Chapter One
A Brief History of the Empire
Men in the Old World in Antiquity
After the might of Dwarfs and Elves drove the hordes of chaos back into the wastes, the lands of the Old World were at relative peace. Both races were in the apogee of their civilizations and the greenskins were kept in check by their vigilance. Many elves crossed the seas from Ulthuan and built great cities on the shores of the old world. Trade flourished between the elder races and the Dwarfs aided the Elves in construction of many wondrous structures. So great was the appeal of the Old World more and more elves came to its shores and spread from their coastal cities inland found yet more settlements in which to trade with the Dwarfs.
Few men lived in the lands that would become the great kingdoms of the Old World. What modest information that was recorded by the Dwarves described them as a primitive and fearful people still using but stone implements and primitive farming techniques. Their villages where based around the ancient stone circles that have become holy places to the Cult of Taal though they did not worship any of the modern gods of the Empire. Called the Belthani by some modern scholars, little else is known of their culture. Some speculate the peoples of Albion retain similar forms of worship to this day, with Ogham stones been a central part of that cultures practices but much else is pure conjecture at least on the part of academics. The Colleges of Magic are far more interested in this era and have many theories of their own involving the fabled Old Ones of Eleven legend, the Hedge folk of today, and the significance of standing stones in the realm of magic. These studies however are almost entirely restricted to members of the colleges themselves and are most likely of little value to the scholar regardless.
The origins of the tribes of men that would eventually come to populate the lands west of the Worlds Edge Mountains are not fully known either but it is speculated they resided to the east in those days. The greatest concentration is suggested to have resided in the plains along the Dwarven Silver Road, a land now dominated by the greenskin. Others still were part of a great steppe culture, called Scythians, which inhabited the steppes that stretch across the northern portions of the world. These lands now are the home of the Kurgan and other marauder tribes but in this time it is greatly believed that the malevolence of Chaos had yet to completely infect these hardy people.
The Coming of Modern Men
Two millennia before the foundation of the Empire, life in these eastern lands seems to have become increasingly untenable. The Dwarfs of this era were consumed with their war with the Elves and began to neglect the dangers that grew in their absence. But these are not the only signals of a change, as when the Dwarfs returned to their homes and were beset by greenskins and their annals record that their foe was now better armed than before bearing weapons of iron which not even the mightiest civilization of men for that era had yet to achieve. How these tribes came to cross the mountains is unknown, some may have already begun to cross during the great Dwarf-Elf war but soon they were in possession of the lands that are now known as the Border Princes and the Badlands as well as some stragglers that may have remained in the Wolf Lands.
For some generations in these new lands they found some peace. The mountains were a great barrier to the greenskins and Dwarfs, though depleted, where obstaninte foes. The great human Kingdom of Nehekahara was in its height and some of its more intrepid rulers brought these humans to pay tribute and some are recorded as to surving as mercenaries in the armies of the ancient kings. Others pushed farther west perhaps finding these lands over crowded or unwilling to answer to foreign kings and moved the lands that became Tilea and Estalia, intermixing with the local humans there, remants of the fabled Kingdom of Tylos. The Dwarfs could not hold back the green tide forever and the southern holds of the Karak Ankor were slowly taken over by foul creatures. Nehekharan support became increasingly intermittent. In those years Nehekhara fell under the sway of the great necromancer Nagash and their empire’s northern frontiers were largely abandoned. Though during this time men learned to craft weapons and armor of bronze their foes grew ever larger in number. Alcadiazzar, the last great King of Nehekhara, restored these tribes as tributaries but he and his entire civilization were extinguished through the machinations of Nagash.
For some centuries after Nehekhara became the Lands of the Dead, men endured in the Badlands. Some records from the Dwarfs and the oral histories of the Strygani tell of the Lodringen tribe founding the Kingdom of Strygos. These men, with aid of refugees from the southern lands, built a realm that spanned all from the Marshes of Madness to the Black Gulf, driving back the greenskins to the mountains. From their capital at Mourkain, called Morgheim, Old Strygos, and a myriad of other names, the Kings of Strygos compelled tribute from the tibes that resided north of the Blood River. Strygani say that the northern tribes grew to resent their kingdom and took up arms against it. They were a weak confederation and were summarily defeated by the better organized forces of Strygos. However, as the Kings of Strygos wasted their time against their fellow men an orc Waaagh descended from Mad Dog Pass, saking Mourkain and destroying the kingdom in a few short years.
Nothing stood in the way of these greenskins and the divided tribes to the north which again faced annihilation. It is at this juncture that the first accurate recordings can be gleaned from the Dwarfs of the Black Mountains, for enmass these tribes of men crossed into the Reik basin. Dwarfs, ever miserly, exacted a high price for the crossing and it is speculated that not all had the wealth to cross over. The Zani people that inhabit the southern foothills of Black Mountains are regarded, by some, as the last surviviors of those too poor to pay. Many however did and, in addition to the fastidious accounting of Dwarfs, survive some of the first written records of these men. Black Fire Pass is dotted with the primitive runes script of these early men marking their passing as many rock walls bear the names of those great tribes which enter written history later: Unberogen, Teutogen, Norsii, Bretonni, Fennone, and many others.
It is believed, concurrent to worsen trends in the south, the Scythian peoples of the northern steppes were confronted with the growing power of Chaos. In these years, it is reckoned, that a greater and greater number of these tribes were seduced into the service of the dark gods. The timeframe in which these developments occurred is a mystery as those that could shed the most light on the subject, the histories of Karag Dum and Karak Vlag, are lost. Scythian peoples had been known to cross into the steppes of Kislev and the moors of Ostermark at quite an early era but it is uncertain if these were permanent. The Ungols, the first promeniant a well recorded tribe is not well known to the Dwarfs until the age in which the tribes that would found the Empire crossed into the Reik basin. Further as the extent of Ungol settlement into the region ended at the edge Kislev steppe with enclaves of southern men, Ropsmen and Firkings it seems highly probable that these events were nearly congruent.
The lands of the Reik basin were of course not uninhabitated, as the old men, the Belthani still lived much as they had centuries before. The newcomers were however a far more bellicose people and gradually all those that resided were subject to or slaughtered by the invaders. The terms of this subjugation is unknown but the new gods brought from the south came to dominate and the older methods of worship vanished.
The Tribes of Men
As there is no historical record of the conquests and defeats of these
Sigmar and the Unification of
Expansion and Apogee
Corruption, Plague, and The ‘Skaven’ Wars
In the last centuries of the first millennium, the Empire was the most powerful nation in the old world.
The Interregnum and Civil War
Following the death of Emperor Mandred, Imperial Elections became increasingly divisive. With each election the Grand Theogonist of the Cult of Sigmar expended more and more energy in putting his candidate up for Imperial Election. While not always successful, the Cult of Sigmar enjoyed increasing political clout and as the landed Electors grew more unruly, the Cult preached a message of Imperial unity concealing its own machinations for power. For several centuries there were many Emperors and few of note. Each election brought the threats of civil war and during the reigns of these some of these Emperors a number of provinces were in the state of de facto rebellion, however no Elector was yet brazen enough to throw off the Imperial system entirely and enter into all out war with the Emperor.
In the year 1360 the Imperial system suffered its first serious breach. The previous Emperor had died in late autumn of 1359 and fears of poor weather delayed the inception of the Electoral Council until after Mitterfurhl in 1360. Of the Electors convened, it was the Elector of Stirland and the Electress of Talabecland that stood the best chance at election. The Elector of Stirland enjoyed the support of many of the southern Electors and most importantly the favor of the Cult of Sigmar. When the Elections were held, the Grand Theogonist purposely held his vote until last and much as the Grand Theogonist had envisioned, the votes of the Provincial Electors had ended in a tie of six votes to each candidate. In dramatic fashion, hoping to further assert the powerful position of the Cult of Sigmar, the Grand Theogonist cast his vote for the Elector of Stirland. Rather than cow the other Electors into accepting the Cult’s place as ‘kingmaker’ of the Empire, the Talabecland candidate, the Countess Otilia, stormed out and proclaimed herself Empress without election.
Many Electors were shocked at this brazen act by one of their peers but there was a great deal of sympathy from those lords growing weary of the increasing secular powers of the Sigmarite Cult. Most important of all was the support of the Ar-Ulric, who thanks to a row with the Graf’s of Middenheim had taken up residence in Talabheim. The Ulrican Cult was both concerned as well as jealous of the power the Sigmarite Church had garnered in the proceeding centuries and the declaration of a non-Sigmarite Empress offered them the perfect opportunity to strike back at their haughty rivals. Few expected the rebellion to come of anything, Otilia’s supporters were far flung and disorganized while the Elected Emperor could call upon the most seasoned troops and officers in the Empire. With the aid of the Ar-Ulric, the ‘Empress’ Otilia was able to assemble an army consisting of the Talabecland state troops, sympathetic neighbors, Ulrican fanatics, and mercenaries from all over known world. In a surprising display of daring and initiative, Otilia’s rag tag army engaged Stirland’s army to the south-west of Talabheim and though both outnumbered and outclassed by the Emperor’s veterans, won a decisive victory at the Battle of the Talabec.
Though the Empress Otillia was unable to assert control over the entire Empire, she had proved to the other Electors the fallibility of the Imperial Crown. The Emperor had not only lost the battle to the pretender but the faith of his vassals. For the next thousand years the Empire would have at least two Emperors and its great lords would gravitate to the service of one or another.
The Crusades
In the early centuries of the second millennium, the swarthy men from across the Southern Sea, grew in power. Arabian Corsairs came to suppliant even the Norse as the greatest pirates and raiders of the oceans, going so bold as to enslave some of the coastal villages of Nordland and in the south the Tileans and Estallians faired far worse. Arabian Dhows wreaked havoc on the merchant fleets of the south and unseated the Norse Kingdom of Sartosa in 1240 IC. As quarrelsome as Tileans are known to be they will suffer no foreign master and Arabian advances into the Tilean mainland were met with the combined arms of the Tilean cities. Estalia provided a more fertile ground for Arabian incursions for little unity has ever existed between those disparate Kingdoms. Minor Kingdoms were rendered client states of Arabian Sultans and their ports served as bases of operation for Coarsairs sailing into northern waters.
As disturbing these events were to Old Worlders, there was little initiative to deal with it. The Kings of Bretonnia and the Emperors of the various Imperial factions felt it was little more than a regional discomfort. Merchant shipping suffered but Corsair attacks were sporadic and uncoordinated. The cities of Araby were just as disjointed as those of the southern Old World and as long as they posed no concerted threat, there was little interest in the courts of the great realms. In the middle years of the fifteenth century however Arabian politics were changing rapidly and when a new unified Arabian effort launched at conquering the whole of Estalia.
History is uncertain of the origins of the Great Sultan called Jaffar; few books of the era survive particularly the records of the Arabians themselves. What is known is that from relative obscurity Jaffar had made himself Sultan of Al-Haikk and fought wars with the other cities of Araby for supremacy. A potent sorcerer and versed in the elemental magics of the Taureg nomads of the deserts, Jaffar united all of Araby under his rule in 1448 IC. A greedy and grasping ruler, Jaffar was not content to be but ruler of his own lands but turned his eyes toward the weak kingdoms of Estalia. Many historians, particularly those of Tilea, contend Jaffars plans were at the suggestion of the vile ratmen that plague those southern lands but no records from the Sultan’s court exist to verify these claims. No matter his motive, Jaffar organized an army like Araby had not seen since the days of the great Nehkarians; vast regiments of spearmen and bowmen drawn from the great cities of the that land, scores Arabian horsemen on swift steeds and in scale armor, throngs of the desert tribesmen mounted both on horse and the odd desert dwelling beasts, along with yet more exotic forces such as the dark skinned regiments of slave warriors drawn from the southern jungles, flying carpets carrying aloft pairs of bowmen, daemons of the desert, and the great tusked beasts. It was an army of conquest and one even the greatest of the Estalian state was powerless to oppose.
As kingdom after kingdom fell to the invaders, those that held out sent increasingly desperate pleas to the courts of the King of Bretonnia, the Elected Emperor, and the Ottilian Emperor for aid. At first these envoys were dismissed, courteously, for few could believe the scale of invasion they described; surely a force could not have crossed from such a wasteland as Araby and if even the scale were true it could not possibly subdue all of Estalia. But as more envoys were received and word came even from the Princes of Tilea, the great courts of the Old World grew concerned, most of all King Louis, later sobriqued the Righteous, of Bretonnia. Should Estalia fall, his kingdom would be next in the path of Jaffar’s armies. His decision was further influenced by the bellicosity of his southern vassals. Barely a generation had passed since Bretonnian attempts to conquer the Tilean states had failed so humiliatingly in the lists at Rivola and many of these southern Lords saw an Estalian adventure the opportune way to refurbish their glory as well as expand their borders. Summarily, King Louis issued a call to war and thus the Crusades began. In the courts of the Emperors, in Nuln and Talabheim, a similar conclusion was reached. Nearly a century of civil war had taken its toll on the coffers of the Imperial magnates and war against a foreign and wealthy opponent seemed the obvious answer. Neither Emperor was in any mood to see the upstart Kingdom of Bretonnia, not even five hundred years old by that point, reap the sole rewards from expelling these southern invaders. A hasty truce was agreed upon and vast host drawn from across the Empire crossed the Grey Mountains into Bretonnia where it joined up with the forces the Bretonnian King.
By the time the Crusaders reached Estalia, all of the southern kingdoms had already fallen to the invader. Those forces the Estalian princes could still field had either withdrawn to the Irrana Mountains or were besieged by the Sultan’s army in the various garrisons of the north, particularly the Kingdom of Bilbali. So great was the Sultan’s ambition, that an immense Arabian army had even besieged Tobaro, the westernmost city of Tilea. In the hope that both beleaguered garrisons could be relieved the Crusader forces divided, a primarily Bretonnian force drove across northern Estalia to the aid of Bilbali while another army composed mainly of Imperial Knights would lift the siege of Tobaro. Unaccustomed either to the tactics of Old World heavy cavalry or perhaps merely over extended, both sieges were broken and the Arabian forces sent into full retreat. Each army slowly drove the invaders back across toward the southern sea liberating town and castles as they went. The Estalian invasion failing, Jaffar opted to withdraw across the Southern Sea, embarking the remains of his army from the port city of Magritta.