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The Old World, called Elthin Arvan in the Eltharin language of the Elves[1a], is the northwestern region of the Known World's sprawling eastern continent. It is the region of that great landmass where most of the realms of Men are located and is usually defined as the area west of the Worlds Edge Mountains, north of the Blood River and the Dwarf sea fortress of Barak Varr and south of the Troll Country.[4] To its south lies the Badlands and the Southlands and eastward stretches the vast and mysterious Far East.

The isle of Albion lies off the coast of the Old World and is similar to the dread, arctic land of Norsca, in that both are neither entirely a part of the Old World culturally or historically, but neither are entirely separate from it either.[4]

The Old World is home to the Human realms of the Empire, Kislev, Bretonnia, Tilea, Estalia, the independent city-state of Marienburg in the Wasteland, the Elven forest of Athel Loren, and the lawless Border Princes, as well as several Dwarf holds of the Karaz Ankor.[4]

In the past, before the rise of Men, the Old World was ruled by Dwarfs and Elves, until the "War of the Beard" forever sundered the friendship that once defined relations between Dwarf and Elf. The ruins of ancient structures built by those elder races are still scattered across the coastlines and high mountains of the Old World.[2]

The different states of the Old World are rarely allied, and although relations between the various realms generally tend to be cordial, they have been known to go to war against each other. While there are interstate rivalries over such things as trade and natural resources, which have often proved a great source of wealth for some Old Worlders, the near-constant threats to life that exist in this region make working together an occasional necessity.[2]

The Old World has been invaded many times over the years: Greenskin hordes from the Badlands to the south, Chaos incursions from the north, Skaven attacks from their underground lairs, unrelenting armies of the Undead, and large-scale raids by Dark Elf fleets have all threatened to destroy one or all of the realms of Men. However, Human lives are relatively short, and over the generations the memories of these events fade into myth and legend, and they become nothing more than stories to scare children at bedtime.[4]

The dangers that exist beyond the borders of the Old World prevent all but the most adventurous and foolhardy from venturing out into the wider world. There are a few established trade routes to the Far Eastern empire of Grand Cathay and to the inhospitable lands of Araby to the south, and the famous explorer Marco Colombo "discovered" the continents of the New World across the Great Ocean to the west.[2]

Contact with the High Elves and Dwarfs is maintained by most of the states of Men in the Old World, primarily for the pursuit of rich trading and commercial opportunities. However, the vast majority of the settled population of the Old World knows little about the wider world beyond the lands they call home.[2]

Kingdoms of the Old World[]

The Old World consists of realms primarily inhabited by Men, but it is also home to the Dwarf kingdoms of the Karaz Ankor and Athel Loren, the forested homeland of the Wood Elves.[4]

The Empire[]

TheEmpire

A map of the Empire as it stood in 2503 IC after Emperor Karl Franz's election.

The Empire, more formally the Empire of Man, is the most preeminent realm of Men in the Old World, possessing both blackpowder and steam technology while more antiquated weapons remain more common and the norm. The Empire was founded by Sigmar Heldenhammer from a collection of warring tribes inhabiting the region that is now the Empire. Sigmar was of the Unberogen tribe who inhabited what is now Reikland, and he now serves as the ascended the patron deity of the Empire.[4]

The territories of the other tribes now exist as the Empire's various Electoral Provinces such as Ostland and Talabecland. The Empire is led by a monarch known as the emperor, though he is elected from and by the ranks of the Elector Counts, the nobles who serve as the feudal rulers of each individual Electoral Province.

Though the Empire has gone through various periods of political fragmentation and civil war, it was reunited two centuries ago during the Great War Against Chaos into the strong power it is today by Emperor Magnus the Pious. Most dates in the Known World are measured using the Imperial Calendar (IC). Though the other peoples of the Old World would surely prefer to use their own systems, the usage of the most powerful Human state's dating system serves to simplify things. The current, reigning emperor is Karl Franz.[4]

Bretonnia[]

400px-Bretonnia

A map of Bretonnia during the reign of King Louen Leoncoeur, ca. 2500 IC.

Bretonnia is a large, feudal kingdom of Men. It was formed from a collection of warring city-states by its first royarch or king, Gilles le Breton, at the bidding of the Lady of the Lake, who would later become the patron deity of Bretonnia.[4]

Bretonnia is the second largest realm in the Old World after the Empire and has a strict class system where the upper class, comprised of the high nobility and Bretonnia's knights, abide by principles of chivalry and are rich and educated. The lower class makes up the majority of the population, and is comprised of peasants who perform most of the labour to support the nobility and are often poorly treated and politically repressed by their feudal masters.[4]

Bretonnian nobles eschew blackpowder weaponry for cultural reasons, seeing its use in battle as cowardly, and favour more traditional mounted combat using knightly heavy cavalry, accompanied by hordes of peasant men-at-arms as support.[4]

The knights of Bretonnia are regarded as the greatest in Old World, and all male nobles are expected to train in the arts of war and chivalry, or face dishonour. Most renowned of all are the Grail Knights, beings who have supped from the Holy Grail and become imbued with fay power and longevity.[4]

Bretonnia is ruled by a king or "royarch," a fearsome warrior who is almost always a Grail Knight. The current royarch is King Louen Leoncoeur -- the "Lionhearted" in the Bretonnian tongue.[4]

Kislev[]

KislevLargeMap1

Map of the Tzardom of Kislev, ca. 2500 IC

Kislev is a realm renowned across the Known World for its freezing temperatures and its hardy people. It is the northernmost civilised kingdom of Men in the Old World. Kislev is ruled by a monarch known as a tzar or tzarina and often bears the brunt of most Chaos invasions of the Old World. It is protected from the many threats facing its people by the existence of the Ice Witches, Kislevite women gifted with magical ability who are skilled wizards and practitioners of the Lore of Ice. The current ruling tzarina, Katarin Bokha, is the most powerful of the Ice Witches.

Erengrad, the capital city of Kislev and Praag are the three largest cities in Kislev, with Erengrad and Praag both being situated on the River Lynsk, Kislev's largest river.[4]

Kislev was founded around 1000 years after the Empire by a union of the Gospodar tribe which migrated out of the Eastern Steppes and with the Ungol tribe that already inhabited the frigid lands that would become Kislev. Its main god is Ursun, the Bear God, particularly in the south where the Gospodar influence is strongest, though there has been a recent movement to unite all of Kislev's various faiths into a single church known as the Great Orthodoxy.

In the more nomadic region of the Kislevite north, the Ungols keep the worship of Dazh, the god of fire and the sun, and Tor, the god of thunder, alive, as well as the veneration of the minor spirits of the land.[4]

Tilea[]

Tilea1

A map of Tilea, ca. 2500 IC

Tilea is a large, fertile peninsula located in the southern Old World, along the tranquil coast of the warm and bountiful Tilean Sea. The wealthy city-states that dot Tilea's landscape share the same cultural ideals, embracing the ideals of trade, exploration, republican political systems and the conduct of constant civil wars with almost equal passion. Tilea is a land of great wealth and advancement, a land known far and wide for being the cradle from which the ideals of democracy, civil liberty and justice was birthed, founded, and established.[2]

Tilea is not a united state, but a cultural region divided up into various rival city-states, the largest and most powerful of which are all considered principalities, including Luccini, Miragliano, Pavona,Sartosa, Tobaro, Trantio, Remas, and Verezzo.[2]

Tileans are known across the Old World as extremely skilled traders and are able to swindle anyone but the cunning Arabyans into a bad bargain, and take great offence at having their personage or accent mistaken as coming from their hated rivals in Estalia.[2]

Most warfare in Tilea is conducted through the hiring of mercenaries by the city-states, and these mercenary companies are also known as the "Dogs of War."[2]

Estalia[]

Estalia Map Man O' War

A map of Estalia, ca. 2500 IC

Estalia is a parched cultural region of Men that is located south of Bretonnia and south-west of the Empire on the Estalian Peninsula of the Old World.

The hot, dry lands of Estalia are not united under one crown. Instead, they are ruled by many tiny kingdoms of different sizes, few of which are known beyond the confines of Estalia itself, though the major city-states include the long-time rivals of Magritta and Tobaro. Estalia is famed for its travellers and merchants, whose trade caravans can be encountered across the lands of the Known World.[4]

Estalians take great offence at being mistaken for Tileans and vice versa elsewhere in the Old World, despite the similarities of their native languages.[4]

Estalian steel is famed throughout the Old World for its quality, and Estalia was famously invaded by a sultan of Araby, which served as the inciting incident for the Great Crusades. The resulting crusades involved soldiers from as far away as the Empire and Bretonnia making their way to Estalia to reclaim the land for its people.[4]

Marienburg and the Wasteland[]

Wasteland v2

A map of the Wasteland made by MadAlfred, ca. 2500 IC (Unofficial)

Marienburg is considered to be the largest trading hub in the Old World and is the greatest of its ports. Straddling the mouth of the River Reik as it drains the mainland into the Sea of Claws, nearly all maritime trade that concerns Bretonnia and the Empire happens here. It is a place of great wealth and great opportunity. It is also a place despised by the Empire, despite its reliance on the fabulous port city's good fortunes due to its people's descision to secede from the Empire -- and their ability to maintain that independence.[3]

The pride and pretension of Marienburg's citizens knows no bounds and they claim to be the equal in every way of the Tileans in art and culture.[3]

Marienburg is now a bustling, independent city-state in the Wasteland that seceded from the Empire peacefully some time ago. Marienburg is one of the largest cities in the Old World and flourishes on the trade that crisscrosses the Great Ocean and the Sea of Claws, and the commercial traffic on the River Reik which runs south to Nuln and Altdorf.[3]

The Wasteland itself is a coastal area of vast moorlands located around the mouth of the River Reik which surrounds Marienburg. The Wasteland used to be the Imperial Electoral Province known as the "Westerland" that was conquered in 501 IC by Emperor Sigismund II, until it seceded during the reign of Emperor Dieter IV in 2429 IC by providing the emperor with a hefty bribe. The Empire has ever since sought to reconquer the province, but Marienburg's unrivalled commercial and maritime dominance has frustrated every attempt.[3]

Athel Loren[]

Map of Athel Loren

A map of the forest of Athel Loren, ca. 2500 IC

Athel Loren, also known as the Everwood in the Empire, is a large, magical forest comprised of ancient, sentient trees located between the Empire and southeastern Bretonnia, on the western slopes of the Grey Mountains. It is here that the Wood Elves or Asrai established their home millennia ago when the majority of the Elves in the Old World returned to Ulthuan, following the conflicts of the Sundering and the War of the Beard. While isolated colonies of Wood Elves exist elsewhere, Athel Loren is their homeland.[4]

Athel Loren is ruled by two powerful Elves called Ariel and Orion who are possessed by Elven deities representative of different aspects of nature. They are said to be the Aethyric conscience of the forest itself. Ariel represents the peaceful, regenerative aspect of nature, and Orion is the embodiment of its warlike, savage and unpredictable essence.[4]

The forest is steeped in magic, and it is unlike any other forest in the Known World. It is said that time flows differently in the forest than elsewhere. One could be within its boughs for hours and come out and see only a few minutes had passed. Or one could enter the forest for minutes only to emerge and discover that a century had passed.[4]

Forest spirits -- Treemen, Dryads, and other fay beings -- are common in Athel Loren, and when the Wood Elves go to war to defend the borders of their woodland realm, the self-aware trees of the forest fight alongside them. Strangers who venture into Athel Loren are rarely seen again, and the local Bretonnian peasants who live in the vicinity of the forest know well to keep clear of the trees.[4]

Worlds Edge Mountains and the Karaz Ankor[]

Worlds Edge Mountains Map

The Worlds Edge Mountains and the Karaz Ankor of the Dwarfs, ca. 2500 IC

The Worlds Edge Mountains, also spelled World's Edge Mountains, are the greatest range of mountains in the Known World, stretching out from the Chaos Wastes and extending into the Southlands.[4]

The mountains are also said to split into several smaller ranges that branch out of the main mountain range, including that of the Black Mountains, which act as the Empire's southern borders to the Border Princes, and the Grey Mountains, which act as the western border that separates the lands of Bretonnia and the Empire. The range continues on to the north until it splits in the land of Norsca, and the other half connecting to the Mountains of Mourn. [4]

In the distant past, the Worlds Edge Mountains were at the heart of the great Dwarf empire of ancient days called the Karaz Ankor. Even now, many great Dwarf holds and fortresses may be found amidst this towering range of peaks.[4]

Border Princes[]

Border-princes

A map of the Border Princes, ca. 2500 IC

The Border Princes, also known as the Borderlands, "the Frontiers," or simply as the "Border Princes," is not a single, united state, but instead a loose collection of city-states and small, independent, feudal principalities located in the far south of the Old World.[4]

These lands are infamous as the homes of a wide variety of bandits, mercenaries, cut-throats, pirates and other lawless fugitives. Following the Battle of Black Fire Pass, Human colonists and adventurers during the time of Sigismund the Conqueror led a campaign of conquest towards the Empire's southern borders and fought off the Greenskin tribes that used to inhabit the lands, clearing the way for many nobles and colonists from all across the lands of the Old World to colonise and claim patches of this territory as their own.[4]

The Border Princes essentially serve as the frontier of the Old World and are regularly attacked by Greenskins, Beastmen and other marauding forces. The Border Princes is a fertile ground for mercenaries, many of who are known to come from here as it is a region where they can find constant, lucrative employment.[4]

Game History[]

In the First and Second Editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, the terms "West", "Westerner" or "Men of the West" stood for the Old World and all of its peoples. The Men of the West's primary anatagonists at this time was another Human faction later identified as Araby.[5a]

The Old World was depicted much like at present, as a mirror of Renaissance Europe in the sixteenth century, comprised of many independent states of varying sizes and related to real world cultures such as high medieval France (Bretonnia) and the Holy Roman Empire (Empire of Man). Although the Old World included the Dwarf Holds of the Karaz Ankor, it was dominated by Men. The language of the Men of the West, called Old Worlder, was spoken and understood as a common tongue by all Humans within the region -- despite some extreme dialectical variations. Old Worlders were white-skinned, usually with brownish hair and green or brown eyes. Most Old Worlders were considered neutral in moral alignment.[5a]

The north of the Old World was more primitive culturally and technologically than the rest of the continent, more analagous to Europe during the Dark Ages or Early Middle Ages (sixth to eleventh centuries) whilst the central regions were slightly more sophisticated, matching the Europe of the High Middle Ages (eleventh to fourteenth centuries) and the southern regions proved the most advanced, aping the culture and technical advances of the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Gunpowder weapons were totally unknown in the north of the Old World in these earlier editions, but available in the south, although even here they were crude and far from common.[5a]

Interactive Map[]


Videos[]

Trivia[]

The Old World is roughly equivalent in geography, culture and technological development to the continent of Europe on Earth during the late medieval and early Renaissance periods of real world history.

Sources[]

  • 1: Warhammer Fantasy Battles: Core Rules (8th Edition)
    • 1a: pg. 212
  • 2: Warhammer Armies: Dogs of War (5th Edition)
  • 3: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition: Marienburg, Sold Down The River (RPG)
  • 4: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition: Core Rulebook (RPG)
  • 5: Warhammer Fantasy Battles: Battle Bestiary (2nd Edition)
    • 5a: pg. 21


Gallery[]

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