AoS Visualising the Mortal Realms as Planets: Brainstorming Thread

[Christ Damien]

How is it causing headache in your local(?) community?

I was reffering to the age of sigmar community in general. It's hard to get the picture because our brain tends to stay on the idea of planets, spherical objects at least.

Instead, it is flat earths with a lot of magic on the side. Magic that keeps you from going into the void.


Here is Arda, the realm of Tolkien. I forgot that it becomes a planet shaped object after Illuvatar reshape everything out of anger xD But at the beginning it is a flat earth.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Ard...asus-tpin&prmd=vin&hl=en#imgrc=WdTlC4OcDzQxdM


For a more artistic perspective :

https://www.google.com/search?q=Ard...asus-tpin&prmd=vin&hl=en#imgrc=o-mbHAcE6UHXsM

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

I'm still sceptical on that and am still staying with my own Canon if that's OK with you lot on this subject. I mostly ignore the aspects of GW's canon that I find boring and use my own.

 

[ILKAIN]

I'm still sceptical on that and am still staying with my own Canon if that's OK with you lot on this subject. I mostly ignore the aspects of GW's canon that I find boring and use my own.

LMAO I think that's just fine... at the end of the day, fluff is just that... FLUFF. it goes well with peanut butter and jelly

 

[gb2098]

I was reffering to the age of sigmar community in general. It's hard to get the picture because our brain tends to stay on the idea of planets, spherical objects at least.
Instead, it is flat earths with a lot of magic on the side. Magic that keeps you from going into the void.
Here is Arda, the realm of Tolkien. I forgot that it becomes a planet shaped object after Illuvatar reshape everything out of anger xD But at the beginning it is a flat earth.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Ard...asus-tpin&prmd=vin&hl=en#imgrc=WdTlC4OcDzQxdM

For a more artistic perspective :

https://www.google.com/search?q=Ard...asus-tpin&prmd=vin&hl=en#imgrc=o-mbHAcE6UHXsM

something i've always noticed when people make those maps of Arda is that they leave Aman on the altered world.. one of the big elements in the post-reshaping is that the reshaping to a round world was done to prevent mortals from being able to reach the undying lands (Aman), which were no longer present on the curved world. only ships sent from Aman by the Valar to carry the elves westward were able to take the "straight path' and reach Aman. anyone else sailing westward would just loop back around until they hit the eastern lands. (done because the Numenoreans, who had their island close enough to see the edge of the undying lands, got fed up with the prohibition from sailing west from their island, and decided to lay siege to Aman, basically they wanted to storm the gates of 'heaven'. the Illuvitar reshaped the world to curve it in order to preserve Aman and the Valar and prevent mortals from setting foot there)



i think the best way to visualize the mortal realm is actually with the help of Terry Pratchett..

The Disc World is a literal disc on the back of 4 elephants ontop of the great turtle A'tuin, swimming sedately through space, with the sun and moon orbiting the disc (one of the elephants even has to lift a leg to let the moon pass). such a weird world can only exist through extreme amounts of magic causing reality to sit down and shut up. (amid other effects)

sure it isn't an exact match, but the basic principle remains.

 

[gb2098]

Chamon: Chamon is the most difficult one to visualise in my view, as metal is not alive in the way a planet’s crust is. However, one piece of art has led me to a possible way to view it - the Kharadron Overlords artwork featuring a skyport really helps to conjure the image of Chamon being another gas giant, but one with a much more hostile climate and atmosphere like our own Jupiter (specifically one that contains a lot of gaseous metals like the aether-gold that the Kharadron harvest).

who says it can't be alive?

 

[gb2098]

thinking on it, i suspect that the AoS writers were heavily inspired by the Ancient Norse Cosmology, with the nine realms supported by the branches and roots of the World Tree.

(various other modern art depictions (sadly no ancient art exists)
https://assets.rbl.ms/14606980/980x.png
https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11111/111112612/3607917-8578551404-nine_.jpg

while the Norse eventually figured out the earth is round (their ability to navigate on the sea required that knowledge), their cosmology evolved in a time before they figured that out, so their cosmology is basically large flat 'worlds' connected by the great tree. each world is a monotype except for Midgard. jotunheim is a world of mountains, Muspellheim a world of fire, Niflheim a world of ice, helheim a world of dreary death, etc.
there was some overlap though.. Muspellheim, helheim, and nifleheim were generally considered to border each other.. ether as one big world or just butting up to each other, we don't know. but Ginnungagap, "yawning void", was said to be between them, and the place where the ancestor of the gods and the giants originated.
like wise Vanaheim, Asgard, and Alfheim (home of the elves) were similar treated as bordering on each other. and possibly with jotunheim and Svartalfheim (home of the dwarves/dark elves) as part of the same region since travel to and from them was present as easy for the gods (but not mortals)

this would seem to parallel the AoS realms fairly well, especially if you view the realmgate connections as the analog for yggdrasil. linking the realms and making travel between them possible, but only for those who know the secret to it.

 

[Aginor]

Here is my stance on it:

I would like the realms to be planets as well, but they aren't in official fluff. Sad but.. meh.
They are more like the planes in D&D / Planescape.

As for how they look like:
I like the Star Wars comparisons, and I agree with most of them. Not all though.

Aqshy - Agree. Mostly. I also see it as kind of a Mustafar-like hellscape. But not all of it. Parts of it may lack active volcanoes.
Ghur - Yeah, sounds good to me.
Azyr - That's where I disagree most. I think of it as a pretty diverse conglomerate of landscapes, like some ideas of how Elysium could look like, quite peaceful and controlled by Order. Life is pretty good there. Formed by the good gods, even with Lustria-like parts for the Seraphon who live there.
Chamon - I think the picture you posted is great for Chamon, at least for the inhabited parts. However I think that metal might be taken a bit less as "artificial" (although I like the "clockwork world" idea, in D&D they call it 'Mechanus' and the Modrons live there), but more literally. Parts of it might be raw, looking basically like a rocky, barren landscape, but the rocks are all either ores, or stuff like native silver (so basically made of metal). There might also be magnetic rocks floating around and such things.
Ulgu - I agree with your description to some degree, but not with the picture. Dagobah is a dark place in Ghyran for me (see below). For me Ulgu is basically Svartalfheim from the Thor movie, or the planet seen in the movie Pitch Black.
Hysh - Same as Ulgu, but bright.
Ghyran - Everything lives, that's the premise. So Dagobah, Endor, Kashyyyk, Naboo and so on. Untouched living nature of every kind, including vast oceans full of life like in the Jurassic oceans and huge grassy planes with herds of wild animals. There are darker places (like Dagobah) and brighter places, but nature rules them all.
Shyish - It might sound funny but Shyish could be pretty diverse. It is kinda like Azyr in my mind, only with all the dead. There are people living there, Along their dead ancestors who might be guarding them. Parts of it might look like straight from a horror movie, or the old world areas of the Vampire Counts, but there might be parts akin to afterlives like many cultures see them. With Nagash in control and undead everywhere, but eerily nice looking.

Also noteworthy: IIRC it is mentioned that the important characteristics of each realm are dependent on the distance to their center. So Shyish might look pretty OK on the fringes, but horribly in the center, or vice versa, depending on your world view.

 

[gb2098]

regarding the day/night cycle..
since the various realms are in different locations relative to the Hysh and Uglu binary, different worlds are going to be in light and shadow at different times, but unless those other worlds also move, they'll do so in a sequence. (on the map, looks like the binary orbits clockwise, so the sequence would be Azyr, Ghyran, Ghur, Chamon, Aqshy, then Shyish.)
possibly with a 2nd smaller shadow zone caused by the prison of slanesh (assuming said prison is a physical site)

what will be the most different aspect will be the fact it won't look like a normal day night cycle.. the sun won't rise and fall, it'll brighten and dim, in the same fashion as an eclipse, with Uglu sliding across the face of Hysh until it is blocked completely. (video from the 2017 one) perhaps even with the corona effect.

 

[Aginor]

regarding the day/night cycle..
since the various realms are in different locations relative to the Hysh and Uglu binary, different worlds are going to be in light and shadow at different times, but unless those other worlds also move, they'll do so in a sequence. (on the map, looks like the binary orbits clockwise, so the sequence would be Azyr, Ghyran, Ghur, Chamon, Aqshy, then Shyish.)
possibly with a 2nd smaller shadow zone caused by the prison of slanesh (assuming said prison is a physical site)

what will be the most different aspect will be the fact it won't look like a normal day night cycle.. the sun won't rise and fall, it'll brighten and dim, in the same fashion as an eclipse, with Uglu sliding across the face of Hysh until it is blocked completely. (video from the 2017 one) perhaps even with the corona effect.

To be honest that's the aspect I like least about the whole thing. It just doesn't work.

 

[PlasmaDavid]

I think they chose a terrible direction for the fluff in the terms of the fluff universe. At least with WFB you could have a mental map of everything, and build the narrative around that. TO be fair I've not read any of the rule/fluff books, but everything I have heard and seen about AoS makes it sound extremely hand-wavey in terms of the fluff.

"Oh no it's cooler because it's no longer bound by geography, there's magical interdimensional stuff happening all the time which leads to various factions fighting!" is idiotic. It's bizarre they chose this direction with the fluff.

Then again I think the fluff writing had been going downhill for a long time. Just piling a bunch of fantasy sounding made up names on top of each other, along with a scattering of adjectives does not make for a compelling or coherent fluff.

I mean, take this random snippet from the blurb for a random Sigmarine unit I picked on the GW site

"The shimmering, golden wrath of the heavens made flesh, the Retributors live up to their name, dealing merciless justice to the sworn enemies of order in blinding flashes of celestial anger. Their weapons are forged from the purest ensorcelled sigmarite - the Retributors call upon the power of the storm to unleash shocking bursts of sky magic that turn their foes to clouds of ash in an instant."

Excellent, I know literally nothing about the unit or their place within your game setting, only they're TOTALLY SUPER COOL AND AWESOME AND STUFF. Purest, ensorcelled sigmarite is soooooo much cooler than mundane sigmarite.

 

[Aginor]

I think they chose a terrible direction for the fluff in the terms of the fluff universe. At least with WFB you could have a mental map of everything, and build the narrative around that. TO be fair I've not read any of the rule/fluff books, but everything I have heard and seen about AoS makes it sound extremely hand-wavey in terms of the fluff.

"Oh no it's cooler because it's no longer bound by geography, there's magical interdimensional stuff happening all the time which leads to various factions fighting!" is idiotic. It's bizarre they chose this direction with the fluff.

Then again I think the fluff writing had been going downhill for a long time. Just piling a bunch of fantasy sounding made up names on top of each other, along with a scattering of adjectives does not make for a compelling or coherent fluff.

I mean, take this random snippet from the blurb for a random Sigmarine unit I picked on the GW site

"The shimmering, golden wrath of the heavens made flesh, the Retributors live up to their name, dealing merciless justice to the sworn enemies of order in blinding flashes of celestial anger. Their weapons are forged from the purest ensorcelled sigmarite - the Retributors call upon the power of the storm to unleash shocking bursts of sky magic that turn their foes to clouds of ash in an instant."

Excellent, I know literally nothing about the unit or their place within your game setting, only they're TOTALLY SUPER COOL AND AWESOME AND STUFF. Purest, ensorcelled sigmarite is soooooo much cooler than mundane sigmarite.

While I disagree a bit with the first part of your post (ever read/played Planescape? They made that idea work!) I do agree with the second part.
Warhammer fluff (and not only Age of Sigmar, the Sam's applies to 40k and to a lesser degree to WHFB, at least the parts I have seen from it) is generally pretty bad.
Cheesy, over the top, and generally not making ablot of sense in itself. Like a Manowar music video in written form. Like Spelljammer on crack.

This is probably the only (tabletop and PC) game I ever played in which I mostly ignore the fluff and substitute it with my own. Normally I am quite a fan of fluff, but this is just too bad, at least huge parts of it.