened by these, but it actually has made many of them stronger and more resilient, deadening their sense of pain, while also still being lethal to those nearby, making fighting them a dangerous prospect for anyone who needs to get close.
• Better Off with the Bad Guys: Zig-zagged. While the forces of Order might call themselves good, there are a lot of people who have determined they're better off joining Chaos. For example, Azyrites have a tendency to discriminate against the Reclaimed, those whose people survived the Age of Chaos outside the safety of Azyr, and can easily come off as less "saviours" and more "colonialists", viewing the Realms as theirs by right, regardless of the people currently living there. Chaos might be corruptive and destructive, but you can at least elevate your position on your own merits, though it's still frequently shown to be a horrible fate for the majority who sign up for it.
• Beware the Silly Ones
  • The Greenskins and Skaven are even more dangerous than before while still filling a comic relief role.
  • Aleguzzler Gargants, who fight by getting drunk and going on destructive rampages through a battlefield.
  • Many Freeguild generals take to battle in crow's nests mounted on an Ogor's back.
  • Subverted in the Flesh-Eater Courts. They believe themselves to be paragons of all that is good in the world, and it can get kind of strange when you consider what they are actually doing. Thing is, no one but themselves think of them as such.
• Betrayal by Inaction: In the Age of Myth, this is how Nagash 'betrayed' Sigmar during the invasion of Chaos: Sigmar called on Nagash's forces for aid, but by this point in the war Nagash had decided he was better off going his own way and didn't send any help. Notably, Nagash was the last member of the Pantheon of Order to abandon Sigmar, ironically making the most Obviously Evil member the most loyal.
• BFG
  • Ogor Leadbelchers are so big and strong that rather than use a normal gun, they lug around cannons filled with whatever shrapnel they can find to maximize the carnage.
  • Skaven Weapons Teams and Warplock Jezzails lug around weapons as big as themselves, and generally require two skaven in order for it to work properly. Being Skaven, their guns typically fire anything from warpstone to warp lightning!
  • The Kharadron Overlords are all about gunfire, so it's unsurprising that these duardin can commonly be found with guns and hand-cannons almost as big as they are. Their suits, combined with their natural duardin stout strength, allow them to use these otherwise cumbersome weapons quite accurately.
• BFS: Even the one-handed swords would probably be at least bastard swords in reality, while greatswords are typically at a minimum as tall as the person wielding them. Special mention goes to Necropolis Stalkers, who not only tower over regular mortals, but the champion wields two greatswords each taller than themselves (it helps they've got four arms). Then there's the sword used by Great Unclean Ones, probably the biggest sword in the setting, given that it's the size of a gargant.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Evil is a competitive industry in the Mortal Realms, so there's a good few fighting for the position of Big Bad.
  • The Five Chaos Gods might each be competing for a spot, but they typically can't take direct action against the world, instead acting through their servants.
  • Their Greatest servant, Archaon, is definitely a top contender, and also stands in the unique position of having won the major edition war he was involved in, retaining control of the Eightpoints to continue his assault on the Mortal Realms. With most of Chaos under his command, it's hard to overstate the level of threat he is.
  • Then there's Nagash, who commands virtually all the dead, and actually came darn near to winning the setting, almost wiping out all life in one fell swoop. Even in failure, he unleashed millions of angry spirits on the setting and it took a god, a living mountain, and magical laser cannons just to defeat him temporarily.
  • Subverted with Kragnos, whose release heralded the beginning of the Era of the Beast in 3rd edition, but he turned out to have no really grand strategy and was eventually taken out of the running by the end of that edition.
• Big Damn Heroes: Dracothion discovering the dying Sigmar in the great emptiness after the World-That-Was was destroyed and breathing life into him.
  • Celestant Prime, arriving to fight the daemon Torglug, and protect Alarielle's Soulpod as it grew into the goddess' most warlike aspect.
• Blood Knight: The followers of Khorne are extremely happy that the Sigmar made the Stormcast Eternals. After several thousand years of slaughtering defenseless weaklings throughout the realms, they've finally got a worthy battle.
• Big Eater: Ogors and Gargants. Ogors are constantly hungry, to the point that they can and will it everything they can at every moment they can (not even rocks are safe, though considered not very tasty). They worship Gorkamorka as the Gulping God and the Sun Eater, and view a quest to eat everything in the Realms as a holy pilgramage. Gargants, meanwhile, like participating in games like "see how many humans you can fit in your mouth", and an easy way to manipulate a gargant is to offer them lots of food.
• Big Fish in a Bigger Ocean: So you're a human wizard who has been studying the ways of magic for decades, or even an aelf that's been learning for centuries, to the point you can unleash arcane devastation unlike any other mortal? Too bad you're in a setting where literal gods, Daemons of magic, and magic frogs exist and take to the battlefield on the regular.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Icefall Yhetees are furry humanoids that tend to follow the Beastclaw Raiders, and are held by the Ogors to be messengers of their god.
• Bishōnen Line: Chaos zigzags this trope. One the one hand, the most powerful servants of Chaos tend to still look humanoid, their new traits adding to their looks rather than completely detracting, while if you end up looking horrible you've probably been transformed into a Chaos Spawn (though interestingly this can also be viewed as earning too much of the gods' favour). On the other hand, some powerful champions aren't exactly traditionally good looking (looking at you, Glutos), their power undimmed by their looks and extra tentacles.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Not to the extent of Warhammer 40,000, but there's no faction that you can truly call "100% Good". Possibly the two closest would be the Cities of Sigmar and Stormcast Eternals, but even they have a healthy amount of grey in the mix. The Cities of Sigmar bring heavy colonialist themes to their efforts to reclaim the Realms (as well as some discrimination against those not from Azyr), and the Stormcast are here to win the war, not necessarily to save you, with some of them viewing losing your entire personality and becoming an emotionless living weapon to be the ideal Stormcast form.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Several factions operate on a strange system of rules, even by the standards of this setting.
  • The Sylvaneth have manufactured goods, such as tapestries, weapons and musical instruments but no economy. Though it is in their ability to make clothes they do not bother with them, except jewelry and magical artifacts such as circlets. They have varying attitudes on the "Quickbloods" (any non-Sylvaneth faction, including the immortal daemons and Seraphon as well as undead), but have a strong hatred of the Wanderer aelves due to the Wanderers abandoning the Sylvaneth during the Age of Chaos.
  • The forces of destruction care only about fighting, and are happy to fight whoever up to and including each other, but still maintain tribal identity and loyalty. They prize valor in battle but have no qualms about attacking non-combatants (beyond seeing them as a "waste of time" for "not providing good sport").
• Brain Uploading: The Katophrane rulers of Shadespire (the setting for the first Warhammer Underworlds season) discovered that the mysterious substance known as shadeglass could be used to capture the souls of the dead. Seeing the potential in this phenomenon, the Katophrane constructed a network of shadeglass mirrors throughout the city to store their living essences that they could continue to guide their city eternally rather than pass on to the afterlife. It was for this denial of his due that Nagash, God of the Dead, cursed the city, turning it into the nightmarish realm of madness and illusion that it is today.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: In the first version of the game, before the release of the General's Handbook, you can field whatever you own, as can your opponent, and there's no way to ensure a fair match. With a lack of a point-based army building system, spending as much money as possible on big models was encouraged. The only things that stop you from doing so are the Sudden Death rules, a sense of sportsmanship, and your opponent simply refusing to play. Naturally most players were not satisfied, so Games Workshop had to rectify it with the release of the General's Handbook, which reintroduced points to the game.
• Bus Crash: Many characters have suffered this. Two notable cases are Mortarchs Vlad von Carstein and Krell (a cruel irony since undead under Nagash are one of the groups much more likely to be able to make it to the new setting).
• Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff": Most units are the same generic fantasy races of previous editions, such as orcs, ogres, goblins, zombies, skeletons, elves, dwarfs and so on, just with different, and at times more easily trademarkable names.
• Cavalry Betrayal: Nagash and the undead turn on Sigmar's forces and attack them during the Age of Chaos. However Nagash does it for himself, not for an alliance with Chaos, though some in-universe believe otherwise. Surprisingly however, Nagash was the last of Sigmar's allies to either abandon or turn on him.
• City on the Water: The city of Miståvn in Ulgu is a combination of this and Mobile City, being built of hundreds of ships lashed together off the coast of Cape Tenebrax in the Penumbral Sea. One of the cities defense measures is to simply untie the ships and sail in different directions.
• Continuity Drift:
  • When the game was first released, lore explicitly had Sigmar recruit his Stormcast Eternals by pulling the great heroes of the Realms away from their people just when they were needed most, leaving those they protected to their fates. This has since been expanded so that there are multiple ways that a soul could be recruited including being chosen after the moment of the hero's death or, in the case of the members of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, recruited from those who rest within tombs of ancient civilisations.
  • Much of the initial background material implied that civilisation outside of the Realm of Azyr was all but extinct only for later sourcebooks introducing numerous pockets of civilisation with distinct cultures surviving all across the Realms.
• Cool vs. Awesome: Crops up several times. For example, when Archaon invades Shyish and challenges Nagash; it's heavy-metal vikings and daemons vs undead of all descriptions.
• Corpse Land: It's a Warhammer setting, there's a lot of battlefields where no-one has come to clean up the aftermath. Vast areas of rotted corpses are so common that this has become one of the primary ways in which people accidentally wander into the lair of the Flesh-Eater Courts: one area of piled-up corpses is no more suspicious than another, until the ghouls started coming after you for trespassing.
• Cosmic Keystone: Each Incarnate is this for their respective realm, as evidenced by the followers of Nurgle trying to claim Alarielle's essence as the key to Ghyran's corruption.
• City of Wizards: Ahramentia was a floating city of wizards that existed in Aqshy, the Realm of Fire, and on one occasion destroyed an invading Khornate horde with a magical doomsday weapon. The reason this is written in the past tense is because Khorne took exception to this feat and punched the city out of the sky.
• City Planet: Azyrheim a city so large that even a lifetime is not enough to go from one end to another. It has entire mountains created from the combined rooftops of low-level slums to high-level mansions and in some places time flows faster and in some slower. It was explained by a Black Library writer.
• Death Is Cheap: For the undead inhabitants of Shyish, especially Nagash himself. Subverted with the Stormcast Eternals, whose constant and pretty much guaranteed ressurections slowly eat away their personalities.
• Death World: While all of the Mortal Realms have their dangers, Ghur is about as dangerous as it gets before you go the Realm of Chaos itself. Everything in Ghur is a predator: from the creatures that feast on each other, to the plants, all of which are carnivorous and many of whom have teeth, to the rivers, mountains, continents, and Realm itself. One of Ghur's moons is missing a large chunk, because it got too close to Ghur and the Realm took a bite out of it. Continental shift is not only far more rapid than in reality, it occurs because the continental plates are alive and eating each other. Naturally, the orruks love living there.
• Decomposite Character: This happened to many of the factions who made the transition from the World-that-was, in many cases leading to the extrapolation of one aspect of that faction becoming the general motif of its successors in the Mortal Realms:
  • The old Warhammer Fantasy Skaven Clans are now types of Clans; what was once the Clan Eshin is now tens of thousands or more of Clans like Eshin, and so on with Clans Skryre, Moulder and Pestilens.
  • The Ogre Kingdoms had two specific motifs that led to new factions here: their insatiable appetites became the general theme of the Gutbusters, while their cold mountain-lairs and use of ice-age beasts serve as the Beastclaw Raiders main aesthetic.
• Degraded Boss: While most of the heroes from the original Warhammer are long dead, their models were kept around and reimagined as generic hero units. For example, the Curseling hero for the Disciples of Tzeentch is based on the Vilitch the Curseling model. Since then, altough, most of those heroes were dropped off entirely from the game (with a few exceptions, including the aforemented Curseling hero - which even got a new model still based on Vilitch's design).
• Dem Bones: Deathrattle, natch. While many are raised by necromancers, others are, for lack of a better term, naturally occurring, with even cases of Wight Kings ruling over kingdoms of bones and forcing vampires to serve them.
• Divided We Fall: Multiple times in the backstory, the victory of one side or another has been possible through the other side deciding to betray one another: originally, the Allpoints, the nexus into the various Mortal Realms, was being held by Sigmar and his Alliance of Order. However, they were betrayed by Nagash, who screwed things up enough that Sigmar went to Nagash's Realm himself, smashed everything in it, and then abandoned the Mortal Realms and went to his realm of Azyr to create the Stormcast Legions so that he could fight on his own terms (leaving Nagash helpless against Chaos when they came). Almost as soon as Chaos conquered the Mortal Realms, the Chaos Gods also turned on one another, and were fighting each other when not slaughtering helpless mortals. Part of Sigmar's plan for the invasion is to re-kindle the alliances with the old forces of Order to get help.
• The Dragon: Archaon returns, given the title Grand High Marshall of Chaos by the Chaos Gods, and commands the entirety of the Forces of Chaos during the invasion of the nine realms. Nagash also returned his second-in-command Arkhan.
• Dramatic Irony: Early in the prequel novel Nagash: the Undying King one of the minor characters is taken up to join Sigmar's chosen (which nobody involved knows is a thing). Since this happens in the middle of a sorcerous duel and the resulting lightning devastates the Chaos force, both sides assume it's an attack by the other.
• The Dreaded: Due to a form of ancestral memory, Lizardmen are this for Skaven.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The Warscroll Compendiums, whose purpose was to allow players to play the game with their old armies before any Age of Sigmar army was introduced, featured 'joke rules', which involved doing things like raising a goblet and crying "for the Lady" or maintaining a dignified and stoic expression for a phase to gain some in-game benefit. They were quite quickly dropped, probably because the concept of something other than your tactical decisions and dice rolls affecting the game was pretty jarring.
  • The early battletomes (released before May 2016) were very barebones, consisting of only the warscrolls, warscroll battalions and fluff, when the game was much more casual than today (you could field whatever model you own, as could your opponent). In the middle of 2016, the gameplay received a drastic change in order to accommodate matched play: from the 1st Edition Sylvaneth battletome onwards, all of them have had rules for allegiance abilities, magical artefacts and spell lores, resembling army books from the old Warhammer.
  • Initially, the Grand Alliance books released as an updated compendium of all available units in early 2016 split apart many of the old Warhammer armies into a bunch of smaller factions, some of which had a very small quantity of units that made them borderline (and in some cases, completely) unplayable as standalone armies; those that did not get expanded into full armies in their own right were later fused together. For example, what once was the Vampire Counts army was separated into Deathmages (Necromancer and Mortis Engine), Deadwalkers (Zombie units), Deathrattle (Skeleton units), Soulblight (Vampire units), Flesh-eater Courts (Ghoul units) and Nighthaunt (Ghost units). After the Flesh-eater Courts and Nighthaunt received their own battletomes, in 2018 the remaining factions were rolled back into a single army, the Legions of Nagash (later renamed Soulblight Gravelords).
• Enemy Mine:
  • In an open play or narrative game you can put any model in the game into your force. You can field an army of duardin, daemons, undead and ogors. Stormcast Eternals and Savage Orcs, WAAAGH! it up against the Blood God and his army of Sylvaneth. Want to have an armada of Kharadron Overlords, Screamers and Dragons? Go for it. How about Gargants and their Beastmen herds? Maybe a plague army of Skaven Pestilens and Nurgle's minions with some Fanatics and Witch Aelfs to spread the rot? Go for it.
  • In Silver Tower, there's nothing that prevents you from including, in the same party, say, a champion of Nurgle and a Tzeentchian sorcerer, a Seraphon hero and a Skaven warlord, or an aelf and a Grot — people that otherwise fear or hate each other's guts.
• Everything Is Trying to Kill You: As previously mentioned, the Realm of Ghur. Everything is a carnivorous predator, from the beasts, to the plants, to the rivers, and the land itself. This has only gotten worse since the Rite of Life and release of Kragnos.
• Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: While a lot of the food of the Realms is unusual due to the magical nature that permeats the setting, special mention goes to the crops of Chamon: all the plants of Chamon have a metallic sheen to them, and grains like coppergrass and rustigo form much of the diet of the humanoid inhabitants.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Much like Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar mixes multiple traditional mythological and fantasy races, tropes and themes. Due to the wider scope of the setting, the game even expands on its predecessor's Kitchen Sink by adding the likes of Sky Pirates, planet sized monsters and an even greater focus on Norse Mythology for some factions.
• Fatal Flaw: Nagash's is Pride. Nagash decides to take on the forces of Chaos with only his own faction and without the help of any allies who don't give allegiance to him. He gets killed by Archaon, though since he controls the Afterlife he easily comes back.
• Festering Fungus: Skragrott's Fungal Asylum is made up of fungi grown from still-living mages and seers, so that their babbling prophecies can be use by him to predict da Bad Moon's trajectory. The mushrooms are also capable of moving, and will attempt to consume anyone who enters the Ayslum as well.
• Fisher King: It's implied that each realm's climate responds to the mood of the Incarnate ruling it. The realm of Azyr is mentioned to be storm-wracked whenever Sigmar gets mad, the seasons in the realm of Ghyran are outright stated to shift in response to Alarielle's moods and in the audiobooks Nagash himself states being able to control the realm of Shyish and makes it a desolate wasteland to deny resources to the invading forces of Chaos (it's unknown whether he's being truthful or telling himself that as consolation after his defeat).
• Flat World: The Mortal Realms mainly take the form of 8 vast discs floating in the Aethervoid, itself basically pure antimagic. Each realm is vast in size, though there is an end to them. Other subrealms exist, such as the Eightpoints or Blight City, and the general understanding of the Realms as discs has been challenged somewhat by the revelation that Shyish may have multiple discs under the one everyone has been fighting over.
• The Friend Nobody Likes:
  • Whilst the Chaos Gods hate each other, they hold the newly ascended Great Horned Rat with the most contempt. Even Archaon gives it nothing but scorn, and outright rejects a gift it offered him once he becomes Grand High Marshall of Chaos.
  • With the exception of her own faction, the Daughters of Khaine, nobody on the side of Order can be said to like, or even trust Morathi — with good reason. Unfortunately, she and the Daughters are just too useful to dispose of.
• From the Ashes: Warhammer Fantasy ends with the complete victory of evil (Chaos, orcs, vampires, and Skaven) over good, destroying the world for good measure. That's the starting point of Age of Sigmar.
• Fungus Humongous: The Sporehollows, located within the Flamescar Plateau of the Realm of Ashqy, are a series of caverns filled with forests of massive, multicoloured fungi that spew mind altering spores that the players can fight through using the rules from Season of War: Firestorm.
• Gaiden Game:
  • Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower and Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal were limited-release competitive-coop dungeon crawlers based on the original Warhammer spin-off version of Warhammer Quest.
  • Gorechosen was another limited-release game, a brutal gladiatorial brawler between Khornate champions.
  • Warhammer Underworlds and Warcry are small-scale skirmish games with different focuses, both receiving significant ongoing support.
  • Champions is a CCG contracted out to PlayFusion, with a Hearthstone-esque mobile app version that can scan physical cards to add them to your list.
  • Soulbound is a tabletop Roleplaying Game by Cubicle 7.
• Garden of Evil: The most iconic would be the Garden of Nurgle, the part of the Realm of Chaos home to, unsurprisingly, the Chaos God Nurgle. It's a vast expanse of rotting vegetation, squirming life, and countless diseases, all built around Grandfather Nurgle as he happily brews new toxins and contagions.
• Glowing Flora: The Glowy Morkeyez mushrooms, which grow in some dank underground caverns, give off an unsettling, pale light. These glowing mushrooms are most commonly found illuminating the squalid lurklairs of Moonclan grots.
• Golem: The mage-rulers of the lost Agloraxi Empire created massive, mountain-sized golems known as Colossi that were used for both manual labour and warfare. The narrative campaign from the Season of War: Firestorm supplement allows a player to build new Colossi to help fulfil one of the campaign's victory conditions.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: Order is the Good, only interested in survival and fighting against Chaos. Death and Destruction is the Bad: the former seeks peace and unity and opposes Chaos but is led by Nagash who seeks to rule over the realms forever with an iron fist; the latter cares about nothing other than krumpin' 'eadz and is chaotic to the point of rivalling Tzeentch himself. Chaos is the Evil, as always. And it gets even more complicated if the factions within each Grand Alliance is taken into account.
• Gratuitous English: Initially, in the non-English versions of the game almost all names (including all unit and faction names) except in very few cases are kept untranslated from English (for example the Silver Tower's name in French and German is still "Silver Tower", not "Tour d'Argent" or "Silberturm"). This was albeit changed starting with the release of the third edition of the game in mid 2021, which introduced proper French, Spanish, German and Italian localizations for the entire terminology.
• Great Bow: Knight-Judicators wield bows nearly half-again as tall as themselves, Vigilor bows are nearly the same size as a Stormcast, Vanguard-Raptors use crossbows so large they need a stand to balance them, Auralian Sentinals use triple-stringed longbows as tall as they are. Suffice to say, if you're using a bow in the Age of Sigmar, it's probably one of these.
• Guns Akimbo: Models armed with a brace of pistols, such as Freeguild Pistoliers and Dispossessed Ironbeards, are able to make two attacks each turn, one for each pistol.
• Healing Spring: The Lifesprings, situated in the Flamescar Plateau region of the Realm of Aqshy, are a group of mineral-rich hot springs famous for their ability to heal any wound or disease afflicting those who bathe in them. The Season of War: Firestorm^note a campaign supplement for 1st Edition includes rules for fighting battles near the Lifesprings that allow Heroes to heal a random number of Wounds if there are no enemy units nearby.
• Heel–Face Turn: After being killed by the Celestant-Prime, Torglug the Despised, the Nurglite Warlord who led the campaign in Ghyran, is redeemed by the energies of Ghal-Maraz and reforged as a Knight-Venator in the Hallowed Knights Stormhost. He's now called Tornus the Hero. To put it into perspective, usually when someone falls to Chaos there is no going back — you are forever damned. This is an event thought to be impossible: he was cleansed of Chaos corruption and redeemed.
• Hellgate: During the Age of Chaos many Realmgates became corrupted and cursed by the Dark Gods and now lead to the nightmarish Realm of Chaos, abode of daemons and the Chaos Gods.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Due to the way wounds work in Age of Sigmar (any damage that's done over the target's wounds bleeds over to other enemy models in the combat), potentially any high-damage attack can be this. The Stormcast Eternal Decimators explicitly have this, however. Their axes get one attack for every single enemy within range as they scythe through them.
• Hero Unit: Hero is a keyword reserved for commanders, wizards, priests, standard bearers, particularly elite soldiers and other army experts. They are the only units that can use Artefacts of Power and serve as generals, and with very few exceptions, each Hero model counts as a unit in its own right. In 4th Edition, heroes are also needed to lead regiments of units; each hero has a specific list of units that can be added to their regiment.
• Horny Vikings: There's an area in the far north of Ghur, Realm of Beasts, known as the Ice-Kingdoms of Gjoll, which are populated by a race of people suspiciously similar to the Old World's Norscans in that they are Vikings and followers of Chaos — particularly Khorne. Two characters in particular in the Black Rift of Klaxus series being put forth by Black Library are Hroth Shieldbreaker and Volundr, War-Smith of Khorne. Both are Gjallervolk and champions of Khorne. The more things change, the more they stay the same it seems.
• Humongous-Headed Hammer: Sigmar himself wielded a warhammer, so it makes sense that his chosen warriors, the Stormcast Eternals, also do, though a basic Liberator's warhammer has a head nearly the size of their torso (and Liberators are nearly 8 feet tall, so that's a really big hammer). Some common sense prevailed when Grandhammers at least had a handle nearly as tall as the Stormcast to provide extra leverage. Hammerers also make use of oversized, well, hammers, using their stout dwarven strength to swing them with crushing blows.
• I'm a Humanitarian: The Bloodreavers of Khorne believe that feasting upon the flesh of their enemies (preferably while they still live) imbues them with the divine might of Khorne. This is also practically the slogan for the Flesh-Eater Courts.
• Kaiju: God-Beasts, titanic magical monsters, dot the Mortal Realms, and tend to be a moving apocalypse for any faction in their vicinity. Even then, the ones making trouble today are a pale reflection of the God-Beasts that ruled the Mortal Realms before Sigmar came, the vast majority of whom were hunted to extinction by the Pantheon of Order (mostly Sigmar and Gorkamorka).
• Insectoid Aliens: The Silent People are a race of migratory insectoid people that are native to Ghur, most commonly found near the mountain Beastgrave. They're commonly accepted by scholars of Azyr to be extinct, despite the numerous eyewitness accounts to the contrary.
• Law of Cartographical Elegance: Averted. While the maps we have been given so far are rectangular, they typically have land masses on the edges to hint at the wider realm that isn't being shown on it (we're also shown which parts of the Realm are being shown relative to the whole Realm, so you can get a good idea of how much is being left out).
• Lethal Lava Land: A lot of Aqshy, the Realm of Fire, can be like this, with such areas becoming more and more common the closer you get to the edge of the Realm.
• Lighter and Softer: Surprising as it is, Age of Sigmar is probably the brightest and most idealistic setting the Warhammer franchise has ever produced. In particular, Chaos is treated as an enemy that can be reliably fought and beaten by the forces of good, rather than an unstoppable force that can only be resisted and delayed. This is becoming a downplayed trope as the story advances, as the Sigmarite dream cracks down and the society of Order slowly becomes like the Old World's. Also, the Stormcast Eternals, initially depicted as The Incorruptible, are now shown as starting to break down under the pressure of being reincarnated multiple times, sliding into Knight Templar territory.
• The Magocracy: The lost Agloraxi Empire of Aqshy's Flamescar Plateau was ruled by the Arch-Domini, a group of powerful mages that persecuted anyone incapable of using magic. The Arch-Domini created numerous magic items and golems to make their lives easier and protected themselves with a magical Wave-Motion Gun. According to legend, the Agloraxi Empire was eventually destroyed when the Arch-Domini annoyed the magic hating Chaos God Khorne enough that he personally destroyed their Ominous Floating Castle.
• Man-Eating Plant: While all of the flora of Ghur count, as everything in the Realm of Beasts is carnivorous, special mention goes to the gnarloaks, large trees with claws instead of leaves, who can eventually develop mouths to better devour their prey.
• Matriarchy: The Daughters of Khaine are organised like this. Morathi's hatred of men means that the only male aelves accepted into the cult are weak with impotent souls, who hold the lowest rank in the cult, with no prospects of their position changing, while female aelves are considered superior as a baseline, with the entire middle and upper echelons being women.
• Mechanical Animals: From the clockwork horses and spiders that can be found in the Cities of Sigmar, to the aethermatic cog-familiars of the Kharadron overlords, there's a motley assembly of robotic animals that can be found in the Mortal Realms.
• Mercenary Units: A Regiment of Renown consists of a small selection of thematic units, representing a group of sellswords who ply their trade across the Realms. Regiments of Renown are added to your army like allies—if you're playing a Pitched Battle, you'll be taking them from the same pool of points, but all armies of the same Grand Alliance and different faction can hire a Regiment of Renown. Regiments of Renown each have a special rule of their own and the Mercenary keyword, differentiating them from the normal versions of these units and giving them all a distinct feel on the battlefield.
• Mobile City: There's numerous across the Realms, the sources of their mobility ranging from the city being on sleds to being on the back of a godbeast.
• Multiple Head Case: Several creatures and beings, most prominently the orc god Gorkamorka. Archaon's mount, Dorghar, took this form with one head for each Chaos God (except Slaanesh who's gone missing and the Great Horned Rat who Archaon despises).
• Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps: Roaming Monsters^note introduced in Wrath of the Everchosen know no allegiance beyond hunger, are treated as enemies by both players' armies (and vice versa), and attack anyone that gets too close, according to their situational Behaviour Tables.
• New Season, New Name: Each edition (known as a season) of the Gaiden Game Warhammer Underworlds has a new subtitle describing the setting in which the season takes place. Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire being the first, with Nightvault, Beastgrave, and Direchasm being the second, third and fourth seasons respectively.
• Non-Human Undead: Undead dragons and gargantuan rotting bats known as Terrorgheists are occasionally used as mounts by vampire lords and ghoul kings.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Nagash took over the afterlife and had the same goals as Sigmar and the other Incarnates for a time. Subverted as, being Nagash, he never intended to stick it out with Sigmar, betrayed him and went his own way. He still intends to take over these new worlds once the Chaos Gods are dealt with.
• Not-So-Safe Harbor: Misthåven is one of the major Cities of Sigmar, and the most major Sigmar-worshipping city in Ulgu. The city itself is formed from ships lashed together, and is a well-known hive of smugglers, privateers, pirates, and general criminal elements. Its make-up allows it to seperate as needed, making it more difficult for attacking armies, before reassembling around the Scryer's Ark.
• Omnicidal Maniac: There's a few, but three deserve special mention:
  • Nagash, Supreme Lord of Undeath, considers free will to be a personal affront, and seeks to kill everything, claiming all their souls and ruling over a stagnant universe of undeath, And he's almost succeeded at least once in the current setting, and nearly a few times in the previous.
  • Archaon the Everchosen seeks to slay the Chaos Gods, but to do so he needs to starve them of emotion, namely by destroying every reality there is. He gained the title of "Exalted Grand Marshal of the Apocalypse" because he's already destroyed several realities by this point.
  • Drycha Hamadreth is a little bit laid back compared to the other two, but that's only because she still wants the Sylvaneth around. Everyone else? The only reason she's not slaughtering you right now is because Alarielle has told her not to.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Zigzagged with the duardin; whilst clearly based in the dwarfs from the original Warhammer, different cultures put their own unique twists on it. The two main independent factions are the Fyreslayers; religiously-motivated mercenaries with a "naked mohawked barbarian" aesthetic, an obsession with fire, and who hunt for magical "ur-gold" to craft into enchanted runes that they hammer into their own flesh for power; and the Kharadron Overlords, who are a race of dwarven Steampunk Sky Pirates who practice Magic Powered Pseudo Science.
• Our Elves Are Different: Beyond the simple name change to aelf, the elves in Age of Sigmar come in a few interesting variants:
  • There's the Lumineth Realmlords, basically an in-universe attempt to recreate the High Elves, with the added bonus of teaming up with spirits of the elements to fight Chaos. Strict, orderly, arrogant beyond belief despite (or maybe because of) nearly destroying an entire Realm with their in-fighting, they know better than you, will make sure you know it, and will do whatever it takes to protect the Realms from Chaos, even if that doesn't necessarily mean helping the people of the Realms. They have taken on a more monastic temperment than is perhaps normal for high elves, thanks to the spirits of nature intervening and shaping their culture to be less susceptible to, you know, trying to destroy a Realm with their superweapons.
  • The Idoneth Deepkin, sea elves with a rigid caste system, who need to harvest souls from the other races of the Realms to keep the 95% of their population born without proper souls alive for any significant amount of time. The name Idoneth is a name they chose for themselves after discovering the soul problem, and roughly translates to either "extreme isolation" or "desperate measures". They prominently use their magic to manipulate the aethersea, basically making air act like water so their underwater creatures can function of the surface, allowing things like flying sharks. Notably for sea elves, a lot of the bigger creatures are not willing servants of the Idoneth, but blinded and enslaved using magical symbols carved into their flesh.
  • The Wanderers, once wood elves that abandoned Ghyran during the Age of Chaos, much to the anger of Alarielle, and now try to hold up the image of still being wood elves, despite no longer living in the woods per se;
  • The Phoenix Lords, more classical high elves that worship the Ur-Phoenix (a godbeast of flame), though they have since been rendered almost completely destroyed when Abraxia decided eating the Ur-Phoenix would cure her Flesh-Eater Courts-induced insanity (though part of the Ur-Phoenix did survive.
  • The Daughters of Khaine are an interesting example, as they're not a subrace of elf like is typical for dark elves, but instead a religious cult that accepts members from any of the other types of elf (though females are the only ones they'll treat with any respect: they are the daughters of Khaine, after all). Extremely matriarchal and led by Morathi-Khaine, the Daughters mostly go about their days trying to perform services in the name of Khaine, namely by killing people.
• Our Souls Are Different: Nearly every living creature in the Realms has a soul, a spark of vital animus that gives it life. Should a living creature have its soul removed, it will fall into a coma or simply die. If not pledged to the Chaos Gods, stolen by Sigmar or the Idoneth Deepkin, souls would eventually make their way to Shyish after death, where they would reside in their chosen underworld until their energies fade to nothingness, which can take anything from a few years to millennia.
• Perception Filter: The Penumbral Engines that Grungni created for Sigmar from Teclis' Enlightenment Engines, are able to supress or remove the memories of anything a being sees within its area of effect, allowing the God King to hide his Stormvaults from discovery and stop the dangerous things they contain from falling into the wrong hands.
• Phantasy Spelling: The game often uses more fantastical spellings of words associated with the various faction, including many of the classic races from Warhammer. Elf, for example, was changed to aelf — an alternate spelling of ælf, the Old English word for elf — while dwarfs became duardin, orcs became orruks, ogres became ogors, trolls became troggoths, and so on.
• Physical Heaven: The Mortal Realms contains two different examples of this. There's Azyr, the Realm of the Heavens, seat of Sigmar himself, and potentially the least Chaos-corrupted place in the setting, though it doesn't act as an afterlife (unless you count Stormcast Eternals). Then there's Shyish, which contains every afterlife, including the heaven-like ones, and like every other Realm people can physically go there, though since Shyish is every afterlife it is also Physical Hell and everything in-between
• Points of Light Setting: During the Age of Chaos, the hordes of the Ruinous Power swept over creation and overran almost everything save for the fortified realm of Azyr, leading to the collapse and erasure of almost every trace of the many civilizations that existed within them. By the game's timeframe, the lands of the forces of Order consist of the far-scattered Free Cities founded by Sigmar's expeditionary forces, alongside isolated and embattled cities, tribes and kingdoms of mortals that survived the dark times, which are separated by world-sized expanses of wilderness and wastelands ruled by Chaos worshipers, roving hordes of Destruction barbarians, former Order cultures that became dark and hostile to survive, primordial monsters, living and predatory spells, and stranger and more dangerous things.
• Poisoned Weapons: The Vial of Manticore Venom is a universal Artefact of Power that can be applied to a weapon's edge, rendering it even deadlier.
• Portal Crossroad World: While every Realm has Realmgates, but the Eightpoints truly embodies this trope. Also known as the Allpoints, this subrealm exists in-between all eight Realms and contains the largest Realmgates to every other Realm. Control of this subrealm was the focus of the Realmgate Wars, which was ultimately won by Chaos, though they did lose control of several of the Realmgates.
• Portal Network: The Mortal Realms are linked by a series of mystical portals known as Realmgates. The Realmgates are the only means for the majority of creatures to travel between the eight Realms with even the gods themselves finding the network of portals to be the most convenient means of travel. While most Realmgates only link two specific points within the Realms, some link to multiple locations while a single portal, the Allpoints, links to all the other Realmgates and is the single most strategic location in the Mortal Realms.
• Practical Currency: The currency of the Cities of Sigmar, and thus one of the more widespread currencies in the realms, is Aqua Ghyranis, which is specially-made water infused with Cyclestone, the realmstone of Ghyran. This has the added benefit of Aqua Ghyranis being an effective healing potion, curing diseases and even combating Chaos corruption, so if need be you can drink your money to save your life. Purchases are usually measured with drops onto a specially-designed glass measuring plate before being poured into a different flask (though not illegal, it's considered bad form to lick the plate after the transaction).
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: A party in Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower can consist of heroes from most armies in every Grand Alliance, with the only restrictions being size (so ogors and cavalry aren't eligible) and daemonhood. You can include Stormcast Eternal heroes, Fyreslayers, Sigmarite priests, necromancers, Orruk bosses, Seraphon, and even Chaos champions in the same party — and none of them seem to mind working with hated enemies in the quest for the Silver Tower.
• Reconstruction: To Warhammer Fantasy Battle, yes, the forces of Chaos nearly destroyed the Cosmos and are still rampaging through large portions of the Mortal Realms, Sigmar's initial gains after the Realmgate Wars are now threatened by Nagash onslaught, but the narrative no longer implies all the worlds are doomed and the Gods of Order are now far more proactive and empowered to fight the forces of corruption, divine intervention is no longer the exclusive and objective domain of Chaos and Death, and new civilizations stand defiant. While the war is far from over the fight seems more balanced.
• The Red Mage: All wizards are capable of casting the two basic spells Arcane Bolt (which is a magical attack) and Mystic Shield (which protects a friendly model), except the Stormcast Evocators and Moonclan Shroomancers and Boggleyes.
• Religion Is Magic: Zig-zagged. Priests can activate prayers which, to an outside observer, are indistinguishable from a wizard's spells. The key difference appears to be that while a wizard attempts to bind a spirit's power whether the spirit wants to obey him or not, the priest is calling upon a deity to answer him, and the entity in question is responding of its own free will.
• Rent-a-Zilla: Some of the biggest monsters in the lore, such as the Zodiacal Godbeasts, are truly massive in size. The Celestial Drake Dracothion, for example, is large enough to have caught the remains of the-world-that-was while Fangathrak has the All-Gate of Ghur on its gullet.
• Replacement Goldfish: Nurgle is trying to conquer the realm of life and sees Alarielle as this for Isha/Shallya.
• Rivals Team Up: Sigmar and Nagash during the Age of Myth, after Sigmar liberated him they fought together to bring order to the Cosmos, defeating powerful ancient horrors which put in jeopardy the emergence of the mortal races and civilization, averted in the current Age, where each one has gone his own way and blames the other of betraying him, although Arkhan, Nagash's main lieutenant, hopes they eventually reconsider so Azyr and Shysh could beat Chaos once and for all.
• Rousing Speech: Gates of Azyr begins with Vandus giving one to the assembled Stormhost.
  "This night! This night, we open gates long closed! This night, we smite the savage. This night, we smite the daemon. We cross the infinite. We dare to return to the realms of our birthright. The design of eternity brought you here. Fate gave you the gifts, and the Forge has augmented them a hundredfold. You are the foremost servants of the God-King now. You are blades, you are his shields, you are his vengeance. You are the finest, the strongest, the purest. In pain you were made, but in glory you will live. No purpose have you now but to bring terror to the enemy, to lay waste to his lands and to shatter his fortresses. We are sent now into the heart of nightmares. For ages uncounted this canker had festered across the face of the universe, extinguishing hope from the lands once claimed by our people. The war will be long. There will be suffering and there will be anguish, for we are set against the very legions of hell. But they know us not. They believe all contests to be over, and that nothing remains but plunder and petty cruelties. In secrecy we have been created, and our coming shall be to them as the ending of worlds. With our victory, the torment will cease. The slaughter will cease. We will cleanse these worlds with fire and consign these usurpers to the pits that spawned them forth. Let the years of shame be forgotten! The fallen shall be avenged, and the Dark Gods themselves shall feel our fury! Reconquest begins, my brothers! This night, we bring them war! This night, we ride the storm!"
• Schizo Tech: In a setting where chariots ride against steam tanks, steampunk airships with volley guns battle archers, gatling guns and canons fire at plate-armoured warriors and ballista, the tech level is anything but consistent. Tech level tends to be more of a per-faction basis, rather than proliferating through all the factions equally.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Slaanesh has been captured and imprisoned by the Aelfs. The lore is vague on how they accomplished this.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Khornate Lord Anhur makes one to Robert E. Howard's Kull of Atlantis with the proclamation — "by this axe, I rule."
  • In July 2020 a Lumineth Realm-lord cavalry model was teased◊ with the mount being painted light blue, with a rainbow mane. Alas, the model is a unicorn, not a pegasus.
• Sky Pirate: The Kharadron Overlords are a dwarf civilization based around this. Their background mentions Grot and Orruk air fleets as well.
• Solo Tabletop Game: During the 2020 COVID pandemic, Games Workshop released rules on their Warhammer Community site (later republished in the December 2020 issue of White Dwarf) that allow people to play Age of Sigmar as a solo game. These alternate rules allow players to take a small force of Heroes and pit them against Adversaries whose behaviour is randomised.
• Species-Specific Afterlife: Not only does Shyish, the Realm of Death, contain afterlives for every mortal culture that has ever existed, it also includes underworlds for animals and creatures. One such afterlife is the Evercrawl, the web-filled underworld of dark forest, ruins and tunnels that is the destination of all arachnid spirits after death.
• Spell Book: The Arcane Tome, a universal Artefact of Power, can turn any Hero into a Wizard, with the standard spells Arcane Bolt and Mystic Shield.
• Sudden Name Change: Many names from classic Warhammer: Aelf (from Elf), Duardin (Dwarf), Highborn (High Elves), Exiles (Dark Elves), Wanderers (Wood Elves), Fyreslayers (Slayers), Seraphon (Lizardmen), Sylvaneth (Forest Spirits), Soulblight (Vampire), Deathrattle (Skeleton), Deadwalker (Zombie), Mordant (Ghoul), Deathmage (Necromancer), Nighthaunt (Ghost), Orruk (Orc), Grot (Goblin and Gnoblar), Ogor (Ogre), Troggoth (Troll), Gargant (Giant), Ironjawz (Black Orcs and Big 'Uns), Bonesplitterz (Savage Orcs), Gitmob (regular Goblins), Moonclan (Night Goblins), Spiderfang (Forest Goblins), Sourbreath Troggoth (regular Troll), Rockgut Troggoth (Stone Troll), Fellwater Troggoth (River Troll), Brayherd (Beastmen), Dragon Ogor (Dragon Ogre), Malerion (Malekith)...
• The Time of Myths: The aptly named Age of Myth, which covers the timeframe from the arrival of Sigmar to the Mortal Realms all the way up to the invasion of Chaos. Back then the Pantheon of Order was united, with even Nagash and Gorkamorka helping settle the Realms, and mighty civilizations covered all the Realms. Entire wars are fought over the remains of this age, as artifacts from the time include certain Realmgates connecting the Realms, staves that can raise a mortal to the level of a god, barriers capable of holding back the forces of Chaos, and more.
• Time Skip: After the Realmsgate Wars^note the first campaign in the game's ongoing narrative the timeline jumps ahead about a century (or a few centuries; time moves at different rates in different realms). This has given the cities built in the wake of the Stormcast's gains time to grow into important centres of civilisation within the Mortal Realms and develop their own distinct cultures.
• Token Evil Teammate: The Daughters of Khaine (and their leader, Morathi) are this for Sigmar's alliance of Order. While the Order Grand Alliance includes some questionable members (such as the Idoneth Deepkin) the Daughters are openly part of Sigmar's alliance despite being vicious killers who worship the God of Murder. Not that the entire Order faction is against them; Even some of the Stormcast approve of their brutal methods.
• Took a Level in Badass: The Ghouls of Warhammer were little more than vermin, a weak and easily overcome foe that was used whenever the writers needed something for the characters to utterly crush and not make any of the established factions look weak. And now in Age of Sigmar they have become badass armies of flesh-eating abominations that roam the Mortal Realms, devouring everything in their path. They've bested armies of the Fyreslayer Duardin, the Bloodbringers of Khorne and even the Stormcast Eternals. Nagash, the God of Death himself, is angry that he cannot control them, since technically they aren't dead. The Ghoul Kings themselves can tame Zombie Dragons and ride them into battle, and even have Vargheists (bestial Vampires) in their service. Even their origins are a badass improvement over simply being inbred vermin, they are now the people who survived the Age of Chaos outside of Azyrheim and resorted to cannibalism to survive.
• Trade Your Passion for Glory: The Warriors of Chaos have basically been in retirement for the past thousands of years ever since conquering the Mortal Realms and have basically gotten flabby by the time the Age of Sigmar begins. It's actually the main reason why the Stormcast Eternals' initial strike is a success, and even then it's a close-run thing. With the prospect of a worthy foe on the horizon, it's all but explicitly stated Chaos is gonna bring the same A-game they brought in the Old World to bear against Azyrheim's forces, and the war's only gonna get worse.
• Unblockable Attack: Mortal wounds are a game mechanic that represent extremely powerful and/or inevitable damage that a model or unit suffers. Such wounds hit and wound automatically and ignore all regular saves, some special rules allow the chance to save such wounds however. They have become an important tactical element since they, of course, represent far and away one's best way of dealing with enemies with excellent saves. Conversely, the special rules that allow saves against them are important as one's only way of dealing with them.
• Unexplained Recovery: Several characters who died on-screen in The End Times are back with no explanation. While this might make sense for the gods and Incarnates, it also includes Teclis (last seen being torn apart by the out of control winds of magic, now a god somehow). It's implied that Teclis was recreated by the Realm of Hysh from Tyrion, but this both isn't confirmed and potentially raises more questions.
• Unfulfilled Purpose Misery: After the complete victory of Chaos in Warhammer Fantasy, the Norsca tribes (especially those devoted to Khorne) gladly welcomed the news of non-Chaos forces surviving, as it meant they finally had different enemies to fight against.
• Uniqueness Rule: It wouldn't make sense for an army to have two Archaon the Everchosens in it, so when it comes to characters that have unique models armies can only include one of each of them (so you can't have two Archaons, but you can have one Archaon and one Be'lakor). Unique characters are also further limited by being unable to be given enhancements.
• Vampiric Werewolf: The Vyrkos Dynasty of vampires are a variant of this: while most vampires of the setting are bat themed (and descended from the original bloodlines recreated by Nagash), the Vyrkos are themed after wolves (and came to be after Belladamma Volga made a deal with an unknown wolf-like being). They can summon wolves, turn people into dire wolvessome like Belladamma Volga and Ivya Volga have developed wolf-like legs, and Vargskyrs look similar to a pop-culture werewolf. Ivya Volga in particular is something of an outcast to the Vyrkos due to associating herself with bats despite their bloodline.
• The Very Edge Of Everything: The Mortal Realms are immense but spatially finite flat worlds contained within spaces called "Realmspheres". As one heads away from their geographic centers, they become increasingly charged with magic until they reach the Perimeter Inimical, the very edge of the Realmsphere, where all matter breaks down into pure magical energy and not even deities can survive. Walking to the edge of Chamon, for example, could result in you exploding into a shower of coins, each marked with your screaming face.
• Villainous Badland, Heroic Arcadia: The central home realm of the Order factions, Azyr, is a beautiful world of star fields surrounding Azyrheim, an immense city-slash-fantasy space station of elegant domes, soaring spires and wide avenues. This is in stark contrast to the base realms of the other three groups of factions — Ghur, home to the forces of Destruction, is a primordial realm of harsh environments and tectonic upheavals roamed by monsters and barbarians; Shyish, home to the legions of Death, is a bleak realm of finality and sterility ruled by undead empires and a few hardscrabble mortal nations; and the Eightpoints, home to the mortal hordes of Chaos, is a blasted wasteland home to nothing but twisted abominations and apocalypse cultists.
• Walking Ossuary: The Ossiarch Bonereapers physical bodies are constructed from bone moulded into the specific forms by master artisans known as Mortisan Boneshapers, building everything from humanoid warirors to giant walking catapults. The Boneshapers are very picky about what bones they'll use, but they are willing to experiment, utilizing the bones of humans, orruks, aelves, ogors, and all manner of monstrous creatures to build and improve their creations.
• Warrior Heaven: Hallost, the Land of Dead Heroes, is the Shyishan underworld where the spirits of the mightiest heroes of the Realm of Beasts spend eternity feasting and fighting. Over the aeons, Hallost has become increasingly war-torn as it has been invaded by the followers of Khorne and Orruk warclans looking for a good fight.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Primatikon was an immense magical weapon that drew power of the Realm of Fire to unleash a lance of magical energy that could obliterate entire armies with a single shot. The weapon was destroyed millennia before the timeline of the game itself and one of the objectives of the narrative campaign included in the Seasons of War: Firestorm supplement is to rebuild the ancient weapon of destruction.
• Weird Sun: The Land of the Chained Sun in Aqshy was once illuminated by the colossal Godbeast Ignax, the Solar Drake. Captured by Grungni, the Duardin God of Metalwork, the massive dragon was bound and kept within the skies of the Floating Continent with great god-forged chains so that the Fyreslayers who lived there would never know night. During the Realmgate Wars, however, Archaeon freed Ignax from its bonds so that he could use her as a weapon against the forces of Order.
• Wham Episode: Every Broken Realms entry. To wit:
  • In Morathi, Morathi succeeds in becoming a goddess, absorbing the essence of Khaine and countless ancient aelven heroes and gods.
  • In Teclis, Arkhan the Black is banished for a time, Nagash and his Nine Books of Necromancy are destroyed (with Nagash barely surviving), the Shyish Nadir is re-inverted, and Teclis is corrupted by Death Magic.
  • In Be'lakor, Chamon is completely overrun by the forces of Chaos, at least three Stormhosts are wiped out or decimated, and Be'lakor nearly succeeds at his plan before being stopped by a Duardin hinted to either be Grungni reborn or Grombrindal the White Dwarf.
  • In Kragnos, Alarielle enacts the Rite of Life which restores the Oak of Ages, sending shockwaves of magic that all the Mortal Realms could feel. This inadvertently releases the ancient being known as Kragnos, who immediately rallied the forces of Destruction to go on a rampage. Though ultimately repelled, they left their mark on a City of Sigmar, while Grungni himself returned from exile to halt the quarrel between the Celestant-Prime and Morathi-Khaine. This all culminates in the Era of the Beast, the basis for the game's Third Edition.
• When Trees Attack: The Realm of Life, ruled by Alarielle, is inhabited by tree folk known as the Sylvaneth, stated to be beings reborn from the souls Alarielle stored after the destruction of the Old World. Unfortunately, because of Alarielle becoming a tad bit xenophobic, the Sylvaneth are quite hostile to outsiders.
  • On a seperate note, the Gnarloaks of the Gnarlwood (it's named after the trees) are carnivorous trees with limbs tipped with claws. Older gnarloaks even develop toothed mouths to bite anything foolish enough to climb them, or be near them.
• Worshipped for Great Deeds: Kragnos is an ancient, centaur-like warrior who has grown infamous for his strength, savagery and bloodthirstiness. He has crushed countless armies and civilizations in his time and seems to have become immortal, putting him on the edge of Deity of Human Origin, and as such has come to be worshipped as a god of war and earthquakes by the great hordes of orcish barbarians that follow him around in hopes of sharing in the slaughter and battle he brings with him. Sigmar also started out as this in Warhammer, but has since become an actual god, thus handily disqualifying him for this trope.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: When you have access to Chamon, the Realm of Metal, gold suddenly isn't that rare anymore, which caused a complete economic collapse in the Cities of Sigmar until they could find an alternative.