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The Factions

The Human Nations

    The Empire 
  • The Empire - the hallmark Dark Fantasy Crapsack World, with cultists, witch hunts, occasional pogroms and horrors lurking behind each and every corner.
  • Witch Hunters. Unforgiving men and women that have dedicated their lives to the utter destruction of Chaos, heresy and witchcraft. Armed with more devotion than reason, they have been given the authority to have men, women and even children burned at the stake in their constant war against the Ruinous Powers. It is not unheard of for entire villages to be put to the torch by Witch Hunters simply because they might be tainted by Chaos.
  • The Old World is so rife with horror and bloodshed that many unfortunate peasants and commoners have been driven to madness by the things they have seen, becoming self-mutilating fanatics. These Flagellants, when able, will throw themselves into battle, whipping and clubbing both themselves and their enemy. Convinced, without any doubt or uncertainty, that they are fighting in the literal End Times.

    Bretonnia 
  • The aristocrats treat their own footmen as Cannon Fodder and keep their peasants in squalor. For one, the peasants have a ridiculous 90% tax rate, if they get chosen to be in the military, their wage is small (and their lords and nobles will make them pay for expenses, except funerary expenses; those are taken from their families).
  • Peasants can in theory become knights, escaping the squalor and poverty of their station. In practice, this has only happened three times in over 1,000 years... but any of their children are still peasants so the lineage dies with them, and it's implied some nobles will see them as upstarts, unfortunate examples to the rest of the commoners, and covertly try to get them killed on the battlefield.
    • There are two bright spots among the peasants; one named Huebald and an unnamed male peasant who invented the Bretonnian treburchet. The former was knighted after saving a noblewoman from Beastmen, and the latter was genius who invented a new weapon that single-handedly protected a village from a Norse raid. As for what happened to them... Huebald didn't survive his first battle. For saving a village, a chapel and inventing a new weapon, the peasant was rewarded a fattened pig and two copper crowns - in-universe historians didn't even bother to get his name, and in Bretonnia that pittance is more wealth than the average Bretonnian peasant can hope to see in a lifetime.
  • Grail Pilgrims. These suicidal hero worshippers follow Grail Knights around, praising their achievements and hoping to bask in the glory of the Lady even as they go into battle. They collect anything a Grail Knight tosses aside, from ruined armor to the rinds of fruit, and praise and sing in song even their crudest curses. Funny so far? When the Grail Knight they follow is injured and thrown off their horse, they invariably scramble over and take every item of value so that they might bask in that item's glory. The gravely injured Grail Knight, a hero of unparalleled chivalry and honor blessed by the Lady themselves, thus granted uncountable blessings, is unceremoniously trampled underfoot. They are more often killed by their followers than any wound, even sometimes being interred alive inside "Reliquae" so that the madmen that follow them can worship their "blessed" bodies. And there is nothing wrong with this in the Pilgrims' eyes. They're simply "venerating the Lady" (even though they accidentally kill her most devoted followers).
  • In light of all the above, they are assumed to be among the good guys...
  • What turns all of this into a Tearjerker? This lore was all retconned into being in the transition from 5th to 6th edition.

The Elder Races

    Dwarfs 
  • One word: grudges. Dwarfs are very focused on claiming revenge for even the most minor or unintentional "crime" against them. They once razed Fortress Kreighof to the ground. Why? Because the Elector Count of Ostermark hired Dwarf craftsmen from Karak Kadrin to build it, promising them twelve dozen wagonloads of gold as payment. He ended up underpaying — by two and a half pennies. What would be a simple accounting error to any reasonable person is a casus belli to the Dwarfs. It's enough to make one want to avoid interacting with Dwarfs at all costs.
  • The reason Dwarfs hold grudges is terrifying as well. It's not just part of their culture or attitude. They sincerely believe that they must hold and avenge grudges or their gods will bring divine judgment upon them and the lore implies that they are correct.

    High Elves 
  • Tethlis the Slayer, the sixth Phoenix King of Ulthuan, had a burning hatred of the Dark Elves to the point that he often came off as no better than them. He launched the Scouring, a war between the High Elves and Dark Elves, one that reached levels of brutality and ferocity not seen since the days of the Sundering. One of his most heinous acts during this war took place after the fall of Tor Anlec, when he ordered that all Dark Elf prisoners — men, women, and children — be put to the sword.

    Dark Elves 
  • The Dark Elves are entirely dedicated to conquest and slaughter in the name of Khaine (with the occasional Slannesh worship thrown in). Except for their king, any male sorcerers are killed or cursed to be eaten by Slaanesh, which can only be prolonged by sacrificing others. Women have to go through extreme trials where those who fail either die, get taken by daemons or become mindless slaves. Their main sources of income are slavery and pillaging, and the two are often connected. They don't even value the lives of their slaves for pragmatic reasons, unless they're skilled or "favored", and if too many die they just go on a raid to capture some more.
  • Every year they have the Night of Murder, where the Brides of Khaine (the Ax-Crazy Witch Elves) walk to the streets sacrificing anyone they find on the Altar of Khaine until the streets are said to run with blood. They will also break into house if they can get into them. Worse, they steal babies on this night - any female babies are raised to become Witch Elves, male babies are thrown into a BOILING CAULDRON OF BLOOD; those who survive this process are trained as Assassins. Most don't.
    • While in newer lore it's just one night, in older lore, it lasted ten nights.
  • The Cold One Knights. Dark Elf elite warriors riding a semi-quadrupedal velociraptor-like reptilitan beast the size of a large horse that can bite an armored man's arm off in one go. They also smell terrible. The only way the Dark Elves can tame them naturally is for the rider to anoint themselves with the slime the Cold Ones exude so they smell like them; said slime numbs their senses of smell, taste and touch permanently.
  • Even among Dark Elves, the Shade tribes are considered savage. In addition to the usual Dark Elf depravity, several tribes are cannibals by choice; they mutilate their slaves for the sake of it, and their method for determining strong children? When babies are born they're left outdoors on the first night of their lives. Any babies that survive until morning are deemed fit to be raised among the tribes.
  • The Chaos incursions the Empire deals with sporadically... the Dark Elves have to deal with them on a constant basis. To the point they had to build watchtowers to keep a constant watch. This is in addition to Beastmen, Greenskin and Skaven attacks, not to mention the chance of finding a random monster. However, the Dark Elves are much less sympathetic victims of these than the Empire.
  • Earlier lore outright called them the evilest mortal race in Warhammer Fantasy; while it was stated at least the followers of Chaos had the excuse of their Religion of Evil, the Dark Elves didn't need any reason for their practices. Even then the undead had the excuse of being corrupted by dark magic.
  • The Dark Elf Bloodwrack Medusa. Anyone who meets the gaze of one will have their eyes burst and bleed to death from every pore in their body.
    • Fridge Logic applies as to whether this gaze works when it comes up against undead (who either don't need or have any blood, while some don't even have eyes or physical bodies) or daemons (who are supernatural abominations).

    Wood Elves 
  • You wouldn't think Wood Elves would be a good source of this, but the Warhammer take on them delivers. The elves themselves aren't so bad except for the fact they're unpredictable and Ax-Crazy, basically Legolas mixed with the mutants from The Hills Have Eyes (2006). It's Athel Loren's native... life, which you should worry about:
    • Dryads initially appear as beautiful women and invite hapless fools into the forest with them, only to suddenly transform into horrible monsters and rip their victims to shreds. There's a bit of fluff in the bestiary for the roleplaying game, where a mercenary captain recounts an encounter with Dryads. As they were patrolling near Athel Loren, a gang of beautiful half-naked women came pouring out of the forest, singing and smiling at the men. The captain laughed at the sight, or at the reactions of his men. Either way, wrong move. Their pretty faces contorted into hideous visages and their arms lengthened and covered in dagger-like thorns, and they slaughtered the entire company. They only let the captain live because they wanted to Spare a Messenger.
    • Some of the treekin are so insane that they just attack everything around them, including other treekin, and decorate themselves with the entrails and skeletons of their victims. They aren't Chaos corrupted, that's just what they're like.
    • What's worse, it's suggested that Athel Loren has deep-running roots connecting it to the forests of the world, and it's expanding to encompass the entire planet, as it's growing outwards and even little outcroppings are beginning to spring up on other landmasses - you could be a sailor on the other side of the world, innocently embarking on an island to go looking for coconuts, and suddenly find yourself in a forest from hell.

    Lizardmen 
  • The Lizardmen. Go ahead, laugh. We'll see you laugh when they sacrifice you, Aztec style, to their god of blood. And your family. And your friends. And, if you're Skaven (because they really hate you), masses of your race at a time. Not enough? They couldn't care less about you, or anything outside of Lustria. They even have a rule that details how they don't give a shit, because that's how they are. And these are among the good guys. Admittedly, it is pretty easy to avoid this fate by not going into their hellish jungle homes and screwing with their stuff and trying to steal their gold. There have been several instances of humans going into Lizardman territory and coming out alive and rich because they had the sense not to piss them off. The Conquistador expys on the other hand did not fare well. Not that they care about the gold, but they write on gold tablets, and care about what's written on them very much.
    • Dampening the horror a bit is the fact that as long as you are not on their "to kill list" (Chaos, Skaven, Dark Elves), they ignore you as long as you don't provoke them (most non Skaven sacrifices are due to provocation). Adding to it is how they can do horrific acts of brutality and genocide (namely to things that pretty much deserve it) yet their minds are literately hard-wired to be incapable of feeling malice, more machine than man.
  • A great deal of their horror comes from the hordes of pissed-off dinosaurs at their beck and call. From stampeding herds of Stegadon crushing all in their path, to packs of ravenous Cold Ones stalking through the undergrowth, to flocks of Ripperdactyls pouncing from the sky to shred unwary prey apart. The prehistoric beasts of Lustria make exploring this continent a suicidal prospect.
  • Canonically, there are no dragons in Lustria. Why? Enter the Carnosaur. A hulking theropod resembling a tyrannosaur on hard steroids they’ve earned their place as Lustria’s apex predator. They’re such bloodthirsty predators that dragons effectively became extinct in Lustria because of them, as Carnosaurs would rip their throats out while they slept.
    • Saurus Old-Bloods frequently ride these things into battle as a Bretonnian knight would on a horse. However, taming these things is just as deadly as fighting them. Skink hunters will attempt to steal Carnosaur eggs and sneak them back to their temple-cities without being torn apart by the enraged parents. Even then, a hatching Carnosaur is still big enough to make a snack out of any unwary Skink.
  • Incredibly, there's something worse in the Lustrian jungles than Carnosaurs. When a major Chaos incursion threatens Lustria's temple-cities, the Slann will awaken a Dread Saurian. Immense crocodilian mountains of scale and teeth, these things are the Lizardmen's most terrible war beast. If the Carnosaur is an upscaled T. rex, the Dread Saurian might as well be a Kaiju.

The Undead

    General 
  • NAGASH. Just look at his character page.

    Vampire Counts 
  • This army can be a chiroptophobe's worst nightmare. There are Bat Swarms - swarms of vampire bats, the largest of which have a wingspan the size of a man's outstretched arms. Unlike most vampire bats, they will also attack during the day, when their prey is alert, and they will strip the flesh off their target's bones if they can. Even larger are the Fell Bats, undead vampire bats that also eat flesh and have a body larger than a motorbike. The Vampire Counts' newest monster, the Terrorgheist. Here it is. And then you read up on the backstory... note . Bat Out of Hell indeed.
  • The Corpse Cart is also pretty creepy. It used to just hold dead plague victims, but since Sylvania is super-saturated with necromantic magic, the bodies it carried became a Blob Monster made out of zombies on it. Then the drivers became semi-undead creatures and replaced their horses with zombies. In the fluff, it brainwashes people into feeding themselves to it.
  • The Tomb Banshee. Ghosts of witches and other assorted evil women, Tomb Banshees are malicious and independent thinking unlike some undead. They're ghosts so they can't be hurt except by magical means, but the worst part is their scream; anyone who hears it gets hurt or dies of fright if they don't have an iron will or aren't fearless or mindless.
  • The Black Coach is pretty horrific; in-lore the mere sight of it can cause a person to die of fright or make family members turn on each other in bloodlust. It's also used as a vessel to help a fully dead vampire come back to life.

    Tomb Kings 
  • In life, the trial for a suspected murderer was to push them into a pit of scorpions. The belief was that the Tomb King pantheon's god of murder had the form of a scorpion, and scorpions wouldn't harm his followers. If the person survived and climbed out, it was said to be a sign of his favor and that they were guilty, and punished by being thrown into a pit of snakes. The innocent died from scorpion stings, vindicated by their painful deaths.
  • The situation they faced when they first awoke enslaved against their will for all eternity to Nagash, the man who destroyed their kingdom, killed most of them and broke the covenant between them and their gods.
  • The Casket of Souls. A golden box, inlaid with jewels and precious stones, ornately carved, which holds the trapped souls of people who have wronged the Tomb King or Queen that owns it. For anyone killed by the owner's forces in battle, this is the fate of their souls, trapped forever with no hope of escape (save destroying the near-invulnerable casket, and even then the freed souls will kill anyone or anything near them in a maelstrom of revenge). What's worse, the trapped souls are weaponized; some Tomb Kings bring the Caskets to battle and have the Keeper, a priest assigned to attend the Casket, open them up. When they do, the souls rush out and try to escape, plunging through living people, desperate for release. Anyone they pass through ages rapidly and dies as their life is sucked out. Worse, anyone killed this way is guaranteed to have their soul trapped by the Casket as well. Even soulless beings like daemons or some undead aren't immune as it sucks away the magic that sustains or animates them.
  • The Necrosphinx, a winged, centauroid animate sphinx. With a scorpion-like tail with a venomous sting, arm blades that can decapitate a dragon and a stone body that can deflect a hit from a warmachine or a large monster. The worst part is how they're animated. They're rumored to be given animus by the Tomb Kings' most malevolent gods, who have turned them into unthinking, unfeeling, unceasing engines of destruction and death. It's said that if it wasn't for the incantations of the Liche Priests, they would kill everything and everyone in their path without stopping. One bit of lore had a Tomb Kings's troops go to fight a Lizardmen army, then the Tomb King and his forces went missing. Another king rallied his troops to find the missing army. He found the butchered remains of both armies, all troops dead, everything cut to pieces... and a lone Necrosphinx standing in the middle of the carnage.
  • The Sepulchral Stalkers, huge guardian statues that look like the spawn of Medusa, only far larger, better armed, and heavily-armored. These constructs watch over the tombs of Nekehara, slithering under the sands most of the time, nigh-impossible to detect. When they do strike, they explode out of the dunes and lay about with man-sized polearms. But wait, that's not the worst part. Any mortal that gazes into the eyes of a Stalker is immediately turned to sand. Even a brief glance is enough to do it, or at least turn a limb into dust. So not only are you and your friends being hacked apart by a huge snake-man mummy, if you even look at it as you try to fight back, you could get instantly snapped. Good luck!

The Forces of Chaos

    General 
Chaos is just as horrific as it is in 40K, and in some ways, possibly even more.
  • The random mutations can be quite chilling: you teeth stick out of your skin, lose two eyes and get a new one eye which only sees the winds of chaos, or transform into a mindless mass of gibbering flesh.
  • The entirety of the Liber Chaotica. The 'author', Richter Kless, delves further and further into daemonic lore in order to write his book, and steadily loses his mind in the process as daemons contact him in his dreams and the book itself becomes an artefact of chaos. A sample:
    I think it is important to mention something about the book. It has undergone a great change. I noticed it as soon as I opened the cover. The pages, where once they were clean, crisp parchment, had turned rotten. Only a short space of time has elapsed since I last saw the book, but it is as if it was kept in a damp room for many years. The pages are damp and moist with water; and the smell! I was forced to turn the leaves using tweezers, as I did not want the corruption to taint me. Towards the end of the book the rot seemed worse. The pages were covered in a viscous green slime. During the late hours, with the candle burning low, I swear I could see tiny things crawling in the slime, burrowing under the pages, spreading their infection.
    • The last page that Richter wrote is covered in deranged scrawlings and sketches of deranged-looking daemons. An 'editor's note' states that Richter has gone completely insane, and all the man did was write a book about Chaos!

    Chaos Gods and Daemons 
  • There are four gods of evil ruling the universe, with aims going from the ruin of civilization to petty malevolence towards individuals. And people are stuck in this world with them.
  • An even more terrifying thought is that the incomprehensibly malicious and devious Tzeentch is the god of Hope. And this is still canon too.
  • Did we mention that Ruinous Powers and their daemon servants are malicious like this because the psyche of living? By their nature, they have to reflect the psyche of living in the most extreme way possible, and hey, they do. They wanted Archaon to bring the End Times so they can purify themselves of their own corruption.

    Warriors of Chaos 
  • Sigvald the Magnificent is one scary bastard once you get past his foppish flamboyance. He's a self-centered, narcissistic, bloodthirsty hedonist who eradicates anybody he considers ugly, crude, or irritating and destroys entire cities on a whim. Even his childhood was terrifying, having been the child of a father and daughter who disowned him once they found out he was a natural-born cannibal.
  • Chaos Cultists are an insidious menace among the Empire. Nobody is safe: scholars, priests, craftsmen... Sometimes whole villages secretly give themselves over to Chaos worship. Think about that next time you want to go see the quaint countryside in the Empire...
    • To say nothing of the Carnival of Chaos, a travelling troupe of Nurgle worshippers who pretend to be harmless performers. They lure in crowds of people with the spectacle — strongmen, colourful dancers and cackling fools. Then when the sun sets and the show comes to a close, they reveal themselves to be terrible cyclopean daemons to the horrified crowd, but by then it is much too late for them as the daemons have already walked among them and spread their pestilence, claiming them in mind, body and soul.

    Beastmen 
  • In this setting, Chaos has armies of goat-headed psychopaths lurking in the forests. Let's not forget that at least some of those goat-headed psychopaths are born of human parents, meaning that the baby you hear abandoned in the forest was probably left there for a damn good reason.
  • Somebody who works at Warhammer had the particular nasty idea of introducing the turnskins, regular humans that mutate into these things well into their lives for no apparent reasons. To have your entire family and friends turning against you, and even if you manage to survive and join the other beastmen they'll probably turn you into a slave...
  • How are new Beastmen are born? Usually it's between a male and female Beastmen but due to latter being few in numbers, most male Beastmen find other disturbing means to breed by either mating with four legged mammals like goats and sheep or raping captured human females.....

    Chaos Dwarfs 
  • Standard Dwarfs are unable to use magic, but the Chaos Dwarfs have a ruling class of mages, thanks to their god Hashut. However, since Dwarfs were never meant to use magic, the sorcerers suffer from a curse that gradually turns them to stone. The ultimate fate of every Chaos Dwarf sorcerer is to eventually be transformed entirely into rock, then placed along the road to Zharr-Naggrund.
  • Chaos Dwarfs sacrifice people of other races very frequently, almost on an industrial scale. The Gods only know how many of their slaves have been thrown into the forge fires.
  • Chaos Dwarfs are essentially the darkest interpretation of their untainted kin you can imagine, married to advanced weaponry and demonology. The Dwarfs are determined, honor-bound, and masterful in their crafting. The Children of Hashut are merciless, willfully immoral, and utterly bent on dominating all other races to their control. They slaughter droves of slaves just to keep their vast forges working. Much like Chaos worshipers, the blood and agony of sacrifices is quite literally the lubrication that allows their society to function, only its scaled up to an industrialized level. They summon daemons, which they then bind to huge living suits of armor, sometimes several at a time, each enraged abomination powering a different part. They scheme and plot against each other at every level, yet still resolutely hold true to oaths of loyalty, only they're a lot more creative about working around the wording of those oaths.
    • Unlike the Dwarfs, they don't wait for generations to introduce or update new technology. Oh, no. If it works, then it goes into mass production, because like their kin, everything they make is flawlessly constructed. Improved Hellcannon? Dreadquake Mortar? Even more lethal and destructive K'Daai daemon? As long as it works, they'll build them and sell them and use them without hesitation.
    • It's stated repeatedly in the lore that the Chaos Dwarfs enjoy inflicting hideous suffering on the lesser races. They have a deep-seated need to control and dominate others, best expressed by torturing everyone else under them. Unlike the Dark Elves, however, this is literally built into their genes, another example of ancestral Dwarven perfectionism and craftsmanship brutally twisted by disaster, the Dark Lands, and their evil god.

Other

    Skaven 
  • While the Skaven are generally Played for Laughs - let's face it, this is an entire race of Rat-faced Starscreams, how could that not be funny? Then you read the army book. Specifically, Hieronymous Bouscus screaming, over images of the utter abhorrence that is the Skaven city. One of their major clans will gleefully rip your brain out and stick it in a giant rat-horror For the Evulz. Another one considers Kill It with Fire, Kill It With Lightning, and Kill It With Poisonous Gas entirely sensible ways of dealing with everything, not caring if their own troops are caught in the blast. And then there's the pure shit-yourself-in-terror story of how the Skaven came to be...
  • There's also their attitude towards friendly fire. In game, it's forbidden to shoot into melee, because you don't want to hit your own troops. Skaven have a special rule called "Life Is Cheap", saying that you not only can, you should shoot into melee and fry your own troops, since that's the best way to slaughter the enemy, and damn your own troops.
  • The Skaven have reserves. They also have psychotic decaying monks, lightning cannons, poison gas grenades, mutant rat-monsters, and silent ninja that come in the night and nail you to the bed with a warpstone-coated sword, ensuring that in the unlikely event you survive, you'll transmute into a horrific monster.
  • It's strongly hinted that the Skaven instinctively wage perpetual war and throw their lives away because they breed like... well, rats. Their two choices are grinding away their population in war or having a population explosion and dying of starvation.
  • Clan Moulder's hat is creating monstrous creatures: they mutate ogres into part rat and part ogre; worse yet is the hell pit abomination, a gigantic monster with multiple rat heads, and the rest of its body is made of... well, there are these huge creatures called blindworms crawling around the same tunnels as the Skaven; a group of Skaven and a small army of their slaves went out one day, the survivors pulled one of these things back, and they put whatever parts of the damn thing they could into the abomination. The damn thing makes the regular chaos spawn look pleasant, that tells you how terrifying that thing is.
  • Let's talk about a story regarding the Skaven, shall we? Long ago, the foolish ruler of a city-state called upon their aid then refused to pay them. In retaliation, the Skaven attacked and took their payment. The city itself was mostly intact, but the Ratmen took every single one of their children...
  • Let's not forget the supposed origin story of the Skaven. It's pretty horrific too. A peaceful town where humans live above ground and dwarfs below in harmony decides to build a great cathedral. It takes many years, and they almost despair until a mysterious stranger offers to complete the tower in a single night if he is allowed to add his own dedication to the gods. The townspeople agree and the tower is built with a great horned bell. The Bell tolls 13 times. Darkness floods the streets over the next few days. Warpstone falls from the sky in a horrific hail. Humans and dwarfs turn against one another as deaths and violence escalate. After months, the humans force their way into the dwarven side of the city to demand aid, and only find gnawed bones, ruins, and thousands of bloodthirsty ratmen. The humans were annihilated that night.
  • The Skaven Empire covers most of the globe. They don't have land on the surface of the world, though. They are under every major human city, in fallen dwarven holds, residing under the holds that still stand... If there is a town or city somewhere, odds are good that there are skaven underneath. They're down there, getting more and more ready to overtake the "lesser races" of the world through an unending flood of bodies.
    • This is largely why the "Conspiracy of Silence" is in place. Not just because of the massive public alarm and disorder such a revelation would produce. Oh, no no no. That's just the lesser outcome. The real nightmare is the Skaven realizing that the Empire, the most powerful nation in the Old World, knows they exist. Considering the Skaven are paranoid as hell and borderline-psychotic on the best of days, it wouldn't take much more than that to unite the whole of Skavendom against such a threat, and millions (if not billions) of ratmen would cover the Old World like a living ocean of destruction. Even the bravest Empire nobles know they wouldn't stand a chance, so the conspiracy is maintained, even if doing so means "disposing" of inconvenient or recalcitrant witnesses.
    • The Empire has some people, the Rat Catchers, whose job it is to go down into the stinking medieval sewers of the cities of the Empire armed with nothing more than a billy club and a small (but vicious) dog, to kill the ratmen. All for minimum wage. Neither do they get any recognition for it, as they mostly just get ridiculed and also the ones who are too vocal about the "bigger rats" wind up disappearing. And you thought your day job was thankless.
  • It has been said that the Skaven are the most evil race in Warhammer, and it makes sense. Vampires will happily enslave entire populations for food and servants, but Even Evil Has Loved Ones. Dark Elves are cruel and have a culture based on slavery, but they are more driven by historical grievance and a few can rise above it, and Even Evil Has Loved Ones too. Goblins are cruel and conniving too, and Orcs are brutal savages, but both have what you could charitably call friendships and both will cry if their pet Squig dies(though not in front of everyone else), and Ogres can form genuine friendships as well as side with the "good guys" on occasion. Chaos Warriors are like Orcs but they can be prone to Villainous Valour sometimes. It can be argued that even Chaos itself represents some of humanity's positive attributes as well as negative ones. Heck, even the Beastmen can be somewhat sympathetic considering their tragic Freudian Excuse, as cruel as they are. The Skaven have nothing you can say positively about. Love, friendship and honour are all alien concepts to the Skaven psyche. All their lives are spent in ambition, paranoia, cruelty and hatred at everyone and everything else, eating others while trying to stay off the menu themselves.

    Greenskins 
  • Black Orcs. Take some of your typical orcs, give them greater intelligence and discipline, make them even meaner and more brutal than most of their kind, and make them some of the best fighters among the greenskins. It's a good thing they're not very common...
    • Supposedly, they were created by the Chaos Dwarfs to improve discipline and cohesion among their greenskin slaves. This bit them in the ass big time; the Black Orcs led the other greenskins in a massive uprising against their masters, and the rebellion came very close to destroying the Chaos Dwarf empire, reaching as far as the doors to the Temple of Hashut. Only the betrayal of the Hobgoblins saved the Chaos Dwarfs from complete annihilation. While the Chaos Dwarfs were able to put down the rebellion, many of the Black Orcs escaped, and their kind have been an enormous menace ever since.
  • While not strictly Greenskin, the Arachnakrok Spiders worshipped by Forest Goblins are nightmarish. A spider the size of city hall, living in webs deep in the forest beyond sunlight...

    Ogre Kingdoms 
  • The Ogre Kingdoms can be easily summarized with a legend popular among the easternmost reaches of the Empire. According to the story, an outrider sent to search for a way out of the canyons along the Ivory Road stumbled upon a valley carpeted with snow, even though it was in the middle of the summer. When he came closer to investigate, he found that it was not snow at all - it was fat that had been rendered from literally everything that lived there. All butchered to feed the Ogres' unnatural hunger.
  • The very appetite of the Ogres is nightmare fuel in and of itself. They are able to eat anything: animals, humans, Orcs, each other and even flesh that has been tainted by Chaos - without any effort or discomfort. Gluttony is a part of their social lives, their religion and even the way they fight. Fights are rewarded with food, prisoners are sacrificed as food, victories are celebrated with food and many Ogre war cries have been translated simply as "feed me."
    • Then there's their menu, which includes sauteed Dwarf, Empire sausages, Elf legs fried in horse blood and whoever thought they could try and replace their ruling Tyrant.
  • The Great Maw. A comet with a face that struck the earth, leaving only mutation, destruction and a massive, fleshy whirlpool of teeth. What was supposed to be a crater was instead a gigantic mouth that ate whatever was thrown into it and still hungered for more. It reminded the Ogres so much of their own appetites that the first thing they did was make it the center of their religion, regularly sacrificing meat - living and otherwise - to it.
  • Gorgers. Basically, if a baby Ogre is born without a paunch, the Ogres will sacrifice it to the Great Maw by throwing it down into a cave. Usually, they die. Sometimes, they find a tunnel into an even deeper cavern, often filled with Warpstone. And, of course, there are the many other baby Ogres living down there too who have suffered a similar fate. And the warpstone mutates them into even bigger, larger versions of Ogres. Of course, there's not much to eat down there besides, well, each other. So basically, they fight and eat one another until the largest eats everyone. And then, whomever survives, breaks free to the surface. And they're STILL hungry.
  • Gnoblars. The eastern cousins of the Goblin race, with darker green skin and larger noses. While they live miserable lives of slavery to their Ogre masters, they are far from sympathetic. They are somehow even more cruel and sadistic than their western cousins and will gleefully gang up to torment the occasional captive. We say "occasional" because they usually prefer to torture small animals.
    • Gnoblar sports are particularly cruel, whether they are played by the Gnoblars themselves or by Ogres. These include house-baiting (tricking their friends into living next to the Tyrant so they get smashed into pulp), runtsprinting (forcing injured Gnoblars to run an obstacle course, with the losers being eaten) and the popular Gnoblar bowl (which entails throwing a cheap piece of loot into a giant crowd of Gnoblars and watching them murder each other over it).


The Setting

  • Warpstone. A type of magical rock that can fall from the sky in meteors or be found underground. It is known and feared for its extreme danger, as even getting near to some is usually enough to cause people to start horrifically mutating. That's before one touches it, which makes things even worse. Getting the tiniest sliver in one's skin is usually enough to kill a human without strong divine intervention. Warpstone also has a great deal of magical power, so that lures foolish wizards and scholars to try obtaining the stuff. The Skaven rely entirely on Warpstone for practically anything in their civilization and have a higher resistance to it. They use it to make poison gas that will melt victims' internal organs and their eyes, and gunpowder that can send a bullet through solid plate armor. Clan Moulder use it to make their terrible monsters through direct application. Rich Skaven can get warpstone mixed into their armor or weapons, so that even hitting them or being hit by them gets the attacker a lethal dose. Skaven assassins liberally coat their weapons in it. Their Grey Priests will literally eat warpstone to gain an incredible boost in magical might for a short time. Skaven also use it for making lights and their money. Warpstone will kill Skaven eventually, but they don't care as long as their enemies get killed first.


The Models:

  • While this will become less nightmarish as you start to collect the models and immerse yourself in the lore, a lot of the miniatures can be downright horrifying if you examine them closely. The most obvious are the Chaos models, where the mutations are downright painful to look at (the Glottkin model has eyes growing out of its pores. it will induce trypophobia in you). And then there are the trophies...


Book Series:

  • The first Gotrek & Felix book features a story in which the villain's hostages, the children of a local village, are in fact his experimental subjects, and were the mutants the heroes have been killing all the way through the story. The villain even had the nerve to complain that the duo killed his minions before they were fully grown.
  • The Malus Darkblade series of novels, set in the Warhammer Fantasy mythos, has the titular Dark Elf telling a human slave that the slave's fiance, the most beautiful slave girl on the ship, agreed to do whatever Malus asked if her man was set free instead of her (the dark elves have a custom of freeing one slave a trip, though Malus could have been saying that to mess with him). The slave is held in place, weeping, as Malus says how he had his fun with her, and then handed her over to his officers. Then they handed her to the crew, who were "Rougher." Malus describes the blood, and the pain she went through, and finishes by stating that she no longer wished to sacrifice herself for him and wanted to be freed instead. And then pulls out a small object. To this point, you're thinking "rape", of course. Then you remember that these are Dark Elves, and what their favorite hobby is (although given their depravity that unfortunately doesn't rule out rape)... and you realize this at just about the point where Malus unfolds the item, which is the girl's skinned and tanned face, and hands it to the slave. "Here, I saved her pretty face for you! Give her a kiss!"


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