Warhammer / WFB: Tropes A to F

A to F — G to Z

#-A

• 13 Is Unlucky: Skaven worship the number thirteen. They're also ruled by a body called the Council of Thirteen, although there are twelve Skaven on it. The empty chair is for their Horned God. They also have exactly 169 Grey Seers (that's 13 x 13) and exactly 13 spells (guess which one is the strongest and most terrifying?). Even their bells chime 13 times. In the last edition of the Skaven army book, they only got Irresistible Force on a casting roll of a 13, rather than the usual 2 or more 6's. That's right, one of the basic rules of the game bent for how much they worshiped 13.
• Abnormal Ammo: The Doom Diver catapult fires a goblin in a hang glider, Warplock guns fire Green Rocks, Screaming Skull Catapults fire flaming, screaming skulls, Thundertusks fire giant iceballs.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Many races have their own brand of blade weapon(s) that, in the game's terms, ignore the target's armor saves. The most famous being the twelve Runefangs from The Empire.
• A Commander Is You:
  • Empire: Balanced/Generalist. The Empire can field any combination of units to suit any playstyle. Whether you want magic, infantry, cavalry, artillery, powerful heroes, it doesn't matter as the Empire will have something for you. This versatility however does mean that the Empire isn't particularly strong in any one aspect. For example, Dwarfs will always outgun you, Skaven will always outnumber you, and High Elves will always out-magic you.
  • Bretonnia: Brute/Spammer/Unit Specialist (Cavalry). Bretonnian armies are usually built around a small core of Magic Knight elite cavalry with high mobility, tough armour and a ward save to boot, with support from hordes of very weak peasant infantry meant to soften up enemy forces with their bows before the knights go in for the killing blow. Trebuchets represent their only artillery piece, but they hit hard — use them wisely.
  • Dwarfs: Elitist/Loyal/Unit Specialist (Artillery). The Stone Wall faction. Dwarfs have solid line infantry with high toughness, armour and good leadership, making them tough to shift. Their artillery is just as superb, able to really reach out and touch the enemy from behind a sturdy dwarf battle line. However they're very slow and they have no cavalry or traditional magic to speak of (they do have magic items though).
  • Chaos Dwarfs: Elitist/Loyal/Brute: Acting almost like an ace-custom version of the Dwarfs, Chaos Dwarfs have most of the Dwarfs strengths (same toughness and morale, with even better armour and some crazy artillery) and also add in a few nasty tricks of their own (a decent, cheap tarpit in the form of Hobgoblins, some actual cavalry in the form of Bull Centaurs, and even the ability to use magic). However, Hobgoblins aside, Chaos Dwarf units are very expensive on a per-model basis and, as a result, building a balanced list can be difficult. A common way to describe a Chaos Dwarf army is, "You can make it good at anything, but you can't make it good at everything."
  • High Elves: Elitist/Technical/Unit Specialist (Magic). High Elf armies are small and their units are expensive and don't have much armour or staying power, but they're the best army when it comes to the magic phase, and their elite infantry do well in their chosen role.
  • Dark Elves: Guerilla/Brute. Dark Elf units are cheaper than High Elf equivalents and just as fragile, but they move and strike like lightning with their high initiative and movement. They have a few hefty linebreaker-type units like the Hydra, but you won't be fielding many of those. Basically a Glass Hammer army; you'll wallop other armies but be careful not to break yourself against them, and don't get shot.
  • Wood Elves: Guerilla/Ranger/Gimmick. Guerilla warfare is the name of the game for the Wood Elves. Highly mobile, superb long-range shooting and especially adept at fighting in woodland. Be aware that the Wood Elves need a lot of tactical thought and skill to be effective; they can't rely on heavy armour or big scary killing machines like the other armies can and getting bogged down will put them on the losing side quickly.
  • Lizardmen: Brute/Spammer/Unit Specialist (Monstrous Creature). You pick Lizardmen because you like dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes, from tiny skinks to hulking T. rex and Stegosaurus beasts. Temple Guard are hideous beatsticks and can bull aside any other infantry apart from the elite Warriors of Chaos. They also have pretty decent magic, all the better for making sure those heavy-hitters hit even heavier. Their main weaknesses are their issues with coordinating fast and slow units, somewhat expensive units, and vulnerability to artillery.
  • Vampire Counts: Spammer/Technical/Gimmick. These undead have no options for shooting except for magical attacks, lucky then that their magic is exceptional. Their heroes are very good in combat, and few other armies can field fodder in such numbers; they may die in droves but you're the undead, there's always more where that came from. Between that and also being immune to morale loss, the Vampires will win the battle of attrition every time.
  • Tomb Kings: Spammer/Technical, even moreso than the Vampires. Reliant on light infantry blocks with skirmishing units backed up by magic, but armour is a very rare thing in the Tomb Kings army. Their infantry are fragile but they don't rout, so make sure the enemy does first. Something of a Pariah faction as their limited power means they need a lot of good planning to be effective.
  • Warriors of Chaos: Elitist/Brute/Unit Specialist (Melee Infantry). Welcome to the most melee-centric army in the whole game. All their units are very durable, hit like trucks and have high weapon skill. Your basic troops can often beat up the elite infantry of other armies. On the other hand they have zero ranged options and zero tactical subtlety — it's just a roving wall of spiky black metal death that advances on the enemy. Don't count on fielding many units either; those badass troops are pricey.
  • Chaos Daemons: Elitist/Brute/Gimmick. Chaos Daemons are poorly armoured and have no shooting, but with their vast tactical options, superb stats, and plethora of special rules granting fear coming out their ears and deep striking, you won't mind. The Reign of Chaos table means they can be buffed into nightmarish levels of power or crippled with a roll of the dice. They were a notorious Game-Breaker in 7th Edition.
  • Beastmen: Spammer/Guerilla. Beastman infantry can move like cavalry and are quite difficult to kill, but their very low leadership means all of their units are likely to bolt if your general isn't nearby. Thankfully many of their leader choices are good. Pariah in 8th Edition.
  • Greenskins: Balanced/Brute/Gimmick. Greenskins field a selection of very powerful- um, "right killy" infantry specialised in their close combat role, and quite cheap too. Orcs are stronger, but goblins bring sheer numbers. They do suffer from terrible leadership and initiative though, and from the Animosity special rule that causes them to fight amongst themselves. Like Beastmen, you'll want to keep a big leader near infantry to stop them panicking or fighting each other.
  • Skaven: Spammer/Gimmick. Like dirt-cheap infantry, fairly powerful shooting and silliness? Skaven are for you. Your troops will drop like flies and run the moment things start going badly, but that doesn't matter because you'll be swamping enemies with numbers which the Vampires would find excessive. Their artillery and warmachines are very dangerous, but be careful they don't blow themselves up (or accept they will and be prepared to laugh at them — Skaven life is cheap).
  • Ogre Kingdoms: Elitist/Brute, in a way you wouldn't believe. It's like having a small army of humanoid tanks. All of them have multiple wounds, high toughness, obscene strength, Impact Hits and Stomp. Ogres can laugh off small-arms fire and smash through enemy units like wrecking balls. Just know that magic and artillery will give them a rough time, they can easily be swarmed, and each ogre that does go down is a serious points-cost loss.
• Action Initiative: Models with the always strikes first rule always well, strike first, regardless of whether their initiative is higher than their opponent. If their initiative is higher, then they can re-roll failed to hit rolls.
• Adventure-Friendly World: One of the big reasons the Warhammer world is so insane is that every faction needs to be able, in canon, to fight every faction, including itself.
• Affably Evil:
  • Vlad von Carstein. He was less cruel towards his peasants than the former Count of Sylvania, von Drakhoff, who would have peasants's heads put on stakes for lulz. Vlad even went one-on-one with a bandit king terrorizing the province. Plus, honestly, trying to take over the empire is actually a pretty common pastime for Elector Counts so that's hardly a point against him.
    • Also, considering that he kicked out the Priests of Morr, who are required to pass on in that part of the world, he's allowing of his subjects to stick around after being killed, instead of risking being consumed by the gods of Chaos.
    • In the short story The Ninth Book, it is inferred that Vlad actually wants to enslave the Empire, to prevent them turning to Chaos. If they served him, they would be unable to serve Chaos in life or death.
  • The setting paints many vampires as being like this. Apparently turning into a vampire heightens and inflames natural passions, adding a dark, predatory edge to a person, but leaves their personality mostly unchanged. The problem is the natural passions of humanity in this world kind of tend towards the crazy anyway, so a warrior with a violent edge becomes bloodthirsty or a flirtatious person becomes a seductive assassin and so on, leading to conflict with each other and everyone else.
• Afterlife of Service:
  • Nehekharan skeletons were soldiers in life who were willingly buried alive under burning sand to serve their master in undeath.
  • The souls of Khornate warriors are taken to their god's fortress, where they fight and die and are resurrected to fight again every day. But deserters, cowards and sorcerers are instead chained for eternity to massive forges where they create weapons for his blessed champions to use.
• Age of Reptiles: The ancient past, both before and during the time of the Old Ones, saw reptilian species rule the ancient world. The Old Ones themselves are often described as reptilian or amphibious in appearance, as are the lizardmen they created as soldiers and servants. Besides them, the dragons and dragon ogres were both widespread and powerful species before the Old Ones came, while the one-eyed, reptilian fimir were the Chaos Gods' favored servants and ruled much of the world in their name; the zoats, a mysterious species of reptilian centaurs, also date back to this period. Over time, however, the Old Ones left, the lizardmen lost most of their ancient holdings, the dragons and dragon ogres gradually began to die out, the zoats shrunk in number and retreated to isolated hermitages and the fimir lost their gods' favor to the rapidly spreading human race, leading to the modern age where warm-blooded races rule over most of the world.
• Ailment-Induced Cruelty: Inverted by worshipers of the Chaos god Nurgle. They are ravaged with diseases and pestilence, but they view their afflictions as gifts from Nurgle that show his favor to them, and those that aren't insensate zombies are usually jovial and friendly and want nothing more than to share Nurgle's love to everyone around them...which just ends up spreading the diseases they're infected with.
• All Trolls Are Different: The Warhammer version are pretty classic fantasy trolls — big, hulking, stupid humanoids — only adding on a ridiculously caustic stomach acid, capable of digesting rock, that they like to vomit on their foes/victims. Even then, there are several distinct kinds of trolls in the Warhammer universe, besides the "common" trolls commonly found tagging along with Greenskin armies:
  • Rock trolls inhabit desolate, rocky wastelands, and have taken to eating rocks for lack of anything else. They are noted to be more resistant to magic than the regular kind of troll.
  • River trolls have scales and live by and in bodies of water. They are revoltingly smelly and filthy even by troll standards.
  • Sea trolls, or shugon, are pale creatures with white, blind eyes, scaly skin and mouths filled with shark teeth, and live in sea caves and the depths of the ocean.
  • Chaos trolls are even weirder due to living so close to the Realm of Chaos. Their regenerating powers cause them to mutate even more than other races. What makes this even worse is the existence of Throgg, the Troll King. After having his head cut off, it grew back, only this time with a mutation giving him genius intellect. Suffice to say, he was a nasty surprise to the Empire, who were used to Trolls being complete morons.
  • Bile trolls are a further mutation descended from trolls who had the supremely bad idea of devouring the followers of Nurgle. The plagued flesh infected them with all manner of necrotic diseases, turning them into eternally rotting horrors whose perpetual decay is just barely offset by their regeneration.
• Always a Bigger Fish: The Monstrous Arcanum describes an incident where a merwyrm — a giant, seagoing dragon — that had been ravaging the coast of Nordland attacked a village close to a necromancer's tower, putting an end to its rampage once it was enthralled by the wizard.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Skaven, the Daemons of Chaos, Beastmen, Orcs, 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 Dark Elves, Norscans, Ogres and Undead.
  • The Tomb Kings mostly just idle away their time in their tombs, and when they emerge, they continue to act like the absolute monarchs they were in life. Yes, they are ruthless, authoritarian and brutal, but not moreso than any other rulers. Yes, they will raze heaven and earth to track down anyone whos steals from them, but so will the Dwarfs, and no-one considers them irredeemably evil. Ultimately, the Tomb Kings are complex individuals with virtues as well as vices. Their undead status means their priorities are strange to the living, and their morality is that of a culture long gone, but if you take the time to understand them, they are generally perfectly reasonable.
  • The Ogres will happily rob and eat anyone and anything, but they can be negotiated with and usually be counted on to stick to the word of an agreement, if not the spirit.
  • The Norscans are barbarians, yes, and the northern tribes are inveterate Chaos worshippers whose only interactions with the outside world are raiding and warfare. The southern tribes, on the other hand, are mellow enough to trade with and work for southerners, and even share some gods and other cultural aspects with the northernmost past of the Empire. In Marienburg and Nordland, Norscan bodyguards are a status symbol.
  • The Dark Elves more of a double-subversion, since they are torture-happy hedonists who consider backstabbing and treachery a way of life. However, they are much, much more. They are family-minded and loving parents, and have a rich and vibrant, though very alien and morbid, culture. Malekith is quite possibly the most evil being alive, but he also has a searing hatred for everything related to Chaos (in fact, part of his motivation for attempting to usurp the Phoenix Throne is that he genuinely believes he is the only one who could win a decisive victory over Chaos).
  • Vampires are predators and prey on the living, yes, but they are not too different from the people they were in life. Vlad von Carstein is one of the staunchest enemies of Chaos in the setting, and while he spends a lot of his time scheming for the throne of The Empire, so do his living counterparts. The Vampire Counts are also noted to be Benevolent Bosses to their living servants, if perhaps only for reasons of Pragmatic Villainy. Vlad and Isabella von Carstein are also noted for having a very loving relationship. And no, it's not just convenience or shared goals, but a deep, mutual, genuine love so strong it is even reflected in the mechanics.
• Ancestral Weapon: Several examples, too many to list here. The biggest one, Ghal Maraz, is actually a Double Subversion — the people wielding it now are not related to the person who wielded it originally, as Sigmar intentionally left behind no children in order to ensure that the Empire would not be in the grip of a single dynasty,^note Some of the novel lore suggests that he did have children, but they were never publicly acknowledged as such, and Sigmar himself didn't learn about their patrimony until they were grown men but would rather belong equally to all those who lived within it. In essence, Ghal Maraz belongs to the Empire itself, and all the men of the Empire are Sigmar's heirs.
• Ancestor Veneration:
  • Dwarfs traditionally practice a form of ancestor worship as a result of their reverence for wisdom, old age and the past. Consequently, their departed ancestors are considered to be the ultimate founts of experience and are prayed to for wisdom and insight, in addition to being accorded the deference and respect that all dwarfs are expected to show their elders. This reaches a particularly strong form in the Ancestor Gods, the semi-mythical progenitors of all dwarfs, who are worshipped throughout dwarfish civilization.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay mentions that ancestor worship is common among many human communities as well, and provides rules for playing as one such worshipper that include bonuses when the character performs a feat their ancestors approve of and penalties such as a round of paralysis as an offended great-great-great-grandfather delivers a furious tirade against an especially disappointing performance. It's noted that dwarfs greatly approve of this practice, but sometimes wonder how the much more short-lived humans can even keep all their bygone ancestors straight.
• And I Must Scream: There are several rather unpleasant ways that one can end up like this in the Warhammer universe. A notable example is a Dark Elf Sorceress who was thrown into a Lizardman God's offering pool, to spend the rest of eternity being fed upon by the God.
• An Ice Monster: Thundertusks and Yhetees in the Ogre Kingdoms can generate magically-charged ice and shape it into weapons or magic missiles, in addition to continually radiating a crippling aura of cold.
• Animate Dead: The trademark of the Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings armies.
• Animorphism: Numerous examples; for example, some Norse turn into bears, some vampires turn into bats or wolves. Wizards with access to the Lore of Beasts can turn into various monsters, up to and including dragons!
• Annoying Arrows: A standard bow or longbow has a strength of 3, which is as effective as sword blow from a standard human soldier. Tougher creatures such as orcs, as well as high-ranking leaders of any army, can shrug this off fairly easily.
  • The Wood elves avert this with a selection of magical arrows that can cause anything from stupidity to instant and extremely painful death. Also the Waywatcher's Lethal Shot Rule, which is, well, lethal.
  • The Tomb Kings also have this in a way, the Blessing of the Asp stops modifiers from affecting the rolls. A better example would be to deploy High Queen Khalida and have the arrows of your archers become poisoned arrows.
• Antlion Monster: The Great Maw is a vast mouth in the ground, apparently sentient and capable of giving the ogres that worship it (by throwing food down its gullet) the ability to use Gut Magic.
• "Arabian Nights" Days: The Araby faction (not playable, but present in the lore background) is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Islamic Golden Age, featuring flying carpets, djinni, and light cavalry with curved swords ruled by sheiks and their magical viziers.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Most academics in the Empire believe the Skaven to be a myth, even though the Dwarfs have been at war with them for thousands of years and they actually conquered most of the Empire at one point. Justified in that admitting to the existence of Skaven would be panicking the population. Chaos invasions every decade? Sure we can handle that. Beastmen in the woods? Not a problem. Cultists in our midst? All the more reason to stay vigilant and obey the witch hunters! Empire dwarfing our own just below the surface? Uh-oh. It's also thought that the Empire acting like the Skaven don't exist avoids causing them to try to attack the Empire in force out of fear of the Empire actively threatening the entirety of them, as expected of the self-serving cowards.
• Arrows on Fire: The Bretonnian peasant archers may be equipped with brazieres to provide Flaming Arrows.
• Artifact of Death: Many items are cursed in ways that make them temporarily beneficial and then impressively fatal. The Sword of Khaine inflicts misery and madness on its wielders, the Sword of Last Resort is a roving character killer that fuels itself on the wielder's life energy, the Black Book of Ibn Naggazar will kill you if you don't feed it regularly (and at up to 3d6 models a turn, it is a hungry one), and the list goes on.
• Artificial Insolence: The Stupidity rule (usually seen on big ugly monsters) prevents them from moving or taking any action if they fail a Leadership roll. A notable case of the rule used by a non-animalistic unit is the Slaaneshi champion Sigvald the Magnificent, who can occasionally ignore the battle in favor of admiring himself in his retinue's mirror-polished shields.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The Empire seems to be built to this. Usually the Elector Counts choose the new Emperor, but in a great time of need a mighty warlord has come to the Empire's aid and dealt away with whatever great foe threatened them at the time — and were always crowned Emperor afterwards. These include Emperor Mandred who pushed back a great force of Skaven, Magnus the Pious who was victorious in the Great War Against Chaos, and of course, Sigmar himself after he broke the orc hordes.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: The winds of magic tend to have this effect on their practioners.
• Atlantis: In this verse, it's called Ulthuan. The continent in the middle of the Atlantic is the home of the High Elves, who as a race are the most powerful wizards in the world, and it's built on a complex weave of magic that keeps the local Winds of Chaos under control. And yes, in the End Times, it sinks.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: The leaders of an army will invariably be stronger and better equipped than other units. If they're a named character, such as the actual leaders of a race or faction, they will be very strong indeed.
  • The Emperor of the Empire needs to mentioned here. He goes into battle on an enormous griffon, wielding a Runefang... except when he rides a dragon... and wields the Warhammer for which the game is named.
  • In previous editions this game was nicknamed HeroHammer as the trope was encouraged and/or enforced by poorly balanced rules regarding special characters and magic items.
  • Nagash was the creator of the undead and their current leader/god. He literally ate a god to gain divinity and is one of the most powerful models in the game (being the only level 5 wizard and having a special rule that gives him a boost to the spells he cast).
  • The Forces of Chaos are basically sorted by this. Any mortal leader among them are the most powerful Champions within the warband, while Chaos Daemons are literally sorted by this; the lowliest nurgling is the same kind of creature as the Great Unclean Ones and even Papa Nurgle himself. The only difference is that each one is more powerful than the last.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • Khorne worshippers (BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!) and greenskins who live to fight. Skaven are interesting example. Usually they are cowardly, but when they come in large numbers (which is every single battle) they are whipped up in to a frenzy, convinced that the other poor sod will get a hell blaster rocket to their skull. That doesn't stop their Grey Seer's and Warlock Engineers magically getting them into said frenzy, said Skaven dying painful deaths hardly being a drawback.
  • Then of course we have the Dark Elves, nearly all of whom are sadistic blood knights to a certain degree. The Cult of Khaine, the elven god of war and patron deity of the Druchii, actually manage to take this even further and are perhaps the most psychotic group in the setting.
• Axis Mundi: The planet's poles have the Chaos Gates, a pair of enormous shattered portals built by the Old Ones, where the Winds of Magic flow into the world from the Realm of Chaos. Unfortunately, they also let Chaos and its denizens into the world, hence why the Arctic and Antarctic are hellish Eldritch Locations.

B

• Badass Army: Too many examples. Probably the worthiest candidates for the title would be the Warriors of Chaos and the Imperial Army: hulking, daemon-worshipping superhuman vikings whose leaders have axes and swords and inches-thick plate armour forged in the fires of Hell; or brave and disciplined ordinary men fighting against all kinds of monsters and horrors with nothing but sharpened steel, gunpowder and patriotic fervour and righteous fury (and sometimes magic). The High Elves and the Dwarfs are no slouches in this department either.
• Badass Normal:
  • The Imperial State Army. Against terrifying giant Vikings clad in inches-thick armour forged in the fires of Hell, insane goat-headed savages, The Undead, psychopathic xenophobic Dark Elves, vile ratmen with World War I-level technology powered by Green Rocks, and Ax-Crazy Goblins and Orc brutes that can rip a man's arm clean from the socket with their bare hands... are the brave men of the Empire holding the line with nothing but steel, shot and sheer discipline. And very rarely the backup of a sanctioned College wizard and some Leonardo da Vinci-esque Clock Punk. And they win much more often than their futuristic counterparts with laser rifles and building-sized tanks do.
  • Bretonnia doesn't even have the shot. It's just medieval France transplanted into a horrifying fantasy setting, with a smattering of magic for their knights gifted by their Lovecraftian goddess.
  • Templar Witch Hunters are this trope. They travel the Empire hunting down unsanctioned mages, necromancers, mutants, Chaos spawn, Chaos cultists, undead monsters and daemons. Usually relying only on blackpowder firearms, crossbows, daggers, swords, rapiers, axes, flails, wooden stakes, holy water and consecrated ashes.
• Baby Factory: Skaven females are bloated, barely sapient creatures constantly popping out newborn rats, which is the main reason the Skaven can absorb the tremendous casualties their society and style of warfare cause them.
• Badass Longcoat: Despite being set in the equivalent of the 16th century, The Witch Hunter Templars of Sigmar commonly wear trench coats alongside their hats. While not all of them are certified badasses in the lore, the model Empire armies can hire are generally competent heroes.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: Chaos, and Necromancers to a certain extent. It used to be that using necromancy automatically turned you evil, and that someone who got into it to resurrect a loved one would inevitably end up leading skeletal armies to destroy the town or something. This drawback seems to have relaxed somewhat.
• Balking Summoned Spirit: As a rule, daemons intensely dislike being called from the Realm of Chaos to be made to serve a mortal's whims, and need to be somehow forced, bribed, or cajoled into going along with whatever the cult or mage that summoned them wants.
• Barbarian Longhair: Warriors of Chaos are from the local equivalent of Scandinavia, and have long, unkempt hair.
• Basilisk and Cockatrice:
  • Basilisks are six-legged, brightly colored lizards so poisonous that vegetation withers and dies at their mere presence, and which can swiftly turn a fertile land into a barren waste. They can concentrate their poisonous aura in their gaze, causing creatures they fix their sight upon to swiftly sicken and die. Basilisk bones can be used to create blades that retain their former owners' toxic natures, making exceptionally deadly weapons that can prove equally dangerous to their wielders.
  • Cockatrices are cowardly but deadly Chaos-tainted creatures resembling monstrous avians with tooth-lined jaws, snakelike tails and batlike wings. They are among the favorite quarries of Bretonnian knights, although cockatrice hunts are complicated by the creatures' ability to petrify with a glance and the fact that some of them possess poisonous claws or acidic vomit as additional weapons.
• Bat Out of Hell: The Vampire Counts make extensive use of undead batlike monsters, from bird of prey-size Fell Bats and dragon-sized Terrorgheists to the Vargheists and Varghulfs, vampires who have degenerated into bestial, batlike predators — flightless ones, in the Varghulfs' case.
• The Battle Didn't Count: A big part of why the Storm of Chaos event was so hated; even though they got their butts conclusively handed to them in the actual battle results, the writers went ahead with their plan of the Chaos armies being unstoppable until a last-minute reversal. It also led to ridiculous compromise plots like the Tomb Kings, whose players had unexpectedly been winning, just wandering off for no reason at the cusp of victory.
• Beast Man: The appropriately named Beastmen, hybrids of man and beast with the heads and hooves of ungulates and predatory fangs.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Par for the course of such a grim setting. In particular, Settra (the first king of Nehekhara) spent all his like searching for a way to live forever. In the end, that's exactly what he got...
• Beneath the Earth:
  • The Skaven have a vast Under-Empire centered under the ruins of Skavenblight, with tunnels stretching all over the world. The Dwarfs likewise created immense tunnel systems under much of the Old World's mountains, which in the modern day largely lie in broken ruin and are home to teeming tribes of trolls and night goblins, voracious fungus creatures and numerous dragons. Combined with preexisting natural caverns, these create immense, interconnected cavern systems stretching beneath much of the world.
  • The Underworld Sea is a vast labyrinth of flooded caves and tunnels stretching beneath the Dark Elven realm of Naggaroth. It's poorly explored, difficult to navigate, prone to floods and cave-ins and populated by ferocious monsters, and there are rumors that the ruins of a lost civilization exist within its depths. Similar abysses are suggested to exist beneath the rest of the world, deep beneath the diggings of Dwarfs, Skaven and Goblins, hiding enormous blind horrors, vast Blob Monsters and cities of ghoulish things where no light has ever shined.
• Beneficial Disease: Since Nurgle is a Plague Master god, his servants become ravaged with all sorts of plagues but the effects don't kill them. They look utterly disgusting but not a bit weaker for it; they are actually harder to kill because they don't need to worry about things like infected wounds. Also they Feel No Pain, and the diseases they spread can still be lethal to non-believers.
• Berserk Button: An actual rule for Vlad if Isabella is fielded in the same army as him and killed, he will gain frenzy and hatred against whatever he's fighting against. And never ever pay a Dwarf short even a if its just a few pennies, and also never try to mess with their beards. Less you want an army of them to burn down your kingdom.
• Better Off with the Bad Guys: Subverted with beastmen. People whose mutation give them animal traits are soon driven out from their native homes, and often find refuge in beastmen hordes. However, they form the absolute dregs of beastman society (as they have a Might Makes Right mentality and use horns as an indicator of power). They can at best make themselves useful to beastmen by selling out their former neighbors.
• BFG: Ogre Leadbelchers wield sawed-off cannon that would be used as field artillery by smaller species, which they use like oversized blunderbusses firing nails and other shrapnel (cannonballs would get too inaccurate, and don't have the same *oomph* of an expanding cloud of debris to the trigger-happy Ogres). Skaven weapon teams field the Warplock Jezzail, a Sniper Rifle of such prodigous size and bulk that they need a second Skaven to hold up the barrel while its user lines up a shot, and the Ratling Gun, which again is so massive that it needs a second Skaven to brace the gunner (and to carry all the ammunition).
• BFS: Great Weapons are a standard weapon type, and commonly take the form of swords to the more 'civilized' factions. Empire Greatswords take their name from the giant zweihänders they wield, and High Elf Swordmasters of Hoeth and Dark Elf Executioners wield two-handed longswords that are almost as big with lethal efficiency. Bretonnian Questing Knights even use these weapons from horseback, due to a Heroic Vow that forbids them the use of the Knightly Lance.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The forces of evil are pretty decentralized but there exist a number of characters whose plans are on a large enough scale to threaten the entire world. Most dangerous of them all is Archaon, purported as the Champion of Chaos on the world and destined to topple it for the Dark Gods. A close second would be Nagash who was the most powerful necromancer in history and has on several occasions threatened to turn the world into an undead waste. The Elves have Malerion the Witch King, ruler of the Dark Elves and primary menace for Ulthuan's safety. Some of the more powerful vampires and several others creatures have also risen to infamy and have whole wars dedicated to them.
• Big Eater: In the examination of an Ogre's corpse, the complete skeleton of a horse was found in its belly. Then there's the fact that they worship a deity called The Great Maw.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Show up as yhetees, allies of the Ogres.
• Bishōnen Line: Played straight with Chaos mutations. If you end up looking completely monstrous from them, you've become a mindless Chaos Spawn that really doesn't represent the peak of power Chaos can grant.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Not quite as bad as Warhammer 40,000 on this, but it does run a close second. It's really more of a case of "They would if they could". More than once everyone has gotten their shit together to save the world from the Hordes of Chaos, but it takes a LOT before they get to that point.
• Black Magic: Dark Magic, Chaos magic and Skaven magic.
• Blood Bath: The Hag Queens of the Dark Elves bathe in magical cauldrons filled with blood to maintain their youth.
• Blood Knight:
  • Greenskins live to fight things, and really aren't particular on what ends up on the business end of their choppas. Unlike Warriors of Chaos and Norscans, who are trying to gain the favour of their gods through battle, Orcs mainly just care about the fighting.
• Blow Gun: There's a Wargear option for Skinks, and a huge version for mounting on their stegadons.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Several races follow their own moral codes that are deeply alien to our own experience:
  • Ogres have no concept of morality beyond Might Makes Right. In Ogre culture, iron is more valuable than gold: if you have a bag of gold, you can buy an iron weapon with it; if you have an iron weapon, you can kill another Ogre and take his gold. This in combination with their massive size and strength makes them excellent mercenaries, as they're willing to do basically anything to get what they want.
  • Dwarfs are obsessed with Revenge Before Reason, to the point of entering Too Dumb to Live territory. Dwarfs never, ever, ever forgive or forget any slight (there isn't even a word in Khazalid to describe forgiveness), no matter how trivial or long ago it was. In notable incident, the Dwarfs went to war against a Empire nobleman over a matter of twelve pennies. Never short-change a Dwarf, and definitely never shave their beloved beards - ask the High Elves why.
  • The Beastmen who lurk in the forests of the Old World despise anything that resembles technology or civilization. They are highly primal and the mere thought of settling or taming or building anything drives them to maddening disgust. All of their weapons and armour are looted or stolen from other races (and often doesn't fit their inhuman frames, so heavy armour is a rarity), and it would take a highly charismatic warherd leader to even get these savages to fashion crude siege ladders.
  • The Lizardmen are effectively biologically immortal "robots" still following the instructions of the Old Ones to the letter. This Plan, or at least their best interpretation of it, basically involves returning all the humans back to the Old World, all the elves (including dark elves and wood elves) back to Ulthuan, all the Dwarfs back to the mountains, and exterminating pretty much everyone else. A quintessential example of Order Is Not Good.
  • Many of the Chaos Gods delve into this often, given that they are the insane embodiments of different emotions and concepts. Khorne offers his followers incredible strength and resilience, and only asks that you spill blood in his name - your enemies, your friends, your own, he's not picky. Tzeentch, the Chaos God of ambition, change and hope, is also a Mad God and Chessmaster extraordinaire who plots endless schemes against everyone including himself, that are designed to fail because with nobody to scheme against, Tzeentch would destroy himself. Nurgle is a twisted example of Friend to All Living Things as he also considers bacteria and viruses life, and grants his followers sickness and takes their pain and affliction as a form of gratitude. And then there is Slaanesh, who is devoted to sensation and argualy, devoted to devotion itself.
• Body Horror:
  • Just try to make it all the way through the list of lovingly-detailed Chaos mutations in the Tome of Corruption without wincing at least once.
  • Morghur is able to induce this in anything that comes near him.
• Boisterous Bruiser: If there's one thing that warriors of Khorne like almost as much as spilling blood, it's boasting about how much blood they've spilled. Here's a particular fine story from Hrolf Wyrdulf of the Vargs:
  "I am Hrolf Wyrdulf, Prince of the Vargs. I am the promised son of the Witch Moon and I slew the sea-worm Ship-Crusher after a battle of thirty days and thirty nights. I can lie on ice and not freeze and drink an ocean of blood and not burst. I stalked Hrunting Iron-Axe from pole to pole and placed his smoking heart on Khorne's board. I took the star-skulls of the Woman-With-Skull-Faces and flung them into the Sea of Chaos!"
• Boring, but Practical: The basic troops of each army (though some may stretch the definition of boring). There are flashier options, but you often take these choices cheaper, giving you more units on the field. Also applies to characters, while taking big expensive named characters is fun, often one or two kitted out characters can do their job just fine for less points.
• Born Under the Sail: The Norscans are naturally good at sailing (being the Heavy Metal version of Horny Vikings), repeatedly raiding the equivalents of Europe and Canada. Wulfrik the Wanderer even has a flying longship that can go through the Warp and emerge anywhere he wants it to, leading to his moniker "The Inescapable One".
• Bows Versus Crossbows: Follows the "bows good, crossbows evil" version of the trope with the merely-insular and obnoxious High Elves and Wood Elves exclusively using bows, and the unabashedly evil Dark Elves using Automatic Crossbows.
• Breast Plate: Most classes are spared from this as the male and female models of their armors are otherwise identical. However, Dark Elf Witch Elves and Sorceresses only wear these (if anything). That being said, they also have very poor Armor Saves without magical assistance.
• Burn the Witch!: Played with; witchcraft is a viable and dangerous practice in the Warhammer universe, thus, the church is usually right to weed them out and destroy them.

C

• Call That a Formation?: Averted. While skirmishing units have a serious mobility advantage, the ranked soldiers gain a "rank bonus" when calculating the winner of a fight, making large, ranked units very difficult to shift. Skirmishers or lonely heroes engaging a ranked unit in a frontal assault are likely to be pushed back even if they deal more damage.
• Campbell Country:
  • Ostland in the Empire is a big example. But there's plenty of little villages all over the place with mysterious practices that don't abide strangers.
  • Mousillon's is a giant poison swamp whose main industry is frog and snail catching, the dead refuse to stay in their graves, the Lord of Mousillon was nuts and possibly not human, giant frog monsters (as well as regular monsters) roam the streets after dark, and the populace look just that little bit extra odd. No one knows why, how, or what's going on.
• Cannibal Larder: Taken to its logical extreme with the ogre "butchers" who are both the tribal cooks and shamans, and often carry a stock of body parts (of various edibility) with them as snacks and spell components. One butcher special character drags along an enormous cauldron, which radiates an increasingly powerful buff as it is filled with enemy bodies.
• Cannon Fodder:
  • Orcs and Goblins. Dem 'umies, stunties, and skinnies jes cawn't rilly kill us all, can dey?
  • Also Skaven, who really don't seem to care how many of them die in battle. In fact they are the only army who can fire on enemy units while one of their units (Skavenslaves to be precise) is in combat with an enemy unit.
  • To a lesser extent, lizardmen.
• Canon Discontinuity:
  • Many of the events from the Storm of Chaos Worldwide Campaign were downplayed or forgotten after its conclusion and many of the units introduced during it (like Valten) were no longer playable. Eventually, the events of Warhammer: The End Times officially made much of Storm of Chaos non-canon.
  • The events and lore detailed in the Nemesis Crown campaign were declared non-canon almost immediately after it ended.
• Can't Argue with Elves: While mostly operating on Screw You, Elves!, it is played straight with Magnus the Pious, who allowed the Elf wizard Teclis to teach humans to use magic relatively safely. Really, Teclis is the only Elf who doesn't treat humans like a pack of apes, and one of if not the most powerful magic-user in the entire setting. Only a colossal moron wouldn't take his advice, even if he's being condescending.
  • While normally a trope associated with elves, the Dwarfs of Warhammer aren't that far behind the Elves in the racist arrogance stakes. To Dwarfs, humans are physically puny, weak-willed, prone to falling to Chaos^note But don't ever even dare mention the Chaos Dwarfs within earshot of a Dwarf if you value your head, and incapable of producing anything better than a Dwarf could - our guns are shoddy, our castles are shoddy, and even the best human-made beer is glorified swill next to the creations of even the laziest Dwarfen brewer. The Khazalid word "Umgak", translated literally as "human made" is synonymous with "piece of garbage".
• Cast from Calories: The ogre's spellcasters use Gut Magic, which, well, works on what the ogre has eaten.
• Catapult to Glory: Goblin Doom Divers, particularly demented goblins who tie crude wings to their backs and get shot out of gian slingshots. Gameplay-wise they function as slightly weaker stone throwers, although a lot more accurate due to the, ahem, 'guided' nature of the projectile.
• Cat Folk: While they're never given central focus, mention is made at several points of a race of tiger-men native to the Kingdoms of Ind. They live in the depths of its thick rainforests and are viewed as noble if fickle beings by the people of Ind, who give them offerings of meat and rice and refuse to attack them even when attacked first. The tiger-men themselves are described as being equally likely to defend a village or caravan from attackers as they are to utterly destroy it themselves.
• Cerebro Electro: The Blue Wind of Magic represents inspiration, knowledge of the unknowable, and the heavens. The Celestial Magisters who specialize in it tend to be dreamy, scholarly Astrologers and theorists... who can call down lightning storms when provoked.
• Chariot Pulled by Cats:
  • High elves have chariots pulled by white lions.
  • The Dark Elves use chariots pulled by Cold Ones — essentially, vicious, scaly Jurassic Park-style raptors.
  • The Beastmen use chariots drawn by enormous mutated boars covered in bony spikes.
  • Among the Greenskins, Orcs use chariots drawn by normal (but still huge and foul-tempered) boars, while the Goblins use wolf-drawn chariots instead.
• Chef of Iron:
  • The Fighting Cocks, mercenary halflings that kick butt and boost other troops with good meals. They also fire a catapult full of soup.
  • Ogre Butchers are another significant example, the Lore of the Great Maw they use being channelled through some distinctly unwholesome ingredients. The spell Trollguts uses... well...
• The Chessmaster: Tzeentch. Emperor Karl Franz on a good day. Mannfred von Carstein probably belongs here too.
  • The Skaven Lords of Decay are a group of this. The best example is the Arabyan Crusades. The Lords of Decay sent Skaven to support Sultan Jaffar, spying on his enemies and assassinating them in exchange for the warpstone deposits across his land that's toxic to humans, but the backbone of Skaven society along with backstabbing and self-interest. They eventually convince him, by lying, that Estalia is planning to invade Araby and that he should strike first, which he does. Two-hundred years of warfare follow in which Bretonnia and the Empire get involved sending thousands of Knights to fight the Arabyans. The Skaven disappear once the tide turns against Jaffar, tens of thousands of humans are dead without one Skaven casualty, and they got all the warpstone and nobody ever found out they were involved. Stupid man-things.
• The Chosen One: The Everchosen are this as far as the Dark Gods of Chaos are concerned; and are almost always the greatest heroes of the Northern tribes; the sole exception being Archaon, who is neither Norse or Kurgan, but a former citizen of the Empire. The Everchosen also have an equal and opposite, who leads the realms of men against Chaos incursions. Magnus and Valten are the most recent.
• Chores Without Powers: The War God Khorne's domain has vast forges where enslaved sorcerers and cowards are forced to create magic weapons for his worthier champions to use.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Tzeentch, the Skaven, Tzeentch's worshipers, the Skaven, Dark Elves, Khorne's worshippers... and did we mention the Skaven?
  • It's not that the Khornate wanted to turn on you, it's more to do with how he already curb-stomped everyone else and needs to kill some more. Or that you were between him and someone he wanted to kill.
  • Outdoing even the Skaven are the Hobgoblins, larger and meaner versions of the Goblins who live on the Eastern Steppes. They are so prone to this that they have evolved a hard bony plate on their backs where a stab is most likely. In fact, they are considered so untrustworthy that even the cowardly, mean, spiteful goblins think that they backstab too much.
• Clever Crows: Tzeentch, the Chaos God of knowledge, magic, and intricate scheming, is sometimes referred to as the Raven God.
• Clingy Costume:
  • It's heavily implied this is what happens to Chaos Warriors once they take up Chaos Armor. However, Chaos Champions are shown as taking off their armour with little incident in the background, and one of Archaon's trials hinged upon him being able to change his gear.
  • Malekith's armor too, which he cannot survive without and ordered to be welded to his body.
• Cold Iron: Cold iron, defined as iron worked without the use of fire, can create weapons capable of harming spirits and other ethereal creatures.
• Colour-Coded Emotions: The four Chaos gods are the embodiments of a specific emotion felt by sentient creatures. Khorne (rage) is red, Tzeentch (hope) is blue, Slaanesh (desire) is either pink/purple, and Nurgle (despair) is green.
• Color-Coded Wizardry: The Imperial Colleges of Magic.
• Command & Conquer Economy: Chaos incursions never seem to have problems feeding their vast armies. This is partially explained by having part of their army not having a need for food, but the majority still needs to eat. There are always prisoners...
  • Bretonnia, despite being in a state of crushing poverty is still able to maintain a considerable military force. To give you an idea on the level of poverty; on a good day a whole Bretonnian village could trade their entire collected wealth for half of the smallest unit of currency in the Empire. Fluff would later justify this by noting that, while Bretonnian peasants are in perpetual poverty, they're that way because the landed nobility that owns them is filthy rich. Bretonnian nobles pay for the upkeep of temporary conscript levies from the peasantry and (by way of the feudal system) fund the nation's famed knights. Bretonnia also benefits from an alliance with the elves of Athel Loren and the patronage of the Goddess of Chivalry.
• Conlang: Lots of languages in the Warhammer universe have their own distinct alphabets and scripts especially Reikspiel, Kislevarin, and Khalizd. Bretonian, however, is just French.
• Conscription:
  • All Bretonnian infantry, with the notable exception of Grail Pilgrims, is conscripted en masse from the peasant population.
  • Skaven Clanrats are conscripts. Skavenslaves are Battle Thralls.
  • Northern peasants of the Empire are constantly conscripted to counteract the consistent threat of Norse warbands attacking those regions.
• Continuity Nod: The Warhammer world does not canonically take place in the same universe as Warhammer 40,000 (anymore), but it does make a few nods to the sci-fi mythos, such as the Old Ones' starships and warp gates and Greenskin spores coming down from space, and the Ogres' Great Maw is reminiscent of Tyranid biotech. It's easy to believe that Sigmar, founder of the Empire, is one of the two missing Primarchs. In fact, in the earliest editions, it was all but stated that the Warhammer world is part of the Warhammer 40,000 universe — or at least that the Chaos Wastes connected to the Warp. Characters of all species could run around with, among other things, bolters (machine gun rocket launchers) and lascannons, while Chaos Space Marines were an actual troop/leadership choice for mortal Chaos armies.
  • The Albion Dark Shadows campaign included a number of magical weapons. They are identical or almost identical in function or description, and most have the exact same stats or effects as their 40k counterparts:
    • Blade of Shining Death = Power Weapon.
    • Claw of Devastation = Lightning Claw.
    • Gauntlet of Power = Power Fist.
    • Armor of the Gods = Power Armour.
    • Divine Eye = Auspex.
    • Fusil of Conflagration = Flamer.
    • Mystic Shield of Light = Rosarius.
    • Hexstaff = Psy-staff.
  • The Liber Chaotica (published in 2003) has, as example of Daemon weapons, a chainsword.
  • The 7th Edition High Elves army book makes reference to the fact that occasionally their armies are put under the control of a less capable general, due to politics, but then comments that the Phoenix King keeps this from happening. This is a reference to the rule Intrigue at Court from the previous High Elf army book.
  • When Araloth travels through the Realm of Chaos, he is beckoned to leave the doomed Old World. In it he meets a figure that is heavily hinted to be Kaidor Draigo. However, given that he's explicitly traveling through a dimension where the laws of the universe are guidelines at best, this isn't hard proof that the two still share the same universe (especially since the Chaos Gods and their realm can plausibly transcend notions such as "consistency").
• Cool Versus Awesome: At its heart, the game is effectively a gigantic constant war between the Holy Roman Empire, demon-worshipping Vikings, a really messed-up take on Arthurian England (with a huge sider order of France), giant lion-riding Athenian "good" elves, Velociraptor-riding super-sadist Spartan-esque evil elves, insane nature-loving neutral elves and their living trees, drunken revenge-obsessed dwarfs, giant spider-loving Lower-Class Lout goblins and orcs, cannibalistic anarchist beastmen, Mayincatec dinosaur men riding bigger dinosaurs, the roving hordes of the undead (two varieties in fact — zombies and monsters led by classic Gothic horror vampires or skeleton legions led by Egyptian mummies) and psychotic Nazi ratmen with crazy wunderwaffe powered by Green Rocks!
• Corpse Land:
  • The island holding the Sword of Khaine is covered in the bodies and battle gear of the elves who've fought over it, and bodies thousands of years old can be seen fresh.
  • The semi-mythical mountain atop which Abhorash and those vampires who have drunk the blood of dragons (the only substance capable of sustaining a Vampire forever) wait to return to the land of the living is said to be surrounded by the bodies of those who have tried and failed to climb it.
  • More generally, Sylvania is full of the dead.
• Counterspell: Dispel dice are an example of this, being used solely to counter enemy spells. There are also various abilities and pieces of wargear that allow instant dispels (the ubiquitous Dispel Scroll), or increase the power of your dispel attempts, either through modifying the result or granting extra dispel dice.
• Crapsaccharine World: Take equal amounts of Arthurian legends, J.R.R. Tolkien and Ivanhoe, and add in twice the amount of Michael Moorcock, Monty Python and Age Of Enlightenment ideas of Medieval society, and you get Bretonnia, with brave knights, damsels and fabulous castles — with peasants bound to turf with ridiculous 90% taxes living in squalor, ignorance and oppression, and where boy children having magical tendencies are quickly eliminated. That, and the fact that their Lady of the Lake in this case is very like some kind of fucked up Lovecraftian horror that's so ancient that not even the elves know what she really is and worse is manipulating their entire society for reasons unknown. And those are actually one of the good guys (comparatively).
• Crapsack World: Take the worst aspects of Medieval European society: the paranoia, the hatred, and the fanatical religious devotion, and roll them into one. You'll get The Empire. Then add legions of Daemons, Beastmen, and other assorted nasties, and you'll be rooting for the imperialist, heretic-burning Empire in no time.
  • Even by Warhammer standards, Sylvania is described as an absolutely horrid place to find yourself. The woods and fens are haunted by bloodthirsty monsters and spectres, while vampires lord over (and prey on) a helpless populace who constantly live in fear for their lives. Going outside at night in winter is a death sentence, while doing so in summer is only slightly safer.
  • Sylvania has a Bretonnian brother named Mousillon, combining all the nastiness of Sylvania with near-endless swamps, giant man-eating frogs and the Bretonnian class system. In Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the "Mousillon Peasant" career is the only one that needs no explanation on how the hero became an adventurer; if you were born in that awful place and had a chance to escape, you grasped it with both hands and ran for the endzone. Anybody would choose any chance to leave.
  • There's also Blood Bowl, which is set in an Alternate Universe of Warhammer where a rugby/gridiron style game became Serious Business enough that every civilization in the world gave up on warfare to play it. Players dying on the pitch is not only common but expected, hooliganism causes hundreds of deaths among the spectators every game, referees have a Weird Trade Union that enforces standards and practices on how they are allowed to accept bribes, and chainsaws are a fan-favourite pitch obstacle. The rulebook points out that any world where this game has fans must be awful.
  • There's also Mordheim, which is the single shittiest place to be in the entire Old World. Basically, it used to be the Empire's chief Wretched Hive until in what the Sigmarite church calls an act of god, a meteorite made of pure wyrdstone smashed into the city and obliterated it. The surviving citizens promptly went mad from exposure and killed each other in a colossal orgy of horrific violence. The entire ruin is seeped in black magic and might now well be a human-hating Genius Loci. The streets are filled with blood, dismembered limbs, faeces, Meat Moss, signs of societal breakdown and complete insanity (like carriages where the horses lie skinned atop the carriage while the human riders' bodies sit in the girdles), and fragments of the comet - which is what everyone comes to the city for. Ghastly apparitions haunt the ruined houses, and daemons and Chaos ogres roam around butchering everyone they find. The few people who still live in Mordheim are all scarred in both body and mind and everyone kills them on sight, so they usually throw their lot in with daemons and vampires just to be able to survive. If the undead or the Chaos cults don't get you, then you'll probably be burned to death at the hands of the Sigmarite fanatics flocking to the city to purge it, eaten by the Skaven, or shanked by some lowlife mercenary looking to make a quick bit of coin.
• Creator Provincialism: Averted. While Albion, the Warhammer world stand-in for the British Isles was one of the first human nations depicted way back in 1st Edition (alongside Nippon), the army for it was named "Prince Wilhelm's Expedition" and featured knights and longbowmen - an early prototype for what would eventually become Bretonnia. Apart from the 2001 Dark Shadows campaign covered by White Dwarf that briefly brought Albion in the limelight, the islands are largely forgotten (in and out of lore) and play little part in the world's story. It's described as a mist-enshrouded land of eternal rain and monster-ridden forests and fens, where ornery druids and stone giants preside over ogham standing stones that turn the entire island into a sinkhole for magical energy. The people who live there have lived in iron age barbarism for thousands of years and have no idea of the world outside.
• Creepy Good: Blue-and-Orange Morality notwithstanding, the Lizardmen are determined to prevent Chaos from overwhelming the world (which is the closest thing this setting has to "good"), and they are also incredibly creepy. The Tomb Kings may also qualify, although they're less overtly opposed to Chaos.
• Creepy Souvenir: Many warriors keep parts of their enemies as trophies, including Gorthor, who wears a cloak made of the skins of shamans.
• Crown of Horns: Orcs often wear the very large horns of various creatures, usually to show that they've killed something bigger and meaner than themselves.
• Crown of Power:
  • The Crown of Domination is a sorcerous artifact that once belonged to Nagash, the greatest necromancer of all time. The last owner was an orc warboss named Azhag da Slaughterer, and while the crown tried to whisper strategies and tactics in his mind that gave him victory, orcs are very strong-willed, and sometimes he'd be seen arguing with the crown.
  • The Crown of Thorns is an item that lets the wearer regenerate wounds.
  • The Circlet of Iron is an ancient arcane relic discovered by Malekith in a ruined primeval city in the far north. It enhances the spellcasting abilities of the wearer but also appears to exert a corrupting influence over them, drawing them to the study of dark magic. It's implied that the circlet was one of the major factors contributing to Malekith's fall from grace.
• Curse of the Pharaoh: Subverted. Many sources describe the Tomb Kings tombs as cursed, but the "curse" that afflicts wannabe grave robbers is usually less "metaphysical malaise" and more "you just pissed off an undead immortal necromancer who will stop at nothing to get their stuff back."
• Cursed with Awesome: Aenarion's Curse makes Tyrion a strong fighter and Teclis a powerful wizard. And Tyrion utterly fixated with battle (literal and metaphorical) 24/7 and Teclis so sickly he needed magic potions from birth just to stay alive.
  • Some vampires view their condition as this. If you get turned into a Blood Dragon Vampire and are lucky/crazy/awesome enough to kill a dragon and drink its blood, you become permanently sated and super-powered.
• Cycle of Revenge: The Dwarfs will go to war over any perceived slights. And then they will go to war to avenge the deaths of everyone who died in the previous war. And then they will go to war to avenge the deaths of those who died in that war, and so on. They can keep an endless cycle of revenge going all by themselves without any intentional participation from the other party.

D

• Dangerously Garish Environment: Because Slaanesh is the god of hedonism, pain/pleasure and other excesses, his followers dress in bright, clashing colors both for their own enjoyment and their enemy's discomfort.
• Dark Fantasy: One of the Trope Codifiers. Warhammer may look like your typical bright and shiny fantasy world on the surface, but it's set in a universe where magic and religion are intrinsically tied to Chaos, not to mention that fighting it will simply empower its gods and all forms of life have also been corrupted by it. Even the entire universe was destroyed in the final confrontation between Order and Chaos, only being resurrected thanks to the efforts of Sigmar.
• Dark Is Not Evil: This is how the less insane undead commanders try to spin it. They're probably lying.
  • Grey and Amethyst Wizards, who use the magics of Shadows and Death (respectively), with Amethyst Wizards having some difficulty convincing fellow Imperial citizens that they aren't necromancers.
  • The Lizardmen, despite being lizard people and feeding people to giant snakes for their Aztec-inspired religion, aren't all that bad. They're essentially the guardians of the world and will often oppose the machinations of Chaos. Provided that they don't intrude on territory that is considered sacred to the Lizardmen, other races will be generally be left alone. The problem is that while they're not overtly hostile to other lifeforms, they don't seem to particularly care about them either. Their dedication to carrying out the enigmatic plans of the Old Ones often results in them doing things like re-arranging entire mountains because they're not in the right place. Said rearrangement resulted in a catastrophe that nearly destroyed the Dwarf race and shattered their empire into a handful of isolated kingdoms and strongholds.
  • Many, or at least some Vampires in the Warhammer world aren't evil at all. However, they tend not to be at the head of an army, and so don't play a prominent role outside of the novels. There is even a set of stories featuring a female vampire named Geneviève Dieudonné who is practically a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire... admittedly, the stories featuring her were created during the earlier editions of the setting and she is a "transcontinental cousin" of the same character from the other Kim Newman series, Anno Dracula and The Diogenes Club. In the later Von Carstein trilogy, the concept is revived with the Grand Master of the Order of the White Wolf, who is bitten by Vlad von Carstein yet manages to resist the temptations of vampirism. He ends up as the eternal guardian of Vlad's immortality-granting ring. It seems to be that, whilst being turned into a vampire does not alter one's perspective, the horrific hunger and starvation an unsated vampire experience eventually corrupts most vampires.
  • The Tomb Kings of Khemri are the mummified rulers of an empire that was slain and reanimated in an act of magical genocide. They just want to be left alone, and are canonically considered a "Neutral" army that can ally with anyone. However, they do launch massive invasions in order to get back their stuff that had been stolen over the years.
  • Morr may or may not be this, given that he takes care of souls in the afterlife, as opposed to eating them regardless of the host being dead or alive, like most active gods in the setting do on a routine basis.
• Death Seeker: Dwarf Slayers, who have suffered some extreme dishonour and now only wish to die gloriously. Problem is, being the stubborn little bastards that they are, they have a hard time actually getting killed.
• Death World: So, so many examples:
  • The Lustrian jungles are full of dinosaurs, Man Eating Plants, tiny frogs with ludicrously potent venom and a civilization of Mayincatec Lizard Folk who don`t appreciate visitors. According to the fluff, the Lizardmen planted the jungles as a defence to keep out invaders
  • Athel Loren, home forest of the Wood Elves, is full of human-hating Dryads, xenophobic, cannibalistic Wood Elves and all kinds of monsters, most of which are allied with the Wood Elves. And the kicker?. The entire forest is a human-hating Genius Loci.
  • Mousillon, a province of Bretonnia that embodies Swamps Are Evil. The human inhabitants are all inbred criminals or grave robbers, the main industries are frog and snail catching, half the houses are abandoned and all are rotted, a type of weed grows that mimics a path and falls through into the water, the previous lord was violently insane and probably not human, giant frogs roam the streets at night, zombies are rampant... It makes sense that Bretonnia has mostly given up on the place, establishing a series of forts to make sure nothing comes out.
  • Sylvania, the homeland of the Vampire Counts, is ruled by vampires and thus choked with wandering undead. The few humans huddle up in villages, doors bolted and hung with charms and prayers to numerous gods. The only reason they stay is that the forests surrounding it are somehow even worse.
  • The Empire gets in on the act. The Great Woods are full of Forest Goblins, Giant Spiders and Beastmen, the northern provinces are full of ghouls, Chaos daemons and direwolves, the sewers are infested by Skaven, mutants and Chaos cultists...
  • Anywhere corrupted by Chaos is guaranteed to become this, full of mutations, demons, Warriors of Chaos and so on.
  • Nehekara, even more so than anywhere else in the setting. Nothing lives there except undead, because the war with Nagash poisoned the waters and reduced it to nothing but sand and dust.
  • The continent of Naggaroth, homeland of the Dark Elves, is primarily a frigid wasteland with sparse natural resources, a host of monstrous wildlife and is the home of one of the most hostile civilizations on the planet. That's not even mentioning the Underworld Sea, a vast maze of waterlogged tunnels beneath Naggaroth. It's lightless, easy to get lost in, hard to travel through and infested with monsters.
• Decade Dissonance: The Kingdom of Bretonnia, a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Arthurian England and Medieval France, rife with knights and peasant longbow men and run by a feudal system. It sits right next door to the Empire of Man, which has Renaissance era level technology going into the early Industrial Period level with elements of Steampunk thrown in for good measure as well, including steam powered tanks! Bretonnia manages to resist being forcibly assimilated into the Empire, most likely due to the mountain range that makes travel between the two difficult, and the magic granted by a local god, the "Lady of the Lake" making their elite upper class Immune to Bullets. However, it's a little more complicated than that, with the local baby-eating wood elves being the most favorable candidate to be both granting them this power, and keeping the nation in its Medieval Stasis, simply to shield themselves from the outside world...
  • Another possible reason that Bretonnia has maintained its independence is its great success in domesticating the flocks of pegasi that live in their mountains resulting in the rise of the Pegasus Knight. Pegasi exist in the Empire too, but mostly as very rare possessions of aristocrats, giving Bretonnia effective dominance of the air. The Royal Air Force — Bretonnian Pegasus Knights — are easily the most effective aerial troops in the game.
• Deconstructive Parody: The entire Warhammer setting is one for the High Fantasy genre codified by The Lord of the Rings, via Dark Fantasy and copious amounts of gallow's humour.
  • Bretonnia is one for Arthurian legend and Chivalric Romance. Bretonnian nobility enjoy almost complete infallibility within their own lands: they can take up to 90% of a peasant's crops and order their entire families killed for just about any reason. Social mobility is practically impossible because any peasant who becomes a noble will have their bloodline die out immediately as their children will be peasants by default, and it's implied that the three times this happened in the kingdom's history, the nobles got these peasants killed in Uriah Gambits to not give the commoners ideas above their station. Guns are banned in Bretonnia even though they are commonplace across the border in the Empire because the Bretonnian nobility are quite uneasy about the peasants they mistreat getting access to point-and-blam weapons that can kill armoured knights easily. Bretonnian society within the Empire is the butt of every joke, even though the Empire is hardly a paragon of social progress and humanistic equality itself. Bretonnian peasants are extremely stupid and obviously inbred, often having walleyes and hunchbacks and just being really hoarking ugly. Meanwhile Bretonnian nobles often make the elves look like homely hobgoblins... but that's because many of them have some elven blood floating around in them anyway. And course, it's all but outright stated that they are just the patsies for the elves of Athel Loren, who want a primitive buffer state to protect the forests from outside invasions.
  • Dwarfs are so stubborn and honour-obsessed that they subscribe to Honor Before Reason and Revenge Before Reason. Any time somebody wrongs, harms, kills or even just insults a Dwarf, the Dwarfs write it down in blood in a big book of grudges which must be paid back, in more blood. Any Dwarfs die trying to right these grudges are put down as separate grudges to be paid back later. Dwarfs never forgive or forget a grudge, no matter how trivial or long ago, and should you die before the Dwarfs can come and collect, well they'll just take it out on your descendants instead. The result is Dwarfs are basically locked in Forever War with nearly everybody when they have enough trouble dealing with the Skaven and Greenskins battering down the doors of their isolated strongholds. As a result, the Dwarfs are going to die out eventually, it's only a matter of time.
  • The High Elves parody and deconstruct a good number of the elvish tropes and stereotypes established by Tolkien in his writings. The Asur are a Long-Lived and Inhumanly Beautiful people who are incredibly competent at practically everything they try from warfare land and naval to magic and the arts, with a competent government headed by a wise and politically savvy king backed by three of the most powerful individuals in the world. Because of this, they're a race of petty egomaniacs who treat all the other races as stupid barbarians with few intellectual and even fewer moral merits. When the Dark Elves pulled off a False Flag Operation against the Dwarfs, the then-Phoenix King Caledor II not only was too proud to explain himself to the Dwarf ambassador but shaved the poor bugger's beard when he got on his nerves. The Dwarfs reacted poorly. The ensuing War of the Beard, uh, War of Vengeance was the most brutal the Warhammer world had ever seen and cost the High Elves most of their leadership (Caledor II himself was slain), most of their military strength, most of their greatest heroes, most of their transcontinental empire, and an irreplaceable magical artefact or three. In the modern day they aren't much better; none of the elven princes really get along, Ulthuani politics is a Decadent Court that hamstrings the efforts of the competent people who are supposed to be in charge, their constant condescension to other races pisses off all their potential allies, High Elven agents and merchants travelling in the Old World alone or at least without sufficient guard are prone to receiving the English Bob treatment - being battered and lynched by superstitious racists who get tired of their snobbery, and the Phoenix King's three talented leaders are always too busy putting out fires at home or starting various drama between themselves to do much to help him lead. This all means that despite their Elite Army and strong navy and massive economy and access to talented wizards, majestic war beasts and mighty dragons, the High Elves are more often than not a non-factor to the wider world. In fact they're even more of a race in terminal decline than the Dwarfs are, because they will not stop squabbling amongst themselves for long enough to fix any of their myriad problems, defeat their enemies (which by this point is most of the world) or even just repopulate their race. They're sliding inevitably towards extinction and nobody really cares to help them reverse that trend. And to add insult to injury, the Wood Elves and Dark Elves despite having their own problems are nevertheless thriving while Ulthuan slowly becomes more and more like a glorified tomb.
  • Greenskins put a spin on Our Orcs Are Different. Rather than being a Proud Warrior Race based on the Mongols or the Vikings, they're basically just big, green British football hooligans. Greenskins don't actually have any good reason to war with other races. They don't want your land, don't want your riches, don't want the glory of conquering you, and don't think you are a threat they need to pre-emptively defend themselves against. Hell, they don't even fight you necessarily because they dislike you in particular. It's that they literally need to fight somebody on a regular basis. It's in their biology. Deprived of a good scrap, they will actually start withering away down to nothing - they will shrink in size, their muscles will waste away, and they'll even get beer bellies. They will even fight each other lacking any other opponent.
• Deity of Human Origin: At the end of his reign, Sigmar wandered away into the mountains to the east and was never seen again. He became King in the Mountain for the people of the Empire, and it is possible he actually did ascend to divinity, and it turns out he really did. It is also heavily implied that Myrmidia and Ranald were also once mortals.
• Destroyer Deity: The elvish War God Kaela Mensha Khaine is venerated by the High Elves and the Dark Elves, but for differing reasons. The High Elves worship him as a God of War, but are also aware about how destruction can be indiscriminate, tempering their reverence. The Dark Elves, on the other hand, openly worship him as a God of Murder, a living representation of their Social Darwinism.
• Deliberately Painful Clothing: Followers of Slaanesh wears these, though it's less repentance and more getting a kick from the sensations, as well as powering their god.
• Demonic Invaders: Chaos entered the Old World through portals at the north and south poles, pouring into the Old World.
• Depending on the Artist: The Crown of Sorcery is an Iconic Item for Nagash (and Azhag the Slaughterer while Nagash was dead) which looks completely different in every depiction.
• Detrimental Determination:
  • Malekith became angrily jealous over being passed over as the Phoenix King of Ulthuan in favor of Bel Shanaar as he believed it was his due to his birthright and his father, Aenarion being the first Phoenix King, and plotted to take over the throne with the aid of his wicked and devious mother, Morathi. Despite his determination, Malekith was very easily susceptible to temptation, which Morathi was all too willing to exploit, resulting in Malekith becoming increasingly evil and warmongering, and while he did get to kill Bel Shanaar, his attempt to prove himself as the Phoenix King backfired horribly, getting scorched and mutilated as a result. His drive to become the ruler of the High Elves resulted in Ulthuan becoming fractured by a civil war, ending with Malekith taking his followers and Morathi to the west, colonizing Naggaroth, and establishing the Dark Elves. Despite his bloodthirsty and tyrannical nature, Malekith does internally admit that his desire for upholding Aenarion's legacy did too much damage, but feels that he's come too far.
  • Zig-Zagged with Settra the Imperishable of Nehekhara. Being an ardent believer of his culture's gods, Settra went as far as to sacrifice his two sons in exchange for rain and bountiful crops for his people. This was reciprocated positively and Settra would unify Nehekhara's people to create a large nation with him as its king. His determination for providing for his people made him very arrogant and ruthless, but this, alongside his charisma and really proving his worth made him loved by his people. He died lamenting the fact that he couldn't be immortal, which was why he created the Mortuary Cult to find a way for immortality, and said cult would continue as long as it could due to Settra's insistency to finding a way to live forever. Unfortunately for Settra, immortality would be discovered by Nagash, who would go on to destroy Nehekhara and establish the Tomb Kings. Incidentally, Settra would come back, albeit skeletal and livid over the fact that he was an animated skeleton and that his kingdom was in ruins, immediately setting forth plans to rebuild his lands.
  • Dwarfs are basically unable to act in any other way. Any promise a dwarf makes must be fulfilled regardless of the personal cost and if that´s not possible for any reason that everyone of any other race would consider a completely valid justification, the involved dwarfs will feel a shame so unbearable that it will drive them to abandon everything and find a death in battle as soon as possible. And to make things worse, they also consider that any insult -real or imagined- against their kin must be avenged even if that requires offending, threatening or attacking an ally, or that thousands of dwarf lives will be lost trying to retake an impregnable fortress.. which means thousands of new grudges will be created and will need to be avenged too no matter the cost.
• Disciplines of Magic:
  • Magic, which originated from the realm of Chaos, enters the physical world as eight distinct, colored Winds — Light, focused on manipulating literal light and purging evil beings; the Heavens, focused on astrology and fortune-telling, as well as weather, electricity and the occasional meteorite; Metal, generally focusing on alchemy; Life, a mostly passive, healing-focused lore with a number of more offensive spells that directly manipulate plants; Beasts, which controls animals and makes allies stronger and more aggressive; Fire, very direct pyromancy; Shadow, focused on illusions and obfuscation; and Death, which manipulates entropy and withers living things. Attunement to a Wind strictly limits a wizard's ability to access other Winds and prevents the use of High Magic, which weaves the Winds into a more harmonious whole, and Dark Magic, which wields them as a raw, unshaped mass still tainted with Chaos. This can be highly dangerous for creatures not attuned to magic, however, hence why the Elves who funded the Imperial Colleges of Magic made sure that they would each focus on only one discipline, as human minds and souls couldn't handle the full force of high magic. Dark magic is a somewhat different story, as some humans can wield it — most forms of necromancy are described as dark magic with a particular focus on the Wind of Death.
  • Besides the main winds, which are accessible to more or less all factions, there are a number of lores and traditions unique to specific groups. These include the runic magic of the Dwarfs, which is less powerful but safer than other forms and binds magical effects into specific carved patterns; the Lores of the Big and Little Waaaagh!, used by Orc and Goblin shamans respectively by channeling the psychic power of greenskin hordes; the ice magic of Kislev, which can only be used by women; the Gut Magic of the Ogres, which works by its user eating something and casting a spell related to the thing they consumed; the Lore of the Wild, used by the Beastmen, which is essentially a corrupted form of the Lore of Beasts; and magic offered by deities, which are mutually exclusive because mortals, though they might pray to various gods according to the situation, can only draw magic from one patron god.
  • In The Old World, which is set before the Colleges of Magic were established to formalise magic study in human lands, each of the spell lores instead represents a particular approach to the study of magic. A practitioner of Battle Magic, Elementalism or Illusion will draw power from whichever Wind of Magic suits their purpose.
• Dismembering the Body: When the great necromancer Nagash was slain, the skaven not only dismembered him but burned his remains with warpfire and then sent bits of ash in separate packages for their agents in different parts of the world to scatter. And the bastard still came back.
• Diving Save: The "Look Out, Sir!" rule simulates this: If a character is embedded in a unit of the same type (infantry, cavalry, or the monstrous versions of either) with at least 5 models left (not including himself), a rank-and-file model may take any hit that would have struck that character on a roll of 2 or higher on a six-sided die. Independent characters can also receive a weaker version (requiring a roll of 4 or higher) if they're within 3 inches of a unit they could legally join but haven't. Since monsters and war-machines cannot form legal units, characters riding or using either cannot benefit from this rule. Thorgrim also cannot benefit from this rule since he's sitting on a giant throne carried by his bodyguards even if he has joined a unit; his very short bodyguards are presumably too short to jump up and block for him.
• Doesn't Like Guns:
  • Bretonnian Knights live by an all-encompassing code of chivalry that disdains all missile weapons as cowardly and ignoble. None of them would ever dream of using a crossbow, handgun or even a hand-drawn bow. What prevents this from being Honor Before Reason is a) they have no problem allowing their peasant retainers to bring longbows and trebuchets to provide fire support, and b) the magic of the Lady of the Lake makes them Immune to Bullets. And of course, the fact that the Bretonnian nobility want to keep point-and-kill boomsticks out of the hands of their oppressed peasant underlings has absolutely, positively nothing to do with it. The basic code of conduct for Bretonnian Knights in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay includes a ban on gunpowder weapons; in fact, none of the knightly careers give you proficiency in them. Not the case, however, with the Bretonnian Navy, as the Exact Words of the Bretonnian code of chivalry prevents the use of guns on Bretonnian soil; on the open seas, they toss cannonballs around like the Empire can (and are in fact the most powerful navy around thanks to the rows on rows of cannon).
  • Elves as a rule hold blackfire weapons in disdain, seeing them as fit only for clueless younger races who lack the proper skill to use bows and magic (like humans). Even the Dark Elves swear by their Automatic Crossbows, even though Empire handguns are definitely superior. It isn't all just racist arrogance though, as the High Elves and Wood Elves use bows that are often enchanted to provide similar or better performance to firearms, and that's not even going into enchanted arrows like hagbane, moonshot and trueflight. Also, there exist exceptions: Kerillian will make use of blackfire bombs (but she'll still bitch about having to need to), and you can use a firearm as an elf character living in the Empire in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, just don't expect to encounter any likeminded kin (and do expect more than a few raised eyebrows).
• Don't Go in the Woods: The forests of the Old World cover vast amounts of land, including most of the Empire. Virtually everything that lives in them is very, very bad. The outermost kilometre or two of any given forest is relatively safe, and people often hunt in them. However, venturing further in is stupid in the extreme. Athel Loren, the home of the Wood Elves, is a Genius Loci that may simply steer you out of it, or let the Wood Elves or tree spirits kill you. The Great Forests of the empire are home to Forest Goblins and Beastmen. Anyone brave — or stupid — enough to reach the deepest reaches of it will find themselves facing creatures like the Preyton, the Jabberslythe, and the Arachnarok Spider.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu:
  • A rare example of a heroic Cthulhu being taunted appeared in the Storm of Chaos campaign, where Teclis turned up and One-Hit Kill-ed the entire daemonic army. The Imperial Grand Theogonist then called him a Dirty Coward for using magic, so Teclis demostrated why one Can't Argue with Elves by pissing off and letting the Empire fight on alone.^note He knew they would win, but decided to let them do all the dying to teach them a lesson in manners.
  • A more literal example happened during The End Times between Settra and the newly-revived demigod Nagash. Having just crumped Settra's army and royal guard, Nagash offered the King of Khemri the position of Mortarch, one of his ten generals, among the undead legions. Settra spat in Nagash's face, resulting in the former's disintergration. Knowing that Settra could not be killed, Nagash left him as a head in the sand, positioned just so that he can see his kingdom. Nagash then promptly went godzilla on the whole of Khemri, reducing it to ruin in a matter of hours. Settra was left in the sand, none of his former allies even daring to go near his head for fear of Nagash's wrath.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: Ohsomuch. The Doomwheel, the Anvil of Doom, Doomseekers, the Doom Diver, the Ziggurat of Doom...
• Draconic Humanoid: The Dragon Ogres are an inversion of the usual fusion, since they're an ogre torso on a dragon's lower body (although apparently not related to either), and are among the most powerful and ancient of all creatures.
• Dramatic Irony: The Old World has its various materials describe Duke Maldred of Mousillon as a charismatic Lord leading his dukedom to greatness. As materials of the previous editions show, Maldred was eventually revealed as a bloodthirsty madman who plunged his Dukedom into such a dark place it never recovered in an affair that would be known as "the false Grail".
• The Dreaded:
  • Gorthor, the infamous Beastman shaman whose very name means "Cruel" in Bray-Tongue. While most Beastmen wear Genuine Human Hide as a matter of course, Gorthor would openly wear the skins of his fellow shamans, where most Beastmen would not even dare to touch a shaman.
  • Nagash the Undying, the guy who invented necromancy. He once tried to conquer the entire world and turn every living thing into his undead servants, and he was so terrifying that for the only instance in their entire history, the entire Skaven race united in trying to stop him.
  • Alith Anar, the Shadow-King of Nagarythe. It really means something to terrify an entire race of xenophobic sociopaths, but Anar manages by skinning his Dark Elf victims alive, stringing them up on trees and kidnapping Dark Elf children to raise them as Shadow Warriors. He once crucified hundreds of Dark Elves and nailed them to a cliff as a warning. But then again it's kinda hard to fault him.
• Droit du Seigneur: Implied to exist in various forms, but there is one heartwarming subversion. Duke Laurent of Artois requires all brides in his domain to spend their wedding night in his bedchamber along with their husbands while the Duke sleeps outside the door, so they can have the duchy's biggest and most comfortable bed in complete privacy for their wedding night.
• Drunk on the Dark Side:
  • The Skaven, especially with warpstone involved. Grey Seers are quite wary of the megalomania (which is extreme even by skaven standards) that comes with the power it gives.
  • The more a character gets involved with the dark forces of Chaos, the more they tend to get addicted to those same forces. At the most extreme, The Dark Side Will Make You Forget as the person becomes little more than a conduit for the gods' power.
• The Dung Ages: If you're poor, this is your lifestyle.
  • Averted in earlier editions of Bretonnia: peasants who proved themselves had the chance of being upgraded to nobility. Now they just get a fat hog and some jewels (which likely won't last long anyhow). It's still possible for a Bretonnian peasant to be knighted for acts of great nobility, such as saving a Damsel in Distress. Not that it happens often — just three times so far since the founding of Bretonnia over 1500 years ago. Bretonnian laws of nobility define a noble as anyone whose ancestors on both sides are nobles for the last two generations. Anyone else is a peasant. A peasant may be knighted, but his line will die out immediately since his children will, by definition, be peasants. The only exception is if a peasant somehow becomes a Grail Knight, since Grail Knights are instantly considered royalty and can make up laws as they please and thus declare their children nobility.
  • Best demonstrated in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, where player characters will be utterly brassic most of their adventuring careers and even relatively wealthy noble types will be scrambling for coin. Case in point, in the 2nd Edition of the game, the most expensive item in the entire game is a Best craftsmanship galleon worth 120,000 gold pieces; in normal games, having 50 gold at any point is a remarkable achievement. It's practically a Take That, Audience!

E

• Early-Installment Weirdness: You could practically make a page to this trope, but, in general, the setting as it is known today didn't take shape until around 4th and 5th edition; the first bones started forming in 2nd edition, solidified in 3rd, but 4th created much that is now the canon. And even then, there were a few things that changed notably between 5th and 6th edition.
  • The very first edition of the game divided humans into four broad factions; the "Men of the West", a generically European force; the "Men of the North", the Horny Vikings Norse; the "Men of the South", the denizens of Araby; and the "Men of the Orient", the knock-off Japan of Nippon (with Cathay, Warhammer's China, as an afterthought). The Men of the West wouldn't be fleshed out into the separate peoples of the Old World until 3rd edition.
  • Bretonnia debuted in 3rd edition with lore suggesting it was based on France just before the French Revolution, with impoverished, much-abused peasantry and decadent, obscenely hedonistic nobles heavily implied to be devoted to Slaanesh. In 5th edition, it became much Lighter and Softer and was more or less a generic "Arthurian Knights" flavored region. 6th edition took the 5e version and made it Darker and Edgier, giving the nobles back some of their corruption, making the peasants more oppresed, and stratifying the social hierarchy much further.
  • Chaos dwarfs didn't appear until 3rd edition, when they were a minor ally troop that Chaos armies could take. Their forces included bazooka & mortar teams, and war-machines pushed by boar-centaurs. They got their first (and only) dedicated army book in 4th edition, which created everything now iconic about the race — their embrace of sorcery, their pseudo-Babylonian aesthetic, their extensive arsenal of advanced war-machines, their extensive use of orc & goblin slaves and hobgoblin vassals, their sacred bull-centaurs, etc. After 4th edition, they faded into the background and were reduced to mere background lore, save for some "pseudo-canon" updates.
  • The Warhammer world originally included half-orcs, who could act as mercenaries for human, orc and Chaos armies, and gnomes, who were an ally to the human and dwarf armies.
  • In 3rd edition, the Empire army was heavily defined by its ability to field mercenaries, which included dwarves, gnomes, halflings, half-orcs, ogres, and human mercenary regiments from Kislev, Tilea and Estalia. In 4th edition, this was downgraded to just including dwarfs, halflings, ogres and Kislevite units — the Kislev special character, Tzarina Katarin, even debuted in the 4e Empire army book. From 5e onwards, the Empire lost all of its non-human and allied nation units.
  • 3rd edition introduced two Human Subspecies native to Lustria; the Amazons and the Pygmies. The former have faded into the background while still showing up in more small scale versions of the lore like Mordheim or Blood Bowl — the latter have been deliberately and justifiably expunged from canon.
  • The Slann debuted in 2nd edition as a race of Frog Men that originated on another world and descended to the Warhammer world in its ancient past. Conquering much of the world, they crushed the native empire of the lizardmen and reduced it to scattered tribes, only to then fall into barbarism and forget much of their scientific and arcane powers. 3rd edition expanded on this lore, allowing players to field Slann armies that contained a mixture of Slann, lizardmen vassals, pygmy allies, and units of lobotomized, drug-addled, castrated human slave-soldiers. 5th edition completely erased the original lore for both the Slann and the Lizardmen, instead making them different castes in a species of biological robots created by a forgotten race of Precursors known as the Old Ones.
  • The Slann character Lord Mazdamundi debuted in 3rd edition as the supreme Emperor of the Slann. In 5th edition, he was reworked into "just" a Slann special character.
  • The Undead originally debuted as a super-broad "kitchen sink" faction, similar to Chaos. From 4th edition, they were broken up into the Vampire Counts and subsequently the Tomb Kings in 6th edition.
  • The Norscans were originally their own mini-army, allied to but distinct from the forces of Chaos.
• Easy Logistics: All factions, more or less, but the Warriors of Chaos take the cake. Somehow a frigid, mountainous wasteland crawling with literal demons and a rape-and-pillage-based economy manages to not only raise and feed huge Norscan armies, but equip them with absurd amounts of armor plate and battleaxes the size of a filing cabinet.
• Eating the Enemy: One of the options for a giant's grab attack is to simply eat the target.
• Elective Monarchy: With only a few exceptions, most of the monarchies are elective in some way.
  • After their first Emperor ascended to godhood, leaving no heir, it was decided that the Empire of Man would elect their Emperors from then on. While this was nominally to choose the most capable among them to lead, this is not always the case. Since the Church of Sigmar (which holds a total of three votes) always votes for the Reikland elector, Reikland automatically has four votes (sometimes five, since the Moot always votes for the son of the previous Emperor). Meanwhile, the Ar-Ulric (head of the cult of Ulric) always votes for the Middenland one, so the Middenland elector automatically has two; unsurprisingly, the two cults don't usually get along. Bribery and politicking are far from uncommon during an election, and the occasional military enticement isn't unheard of either.
  • The High Elves elect their Phoenix Kings in a similar fashion, although unlike the Empire they have a series of rules, both spoken and unspoken, regarding the process, and enough hindsight to understand certain lines they never cross (killing ones' rivals being the biggest one). There is also a hereditary Everqueen, who is required by law to marry the Phoenix King (though once that's done and the next Everqueen has been begotten, they can and will take other consorts).
  • Bretonnia has a system comparable to the Empire, where the Dukes elect the King (also called the Royarch) from among themselves, but there is a prerequisite that the King must be a Grail Knight. In the event that the previous King's son is already a Grail Knight, though, he will almost certainly be chosen. Granted, the final word is with the Fay Enchantress (the head of the Bretonnian religion), and she is fully within her right to refuse the nominee, in which case another election has to be held.
  • The Dwarfs are this combined with a bit of Asskicking Leads to Leadership. The Karaz Ankor of the Dwarfs is divided into numerous holds ruled by hereditary kings, who in turn owe allegiance to the High King. Upon the High King's death, all the noble clans gather in Karaz-a-Karak, where any of the hopefuls compete for the title (mostly by performing various great deeds), after which a Council of Elders select the High King.
• Elemental Embodiment: Incarnate elementals are living embodiments of one of the winds of magic, and are typically created or summoned by a wizard attuned to that wind.
  • Incarnate elementals of Aqshy, the Wind of Fire, also known as Charred Ones, Black Harvestmen and Jack O’Cinders, are towering figures of flame and smoldering ash. They embody the destructive and ferocious nature of their wind, and are often summoned as engines of war.
  • Incarnate elementals of Ghur, the Wind of Beasts, also known as Bloody Hidesmen, Horned Men and Faceless Hunters, are towering figures of muscle and sinew with horned or antlered skulls for heads. They are living embodiments of predatory might and the fury of the wild, and are called upon to defend the wildlands or to hunt down powerful foes.
  • Incarnate elementals of Shyish, the Wind of Death, take the form of enormous serpents with two long necks topped by draconic heads, bound together by a chain and an hourglass said to contain a king's powdered bones. As living embodiments of entropy and death, any beings in their proximity begin to wither and die.
• Elemental Personalities:
  • Wielders of the Lore of Fire, such as Imperial Bright Wizards, elven Dragon Mages and ogre Firebellies, are typically characterized as impulsive, hot-headed, passionate, and prone to sudden mood swings.
  • The Ice Witches of Kislev are typically characterized as being cold, unapproachable and controlling.
  • As described in the Storm of Magic supplement, fire dragons are impatient, hot-tempered and prone to violent rages, frost dragons are patient and slow to anger, and storm dragons are excitable, flighty and whimsical.
• Elemental Powers: The eight winds of magic. Kislev also has ice magic.
  • The white wind, Hysh.
  • The yellow wind, Chamon.
  • The green wind, Ghyran.
  • The blue wind, Azyr.
  • The grey wind, Ulgu.
  • The purple wind, Shyish.
  • The red wind, Aqshy.
  • The brown wind, Ghur.
  • And lastly, the black wind, Dhar.
• Elves vs. Dwarves: In a past age, the High Elves and the Dwarfs waged a brutal war known to the former as the War of the Beard and to the latter as the War of Vengeance. While the Dwarfs technically won the war by slaying Caledor II (and are very insistent on reminding every elf they encounter of that fact), it was in reality a Pyrrhic Victory that shattered both their empires and left an entire generation of both races' greatest heroes slain. While no longer in direct conflict, the two races still harbour much animosity over the war and avoid each others' affairs as best possible, restricting their distaste for each other largely to diplomatic barbs. To the Dwarfs, the Elves are softer than even humans as well as arrogant bastards, showing no respect for superior Dawi craftsmanship and engineering, and opting to use... [shudder] magic; even the Khazalid word for "untrustworthy" means "like an elf". To the Elves, Dwarfs are reactionary, crude, petty and need to mind their betters.
• The Empire: Yeah, the good guys. Usually. Based on the Holy Roman Empire; as a result, it's surprisingly democratic, with nobles known as Elector Counts voting for their emperor, again, a practice swiped from the Holy Roman Empire. The upper classes are largely corrupt, the church is an extremist military force, though the latter is justified, given the sheer evil of everywhere else. Suprisingly, the actual monarch (see below) is both decent and competent. They could arguably qualify as more of The Federation.
• The Emperor: The Emperor is an elected official (though elected by the nobility, and not the populace), the current one a guy named Karl Franz (who is also the reigning prince of one of the constituents of the Empire). He's what you could call an Emperor Action.Although it's possible he had the incarnation of his own god killed to preserve his position and maintain order. But then, nobody's perfect.
• Eminently Enigmatic Race: The Old Ones are largely a mystery, even in comparison to their counterparts in 40K; a race of legendary Precursors responsible for creating the Lizardmen and a vast swathe of the other main races in the setting, almost nothing is known of their culture, why they terraformed the world, or even their basic biology: apart from a few unconfirmed cases, they're extinct, and the few immortal witnesses to their arrival are either dead or not talking. All that's known is that they might be as reptilian as the Lizardmen themselves, and that's it.
• Emotion Eater: Chaos mainly; the lore of Slaanesh focuses on this and messing with leadership.
• Enchanted Forest:
  • The Wood Elves reside in Athel Loren, a magical forest filled with forest spirits, from cruel dryads and vicious fairies to mighty treemen and forest dragons. Magic is thick in Athel Loren, and time flows oddly — if the Wood Elves don't kill trespassers, then they'll likely end up getting lost in the forest for days and come out like it's been years. The forest is divided in several realms, many with their own temporal peculiarities and takes on the trope: Modryn’s forests are shrouded in eternal night, the woods of Atylwyth are always locked in winter, and it is always summer daytime in the glades of Arranoc. The forest itself is implied to be a Genius Loci, granted sapience by the extreme levels of magic that permeate it and aware of what goes on beneath its eaves.
  • Laurelorn Forest, within the Empire, is home to a secondary population of wood elves known as the Eonir. It's not an otherworldly Genius Loci like Athel Loren is, but it's nonetheless a vast primordial forest cut through by few roads or towns — the Eonir make sure of that — and travelers permitted to go through it will find a twilit wilderness where the canopy blocks out most of the sun's light, animals seem far more intelligent and aware than they should, strange noises issue from the forest's depths and arm-like branches beckon to follow them away from the path.
  • One of the realms of the High Elven homeland, Avelorn, is thickly covered in ancient forests and home to a variety of magical creatures such as unicorns, spirits and treemen much like those found in Athel Loren. It's also noted to be the most innately magical of the High Elves' kingdoms. While the presence of High Elven civilization and it being the homeland of the Evergueen make it a much more benevolent take on this trope than the setting's other examples, Avelorn's forests are not without their dangers — the magic saturating them is more than capable of making incautious travelers lose their way, and likewise serves as a magnet for the monsters of the mountains looming over it; Avelorn is more prone to monster attacks than any other elven realms.
  • The 8th Edition rulebook includes rules for randomly determing what sort of unnatural woodland any given thicket of trees is, including copses where trees slumber fitfully and just at the edge of wakefulness or which are covered in colorful fungi with mind-clouding spores.
• Enemy Civil War: Many of the evil factions tend to fight among themselves. The Skaven in particular are known for this.
• Ethnic God: With the exception of the Chaos gods, which are worshipped by human and elf Chaos cultists, as well as the Norscans, Kurgans, Hung and Beastmen, most deities are specific to certain races and nations:
  • Among the human nations, the Kislevites worship the bear god Ursun, as well as the fire god Dazh and the thunder god Tur. Sigmar is the god of the Empire's state religion, as well as its deified founder, although the Imperials also worship other gods such as Ulric, Morr, and Myrmidia that they share with other human cultures; these each began as the patron deity of one of the Empire's founding tribes and, while most are now worshipped throughout it, Ulric is now worshipped almost entirely by the Middenlanders. The Bretonnians worship the Lady of the Lake.
  • The High Elves, Dark Elves and Wood Elves worship the same gods, but in different aspects: Khaine is a War God for the High Elves and a god of murder for the Dark Elves.
  • The Orcs and Goblins worship Gork, the god of brutality, and Mork, the god of cunning. The Forest Goblins additionally worship their own native deity, the Spider God.
  • The Lizardmen revere their Old One progenitors, but the cult of the snake god Sotek has in recent centuries become their leading faith.
  • The Skaven worship the Great Horned Rat, which they view as their creator and special patron.
• Even Evil Has Standards: After the Nehekharan Empire was completely destroyed and transformed into the Land of the Dead by Nagash, the very first Necromancer, the Skaven Council of Thirteen got very uncomfortable at the prospect of being among the first victims of Nagash's upcoming plans for world domination. They made a unanimous vote in favor of assassinating Nagash which was done by freeing Alcadizaar, the last King of Nehehara, and giving him a blade made out of pure warpstone. During the battle, the Council joined their power into protecting Alcadizaar until he finally defeated Nagash, after which they disposed of the latter's remains in warp fires and set about extracting the warpstone in Cripple Peak for the next 1111 years. This is the only known instance in history where the entire Skaven race have ever completely united against an outside threat, and where the Council of Thirteen have ever aided a non-Skaven. Just to give you an idea of how terrified the Skaven were of Nagash.
• Everything Trying to Kill You:
  • Lustria. Poisonous plants (soul-eating properties optional) carnivorous animals lurking around every corner, tiny tree frogs that can kill a Daemon with their poison, and to top it all off, a race of killer dinosaur-men with a ruthless streak a mile wide. In fact, a Chameleon Skink may very well be lurking right above your head right now...
  • Honestly, this is true for everywhere, not just Lustria. Take the lands of the Empire, for example. You might get killed by a Beast Man raiding party, torn apart by Orcs, have your village and family destroyed by a Chaos incursion, or you may be killed by wildlife on any given day. That, and your owned damned country might be trying to kill you because they have the slightest feeling that you are a follower of Chaos. And it is like this anywhere on the globe, even for the "evil" factions. The only reason they haven't all been killed is because they're just so damned good at killing as well, meaning you get stuck in an endless cycle. See Adventure-Friendly World above.
  • The great forest of Athel Loren is a human-hating Genius Loci that is gradually growing outwards despite the best efforts of the Wood Elves to curtail the spread with magical standing stones. There are even outcrops of Athel Loren on isolated islands on the other side of the world. Until the world was destroyed by Chaos, there was the terrifying possibility that Athel Loren eventually would have grown to encompass the entire planet.
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: Daemon Prince apotheosis. Vampirism too, especially the Strigoi bloodline.
• Evil Versus Evil: "Bad guy" factions are just as prone to fighting each other as they are to fighting less malevolent people. And don't think they don't fight among themselves, either.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Green Knight.
• Exact Words: In the novel Nagash the Sorcerer, the eponymous sorcerer promises his bride, Neferem, that no harm will come to her son, Sukhet, from this moment forward if she drinks an elixir recently made from the now-deceased Sukhet's blood.
• Exploited Immunity: An early edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle had the spell "Wind of Death", which hit every living thing on the table and (statistically speaking) could kill an average human unit 50% of the time. A player who had tougher troops (or better yet; undead troops, who would be immune) could easily find themselves better off than their opponent after using it.
• Extreme Omnivore: Virtually the only things Ogres don't think make for good eating are Gnoblars — and they'll eat them too, they just don't like it as much as better fare. Although the ears and nose are quite tasty. Coincidentally, ear and nose size are badges of status among Gnoblars. One Ogre mentioned in the Ogre Kingdoms army book was killed because it ate a loaded rifle, which went off in its stomach firing directly into its brain. There was also a whole horse skeleton found in his stomach.
• Extreme Speculative Stratification: Bretonnia (Arthurian Legend meets The Dung Ages) is essentially divided into two types of people: nobility and peasants (the other social classes of the actual Middle Ages presumably exist offscreen). The first are feudal overlords with their hands full dealing with orcs, Chaos and their neighbors encroaching, the second are illiterate, inbred Cannon Fodder whose only hope for social advancement is to join their lord's army as a bowman.
• Expy:
  • Sigmar is effectively "What if Charlemagne was Jesus and also Conan the Barbarian?"
  • Balthasar Gelt is also "What if Doctor Doom was a wizard?"
  • The High Elves have quite a few similarities with the Melniboneans from The Elric Saga. Being a race of elves/high men from a distant island with strange conical helmets and mighty dragons to back up their already-powerful armies. Even Teclis is much like Elric himself, being a genius but flawed sorcerer-prince who needs to imbibe magical potions to maintain his vigour and has little patience for his race's uppity and xenophobic attitudes. It's the Dark Elves who have the Melniboneans' sheer cruelty covered.
  • Malekith, as a powerful Magic Knight clad in scary black armour to conceal terrible burn injuries, is a dead ringer for Darth Vader.
  • Khorne was inspired heavily by the Conan the Barbarian version of the Celtic deity Crom, according to Bryan Ansel (co-founder of Games Workshop).
  • The Great Horned Rat worshipped by the Skaven is an expy of Satan.
  • The Chaos Dwarfs are ones for Isengard, and the Pan Tang. And the Black Orcs (created by the Chaos Dwarfs) are basically Uruk-Hai.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: The further north you go, the colder and more Chaos-y it gets. The Chaos Warriors hail from the grim northern wastes and beyond that is the Realm of Chaos, near the Warhammer world's north pole (with a matching, if seldom-depicted, counterpart at the south pole).

F

• The Fair Folk:
  • The Fay Enchantress (a servant of the Lady of the Lake) takes all Bretonnian children with magical talent away to be trained. This is considered a great honor. The girls? They tend to turn up about ten years later, acting very different but well trained in using this power. The boys? Oh, they tend to not ever be seen again.
  • The Wood Elves of Athel Loren (who may be the power behind the Lady) are known to flat-out abduct children. According to a Wood Elves army book, "Boy children taken from the lands around the forest, destined never to grow old, joyfully serve their Elven masters." What actually goes on is left to the imagination.
• Fantastic Fallout: A Chaos Gate situated at the north pole has twisted the region around it into a bitterly-cold Chaos-tainted wasteland where the only mortal inhabitants are frenzied Chaos followers. Elsewhere around the world, the reality-warping effects of magic use often leave long-lasting effects upon the land.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • The Empire is an expy of the Holy Roman Empire. It's a multi-state polity of bickering fiefdoms ruled by an elected Emperor, the official language is called Reikspeil, and everyone has names like Volkmar, Dietrich, Siegbert and Landolf.
  • Bretonnia is high medieval France with a lot of references and expies to Arthurian England (and also more than a few to Monty Python and the Holy Grail).
  • The High Elves are a nice mix of the ancient Greeks (especially the cultured and educated but still very badass Athens) and the Byzantines with Tolkien's Quendi and the Noldor elves. You can also make the case that as a thalassocratic island nation with a diminished intercontinental empire who nevertheless remain a major player in world affairs because of their advanced military and great cultural influence, the Asur are this world's stand-in for the post-colonial United Kingdom.
  • Conversely the Dark Elves are a blend of medieval Scandinavia, the Spartans, the Melniboneans and generally the more cruel and depraved side of ancient antiquity.
  • The Wood Elves combine the rustic and primitive Silvan elves of Tolkien's work with iron age Celts.
  • The Lizardmen are one for the Pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas — the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Inca and the Olmecs.
  • Sylvania is a fantasy version of ancient Romania under Vlad the Impaler.
  • Nehekhara was a fantasy version of Ancient Egypt, even remaining so in undeath as the Tomb Kings. They built pyramids, mummified their dead, worshipped humanoid gods with bestial heads, etc. Pretty easy one to get.
  • The Norscans are a hodgepodge of Germanic, Norse and Anglo-Saxon influences but with the badassery and barbarity dialed up to eleven. They rarely appear but the Kurgans are also daemonic Mongols and Turks with elements of Slavic pagans, and the Hung are daemonic Huns.
  • The Chaos Dwarfs have massive hats, twirled sausage-curl beards, giant ziggurats and worship a brutal bull god named Hashut, making them Babylonians. You can also make the case that the black and red colour scheme, heavily mechanized military and love for grossly oversized artillery, industrialized slave economy and supremacist ideology driving them to maliciously conquer and subjugate other peoples makes them the fantasy equivalent of Imperial Germany meets Nazi Germany.
  • Amusingly, Orcs are intended to be one for British Football Hooligans.
  • Ogres look like big, fat Mongols. But they also have a lot of neanderthal prehistora to them too.
  • Kislev is one for the Tsardom of Russia, the Kievan Rus, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Marienburg is the Netherlands during the Age of Exploration. Albion is pre-Roman Britain. Araby is the Islamic Middle East. Cathay is Imperial China, Nippon is feudal Japan, and Ind is fantastical India.
  • Unfortunately this doesn't always work to the game's benefit. Take the Pygmies, a race of short, dark-skinned hobbits from tropical Lustria who were based on the real-life pygmy peoples like the Twa and Mbuti. The model line was introduced in 3E and then quickly dropped by Games Workshop when they realized what an absolutely horrendous idea this was.
• Fantasy Counterpart Map: The setting's unnamed planet is essentially a distorted version of medieval and early modern world maps. The Old World is a scrunched version of Europe, with the Empire where Germany would be, Bretonnia in place of France, Kislev approximating Russia, Norsca as a horizontal version of Scandinavia, Estalia, Tilea and the Vaults in place of Spain, Italy and the Alps, and the mist-shrouded island of Albion a ways off the coast. Heading east, the Dark Lands take the place of the Central Asian deserts, the Mountains of Mourn are the Himalaya stand-ins, and Cathay, Ind and Nippon are China, India, and Japan (even using already-existing alternate names for their real-world counterparts). North of it all are steppes leading into the polar Chaos Wastes. Among the other continents, the Southlands, Naggaroth and Lustria have the approximate shapes and locations of Africa (complete with a northern desert home to a pseudo-Egyptian culture) and North and South America. The only area with no real equivalent is the floating island of Ulthuan, which instead serves as an Atlantis analogue.
• Fantasy Counterpart Religion: Lots of it.
  • The Cult of Sigmar is a Christianity analogue if Jesus was like Conan the Barbarian.
  • The Chaos Gods are like a more malevolent version of the Norse pantheon, including an Odin analogue being filled by Khorne promising a Warrior Heaven for his followers that fall in battle.
  • The Nehekharan Gods are obviously based on the Egyptian pantheon with its similarly named gods Ptra (Ra) and Basth (Bastet).
  • The Kislevite religion and the Great Orthodoxy are based on Slavic paganism and Orthodox Christianity.
  • The Lizardmen worship Sotek, a snake-like deity akin to the Aztecs' Quetzacoatl.
  • It's also implied that Warhammer's version of Islam is practiced by the nation of Araby, though other than being described as a monotheistic faith manifested by its chosen prophets, not much else is known about it. The equivalent of the Crusades happened when a daemon of Tzeentch (or the Skaven, depending on who you ask. Potentially even both.) tricked an Arabyan sultan into attacking the Empire, but little else is known about it.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Zig Zagged due to Schizo Tech.
  • The Empire, Dwarfs, and Ogres make extensive use of handguns, pistols, cannons, mortars, volley guns, and rockets. Oh, and steam-powered tanks and helicopters. They're pretty much objective improvements over their muscle-powered equivalents, mainly balanced out by cost. The other Old World human nations (besides Bretonnia, see below) are in the same boat as the Empire, though seemingly a bit behind — it's noted that the crossbow is still more common than the handgun in the Southern Realms, and their army list in both 5e and 6e restricts personal firearms to heroes and unit leaders. The Cathayans (this world's equivalent of the Imperial Chinese) also use a lot of gunpowder, and their weapons are generally more reliable and accurate than the Empire's.
  • Even more notable are the Skaven, who wield sniper rifles, flamethrowers, Ratling guns, laser cannons and even Wyrdstone-powered nukes. A lot of which hilariously backfires, and only makes up a tiny portion of a tiny portion of their massive forces anyway.
  • Ever since the Founder of the Kingdom Giles le Breton was killed by an ignoble arrow, by Bretonnian law, no Bretonnian knight may pick up and use a crossbow or a gun, seeing as guns fulfil a similar battlefield role and so are included in the law. Even hand-drawn bows are off-limits, restricted to hunting weapons, or a supporting weapon solely for the peasant rabble who accompany knights into battles. In fact, Bretonnian knights have magical protection from guns just because they hate them so much. And the fact that Bretonnian nobles don't want their peasants (who outnumber them significantly) to have access to easy-to-use, point-and-blam weapons that can easily kill an armoured knight has absolutely, positively nothing to do with it. The blessings from The Lady of the Lake who may be an elven goddess manipulating the Bretonnians also helps. That said, the Bretonnian navy use ships bristling with cannons - after all, the law prevents the use of firearms "on Bretonnian soil", and the port cities are petitioning an amendment to the law to allow their fortifications to use cannons.
  • The elves view firearms as crude, inelegant human and dwarfen tools, and refuse to use them themselves. While there's nothing in WFRP preventing an elven Player Character from using them, don't expect to find any like-minded kin out there (and expect more than a few raised eyebrows). As a rule, they make up for this through their exceptional speed, strength and reflexes — the magical bows of elven archers give them performance rivalling guns — and by also relying on their powerful magic and alliances with giant magical creatures. The Wood Elves live as essentially Iron Age tribes alongside their tree spirit allies, while the High and Dark Elves remain at a more generally fantasy-medieval technology level and use the same standard bows, crossbows, and ballistae that they've had for thousands of years.
  • The Beastmen make no use of any ranged weapon more complex than a throwing axe or javelin. They consider technology to be a repulsive blasphemy, lack the manual dexterity to operate any device more fiddly than an axe, and strongly prefer to tear enemies to pieces up close and personal. Despite being essentially just hordes of screaming savages in skins, they manage to remain a persistent and existential threat to the Empire's firearms-equipped troops due to their extensive use of guerrilla warfare and ambush tactics.
  • The Warriors of Chaos similarly view ranged warfare as cowardly, and relegate their armies' ranged element to axe- and javelin-throwing marauders; full Warriors either fight in melee or become sorcerers. In their case, they compensate for this by means of being blessed with unnaturally strong and resilient bodies by Chaos and being clad head to toe in armor so thick that it can shrug off small arms fire, allowing them to march right up to more range-heavy armies and start laying about with their heavy axes, swords and maces.
  • The Orcs, similarly to the Beastmen, are too primitive to operate complex technology and too savage to really want to fight from range anyway. They have some ranged elements, insofar as they use arrer boyz, err, archers and primitive bolt throwers, but the bulk of their armies consist of heavy infantry and cavalry.
  • The Lizardmen are primitive descendants of the servants of a bygone race of glorious starfarers. As such, their technological base is split between ancient technological wonders like crystal laser cannons which they can operate but not repair or reproduce, and stuff that they can make themselves, which is functionally at a Bronze Age level; their devotion to the bygone Old Ones means that they don't care to use any technology not developed and approved by their ancient masters. As such, a Lizardman army consists chiefly of ranks of reptilian warriors armed with stone and bronze clubs and spears, squads of skirmishers armed with javelins and blowpipes, and rare and powerful magitek weapons carried by dinosaurs (because the Lizardmen never discovered the wheel either).
  • The Tomb Kings are an undead faction whose members were last alive during the setting's Bronze Age. Prideful in the extreme, they refuse to use any tools or methods not invented by their old empires, and still march to war as armies of skeletal swordsmen and archers supported by animated statues. Through magical power and sheer numbers, they remain a threat (they can raise a lot of dead by virtue of being so old).
  • The Vampire Counts are an especially notable example because they lack any ranged weaponry whatsoever, even simple arrows or throwing spears. The reason for this is that the bulk of their armies consist of hordes of mindless animated corpses that can just about shamble towards warm meat and bite it, incorporeal spirits, and feral monsters. The vampire elites themselves prefer to rely on their inhuman durability and to use magic for killing things from range.
  • Back in the day there was a lot of bleed between Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, meaning that futuristic warriors could have beastman troops toting automatic rifles and riding motorbikes. And high fantasy armies could contain Powered Armored mooks with boltguns. This doesn't happen anymore, and fantasy is now kept well away from sci-fi antics.
• Fantasy Pantheon:
  • The Elven and the Empire both have pantheons composed of various gods. These gods tend to be anthropomorphic personifications of various concepts (Isha is the Elven goddess of life, Ulric is the Empire's god of winter, battle and wolves, Khaine is the Elven war god, etc.), although the Empire also has Sigmar who isn't really a personification of anything but a human who ascended to godhood (or a Physical God, or possibly a Folk Hero whose legend has gotten out of hand, depending on who you ask).
  • Then there's the four great Gods of Chaos created from the psyche of mortals: Khorne, god of rage and war; Slaanesh, god of lust and excess; Nurgle, god of disease and despair; and Tzeentch, god of schemes, magic, and ambition. It's worth mentioning that Khorne is sort of like an evil version of Odin, minus the magic. There were a number of lesser Chaos Gods, but they were minor gods and their canonicity is questionable (see below).
    • Since Chaos uses the symbol of eight arrows arranged into a star, the devs made a group of lesser Chaos gods to round out the number to eight. They have existed on and off under dubious canonicity due to unimportance or real world legal complications. There was Hashut, god of Chaos Dwarfs; Malal, renegade Chaos god that represents Chaos's inherent instability; Necoho, god of atheism (no, really!); and Zuvassin the Undoer, who simply meddles with the plans of other gods. There was also Be'lakor, whose something of a puzzle at this point, but exists and a Daemon Prince who's subordinate to each of the big four; and also the Great Horned Rat, the god of the Skaven.
    • There's also the concept of Chaos Undivided, whose tenants worship the main four Chaos gods as a pantheon or as aspects of a higher deity. Chaos is usually at its most unstoppable when the gods set aside old rivalries and focus their power and followers on a single goal.
  • The ancestor gods of the Dwarfs are another pantheon and so is the old pantheon of ancient Nehekhara. Ind is mentioned and referred to as the land of a thousand gods so one would expect them to have quite the pantheon. Bretonnia is said to have the commoners and the occasional noble worship some Empire gods along with the Lady of the Lake, but that might not count.
  • The Orcs have two gods (Gork, the god of cunning brutality and Mork, the god of brutal cunning. Or possibly the other way around. Wars have been started by Orcs arguing which is which), but that hardly counts as a pantheon (a couple of other gods, such as Bork and Khalekk have been mentioned in the older background, but they probably aren't canon anymore).
  • Interestingly, the Ogres, who worship the Great Maw, seem to be the only truly monotheistic race.
  • The Skaven have only one official god as well: the Horned Rat. It was a deity strongly associated with Chaos, though it wasn't part of the "true" pantheon, possibly existing only as a minor Chaos god. This lasted until the events of Age of Sigmar when Slaanesh disappeared, and the Horned Rat took over the vacancy. Some Skaven secretly worship the other Chaos gods, chiefly Nurgle, but this is considered blasphemous and anyone caught doing so is destined for an excruciatingly painful death.
• Fantastic Race Weapon Affinity:
  • The humans of the Empire are associated most often with halberds and flintlock muskets. Halberds are a multi-purpose formation weapon representing humanity's Jack of All Stats nature and emphasis on teamwork and combined arms warfare, and firearms represent mankind's ingenuity and use of radical technology to overcome the sheer advantages the other races have. Hammers, while rarely used in battle, are a symbol of religious and national identity, as God-Emperor Sigmar wielded the legendary Ghal-Maraz (the Warhammer the game is named for).
  • In Bretonnia, the lance is considered the true weapon of a Knight in Shining Armor, though other weapons are used too. Bows are the weapon of the ignominious peasant.
  • Dwarfs favour axes, the more ornate the better. Their infantry are often seen wielding one or two-handed varieties, and sometimes they wield hammers as well. Though dwarfs are certainly capable of making fine swords, no dwarf worth his salt would be caught using one in a fight (they consider them "umgak"). For fighting at a distance, dwarfs reach for their thunderer firearms, but more poorer or conservative dwarfs just stick to crossbows.
  • As a whole, Elves favour bows and spears. Ranks of spearmen protected by great tower shields are a vital component of all three Elven armies. Though High Elves also employ archers commonly, it is the Wood Elves of Athel Loren who boast the greatest mastery of the bow; on top of being crack accurate with them, their bows are more powerful than firearms and often fire magically-enhanced arrows too. Dark Elves hold the bow in disdain, and prefer repeating crossbows.
  • Among the Lizardmen, the larger and more dangerous Saurus warriors wield bone or stone-based fang-lined weapons similar to the Aztec macuahuitl. The smaller, scrappier Skinks operate as skirmishers, using javelins and blowpipes to pepper enemy troops while avoiding direct combat.
  • The savage Greenskins, having little patience for any kind of battle more complicated than vulgar brawls, use simple but strong axes and large knives called choppas. More advanced tribes might use ones made from iron, but Savage Orcs use stone ones (that are no less deadly than metal ones - and Orcs are perfectly capable of killing you with their bare hands anyhow). Goblins tend to use short spears (stickas) or bows (arrers).
• Fantastic Racism: Warhammer has its share of speciesism and prejudice.
  • People from the Empire are horrifically prejudiced about Dwarfs, Halflings and Elves as well as humans not from the Empire, humans from different provinces in the Empire... and of course these are the ones they'll actually talk to (maybe). Anything else will pretty much get attacked on sight. On the other hand Dwarfs consider humans to be soft and incompetent and elves to be treacherous and arrogant magic-using bastards. Elves have racism within the three different factions, each hating each other to various degrees (though the worst is between the Dark and High elves) in addition to considering any other race to be little more than animals or at best primitive barbarians that can be manipulated and tricked with little remorse.
  • On the human-to-human side, Imperials and other southern humans fear and despise the Norscans due to them being frothing Chaos-worshipping barbarians intent on slaughter and conquest. The Norscans, conversely, see all non-Norscans as weaklings and sissies who worship impotent gods barely worth thinking about. Indeed, Sigmar and Myrmidia are not even things to be hated in the unholy north, rather they are just as openly heckled and ridiculed as their worshippers. It's in fact so bad in Norsca that "southling" is actually a fairly serious insult there. Then there's the Hung, whom even the Norscans consider to be bastards.
  • One of the most consistent aspects of the Gnomes (once retconned, now returned as of WFRP 4th Ed.) is their scorn against other races; it is said that they harbour grudges worse than Dwarfs do. Gnomes despise goblins as the goblin warlord Grom the Paunch destroyed the Gnome city-state of Glimdwarrow and slaughtered much of the Gnome race. Gnomes hate Dwarfs, seeing them as oafish and stupid (and conversely Dwarfs hate Gnomes for being troublesome and mischievous). Gnomes are one of the few races who hate Halflings, with a gnome pedlar complaining that they are a race of sticky-fingered thieves. Gnomes don't particularly like humans much either, especially the Witch Hunters, whose continued persecution of the Gnome race for their use of Ulgu magic and refusal to submit to the Colleges of Magic. And they hate the High Elves too, because Teclis was the one who taught humans magic and founded the Colleges and by extension the Witch Hunters.
  • Even within the Empire there's a lot of prejudice. Reiklanders are all puffed-up, effete snobs. Nordlanders are all more-or-less half-Norscan, wolf-worshipping savages. Marienburgers are treacherous and greedy, penny-pinching bastards. Averlanders are... very fond of their sheep, and Hochlanders are the same way about their prized heirloom rifles. Stirlanders are inbred country bumpkins who drown cats for entertainment and drink their ale hot. The Halflings of Mootland, when people actually acknowledge they exist, treat them as natural thieves or argue the Mad God Ranald made them as a bizarre joke.
• Fate Worse than Death: If they are lucky, Elven souls are typically enslaved by the goddess Ereth Khial, the Pale Queen, and sentenced to eternal torment in Mirai, the black pit, upon death. Many Elven souls, however, are devoured by by the Chaos god of depravity after suffering soul-shredding torments. The High Elves attempt to avoid this fate by binding their souls to the Waystones that protect their homelands, while the Wood Elves allow their spirits to be claimed by the forest. The Dark Elves by contrast consider "preparing to die" as "planning to fail", their only hope is to never die.
• Fauns and Satyrs: Beastmen, though the emphasis is much more on the beast than the man, are this in appearance.
• Fearless Undead: On the tabletop, otherwise the whole army would flee at the sight of itself.
• Fertile Feet: A rare evil example; the one character with this trait is a Champion of Tzeentch named Aekold Hellbrass. It's a side effect of a mutation called "Breath of Life", which renders the Champion a walking repository of life energy.
• Fictional Disability: Teclis is the greatest mage the Elves have ever produced (and one of the greatest mages in world history). He is also a ridiculously Squishy Wizard, requiring healing potions just to stay alive, and having a limp uncurable by magic. By contrast, his brother Tyrion is an unpeered swordmaster.
• Fictional Earth: The world map is clearly based on Earth's◊, though it has a few extra islands and geographical features Earth does not, such as North America being either frozen tundra or burning desert, Africa being split in two by a mountain range, and Antarctica being a warm wasteland populated by Beastmen. In early editions, Warhammer 40,000 was set in the far future of Warhammer Fantasy, but they now exist in separate realities linked by the Warp, and 40K's Earth is now our far future.
• Fictional Flag: Iconography and vexillology are a major part of the settings' backgrounds, as creating tabletop armies and making factions and subfactions visually distinct involves giving them distinctive, recognizable symbols.
  • The Empire uses a mix of skull, warhammer and griffin iconography. The Church of Sigmar uses a double-headed comet, their god's sacred symbol.
  • The Bretonnian dukedoms each have traditional heraldry, used by their lords and, in modified form, by the lord's sworn knights and vassals. Examples include Parravon's gold pegasus on black, derived from its famous pegasus riders; l'Anguille's blue sea monster on white, representing the beasts that live along its coasts; and Bastonne's red dragon on gold, in honor of its founder, Gilles le Bretton, who among other things was a famous dragonslayer.
  • Each High Elven kingdom uses iconography derived from some notable trait or tradition, such as Chrace's white lion head to represent its wild lions, Caledor's coiling dragon in honor of its Dragon Riders, or Ellyrion's white horse head to represent its equestrian traditions.
  • Ogres as a whole use a stylized ring of teeth to represent the Great Maw, their god. Each tribe uses a modification of this as its specific symbol — the wealthy Goldtooth tribe has a Maw with a golden fang, the Feastmasters have a cauldron ringed by teeth, and so on.
• Firearms Are Cowardly: Played with by certain factions.
  • Bretonnia is famous for its disdain of any ranged weapons (especially firearms) ever since the death of Gilles Le Breton to a crossbow, forbidding gunpowder weapons on its soil and only permitting longbows to its peasant levies while the ruling class focuses on horseback combat. Thanks to the Lady giving them resistance to firearms, they can hold their own against gun-happy armies like Dwarfs, Skaven, or the Empire.
  • The Lady they worship is actually a Wood Elf priestess who's part of a centuries-long Let's You and Him Fight gambit and enforces the trope, keeping Bretonnia in a firmly pre-industrial setting to keep them away from the forests.
  • Subverted with the Bretonnian navy: Despite being helmed by the nobility, their ships are the most heavily-armed of any faction, as the law forbids guns on Bretonnian ''soil''.
  • Chaos forces typically have little in the way of ranged weaponry as the War God Khorne does not like his followers to shed blood without risking their own. Exhibiting bravery in battle is the best way to get noticed by the gods and so gain their favor. Doing otherwise is the quickest way to lose Khorne's favor.
• Firearms Are Revolutionary: Played with in regards to the Empire and Bretonnia.
  • The Empire of Man is at a Renaissance/early Industrial Revolution level of technology, and so uses guns and gunpowder artillery in its armies. The neighboring Kingdom of Bretonnia is resolutely stuck in the kind of pre-modern chivalric warfare seen in Arthurian Legend (to the point where ranged weapons like bows and trebuchets are considered fit only for peasant levies), but the Lady's magic allows their knights to be highly resistant to firearms. It's been implied the Lady is actually a Wood Elf deliberately hindering Bretonnian technological progress to ensure they remain as unwitting meat shields around their forests.
  • The Bretonnian navy, on the other hand, is the most powerful in the world due to their enthusiastic adoption of cannon (the issue of them being unchivalrous weapons is irrelevant to the navy as guns only aren't allowed on Bretonnian soil), and the harbor cities and some border towns are trying to take the more pragmatic option of using guns to defend themselves.
• Fireballs: The signiture spell of the lore of fire, which means any user of the law can take it without rolling or swap it for one of their rolled spells. Storm of magic takes this up to eleven with the spell fireball barrage.
• Fish People: Fish men have received scattered mentions in the background material since the game's earliest editions, having several run-ins with both the Dark Elves and the Lizardmen, but were never a playable faction and have at times been treated as something of a running gag. Later editions of the game indicate that there is some manner of underwater civilization that controls sea monsters but whether these are related to the fish men of early editions (who were often said to live in the submerged caverns beneath Naggaroth) is unknown.
• The Flame of Life: The Sacred Flame of Ulric is an eternally burning flame in the city of Middenheim, legends saying that, so long as it burned, the city and its people would endure. During Warhammer: The End Times, the flame is sapped off its power and goes out; things turn really south in Middenheim afterwards.
• Flamethrower Backfire: A skaven warpfire thrower has a good chance to explode violently on any malfunction.
• Fleur-de-lis: The emblem of Bretonnia, naturally.
• Foil: In a way, the two human kingdoms are a continuing proxy for the Asur and the Dawi. The Empire met the Dwarfs early on in their history and eagerly took up their technological innovations, chiefly gunpowder. Its neighbour Bretonnia frequently trades with Ulthuan and styles its culture on the old Asur colonies, and is still being manipulated by the elves of Athel Loren to be used as a buffer state, and consequently they hold technology and firearms in disdain. An Empire nobleman might scoff at a Bretonnian and ask "Why don't you use guns?" and the Bretonnian will counter by pointing across the sea and saying "They do not use them and neither do we, the Lady shields us from them." And she does.
• Food-Based Superpowers: The Lore of the Great Maw allows the Butchers, the magic users of the Ogre Kingdoms, to cast different spells depending on what they eat. Eating the heart of a powerful beast, for example, allows them to strengthen their allies, while eating the entrails of a Troll allows them to give a nearby unit a Healing Factor and consuming a victim's brain can project the unfortunate's nightmares into the minds of the Butcher's foes.
• Food Chain of Evil:
  • Dread maws, a species of burrowing worm-like monsters, are entirely capable of devouring large and powerful creatures such as dragons or chimeras, which they take down by burrowing directly into their bodies and devouring them from the inside out.
  • Magma dragons favor large, powerful monsters such as chimeras and manticores as prey. They will go after humanoids as well, but these are rarely large or numerous enough to be worth the effort.
• Forced Transformation: There are a number of effects that turn people into frogs, especially in Storm of Magic games.
• Forged by the Gods: The Chaos Gods sometimes grant their mortal or daemonic servants powerful weapons (although usually their forging is done by daemons, not the gods themselves). Vaul, the forge god of Warhammer's High Elves, forged at least one magic sword.
• Frontline General: An actual game mechanic, as the minimum to play is a general / character and 25% Core units. Well, except for Skaven. Their generals will only be on the frontline if the frontline's entirely eroded away and they couldn't escape.
• Frog Men: The Slann have consistedly been portrayed as a race of humanoid frogs or toads since their debut. They were originally depicted as an alien race that came to the Warhammer world in the ancient past and conquered it, destroying or defeating the indigenous sapient peoples such as the Lizard Folk and even reshaping the planet to their whims, before their culture stagnated and rotted to the point they largely forgot most of their advanced technology and sorcery, reducing all but the innermost core of their empire to scattered tribes who were being pushed back by invaders from the human nations. Come 5th edition and they changed into their now-definitive loreset, which portrays them as the leadership caste of a collective of bio-engineered flesh-robots, struggling to figure out how to maintain the orders of their creators, the Old Ones, since the Old Ones were annihilated by the coming of Chaos.
• Full-Boar Action: Huge boars are deployed by the Orcs as heavy cavalry, compared to the light wolf cavalry used by the goblins.

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