A just-for-fun series of seven fan-created Warhammer Fantasy Battle Factions By Sykall Date: 25.04.2021 1 Introduction Hello everyone, I am a fan of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle franchise made by GW. I was intrigued by the setting quite a while, but started to descend deeper into it due to the Total War Warhammer Trilogy. GW has created and cultured this setting over many decades. Their main approach was to create a battle royal of common fantasy tropes, mixed with historical templates for various factions and a few unique additions. Some people may call this unimagitive if you e.g. take the Holy Roman Empire or France and give the former magic and more gunpowder and the later athurian motives of chivalry. However I like this approach to world building for a couple of reasons. First, it makes the factions easily identifiable. Even newcomers who have no previous experience in Warhammer can quickly identify certain factions based on common historical knowledge and knowledge of common fantasy tropes. Thus they gain an immediate understanding of most of the factions modus operandi, its position in the setting itself, and the potential relationships to other factions. Second, this approach makes it easy to expand the setting if necessary. As the worldmap of WFB is a distorted version of our own world, it is relatively easy to expand it with new factions and potential stories. Something GW did in the past. No part of our world is devoid of prestigious or unique cultures which could serve as a template for a faction. By fusing this historical template with local or common fantasy tropes it is easy to create a new Warhammer faction and to insert it into the setting without much friction. However this approach was not often used to the full extend by GW. Most of its development focus lied on the Old World in particular. This is on the surface not a bad idea, but as GW also established global factions it lead to something of a 2 class structure. Especially narratively where the factions outside of the OW, which I call rim factions as they are never in the centre of attention, on unequal footing. These factions include Tomb Kings, Lizardmen and the Ogre Kingdoms, but to a lesser extend also the Dark Elves. Most of these factions have very interesting backstories, but little else in a narrative sense or impact on the setting at large. The main reason for this is, that these factions exist in a vacuum. E.g. the Tomb Kings are the only faction to be placed in the Southlands. Araby exists as well, but is was treated as a footnote for the most part and was never allowed to have any impacts of other factions, outside of its short-lived invasion of Estalia. Similarly the Lizardmen have the Amazons and the Vampire Coast as potential neighbours, and Ogres have the Dawi-Zharr. But in GW main WFB-line these factions are rarely established as more as minor footnotes and never established to live up to their potential. This results these rim factions having little do nothing to do, as they have no important neighbours. All they can do is deal with a minor human colony or a skaven clan or raiders and marauders. But they have no interaction parts with which interesting stories could be told, or that would allow them to leave a significant impact. And even if the footnotes were properly established, if we compare the content for the Old World with the rest of the world, it remains full of unused spots and white holes. Naggaroth is a great example for this, as this continent is modelled after North America, which houses hundredths of prestigious cultures and civilizations and myriads of myths. All of these could act as an inspiration for multiple Warhammer factions. However the continent is devoid of unique content or content in general with 2 the exception to the dark elves, who are not even native to this continent and have most of their affairs focused on Ulthuan. So everything outside of their domain could be erased from existence and it would barley change the status quo. This leads to a kind of friction, as WFB is not only a tabletop game, but its campaigns were also often driven by narratives. These can be seen by events which were hosted by GW, like the Nemesis Crown or Storm of Chaos. However most of these events are centred on the Old World, as this is where most of the factions are placed. Factions outside of the OW must be forcibly written into the story to justify their presence, or are left out entirely. And because there is no considerable content established outside of the OW there is little reason to create major events outside of the OW or ones which span over multiple theatres of war. Some may say the historical/technological era of the setting is makes multiple war theatres hard to develop, especially if they stretch over multiple continents. However the Great War against Chaos, which was fought from Ulthuan to the Old World is an example for such a war. And even with the technological limitations of the WFB Setting they should be possible on a general basis, as many global or multi continental wars also existed on our own world around the same time period most of WFB is based on. Total War Warhammer acknowledged this problem, especially as they created a trilogy of games spanning over different parts of the world. This let to CA cooperating with GW to flesh out and even reinvent new factions, like Norsca, the Vampire Coast and for TWWH3 Cathay and Kislev. Though the problem that many continents have huge areas which are functionally non-existent is still present. For example the Spine of Sotek, the equivalent to the Andis. A critical mountain range of South America and home to 4000 Years of human civilizations, including one of the greatest South American empires of all time. But in WFB it is just an empty spot on a map. Or the southern parts of the Southlands, which are treated as a bland copy of Lustria, despite Africa being home to many civilizations like Ethiopia, Mali, Zulu or the Kingdom of Kongo and many, many more. As a fan of both history and Warhammer it was frustrating for me to see so much potential in the Warhammer setting, which was not fulfilled. My best guess is, that GW left these white spots intentionally to fill them out at a later point. But this never happened due to WFBs cancellation. During the Covid-19 pandemic and several lockdowns I had a lot of free time to spare. To keep my brain occupied I tried to fill out some of these empty spots on the WFB world map with made-up factions of my own. These factions are not meant to be taken serious in any way. They are just rough templates, which are free to be used in any way or shape as you like. The concepts are primarily meant to be an enjoyable read to pass the time during the Covid-19 pandemic. But if they also ignite your own creativity, it is also a welcome outcome for me. You may do everything you want with the concepts. You may share them, expand upon them, restructure them, create additional content or just leave them alone. Warhammer games are after all about the personal creativity after all. Most of these factions are modelled after historical templates and/or well-known fantasy tropes. I tried to limit myself as much as possible to the rules established by the WFB setting. As such I rarely created entirely new stuff, but rather expanded stuff GW hinted at, or remoulded and recombined elements GW itself used. I tried to be as close as possible to established Warhammer lore, to contradict nothing major. All these new factions are also all stand-alone creations. So you can read each entry on its own without any cross-references or previous knowledge of the other factions. But the factions are also envisioned in such a way, that they do not exclude each other. 3 As a short overview the concepts include 7 factions which are in alphabetical order: The Chon: The Chon are harpy-like creatures that live in the mountainous regions and western Islands of the New World, with some enclaves around the Southern Chaos Wastes. These winged humanoids were spawned from Chaos influence but are not aligned with it. They incorporate the concept of Order within Chaos and thus fight against its agents. Their society is very strict and they are robotic in nature, as they supress any emotion. And they see very few other races as worthwhile or will even exterminate them like pests, if they think these races attract chaos attention. The Realm of the Desert Dwarfs (Dawi Izor): These dwarfs are remnants and refuges from Karak Zorn, who ventured into the great desert of the Southlands. South of Nehekhara and east of Araby they constructed a realm with various cities and citadels. Instead of mining, these dwarfs use their engineering and construction skills to create one of the most advanced irrigation systems of the world and turn the desert into a green garden. As a result they live mostly on the surface and erect huge ziggurats planted with greeneries (reminiscent of the hanging gardens of Babylon), in addition to many other deviations of normal dwarfs. They are partially inspired by the African kingdoms of Mali and Nubia, with some Mesopotamian influences as well.