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"Say what you will of us, call us heathens because we deny your weak pretender-god. Call us savages because we strike at you, but know this -- it is we who are closest to the Ruinous Powers. We, most favoured of the gods, shall burn your lands, revel in your suffering, and destroy you. Despair! For all that remains for you is the taste of northern steel and the end of your world. Such is the will of the gods."

—Hallbjörn, Norscan Chaos Marauder[36]

Norsca is a frigid, arctic peninsula and Human cultural region located in the far north of the Old World, though not officially considered a cultural or historical part of it by southern scholars. Norsca lies on the very doorstep of the northern Chaos Wastes themselves. It is bordered to the south by the freezing waters of the Sea of Claws, to the north by the Sea of Chaos and the Chaos Wastes, and to the east by the roving Kurgan tribes of the Eastern Steppes.[1a]

Norsca is inhabited by a race of savage and ferocious Men known variously as Norscans, Norsemen or the Norse. Long ago, in the time of Sigmar, when these people still inhabited the northern lands of what would become the Empire, they were known as the Norsii.[1a]

Suffused with the unholy energies of Chaos by its proximity to the ruined Warp Gate of the Old Ones that lies at the northern pole of the Known World, Norsca is a brutal realm where no one ruler holds sway. Instead, the bleak and brutal landscape is divided amongst the barbaric kingdoms and territories of many bloodthirsty and warlike tribes of Northmen, ruled by dark-armoured Chaos Champions and Chaos Lords blessed by the favour of the Chaos Gods, and who are thus held up as akin to royalty by their brethren.[7c]

Fur-clad warriors and berserkers of hairy brawn, the wrathful barbarians of Norsca sail the seas in fearsome longships and unleash their devastating fury upon the civilised realms of the south. Warlike and cruel, the Norscans are the very epitome of the Warriors of Chaos; fanatically devoted champions of the Dark Gods and the baneful scourge of their foes.[1a][2a][3a] The brutality of Norscan raids has been felt as far abroad as the Witch King's baleful Dark Elven domain of Naggaroth, as well as the mysterious Far Eastern empire of mighty Grand Cathay,[35] for the Men of Norsca are reckoned to be perhaps the most adept sailors and navigators in all the Known World;[1a] unequaled by any in their courage and reckless thirst for conquest.[1a][2a][3a]

Norscans are, without exception, great warriors, blessed with incredible strength at arms and fearsome demeanours.[7b][51b] It is the dream of nearly every member of this fierce people to ascend to the ranks of the greatest warriors -- to become mighty Champions of Chaos and bear the dread marks of their ruinous gods' favour.[7c][51b]

Norsca is a savage and brutal land, plagued by lethal winters for more than half the year, and worse, lashed perpetually by raging gales of Chaos energies howling down from the ancient ruins of the Old Ones' fallen Warp Gate resting at the very heart of the northern Chaos Wastes.[7a] As such, no sane Human being would be able to survive in this harsh wasteland with their sanity intact.

It is for this reason that most, if not all the tribes of the Norscans, are affected to some extent by the power of Chaos, causing their flesh to warp and mutate through the influences of their gods, and their minds to be plunged into the darkest depths of the most violent insanity. The Norscans see these alterations as the "blessings" of their dreadful deities, which empower them to strive above and conquer all who oppose them. Barbarous, hard-bitten and war-like, the Men of Norsca form the hardendec core of the armies of the Warriors of Chaos.[1a]

History

Chaos Warrior

A Norscan Chaos Warrior in service to Khorne.

Norscan Origins

There are many different theories amongst the scholars of the Old World regarding the origins of the Norscans. Some aver that the Norscans are the descendants of Daemons, a race of bloodthirsty monsters whose very existence is at odds with the natural order,[7a] while others argue that they are a race of Giants and kin to the hulking denizens of the Ogre Kingdoms. Yet others submit that the Norsemen are supernatural creatures of ice and snow, born of the merciless winds of winter.[7a]

In truth, the ethnogenesis of the Norscans begins with their ancestors, the Norsii, an ancient tribe of northern barbarians who had long venerated the Chaos Gods, particularly the Blood God Kharneth. Ancient sagas record that during the cataclysmic events of the Fall of the Old Ones, when Chaos first burst forth into the Known World, that tribes of primitive Men made common cause with the Daemonic hordes, creating unholy pacts with Chaos' dark lords and binding their people to their worship. Thus were born the first of the Warriors of Chaos, and the Norsii were among those first tribes of the Northmen to pledge their souls to Chaos, alongside the ancestors of the Kurgan and Hung. Riding as the vanguard of the Chaos hordes, these barbarous mortal tribes brought ruin and devastation upon the gleaming kingdoms of Dwarf and Elf, and so were the mighty bastions of Order humbled by their brutal onslaught,[3d] and untold millions were slain.

The much later records of the Norse Dwarf clans, most significant being the Chronicle of Dread Yngvarr Iovarsson, make mention of several specific tribes of warlike Men, far outstripping the tribes of what would become the Empire in their savagery and bellicosity, migrating and settling in the northernmost parts of the Old World, these being the lands later to become Kislev, Nordland, and Ostland. Most significant among these groups were the horse-bound Ungols, the grim Frikings, the Tor-worshiping Roppsmenn, and, most notably, the savage, bloodbound Norsii tribes, such as the brutal warriors of the ferocious Iron Wolves clan, and others besides.[12a]

Norse Berserker

A Norscan Champion of Khorne, the most worshipped of the Chaos Gods among the Northmen.

The migration of the northern tribes of Men is dated reliably in the Norse Dwarf chronicles as having taken place in -1012 IC, putting it roughly 20 years prior to the later Blackfire Pass migration of the Hunberokin, Teutokin, Merokin, and other Imperial precursor tribes.[12a] The Norsii settled in their new homelands, raiding and pillaging their neighbours for additional resources and to catch the eyes of their malefic deities.[8]

Imperial legends from before the age of Sigmar narrate how, having been pushed to their limits by the conquests of the Norsii, the southerly tribes had banded together into a great host to push the Norsii to the uttermost northern lands of the Reik Basin, confining the brutal raiders to the lands above the Middle Mountains for centuries.[8] Other Norsii clans were driven yet further back to the Chaos Wastes themselves, where they were believed by the southern tribes to have perished. This was not the case, however, and it was in these unholy lands that the Norsii were able to indulge themselves more freely in the gifts of the Chaos Gods, and connect themselves more deeply with the darkest aspects of their violent beliefs. These black-armoured Chaos Marauders would return to their kinfolk in black-prowed longships, rising to lead their kinsmen in warfare.[7a]

Norsca 04

Concept art of a Norse Longship as created for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

As one of the earliest Human tribes to settle the Reik Basin, the Norsii may have also participated in the massacre of the peaceful agriculturist tribes that had settled the area previously. Likely alongside the Roppsmenn and the Teutogens, the Norsii are also known to have contended mightily with the Udoses, having raided and despoiled the lands of their enemies on countless occasions. In 9 IC, the Norsii under their High King Cormac Bloodaxe assaulted the Udoses' capital city and slew King Wolfilla and his entire family, crucifying their bodies upon the walls of their own palace.[9]

Barbarous and warlike, even beyond that of the Teutogen or the Ungols, the Norsii were ever the bane of their southerly neighbours, despised and feared for their brutality and consummate skill at warfare. It was only under the rule of Sigmar Heldenhammer that the ferocious Sea-Wolves of the Norsii were held at bay, and finally driven from the Empire for all time to people their bleak homeland in the Chaos Wastes.[8]  

As the chosen people of the Ruinous Powers, the Norsii had seen it as their right and duty to butcher and plunder the tribes of the south, laying low all who dared to oppose them, virtually unchallenged until the rise of blessed Sigmar.[8]

Pleased by the ferocity of their servants, the Dark Gods bestowed the Norsii with the blessings of Chaos, increasing their indomitable might and making them as wolves amongst sheep. Forever on the fringes of the southern lands, the Norsii became a fearsome race of skilled fighters, and many vicegerents of the Dark Gods had served as advisers to the northern tribes, guiding and shaping their destinies, preparing the Norsii for their role as the harbingers of the End Times.

Norsca Emblem Total War Warhammer

Icon of the Norscan World Walkers army commanded by Wulfrik the Wanderer in Total War: Warhammer III.

The depredations of the Norsii are described in grandiose terms by the legends of the age of Sigmar; speaking of hulking Norscans bedecked in heavy black plate, wielding brutal axes and kite shields taller than any man. Of towering armoured horsemen hefting huge iron lances, mounted upon great destriers with burning red eyes. Of dark shamans who summoned forth Daemons of blood and fire to fight alongside the armies of the Norsii. Of dark, majestic warrior-kings of unsurpassed martial might, who dwelt within black halls of iron and beheaded and gutted their enemies within their fortresses in praise of the cruel gods they so faithfully worshipped. Indeed, few had faced the warhosts of the Norsemen and lived to speak of it; those who had tried were simply butchered violently and left as a sacrifice to the brazen war-god of the Northmen.[26]

Faced by the extreme opposition of Sigmar Heldenhammer and a united army of several tribes, and still reeling from the loss of High King Varag Skulltaker in battle during the previous year, the Norsii clans were unable to successfully hold their ground against the southron onslaught. Though the Norsii fought like maddened bears in the defence of their homesteads, they were eventually forced northwards by the armies of the Unberogen, Udoses, Taleutens and Cherusens.[8]

Wintertooth

The icon of the Troll King Throgg and his Norscan Wintertooth army in Total War: Warhammer.

Fleeing across the northeastern rivers, the Norsii were then forced to contend with the fierce Ungol horse-tribes, but were able to fight through them to reach the Troll Country. There, the Norscan sagas record the final stand of the mighty Ekkil Bloodheart, a giant warrior of great renown and incredible power who held off the advance of the Ungol hordes long enough to allow his kinsmen to flee to the Chaos Wastes. Oral tradition records Ekkil, proud to the point of insanity, as having severed his own head from his neck to deny the Ungols the pleasure of killing him.[21a]

After much hardship, the Norsii finally returned to Norsca, but instead of the safe refuge they had hoped for, they found their ancestral homeland occupied by many strange and barbarous races. Among these were a race of primaeval savages who were kin to the earliest Human tribes who had become the original Beastmen, as well as the bloodthirsty Kurgan tribes of the Eastern Steppes. The Norsii would not be denied, however, and in a ferocious war of conquest, they slaughtered or subjugated all the other races of the land until they alone became the dominant force. It was from this war of conquest that the bloodlines of these barbarous peoples were mingled and a new, even more ferocious nation of warriors was forged from the raw clay of the Norsii -- the Norscans.[7a]

Great Invasion of the Norsii (-7 IC)

Norse Khorne Champion

High King Varag Skulltaker leads the armies of the north in a great Norsii invasion of the lands of the Cherusen and Taleuten tribes.

Though the Norsii had ravaged the lands of their neighbours on countless occasions, one of the most famous was the great invasion they launched of the lands of the Cherusen and Taleuten tribes in the age before the founding of the Empire by Sigmar Heldenhammer. In -7 IC, a horde of bloodthirsty Norsii under the leadership of their high king, a mighty Champion of Khorne known as Varag Skulltaker, descended from the frozen north to lay waste and burn all before them as an offering to the Chaos Gods. [8]

The terrible threat of a Norsii invasion drove the formerly rival Cherusen and Talueten tribes to put aside their differences and join forces against the terrifying threat. Such was the ferocity and power of the Norsii that not even the combined efforts of the two tribes was able to hold them back, and the Norsii succeeded in conquering the Cherusen and Taleuten lands (modern Hochland and Talabecland, respectively), pushing out the native tribes and causing them to migrate further and further south in order to escape certain death or enslavement at the brutal hands of the Norsii.[8]

The Cherusen and Taleutens subsequently appealed to the fierce Teutogen tribe to their south for aid, but even the legendary sons of the war god Ulric were fearful of the ferocious Norsii, and Artur, chieftain of the Teutogens and lord of the Fauschlag, had instead elected to watch events unfold, hoping that the Norsii juggernaut would exhaust itself against the Teutogens' rivals in the south, particularly the Unberogens, and leave their lands ripe for conquest by the people of the Fauschlag.[8]

The now homeless tribes looked to the far south for succour; to the seat of the Unberogen tribe and the mighty King Bjorn. Appealing to the honourable chieftain for aid, and pledging their Sword-Oaths to him if he would assist them, Bjorn agreed to help the beleaguered tribes and marshalled the full strength of the Unberogen to war. His decision was also motivated by the knowledge that the Norsii would inevitably turn their axes upon his own lands once the Cherusen and Taleuten were wiped out.[8]

King Bjorn's legendary son, Sigmar Heldenhammer, was not part of that great muster, however, having instead been charged to steward Unberogen lands while his father made war in the far north. For weeks uncounted did the armies of the southern kings battle against the terrible hordes of the north. A host of fully 7,000 warriors, outnumbering the Norsii nearly 2 to 1, marched into the cold lands of their new dominion. In the initial battle, fully 1,000 southern warriors alone had been slaughtered by the Norsii. Hundreds more had been dealt such blows and had been butchered so badly that they would never fight again.[8]

Norsii wolfships had penetrated far inland, and parties of raiders had managed to assault the Udoses tribe and their principle settlement of Haugrvik, besieging the seat of King Wolfilla of the Udoses himself before the southern armies were able to relieve the siege. These battles with the hosts of the southern tribal kings were merely foreplay. Each confrontation was only a brief skirmish foreshadowing the true and terrible battle about to begin on the rocky foothills east of the great Middle Mountains.[8]

The warriors of the north were brutal and ferocious beyond all reason, as any single Norsii warrior was easily worth three southrons in battle.[8] Yet the very savagery and overpowering drive for personal glory that made the Norsii such phenomenal warriors proved also to be their greatest weakness -- for the armies of the Norsii lacked the methodical discipline and numerical superiority of the southern tribes, which had served to impart a huge advantage to the defenders.[8]

Six thousand southerners gave battle against 4,000 cold-eyed killers from across the Sea of Claws -- black-armoured Chaos Champions at the fore with hordes of hulking Marauder Berserkers at their bearskin-cloaked backs. They charged at their foes, howling bestial prayers to the god Khorne, and promising brutal ends to all who opposed them. Volleys of arrow-fire smashed into these madmen but to no avail. The steel-armoured Chaos Champions, bloody-furred Chaos Warhounds and howling monstrosities of the northern horde struck into the southerner's lines with a fury born of the love of war, wreaking terrible havoc amongst their ranks and slaying hundreds.[8]

A wedge of heavy Norsii horsemen smashed into the flanks of the southerners, killing scores with their mighty brazen axes, but these knights were nonetheless defeated by frenzied Cherusen wildmen, who tore the armoured giants from the saddle while Unberogen axe-men dispatched them with brutal strikes. Back and forth the tide of the battle swung, but slowly, the discipline of the southerners won out, as did their greater numbers. They advanced as a silent block of axes and swords, resolute in their desire to see the offence of the Northmen avenged.[8]

A great cheer rose from the combined ranks as it seemed the Norsii's fate was sealed, only for the appearance of their king, resplendent in his red Chaos Armour and bearing aloft his flaming greatsword, to restore order and courage to the Norsii ranks. Emboldened, the Norsii fought in an ordered retreat which drove back the southern alliance and won them the day.[8]

The southerners had neither the strength nor manpower to launch a pursuit now, and the Norsii retreated to a highly defensible position of a thickly wooded ridgeline and regrouped there in good order. For days the southrons attempted to goad the Norsii into a charge, but fear of their mighty warlord kept the natural ferocity of the Northmen in check. In the end, the southern army was forced to make a costly charge up the hill to defeat their foes.[8]

The southerners charged, and the Norsii fought like Daemons against them, their fury unmatched, and their shield-walls as impregnable fortresses atop their strong, elevated positions. Many times had Unberogen axes and swords failed to splinter the shields of the Northmen. It was only inch by bloody inch that the feral Men of the northlands were driven back, but for each inch a score of southrons had fallen bloodily and brutishly. Even when they had been driven from the top of the hill, the Norsii had remained defiant to the last, fighting in smaller and smaller circles and asking for no quarter from the enemy.[8]

Varag Skulltaker slew many in the battle, and had even fought the Unberogen king Bjorn in single combat. Daemonic sword met magical axe as the two kings fought, but Bjorn eventually proved too great for the Norsii warlord and hacked the Chaos Champion's head from his shoulders.[8] Enraged by the loss of their high king, Varag Skulltaker's dark-armoured Huscarls fell wrathfully upon the Unberogen king, savagely hacking him to death and tearing his body to bloody ribbons.[20a] Despite the massive losses sustained by the southern tribes, the Norsii were successfully pushed out of the Cherusen and Taleuten lands. The defeat of the main horde also signalled the withdrawal of the Norsii forces raiding and besieging the lands of the Udoses.[8]

Flight of the Norsii (-7 IC)

Vicious Norscans

The Norsii were a savage, barbaric people.

With the breaking of the snows, Sigmar Heldenhammer, newly ascended as the King of the Unberogens with the death of his father repelling the Norsii, called upon the Sword-Oaths of the Cherusen and Taleuten to aid him and journeyed north once more to bring war upon the chosen people of the Dark Gods.[8] He had also entreated the Teutogens for aid, but to no avail, with some tribesmen even going so far as waylay Sigmar's army as it passed through their territory.[8]

Finally arriving in the cold land of the Udoses, a beleaguered realm that had long-suffered daily invasions at the hands of the Norsii, Sigmar's warriors lifted the newest Norsii siege of the Udoses' keep of Salzenhus. The King of the Udoses, Wolfilla, was then only too happy to join his warriors to Sigmar's army. Thus did the wild-haired, kilted warriors of the Udoses tribe finally take the battle to the Chaos Marauders whom they had been forced to fear for so long.[8]

Though the Norsii fought like madmen to protect their steads from their former victims, the battle was never in doubt. With a full 8,000 warriors outnumbering them by several magnitudes, and with no strong leader to unite them with the death of their high king, the fractious Norsii were forced to retreat further and further northwards to the coast of the Sea of Claws, where their wolfships were anchored. Their villages burned and plundered by the Men of the south, there was nothing left for them but to return to the northern wastelands of their birth. Sigmar's warmachines had smashed the longships to burning kindling, however, thus robbing the Norsii of their salvation.[8]

But Sigmar had foolishly underestimated the Norsii, and though many of their kinsmen had been slain by the massive army of the south, yet more tribes were able to fight their way through the southrons' flanks to the then-unknown lands of the Kislevite steppes, slaughtering their way through the nomadic Ungols and wandering Kurgan tribes until they finally reached the lands of the Chaos Wastes -- Norsca itself.[21a] 

There, they scratched a bare living from the bleak land, fighting the neighbouring Kurgan and Ungols to assert dominance in the north, and amongst each other for resources and hunting grounds. Where once the Norsii lived in mighty halls of fire filled with warriors, now they were reduced to dwelling within icy caves and hovels built from the cannibalised ruins of the once-proud wolfships that had carried their warriors to battle for generations. Many were the oaths offered to the brutal gods of the north, as the Norsii swore that they and their descendants would one day cross the Sea of Claws and bring the bloodthirsty songs of war southwards, and kill all who dwelt in the southlands.[8]

It is recounted in the dread sagas that during the earliest stages of Norsca's settling that the Norsii came into conflict with a grotesque race of massive, Treemen-like beings known as the Treeblood, who savaged many of the early tribes. In desperation, the Norsii cried out to Tchar, the Changer of Ways, for salvation, and unto his people did the Raven God gift the Norsii with the magical fires of Chaos to drive the Treeblood from the land.[14]

With axe and flame, the ancient Norsii heroes led their kinsmen to slaughter the Treeblood and conquered all of Norsca for their own, building their oldest halls from the husks of the creatures. So complete was the Norsii's annihilation of the Treeblood that only one remained, the greatest and most hate-filled of its kind: the Trolltree. This horrific remnant of an ancient age was finally felled by the legendary Chaos Champion, Wulfrik the Wanderer, and from its bark was created the second magical longship called the Seafang, the largest and greatest of all Norscan longships, the first having been lost in an invasion of the island-continent of Ulthuan.[14]

Cormac Bloodaxe and the Siege of Middenheim (9 IC)

"These are days of great power, the tribes of the north, the beasts of the forest and a great prince of Kharnath will fall upon Middenheim and we will baptize this world in blood!"

—Kar Odacen, shaman of the Norsii, foretelling the coming of King Cormac Bloodaxe.[9]
Norsii

The vicious Norsii were the first warriors to ever defeat the Emperor Sigmar in open battle.

The Norsii, driven to the frigid lands beyond the Sea of Claws soon to be called Norsca, were left to recoup their strength and organise themselves into new factions, many clans and tribes having been wiped out or thinned by Sigmar's invasion. During this time, many grand heroes rose up to lead the Norsii, such as the legendary hero Ekil Bloodheart, who fought the Ungol hordes on the border of the Chaos Wastes.[21a] Despite the many heroes of the Norsii present in this era, few are so renowned in the early annals of the Northmen as Cormac Bloodaxe; a warrior whose name bespoke the naked ferocity and bloody-minded courage of this warrior-race.[9] 

A visionary warrior-king, Cormac was the son of the slain Norsii High King Varag Skulltaker, who had fallen in combat againt King Bjorn of the Unberogen, Sigmar's father. Cormac's incredible strength and ravenous drive for vengeance saw him arise to claim leadership of his father's tribe, the Iron Wolves, and eventually claim high kingship over all the Norsii tribes after a series of battles waged against the defiant jarls.[9] 

Cormac's adviser was the ancient shaman Kar Odacen, an emissary of the Chaos Gods themselves, who had long watched over the chosen people of the Dark Gods and had guided their destiny by long serving as a viceregent and counsellor to the warrior-kings of the north, including Cormac's father and grandfather. It was Kar Odacen who had forged Cormac's mighty Daemon-axe, binding a creature of Khorne to the blackened blade. Ensorcelled axe in hand, Cormac, now named the Bloodaxe, wrought unholy havoc on countless battlefields.

The Norsii invasion of the newborn Empire of Man began in 9 IC, barely two decades after their exile at Sigmar's hand. The cruel Northmen had returned to repay the first emperor for their suffering. United into the mighty juggernaut that had once made the world tremble, they sailed out from their fastnesses in the sub-arctic lands of the north, their only desire to avenge the deaths of their sword-brothers and kinsmen those many years ago.[9] 

The Norsii began their campaign of reconquest and revenge by raiding the holdings of the northern Roppsmenn tribe, who alone had taken the Norsii's abandoned territory after Sigmar's war in the north, largely due to the fact that no one else had wanted it. Such was the terror the memory of the Norsii evoked that even despite their exile, the marks of their dark worship of Chaos and barbaric culture were still carved deep in the northern lands, and so few tribes of the south had deigned to claim such holdings, believing them cursed and haunted by the spectres of the raiders' many, many victims.[9]

The Roppsmenn's courage proved their undoing, for so exposed to the Sea of Claws as they were, they could not withstand the ferocity of the Norsii raids, which plundered their villages and took their wives and elders as hostages. The Norsii thus held them as ransom, and extracted from the defeated Roppsmenn chieftains their oath for a season's worth of service, thereby enslaving the northern tribe to their will.[9]

Next, the Norsii fell upon the Udoses tribe, their long-time rivals. The Sea Wolves attacked the Udoses' northern capital city of Haugrvik, many miles inland from the shore of the Sea of Claws, and put it to the torch. Joined by the forces of their Roppsmenn "allies," the Norsii easily slaughtered the defenders. It was King Cormac Bloodaxe, resplendent in the ancient Chaos Armour of his father and wielding his flaming Daemon-axe, who slew the mightiest warrior amongst the Udoses, Cyfael, with a singe strike that split the brave clansman in two from neck to groin.[9]

King Wolfilla had all but thrown open the gates of his castle of Salzenhus when Cormac slit the throat of his wife, who was heavy with child. The Norsii then dragged the King of the Udoses out of his hall and crucified him, and threw the still-living members of his family to burn alive upon a pyre. Cormac Bloodaxe would later reflect upon this and say that no man so weak and soft should ever have been made a leader of Men.[9]

All the Udoses who lived within Haugrvik were slaughtered, the warriors slain in honourable battle, their non-combatants impaled upon great brazen stakes in honour of Khorne, and the settlement's children sacrificed upon bloody altars for the glory of the Lord of Skulls.[9] With Wolfilla's death, the Udoses quickly fell into the vicious, clannish bickering for which they were so famed as a succession crisis quickly spiralled out of control as the chieftains fought to take the tribe's now-vacant throne. With the defence of the northern Empire shattered, the Norsii were able to freely move further inland and wreak havoc and destruction upon the southern tribes just as they had done in the ancient days before Sigmar's rise to power.[9]

Norsii carving

This ancient carving from the time of Sigmar depicts a Norsii horseman.

With every victory, the tragic accounts of the Norsii's atrocities and savagery spread like wildfire throughout the Empire, sapping the courage and resolve of its defenders with every retelling as more and more refugees carried terrible accounts of the brutality they had suffered at the hands of the Northmen. Horrifying accounts of the oceans of blood their axes had spilled and the countless innocents carried off into slavery in the bowels of their dreaded wolfships.[9]

These barbarous attacks were not the work of a mere horde of raging barbarians however, but were in fact calculated specifically at weakening the morale of the Empire's army, as well as being specifically formulated in order to harm the ability of the Empire to quickly react and raise more troops to confront the Norsii invasion. This was only exacerbated by the fact that when Emperor Sigmar learned of the Norsii invasion, and the Roppsmenn's complicity in it, he marshalled his forces and waged a long, arduous campaign to crush them and drive them out of the Empire, for they had forfeited their place in it by aiding the savage Northmen. This left the inner lands of the Empire undefended against the wrath of the Norsii, however.[9]

The Roppsmenn tribe was all but annihilated by Sigmar's assault, their tattered remnants driven into the then-unknown lands of the northeast that would one day become Kislev where they would come into conflict with the Ungols. Nonetheless, this planted the seeds of dissension and disunity within the Empire, for the violence perpetrated against the Roppsmenn, seen by some simply as the coerced victims of the Norsii, was quite controversial in Sigmar's time. As a result, the Elector Counts became wary around their emperor, fearing what would become of their lands should they ever voice a contrary opinion. The purity of Sigmar's justice, long seen as the epitome of good governance by the tribes of the Empire, was now cast into doubt.[9]

Despite this disunity, the Empire was able to raise an army to meet the Norsii invaders, though were it not for the Udoses in the north setting aside their civil war over their succession crisis, elevating the canny warrior Conn Carsten to the position of warchief, the Norsii likely would have succeeded in conquering the whole of the Empire long before Sigmar Heldenhammer could have marshalled the tribal levies to stand against the horde. Indeed, but for the vigorous hit-and-run raids and tireless guerrilla warfare perpetrated by the Udoses upon the Norsii juggernaut, the entirety of the north would have most assuredly fallen long before Sigmar and his allies could have mustered to oppose them.[9]

When Sigmar finally faced the Northmen, they had done what no other enemy had ever accomplished before or since: they, and they alone, had managed to lay low the first emperor in true battle.[9] Indeed, the Imperial army, resplendent in its power and its morale bolstered by the mythical presence of the emperor, had expected to defeat the warriors of the north in a single, decisive battle. As such, it was completely and totally unprepared for the tactics employed by the Northmen.[9] 

The Imperials had expected undisciplined berserkers, only to find the natural ferocity of the Norsii tempered by a razor-sharp military precision. The Norsii had given battle in imitation of the southern armies, marching in tightly-packed ranks with a hitherto unheard of cohesion, and yet still retaining the unabashed fury and incredible martial skill that made the Men of the North masters of the battlefield. A perfect synthesis of military discipline and wild ferocity, even the whirlwind fury of the Thuringian warrior-bands was little use compared to the merciless berserker rage of the Norsii warriors, who met the Thuringian vanguard of Sigmar's army and hacked them apart, almost managing to slay their Elector Count, Otwin the Berserker.[9]

The axes and swords of the Norsii were not the only foe Sigmar faced that day, for the Norsii had also received a pledge of loyalty from their fellow Northmen, the Kurgan and Hung tribes, and so did the plainsmen of the Eastern Steppes swear their lives to the service of High King Cormac Bloodaxe. The horse clans of the Kul, Mung, Khazag, Hung and many others did encircle Sigmar's host, hammering the Imperials with arrows, holding them in place while the Norsii's heavy cavalry charged their lines, smashing into the southern warriors like the fist of the Blood God himself.[9]

The armies of the emperor were completely and utterly routed, and had they not organised enough to mount an orderly withdrawal from the battlefield, they would have surely been all but completely annihilated. Sigmar had realised that his army having sustained such losses, the Norsii could not be defeated now upon the open field of battle.[9] 

The only course remaining, therefore, was to retreat to the Teutogen fortress of Middenheim, renowned in legend as having never once been conquered. The great lifts that allow passage to the city in the present era had not been created in the time of Sigmar, and so to gain entry into the city would have required the Norsii to simultaneously take and hold both the eastern and western passages, as well as the viaduct of the city. It was only by drawing the Norsii into such a siege that there would be any hope of the Empire surviving Cormac Bloodaxe's invasion.

Sigmar23 03

Emperor Sigmar faces a Norsii Chaos Champion in combat.

The Norsii followed the fleeing Imperials to the fastness of Ulric, their number bolstered by hordes of raging Beastmen. Gathered as an endless tide of sinew and steel below the Fauschlag, the Norsii brought the hafts of their mighty axes banging against the round bosses of their shields as they bellowed and roared the black names of the Dark Gods and their honoured ancestors, while the Beastmen screeched and roared in blasphemous hymns to those self-same deities.[9]

It was a droning noise that shuddered the courage of all who heard it -- a terrible sound that spoke of the need and desire to make war for no reason other than the suffering it would cause. Here, clearly demonstrated, was the reason Sigmar was forced to drive the Norsii from his Empire: for where the Men of the Reik and the other southern tribes sought peace and plenty, the Northmen craved only battle and war. Where development and progress were the watchwords of the Empire, the joy of killing and the lust for domination drove the grim warriors of the savage north. Where the gods of the south rewarded worship with peace and protection, the baleful Dark Gods of the Northmen demanded worship and offered naught but war and the power to carry it on in return.[9]

The siege was brutal, lasting for thirteen full days and nights. Merciless Norsii charges were thrown back but with the greatest of effort, with each attack seeing the Norsii reaping a terrible toll from their adversaries. For where the Men of Sigmar's Empire fought with all they had for the sake of bare survival, the Men of the North fought with the savage desire that their gods would notice their might and reward them for their bravery. Marshalled before baleful war-altars dedicated to their gods, the Norsii truly felt the eyes of the Chaos Gods upon them, and the raging energies of the Aethyr surged upon them, transmuting them into new, deadlier forms.[9] 

On the thirteenth, most terrible day of the siege, Cormac Bloodaxe, who had slain so many in battle that his Daemon-axe now perpetually ran thick with congealed blood, awoke knowing the will of his god was to be carried out. For his vision seethed red as though his eyes were drenched perpetually in blood. Before a great pit where the Norsii had thrown the corpses of their enemies in honour of Khorne, there did Cormac command the greatest warriors of eight clans to sacrifice themselves to Khorne's glory. Mightily pleased with their valour and tithe of souls, the Blood God did take up the Norsii high king and use his body as the physical host to call unto the mortal place a manifestation of pure, unbridled rage -- a Bloodthirster, a Greater Daemon of Khorne.[9]

The Bloodthirster in Cormac's body is said to have strode forth and broken apart the walls of Middenheim with a single blow, slaughtering hundreds with sweeps of his burning axe while his very presence drove the Men of the Empire mad with rage born of fear. The Norsii roared their exultation to the cold thrones of the Dark Gods, their cries now even more hideously animalistic than those of the Beastmen who stood alongside them, and they fought with fury so redoubled that none could withstand them -- such was their joy to fight under the gaze of a living avatar of Khorne the Mighty. Soon, the Greater Daemon crossed blades with Sigmar, the two kings fighting to decide the fate of their peoples. It was only through the aid of Myrsa, Warrior Eternal of the Fauschlag, the greatest champion of the Teutogens, and the divine power of the war god Ulric himself, that Sigmar was able to marshall enough strength to defeat the Bloodthirster, banishing the powerful Daemon back to the Realm of Chaos.[9] 

With the banishment of the Bloodthirster and the death of Cormac Bloodaxe, the morale of the Norsii army gave out, and they now fought their way past the vengeful press of Imperials to reach their wolfships and return to their new homeland. Though the Empire was ultimately victorious, the dreadful memory of how close it had come to desolation loomed long in the memories of all who had fought and suffered in the invasion; and few would ever forget the terror of the mighty Norsii. Once more, the Norsii were thrown back across the Sea of Claws, to the land now and forevermore known as Norsca.[9] 

In the aftermath of the Northmen's siege of Middenheim, Sigmar marshalled what remained of his forces and led his warriors in a series of revenge raids against Norsca. He succeeded in slaying numerous tribes and had razed dozens of villages along the southernmost coast, but the terrain and a lack of numbers meant he could not penetrate further inland and take the fight to the more numerous tribes dwelling in the land's interior. The Norsii were thus largely left to their own devices, allowed to recoup their strength and prepare themselves for later conflicts with the Empire.[9]

From Norsii to Norscans

"In this year of Ulric's Grace, there were great sigils and portents of doom and destruction. The statue of the Wolf was heard to howl for death, and there were many children born with twisted feet or hands or other such mutations. Great beasts were seen to fly through the air and block out the sun and a famine and plague did grip the coastal villages. Even as these ails did pass, reavers emerged from the seas with sails of blood and death and laid waste to a temple and three towns upon our coast, killing or enslaving those who did not flee and plundering what little they could. They wore strange armour and fought beneath the banner of the wolf, as if mocking our faith."

The Chronicle of Middenland, depicting the bloodthirsty ravages of the Chaos-worshiping Norscans.[17]
NorscanWarlord

A Norscan Chaos Marauder

The Norsii were thus forced to return from the lands of the Empire to their ancestral northern homeland, the barren, arctic wastes they now named "Norsca." From there they continued to perform their heathen practices, and to bring terror and devastation to the Known World. Though Emperor Sigmar subsequently led retaliatory raids upon the Norsii after the successful Imperial defence of Middenheim, he was only able to inflict damage upon the most southerly coastal settlements, and was incapable of penetrating further into the land's interior.

So the Norsii were left to recoup their might, and to decide amongst themselves their new tribal boundaries while eventually reorganising themselves into the seven, "high" tribes of which we now know of today. Nonetheless, the Norsii would not suffer Sigmar's depredations lightly. Amongst the many southern tribes the emperor had put to the sword, one was known as the Taalos,[1e][10] one of the many tribes that had comprised Cormac Bloodaxe's defeated horde.

The Taalos' warriors and chieftain, Aetulff, had been slain during the Norsii assault on Middenheim. So was this tribe bereaved of protection; with only women, children and elders left to comprise them. Thus they were easy prey for the raiding fleets of the Empire, and were slaughtered by Sigmar and his vengeful warriors. All but one remained to mourn the death of the tribe, a single Norsii child who had borne witness to the deaths of his family members, and who would, through his grief, rise to become the greatest champion of Chaos -- the first of the vaunted Everchosen of Chaos Undivided -- Morkar the Uniter.[1e][10]

Morkar was a warrior of great strength, courage and vision.[1e] His mentor and protector throughout his childhood was the fallen Unberogen warrior turned Norsii Champion of Slaanesh known as Azazel, whose harsh tutelage prepared the child for the savagery of life in the north.[10] 

Even the Champion of Slaanesh could feel the favour of the Chaos Gods radiating from the child, and knew it was their will that he foster the boy in his way. As he grew to manhood, Morkar carved a strong following from amongst the tribes of the Norsii, utilising the gifts the Dark Gods had granted him to realise his bloody dreams of vengeance and kingship.[10] 

Chargingnorse

A charging Norscan Marauder Horseman.

The Dark Gods favoured Morkar with their attentions, and soon, resplendent in his blood-stained battle-armour, he journeyed north into the Chaos Wastes to be crowned by He Who Crowns the Conquerors -- Be'lakor, the first of the Daemon Princes ever raised to immortality by the Ruinous Powers. Be'lakor, anger coursing through his veins, found his limbs compelled to place upon the Norsii's head the Crown of Domination, as a sign of the Dark Gods' favour for him.[1e]

Thus was Morkar crowned the first of the Everchosen -- the greatest mortal Champions of Chaos. With his duty carried out, Be'lakor receded back into the shadows of his own madness. Thus did the first great incursion of the Warriors of Chaos into the Old World begin; an invasion so great as to dwarf even the intensity of Cormac Bloodaxe's assault upon the Empire.[1e]

Morkar and his followers rampaged southwards upon their wolfships in an orgy of death and destruction -- mayhem of such scale as to cause a resurgence in the power of Chaos across the Known World that saw the influence of the Dark Gods pulsate from both polar gates, causing Daemons to break the veil between worlds in numbers not seen since the Great Catastrophe and take up ranks alongside the hordes of frenzied Northmen. Morkar's armies slaughtered their way through the Empire, killing all the who stood before them, reaping their wergild from the Imperials, but all Morkar desired was to take vengeance upon the Master of the Empire himself.[1e]

Morkar and Sigmar soon faced each other in battle -- the two savage monarchs crossing axe and warhammer in a titanic clash that shook the mountains themselves. For a day and a night did the Northman Everchosen and emperor duel, seemingly evenly matched. Though Morkar the Uniter was mighty beyond all mortal comprehension, Sigmar himself was also a being far above mortal kith, and his forces were splintered and scattered when the conquering warrior of the north finally fell under the crushing weight of Ghal Maraz. Thus was the first great Chaos incursion defeated by the first Champion of Order.[1e]

As time went by, the Norsii began to reintegrate themselves into the lands of Norsca, building their fortresses amidst the icy lands and raising Chaos Monoliths in honour of the Chaos Gods and their heroes. As time went by, the Norsii also began looking eastwards to the lands of the Kurgan and Hung, raiding the lands of their Northmen neighbours and defending their eastern borders from their incursions in turn. Over the course of the centuries, commerce between the Norsii and Kurgan began to grow, as the two peoples began to exchange goods; the Norsii their masterly-crafted steel, and the Kurgan their slaves.[33]

Marauder of Chaos

A heavily mutated Norscan Chaos Marauder

Though not particularly close and ever riven by a brutal rivalry, Norsii and Kurgan blood nevertheless mixed as the two peoples began to interbreed -- a result of stealing each other's wives on their countless mutual raids. The Norsii and Kurgan also began to influence each other culturally as a result of long-term exposure to each others' practices.[7a]

Added into this admixture was a corrupted race of Men reckoned to have once been kinsmen to the Humans who were mutated into the very first of the Beastmen, whose blood would also mix with that of the mighty Norsii. With the intermingling of these differing bloodlines was born a new people from the proud and brutal Norsii -- the Norscans. And it was not long before they would again stream out of the north with a vengeance, seeking to spill blood once more, consumed once again by the lust for battle and slaughter that was the mark of their eternal warrior spirit.[7a]

The Norscans, as they came to be most commonly called by the peoples of the Old World after settling in the north, have earned a just reputation as relentless warriors, feared throughout the mortal world for their brutality and strength. In the past, they have invaded and conquered parts of the Empire, ruling areas there briefly before they return to their blasted fastnesses in the far north.[5a][12a]

The northern Grand Provinces of Nordland, Ostland and the Westerland have proven particularly susceptible to Norscan raids, due in no small part to their highly vulnerable location on the southern shore of the Sea of Claws.[5a][12a]The city of Marienburg, in particular, has suffered several invasions at the hands of the Chaos-worshiping Norscan raiders for generations. The first instance of Marienburg's sacking at the hands of the Norscans was in 632 IC, the culmination of many raids that eventually ended with the city being burned to the ground for the first time.[11]

The most notable instance of the Norscan sackings of Marienburg was in 1109 IC, when High King Ormgaard of Norsca led a Warriors of Chaos horde down from the Northern Wastes to conquer the Empire during the reign of Boris Goldgather.[11] Though Ormgaard was defeated, his fleet routed and driven back to Norsca and his head taken to Altdorf as a trophy, his son, Snagr Half-Nose, or Snorri Half-Hand,[12][12a] depending on which retelling one reads, yet remained in the south with a horde of bloodthirsty Chaos Warriors at his back. Snagr led his warriors to ransack the Westerland, eventually besieging the great city of Marienburg, burning the Templewijk district in honour of the Dark Gods and occupying the city in its entirety, forcing the nobility to cower on Rijker's Isle or flee.

Snagr Half-Nose/Snorri Half-Hand then proclaimed himself jarl of the "Vestland" and thus ruled the province as a bloody tyrant.[11] At the same time, the Imperial province of Drakwald was under attack by hordes of savage Beastmen, causing a great debate to arise in the emperor's court regarding where his armies were needed most, with each beleaguered province venomously arguing their own case. Locked in politicking, and exacerbated further due to Emperor Boris's own indifference to the plight of the provinces, no forces were sent northwards to repel the Norscans, allowing them to pursue their violent pillaging unabated for two years.[12a] 

With the advent of the Black Plague in 1111 IC, the city of Marienburg soon fell to affliction. Having found a foe even they could not slay, the marauding Norscans soon abandoned Marienburg and sailed back to their homeland. In 1850 IC, seven centuries later, during the Age of Three Emperors, the Chaos Fleets of Norsca made war upon the Westerland, once more raiding along the southern coast of the Sea of Claws and succeeded in sacking Marienburg for the fourth and final time.[12]

Around the same time, the Norscans had begun a campaign of violent expansion southwards and had succeeded in conquering the northern Imperial province of Nordland, as well as other territories of the surrounding provinces, decisively defeating the Imperial forces stationed there and enslaving much of the northern Imperial populations, while also driving many refugees south to Talabecland and elsewhere.[12a] 

The Empire was incapable of sending forces to liberate Nordland as a result of further political infighting within the court of then-Emperor Mandred Skavenslayer, which left the Nordlanders and their ilk to fend for themselves. As a result, Norscan longships colonised the Nordland coast unimpeded -- enslaving the native Was Jutone population.[12a]

It has often been remarked that as a result of having lived so long under the Norscan yoke, and the constant shadow of their raids, the people of Nordland have in some ways come to resemble the Chaos raiders of the Sea of Claws; much to their shame and consternation, for the Nordlanders do indeed share more with the Northmen than they would ever care to admit. It is often said in the Empire that "character is in the Blood," meaning that the worth of a man draws from his ancestry. As a result, Nordlanders are often held in some suspicion by their fellow Imperials, and seen by some as only one bad day away from turning into the savage, Chaos-worshipping barbarians of the north.[12a]

Invasion of Tilea (800 - 1017 IC)

Sartosa Location

Location of the pirate isle of Sartosa in the Tilean Sea that was conquered in 1017 IC by the Norscans.

Longships full of hairy northern barbarians began appearing in the Tilean Sea as long ago as the 800s IC. The coasts of Tilea were subsequently ravaged on numerous occasions as were the shores of Araby and Estalia. On several occasions raiding warbands were surrounded and cut off from their ships by the Tileans. Recognising that the Norscans were good warriors, the Tileans would offer them employment as mercenaries.[55a]

Soon a flourishing trade developed, with furs, amber and many other things coming out of the far north in return for Tilean gold, wine and items of Elf and Dwarf work obtained by the Tileans. It was the Dwarf rune weapons which particularly delighted Norscan chieftains, such that a single Dwarfen sword might be enough on its own to hire a Norscan chief and his warband. Through contact with the Norscans, which increased greatly following the establishment of a Norscan stronghold on the pirate isle of Sartosa, Tilean merchants heard about the Norscan voyages of exploration, such as the renowned expeditions made by Erik the Lost and his son, Losteriksson, to the New World continent of Lustria and other distant lands.[55a]

Norscan maps, written in runes on sealskin and walrus hide, were eagerly bought by Tilean merchants for gold. In this way the Tileans gathered a greater knowledge of the true geography of the Known World than any other people except the High Elves of Ulthuan. The Elves would never divulge these secrets to other races, wanting only to keep it all for themselves. Neither would the canny Dwarfs reveal much of what they knew, for fear that others would plunder treasures before they could do so themselves![55a]

The Norscans, however, were not only willing to tell of their heroic voyages of exploration, but were downright boastful, elaborating the tales with a mixture of vital detail and dubious hearsay which increased in proportion to the ale poured into their tankards in the taverns of Tilea![55a]

In 1017 IC, Norse Raiders landed on the island of Sartosa, and easily overcame the scattered inhabitants and the small garrison of Tilean troops from the city-state of Luccini. From this base, the Norscans ravaged the coasts of Tilea until they were defeated in a sea battle off Cappo Cinno. The remaining Norscans were hired by Luccini as mercenaries and allowed to stay on the island to guard it.[55a]

Norscan Voyages To Lustria (888 IC)

Chaos

Norscan raiders come to Lustria.

The Norscans are seafarers of unmatched skill, as only the mariners of the High Elves, the Sea Elves, could be argued to be their equals in sailing and navigating the turbulent seas of the Known World. Since the time of Sigmar, the Norscans have had a well-established sea-faring tradition, and their sleek longships are well-suited to even the longest voyages.[2a][1a][3a]

Exploration is a trademark of the Norscan tribes, and it is often said that discovering and conquering new lands brings great favour with the Dark Gods, for to do so is to extend the banner of Chaos far and wide. Exploration also brings great personal glory, and the halls of Norscan warriors rock with the songs of men and women who sailed to distant shores, saw distant lands, and slew and enslaved their inhabitants.[2a][1a][3a]

Though the High Elves had long attempted to block the rise of any other naval power in order to maintain their mastery of the sea, the Norscans quickly broke through their blockades of the great western oceans. Amongst these raiders in particular was the infamous champion Losteriksson, who was the first Human to cross the Great Ocean to the New World and discover the long-forgotten continent of Lustria, the infamous jungle-realm now known to be the domain of the cruel Lizardmen.[2a][1a][3a]

Losteriksson had learned of the western land by "questioning" High Elven captives. The Norscans were fortunate to find that the land they had discovered was not a savage, primaeval waste, but that a fabulous temple stocked with gold and riches lay not far from their landing. The barbarians ransacked the great temple, plundering it of all riches and slaying whoever stood in their way, roaring their blasphemous battle-cries as they did so.[2a][1a][3a]

The resulting riches made every participant of the raids staggeringly wealthy, and longships returned to Norsca laden with gold and plunder. As word got out in the north of the great riches to be found in the "New World," many more Chaos Marauders began to join forces with Losteriksson to raid the lands of the "Dragonfolk," as the Norscans came to refer to the Lizardmen. These successful raids eventually culminated in 888 IC with the establishment of the Norscan outpost of Skeggi in Lustria, named for Losteriksson's daughter, the first child of the Old World to be born in the New.[2a][1a][3a]

Norse Conquer Lizards

The Norscans overcome the Lizardmen, who they knew as the "Dragonfolk."

It was not only greedy raiders whom Losteriksson had brought with him as he rampaged throughout the coastlines of Lustria, for the Norscans, being fierce Men of the Far North, carried always with them the names of their Dark Gods in their hearts. A power not felt in Lustria for many centuries was now stirred once more, and the meditations of the Slann mage-priests became deeply troubled as the echoes of the Old Ones' disastrous war against the coming of the Ruinous Powers reverberated in the minds of one mage-priest to the next. They now faced the dreadful possibility that Chaos was abroad in the mortal world once more; its standard carried in the war-like souls of the Norscans.[24][24a]

Though a mighty Chaos Champion, Losteriksson was wise enough to avoid direct battle with the Lizardmen, though his descendants would later prove without their forefather's wisdom. More impetuous Norscan champions of his time also proved less farsighted, and also attempted to penetrate further into Lustria's interior. None were ever seen again. One of the more reckless warbands, however, returned from a rather profitable raid on the Lizardmen's inner cities, carrying with them hundreds of pounds of gold and a relic of apparently great value.[24a]

Losteriksson realised their misstep when a massive horde of Lizardfolk streamed out from the jungle and besieged Skeggi. Losteriksson ordered the settlement's gold to be thrown over the ramparts to the Dragonfolk, knowing that they had only come for their precious relics. The Lizardmen took that which the warband had stolen and quickly departed the settlement with nary a backward glance. And so the Norscans' settlement in the New World survived and prospered.[24a]

Far from dissuading more Norscans from making the journey to Skeggi, this merely enticed more Warriors of Chaos warbands to sail from frozen Norsca to the warmer climes of the south, for the promise of battle is just as tempting to a Norscan as the bright lure of gold. In time, the Chaos Champions of Skeggi sailed back to their homelands, bringing tales of the horrors they had overcome and the profit they had made, causing scores of longships to sweep down and begin raiding the land of the Old Ones.[2h]

By 954 IC, hundreds of Norscan warbands attempted invasions of the jungle continent, seeking to conquer it for the glory of the Chaos Gods. The first of these was the raid of Allec Fellclaw, whose horde of Norscan marauders marked the first full-scale Chaos invasion of Lustria since the fall of the Old Ones in the Great Catastrophe. Though his horde was driven back on their longships to the sea, they succeeded in plundering vast amounts of treasure, and the survivors returned to their tribes as wealthy men indeed.[2h]

Invasions of Bretonnia (947 - 2521 IC)

"Orgulous and grim, the Northmen would not give, for they sought glory or death in the eyes of their bloody gods."

—The Tenth Great Battle of Gilles le Breton and his Companions[47a]
Norsca vs Bretonia

Jarl Svengar faces Marcus of Bordeleaux in the highest tower of L'Anguille.

Though Bretonnia is relatively farther from the Chaos Wastes than the Empire, it has nonetheless suffered mightily from the depredations of Norscan raiders, who have ever sailed down its rivers to spread destruction and suffering upon the Lady of the Lake's realm for countless generations. Indeed, the Norscans have raided the lands of Bretonnia since at least 947 IC,[47b]more than 30 years before the establishment of the Bretonnian kingdom by Gilles le Breton in 979 IC.[47b] It was the attacks of Norscan Chaos Marauders that led to the extinction of the northern Bretonni tribes in 947 IC, their attacks isolating those tribes from each other, and ravaging their lands utterly.[47b]

The Norscan raids were the most common along the northern Dukedoms of L'Anguille and Lyonesse, and the constant shadow of Norscan attacks made the knights of those lands more battle-hardened than most. Thus, the knights of more southerly Bretonnian dukedoms held the resilience of their northern compatriots in high esteem, and commend them for their efforts in withstanding the Norscan invaders. Indeed, all Bretonnians know well to fear the Northmen; for beyond their inhuman strength and merciless brutality, the fact the Norscans so willingly tread the path of Darkness and openly revel in their damnation by Chaos is what terrifies the pious folk of the western lands of the Old World above all.[47b]

One of the most notable instances of a Norscan raid upon Bretonnia was the great assault launched by Svengar of the Skaelings, who attacked the great Elven-built city of L'Anguille during the days of Gilles the Uniter.[47a] The history of Bretonnia, related by Adelrond of Couronne, narrates the coming of the great Norscan horde. Thousands of warriors, orgulous and grim, thirsting for death or glory in the eyes of the Chaos Gods, fell upon the city like wolves upon sheep.

Gilles le Breton and his Companions, riding triumphantly from their previous victories, were aghast to come upon such a terrible sight as the Norscan Warriors of Chaos besieging their realm. Clad in fur and hellforged steel, the Norscans met the Bretonnians in tempestuous battle. Paying no heed to their own safety, the Northmen did not back down from the fight and overcame the Bretonnian defenders. In desperation, Lord Marcus of Bordeleaux threw down his knightly gauntlet and challenged Svengar to single combat; "find victory or take leave!", he cried. Svengar, filled with the martial pride of the Norscans, could not refuse the challenge, and ascended to the highest tower in order to face the Bretonnian knight in single combat.[47a]

Many thousands had already fallen to the whirlwind fury of Svengar's warhammers, and he was happy to see Marcus' resolve remain unshaken before him. With a guttural war cry, the jarl faced the Bretonnian Lord, their battle lasting for a full day and night, and the elements themselves arcing down from the blackened sky to lend even greater might to Svengar's blows.[47a] Alas for the Norscans, Marcus found renewed strength with the breaking of dawn's light and found an opening in the barbarian warlord's defence, striking a mighty blow that cleaved him in twain, sending his corpse down to the sea's watery embrace. Honouring their chieftain's oath, the Norscans drew up their anchors and unfurled their sails to return to their icy homeland.

This was not to be the last of the Norscan raids on Bretonnia, nor even at all the most terrible. Centuries later Svengar's descendants, the jarls of the Skaeling tribes; most illustrious among them Egil Styrbjorn of Strovengaard, would unleash terrifying devastation upon the lands of King Louen Leoncoeur.[2h]

On certain occasions, the armies of Norsca also succeeded in breaking through the defences of the north and raiding deep inland into the southern dukedoms, such as Couronne. In 2007 IC, Repanse de Lyonesse led her knights, the Chevaliers de Lyonesse, to war against the mighty Norscan Chaos horde of the Champion of Nurgle Kharan the Blighted, and succeeded in routing them from the land during the Battle of Lamentations, though roughly half of all the knights of Bretonnia perished in the conflict.[47b] In 2521 IC, Norscan longships once again began raiding northern Bretonnia, setting countless villages in Lyonesse and Couronne to the torch.[47b]

The War in the Mountains (2302 - 2390 IC)

KingValmirAesling

Valmir Aesling, Chaos Lord of the Aeslings and Scourge of Kraka Drak

In the aftermath of the Great War Against Chaos initiated by the invasion of the Old World by the twelfth Everchosen of Chaos Undivided, the Kurgan Asavar Kul, Valmir Aesling of the Aesling tribe rose up to fill the void left by the fallen Everchosen and declared himself the "Emperor of Chaos" and high king of Norsca.[2g] Such was Valmir's might and power that few contended his grandiose claim; Valmir was a ruthless and efficient leader of men, brooding and silent save for the occasional and invariably fatal burst of terrifying anger. High King Valmir held a reputation as an uncompromising and bloodthirsty warlord, punishing even the smallest act of cowardice or insubordination with the most brutal tortures he could devise, and he hated all non-Norscans with a terrible passion.[2g]

To Valmir, the Norse Dwarf hold of Kraka Drak was an aberration, a canker that had be torn out of the landscape of Norsca with extreme prejudice; for the Dwarfen citadel had nestled in the northern mountains that he counted as his ancestral homeland.[2g] The Chaos Lord had striven previously to destroy this blot upon his territory, but had failed when the Dwarfen defenders had not only weathered his initial attempt to take the hold, but also succeeded in forcing Valmir's armies out of the mountain passes.[2g] Incensed by this, Valmir swore vengeance against High King Silverbeard of the Norse Dwarfs, and began drawing up plans for a second invasion of Kraka Drak.

Valmir launched his new invasion at the height of the Norscan summer, a time only slightly less lethal to mortal creatures than the rest of the bleak year, but far more conducive to military campaigning than the terrible Norscan winter; for he knew that the heavy snows and blizzards of that season would have served only to slow down his hardy Northmen warriors and aid the perfidious Dwarfen defenders. Valmir gathered tribes of bloodthirsty Norscan Chaos Warriors into two great warbands and sent them on a gruelling climb over the crests of the mountains while their fellow tribesmen kept the Kraka Drak throngs occupied. The Norscans fell upon the Dwarfen gate-keepers from above and poured their still-living bodies into the molten heart of the mountain.[2g] 

Death and Chaos by kunkka

The Aeslings battle for the Icicle Pass.

It was then that Valmir unveiled the next phase of his ambush, as the mountain valley echoed with the soul-shattering roars of bestial creatures who had been kissed by the favour of Chaos' Dark Gods. Packs of mutated Chaos Spawn, feral Forsaken and yet more horrifying beasts that defied easy explanation thundered into the pass; a terrible horde of unclean monstrosities that no son of Grungni had ever seen washed over the Norse Dwarfs' defensive positions.[2g] With iron-courage, the stout Dwarfs withstood the bestial advance and fought back, beginning a methodical slaughter of the Chaos beasts that choked the narrow mountain pass with their foul corpses.

Valmir could well-afford these losses, for even as the Norse Dwarfs disposed of the Chaos beasts, his elite warriors were inside the hold continuing their own butchery. The Dwarfs were thus drawn into a war of attrition that they could not win.[2g] 

In the guttering light of the labyrinths honeycombing the Dwarf peak, the Huskarls of Valmir Aesling did battle with the mighty Ironbreakers of the Dwarfs, the passageways echoing to the sound of jagged Chaos blades bashing against gromril plate armour. Eventually, however, the Ironbreakers themselves were cut down. More and more Dwarfs charged out from their barracks to meet the Chaos Warriors, but they fared no better, and soon the whole of the Dwarfen underworld was like some nightmarish afterlife of Norscan myths -- a terrible smith that forged only heroes quenched in blood.[2g]

Outside in the Icicle Pass, the Dwarfs were faring far better as they were managing to hold against Valmir's armies. In the skies above, what few gyrocopters the Norse Dwarfs possessed attempted to bring news of this surprise assault to the outlying Norse Dwarf holds. The skies shook with the bloodcurdling roar of a Daemonic beast, and so did a winged, crimson figure sweep down and smash the strange craft asunder.[2g] None other than Aghask, a Daemon Prince ally of Valmir Aesling. Truly, the Norscan high king had planned this battle well. Below the aerial duel, King Silverbeard had set his oathstone and announced his intention that he would not flee from the battlefield, for he preferred death to dishonour.

War in the Mountains

Valmir Aesling duels King Silverbeard of Kraka Drak.

The loud cracking of a whip and bestial growls announced the arrival of Valmir himself, taking to the battlefield upon his mighty chariot pulled by six hideous and skinless bears.[2g] Mighty Valmir rode up to Silverbeard and threw his battle tally at the Dwarf king's feet -- a massive handful of decapitated Dwarf heads. Incensed by this affront to his people's honour, Silverbeard roared out his challenge to the Norscan.[2g] 

All around, warriors of either faction, Norscan and Dwarf alike, held their breath. Long did this duel last, even as the War for the Mountain raged all about them. Fully thrice the size of the Dwarf king, Valmir rained blow after earth-shattering blow down upon him, who weathered the assault with astounding resilience. Then, without warning, Valmir stepped back from Silverbeard's oathstone and tilted his head as if hearing something. His great beard parted with an evil grin as the sound of galloping hooves grow louder and louder.[2g]

Suddenly, the valley began to fill with the sounds of slaughter and the harsh shouts of dying Dwarfs. Valmir's allies from beyond the Troll Country had arrived precisely as bidden, galloping into the rear of the Dwarfen army with crushing force. Caught between the bulk of Valmir's bloodthirsty infantry and the sledgehammer blow of the charging Chaos Knights at the rear, the Dwarfs were swiftly cut down and trampled into the snow.[2g]

Realising there was but one recourse remaining, Silverbeard gave the order for the Wrath of Grimnir to be stoked. With a boom that split the skies like the vengeance of the Dwarf god himself, the enormous cannon unleashed its payload; its target not the Chaos horde, but the sheer sides of the mountain pass itself.[2g] 

With great ear-shattering booms, the mountains fell down in great slabs of rock, thundering down in a cataclysmic avalanche that engulfed Norscans and Dwarfs alike. Silverbeard's last sacrifice, which had served to spare the green lands of the south from Valmir's deadly attentions, had also sealed the fate of Kraka Drak.[2g] 

For in the dark depths of the mountains, Valmir and his Huskarls fought on, grimly and methodically slaughtering the Dwarf-folk who had thought themselves safe. Though it took many decades of bitter fighting, Valmir and his closest followers eventually succeeded in wiping Kraka Drak from the annals of history, though it also resulted in his death. The "Emperor of Chaos" had fulfilled his oath.[2g][3d] 

Gorequeen's Raiders (2398 IC)

"Blood for the Blood God!"

—Traditional Khornate battlecry
Valkia Nordland

Valkia the Bloody leads the Norscans to war.

The Norscan tribes have ever been the bane of the Empire's northernmost provinces, since even before the time of Sigmar they have raided and ravaged the northern shores, burning and plundering the villagers of the oft-beleagured Nordlanders. In 2398 IC, the Daemon Princess Valkia the Bloody, the Gorequeen and Shieldmaiden of Khorne, came upon her fellow Norscans from the Realm of Chaos and sounded the call to make war once again upon the people of Nordland. By her murderous will, the tribes of Norsca fell upon the Empire, their only desire to slaughter for the glory of the Blood God.[6a] Neither man, nor woman, nor child, nor even chattle would be spared sacrifice to the god of war.

The Nordland capital of Salzenmund did not spare soldiers to defend the northern marches from the Norscan invasion. The villages were forced to look to their own defences, led by a brave fisherman known as Harold Dreizacker who gathered a rag-tag fleet to patrol the Sea of Claws, ever anxious for the sight of the Norscans' blood-red sails on the horizon.[6a]

As Geheimnistag came and cold winds began blowing, the people of Nordland let out a collective shudder of relief, for the break of winter marks the end of the Norscan raiding season.[6a] The Nordlanders thus turned their efforts to the long process of rebuilding but barely three days after the first breaking of winter, the Norscans returned to play out their last acts of brutality and carnage. The Gorequeen and her Huskarls fell upon the port city of Dietershafn, and great was the slaughter they brutally unleashed, the Norscans massacring the inhabitants with vicious abandon. Dreizacker quickly marshalled his ships to intercept the raiders at anchor but with a single throw of her great spear Slaupnir, Valkia smashed their entire fleet to bloody kindling.[6a]

All was thought lost, and had it not been for the timely arrival of a steel-clad Dwarf dreadnaught, all spewing steam and cannonfire, the end would have surely been in sight for the province of Nordland. It is not known what drew the ship or its hardy Dwarfen crewmen, but whatever the case, it must have surely settled a mighty grudge, for the Dwarfen mariners were able to drive back the Norscan raiders, routing their longships back to Norsca. The people of Nordland had further cause to rejoice when it was found that Harold Dreizacker had narrowly survived the sinking of his ship and washed ashore on Nordland's coasts.

Though the Norscan fleet was routed, there was little to no sign of the Gorequeen herself, whether it was the sight of her wolfship sailing to safety or that of her Daemonic corpse. The favoured consort of the dreaded Norscan god of war, it is said in the sagas of the Norscan tribes that the Blood God himself saw fit to bring Valkia back from death, and remade her anew with the gift of Daemonhood.[5][5g] 

The Lord of Battles is thus loathe to allow this favoured servant to fall, for it is Valkia who is said to choose the slain warriors of the north to be reborn again in the Halls of Khorne in the Blood God's Domain that they might fight on in glorious battle for all eternity, thereby peopling Khorne's malignant realm with warriors to carry on the eternal war he so adores. Khorne's winged servant is thus well-known to all warriors of the north, and so the ferocity of such barbarian warriors is heightened and bolstered even further by her presence, for to live forever in the halls of the Blood God is an honour beyond all others for the Northmen.[5][5g] 

History would later prove that the Gorequeen survived this battle, and so it was that the outcome of the invasion was nought but a pyrrhic victory for the Empire. For while the people of Nordland did their utmost best to prepare for the coming winter, many hundreds of strong working men had been slaughtered by the Norscans during the raids, and the northern Chaos Marauders had also burned many storehouses and fields.[6a] 

Necessity thus drove the courageous Harold Dreizacker to make the journey southwards to Salzenmund, in order to beseech the Nordlander nobility to provide for their beleaguered subjects. However, he never returned from his journey. Some say he was slain by spies of the vengeful Norscans, while others clamour with angry voices that he was assassinated by the agents of the nobles who felt threatened by the fisherman's rising political clout among the commoners. Regardless, with Dreizacker's death, no aid came south from Salzenmund, meaning that only the hardiest folk of the harsh province survived the winter of 2398 IC.[6a] 

In addition to the massive devastation the Norscan warriors had wreaked upon Nordland, their coming had also sown the seeds of dissension and rebellion in the hearts of the commoners towards the Nordlander nobility. In the aftermath of the raids and Harold Dreizacker's mysterious demise, certain groups began forming with the intent to overthrow the nobility, citing their indifference during the Norscan raids and general corruption as reasons they had to be brought low.[6a] 

These events inflamed the already great civil unrest within Nordland and brought the Electoral Province that much closer to an inevitable civil war. Khorne, more so than his fellow Chaos Gods, is said to take particular pleasure in anarchy and disorder, as such occurrences intensify the prospects of battle and bloodshed. It is thus thought by some that the Norscans alone of all the parties of this conflict were the true victors, for Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, and so neither do his followers.[6a] 

Battle of Nordland Fjord (2502 IC)

Axe-wielder

The Skaelings stand resolute against a defeated Nordlander army.

Shortly after the coronation of the Reikland Prince Karl Franz as the new emperor in 2502 IC, Norscan tribes once again gathered for a great raid upon the soft lands of the south.[4][4a]The new invasion was led by the pre-eminent warlords of the far north, among whom was Gutrot Spume, jarl of the Dragonbone tribe and Champion of Nurgle. Never an idle man, the new emperor gathered his armies to aid Elector Count Theodoric Gausser of Nordland in repelling the Warriors of Chaos.[43]

Initially, Karl Franz appeared to abandon his brother count, leaving the beleaguered armies of Nordland to the fury of the Daemon-worshipping Norscans, but his apparent retreat had in fact been a clever ploy to gain the support of Tzarina Katarin of Kislev. The Reikland prince had rescued the Kislevite monarch from the depredation of a Norscan Chaos Marauder-band that had waylaid her and her retinue several leagues away and had carried her to the battlefield aloft upon his personal Griffon Deathclaw.[4a] 

Tzarina Katarin, a powerful practitioner of the native Ice Magics of her people, cast a spell that froze the bay of Nordland in its entirety, preventing yet more Norscan wolfships from making landfall and reinforcing their kinsmen.[4a] The aid of the Ice Witch allowed Karl Franz to engage the Chaos Marauder warbands one-by-one, isolating the horde and driving the Norscan warriors from the Empire. No sooner had his warmachines reduced the Norscan wolfships to kindling than the emperor had taken his armies and returned back to Reikland in the far south, albeit leaving a company of his personal guard -- the much-vaunted knights of the Reiksguard -- to aid Count Theodoric in mopping up the Chaos forces that remained.[4a]

The newly ascended emperor had only intervened in the fighting in order to prove his strength to those Elector Counts who had spoken out and decried his taking of the throne. With a laurel of victory secured, the southron prince had no desire to remain in the north, and believed the Norscans vanquished. A foolish belief, for the warriors of the north do not accept defeat willingly, and were readying themselves for another stand against their foes.[47] Even more troubling, Gutrot Spume had survived the battle, and somehow found his way back to his tribe in Norsca. Raging at his defeat at the Reiklander's hands, Spume made his oath before the Urfather Nurgle, the Chaos God of disease and decay, that he would one day return to the south and take his vengeance.[43]

At the Nordlander coast, near the town of Hargendorf, Count Theodoric Gaussar gathered a new army of levies to drive out the last of the warriors of the Norscan tribes that yet remained of the once-mighty horde vanquished by Karl Franz, which included the Skaeling tribe.[47] Amongst his forces was Kurt Helborg, then a preceptor of the Reiksguard, and a small contingent of Reiksguard brother-knights.[47] 

Helborg and his warriors had pleaded with the count to pull back to the town of Hargendorf and draw the Norscans to a siege they could not hope to win, for the Imperials' defensive position and the fragility of the winter ice made a direct assault upon them a most risky endeavour.[47] The hot-headed Nordland ruler had dismissed the concerns of the Reiksguard, for he would not disgrace his ancestors by fleeing from the northern invaders. For centuries, the Nordlanders had fought the Norscans, giving their lives against the ruinous tribes in order to defend the soft, southern states of the Empire. He would carry on the fight just as his predecessors had, but this would prove to be a terrible error.[47]

Gutrot Spume

The Dragonbone tribe of Norsca, home tribe of the Champion of Nurgle Gutrot Spume.

The Skaeling tribesmen readied themselves into a shield-wall, and had used the battered beams of their fell longships to construct a ruinous war-altar to the Chaos Gods in order to catch a measure of their favour for the difficult battle ahead. Among their numbers were heavily armoured Chaos Warriors, hulking, axe-wielding heavy infantry clad in arcane sets of ruinous Chaos Armour, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the lightly-armoured Chaos Marauders of their fellow tribesmen.[47]

Though the Imperials had attempted to goad the Norscans from their fortified position into a frontal charge, they had proved far more disciplined than expected and merely kept their calm with their backs to the sea and the emperor's army marching towards them. The Imperial archers and crossbowmen could not hope to pierce the Norscans' heavy, darkwood shields, and so the Nordlanders were forced to advance, going on the offensive in order to drive the Norscans back to their foul longships.[47] 

To meet them charged forth frenzied youngbloods, stripped to the waist and covered with woad, screaming oaths to the Dark Gods and hurling blackened axes and javelins that slammed into the advancing block of halberdiers, causing the first ranks to fall over dead in an instant. Shamans cowled in furs and leathers hurled forth bloated heads at the charging ranks of Nordlanders, the grizzly projectiles breaking apart on contact and enveloping the enemy in a Daemonic mist that had men clawing out their own throats in horrifying agony. To force the Skaelings down the hill had taken the better part of an hour, the unexpected discipline of the Norscan marauders winning out.[47]

For all the Norscans' valour, however, they were too few, and Gausser's army began to win out with its greater numbers. The Norscan shield-wall slowly disintegrated as lightly-armoured tribesmen fell and mighty Chaos Champions fought desperately to close the gaps in the wall. Yet, nonetheless, the Norscans had still chosen their battlefield well, and just as the Nordlanders began to gain on the retreating Skaelings, the thin ice under their ranks shattered under the weight of so many armoured warriors, ushering many a Nordlander to a watery grave.[47]

Within moments, the regiment became panicked and disorderly, while the Skaelings howled and hooted at their foes' predicament and went back on the offensive, quickly forcing the Nordlanders back down the hill over a carpet of their dead. Once more the Norscan shield-wall opened, allowing the frenzied youngbloods to pour out and again slake their lust for violence upon the prone and cowering men of the Empire. Their advantage of numbers stripped from them by the terrain, the Nordlanders were soundly defeated by the brutal Norscans.[47]

The Reiksguard charged to salvage something from the situation, but their efforts proved futile. Though the shield-lines of the Skaelings wavered at the charge of the Imperial heavy cavalry, they did not break and the Norscans began to push back as their massive axes and warhammers smashed the knights from their saddles.[47]

However, the second charge of the Imperial knights finally broke the shield-wall and drove the Norscans back. Yet despite this, there was still no victory. The Skaelings horde began to pull back into the bog over a field of Nordlander dead, even while groups of Chaos Marauders were already forming on the flanks of the Reiksguard. The knights could not hold the centre and the day was lost. Two hundred Nordlander soldiers and 1 Reiksguard knight were amongst the casualties the Nordlander army suffered in their ill-fated attempt to drive the Skaelings from their shores; thus it was Count Theodoric who was forced to pull back his army in defeat to the town of Hargendorf. Thus were the Skaelings victorious.[47]

Mortkin's Invasion of Ostland (2515 IC)

"They came out of the north, bringing with them fire and ruin. Not since the Great War Against Chaos had the Empire seen so furious an invasion from the barbarian worshipers of the Dark Gods. Is this war a madman's quest for revenge, or is it the beginning of the end?"

—Anonymous[4a]
Mortkin

The Chaos Lord Mortkin of Norsca, one of the mightiest of the northern kings.

The Norscans, being fearsome barbarians born of the Chaos Wastes, are most feared and reviled for their monstrous faith in the Chaos Gods, and the sheer bloody-minded fanaticism with which they carry the war-like banner of Chaos. Indeed, whenever the shadow of Chaos extends from out of the Chaos Wastes, the Norscans are among the first to heed the will of the Chaos Gods and leave their homes in force, sweeping into the southern lands, killing all before them and burning that which they cannot loot. During such incursions, many great Chaos Champions step forward to command the armies of the north.[1a][1b][4]

Amongst the greatest of these warriors was the Norscan Chaos Lord Mortkin, who in 2515 IC led a Chaos horde of terrifying power in order to ravage the entirety of the northeastern Empire. So great was this army, that it even rivalled the massive legions that had once marched at the command of the twelfth Everchosen Asavar Kul during the Great War Against Chaos. The chieftain of the horde, Mortkin himself, was a warlord perhaps even greater than Kul himself -- a steel-clad jarl of numberless Norscan tribes, and lord of countless Chaos-armoured Champions of Chaos. This Chaos Lord was the chosen vessel for the ruinous will of the Dark Gods, invested with their greatest blessings that he might carry out the doom of all mortal civilisation. Yet, Mortkin cared little for such divine favour, for his greatest desire was but to slake his thirst for revenge upon the Ostlanders for the destruction Elector Count Valmir von Raukov and his son had visited upon countless Norscan coastal villages.[4a] 

Many are the lords of Chaos who seek the honour of carrying out the will of the gods when the Realm of Chaos waxes and a champion must be called. But some of the mightiest of these warrior-kings did not join the clash -- Archaon the Dark Templar had long strived on the path to becoming Chaos' greatest champion, but he was yet abroad with his Swords of Chaos warband, searching for the Treasures of the Dark Gods that would name him the thirteenth Everchosen, and so his fate was yet undecided. Quixiom, the Two-Headed Sorcerer, was not available, for he had clothed himself in magical beguilement and sought tutelage from the Daemon-aided Sorcerer Lords of mighty Araby.[4]

Only Mortkin, master amongst the red-handed reavers of the Chaos Wastes, was present to heed the demands of the Chaos Gods, and even he was mired in a terrible gloom; for as news of the destruction of coastal villages spread across the Northern Wastes, so too did they reach the ears of the Black-Iron Reaver. It was by fiendish chance that among the villages that had been put to the sword was the coastal town of Ulfennik, which was Mortkin's own birth village.[4]

Khornate warriors

Mortkin's Black-Iron Reavers unleash their fury.

So it was that numbering among the many savage oaths of vengeance and destructions that were proffered up to the Ruinous Powers was that of Mortkin himself, the Black-Iron Reaver. The Chaos Lord had sealed himself within his mighty fortress in the deepest wilds of Norsca, and there he raged. He swore to all the Dark Gods that his vengeance would be great, that the southmen would reap the horrors they had sown, and that when all was said and done, he would claim his weregild from the blood and flesh of Oleg von Raukov, son of the Elector Count of Ostland who had led the raids upon Norsca and destroyed Ulfennik. In that instance, the Dark Gods laid their greatest blessings upon Mortkin and raised him up as a dark avatar of their will.[4a]

Pious in the ways of the Norscans, Mortkin venerated each of the Dark Gods in equal measure as Chaos Undivided. But he was ever his own man, ever looking after his own affairs even before matters of faith. Though the gods were wary of investing their favour in a man who was uncertain to carry out their will, none amongst their company doubted Mortkin's worthiness as a warrior and champion. For it was Mortkin who cast down the Leprous Council, a terrible cabal of matchless Nurglite sorcerers single-handed, it was Mortkin who through cunning and will, matched wits with the mighty Dragon Skulex the Great and bound the ancient creature to his will, and it was Mortkin who overcome a mighty, two-headed Chaos Giant in an honest test of strength, and who earned the grudging respect of Khorne's Shieldmaiden, the Daemon Princess Valkia the Bloody, when he fought her to a standstill in personal combat. With the pact made, when next the Chaos Lord stepped from his hall, it was with single-minded purpose; to end the pointless bickering that had riven his people apart and lead the Norscans to victory over the Empire once more.[4a]

The attacks of 2515 IC were unlike anything seen in the Empire's recent memory. Encouraged by the rampant Winds of Magic, an army of Norscan tribes descended down across the Sea of Claws and put countless towns along the Nordland coast ablaze, though it was neither large nor bold enough to threaten the major cities further inland. Another, even larger host of Norscans then plunged southwards on a broad front through Kislev, causing a swathe of destruction.[4a]

Although much of the horde's momentum had dissipated on the endless steppes of Kislev, some bands of Chaos Marauders managed to slip past the defences of the Ostforts and wrought great havoc within the northeastern Imperial province of Ostland. The third, and most devastating of these preliminary attacks was led by the Champion of Slaanesh, Prince Sigvald the Magnificent. Sigvald's army of frenzied, debased raiders blazed through the lands of Kislev and Ostland in a three-month rampage until it was finally blunted at the Temple of Skulls by a coalition of Imperial armies that had marched north to Ostland's aid when Oleg von Raukov, ruling the state in his father's absence on business on the emperor's behalf, sent forth an urgent plea for help. Regardless, these attacks were nothing more than a mere foreshadowing of the terror to come.[4a]

The true and terrible heart of the invasion, the massive Norscan warband known as the Black Iron Reavers, the personal warhorde of Mortkin himself, who stood at the mighty army's head, began marching from the depths of southern Norsca intent on ravaging the lands of the Empire. A king of kings, favoured scion of Chaos and leader of many tribes, Mortkin's was the mightiest army to cross the boundaries of the Empire for an age. Fear ran before Mortkin, and in his wake he left naught but smoking ruin and butchered offerings to the Chaos Gods.

Northlanders by majesticchicken-d4ddgcu

Mortkin's Warriors of Chaos horde marches in step.

Mortkin led his army from Norsca, pushing south through Troll Country until finally entering Kislev in the far south. Absorbing tribes of Norscans raiding from their holdings in the area, as well as newly materialising Daemons into their ranks, Mortkin's armies swelled to even greater proportions.[4a][21][21a]

The hordes first fell upon the nomadic horse-tribes of the Ungols, who while able to keep on the move and avoid danger for a time, soon found themselves surrounded by discordant tribes of warriors so numerous that they were quickly hemmed on all sides and hacked apart. Keeping his army unified through iron-will, and aided by the whispered counsel of Daemons, Mortkin pushed ever onwards to Ostland, decimating everything in his path. Oleg von Raukov gathered his levies and the garrisons of the Osforts, and joined up with his long-time ally Piotr Sergayev, a kovnik (captain) of Kislev and his company, intent upon meeting the Norscan armies on the northern side of the River Lynsk and defeating them before they could penetrate into the Empire itself.[4a][21][21a]

Mortkin's spear-head smashed Oleg von Raukov at the banks of the River Lynsk and sent his battered army retreating back to the Osforts. With this crushing defeat, the reckless heir to the Ostland throne finally realised that this was no mere warm-weather raid, but an invasion capable of wiping his home province off the map. Oleg von Raukov had further cause to fear, for during his father's war in the north his had been the hand that had destroyed Mortkin's birth village of Ulfennik. So did rumours begin to surge throughout the remnants of the province that the Black Iron Reaver was searching specifically for the Ostlander high lord, putting blood-chilling fear into Oleg von Raukov's heart.[4a]

In their search for the Ostland prince, Mortkin's savage army wiped the cities of Bohsenfels, Zundap, and Kludburgh from the face of Ostland -- Kludburgh specifically having been subjected to such a horrible end as to make even the hardiest soldiers of the Empire weep freely. It was Mortkin who tore down the ancestral seat of the von Raukov noble house, Castle von Raukov, destroying the venerable citadel and slaying all of Count Valmir's retainers. Even the count's wife, Ivana von Raukov, was lost to the tender mercies of the Northmen when the castle fell. Oleg and his brother Vassily were able to escape the massacre, however, and flee southwards to the fortified city of Volganof, the most heavily defended fastness in all of Ostland. Upon hearing where the young lord had fled, Mortkin gathered the spear-heads of his mighty army together and began a forced march to the Imperial stronghold of Volganof.[4a]

To the harsh blaring of warhorns did Mortkin emerge from the massed ranks of his countrymen, flanked on either side by fell lieutenants. Such figures of might and power on their own could have wrought great devastation upon the lands of Men, but here they were, subservient to this one northern king. Mounted atop his mighty Juggernaut, a gift from Khorne in thanks for the many bounteous slaughters enacted, the massive armoured form of the Norscan was wreathed in an aura of magic so blasphemous that to look upon him scarred an onlooker to his very soul.[4a]

In an iron voice, the Northman boomed his ultimatum to the cowering men of Volganof -- "Surrender von Raukov to me, or I will crush your city. All of Volganof will die. I swear to the gods your suffering will be great. You have a single day to decide your fate." Though it was tempting, given the massive numbers at the Chaos Lord's command, the Ostlanders refused to give up their beloved count's son. "A wolf at the door is still a wolf," came the old Ostland saying, and the wolves of the north do not give up their sport. The next day, when Mortkin returned for Volganof's response, he was answered not by a Human voice, but with the roar of cannonfire, and so the battle was joined.[4a]

Warriors doom

The Crimson Reapers avenge their lord.

Mortkin raised his axe, flames coming alive across the blade. At this signal, the Norscan warbands plunged forth, black-armoured Chaos Champions at their fore. At the southern wall, his Daemonhost of Khornate abominations fought with frenzied abandon to carry the battlements and take the city from the rear. All the while, Mortkin held in check the matchless fury of his own Fell Legion, awaiting the moment to strike. With the Daemonhost's downfall, and with his armoured form now filled to bursting with dark energies, Mortkin finally took to the fray.[4a]

At last, the Norscan king and his Fell Legion took to battle under tattered banners of black and red, and none could stand against them. The Crimson Reapers, the king's own Huskarls, made quick work of all who stood in their way, hacking men apart with hideous ease with their mighty battleaxes, and Mortkin himself slew dozens with every swipe of his mighty axe. Realising his counter-army was crumbling quickly under the fury of the northerners, Oleg von Raukov could not keep his army from retreating back to the walls, and soon was left with only his own Scarlet Bulls, a greatsword regiment, to aid him on the battlefield.[4a]

When Mortkin saw Oleg von Raukov on the field, death was in his gaze. With a roar, he slaughtered his way to meet the Ostlander in battle, leaving hundreds of bloody corpses in his wake. Though Oleg von Raukov was a mighty warrior, not even a hero as great as he had it within his power to defeat a beast such as Mortkin. Three times did Oleg strike Mortkin, each blow which could have killed an ordinary man barely registered upon the hulking form of the Norscan king.[4a]

Having easily weathered the smaller man's desperate flurry of attacks, Mortkin lifted his axe and readied an assault of his own. With a blow that could have felled a Giant, Mortkin smote von Raukov, whose body crumbled almost to dust with the Norscan's blow. Although mortally wounded, the valiant man arose and attempted to fight on, but the cruel Norscan smashed him down to the ground with a single strike before proceeding to crush the life out of him with an iron heel. Though it would pass like all things, Mortkin would glut his savage soul upon Oleg Von Raukov's suffering as long as he could. When the Ostlander prince at last breathed his final, ragged breath, justice and vengeance was at last exacted.[4a]

Having accomplished what he had set out to do, and with little desire to play out the role the Chaos Gods had decreed for him, Mortkin threw down his axe and lifted his greathelm from his bearded head. "Wergild is paid," he bellowed "Let Volganof burn to repay my home of Ulfennik. Never again shall I return there. My saga is ended and I chose now to die as a man, my will my own. I go now, mayhap too late, to the halls of my fathers."[4a]

With this proclamation, the fell light died out around Mortkin, the bitter Dark Gods perhaps taking back that which they had given. The Crimson Reapers, his personal guard, bore witness to their beloved jarl falling under the vengeful halberds of the Scarlet Curs, the Ostlander regiment serving Vassily von Raukov, brother to the felled Oleg. Mad with grief, the Reapers slaughtered the Curs to a man and carried the body of their liege lord within the now-burning city, set alight by the victorious looting and pillaging of Mortkin's army. Amidst the fire and flames, they formed a protective wall around their king, slaughtering any who dared to approach as they mourned him with furious shedding of blood and anguished howls of sorrow, even going so far as to slay fellow Norscans who accused them of cowardice.[4a]

Though the horde of Mortkin had later been driven back to the north by the timely arrival of the Reiksguard and the returned Count Valmir von Raukov, their victory had been hollow and phyrric -- for Ostland had been ravaged, her sons lay dead in their thousands, and her mightiest cities were now a flaming ruin. Ostland was now a funeral pyre for a fallen king -- a fire so mighty as to reach up and blind the gods themselves. A fitting end to the saga of Mortkin of Norsca.[4a]

End Times

Main Article: The End Times


"Fear me mortals, for I am the Anointed, the favoured Son of Chaos, the Scourge of the World. The armies of the gods rally behind me, and it is by my will and by my sword that your weakling nations shall fall."

—Archaon, Lord of the End Times and the thirteenth Everchosen of Chaos Undivided[1]
Archaon2

The thirteenth Everchosen Archaon leads the Men of Norsca to war during the End Times.

When Archaon finally completed his centuries-long odyssey throughout the dark places of the Known World and was crowned Lord of the End Times, he immediately began work to add the remaining tribes of the Northmen who had not yet pledged themselves to his apocalyptic banner to his vast armies. Within a short time, he had succeeded in bringing every last tribe, clan or warrior-band that had ever vied for control of the tainted northlands under his iron-fisted rule. Bloodthirsty Aeslings and barbaric Baersonlings, wily Skaelings and sea-faring Sarls, twisted Vargs, savage Graelings and berserker Bjornlings and a thousand other hard-hearted Norscan tribes aside, all did answer the thirteenth Everchosen's call.[38][43]

Khornate

A Norscan Champion of Khorne

The heroes of the north flocked to Archaon's banner -- High Jarl Egil Styrbjorn, Wulfrik the Wanderer, Valnir the Reaper, Sigvald the Magnificent, and countless other Chaos Champions who thirsted for the chance to prove themselves in the Final Battle of the mortal world before the Dark Gods [38].

With the coming of late autumn 2525 IC, the Norscan tribes charged down from the north upon the realm of Kislev, the 1000th year of that kingdom's storied history by the Gospodarin Calendar [41]. This was to be its last. The city of Praag fell swiftly to the howling fury of the horde, while Erengrad fared only slightly better, barely holding out against Archaon's armies before falling swiftly to midnight reavers in wolfships that unloaded lethal cargoes of insane Chaos Warriors and berserkers who burned the city's western seaport to the ground before putting all its inhabitants to the sword. The city of Kislev -- that legendary bastion which shared its named with the mighty land, was taken by storm in a single night of terrifying bloodshed; its proud walls reduced to rubble, thick with screaming forests of impaled men, women and children.[41]

Kjarl Deathaxe

Norscans of the Blood-Drinkers tribe march to war.

Those few of Kislev's people rallied behind the Tzarina Katarin Bokha, who had miraculously survived the slaughter of the city of Kislev [41]. Under her leadership, the ragged remnants of the Kislevite nation staged a doomed resistance against the depredations of the Norscans and their allies [41]. In the end, their struggle proved pointless, for the Northmen rampaged throughout the scorched remains of the nation and killed and plundered where they wished, taking resources and testing themselves for the true battle against the hated Empire that lay further south. Tzarina Katarin and her followers were eventually slain at their final stand at the ruins of Erengrad [41]. With no further resistance, Archaon led the Northmen further southwards.

Realising that they could not withstand the hordes of Norsca, the Gold Wizard Balthazar Gelt, supreme patriarch of the Imperial Colleges of Magic, concocted a plan to buy the Empire time to prepare itself for the coming Chaos onslaught -- the creation of the magical Auric Bastion [43]. This was a massive construct of conjoined magic and faith that would span the immense Imperial-Kislev border, effectively barring the way of the great Norscan horde seeking to come crashing down upon the northeastern Empire.

However, the Auric Bastion could not fully prevent the Norscans from crossing into the Empire. Chaos warbands, led by particularly bloodthirsty or foolhardy chieftains, scaled the towering edifice and managed to raid villages and besiege scattered fortresses[43]. The most significant of these warbands was the horde of the Kurgan chieftain Festak Kran, a Champion of Nurgle. His warband succeeded in pushing deep into the western Empire, causing much havoc before he was eventually stopped by the heroism of Valten, the Champion of Sigmar. Festak Kran's death, however, would not stop the Norscans' offensive against their most hated adversaries.

The Glottkin and the Fall of Altdorf (2525 IC)

"Brothers three shall bring low the Empire of Man. It is they who will muster the plague-kissed in their master's name. It is they who will cast the curse of unbound life, a curse that will bring primal disorder to a world of hard-won progress. United, the lords of disease shall bring the Old World to the brink of ruin - ruin from within and from without. All things clean and true shall sicken and fade. The Gods of Man shall fade with them, until only death holds the key to salvation... These are the End Times"

Lileath, goddess of prophecy[43]
Glottkin by faroldjo-d860slo

The Glottkin of Norsca, clockwise from the top -- Otto, Ghurek and Ethrac Glott.

With the death of the Kurgan Chaos Champion Festak Kran, Nurgle, the Chaos God of disease and decay, found himself bereft of a true champion to represent him in the conflicts of the End Times. The Everchosen Archaon, who knew well the fractious ways of Chaos, knew also that such a development could well deprive him of the god's favour, thus rendering him incapable of carrying out his destiny as Harbinger of the End Times [43].

Fortunately for his dark designs, there were indeed successors to Festak Krann who could ensure that the favour of their god remained upon the Three-Eyed King's dark crusade. The Glottkin -- the three brothers Otto, Ethrac and Ghurek Glott -- were grotesque warlords who stood paramount in the favour of the Urfather, Chaos Champions of plague and contagion greater than any other before them. Even the legendary Nurglite Chaos Lord Tamurkhan who had assaulted the southern Empire only a scant few years before the End Times began could not boast of the same esteem in the eyes of Nurgle as the fearsome Brothers Glott of Norsca.[43]

The Glottkin, though Taleuten by blood, had been raised amongst the Fjordlingas clans of Norsca [43] and had fully adopted Norscan customs and beliefs. When a force of Nordlander soldiers had attempted an invasion of the clans of the fjords, the Brothers Glott had led their fellow tribesmen in expelling the invaders, thus attracting the favour of Nurgle as a result [42].

In time, the Glottkin had become mighty Chaos warlords who led the Fjordlingas to glory upon glory in battles with enemy tribes, as well as the Imperials to the south [43]. When Archaon had appeared before the triumvirate of Nurglite chieftains, he at once recognised them as warriors mighty enough to bring eternal glory to the Plague Lord, that his entropic might and boundless vigour might be bent to his holy quest. At his word, the Glottkin ceased their rivalry with the fearsome Red Reavers -- an enemy tribe of Norscans dedicated to the service of Khorne, the Chaos God of war and rage. Within days, the Nurglite champions had called for a massive fjordmuster drawing all the tribes and clans of Norsca to their side that paid obeisance to the Lord of Decay.[43]

Among the most significant of the Chaos warlords to join forces with the Glottkin was Gutrot Spume, jarl of the Dragonbone tribe. A mighty Champion of Nurgle in his own right, the Glottkin had earned his allegiance when they presented him with a captured Mutalith Vortex Beast at the gruesome hall of bones where he made his lair. The jarl had sacrificed the mighty Chaos beast to Nurgle upon a great pyre, beseeching the god for a favourable wind to carry his mighty plague fleet southwards to do battle against the Empire. Even moreso than his own personal strength, or his formidable army of thousands of bloodthirsty killers, the Glottkin desired the jarl's massive fleet of longships for the task of weakening the Empire's northern coasts that Archaon had entrusted to them [43].

Plagueships

The Glottkin's plague fleet

The next tribe of Norsca to join the Glottkin were the infamous Maggoth Riders of Icehorn Peak [43], led by Orghotts Daemonspew -- a warrior renowned to have the ichor of the damned running thick through his veins. So impressed were the Glotts by this Norscan warlord that they entrusted him with a third of their army, ordering him to take the Empire by its undefended eastern flank.

The Glottkin, in light of the fearsome presence of the famed High Elven fleets of the Phoenix King Finubar Seafarer of Ulthuan upon the northern seas, advised the Nurglite armada to make a cautious crossing of the Sea of Claws. But Gutrot Spume, mighty jarl that he was, would have none of his lords' cowardice, however, boldly declaring that his was the greatest fleet in all the world, backed as it was by the fell powers of Chaos, and would not bow to the mere spectre of High Elven cunning.[43]

Gathering his shamans and vitki, Spume intoned a Daemonic incantation that even Ethrac Glott, most favoured sorcerer of Nurgle, could not understand. With these fell words spoken, the fleet of Norscan plagueships became engulfed in a foetid mist as they sailed the icy waves of the Sea of Claws. The Norscans were seen spotted by the prowling High Elven fleet who believed that they had taken the raiders by surprise and sailed boldly into the mist, thus foolishly sealing their own fate.[43]

640x1015 11483 Nurgle knight forgeworld GW 2d fantasy knight horse warrior picture image digital art

A Plague Knight of Nurgle

The Glottkin looked on appreciatively as Spume's gambit bore fruit -- the dense pillars of choking smoke brought about by the Dragonbone tribe's incantations suddenly became solid, plagued tentacles that crushed the High Elven fleet. Those few ships that attempted to defend themselves were swiftly undone by the pseudopod defences of the cursed Norscan longships, which snapped the hulls and masts of the sleek Elven vessels in two, allowing the fearsome Norscans to make short-work of the fragile High Elven warriors.[43]

The Glottkin raised their blades in salute to Gutrot Spume's sorcerous victory. So much for the vaunted fleet of the High Elves, no doubt the Empire would fare little better against their fleet than their Elven allies had.[43]

In the days after the Norscan fleet bullied its way through the High Elven armada, it divided into three distinct wings. The first was a teeming host under the command of the mighty Glottkin themselves; its Dragon-head prows aimed at the mighty Imperial fortress city of Marienburg, which had to fall before any amphibious invasion of the Empire could be successful. The second, comprised of the elite warriors of Gutrot Spume, was headed straight for Nordland -- they were to take the Old Dwarf Road, fighting their way due south to the emperor's capital of Altdorf. The third force sailed towards the Gulf of Kislev, for its commander Orghotts Daemonspew had intended to land near Erengrad and lead his warriors through the mountains to assault the eastern half of the Empire.[40][43]

The massive fleet of the Glottkin fell upon the Empire's northern coast, with cities such as Carroburg falling to them with contemptuous ease. Marienburg alone stood against them, but without the protection of the Vloedmuur sea-wall; that nigh-impenetrable defence erected since the last sacking of Marienburg by Norscan hands which had fallen so easily to the Nurglite fleet, it would have no hope now of surviving the coming of the Brothers Glott [43].

The Norscan fleet, having surprised the Marienburg defenders by breaking through the impenetrable Vloedmuur, fell upon and utterly crushed their foes. The city's standing army proved no much for the horde of relentless Norscan warriors -- black-armoured Chaos Champions and insane berserkers crashed into the hastily assembled Marienburg lines and slaughtered their way through their ranks with blistering speed. Soon, all inhabitants of Marienburg were being called up to reinforce the defenders. Scullery maids and noblemen alike were given weapons and made to take up their positions in the lines, fighting desperately for the survival of their city against the savage Chaos Warriors.[40][43]

NorseVs

The army of the Glottkin contends with the restless dead of Marienburg raised by the Vampire Lord Mundvard the Cruel.

Despite the desperate defence of the Marienburgers, the Norscans were hardly slowed in their advance. Salvation for the people of Marienburg came from an unexpected source -- the city's unknown master, the Vampire Lord Mundvard the Cruel. The Undead lord, unwilling to see the city he had silently ruled for centuries as its crime lord fall to the atavistic savagery of the Northmen, unleashed the full extent of his considerable power and raised all the dead of Marienburg to fight alongside and aid its Human citizens against the Norscan onslaught. Thus did the barbarian Norscans find themselves contending with the fresh-raised corpses of foes they had slain but moments ago.[40][43]

The onslaught of the Undead proved a daunting foe, but the Norscans held their lines against them, matching the deathless march of Mundvard's army with their bloodlusting fury. The Red Reavers, fearsome one-time rivals of the Glottkin's Fjordlingas, were at the forefront of the battle, slaughtering their way through the Undead's ranks with a fury born from the touch of Khorne's madness. Mundvard the Cruel, realising that his army was crumbling in the face of Norscan ferocity, threw himself into the fray to challenge the malefic lords of the host themselves -- the Brothers Glott. He had hoped that by slaying the leadership of the horde, it would fall apart and carry the day for Marienburg's survival. [43]

Though Mundvard was a mighty Vampire Lord, he was no match for the most favoured Chaos Champions of Nurgle. Otto Glott punched his scythe deep into the Vampire's breast when he became blinded by the foul digestive acids of Ghurek Glott's belly, holding him long enough for his mutated sibling to pick him up in his great tentacle. With a soul-rending roar, Ghurek hurled the Vampire far into the sea where he was crushed by the weight of the Sea of Claws. Bereft of his power, the magic animating the Undead of Marienburg dissipated and the army simply withered to dust. [43]

Marauder concept art

A Norscan Chaos Marauder proudly bears the mutation granted him by Slaanesh in this concept art for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Yet even as the Norscans roared their victory to the thrones of their gods and the halls of their ancestors, brave clarions began sounding on the edge of the city [43]. A relief force from the western provinces had come to lift the siege of Marienburg -- the Reikland Irregulars led by General Aldred von Carroburg, and also containing the most celebrated Imperial heavy infantry regiment of all time: the matchless Carroburg Greatswords.

Thus did another gruelling battle ensue, but the Norscans were unperturbed. They would gladly slaughter a dozen armies if it came to it, for their legend was but at the beginning. They smashed into the Imperial lines with unmatched savagery, crushing bones and breaking collarbones with every heavy swing of their brutal axes. Though the unbridled savagery of the Norscan advance had nearly succeeded in shattering the Imperial lines then and there, the Reikland Irregulars had somehow managed to hold their ground and slowly began pushing back the frenzied Norscan advance.[43]

Inch by painstaking inch, the Norscans were driven back until they reached the Marienburg harbour. But it was here that the Imperials had made their faux pass and fell victim to the Northmen's barbarous tactics. For the ground's surface was slick with blood, moss and dismembered cadavers and the Imperials were unable to keep their footing, but the Norscans, raised as they were upon the vast pack-ice of the far north, were able to deftly manoeuvre on the slippery ground.[43]

The Norscans took advantage of the Imperials' disarray and fell upon them with a soul-chilling bellow. It was battle as the Northmen loved it most ensued -- brutal, anarchic and savage. The Reikland Irregulars were swiftly slaughtered to a man by the immense strength and unimpeachable fighting skill of the mighty Norscans. With their swift victory, the emboldened host of the Glottkin began marching further south to close upon the city of Altdorf.[43]

Spume

Gutrot Spume, jarl of the Dragonbone tribe.

Meanwhile, as the Glottkin's horde rose afresh with their victory, the mighty warriors of the Dragonbone tribe under Gutrot Spume made landfall upon the Nordland coast. Spume had once before led an invasion of the Empire during the age of the Norscan Chaos Lord Mortkin, which had nearly succeeded but for the intervention of Karl Franz and the Ice Witch Tzarina Katarin. Spume had made an oath since his defeat that he would slay the emperor himself.[43]

The province of Nordland fell to Gutrot in short order, with the Elector Count Theoderic Gausser himself numbering amongst the dead. Confident in the unmatched battle prowess of his Dragonbone warriors, the jarl had made an audacious proclamation, that his army would eschew the Old Dwarfen Road and travel to Altdorf through the Drakwald, arriving at the city before the Glottkin and claiming the glory of its fall for themselves.[43]

Gutrot Spume's trek through the great forest had proved risky, for his Norscans were raised amidst the wintry peaks of the Norscan mountains and the wide open spaces of frozen tundra and pack ice. Though forests existed in their homelands, there were none so vast and deep as those in the Empire. The Norscans soon became lost in the winding paths, and outriders and Chaos Knights who rode ahead of the main force to find some end to the sprawling labyrinthine wood went missing. For it was not only the winding paths of the forest that the Norscans were to contend with, but the presence of myriad territorial Beastmen tribes.[43]

Gutrot eventually came upon these tribes, pleased to find that many among them shared their worship of the Urfather Nurgle. The Beastmen, recognising Gutrot Spume as a true son of their god, bent the knee in obeisance and joined their number to the Champion of Nurgle's steel-clad horde, chanting out praises to the gods in their bastardised form of the Dark Tongue. As the Norscans and their beastly allies trekked deeper into the wood, they came upon signs of the Greenskin tribes that also dwelt within it. The sight of the Forest Goblins' grizzly trophies did little to dampen the Norscans' spirits -- indeed, it seemed to reinvigorate their savage hearts.[43]

They had gone far too long without battle, and a fight against a common foe was likely to strengthen the bond that lay between the Men of the North and the Children of Chaos. As the chattering Goblin hordes swarmed out from between the trees in all directions, Gutrot Spume but raised his pitted axe and charged forth to unleash his fury. His mighty huskarls followed -- heavily armoured Champions of Chaos known as the Sons of the Last Plague, who rushed forth behind their lord eager to please the Dark Gods with blood.[43]

Barbarian was pitted against barbarian in a ferocious struggle. But in the end, not even the unthinking bloodlust of the Greenskins was a match for the bloody-minded berserker fury of the Norscans. Even though the Northmen were outnumbered ten times over by the greenskinned horde, the Forest Goblins and their Savage Orc allies could not hope to match the insane strength of the steel-clad Norscan warriors. The spirit of the Savage Orcs was broken when their champion, Grokka Goreaxe -- of whom it was said was an avatar of the fury of Gork -- was beheaded by Eogric the Vile, the most merciless warrior of the Dragonbone tribe and Gutrot Spume's personal headsman who raised the Greenskin champion's head to a crash of thunder that sounded more like the low, dark laughter of a capricious god.[43]

The Savage Orcs fled, but the Forest Goblins remained. Their chieftain directed them to swarm upon the Dragonbone's jarl. Thousands of diminutive Greenskins fell in mounds as Gutrot Spume unleashed his rage upon him, but they soon engulfed him and dragged him down. But the mighty lord of the Fjord clans would not be slain by such paltry foes -- though the spider-mounts of the Goblins bit deep into his necrotic flesh and feasted upon him, so favoured was Gutrot Spume by Nurgle that his very blood carried with it the contagions of the Urfather which burned the spider creatures from the inside out.[43]

The Plague God, placated by one of Spume's earlier sacrifices of a Goblin chieftain upon his altar, sent forth a swarm of engulfing Daemonic insects who undid the jarl's assailants -- leaving him bloody, yet still defiant and triumphant upon his mighty palanquin. Gutrot Spume then found the Goblin warlord upon the battlefield, and contemptuously broke his mere flint spear with ease, grasping him by the throat. The Goblin vainly attempted to bite the Norscan chieftain's unarmoured shoulders, thus imparting some of his weak venom into the Champion of Nurgle.[43]

But the Norscan's diseased blood found its way into the Goblin's throat, causing the Plague Lord's unlovely fecundity to billow more and more into his body. The Goblin's eyes glazed white, and his features began to bulge and distended across his skull before finally exploding with a wet pop. A knot of the closest Greenskins cried out and fled into the forests like insects scattered by torchlight. The panic spread through the Greenskin horde like a virus. As quickly as they had come, the spiders and their greenkinned masters fled back into the hallow trees, muddy warrens and boles from whence they came.[43]

It was the Norscan belief that such bloodletting would not go unrewarded by the great gods. They were proved correct when the vines of the forest, slathered in the blood of countless sacrifices, suddenly came alive and retreated, thus revealing a hidden passage through the Drakwald. If this path was to lead to where the Dragonbone thought it would, they would yet outpace the Glottkin and take the glory of Altdorf's fall for their own. As they had provided for their Father Nurgle, so did he provide for them [43].

BastardKing

Orghotts Daemonspew, the Bastard King of Icehorn Peak

As Gutrot was fighting his way through the Drakwald, the third arm of the Norscan invasion of the Empire, Orghotts Daemonspew and the Icehorn Peak clans, began to close upon the Gulf of Kislev aboard the mighty longship Vulfbite. From there, the Daemonic warriors would traverse the Middle Mountains and arrive at the Brass Keep, enlisting the putrid Champions of Nurgle garrisoned there. The Glottkin were wise to entrust such a task to Orghotts and his Maggoth Riders, for there was no better force in all of Norsca for negotiating the daunting peaks that lay at the Empire's heart.[43]

The warriors of Daemonspew made their way past the defences of Erengrad without incident. The people of Kislev had already been rendered to near-extinction by the Norscan hordes of Archaon in earlier months, and what few survivors remained had no strength left to resist the marching Warriors of Chaos. No surviving Kislevite had any wish to invite further ruination upon the last remnants of their people. [43]

Upon arriving at the Brass Keep, Orghott Daemonspew earned the allegiance of the Repugnauts of Brass Keep -- fanatic warriors of the Plague God, who had ravaged the lands of the Empire in ages past. His ranks bolstered with the veteran warriors, the Bastard King of Icehorn Peak continued on the path to Altdorf. Daemonspew had originally intended to focus only on reaching the city, but with his chieftains clamouring for battles before then, he elected instead to march upon the nigh-impregnable city of Talabheim. [43]

In a brutal night attack of unremitting violence, the Icehorn Peak tribesmen fell upon Talabheim's defences, leaving a bloody swell of rotting corpses in their wake as praise to their mighty deity. As if in amusement over the carnage, Nurgle rent asunder the veil between worlds and sent his Daemonic legions to the aid of the mountain tribesmen.

The defenders of Talabheim sallied forth to face the Norscans and their Daemonic allies on the open field. In a pitched battle, the Norscans triumphed over the defenders of Talabheim when the destruction of their mightiest warmachine and the death of their finest captain robbed them of their nerve. The few survivors fled back to Taalgrad and then streamed westwards with the rest of the refugees in a vain search for safety in Altdorf. The Norscans followed them, sailing upon the River Reik on a flotilla of warships. The final battle for the fate of the Empire was now at hand.[43]

Glottkin at Altdorf

Otto Glott faces all the chivalry of the southern lands.

Through the machinations of their mutual deity the three Norscan hosts had all converged upon Altdorf at the same, appointed time. Though it rankled some warlords such as Gutrot Spume that the chance for greater glory by destroying the city alone had been robbed from them, the sight of their patron god's dark smile upon the ethereal winds beyond the mortal world had strengthened their faith with the promise of glory and heightened their appetite for carnage. And they had also seen the wisdom in falling upon Altdorf as a united whole, rather than allowing the defenders to drive them off piecemeal.[43]

The beleaguered defence of the city was bolstered by the knights of Bretonnia, led by their former king Louen Leoncoeur -- now freed from his kingly chains by the return of Gilles le Breton, the first king of Bretonnia who had been revealed at last as its fay Green Knight protector. The finest of the chivalry of the south followed Leoncoeur into the battle for the Imperial capital, and in them the Norscans were to find a foe worthy of their martial prowess. In addition to the flower of Bretonnian knighthood, the defenders of Altdorf were joined by the forces of the Empire's newest Elector Count -- the resurrected Vampire Lord of Sylvania, Vlad von Carstein.[42][43]

The Bretonnian army smashed into the Norscan shield-wall, and proved an unexpected complication to the Glottkin who possessed the overall command of the three Chaos sword-hordes. Otto Glott, for all his twisted joviality, knew well that the hour of destiny was at hand. He knew that only through the complete destruction of Altdorf could the Empire finally be destroyed and Chaos's final triumph be assured. The determination to see this done burned as a cold fury, and thus did the mighty Otto Glott, atop his aberration of a brother, charge into the Bretonnian ranks with a blood-curdling Norscan battlecry rising from his savage throat. Ghurek Glott feasted upon the knights' warhorses, while Otto took their riders' heads with every swing of his monstrous scythe. On and on the Brothers Glott went, breaking the Bretonnian wedge kill by kill.[43]

Meanwhile, Vlad von Carstein lent his blade to the defence of his new realm's capital. Von Carstein slew the venerable Nurglite Chaos Sorcerer Festus the Leechlord, and thus staunched the Daemonic tide he led. At this victory, the Reiksguard, commanded by Harold Zintler, massed for a counterattack against the Norscan horde. His efforts were blunted by Gutrot Spume, for the jarl leapt from his great palanquin into the midst of the Imperial knights, blunting their charge with brutal slaughter before slaying Zintler himself with his own blade. The battle raged, with victory so close at hand that the Brothers Glott could taste the beatific glory of Nurgle's Garden and the raptures its coming heralded.

The Vampire Lord of lost Marienburg, Mundvard the Cruel, restored to unlife by his master Vlad von Carstein, came unexpectedly to the battle seeking to avenge himself on the brutes who had destroyed his beloved city. Directing his dread Terrorgheist upon the Norcan warlords, the Vampire raised his sword in a terrible arc to sever Otto Glott's head. The eldest Glott brother made short work of the Undead beast and its master in due order. Afterwards, Otto Glott came face-to-face with the legendary sire of the von Carstein bloodline himself, Vlad von Carstein, now the Mortarch of Night. After a short, yet vicious duel, Vlad von Carstein succeeded in driving his Vampiric blade through the muscled chest of the barbarian warrior. Yet this gained the newly created Elector Count no victory, for Otto Glott's blood was so thoroughly tainted with the most magnificent contagions of his deity, as befitted a favoured son of the Lord of Plagues, that death would not claim him.[43]

Von Carstein's blade was enchanted to enrich its wielder with the lifeblood of its victims, thereby sating its master's unholy thirst. Yet now the choicest of the Crow God's plagues billowed into the ancient Vampire, burning him out from within and forcing him to his knees as the amused Otto Glott readied his monstrous scythe to take the weakling's white-haired head. Before Glott could slay the wretched Imperial Vampire then and there, von Carstein hastily shapeshifted into a bat and fled from the battlefield. With his departure, his Undead legions faded into dust. Satisfied with his newest victory, Otto Glott led his siblings into the inner sanctum of the Imperial Palace -- intent on finding the weakling master of the Empire, Emperor Karl Franz [43].

Within the ruined palace did the Brothers Three find Karl Franz. At his side stood his Marshall of the Reiksguard, Kurt Helborg. Though the two southern warriors fought valiantly against the foetid Champions of Nurgle, for all their skill they were but pampered children before the barbaric might of warriors raised amidst the Chaos-touched savagery of Norsca. Otto Glott thrashed Karl Franz to the ground, ripping the Runefang of Reikland from his grasp and bringing the blade down in a gory arc to strike down the southron lord. His strike was stopped by the intervention of Helborg, who caught the blade in his bleeding hands. Otto simply ripped the weapon free, slicing off three of Helborg's fingers in the process and then stabbed him through his eye with such force that the tip of the Dwarf-crafted blade exploded out from the other side of his head. [43]

Laughing like a hunter around wounded prey, Otto Glott returned to the prone and bleeding emperor, his brothers gathering behind him to witness this historic moment of triumph for Chaos. With a guttural Norscan war-cry, Otto Glott raised the stolen Runefang and swung it down upon Karl Franz as a booming thunderclap shook the skies above. The emperor raised his good arm to deflect the blow, but it availed him nothing. The keen Dwarfen steel sliced through the bone of his arm and plunged into his heart. Thus did Karl Franz, Defier of the Dark, Emperor and Son of Emperors, meet his death under an outpouring of celestial light. With his last breath, he intoned the name of his warrior-god and ancestor -- Sigmar. And then the world was changed forever.[43]

Miracle

The return of Sigmar to the mortal world with the death of Emperor Karl Franz.

Above the Chaos hordes, the sky ripped asunder to reveal a gleaming otherworld and from that rift a mighty Twin Tailed Comet of pure, holy light descended upon the fallen body of Karl Franz. The emperor was dead, of that there was no doubt. The being that arose in his place was all-together a greater entity, whose divine presence burned away every last vestige of the unholy filth that blighted his Empire. Sigmar Heldenhammer -- son of Bjorn, chieftain of the Unberogen, First and Greatest of the Emperors, Foe of the North, Enemy of the Dark Gods, god of war and thunder -- had returned at long last to the mortal world to save his people in their darkest hour.[43]

Not even the Glottkin and the Men of Norsca could withstand sunch unbridled divine power. Single-handedly, wielding golden lightning, the God-King destroyed the Chaos Invaders just as he had in ages past. Ethrac Glott, thinking quickly, intoned Daemonic incantations that spirited him and his brothers to safety -- though they were soon captured by their god Nurgle, incensed at their failure to ensure his ascendancy over his Brothers-in-Darkness in this Final War.[43]

Gutrot Spume was the first to realise the forces of Chaos had been defeated, though he had gloried in the fact that the Empire had been battered to the point of collapse. Orghotts Daemonspew was not far behind his fellow jarl, and together they carved a bloody path free of the Imperials as they quit the field with the remnants of their armies. Regardless of the Empire's last minute triumph, their victory was but a pyrrhic one. The Norscans had slaughtered more than half of the Empire's entire population, and Bretonnia had expended all her strength lending knights to its defence.[43]

Worst of all, the few remaining survivors of Nordland had collapsed into the ruins of the Imperial Palace bringing dire news. They told of an armada of Norscan wolfships more massive than any Chaos Marauder fleet ever to have crossed from Norsca to the shores of the Empire that was even now slicing its way through the icy waves of the Sea of Claws. The sails of these vessels dripped blood in honour of their allegiance to Khorne, and upon the deck of the kingship ahead of them was a banner with the symbol of the Three-Eyed King himself -- for the thirteenth Everchosen Archaon, the Lord of the End Times, was coming.[43]

Fall of Middenheim (2527 IC)

"I am the Final Moment made flesh. I stand here on this mountain, and I will sit on this throne. I will be the axis upon which the wheel of change turns, and the world will drown in the light of unborn stars."

—Archaon, Lord of the End Times.[39]
End Times- Archaon

The thirteenth Everchosen Archaon at the World's Ending.

Archaon -- the Three-Eyed-King of the North, High King of Norsca, High Zar of the Kurgan, thirteenth Everchosen of the Dark Gods and the greatest warrior ever to walk the Known World -- was on the march. In his wake came the full might of all the north -- every tribe and warrior of Norsca who had proffered sword-oath that they might fight the final, glorious battle to seal the fate of the mortal world. Upon this mighty horde of the Warriors of Chaos were all the eyes of their ascendant gods. [45]

The mighty fleet of longships made landfall upon the straits of Kislev unopposed, but not unobserved. A thousand-thousand beady red eyes that watched from the shadows widened in fear as tribe after tribe of savage Norscans waded ashore. Soon, the old Nordland coast was thick for miles with black-armoured, horn-helmed Northmen.[45]

Yet still the warriors of the north flooded the shore. A living tide of steel and sinew that overrode that of the ocean as the Blood God Khorne's Wild Hunt forced the sun to flee from the skies. The air flickered with hellish magics above the forest of raised tribal banners as the countless warbands and sword-clans gathered around their jarls and Chaos Champions. The veil between worlds was rent by the sickly luminescence of the black halo that was the remains of the Witch Moon Morrsleib, causing hordes of Daemons to caper into blasphemous existence on the edges of the great freigattur. [45]

So vast and anarchic an army should have taken weeks to order into an effective fighting force, if they could be ordered at all. Yet all warriors of the horde felt the oppressive weight of their king as keenly as any steel blade, and bent to it without question. The Under-Empire's ruling Council of Thirteen and their Skaven hordes, disarmed by the notion of the full might of the savage north being marshalled at the time of their triumph, made the decision to ingratiate themselves with the Chaos host of Arachaon lest they engender their own complete annihilation by standing in the path of the barbarians. Archaon accepted the ratmen's fealty. The Skaven would be allowed to serve the interests of the Ruinous Powers. They were, after all, true children of Chaos just as the Beastmen were, and their particular talents would prove invaluable in the coming days [45].

Just as Archaon's fighters marched in apocalyptic step, so too did Middenheim's defenders ready themselves for the horde's onslaught. Valten -- Herald of Sigmar and champion of the Empire -- had ridden hard for Middenheim, seeking to bolster the city's legendary defences with his own not-inconsiderable forces. Graf Boris Todbringer, consumed with his vendetta against his long time rival the Beastlord Khazrak One-Eye; had resolved, despite the dissent of his nobles and the Knights of the White Wolf, to sally forth into the Drakwald and slay the best once and for all. [39]

In his stead, Todbringer made Valten the acting castellan of Middenheim. The loss of its lord in a foolish quest for vengeance severely weakened the great city, leaving it vulnerable to the massed Norscan horde. Nevertheless, Valten was determined to carry out his charge and protect the people of Middenheim. With the aid of the two greatest gods of the Empire -- Sigmar and Ulric -- the warrior was certain he would be able to bring Archaon himself to battle and slay him. For the Three-Eyed King's part, he knew Valten well, and was equally determined to slay the preening southlander to further prove the lie of the false idols he called gods. [39], [45]

Middenlanders

The Aeslings assault the ramparts of Middenheim during the battles of the End Times.

The slaughter began as battle was joined at the walls of Middenheim. To be a man of the north at that time was to walk in the wake of legend itself -- Egil Styrbjorn, Ragnar Painbringer, Sven Bloody-Hand, Engra Deathsword, Wulfrik the Wanderer, Valkia the Bloody, Sigvald the Magnificent, Scyla Anfingrimm, Valnir the Reaper and a thousand other noble names of dark renown and terror thundered across the field, leading their tribesmen across a bloody field to face the cowardly Middenlanders who perched atop their mountain fastness dreading the wrath of the Northmen.[39]

Warhirds of savage Aeslings charged up the ramparts, driving their bloody axes into the flesh of their enemies while roaring bestial praises to Khorne, the Lord of Blood. Barbarian Bjornlings braved the hail of cannonfire and crossbow bolts as they locked their massive kite-shields and slowly took the pathways of the labyrinthine city.[39]

The tribes of Norsca fought on, with the grim, fatalistic determination of their people as they hacked and slew for the glory of their hateful gods. Yet despite the onslaught, the Men of Middenheim took heart, for they recalled the ancient legends of their forefathers that told that the city of Ulric would remain unconquered so long as the flame of the god burned within its walls.[39]

Yet below the Fauschlag, their fate was already being sealed. For Teclis, Loremaster of Ulthuan, was enacting the next foolish step of his ill-conceived plan to defeat Chaos. In order to foster the resurrection of his warrior twin brother Tyrion, now cleansed of the Curse of Aenarion, into the Incarnate of Light, he would need the energies of the first and mightiest of the gods of the Empire -- Ulric himself, whose physical embodiment in the mortal world burned as a blinding flame within the great mountain itself - the visible fire burning above and believed to be the Flame of Ulric was but a pale facsimile of the true divine inferno buried within the Fauschlag. Teclis proceeded to steal the true Flame of Ulric, which resulted in the death of the great god of war and winter. Arrogantly believing his plan to be the only way to save the Known World from Chaos, the Dark Gods laughed heartily as the foolish High Elf Mage actually precipitated the annihilation he sought to prevent. [45]

The people of Middenheim let out a desolate cry of sorrow and horror unimaginable as the Flame of Ulric at last guttered and gave out with their deity's death. The heart was torn out of Middenheim's defenders by this loss, while the Norscans still came in slavering hordes -- eyes wild with bloodlust and rage, for while the Ulricans despaired in their god's appraent abandonment, the Norscans knew the eyes of theirs were upon them, and so they fought with ecstatic fury in the hopes that the Dark Gods would bestow upon them their fulsome favour and grant them glorious deaths in battle.[39][45]

Only one Imperial defender stood resolute against the tide of northern warriors -- in his hand was clutched the warhammer of the hated Sigmarhimself -- Valten, the southling god's herald and champion. He reaped a terrible toll from amongst the legends of the north, for many heroes of Norsca sought to slay him for the glory of the gods and the favour of their high king. [39]

Only Wulfrik the Wanderer, who had earned the honour of facing the Sigmarite in single combat by besting the equally legendary Valnir the Reaper in single combat, was able to contend with Valten where all the other champions of the north had failed. After a short but brutal duel where the Sarl had nearly proved victorious, Valten overcame Wulfrik and struck him down. Yet the Wanderer could see Valten's death coming, and knew that a similar fate awaited the so-called "Champion of Sigmar." [39]

Archaon VS Valten

Archaon faces Valten, Herald of Sigmar, in single combat during the siege of Middenheim in the End Times.

At last, Archaon himself took the field. He sought out Valten and challenged him to single combat. The Three-Eyed King mocked Sigmar's champion, calling him unworthy of the man-god's ancient warhammer. And though Valten was a peerless warrior amongst his own kind, it was truly not within his power to vanquish the thirteenth and final Everchosen.

Around the duelling warriors, the Everchosen's personal bodyguard -- the Chaos Knights of the Swords of Chaos -- gathered around to act as spectators to this legendary confrontation, one long in the making. The Chaos Knights were not the only audience to the epic battle, for the gods themselves gathered to look down upon this fated duel. The Ulricsmund shook with the battle as U'zuhl, the Slayer of Kings and Ghal Maraz clashed, again and again.[39][45]

The two warriors traded earth-shattering blows in an intricate waltz of destruction, strikes that could have annihilated any mortal man dozens of times over. Two destinies were at war, the skeins of fate straining to control their struggle as the rest of the battle simply faded into the background, where heroes lived and died in their dozens. Yet here was the only contest that mattered. The future of all creation would be decided -- either by the victory of the Slayer of Kings or the warhammer of Ghal Maraz, the "Skull-Splitter."[45]

The raging battle ceased for a moment when the Amber Wizard and Supreme Patriarch of the Imperial Colleges of Magic, Gregor Martak, filled with the last withered godspark of Ulric, attempted to intervene and swing the pendulum of combat in Valten's favour. As it transpired, the Herald of Sigmar's death came not by the edge of Archaon's mighty Daemonblade, but by the hand of the Skaven Verminlord Daemon Skreech Verminking, who decapitated the Herald of Sigmar.[39][45]

The Eye of Sheerien flared like a dying star, and all gathered felt Archaon's godlike rage -- a force unto itself that washed over all present as a wave of agonising, incandescent heat that burned clean away the smoke of the battlefield and drove back the shadow. The skies buckled with the Three-Eyed King's fury as a bolt of sorcerous lightning sundered the skies and smote the Temple of Ulric. The Everchosen set down the corpse of his rival and rose, his anger at being denied this prophesied battle a thing to cow the gods themselves.[39][45]

The Everchosen weathered the cold fury of Gregor Martak's spells, wading out from the arcane blizzards he conjured as though they were no more substantial than fog. Contemptuously, he raised up the supreme patriarch by the throat and slew him with his blade.[39][45]

Without the inspiration of the wizard's presence to give them hope, the remaining defenders of Middenheim quickly disintegrated in the face of Valten's demise and the sheer immensity of the Norscan army. Their few remaining positions quickly overrun, the ragged survivors were pursued unto death by their victorious foes. Thus it came to pass that the Norscans played out the final steps of annihilation begun by their ancestors when Cormac Bloodaxe led his mighty horde against Sigmar's empire more than two millennia before. Middenheim had fallen at last.[39][45]

Fall of the South and the World's End (2528 IC)

"So soon the hour of fate comes around. The Everchosen stirs from his dark throne and prepares the blow that shall split the world asunder. Realms of old are fallen, lost beneath the fury of the northlands, or smothered by vermin from below. Some heroes battle on, too stubborn to realise all hope is lost. Their time is past, and a new age of Chaos and dismay beckons. Perhaps I am foolish also, for I fight with no hope of victory. I seek only to weaken the Dark Gods, to shake their hold upon the future. No other course remains; not to mortals, nor the Divine."

—Prophecy of the End Times[45]
Three-Eyed Konungr

Archaon, the thirteenth and final Everchosen of Chaos Undivided, at last seated upon the throne of a dying world in Middenheim, crafted from the bones of the priests of Ulric.

The tribes of the Northmen were in ascendance; Middenheim was undoubtedly the proudest conquest of their long and storied history, for its capture was an unmatched humiliation of the weakling gods of the Empire. It was particularly humiliating for Sigmar, the ancient foe of the north.[39]

The hated Empire of the south was all but vanquished -- Altdorf was a festering ruin, Talabheim a scorched waste and Middenheim the staging ground from where the Northmen would strike the final blow against Sigmar's heirs. Only Averheim, capital of the Electoral Province of Averland, stood unbowed against the bite of Norscan steel.[39][45]

Archaon had claimed the Temple of Ulric as his hall in the many months since he and his Norscans had laid the city low. His throne had been forged from the bones of Ulric's priests, and the warhammer of Ghal Maraz had been set upon it as a trophy -- a testament to the supremacy of the Dark Gods of the north over the deities of the south [39] [45].

There, the thirteenth Everchosen received the supplications of his warriors and Daemons who were oath-pledged before the gods to his service. Once the temple had been illuminated by the Fire of Ulric, but that callow flame had proven no more divine than the dim torches that hung upon the walls of the defiled temple. Ulric had been shown to be a lie, just as Sigmar was a lie. With the conquest of Middenheim, Archaon had proven the former. With the skull of Karl Franz, he would prove the latter. [45]

The Three-Eyed King had already set the wheels in motion for the doom of the mortal world, having dispatched tribes to batter Averheim under the command of the Champion of Tzeentch, Vilitch the Curseling. The tribes dedicated to Tzeentch fell upon that city, roaring out bleak warriors' songs as they battered the walls of the Averburg with Hellcannon fire, and black-armoured northlanders had climbed up the rubble of fallen walls to slake their bloodthirst upon the Men of Averheim.[45]

Yet at the final moment, where the final fall of Averheim was assured, salvation for the southmen was found in the arrival of Sigmar Heldenhammer, Incarnate of the Heavens, and the last surviving warriors of the Empire. With the aid of the Dwarf warriors of Karak Kadrin, led by their mighty king Ungrim Ironfist, the first emperor successfully drove back the Tzeentchians and freed Averheim of their fury.[45]

Back at his hall at Middenheim, Archaon had realised that the time for deception and feint had long passed. Now dawned the hour of murder and slaughter. Unsheathing his mighty blade, he slew the Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, Kairos Fateweaver, beheading the abomination and taking his blood as the sacrament with which to honour the greatest of all the Dark Gods -- Khorne.[45]

From the blood and broken Daemonic corpse rose the mightiest of Khorne's Bloodthirsters -- Ka'Bandha, Lord of the Third Host, who pledged his service to Archaon, for it was the murderous will of the Blood God. With the aid of the Bloodthirster, Archaon gathered the most brutal Norscans into a terrifying army dubbed the "Berserker Onslaught," commanded by himself and two of the most favoured Khornate Champions of Norscan blood -- Valkia the Bloody and Scyla Anfingrimm. The three Norscans led the horde southwards upon Averheim, intent on breaking the last vestige of Imperial resistance. [45]

The northern skyline was soon choked with skull-laden banners and the air rang out with the discordant shrieking of savage Norscan war-songs. Many were the renowned warriors gathered into the ranks of the Berserker Onslaught -- the mighty Skaramor clans, the merciless warriors of Valkia's Bloodied Horde, fresh from their victory over the Dark Elf armies of Naggaroth in the far north, and many others whose blades thirsted for southling blood. But scant hours after Archaon's personal standard had crested the skyline did the Berseker Onslaught charge -- and Averheim rocked with the staccato thump of drumbeats and the roar of battlecries.[45]

Adrian-smith-frontispiece

The Norscan horde falls upon Averheim.

The Norscans charged forth at the great northern wall of Averheim, throwing massive, heavy-bladed axes and daggers at their foes atop the battlements. A rain of hellish cannonfire greeted them as they thundered across the Aver Valley. Thousands fell, many hundreds more were gravely injured, but so immersed in the fury of Khorne were the Norscans that they weathered the endless hail and climbed over the mounds of their dead to avenge themselves upon the Imperials.[45]

Oaths to Sigmar, Grimnir and the Lady of the Lake were drowned out by bellowing roars as the berserkers called out the eight-thousand bloody names of Khorne as it finally came to be the Northmen's time to wreak slaughter. Few of the southerners could match the fury of a Norscan, and even fewer the endless wrath of the bloodthirsty Champions of Khorne. Soon, the trickle of Norscans upon the walls transformed into a mighty flood and all foes broke before them. Not even the mighty knights of Bretonnia and the grim Dwarfs of Zhufbar and Karak Kadrin could stand long before the savage fury of the north.[39][45]

The Berserker Onslaught soon devolved into little more than a wild mob of savage warriors by the time they had reached the Steilstrasse. Drunk on slaughter and caked in offal, crimson-armoured Norscan Champions of Khorne thundered forth on brass-skinned Juggernauts, their runed axes reaping a frightening toll from their foes. The matchless warriors of the Skullrage, legendary Norsii knights said to have fought at the side of Morkar the Uniter, the first Everchosen himself, duelled with the greatest Bretonnian knights and hacked them down from their saddles with contemptuous ease.[45]

Even where their riders were slain, their Juggernauts continued their fight, lost in a shard of Khorne's everlasting rage. Towards the east wall, the shield-walls of Norsca and Karak Kadrin clashed, with the Dwarfs weathering the brutality of their foes with a skill that only the most battle-hardened northlanders could match. Yet the Northmen matched the skill of their grim foes with wild bloodlust, and so many of Ungrim Ironfist's Slayers found the deaths they longed for atop the walls of the Averburg.[45]

Scyla

The Chaos Spawn of Khorne Scyla Anfingrimm unleashes his fury.

Ungrim Ironfist had held alongside his favoured warriors thus far, though it seemed now that his doom had come. Scyla Anfingrimm, Talon of Khorne, had followed his slaughterer's instincts to the Magnusspitze, and the truest savages of Archaon's hird had followed in his murderous wake.[45]

These were axe-wielding savages, neither fully Men nor Daemons, who sought to drown out their own internal agonies with the death-cries of their foes -- Forsaken warriors who had long been cast aside from the shifting gaze of the Dark Gods and set upon the path of death or spawndom streamed screaming and howling onto the field. Where the Dwarfs had managed to hold back the rest of the Norscan horde, there was no way to contain Scyla Anfingrimm's howling host. With tendril, pinion and snapping claw, the Bloodbeasts crushed the Dwarf Slayers under their mindless, bestial bloodlust [45].

Anfingrimm at last had found Ungrim Ironfist on the field of battle and matched his mighty claw against the Axe of Dargo. The Slayer King was buttressed by an ancient power -- for he had become the Incarnate of Aqshy, the Red Wind of Magic itself, which strengthened his limbs and guided his blows, cloaked itself about him and burned away the darkness.[45]

But Anfingrimm was amongst the Blood God's most beloved warriors, and in the Final Days of the world, he had grown mighty indeed. Insensate to the pain of the magical fires Ironfist now conjured, the Chaos Spawn bore down upon him earth-shattering blows and pulverised his armour. Once, twice, thrice, the former Norscan Champion of Khorne had used Ironfist as an improvised flail, using the Dwarf king to crush and shatter his very subjects. When Anfingrimm drew the battered Dwarf back for a fourth time, it was then that Ironfist let fly his final, desperate swing.[45]

The Slayer King had aimed for the Chaos Spawn's head, but it had seemed that his axe-blow had instead found the hulk's massive arm -- the very one with which he now grasped him. The axe bit deep, and Anfingrimm howled in unholy rage as he instinctively threw away the Dwarf. Blinded with pain and fury, he leapt upon the prone Dwarf king, who with desperation quickly rose to his full height and slashed his blade across the hulking Anfingrimm's belly, nearly drowning himself in the creature's smouldering blood.[45]

The Chaos Spawn howled in fury a second time, but could not halt the momentum of his charge in time before he struck the edge of Magnusspitze's parapet with a sickening crunch, and then plunged over the edge into the smoke-wreathed sky beyond. None could be certain, however, if this had spelt the end of the one-time saviour of the Bay of Blades, though he did not reappear in later battles of the End Times.[45]

Valkya2

Valkia the Bloody seeks skulls to lay at her paramour Khorne's feet.

Far across the city, the Emperor's Company was swiftly losing momentum. Only Karl Franz himself, in truth the Imperial founder and patron god Sigmar Heldenhammer reborn, though it was unknown amongst his comrades, seemed untouched by weariness and many were the prayers made that the power that strengthened the emperor would not itself wane until the gold-helmed Everchosen was slain.[45]

As the fur-clad and steel-sheathed warriors swarmed all about them, the Swords of Chaos -- Archaon's own warband and the elite core of the Berserker Onslaught -- had spurred into the fray. Their charge was unto the southlings as the ending of worlds, as their impact trampled hundreds of brave warriors of both the Reiksguard and Griffon Order alike into the gore-slick dirt.

Above the charge of the Norscans flew the mightiest of their legendary shield-maidens -- the dauntless warrior-queen Valkia the Bloody the Bringer of Glory, the Daemon Princess of the Blood God who carried the fallen to Khorne's halls. Though Archaon -- High King of the Northmen -- had made his claim upon his southern counterpart, there were still many choice trophies to be laid at Khorne's feet, and the Gorequeen had set her malefic gaze upon the Imperial standard, as well as the skull of he who bore it -- Ludvig Schwarzehelm.[39][45]

Both Valkia and the Emperor's Champion duelled amidst the battle -- peerless warriors of their respective races. Though Schwarzehelm was a swordsman of exquisite renown who bore no equal among the Men of the south, Valkia had been a queen of Norsca in mortal life, and in immortal Daemonhood bore the highest favour of Khorne himself. Valkia's spear, Slaupnir, had torn its brutal way through Ludvig's breastplate and pierced his heart, slaying him. But in his death-throes, the warrior had raised the Imperial standard Valkia sought to claim and drove it through her Daemonic flesh, the Daemon Princess' very momentum driving her further and further down the spear, until the heartwood shaft had shattered her unnatural spine.[45]

Archaon triumphant

Archaon charges into the fight against Sigmar.

As the two died, Archaon had at last sought out the emperor -- his foe and great adversary. A strange silence fell upon the field as the two locked their fierce eyes upon each other. The sense of destiny defied was electric in the air, the sense of fate itself sheering loose of the path set for it. The thirteenth Everchosen raised his mighty blade and rode towards his enemy, and the moment was lost.[39][45]

The Everchosen did not ride at once to meet his foe in combat -- his swing had been the signal for his Swords of Chaos to charge ahead and engage the foe. Not one of the heavily armoured Norscan riders had reached their enemy, having been burned to cinders by the emperor's lightning or torn from their saddles by his Griffon Deathclaw. Archaon remained motionless as he beheld the slaughter of his closest Chaos Knights and nodded to the emperor. The barest of salutes perhaps, or a satisfying foresight of the contest to come between them.[45]

The Norscans still continued streaming onto the Magnusplitze. While their victory was all but assured at the Steilstrasse, here it was less a complete rout for their foes and more a grinding stalemate given the timely arrival of the Dwarf warriors of Zhufbar who reinforced their red-haired cousins of Karak Kadrin.[39][45]

Imperial soldiers fought back to back as frenzied Northmen slaughtered their ways through their ranks, breaking Imperial lines with heavy blows from their axes. The men of Carroburg and Ostland, Quenelles and Altdorf, all felt despair rise up like bile as Aeslings, Baersonlings, Bjornlings and Graelings thundered and muscled through their lines and slaughtered men without mercy.[39][45]

Yet among all this bloodshed one battle stood ascendant. That was the duel between the emperor and Archaon Everchosen. Compared to this confrontation, the earth-shaking duel between the Three-Eyed King and the devil Sigmarite Valten had been but a mere prelude. Around the combatants, the Swords of Chaos formed a protective ring to thwart the efforts of the emperor's Reiksguard, or indeed any other, to intrude upon this mighty reckoning.

Bound with the full power of Azyr as its Incarnate, Sigmar was nearly Archaon's physical equal. Deafening metallic clamour rang out as the Sword of Kings and Ghal Maraz clashed together, Daemonfire and holy lightning striking out with every blow. Below, Archaon's steed Dorghar and Karl Franz's Griffon Deathclaw duelled with every bit the same fury as their masters, red wounds steaking the Griffon's body and dark blood flowing free from the Daemonsteed's thick hide.[45]

The emperor called out to the heavens to unleash their fury upon Archaon, lashing the Norscan high king with bolts of lightning. Unperturbed, the Everchosen countered with his own Dark Magic, wreathing the emperor in Daemonflame that would have surely burned him to his very soul had it not been for the protective enchantments of the Seal of Purity.[39][45]

Again and again did blows fall, the two warlords striking out in a dance of steel with skill so impeccable that it seemed almost a rehearsed battle. All around them, Norscan and Imperial alike fell into the sodden mud, their skill having failed them. Yet still, the northern king and the emperor fought.

ChaosHeavyInfantry

Mutated Norscan berserkers in battle during the End Times.

At last, Ghal Maraz battered away Archaon's rune-shield and thundered into the black plate of Morkar the Uniter's armour with a dull clang drowned out by Archaon's bestial bellow of pain. This small victory proved bitter, however, for the emperor had left his defences dangerously weakened and the Slayer of Kings lashed out to take advantage.[39][45]

Deathclaw saw the blow before his master did, and imposed himself between Sigmar and the keen edge of the Slayer of Kings. Instead of striking the emperor's neck, as Archaon intended, the Daemonblade instead hammered into Deathclaw's skull. Blood oozing from the blow, senses struck clean by the hammer of the impact, the mighty Griffon tumbled to earth with a muffled screech and threw his lord from the saddle.[45]

Archaon was on his foe the minute Sigmar had fallen to earth. The Slayer of Kings arced down with blinding speed and tore a bloody groove through the emperor's ensorcelled plate armour and bit deeply into the flesh within. Ghal Maraz struck out a second time, but it was slow now with its wielder having suffered such a mortal wound. Archaon easily dodged the strike and laughed at a foe so nearly humbled. He did not charge his steed now, for the emperor was defeated. Nor did he call his Swords of Chaos warband to end the cretin princeling's life. Instead, he merely goaded Dorghar to a tread and slowly approached his beaten foe.[45]

Archaon raised the Slayer of Kings and brought it down in a murderous arc, while the emperor raised his warhammer of light in a desperate guard against it. The two weapons met with a ponderous clang, but Archaon tore his weapon away and brought it down again with twice as much force. With that strike, the Slayer of Kings thundered into Ghal Maraz and the warhammer exploded into a thousand shards of light[39] [45].

The Three-Eyed King mocked the fallen emperor as a thief, declaring the power of the Incarnmate of the Heavens mantled upon him was not his property for it had been stolen from its true master -- the Changer of Ways, Tzeentch, the true god of all magic. Archaon tore away the power of Azyr from the emperor, returning it to the possession of Tchar the Raven God. Thus did the Three-Eyed King finally prevail over his nemesis.[45]

15897

The Norscans rampage across the battlefield.

Seeing the wretched emperor as unworthy of even the effort of killing, the Three-Eyed King elected to deny him the honour of a warrior's death, declaring that no god favoured him nor cared if he lived or died. Averheim was now lost, smothered under the wrath of the Northmen like all the rest of the mortal world. With no recourse, the Gold Wizard Balthasar Gelt conjured a spell to transport the survivors of the emperor's army to Athel Loren -- the last place in the Old World spared the fury of the Norscans, leaving only Ungrim Ironfist and the Sons of Kazakrendum to cover their retreat. Every last Dwarf not of Zhufbar died a loathsome death that day.[39][45]

With his victory over the Empire seemingly assured, Archaon led his victorious warriors back to Middenheim, where they would enact the final stages for the annihilation of the feculent mortal world the Three-Eyed King had decreed was worthy only of death.

The triumph of the Northmen was swiftly imperilling the delicate Weave that the Wood Elves of Athel Loren had striven so hard to maintain. The travails grew so deadly that many of the forest wraiths began to succumb to the madness of Chaos. With every assault the Norscans and their allies had made, the more they pushed the world towards its unmaking [39].

Such devastation could not come into being overnight, of course. Indeed, without an explosive influx of Chaos energies similar to the terrible occurrences glimpsed during the fall of the Old Ones in the Great Catastrophe, this unmaking would doubtless have taken centuries. However, a horrifying tipping point was emerging -- one that if left unchecked, would reduce the mortal world to formless, primordial Chaos. And already, its precursors were being felt.[45]

Within the bowels of the Fauschlag in Middenheim, the Northmen had uncovered that which they had sought at Middenheim since times immemorial. An ancient device, left over from the age when the Dark Gods warred against the Old Ones: a device that, if properly coaxed, would open a rift into the Realm of Chaos, one similar in intensity to the two gateways into that extradimensional hellscape that stood at either pole.[39]

Without an equal to cancel it out, as had been the case with the Old Ones' Polar Gates, this new gateway would devour the Known World unabated, and indeed also undo the bindings placed upon its two siblings, thus destroying the delicate equilibrium that had been unwittingly created by the Great Catastrophe and play out the last acts of the damnation that had only been delayed those many thousands of years ago with the creation of the Great Vortex.[45]

Deamons Bloodthirster by columbussage-d47j02l

The Blood Hunt unleashed.

Ka'Bandha, Lord of the Bloodthirsters, had grown impatient with the thirteenth Everchosen's unwavering desire to remain in Middenheim while blood was yet to be spilled. Though he had sent many foes to Khorne's halls and won a mighty victory at Averheim, his refusal to hunt the last remnants of resistance to the dread will of the gods was deemed disrespectful to Khorne in the eyes of the Bloodthirster.[39][45]

Archaon, unbowed by the Greater Daemon's rage, suggested that Ka'Bandha lead his pack to claim the emperor's skull for Khorne, but he should deliver Karl Franz's flesh to adorn the Three-Eyed King's black throne. With new purpose Ka'Bandha led the Blood Hunt to run down and slaughter the last embers of resistance to Chaos' rule.[39][45]

The ancient Daemonhost did not need to run down their quarry, for the army of the Incarnates rode out in a last, desperate charge to avert the destruction Archaon sought to unleash. Their forces were greatly enhanced by their desperate alliance with the Undying King Nagash and his surviving Mortarchs. The dead of eleven Imperial provinces rose up to aid the last Army of Light against the red ravagers of the god of war.[39][45]

Warhammer-mark-of-chaos-haos

Black-armoured Norscan warriors forge barbaric enclaves in order to defend the Middenplatz.

Though the Incarnates and their dark allies fought tooth and nail against the Daemonic hordes, they could not prevail against the boundless fury of rage itself given form. The Lord of the Blood Hunt directed his fellow Daemons in smashing apart the forces of the Incarnates, while he himself set his burning gaze upon the emperor. In a last ditch effort, the Incarnates cast a potent spell to transport themselves and a select few of their forces into the Ulricsmund itself. Meanwhile, Nagash led his Mortarchs and a veritable horde of Undead ever northwards towards Middenheim.[39][45]

The Norscans and Kurgans, believing their triumph had already been secured, resigned themselves to nights of wild feasting and drinking in celebration of their mighty victory at Averheim. Besotted, they were unprepared for the blow Nagash dealt them, for his Mortarch, Krell, had charged upon them leading the Doomed Legion. Krell and his warriors showed no mercy to those to whom they had once been kinsmen to in life, and so did grave-steel cut deep into sinuous northern flesh.[39]

Sigvald vs Krell

Sigvald crosses blades with Krell.

The Champion of Slaanesh Sigvald the Magnificent marshalled his kinsmen against the Undead horde, and so did the Norscan sword-bands lock their shields together to contend the Undead, roaring out warrior-songs to show their deathless foes their defiance. Other heroes too rose up to lead their kin against Nagash's forces -- Harald Hammerstorm, legendary victor of the Battle of Khorsvold, who challenged Vlad von Carstein; Arbaal the Undefeated, who faced off against Caradryan, Incarnate of Fire; the mighty Egil Styrbjorn, who slew all comers who dared to challenge him as he roared bestial praises to the god of blood.[39][45] 

Sigvald and Krell sought each other out and faced off in their own battle. Though the undead behemoth had long been enthralled to Nagash's foul whims, there was yet some part of his soul yet bound to Khorne and was still consumed by the antipathetic rivalry between the followers of the Blood God and the followers of Sigvald's own patron, Slaanesh.[39][45] 

So did the two Norscans clash in a contest of champions equal to any other battle waged during the End Times. Krell's ponderous, haymaking blows were matched against the ephemeral swiftness and dauntless skill with which the Geld Prince wielded his rapier Silverslash. Yet for the first time in his immortal existence, Sigvald the Magnificent, Geld Prince of Slaanesh, had taken a step back from a foe.[45]

Again and again did Krell's Black Axe sweep out to reap Sigvald's skull, while his thin blade had seemed only to skitter along the thick surface of Krell's red plate armour. Where Silverslash had penetrated the barrow-iron and dealt a blow, still did the Wight continue unhindered; the only indication that he had suffered any blow at all being the angry flare of witchfire in the Wight's pitiless gaze.[45]

Suddenly, the Overlook shook to a throaty roar that signified the coming of Throgg Winterooth, the Troll King, and his monstrous horde, comprised of all the unclean beasts that dwelt in the Northern Wastes -- fellow Chaos Trolls, Giants, mutants and feral Beastmen who swarmed across the city at Throgg's command, bound to his dark will by the magic within his tarnished crown.[45]

Archaon had ordered that Sigvald and Trogg both hold the Overlook against the Undead assault, but the Everchosen's command had rankled the Geld Prince's colossal pride for Sigvald found only insult in being compared with the Wintertooth. The Slaaneshi Chaos Lord had dealt what he thought was a fatal blow to the Troll King as they departed from the befouled Temple of Ulric and left Wintertooth for dead. Regardless, Throgg's natural regeneration had seen him rise again, intent not only with crushing the Undead, but repaying the Norscan princeling for his treachery. [39] [45]

Warriors of chaosds

The warriors of the north stand fast against their foes.

Yet the Troll King's vengeance had to wait, for Sigvald and Krell were even now locked in battle. As the Geld Prince blocked the Wight King's latest strike with his silvered shield, he beheld with horror in its perfect reflection the toll the battle had taken on him. The Geld Prince's face had been pulped to bloody ruin, his skull cracked and his right eye crushed and blinded, once immaculate skin brutalised into puckered, discoloured flesh that the Chosen of Slaanesh knew at once would never heal.[39]

The Wight King had made the mistake of striking the Geld Prince where he had been most vulnerable -- his vanity. In that moment, Sigvald had abandoned the refined gentility of a favoured warrior of Slaanesh and fell into the berserker fury so characteristic of his people, overcome by a raging bloodlust more fitting of a Khornate champion than a servant of the Dark Prince.[45]

Scooping up his shield, Sigvald threw himself upon Krell, punching, thrusting, kicking and cursing wildly. Fury gave Sigvald the advantage finesse had denied him, and so it came to be Krell's turn to retreat. Sigvald smashed his shield into the fallen champion's skeletal visage, thus blinding him momentarily and allowing Sigvald to sever the Wight's right arm. Roaring in rage at his loss, Krell launched the Black Axe into a terrible backhand swing which snapped Silverslash in two when the Geld Prince raised the blade to deflect the strike.[39][45]

Yet before the Wight could capitalise on his victory, Sigvald threw himself upon Krell and knocked him down upon the flagstones. Sigvald slammed Silvershash's broken spine repeatedly into the Wight King's eye-socket. Then, with his armoured knee, he braced Krell's remaining arm, pinning the Black Axe to the ground and laid about the Mortarch of Despair's head with bare fists.

Sigvald pounded the Wight again and again, shouting all his incoherent hate at his foe's expressionless face. Heedless was he of the blood streaming down his face, or of the bones breaking in his fists. He felt the cheekplate of Krell's helm give way under his onslaught, and flung the twisted scrap of metal clear, not noticing that in so doing he had sheared off three of his own fingers. He relished only the sound of Krell's skull breaking under his mighty blows, not realising that the sound of shattered bone came also from his own hands.[39][45]

Only when the witchfires died from the Wight's eyes did Sigvald at last relent, slumping back from his destroyed foe with ragged breath. At last did Sigvald look upon the self-inflicted ruin of his hands, knowing with crushing finality that never again would he wield a blade. Throwing his head back, he howled at the sky -- the sound fuelled as much by despair as by anger. He did not scream long, and as the shout finally died down to wracking sobs did Trogg's barbarous warhammer come down and crush the Geld Prince's fair head from behind. Scowling, the brutish Throgg emptied his bladder upon the corpse of Slaanesh's favoured son. Insult and treachery repaid, the Troll King waded further into the battlefield and went to claim victory for the Dark Gods.[39][45]

Having dispatched the Orc Warlord Grimgor Ironhide, the Incarnate of Beasts, the thirteenth Everchosen moved to engage Sigmar in single combat. Fully manifested upon the mortal plane as was only possible for a being of his divine power, the Heldenhammer's avatar of Karl Franz proved to be Archaon's physical and metaphysical equal.[39][45]

The battle fought between them proved to be perhaps the fiercest of all that were waged during the End Times. Thunderously did the Slayer of Kings and Ghal Maraz clash in blows that could have shattered mountains and shook the very world to its foundations. Throughout the duel, Sigmar raged at the Everchosen, lamenting that he, a son of a daughter of the Empire, might have been the sword that would have wiped the Empire clean of taint and led Humanity into a bright age of glory. Archaon's anger blazed brighter, for in frenzy he laid upon Sigmar with all his hatred, decrying the God-King as a liar and coward.[39][45]

Having at last disarmed the God-King, Archaon readied his Daemonblade for the blow that would kill a god. The intervention of Ulric, Sigmar's own deity during his mortal life, who sought to repay the Everchosen for the despoiling of Middenheim and the slaughter of his worshipers, bought the God-King time to recover as the Three-Eyed King finally slew the host of the Wolf Lord's godspark and thus snuff out the last embers of that noble deity.[39]

Enraged even further by the loss of the god who had admitted him into the company of the divine and whom he had so loved in his mortal days, Sigmar unleashed the latent power of Azyr within him and destroyed Archaon's legendary Daemon sword. As Archaon reeled back in shock, Sigmar charged forth and hammered upon the Everchosen with blow after blow until he finally cast him into the new Chaos Gate he had opened to end the world.[39][45]

But the Lord of the North would not be defeated so easily, for as the attempt of the Incarnates to seal the rift failed Archaon climbed his way up from the Chaos Gate. Driven to fathomless insanity by the revelations he had borne witness to within the Realm of Chaos, Archaon fell upon Sigmar with a rage so unholy that it blackened the soul. And as the newborn Chaos Gate fed its dark hunger upon the Known World did the two demigods struggle in titanic contest, the ending of the mortal world itself paling in intensity to the unimaginable hatred that existed between them. [39][45]

Ragnarok

The ruin of hope and the final end of the Known World.

Meanwhile, the Norscans and their Kurgan allies fought brutally against the defenders of the Old World, their only desire to fight and die well before the gaze of their gods. Great was the carnage on both sides as the opposing armies clashed in brutal contest. Yet, as the blows struck either line, the Men of the North knew they had won victory. For even as they battled, the gnawing rift into the Realm of Chaos that was born underneath the Fauschlag came to ravenous life -- feasting upon reality and replacing it with the glory of the Otherworld, for the mortal world was now to be consumed at last by the long-delayed hunger of the Ruinous Powers.[45]

At last, the veil between the worlds was lifted as the Dark Gods had long promised. The Northmen were rewarded with a final escape from the piteous dream of flesh and passed into the true realms of battle and glory that lay beyond the ashen existence of the mortal world. No two watchers beheld the same vision. Some looked to the heavens and gazed upon skies riven with fire, some looked upon an ice-cold maelstrom of stars, while others saw unclean things from beyond the dim horizons of sanity that drooled with the molten stuff of Chaos.[45]

In that moment before they were claimed by the triumphant power of Chaos, the Northmen stood upon the corpses of their hated foes of the south, having at last repaid Sigmar and his heirs for their defiance of the darkness. In the final wars that raged with the death of the Known World, many were the champions and warlords raised by the gods into the glory of Daemonhood. Many great heroes and battles were yet to be writ into the final sagas of the world, unfolding in a blink of an eye or even across millennia as the mortal world screamed its dying breath. Whatever the truth of these final times, much has been lost, waiting only to be retold.[45]

Geography

"I spent a year in that hellish place. Can you believe it? For six months straight, it was dark, the sun barely came over the horizon. And let me tell you, those were the most dangerous six months of my life."

—Mikel Kraus, Mercenary[7a]
Norsca Map

Map of Norsca, the Chaos Wastes and their tribes.

Geographically and climatically the peninsula of Norsca is, for the most part, a frozen, boreal wasteland bereft of all trappings of civilisation, albeit one so large that it could fit the entirety of the Empire into it several times over. Stalked by all manner of gruesome monsters, the tales Old Worlders tell of it fail to fully encapsulate its brutality.[7a]

Few crops grow here, for the land is hard as iron and the howling winds cut like daggers of purest cold, and it is because of this sheer scarcity that the Northmen have learned to spurn the sickle and ploughshare, instead deigning to take what they need to survive from the lands of weaker Men with the axe and sword. A network of fjords and mist-clouded isles wreathes the coasts, and it is from here that the Norscans build and tether the longships with which they terrorise the shores of the Known World.[3a]

Scattered coastal settlements provide some respite from the harshness of the elements, but even they are regularly assaulted by Bloodkrakens and other such horrors. Further inland, however, the great fjords give way to frozen steppes where brutal tribesmen hunt their game, taking care to avoid the bone-carpeted lairs of Ice Dragons. It is a grim, shadowy land where the weak do not live long, and where living means a constant fight for survival, supremacy, and the chance to appease the Dark Gods.[3a]

Norscalandscape

The Chaos-tainted arctic wastes of Norsca are the bane of the weak.

The landscape is famed chiefly for its mighty and foreboding mountain ranges; such as the Jotunheims, the Mountains of Frost and Dusk, and the Mountains of Thjazi. The mountains themselves are cloaked in local myth and history, and are sometimes named for ruined fortresses sitting atop their icy peaks, or for mighty and legendary beasts that nest amongst their crags and defiles.[7a]

Though the mountains dominate the country's interior, they are far from the only feature. Massive stretches of forest mark a great deal of the land; ancient taigas that house foul secrets of the Dark Gods, as well as ferocious beasts of unnatural strength and power. To the north, immense seas of glacial pack ice stretch down and cover nearly the entirety of the upper half of the country, rendering Norsca as a glaciated wasteland. These ice fields form the Frozen Sea along the north of the peninsula, the great strait that separates Norsca from the true Chaos Wastes.[7a]

Massive frozen glaciers are a common sight, particularly in the arctic climes of the northernmost parts of the peninsula. The great Hellwyrm Glacier is one of the most well known of these, having been the site of a climactic battle between the iron-clad Chaos Warriors of Valgar the Butcher and the Undead legions of the Tomb King Settra the Imperishable during the fabled War of Sand and Snow.[3]

The great Ice Field of Drergan Mort too has played host to mighty conflicts between the Baersonling tribe and their rivals, particularly the tribes of the neighboring Kurgan. Many times have the Norscans emerged victorious from that field of death, proving their strength in the eyes of their infernal deities.[7a]

Norscan cliff

The rugged cliffs and fjords of Norsca

The seas of Norsca are just as dangerous as the land itself. For amidst the frigid waves of the Sea of Chaos prowl the fearsome black longships crewed by barbarians and mastered by the terrible Champions of Chaos who reave and raid as they will, bringing bloody battle to any ship cursed with the misfortune of crossing them.[7a]

From the ports and fjords of Norsca do the terrible Chaos Fleets sail, harbouring cargoes of bloodthirsty Chaos Marauders intent on putting civilisation to fire and blade. Moreover, the icy cold of the Sea of Claws is itself as much the bane of sailors as the savage sea-faring warriors who ride its waves; with winds so cold they freeze the very spray, causing knives of frost to pierce the flesh and freeze extremities. And deep below the tides lie creatures that have been touched with the power of Chaos that capsize ships and feast upon the flesh of Men. Small wonder then, that Men grow vicious and cruel in these lands.[7a]

Harsh lands breed harsh folk, and the Norscans have been moulded into some of the fiercest and most violent warriors to blight the Known World. They are a race of ferocious raiders who must kill and plunder in order to survive. However, during the summer months, the air of Norsca warms just enough to enliven the sparse stretches of land suitable for farming, which serves to supplement the Norscans' common diet of fish, bear-flesh and the meat of the far less savoury creatures that prowl the wilderness. All other months, however, the land is deathly cold, and unnatural snow-storms are a constant, made all the worse by the unholy winds blowing down north from the Chaos Wastes.[7a]

Half the year is a dim twilight, the sun barely a disk of light hanging low on the horizon. Within the land itself lies things warped and changed by the loosed energies of Chaos that permeate this ancient land, though there is wealth hidden amongst its terrible dangers -- the mountains that hide veins of gold and iron, as well as other precious metals. Beyond all this there is the warpstone; the very essence of the magical energy of Chaos given solid form in the mortal world, which saturates the ground so that the very land is infused with it.[7a]

Though Norsca's distance and danger is a potent deterrent to keep all but the bravest of southern merchants from travelling there, the rare treasures hidden amongst its dangers yet provides a tantalising lure for the courageous and mad to make the journey north and risk their lives under a Norscan's blade; and their immortal souls upon their bloody altars.[7a]

Landmarks

Norsca 03

Norscan shrines to Tzeentch, the Chaos God of change and intrigue; concept art for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

The most striking features of Norsca, raised by mortal and immortal hand alike, are the great, stone monoliths that dot the primaeval wilderness. These infernal monuments serve as focal points for channeling the raw magical power of Chaos, and sorcerers who find themselves near these constructs will likely find their powers greatly augmented by their proximity.[17d][17e]

Those with the courage to look upon the monoliths more closely are likely to find runic inscriptions in the Norscan tongue written clearly upon them. These inscriptions often foretell the sagas of the great heroes of Norsca; the Champions of Chaos.[17d][17e]

These "Chaos Monoliths," as they are known, are towering runestones raised by the Norscan tribes for the commemoration of some legendary tribal hero or king for some deed of martial majesty that won that figure the renown of the Dark Gods.[17d][17e]

Monoliths are most often raised with stone, but can also be composed of more esoteric material as a result of Norsca's otherworldly qualities. Bone, bloody flesh, marble, precious gems, and so on are all examples of materials Chaos Monoliths may be composed of. Wealthier tribes are able to commission monoliths to be crafted by the Chaos Dwarfs of Zorn Uzkul, who are said to cast the great runestones in brass polished to a mirror sheen that reflects not the countenance of the onlooker, but the savage visage of the warlord the monolith commemorates.[17d][17e]

Chaos Monoliths serve as commemorators of heroes and kings, repositories of the histories of the Norscan people, but they also serve as markers of tribal territories or the holdings of warbands. Monoliths quickly become places of pilgrimages among the northern tribes, and most Norscans will not pass one without leaving an offering of some kind or at least reciting the saga written upon it.[17d]

The Norscans believe that the Dark Gods themselves watch over the monoliths, protecting them from the ravages of time and judging the worth of those who come before them. Monoliths may sometimes stand watch over cairns of fallen Chaos Champions, where the bodies of the dead heroes are usually interred with their weapons and armour, making them a tempting, albeit difficult, target for would-be graverobbers.[17d]

Aside from the monoliths, the lands of Norsca are dotted with the massive great halls of the various tribes. There are expansive, thatched structures constructed of oak and pine where the tribes gather to feast and carouse and prepare themselves for their campaigns of rapine and slaughter against their enemies.

Total War Norsca Wolf Crow Serpent and Eagle Monoliths Render 1

Norscan Chaos Monoliths dedicated to the major Chaos Gods as rendered for Total War: Warhammer; from left to right, totems dedicated to Khorne as the Hound, Nurgle as the Crow, Slaanesh as the Serpent and Tzeentch as the Eagle.

Most Norscan great halls are massive structures, but a fair few are titanic even by northern standards. The great Hall of the Snaegr that lies in the land of the Skaelings, or the great Hall of Strovengaard, home to the fearsome Egil Styrbjorn, are but two grandiose examples of truly legendary great halls. There is also the Hall of Urslo, home to the ferocious Ursfjordings and the infamous Beorg and his Bearmen of Urslo.[4a]

Then there are fortresses. Norscan fortresses are not quite as ostentatious or grand as those erected by the civilised realms of the Old World, but still, these barbaric fastnesses are raised over highly defendable positions. Ruled over by the mightiest kings and warlords of the land, the fortresses of Chaos number among them the Doomkeep, the Forbidden Citadel, the Altar of the Crimson Harvest, and the Tower of Khrakk.[14]

The great fortress of Ormfell also exists in the lands of the Sarls, erected at the place where the great Sarl hero Ormr defeated a terrible serpent and set its bones into his throne. Centuries later, the Sarl king Ulgra Troll-Eater marched southwards alongside the twelfth Everchosen Asavar Kul during the Great War Against Chaos, and shattered the walls of Kislev, carrying the rubble back to Norsca to set as a reinforcement of his ancestral seat's ancient defences.[14]

At one point, the Daemon fortress of Baga Yar, the great witch, stood in the lands of the Skaelings, but was long ago laid low by the Chaos Champion known as Wulfrik the Wanderer, who led an army of Norscan warriors to conquer the Daemon fastness and its unholy mistress, slicing off the arms of Baga Yar and boiling her alive in her own cauldron in order to steal the great magical longship known as the Seafang that was capable of sailing through the Realm of Chaos.[14]

Norscan Culture

People of Norsca

"From the harsh snowlands they come, blue of eye and blonde of hair and tattooed upon arms, face and chest. Their eyes are mad with bloodlust, for blood they thirst, driven forth on the whims of the gods they seek to appease. Clad in few garments and wielding clumsy and brutal axes and maces, they rage against the civilized lands of the south, burning, pillaging and looting all before them as a .sacrifice to their uncaring masters beyond the gates of hell in the northern wastes."

Liber Chaotica, penned by Richter Kleiss, Priest of Sigmar, declared insane[17b]
All Fear the Wrath of the Norscans

All the civilised Men of the south fear the wrath of the Norscans.

The Norscans are a distinctive people of Mankind, forged of the hardiest of mortal stock and possessed of tall, broad frames and extremely muscular builds.[1b][2b]

The songs and legends of the Known World describe them as nigh-unstoppable, and those who have borne witness to the fury of a berserking Norscan will carry the sight unto their graves. Towering in height and thick of bone and steely muscle, the strength of the Norscans is rightly regarded as legendary. The Norscans tend to keep their hair long and almost universally cultivate large, wild beards, as they regard shaving as an effeminate practice. Norscans tend to have pale, weather-beaten skin and red or blonde hair, though darker hair colours such as black and brown are not rare amongst them.[1b][2b][4a][7a][7b][14][23a]

Norscan warriors are known to festoon talismans and other arcane items upon their person. These include the fangs of mighty beasts, the heads of powerful enemies and runic talismans that are thought to invoke the power of the Dark Gods. Norscans also bear various tattoos and ritualistic scarifications that openly display their fanatical dedication to the Chaos Gods. A superstitious and fiercely pious folk, the Northmen believe in all manner of portents, signs and omens. Every Norscan, from highest Chaos Champion to simplest Chaos Marauder, will carry a trinket or two to ward off the Evil Eye and bring about the favour of the gods.[1b][2b][7a][7b][23a]

These trinkets range from simple, even innocuous talismans to rare items of grave and dire power. Simple charms like a rabbit's foot, a clump of hair from a sorcerous hag, or a raven's beak etched with magic runes are all examples of the fetishes the Northmen wear in order to ward off evil. Other, more esoteric items are thought to be far more powerful: it is said that the dried tongue of a Plaguebearer bestows one mastery over all disease, that the tooth of a Flesh Hound will grant a warrior great strength and bravery and that the eye of a Cockatrice will flood one's path with wealth and precious gems.[2i]

Norscan Horseman

Norscan warriors often affix gruesome ornamentation upon their shields and armour.

Whether these charms truly possess such power is irrelevant, for the Norscans find through them the strength to conquer, and what more can men ask of folklore and tradition? The people of the Empire know the Norscans as those who sail their feared longships to attack the southern lands, clad in fur and steel. They are a fierce people whose sons love nothing better than to charge into battle wielding mighty axes.[2i][23a]

When winter slackens its iron grip on the north the wolfships and dragonships of the Norscans invariably set sail, raiding southwards, westwards and eastwards in search of glory. The only warning of the Norscans' attacks is the harsh blaring of warhorns and the shouted oaths to the Dark Gods whose names lesser men dare not speak. And so it has always been, as told by the fathers of the fathers of the eldest who now live. None can remember a time when the lands of the south were not ravaged by the Men of the North.[4a]

For centuries, these bloodthirsty marauders from above the Sea of Claws have always targeted Kislev and the northernmost lands of the Empire. The raids of the Norscans have become increasingly brutal and deadly as the taint of Chaos has spread across the northern wastes of their homelands.[5a]

In times gone by, these battle-hardened Norscans, alongside their Kurgan allies, would forcibly settle the lands they jointly conquered, often taking a local wife from amongst the conquered population, thus mixing their bloodlines with those of the Old World and extending the banner of Chaos ever southwards. Over time, as the grip of the Chaos Gods upon the mortal world has increased, their influence in the northlands has increased exponentially.[5a]

The taint of Chaos is ever increasing and has ever been strongest in the north, due to its proximity to the Polar Gate to the Realm of Chaos that lies at the northernmost point of the world. For this reason, the hard warriors of Norsca have ever worshipped the Dark Gods of Chaos, even if the names of these gods have been twisted and reflected through the lenses of the countless tribes of the Norscans.[5a][17a]

Norscan heads

The Men of Norsca are a barbaric lot, many of who sport various mutations "gifted" to them by the Chaos Gods.

While all of the tribes recognise the Chaos Gods as their masters, they may pray and shout and perceive them by names different from those that southern scholars and sorcerers know them. Ultimately, however, it is always the Ruinous Powers who are listening and responding to their cries. [1b][2b]

Thus, raids from the north seek not only to take gold, women, and food for the sake of survival, but also to shed blood for the gods. Whenever the fur-cloaked warriors of Norsca emerge from their dreaded longships, their objective may not be to simply pillage; but to kill, maim and destroy in the myriad names of the Chaos Gods.[5a][7a]

Norsca warriors

To see the Men of Norsca on the battlefield is to see death made flesh.

The Norscans are in a constant state of warfare, both amongst themselves and the other tribes of the Northmen like the Kurgan and the Hung. Most of all, they are in a perpetual state of war with the so-called "civilised" lands of the south. Almost every aspect of Norscan belief and culture teaches them to hate the peoples and gods of the south, to know that their annihilation is their first and greatest duty to their own gods. As a result, the Norscans are known to their neighbours as a militant people -- constantly gearing and girding themselves for conflict.[7a]

In ice-bound Kislev, where the border is less constant than the sea, Norscan raids are never-ending and staggering in their unbridled ferocity, so much so that Tzarina Katarin Bokha has had to drastically reinforce the garrisons and defences of both Praag and Erengrad. Despite the dogged determination of the Kislevites, the Norscans have blazed through the Realm of the Ice Queen on countless occasions, razing the cities of the Gospodars without fail.[5b]

DAARKEN11

A Norscan Chaos Marauder bearing traditional tribal tattoos invoking the power of Tchar, known in the southern lands as Tzeentch.

Worse, with rumours swirling in the icy north of a new, thirteenth Everchosen seeking to unite the tribes of Chaos into an indivisible whole, the peoples of the south huddle in frightened corners, dreading the terror the mighty Norscans shall bring down upon them once more. Yet in spite of their unbridled savagery, a few facets of a normal Human society remain among the Norscans. Namely, honour and loyalty; particularly to one's kinsmen and elders. Few Northmen dare to displease their chieftains and tribal elders, for doing so risks being thrown into the wilds, with little hope of being accepted by another tribe, as anything other than a thrall, at any rate.[1b][2a][5b]

Battle and faith in the Dark Gods are at the heart of Norscan society. The tribes live for war and the shedding of blood, and the rivalries between them provide ample opportunity for it. For instance, the Aeslings have long been foes to the Baersonlings to their south. It is the same between the Aeslings and the Sarls, the latter blood feud eventually erupting into the legendary Battle of Skulls, where the Aesling king Torgald was slain by the legendary Chaos Champion Wulfrik the Wanderer of the Sarls. Similarly, the Bjornlings are at regular loggerheads with the Graelings, and so on.[2a][2h][7b][7c][14]

Men in Norscan society earn standing by being great warriors, and earning the favour of the Dark Gods as a result. Raids from the north are thus undertaken in part so that young men may advance in honour in the eyes of their fellow tribesmen and, more importantly, the Chaos Gods. Slaying the weakling warriors of the south, despoiling the temples of southern gods, and carrying prisoners back to the north to be sacrificed upon pyres and altars dedicated to Chaos all serve to advance a Norscan's renown.[7c][7d]

Oral traditions and sagas are also important in Norscan society, deeply intertwined with the aforementioned need for social standing, renown and honour. It is the dream of nearly every Norscan to have the deeds of their life remembered and feared by all through their recording in the sagas sung by the skald-chanters. Most of the warriors commemorated in the sagas are legendary -- some even near-mythical -- Champions of Chaos. Some sagas are even written to honour whole tribes who committed glorious feats of strength -- such as the Saga of the Gorehunt Tribe. [2e] 

Personal and tribal honour are highly integral to most Norscans, and many feuds among the tribes can likely be traced back to a breach against a man's personal honour by a person from the other tribe, though who did what exactly will likely depend on which side of the conflict one asks. The Norscans guard their personal prestige jealously and are even willing to endure horrific torture and long-lasting injury if it means their honour is protected or restored.[2e]

Norscan Practices

The Blood Raven

"It takes strength of purpose to do this. But keep your loyalty true and my lord's hand will guide you correctly."

Valkia the Bloody[16]

"You favour birds, Zarnath? Since you like birds so much, traitor, I will make you one."

Wulfrik the Wanderer[14]
Norse Champion

Many Norscans walk the path of the Blood God Khorne.

Norscan executions are an unimaginably brutal affair best not described on a full stomach. One method above all is noted for its significance and sadism -- the terrible rite known as the "Blood Raven," known also among some tribes as the "Blood Eagle." The earliest mentioning of the rite lies in 1396 IC, when the Daemon Princess Valkia the Bloody, Shieldmaiden of the Blood God Khorne, descended down from the Halls of the Lord of Skulls to lend her aid to a Norscan army seeking to besiege the Dwarfen hold of Karak Ghulg.[15][3d][5b]

Upon defeating the Dwarf defenders, Valkia commanded the Norscans to cut open their foe's ribcages and tear out their still-pulsing lungs and place them upon the shoulders of the still-living Dwarfs like the folded wings of a hellish raven. Thus was born the Blood Raven, known by some tribes also as the Blood Eagle, the most revered and terrible of all Norscan traditions.[15][3d][5b]

A Norscan warband led by a Chaos Lord known as Bothvar, renowned throughout the lands of the north as a ferocious Champion of Khorne, thundered down upon the northern Dwarf Hold of Karak Ghulg, driven by the murderous command of the Lord of Battles himself. With the bloody frenzy of the berserker, the fair-haired Chaos Marauders battered the great Dwarfen citadel in order to break open the way to the hated Empire of Sigmar.[15]

Nigh unstoppable on the battlefield and favoured mightily by his Dark Lord, Khorne had seen fit to favour the Norscans with the appearance of his very own paramour. Empowered by Valkia's Dark Magic, the Norscans shattered the Dwarf defenders with renewed aggression and tore out their living lungs from their shattered ribs in honour of Kharnath, as Valkia directed them. The Daemon Prince and Chaos Lord fell upon the king of Karak Ghulg Skadi Ironjaw, and it was Bothvar who felled the king and feasted upon his heart.[15]

The Blood Raven/Eagle is as complex as it is grotesque, considered to be a method by which enemies are sacrificed to Khorne. Broadly speaking, the ritual involves, in order, shattering the victim's ribs, tearing out their lungs and placing them upon their shoulders, so that they resemble the folded wings of a great raven or eagle.[15][14] 

In one style of the execution, the skin of the person's chest is sliced and peeled off, exposing their bloody ribs. The sternum is then broken, usually with a weapon, but amongst more savage Norscans, with bare-hands and fists. The two ends of the ribcage are then taken and pulled outwards, a feat that necessitates the immeasurable strength of the common Norcan. The lungs are then removed and splayed outwards, causing the slain to seem as though he or she possesses wings, much like a raven or eagle. With this act, thanks is given unto the Blood God for victory.[15][14]

Other usages of the Blood Raven involve instead flaying the flesh from the slain's back, rather than his or her front. The ribs are then cut from the victim's body, made to bend outwards until they break. Finally, the pulsing lungs are pulled out and are thus set against the dying's back. It is a terrible, lingering death that invites the sadistic pleasure of the Dark Gods and it is with a butcher's aplomb that the Norscans carry it out.[15][14]

Wergild

Norsemen

Sketches made of Norscans

It would be easy to decry the Norscans as being lawless savages, with no care for the destruction and carnage they leave in their wake. Truly, they are a savage people; who have little interest in other peoples beyond slaughtering or enslaving them, and who openly worship the Chaos Gods. However, Norscan culture is far more than simply a series of endless battles, and to decry Norscan society as being lawless is simply false. Favouring simple laws over the complex ones preferred in the Empire and elsewhere in the south, the wergild (literally "man-gold", in the Norscan tongue) is one of the few universally accepted traditions of Norsca.[7b]

To put it simply, any crime, no matter how great or small, incurs a debt, or wergild. When a man is wronged in Norscan society, he may seek recompense from a jarl, Chaos Champions or other leaders of Norscan society. The man states his case, and the accused is given a chance to defend himself. Witnesses of honourable character are then produced by both sides to lend their perspectives on things, and once all the evidence is presented, the jarl comes to his decision.[7b]

Such a verdict rarely comes easily, and is never entirely fair, depending on the quality of the arguments and the jarl's own mood. In any event, the final arbitration of the matter rests with the jarl, who sets the ultimate price of wergild. This can be in the form of a fine, which varies according to the importance of the individual murdered; Norscan kings and jarls thus require the highest level of recompense. Over the centuries, the wergild has expanded to cover all manner of possible offences, thus, in instances where no one has been killed, a jarl must be somewhat creative in his arbitration.[7b]

Each jarl must fall upon his own wit and cunning when devising a wergild, basing the recompense on the crime itself. In the case of a wrongful allegation, a jarl may order the accuser's tongue to be ripped out. Assaulting another man's wife may result in the rapist being made a eunuch, as a purely practical consideration, seeing as how the accused could not properly control his passions.

The taking of limbs is fairy popular punishment when the accused cannot pay the wergild, and in some cases, even when he or she can. In the case of a particularly dishonourable deed, the accused may be forced to undertake an impossible quest to some horrific den in Norsca that will likely lead to their deaths. This is usually an amicable situation for all involved, for not only does it serve as an appropriately terrible punishment, but it is also considered a wonderful venture for what is better to a Northman than to be set upon a heroic quest to best some nameless horror in the glory of single combat, thus achieving glory and the favour of the Dark Gods as a result?[7b]

The manner in which the wergild is paid out varies amongst the tribes. Certain times, the arbitration of wergild may involve a transfer of titles and station to the wronged party, and there are even some cases of Norscans taking the women, children, holdings and even the thralls of their enemies as recompense for losing their own as a result of the accused's actions. Other times, the wergild may not even fall on the guilty party, but instead on a relative -- such as a wife or child, who will often have to part with a limb or eye to repay the debt of the patriarch. Sometimes, it may even pass upon the next person to enter the area, a preferred arrangement for the accused, but often a risky one if a man of importance, such as a jarl or Chaos Champion, is the one who enters.[7b]

The shamans of Norsca, however, have no worldly wergild attached to them. Rather, it is thought that the reprisals from the Dark Gods themselves settle all debts those foolish enough to strike a seer must pay. As the gods are very active in Norscan society, shaman, seers, vitki and Chaos Sorcerers occupy a high level of importance in the echelons of Norscan society and are afforded a great deal of respect, seen as the oracles through whom the gods communicate their holy will (of course, as the Norscans see spirituality as a matter directly between a man and the Chaos Gods themselves, no self-respecting Northman would depend on a middle-man to speak with his own deities). It is either a desperate or reckless man of Norsca who would dare raise his hand against a seer; for even the fearsome warriors of the north are wise enough to fear the retribution of their cruel gods.[7b][13] 

Norscan tribes dedicated to Khorne have no reverence for spell-casters such as Chaos Sorcerers, and invariably slay such seers whenever they find them. To compensate for their dearth of arcane knowledge, Norscan tribes who worship the Blood God have their own form of seers; a sect of terrifying warrior-priests known as "Bloodfathers." These Norscans are legendary warriors who bear the Mark of Khorne and are said to receive visions of bloodshed and knowledge of battle from him. For a devotee of Khorne to even raise his hand against them is said to invite the displeasure of an already raging god. The Bloodfathers of Norsca are rightly feared throughout the north, for it is said that there is no trick of axe and sword that Khorne has not revealed unto them.[7b][13][50]

Skalds

Skalds are keepers of northern lore, and chroniclers of the histories of the Norscans. Part entertainer, part warrior, these individuals are held in high esteem by Norscan jarls and kings for their wisdom and knowledge. These men recount the sagas and the deeds of the ancestors and the Dark Gods themselves, often also composing new sagas out of the feats and exploits of contemporary heroes to add to the collective history of the Norscans.[7c]

As they are skilled and powerful warriors also, many Norscan warleaders find it prudent to have a skald in their cohort. When the call to war is sounded, these men have the honour of bearing their leader's own standard into battle.[7c]

Birth

Amongst many Norscan tribes, it is believed that a birth cannot occur without a death. The arrival of a newborn is thus said to signify doom for the tribe. And so, to appease the hungry spirits, the Norscans would butcher a thrall.

Other tribes, however, see birth as the truest sign of their gods' favour and will. There is a tradition amongst some tribes where the father would feast upon the flesh of the afterbirth, for it is believed that this material holds within it the essence of change, and thus by devouring it, one can draw strength and power from it.[7b]

Mourning

There are only two ideal fates for a warrior in Norscan society -- gaining the marks of the Dark Gods, and death. As a result of this, women are forbidden to mourn their sons and husbands. Instead, they are to celebrate their passing with feasting and praise for the departed.[7b]

It is a common custom for Norscan women to cut off their fingers as an offering to the shadowy Warrior Hags, that these Daemons might bear their men safely to the honoured Halls of the Dark Gods in the Realm of Chaos.[7b]

Norscan Tribes

"Certainly there are conflicting views about the Norscans. On the one hand, they are merchants and traders, interested in dealing fairly with their neighbors. But on the other hand, they are fierce and bellicose people who raid and steal as they like, extorting gold and silver for not sacking our coastal communites. The reason for this somewhat contradictory nature is that Norsemen, though mostly of similar form and appearance, are not just a single people, but rather consist of many tribes. And their attitudes differ a great deal between each tribe. To comprehend the Norsemen character, one must first understand who they are, where they live, and the fundamental motivations of the Norsemen people."

—Xavier Pfaff, Middenheim Historian[7b] 
1c905214cbab29a5cb7115f161e9c6a3 (1)

Whatever their tribal affiliation, every Norscan is a fearsome warrior.

The very term "Norscan" was devised by the Men of the Empire, for a single, cohesive Norscan people does not actually exist. Instead, they are divided into various and numerous tribal confederations, as much at war with each other as with the Kurgan and Hung tribes of the Far East, or the Empire to the south. These various Norscan tribes are often nations unto themselves: possessing varying pantheons of gods, traditions, heroes, and tribal dialects.[1a]

Wc chaosmar

The Skaelings of Norsca

The northern tribes are often fierce Chaos worshippers and are the most likely among all the tribes of the Northmen to take part in the Dark Gods' wars upon the civilised world. The southern tribes, on the other hand, are somewhat milder: while they raid and plunder just as much as the rest of their kin, it is in these tribes that the ideals of trade and cooperation have begun to take root, albeit shakily. When not waging war against the southern realms, southern Norscans often trade exotic furs, metals, and their service as mercenaries to employers in cities such as Marienburg.[7b]

However, all Norscans are united by a shared ancestry and a mutual veneration of the four major Dark Gods of Chaos. As such, when the Ruinous Powers speak and command war to be made against the Empire, the southern tribes take up the call as readily as their more northerly kinsmen. To refuse the call of the gods is the greatest dishonour a tribe can bring unto itself and is often seen by other Norscans as grounds for annihilation.[7b]

The tribe forms the very core of Norscan identity, for a Norscan will never identify themselves as such. They will, instead, base their identity only on their tribal heritage. For instance, an Aesling will always think of themselves as an Aesling rather than having a connection to any other Norscan -- for their only loyalty is to their family, their kinsmen and the Dark Gods.[17a][17b]

Being divided into countless tribal affiliations, there exist many important cultural differences that mark each tribe as being unique, with particular customs and beliefs that serve to set them apart from the rest of their countrymen.[21][22][23]

For instance, one particular clan of Skaelings may dress in cloaks of bear skin and reindeer hide, paint over their steel armour with blood, and grip mighty battleaxes and spears in honour of Khorne.[21][22][23]

On the other hand, a tribe of Aeslings may be dressed in checkered surcoats and wear brass-studded collars while wielding brutal longaxes in honour of the same deity.[34] Thus, Norscan warriors are as diverse as they are lethal.

Major Norscan Tribes

Mon 256

Icon of the Aeslings in Total War: Warhammer

Aeslings

The Aeslings or Aes are a Norscan tribe whose southernmost village is Skraevold, and whose territory borders the Frozen Sea.

They are mortal enemies of the Baersonlings, whom they have stolen cattle from as well as having slain their freeholders and thralls. Aeslings are most often sworn servants of Khorne, the Chaos God of war and murder who they call "Karnath."

Warhammer Bjornling symbol

Icon of the Bjornlings in Total War: Warhammer

Bjornlings

The Bjornlings are a Norscan tribe which lives by trade, fishing, and raiding -- adapting by circumstance and the whim of the gods. During times of hardship or when Chaos waxes strong in the north, the Bjornlings are warlike and contemptuous of the soft southern folk of the Old World.

However, during times of peace, the Bjornlings are one of the few northern tribes which willingly put down their axes in pursuit of trade and exploration, making them some of the greatest sailors and explorers within the north.

The infamous explorer Erik the Lost and his son Losteriksson, as well as the infamous pirate Aranessa Saltspite, all hail from the Bjornling tribe. The fortified hold of Skjold is considered the capital of the Bjornlings.

Sarl Emblem Total War Warhammer

Icon of the Sarls in Total War: Warhammer

Sarls

The Sarls are a Norscan tribe known for being great shipbuilders, and few are the Sarl villages that do not provide timber for the longships of their tribe.

In one such village, every able-bodied Sarl is expected to help herd timbers down the icy rivers of their land to the shipyards on the coast.

Climbing pitons are not uncommon among Sarl hunters, who know how easily the role of hunter and prey can change and appreciate the value of keeping a safe distance above snapping fangs and flashing claws.

Graeling emblem Total War Warhammer

Icon of the Graelings in Total War: Warhammer

Graelings

The Graelings are a Norscan tribe who resisted Archaon's quest to become the thirteenth Everchosen, using the Werekin of Fjirgard to combat him. The Three-Eyed King defeated them only after heavy losses.

Wh main nor varg 256

Icon of the Vargs in Total War: Warhammer II

Vargs

The Vargs are a fearsome Norscan tribe of Chaos Marauders that inhabits the north-central coastline of Norsca. Shrouded by myth and legend, they are reputed to be some of the most bloodthirsty and devoted to Chaos amongst all the northern tribes.

Centuries ago, the Vargs were solely followers of Khorne, whom they knew as "Arkhar the Wolf," and were led by their legendary founder and chieftain, the Champion of Khorne and Chaos Lord Hrothgar Daemonaxe.

Skaeling 256

Icon of the Skaelings in Total War: Warhammer

Skaelings

The Skaelings are among the most infamous Norscan tribes to have ever blighted the Old World. Great sea-reavers, they are ancient enemies of the Bretonni, having spearheaded some of the largest invasions in Bretonnia's history. The Skaelings are also close relatives of the Nordlanders, having invaded, colonised and intermingled their bloodlines with those of that Electoral Province of the Empire during the invasions of the 14th century IC.

Like other Norscan tribes, although considered a monolithic cultural group by outsiders, the Skaelings are many and varied, and scattered across the southern coast of Norsca and the great mountains that lie behind it. Ardent worshippers of the Chaos Gods, particularly of the Blood God Khorne, the raiders of the Skaeling set sail for the thrill of battle and to praise their mighty god with the spilling of blood, though they are perhaps not quite as monomaniacally bloodthirsty and insane as the brutal Vargs and Aeslings that lie to the uttermost north beyond their lands.

Yet such is their ferocity and adherence to Khorne's will that they regard any Northmen with an insufficiently eager appetite for blood sacrifice as weak and faithless. They retain special scorn for the Bjornlings, whom they regard as mere traders and cowards.

Baersonling Warhammer Total War

Icon of the Baersonlings in Total War: Warhammer

Baersonglings

The Baersonlings, also called the Baerson, are a tribe of Norscans whose holdings are centred on the village of Vinnskor. Their people are noted for their hair and beards of pale gold. They are great rivals of the Aeslings.

Minor Norscan Tribes

  • Sortsvinaer
  • Brennuns
  • Wolfclaw
  • Stormravens
  • Wyrmkin
  • Kin-Slayers
  • Beast-Flayers
  • Blackaxes

Norscan Society

Norscan Berserks

A Norscan bondsman

Norscan society is comprised of distinct tribes that venerate their ancestors and their respective visions of the Chaos Gods, yet nonetheless each tribe is stratified along similar social structures. The Norscan tribes are each ruled by a king, who distributes hunting grounds and territory to his lords, who are known as "jarls." The jarls in turn bestow gifts and favour upon their sworn warriors, who are known as "bondsmen."

Warriors occupy the most vaunted and esteemed place in Norscan society, due to the warlike mien of the northern tribes and their insatiable lust for blood. The rest of Norscan society consists of the elderly (though it is quite common for elder warriors to command immense respect among their fellow tribesmen, due to their renown and experience in combat), the infirm and the women.

At the very bottom rung of Norscan society lie the thralls, slaves taken in raids for use as menial labour, as consorts, and worse, as sacrifices to appease the dark hunger of the Chaos Gods.

Norscan Kings

Chaos Warlord

A Norscan king is often also a powerful Chaos Champion.

The most powerful and fearsome of Norscans are the dark kings of this wild land. Most Norscan kings begin their careers as jarls, but occasionally one can inherit the title from his father. There is a divide in the methods of royal succession between the northern and southern parts of Norsca. In the north, Norscan kings are invariably victors of blood-drenched trials-by-combat where all claimants battle each other in order to determine who among them is the greatest warrior and most favoured by the Dark Gods. In the south, however, the transition of power is generally somewhat smoother, but still fraught with violence as the new Norscan king must still slay his rivals in combat to ensure his power and prove his worthiness before both the gods and his kinsmen.[7a][7b]

All kings of Norsca bear upon them Marks of Chaos, indicating outwardly that they have been blessed by their patron deities with incredible power and might. These Marks are also an indication of the king's right to rule his tribe -- for he must have already proven himself as a mighty warlord in order to attract the eyes of the Dark Gods in such a profound way.[7a][7b]

Celebrated Chaos Champions, the kings of Norsca are amongst the most deadly warriors in the entire Known World, and prove the legends of their dark might in war time and time again. At times, certain exceptionally powerful Norscan kings can rise to unite multiple tribes or even all of Norsca under their banners. This individual is known as the "high king." To date, there have only been a small number of individuals with the sheer strength and will required to become high kings of Norsca, such as High King Ormgaard, High King Valmir Aesling, High King Erik Redaxe, and the thirteenth Everchosen Archaon, the Herald of the Apocalypse, who was the final high king of Norsca during the End Times.[2g][2h][7b][11][14]

Jarls

Khornate Marauder

A Norscan chieftain wielding a Daemon Weapon in combat against a warrior of the Empire.

Jarls are powerful Norscan chieftains and nobles who are loyal to their tribal king. In exchange for their oaths of fealty and friendship, the king grants his jarls hunting grounds, bondsmen, thralls and treasures. Jarls are the absolute masters of their lands, but are expected to be subservient to their kings, who tend to punish disobedience with swift and terrible retribution.[7b][7c]

Norseman of Tzeentch

A mighty Norscan jarl blessed with the divine favour and "gifts" of Tzeentch as depicted in concept art for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

When the winds of war blow, a jarl is bound by oath and honour to come to the aid of his king and lend his warriors to the cause. Should a Norscan king die without an heir to succeed him, the jarls will invariably fight a savage contest to determine who shall be his successor. Whilst it is expected that jarls are utterly loyal to their tribe's monarchs, it is also expected that in times of weak leaders that a strong jarl will slay his lord and take the throne of the tribe for himself.[7b][7c]

This is a risky act in the best of times, however, for such a coup is likely to invite retribution from the king's loyal followers, particularly his sons, who are expected to take brutal vengeance upon their father's murderers.[7b][7c]

Many jarls tend to be Chaos Champions of a certain type, often afflicted with mutations and enhancements that show that they have the favour of the Dark Gods. Though they are generally not as individually deadly as Norscan kings, jarls are nonetheless terrifying forces on the battlefield.[7d]

There also exist among jarls highly powerful and exceptional individuals known as "high jarls," powerful Chaos Champions and warlords who rule over large and powerful cities of the north. They command massive armies, able to bring to bear thousands of warriors and savage beasts culled from the darkest nightmares of the civilised realms of the south. Only one high jarl is known, Egil Styrbjorn, Champion of Khorne and high jarl of the Skaeling city of Strovengaard.[7d]

Norscan Warriors

"The gods compel us to murder, but I do it freely!"

—A Norscan warrior[48]
Branded by khorne

A savage Norscan warrior in the throes of berserker rage.

The Norscans are a warrior people of the highest calibre, and so it is unsurprising that warriors form the vast majority of the Norscan tribes. While all Norscans are skilled to at least some extent in warcraft, becoming a true warrior in Norsca is a far more complicated affair than in other lands. Anyone can take up a blade and fight, but to be able to truly call oneself a warrior a free man must undertake special rites of passage.[2a][7a][7b]

Different tribes have different rites; some require three tests: the Test of Strength, the Test of Skill and the Test of Courage. Others may send out candidates armed only with a spear in order to slay dreaded beasts, such as Trolls, Chaos Spawn, Daemons or Ymir. Some tribes erect a fake village, and populate it with thralls armed with shields and clubs. The aspiring warrior must then raid the "village," slaying all within in order to recover a prize, such as gold, meat, ale, or a buxom female thrall.[7b]

Jarls and Chaos Champions attract warriors to their bands by dint of their personal strength and reputation as undefeated warleaders. Generally speaking a Norscan must make blood-oaths of loyalty to the chieftain, and from then on does the warrior take his place in the warband's battleline; sharing in the glorious bloodshed and death that often follows. In return, these warriors receive their share of the rewards that follows a successful battle, and receives their pick of weapons from the warband's Mound of Blades. Other such gifts a warrior may receive include arm-rings, Chaos Dwarf-forged armour, and, of course, new thralls.[7a]

A warrior's life is often brief, but it is always exciting. Between raids and invasions, warriors provide meat for their clan and tribe by hunting the savage, Chaos-tainted beasts of Norsca. They gain further prestige when they return with the slaughtered carcass of a Chaos Spawn, Beastman, Ice Dragon or some massive shark pulled from the seas.[48]

In times of war, they clamber onto the wolfships, bravely setting off for whatever battlefield awaits them, knowing that their destiny is at hand. From their exploits, they take up various titles and bynames reflecting their personal attributes and triumphs -- such as "Redaxe," "the Wanderer," the "Slayer of Souls," the "Geld-Prince" and so forth.[48]

Chaos Warrior

Chaos Warriors are referred to as "Huskarls" in Norsca.

The greatest of Norscan warriors often ascend to become Chaos Warriors, or Huskarls; warriors who have emerged from the unholy perils of the Realm of Chaos as beings far greater than their fellow tribesmen. Hand-picked by the jarls and holding immense authority among the tribes, they are the ultimate warriors; chosen to be the personal guard to Chaos Lords and Marauder Chieftains.[1d][2i][30]

Brave heroes all; for these Champions there are but three fates -- to die in glorious battle against the enemies of their gods and tribes, to become overcome with the Chaos power flowing through them and devolve into "Weres" (Chaos Spawn), or to overcome all obstacles put before them and ascend to sit at the right hand of their gods, blessed with eternal power and everlasting life as a Daemon Prince.[1c][1d]

The Chaos Warriors are the greatest of all the fighters of Norsca -- raised from strong Norscan stock, their skills honed over the years by constant battle amongst themselves and against other races. Their strength infernal and their bodies hardened like steel, and they stand a head taller than their fellow tribesmen.[1d]

Grim, silent figures, their natural northern constitution is bolstered by Daemonic favour; allowing them to trudge through the direst of blizzards and densest of forests. When roused for battle, the Chaos Warriors of Norsca are roaring, unstoppable forces. Arrows and bolts clatter piteously from their hell-forged Chaos Armour as they stride into the enemy ranks. The thrusts of southern spears and halberds are deflected contemptuously, and the lifeblood of their foes splatters against their barbarous armour as their battleaxes rise and fall in gory arcs. [2i]

Norse Chaos Lord 2

A Norscan Chaos Lord

More favoured than even the Huskarls are the Chaos Chosen, whom the Dark Gods have personally marked out for greatness. Physical manifestations of the power of the Chaos Gods, the Chosen are unto the Chaos Warriors as the Chaos Warriors are unto normal Norscan Chaos Marauders. Their bodies warped and strengthened by the dark blessings of Chaos, this causes them to manifest even fouler mutations than their brothers-in-arms -- such as wolf-like fangs, and many other such alterations.[1d][2i]

The Warriors of Chaos who choose to leave their tribes gather together into warbands led by such heroes. These sword-bands roam and sail the length and breadth of the Known World, butchering and pillaging, fighting rival warbands in blood-feuds to prove their worthiness to the gods.[1d]

Heroes who command such a following are rightfully legendary; figures such as Wulfrik the Wanderer, Valgar the Butcher, Hakka the Aesling, Einarr Steelfist, and Garmr Hrodvitnir, figures of unsurpassed fighting prowess and iron-hard discipline. Indeed, it is often said in the northlands that the Chosen Champions of the gods have but one vice -- cruelty to their foes.[2g]

Norse Chaos Lord

A Norscan Chaos Warrior

When not hunting or raiding, warriors enjoy the finer aspects of Norscan life. They spend their time in the sweat-lodges, swapping tales of their savage exploits and making grand boasts of their fighting prowess. At night, they engage in epic drinking contests from which they gain new and evocative titles such as"Alespew," "Rockson" and "the Glutton," to name but a possible few.[7b]

As Norscans are often unforgivable braggarts and competitors, they will perform all sorts of insane feats to outdo their rivals. Sometimes, these games of one-upmanship can lead to physical contests to decide who is greater, such as arm-wrestling, knife-fighting, brawling and duelling. These fights are rarely lethal, however, since to slay a fellow tribesman in times of peace is a grave crime likely to give rise to blood-feuds and revenge-killings, as well as the paying of wergild in order to contain the aforementioned civil strife in the tribe.[7b]

To the outsider, Norscan warriors are all the same: bloodthirsty bands of savage Chaos Marauders. But there are nonetheless distinctions amongst the various tribes. Loyalty to a particular jarl engenders all sorts of peculiarities that his bonded warriors embrace. For instance, if a jarl is a Champion of Khorne, then his warriors are likely to dress in red or black and work the skull-rune Mark of Khorne into their shields and armour.[7b]

Another example could be of warriors who only fight with a particular type of axe, or who use shields whose edges have been sharpened to a razor's edge. Others may be incredible leapers, while others may only armour their fronts so that they can never retreat from a battle. Unusual haircuts, top-knots, braids, beard or even (extremely rarely) a lack of a beard altogether characterise differing groups of Norscans.[7b]

Thralls

Among the most wretched of fates facing the inhabitants of the Old World is a life of forced servitude, whether it is in the horrid mines of the Skaven, the opulent pleasure palaces of mighty Araby, or being subject to a life of fear and brutality as a thrall to a jarl of Norsca. Each raid against the coastal settlements of the Empire and Bretonnia finds more people captured and brought back to a life of endless toil and service to their masters. Such thralls are not contained to the women and children who are captured, but also include warriors taken as prisoners on the field of battle.[7b]

The treatment of thralls varies depending on the tribe. Sometimes, thralls are used to aid shipbuilders in constructing the longships, or are set to work the frozen fields of various farmsteads. Other times, thralls are taken as a fourth or fifth wife, selected for their attractiveness rather than their station. But for most thralls, their fate is to be bloodily sacrificed in order to curry favour with the Dark Gods.[7b][17a]

When a new wolfship is finished, the Norscans line the approach to the sea with screaming slaves, to crush the life out of them as the warriors push the longship into the waters. Before a raid, a slave might be sacrificed in order to earn the blessing of Khorne for the battle ahead. Their guts may then be flung into the ocean to appease the hunger of the Daemons of the waters, or their broken body may be tied to the mast to feed the hunger of the ravens and the other spirits of death.[7b][17a]

Seers kill thralls with impunity in order to fuel accursed magics, using the blood of innocents to conjure forth the Daemons of the Otherworld or to commune with the vengeful spirits of fallen warlords. Though some thralls may receive decent treatment in rare circumstances, most face a gruesome fate.

Norscan Women

Though Norscan society is patriarchal, women have a stronger place in these lands than many might suspect. A woman may own property and can become a jarl or even a tribal queen if her husband or father dies and has no male offspring.[7e]

It is up to the woman to decide whom she weds and if she divorces. Whilst women are expected to stay behind during raids and wars, it falls to them to protect the home while the men are away, so most are competent, if not outright-skilled warriors.[7e]

Norscan Settlements

Norscan settlements range from heavily armed tribal enclaves to massive, militarised fortress-cities. Various factors determine the size of a settlement, such as farming area and the availability of natural resources. Due to the harshness of Norsca's climate and terrain, most settlements are small communities consisting of perhaps a dozen or so clans. While small, however, these communities are numerous throughout the land, numbering in the thousands.[7c]

As with all settlements, even these modest centres of population are typically headed by a jarl or some deputy chieftain, who is often advised in religious matters by a vitki and propped up by a cadre of fierce and loyal warriors. Larger settlements are typically ruled by a tribal king or a high jarl, which contain massive populations and house mighty war-fleets that are sent out seasonally to raid and pillage the coastlines of the Old World and beyond.[7c]

Smaller settlements struggle to survive, fighting ferociously to endure until they are eventually destroyed by the elements, rival tribes or by some unholy monstrosity from the Realm of Chaos. [7c]

Sites of Settlement

When selecting a site for the purpose of building a settlement, the Norscans invariably look at three factors. First, the site must have access to a useful resource: good fishing, forests for timber and hunting, or a rich area of soil suitable for farming. Secondly, the location must be defensible; areas nestled in the mountains or within dense forests are considered ideal for this purpose. The last, though perhaps most important consideration is the ability to see in all directions. What good is a village nestled in a gorge of mountains if one cannot see the approach of one's foes?[7c]

To make otherwise unsuitable sites useful, the Norscans construct tall watchtowers in order to broaden the sight of their clan. In addition, within these watchtowers there is typically a signal fire which can be lit to notify the rest of the settlement of an impending attack. These watchtowers can also serve more than one settlement, and should the greater tribe fall under attack, then signal flares erupt all over the tribe's territory, calling the chieftains to muster their warriors for glorious battle. But even above these considerations, the Norsemen erect their holdings according to the Will of the Dark Gods, for the iron Men of the North do not gather into settlements for sustenance or even survival, but so that they might gather under the scrutiny of the Ruinous Powers and worship their mighty deities.[48]

Drawn by no true sense of place, the Norscan tribes sometimes wander their brutal homeland until they are drawn by some relic of ancient and ruinous power, the location of which being where they shall erect their holdings and remain. Tribal relics may be the skeletal remains of a beloved and fierce jarl, or some ancient blade endowed with the unholy energies of their gods. Regardless, such sites are considered highly auspicious for the creation of villages and enclaves, and the tribes will often defend their newfound homes to the death. Amidst these tribal gatherings do the Chaos Warriors await the coming of the Great Champion -- a king with three eyes.[48]

Norscan Structures and Architecture

Norsca 01

A Norscan longhouse

Norscan architecture is built with utility as the primary concern. Buildings must be large enough to accommodate a family, and must be low enough to the ground that the falling snow can conceal it from predators. In spring and summer, their roofs are seeded with grass so that they blend into the surrounding land.[7c]

Most Norscan structures tend to be longhouses: long, large, single-storied buildings covered in thatched roofs. Most longhouses feature some form of adornment, such as whorls and swirling patterns working in carved images depicting warriors and Daemons. Within the longhouse, there is the central common room where food is cooked, skalds tell the tales of the Dark Gods and the ancestors, and most of the family sleeps for warmth. Other areas attached to the common room serve as storage areas, pens for holding animals and personal bedrooms. Thralls live in hovels little more than stitched-together skins hanging on a wooden frame. These residences are abysmal at keeping out the cold, so in order to conserve heat thralls will often smear the walls of their abodes with mud or excrement.[7c][14]

Each Norscan community, whether it is a small village or mighty city, contains at least one shrine dedicated to the Chaos Gods. Most such sites tend to be caves burrowed into the side of a mountain or hill, but others are free-standing structures. Such sites can be identified from the presence of dark altars, bonfires, mounds of skulls and sacrifices of plunder. Strange runes mark the entryways, forbidding passage to all except full-blooded warriors. Despite this, even the most fearsome Norscan warrior is wary of entering a temple without cause, for the Dark Gods are cruel and capricious deities. Maintaining the site is a seer or vitki, who either lives in the shrine itself or in a nearby hovel. Shrines dedicated to Khorne are instead tended to by the Bloodfathers.[7c][13][17d]

Those familiar with the runes of Chaos can see their working throughout these shrines, from the bloody altars to the horrifying paintings on the cave walls. The symbols of the Ruinous Powers are worked into everything, charging the very air with raw, unholy energy.[7c]

Lastly there are the fortresses. Though they are perhaps not as opulent or grandiose as those of the Old World, these barbaric strongholds are highly defensible, able to withstand the worst of assaults. Some strongholds are the deserted holds of Norse Dwarfs, claimed by Norscan clans as their seats of power. Other fortresses are man-made, carved from the very rock itself.[3a]

Finally, there are the Chaos Fortresses, mighty edifices of dark majesty empowered by the very stuff of Chaos itself, renowned throughout the land and couched in legend. Only the greatest and most powerful kings and jarls are considered worthy enough to control such mighty enclaves, but those that do are truly formidable warlords. Such fortresses include the Doomkeep, the Tower of Khrakk, the Forbidden Citadel and the Altar of the Crimson Harvest.[3a]

Norscan Colonies

Many tribes of Norsca are not just raiders. They are great traders and merchants, sailing far and wide in search of exotic goods and untapped markets. And they are bold explorers, ever seeking new lands to colonise. For this reason, there are many Norscan colonies dotted across the Known World. Most are peaceful places populated by travellers and adventurers that chose to settle in a more hospitable climate than the bleak, windswept mountains of their distant homeland. Many become important centres of commerce, valued by mercenaries and merchants alike, and most are vital ports through which much trade passes.[56a]

However, all attract and harbour Norscan raiders come to loot, pillage and make war. Add to this that many Norscans are touched by the mutating power of Chaos, often displaying animalistic features or, in rare cases, being capable of shapeshifting, shedding their Human form and taking on that of a beast, it is no surprise that Norscan colonies are seldom popular with the natives of the regions where they are established. Consequently, most far-flung Norscan outposts are heavily fortified against aggression.[56a]

Most such Norscan colonies can be found on the coasts of the Empire, Bretonnia and Kislev, the largest of which include Erengrad in Kislev, Manannheim in Nordland and Skajadholm in Bretonnia. Others survive in far distant corners of the mortal world, many months sailing from the treacherous coasts of Norsca, such as the settlement of Skeggi in far-flung Lustria, and others in Tilea, Araby and, according to some, even Grand Cathay, Khuresh and Nippon.[56a]

Norscan Religion

""Khorne!" they roared, invoking the sacred battle-name of Kharnath the Blood God, Lord of Battles. "Khorne!" they howled until it seemed the walls must fall from the violence of their voices alone. "Khorne!" they shrieked as they gnashed their teeth and bit their shields."

—Destruction of Wisborg[14]
Board-dials-at-starting-position

Norscan religion revolves around the worship of the Chaos Gods; above, from clockwise, are the Marks of Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch and Slaanesh. The four major Chaos Gods are known by many different names among the tribes of Norsca.

Norscan religion is based primarily around the worship of the Chaos Gods, which are venerated by various local aspects and names both similar to and distinct to those they are known by to the scholars and priests of the Empire. Commonly, the Norscans, like the other Human peoples who dwell around the Chaos Wastes, venerate all the Chaos Gods in a single pantheon called Chaos Undivided, as a purely practical consideration in order to draw upon all of the gifts and powers of the four major Chaos Gods in order to better survive in the harsh north.[1a]

In spite of this, there are many tribes that do in fact take a single Chaos God to be their patron, who is then seen as both the father and protector of that tribe. Commonly, that god is also the patron of the chieftain. In the vast majority of Norscan tribes, Khorne takes up this position, as he is by far the most popular choice of patron deity in the battle-torn north.[1a][2a][5a]

In addition to the Chaos Gods themselves, the Northmen's religion also incorporates various Daemon Princes, fallen Chaos Champions, revered ancestors and various other lesser spirits into its traditions. Despite the presence of these additional deities however, it is always the Chaos Gods alone who are ever-present and who receive the highest degree of veneration; being the core set of deities Norscan religion revolves around.[7b][19]

The Norscans have worshipped the Dark Gods since times immemorial; the tribes simply have no concept of how to live otherwise. Far from being mindless slaves to darkness, the Men of the North merely maintain that beings as powerful as the Chaos Gods simply operate on a level beyond mere Human judgement or understanding, and are thus entitled to reward or destroy as befits their divine inclination, just as it is the charge of a man to pay them homage and passionately strive for their favour. The Norscans believe the path they have taken is the only one that is pure and true, and thus look down upon the gods of the southern lands; seeing them as corrupt, weak and wicked things that are beneath contempt and worthy only of mockery.[1a][2a][8][9]

In the Norscan faith there is no equivalent to the Kingdom of Morr, the god of the dead, and there is nothing after death for the souls of the departed save the Realm of Chaos. They believe that Men shall only enter those unholy domains to sit at the right hand of their gods if they were strong and true warriors in life, for cowards are cursed by the gods and reviled for all eternity. Thus, every Norscan fights with an insane fervour driven by this belief, which molds them into the perfect warriors of the Dark Gods.[17a]

In battle the Norscans look to Khorne, their god of war, for strength. The Blood God is renowned in Norscan sagas as an embodiment of strength and a granter of victory, and so thousands upon thousands of Norscan warriors are dedicated to his savage creed of wanton bloodshed. Amongst the Norscans, the most common name for the Blood God is "Kharnath," meaning "Lord of Rage" in the Dark Tongue of Chaos. But other names are also prevalent amongst the tribes, such as "Akhar," "Khorne," the "Brass Lord of Battle," "The Hound," and many others.[5f][7d][17][28][29][196]

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The Star of Chaos in one of its infinite varieties; in this case emblazoned with the Mark of Khorne, the Blood God.

Seers and vitki take Tzeentch, the Raven God, as their patron, and beseech the Changer of the Ways to aid them in their witchery and to one day grant them pre-eminence over the warrior-kings who lead the tribes. As most Norscan spell-casters are Chaos Sorcerers of a sort, channeling the Black Wind of Dhar to power their profane divination, it is common for them to take at least one or more of the Dark Gods as their patrons, and most commonly this patron is Tzeentch, due to his association with magic and sorcery. For the most part however, Tzeentch is distrusted by most Norscans, particularly warriors, for his cunning ways, yet as he is also seen as the god of wind and tide, most Norscans will strive for his favour before taking to their longships, in order to ensure a safe voyage.[7c]

In times of plague and famine, the Norscans offer sacrifices to Nurgle, to placate the Crow God and to persuade him to withhold his "blessings." Some tribes dedicate themselves to the Plague Father on such occasions, however, believing that only through fighting in his name shall they be delivered from the ruinous touch of Nurgle's contagions. Slaanesh, the Great Serpent, god of pleasure and hedonism, is prayed to in the aftermath of battle for fulsome feasting and celebration. He is also prayed to for fertility and virility and is invoked in some tribes' marriage ceremonies.[27][28][29]

There is also a very strong element of ancestral worship to the Norscan religion that cannot be overlooked. Indeed, the veneration of the ancestors is a tradition as old as the worship of the Chaos Gods themselves to the Norscans, and one from which they too derive their strength and fierce codes of honour.[7b]

Though they dominate the Norscan pantheon, the Dark Gods are certainly not alone amongst the number of the dread Norscan deities. For example, there is Mermedus -- a Daemonic sea deity and lesser idol of Chaos believed by scholars to be a Chaotic reflection of the sea god Manann, who is venerated amongst ferocious Skaeling sea-raiders. The Skaeling marauders make Human sacrifices to the abominable god by weighting the prisoners they take in battle with leaden weights before throwing them into the ocean to drown in their sea god's dread embrace.[17b]

SkullThrone

The Blood God Khorne, the god of war and murder, upon his throne in the Blood God's Domain in the Realm of Chaos. Khorne is the most popular of the major Chaos Gods among the warlike Norscans.

When a warrior dies at sea it is said that he now wears the "chains of Mermedus," and so is his soul taken forever in that god's servitude, eternally deprived the honour of feasting with the ancestors in the lofty halls of the four major Chaos Gods. Thus, the Skaeling sea god is as reviled amongst the Norscans as he is respected as the lord of wind and tide. Curiously, while there exists a clear antipathy for the gods of the south due to their belief in the gods of the north, some Norscans nonetheless believe in deities with clear parallels to some worshiped in the Old World, Mermedus being one of them. However, some sources indicate the worship of a lesser deity known as Olric, who appears to be a Norscan vision of the deity Ulric, the Imperial god of war and winter, albeit one far more savage and brutal than his southern counterpart.[14a]

The Norscans see themselves as the closest of all the peoples of Men to the Dark Gods, and thus believe it to be their duty and right to raid and ravage. Thus they raid not only the south, but also their fellow Northmen who are worshipers of Chaos -- the Kurgan and Hung to the east. Many Norscan warbands also make journeys into the Chaos Wastes, to hunt the abominable creatures of that land and show their might to their infernal masters. Indeed, amongst some tribes, there is a tradition of leaving a child on his thirteenth year at the shores of the Chaos Wastes with only bare necessities and a single weapon. If he is able to survive for a week, he is returned and made a man of the tribe. If he manages to bring back the head of a Chaos Spawn or a Beastman, then he is made a warrior then and there.[1c][7b]

The Norscans believe themselves to be honourable men, mighty and courageous, and for this strength of will and sinew they honour their Dark Gods. The Norscans see the "blessings" of their gods (mutation) as gifts that allow them to better stand against the unimaginable perils of their homeland. As all the Norscans are, to some extent, affected by the touch of Chaos, they are constantly reminded of the presence of their gods, and are ever vividly reminded of their potency. In comparison, the gods of the south, such as Ulric, Sigmar and Myrmidia, are but pale, pitiful children before the might of the Dark Gods of the north.[1a][2a][4a][7a][7b][17a][17b]

The Norscans believe that the world they perceive -- the realm of flesh and blood and the material -- is a prison; an illusion created by the Dark Gods in order to test them. For them, the true world is the Realm of Chaos; the ever-changing, ever-mutable domain of the Dark Gods. The Norscans believe that it is only through the gifts of the Dark Gods that they shall be able to penetrate this veil of the senses and peer into the true reality. When a Norscan receives a mutation, they believe that it is the hand of the gods stripping away the illusion about them and thus revealing to them their true self. In simpler terms, they are gaining a glimpse of reality. When a seer conjures forth a Daemon, it is again seen as a fleeting glimpse of the true world.[7a][7b][14]

Daemon Prince

It is the dream of every Northman to be elevated by the Chaos Gods to the greatest stature available to the mortal servants of Chaos -- that of a mighty Daemon Prince.

Some scholars have theorised that Norsca's extremely close proximity to the Chaos Wastes lends itself to this way of thinking. The Chaos Wastes are strange, and everchanging. An ordinary boulder may stay in one spot for a thousand years, only to pick itself up one day and move to another spot. Birds may fly through the cold mountain air at one point, and then land and slither across the ground as a snake the next. Storms come and go without warning, and the very stars seem to writhe and change.[7b]

Norsca is a land in constant flux, abiding by no laws, lending a dream-like quality to this wild land. To a Norscan, it is thus no great leap of logic to assume that the mutations and rewards of Chaos are gifts of the Chaos Gods; a mark of divine favour granted to set the chosen apart from the mundane.[7b]

As the realm of flesh is but a dream, it is the goal of every Norscan to reach the truth: The true realm beyond this grey, ashen existence, the realm of the Dark Gods. Death and glory is the doorway to the land beyond, and a man can only make the journey through it by proving himself in the dream.[7b][17a][17b]

In order to prove one's worth, he must have been a powerful warrior in life, who died a heroic death slaughtering many foes attaining glory and the marks of the Chaos Gods' divine favour. Those who beg for mercy, who cling to the realm of the living, are found wanting and cursed to walk the mortal world forever as disembodied spirits. Others are tormented for all eternity by Daemons and reborn as slaves, women, or worst of all, Old Worlders.[7b][17a][17b]

Thus, it is warriors who occupy the most prestigious echelons of Norscan society; for they alone can attain the glory that awaits them beyond the mortal world.[7b] The rest are condemned to spend their days in the dream, never to know the dark paradise that might be theirs. This belief has molded the Men of Norsca into vicious and powerful warriors who thirst after the chance to make war for the glory of Chaos, for there is no greater glory than to fight and die in the armies of the immortals and to join their holy number.[1a][2a][3a] 

Valkia

The Daemon Princess Valkia the Bloody, Consort of Khorne, is a prominent figure in Norscan religion.

In general the Norscans tend to revere Khorne, the Skull-King and Lord of Battles, more fanatically than the other tribal barbarians of Chaos -- for the simple, brutal strictures of the Blood God's faith are pleasing to the war-like Norscans, and the behaviour of the various Norscan tribes in Norsca, as well as the terrible Troll Country, dovetails neatly with what the Blood God expects from his followers. As a result, many tribes of Norsca take Khorne as their sole patron and most Chaos shrines dedicated to him are found within Norscan settlements.[5e][7d][17d][17e]

The Norscans also maintain a unique tradition in their version of Khornate worship, venerating the Daemon Princess Valkia the Bloody. According to Norscan sagas, she was once a fearsome warrior queen of one of the tribes of Norsca, the Schwarzvolf, who was risen from her tribe to become the Shield-Maiden of the Blood God and the Bringer of Glory -- Khorne's consort who chooses the valiant dead who are to enter into the Blood God's Domain to fight on for all eternity.[5g]

Many times in the past, Valkia has returned to the mortal world to lead the Norscans to battle, and in her presence, the grim warriors of the north fight even harder -- for where Valkia flies, the Axe-Father watches, and to any Norscan, the prospect of becoming his Champion is a prize beyond all measure. Indeed, the Norscans' utter devotion to Khorne is a dark thing of terrifying fanaticism, for they have gone above and beyond the call of their god's demand for eternal warfare. Thus, many Norscan tribes spend their days raiding up and down the coastlines of the Empire and beyond to gather skulls to honour the Blood God.[2e][2g][17b][17c]

An example of the Norscan Khornate zealotry is of the Gorehunt tribe, who in late 2103 IC, resolved to offer up the skulls of far-off lands unto the Blood God, and took to the seas in their longships, heading to the south. The Norscans eventually came across the desert kingdom of Araby.[2e][2g][17b][17c]

Though the Gorehunt tribe was less than a hundred strong, the Norscans were truly blessed by Khorne, and carved a bloody path of devastation throughout the land, battering aside the many thousand-strong armies of the emirs of Araby. At last, the rulers of that kingdom sent an army so great it hid the very dunes of the desert with its passing, and numbered great creatures of magic in its number.[2e]

But the berserking Norscans fought on with an iron resolve and annihilated the Arabyan army, spilling so much blood it ran in a mighty river throughout the desert kingdom. Though every Norscan of the Gorehunt tribe was slain, their strength and devotion pleased Khorne greatly, and he willed it so that the river of blood they spilled would forever run through Araby as a testament to their devotion.[2e]

Seers, Shamans and Bloodfathers

"The only men the gods speak to are seers, and they pay a terrible price for this gift."

—Einarr "Steelfist" Sigdansson, Champion of Tzeentch[13]
Warhammer Vikti

A Norscan vikti or seer

The priests of Norscan society are the seers, or vitki, as they are referred to in the Norscan tongue. Admittedly, many of these shamanistic spell-casters are Chaos Sorcerers and shaman-sorcerers who draw upon the power of the Dark Gods and the Dark Magic of Dhar to fuel their divinations. These priests are often the advisers of the mighty Norscan chieftains and wield great authority over the tribes due to their status as the mouthpiece of the Chaos Gods.[7a]

With but a word can a vitki order the death of any man, and thralls die brutally by the score in order seal the Daemonic pacts and empower foul rituals by which they draw upon the dark power of Chaos. Steeped in the arcane traditions of the Ruinous Powers, it falls to these privileged men and women to interpret the movements of the Winds of Magic, the whispers of Daemons and the souls of fallen warriors in order to guide their jarls and kings to choose the proper path for the tribes -- one of blood, glory and conquest.[7a]

Amongst the many, many Norscan tribes who are dedicated solely to the bloody-minded worship of Khorne, the god of war, another tradition of divination exists. One that abides by the strength of steel rather than the addled whispers of sorcerers: the path of the terrible "Bloodfathers." These warlike male priests are solitary by nature, and many deign to attend to the shrines and holy places of Khorne in isolation, the majority of which are located in Norsca, but also others further afield. They are rightly considered legendary amongst the northern tribes, for many among them bear the Mark of Khorne, a sure sign of their divine lord's favour.[7a][13][17c]

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Tuula Bloodhair, Norscan priestess of Khorne

Furthermore, it is whispered amongst the Norscans that such is the Bloodfathers' strength and skill that no man can best a Bloodfather of Khorne in battle, for there is no trick of axe or sword that the Blood God has not revealed unto them. The dreams of the Bloodfathers ever touch the sanguine home of Khorne, the Blood God's Domain in the Realm of Chaos, granting them visions of scarlet yesterdays and crimson tomorrows, visions of battle that allow them to advise their chieftains to walk the path of Khorne's favour. The Bloodfathers of Norsca often boast that the divining cantrips of sorcerers is precious little compared to the visions granted by a god. [13][49]

Norscans observe various customs and rituals before battle in order to prepare themselves for the fight and to gain the favour of the Dark Gods. The bloody sacrifice of a thrall to the Ruinous Powers is an extremely common practice, but it is by no means the only one. Most Norscan battle-customs involve terrifying and complex rites, such as the symbolic spilling of blood, consuming the flesh of Chaos, and even ritual combat between two warriors.[7b]

In some tribes, there exists a truly horrific ritual to consume the power of Chaos. They first take a living Beastman, drain its blood into an iron cauldron brought to a boil and then add various hallucinogenic substances and herbs into the repulsive fluids. Next, the warriors drop locks of their hair into the concoction. Once all in the warband have contributed, the band's Shaman-Sorcerer hands around a skull filled with the liquid. Each warrior drinks from the skull down to the dregs, believing that ingesting the blood of a Child of Chaos will allow them to receive visions from their gods.[7b]  

Death

"He's taken his father's hand."

—A Norscan saying meaning that a fallen warrior has taken his seat in the Halls of the Dark Gods in the Realm of Chaos.[7b]
Chaos Warrior Emblem

The Star of Chaos, a symbol that embodies death, divinity and conquest for Norscans.

A Norscan does not fear death, for no true Man of the North fears to escape the prison of flesh and enter the Realm of Chaos in honour and to dwell within the halls of the Dark Gods. For many Northmen, the greatest fate is that the Daemon Princess Valkia the Bloody, the Shieldmaiden of the Blood God herself, shall carry them to fight on in the halls of Khorne in the Blood God's Domain, where a glorious hereafter of eternal battle awaits them.[2g][7b][15][50]

Their measure is taken by the moment of their deaths; by the blood they shed and the foes they slay, and the Chaos Gods are said to look well upon men who fight the hopeless fight. Thus it is said that Norscans never retreat; for to do so is the epitome of weakness, and the Dark Gods of the north have little mercy for those who are weak, and such souls are doomed to be shamed and tormented in the afterlife.[13][14]

It is strength alone the evil gods of Norsca exalt, and they are pleased by those who slay with power and who die with honour. A warrior's saga is said to begin in death, and so each Northman strives to make it so that their doom is of such glory and blood that it is worthy of remembrance. For no father can respect a son who does not find an end nobler than his own, and would sooner spit on him from the halls of the Dark Gods.[13]

The Norscans have an acute obsession with death, equally that of their enemies as much as their own. Theirs is a culture that exults and embraces that which is brutal and deadly, values the masculine and strong, and which teaches men to be reckless with death. This affords them a clear psychological advantage over their enemies, for where the Men of the south and east might fear the pain of their death, the Norscans embrace it as the only road to the true realm beyond the waking dream of flesh.[27][28][29]

Amongst the Norscans, it is an unthinkable fate for a man to die without holding his weapon, for how can the gods permit him to enter their halls when he cannot prove he met his end in battle? A far worse affront is for a warrior's corpse to be dismembered of his hands, for how is he to grip his sword and shield in the eternal battlefields of the Dark Gods without a hand to clasp around the handle of his blades? Indeed, to desecrate a corpse in such a way is a grave crime amongst the Norscans, sure to drive them to seek vengeance from the perpetrator no matter the cost.[28]

The Norscans possess many complex rituals to honour those who find their way to tread the paths of the Realm of Chaos. By far, the most well-known is to place a dead warrior upon a longship and burn it to the sea. This is a prestigious thing, and is reserved only for chieftains and mighty Chaos Champions.[10]

By placing a warrior upon a ship, it is believed that his soul shall rise with the flames to be sent on his way to the Dark Gods. Among the Norscans, it is considered a tiding of great doom to wage war while a warrior is committed to the gods in this way, for to fight in the shadow of unquiet souls is an omen of ill-fortune. It is often customary to recite the dark and brutal deeds of the fallen, that the gods might know who it is that comes to their halls.[10]

Another, similar funerary practice, one reserved for Norscan warriors who fall in battle, is to place them upon a burning pyre. The fires are believed to carry the spirit of the dead warrior high to the halls of the Dark Gods, where they shall tell their tales to their honoured fathers and share their stories of victory in war with the other great warriors and kings of ancient days.[28]

All around their pyres, their shield-brothers gather to give a great shout into the sky, bringing their axes and swords to hammer against their shields while they roar and bellow the names and bloody feats of valour of those who have fallen, that the Dark Gods of the north might know they who come to take their place at their lofty tables.[28]

Norscan funerals are no somber, self-important affair as they are in the south. Those who have fallen are honoured and revered, their pyres no commiseration of death, but rather a celebration of their lives. Those who die are revered and hailed, for their saga is now completed, and shall be joined to that of the greater tribe, and in turn, that of the Norscan people themselves. Marauder and Chaos Champion, herdsman and king alike are honoured thus, and through this, they shall live forever. Not only in the immortal realms beyond flesh, but in the memories of those who will come after them.[28]

Norscan Economy

Crafts and Trade

Total War Norsca Ship Render 1

A render of Norse Longships for Total War: Warhammer.

The Norscans are commonly described in the Old World as a people with only two talents -- producing lethal weapons of war and producing powerful warriors with the deadly will to use them. As such, trade with the various peoples surrounding them -- the horse-nomads to their east and the mutant bands to their north -- will commonly centre around the exchange of weaponry and armour.[17d]

It is for their smelting of metal and working of steel that the Norscans may be acknowledged when off the battlefield. Norscan steel is amongst the finest in all the Known World; their barbaric iron plates capable of turning aside a blade as well as the armour of any knightly lord of Bretonnia, and there are those smiths of the Norscans well-versed in the art of creating the vaunted Chaos Armour, but such knowledge is jealously guarded and rarely attempted; for the creation of such armour involves black rites and sacrifices of the maker's very soul. Even moreso, many superstitious Norscans outright refrain from the creation of Chaos Armour despite having the skills to make it, believing its manufacture a matter only for the Dark Gods themselves.[17d]

Total War Norsca Ship Render 2

A render of a Norse Longship for Total War: Warhammer II.

The Norscans have also kept strong trade channels with the Chaos Dwarfs of Zorn Uzkul, the Great Skull Land in the northern Dark Lands of the Far East. Over the centuries, trade delegations from Zharr-Naggrund have made contact with the Norscan tribes (with varying degrees of success) and have opened up some trade relations with them.[2h][3f]

The Norscans cannot hope to match the Chaos Dwarfs in the art of metallurgy, for the work of Men is always shoddy and exude compared to the mastery of the sons of Grungni and Hashut. Indeed, the Norscans entertain trade relations with the Chaos Dwarfs in order to make use of their masterfully crafted weapons and armour. In some cases, Chaos Dwarfs can be found living temporarily amongst Norscan tribes in order to facilitate a commercial arrangement.[2h][3f]

The Norscan tribes thus exchange furs, meat, precious gems, warpstone, Chaos-tainted iron ore and, most importantly for the Chaos Dwarfs, slaves in order to buy their armaments. Some few Norscan tribes, primarily those in the extreme south of the country, also trade with the Empire in small quantities, though this is comparatively little compared to their commerce with the Kurgans.[2h][3f]

Total War Norsca Ship Render 3

A render of a Norse Longship for Total War: Warhammer II.

In times of peace, Northmen can be found selling furs, gems, hunted game and other such things in the great merchant cities of Erengrad or Marienburg; however, this is often a contemptible position for any Norscan, and few will look upon it as a first resort. Some Norscan tribes have also seen fit to sell slaves taken from their many raids to the Dark Elves of the west, particularly the Graelings, who do so in between raiding the Dark Elven cities, such as Karond Kar. Norscan slavers are also seen as far south as Araby and Ind, flooding the flesh-markets with premium stock that lesser warriors simply could not attain.[2h][3f]

Whaling

Whaling is another industry of Norsca. Given that the sea creatures of the far north are often as twisted by the touch of the Dark Gods as any other creature, the whalers of Norsca are often made of sterner stuff than most, and thus it is that whaling is one of the few professions not directly concerned with battle that is respected even amongst Norscan warriors.[7a][7b]

Whales provide much to a Norscan village's foodstores, their meat being able to feed entire villages well. Their skin is used to manufacture rope, and their blubber is used to make oil for fuel. The easiest way to hunt them is to use boats to herd schools of small whales ashore where they can be easily killed, but most Norscans spurn such womanly ways, savouring the thrill of setting sail upon a mighty longship to hunt a monstrous whale throughout the Sea of Chaos. Above all do Norscans treasure the blood and fury of any endeavour, and whaling is no exception.[7a][7b]

When such a beast is sighted, the longships sail after it immediately, harpooners gathering at the fore to bring the beast down. The bravest men then leap from the longship's prow onto the leviathan's back, tearing its hide apart with strikes from their axes. But nonetheless, these beasts, twisted and warped as they are by the powers of Chaos, are amongst the most terrifying of creatures within the northern seas, and so it is that any encounter with them must be swiftly and surely settled; for such is their bulk that they can easily capsize any longship, no matter its size, and can swallow entire crews in their gaping maws. Harpooners must thus ensure a swift kill, and the best are able to impale the beast right in its gargantuan heart, while others of lesser skill instead skewer it in its ribcage, enabling them to instead drag the beast towards the longship where the crew can slay it with their axes.[7c][51e]

A whaling vessel seldom returns without towing a slaughtered whale behind it, as it is considered better amongst Norscan whalers to submit to a watery grave than face the dishonour of returning to their villages empty-handed. When a vessel does return with the spoils of victory, any Norscan village or town has much to celebrate. Thanks and sacrifice are offered up to the Dark Gods, and much drinking occurs, lasting well into the week, for the survival of the village is now assured for the next many months.[51e]

Norscan Currency

Sceatta

A rare, Norscan-minted sceatta coin

The Norscans have little use for coins, preferring instead barter and simply taking what they wish on their raids, including coins of other races and kingdoms, but what few coins they do mint are called sceattas, small silver coins bearing the crude imagery of a tribal king encircled by runes of the Dark Tongue.[1a][2a][3a][7b][13][14][22a]

The pfenning is a bronze Norscan coin whose face is divided into 4 quadrants. Each quadrant bears a Dark Tongue rune; starting with Strength in the top left quadrant, then clockwise the other quadrants are Courage, Death and Conquest.[1a][2a][3a][7b][13][14][22a]

The Northmen do not mint gold coins; whatever gold they find they instead melt down into jewellery. They do not exchange coins with other realms, firstly due to few southern traders hazarding transactions with those who so openly serve Chaos, and also because the Norscans see all coinage as equal regardless of composition or origin.[1a][2a][3a][7b][13][14][22a]

Norscans, martially inclined as they are, have a practice of wearing arm-rings, forged from gold, silver and in some cases, beaten iron, as a sign of the victories a warrior has won, thus serving as status-symbols, as these arm-rings are worn by common warrior and jarl alike. These arm-rings also serve as currency in addition to their aforementioned cultural functions. The arm-rings themselves are far more ubiquitous amongst the Norscans than coinage.[1a][2a][3a][7b][13][14][22a]

Norscan Language

Norscan is a complex and ancient tongue. Structurally, it bears much similarity with Khazalid, the harsh, guttural tongue of the Dwarfs, but it is also deeply influenced by the Dark Tongue of Chaos, and to a lesser extent, Old Reikspiel, the ancient tongue of the Empire.[7b]

Essentially, Norscan uses a small number of root words and creates new words by adding prefixes and suffixes and creating compound words out of simple ones. What further adds to its complexity is that different tribes often use different words to describe the same things, hence the dialects of Norscan vary wildly, often making the tribes different nations unto themselves. For instance, a southerly tribe may refer to a bear as a "bee-wolf" ("bee" for honey, "wolf" for shape and appetite), while a northerly tribe, where bees simply do not exist, may refer to a bear as a "water-wolf," since the bear snatches fish from the mountain streams. In order to master this language, one must not only have complete mastery over its root words, but also be able to understand the implied meaning when the words are joined in the context of where they are spoken.[7b]

As the Norscans have invaded and conquered portions of the Empire in the past, their tongue has come to also influence the people of the Empire, particularly in the northerly provinces most susceptible to their attacks, such as Nordland and Ostland. For instance, the term "werecreature," used to describe shape-changing beings, is obviously drawn from the Norscan word for those who are affected irrecoverably by the corrupting influence of Chaos, namely Chaos Spawn and Forsaken -- the "Were." The Norscans have no word for "mutant" in their tongues with its pejorative connotation; the closest equivalents for the condition being "blessed," "gifted," or "chosen." The latter is perhaps the closest fit, as Norscans view mutants as being chosen by the Ruinous Powers, gifted by the gods.[23b]

Titles and nicknames known as "bynames" to scholars form another important aspect of the Norscan lexicon, and are often bestowed upon a warrior after certain heroic exploits donating a personal trait or ability. Examples of such are, "Hatewrath," "Manslayer," "Bloodaxe," "Beasthunter" and so on. Norscan insults, on the other hand, are often crude, demeaning and appalling to hear. As the Norscans venerate all things masculine, disparaging a man's battle and sexual prowess is not only humiliating but also infuriating to hear. To speak of a man's "sword" is a particularly common jibe, thus impugning both his skill at arms as well as the size of his manhood.[7b]

Comparing a man to faithless Imperials, thus implying disfavour with and disloyalty to the Dark Gods and to the clan, tribe and the ancestors themselves, is yet another sure-fire way to provoke a Norscan into a terrible rage. And woe unto those foolish enough to imply that a Norseman was used as a woman in the bed of another man, for to utter such cravenness would transform even the lowliest Norscan into a rampaging berserker certain to cut down dozens in a psychotic fury.[27]

The majority of common Norscan insults are far too profane to even mention, but suffice to say, most are like the Norscans themselves -- barbaric, crude, savage and incredibly unsubtle. Other common Norscan phrases often tend to invoke the Dark Gods in some way or fashion, for instance, the phrase "Khargash," meaning "blood of Khorne," is a common enough expression of ire in Norsca, though it is also used as an oath.[27]

The Norscans write using runes, and those familiar with the written script of the Dark Tongue can no doubt see its influence upon the written system of Norse. The runes are believed by many Norscans to hold some measure of the power of Chaos, and are thus often inscribed onto a warrior's armour, including even the Chaos Armour of Chaos Champions, in order to invoke the protection of the gods and grant strength to the wearer in a primitive form of magical invocation.[27]

Notable Norscans

"But only deeds of blood and madness draw the Dark One's gaze..."

—The Saga of Khalac Swordsson[2]
  • Archaon - Though Diederick Kastner, the man who would in his despair take up the dread mantle of Archaon the thirteenth Everchosen of Chaos Undivided, was born in the Imperial province of Nordland in the village of Hargendorf, it was foretold in the Liber Caelistior, the dread tome of divination penned by the seer Necrodomo the Insane, that the north and south would meet in the last Everchosen's blood. As a result, Archaon bears mixed Norscan and Nordlander heritage; his father having been a champion from the Varg tribes who forced himself upon a cowering innocent Imperial woman during a raid that had seen the town of Hargendorf reduced to ash and cinder. The rape-spawned child would later go on to become a templar of the Order of the Twin-Tailed Orb, fighting valorously and faithfully in the service of the God-King Sigmar; but once his true heritage and destiny was revealed to him, Diederick Kastner despaired. He forlornly prayed to his god to save him from this unwanted fate, but when cold silence answered his prayers he renounced the gods of the south and affirmed his hatred for the Dark Gods of his father, accepting the cruel destiny engineered for him as a final means to repay the fates for the evil they had done to him. Thus did Sieur Diederick become Archaon Everchosen, the Herald of the Apocalypse and the greatest of all the Champions of Chaos. His deeds legend and his armies vast; innumerable foes of dauntless might lying bleeding in his calamitous stride, the half-Norscan warlord stands ready to fulfill his destiny and bring all the mortal world to fire and ruin in the End Times.[38]
  • Morkar the Uniter - Morkar was a Norsii tribesman and the first Everchosen of Chaos Undivided. In the aftermath of Cormac Bloodaxe's invasion of the Empire, Sigmar Heldenhammer led his warriors in a series of revenge-raids, wherein the Imperial warriors set countless Norsii villages aflame. Morkar's own village and tribe were among those destroyed by the Empire's vengeance. The young Norsii survived the raids and managed to escape further into the north. Convinced that his gods had spared him for a reason, Morkar fought as all Men of the North must fight -- for the favour of the Dark Gods. Morkar eventually rose to become a Champion of Chaos and ruled over all of the north as a favoured son of Chaos. The Norsii warlord was then crowned as the first Everchosen, and charged by the gods to make the mortal world a kingdom of Chaos. The hordes of Chaos swept into the lands of the Empire and Morkar came to duel the Emperor Sigmar in single combat. In a battle likened to that between gods, the two clashed until Sigmar finally overcame Morkar and slew him. Morkar's body was carried back to the north by his followers and laid in a great burrow deep within the primordial reaches of the Chaos Wastes. There, within a mountain, the Unconquered One remained undisturbed until Archaon, the thirteenth Everchosen, his successor, found his way to Morkar's cairn and took the ancient warlord's ruinous Chaos Armour, the Armour of Morkar, for his own as he sought to claim the mantle of the thirteenth Everchosen.[1e][10][38]
  • Cormac Bloodaxe - Cormac Bloodaxe was a mighty Champion of the Blood God, Khorne, and a great chieftain and king amongst the ancient tribes of the Norsii. The son of the slain Norscan High King Varag Skulltaker, Cormac harboured a soul-blackening hatred towards the newly ascendant Empire that had slaughtered and driven his people back to the barren northlands after its founding. His greatest resentment was reserved for the Unberogens and their king Sigmar Heldenhammer, who had led the fight against the northern tribes. The molten core of violence within Cormac, as well as his favour in the eyes of the Blood God, proved a potent force in unifying the scattered tribes of the Northmen; clad in his father's Chaos Armour and wielding a burning axe in which was bound the spirit of a Daemon of Khorne, he was an avenging fury that laid waste to the enemies of his people. He was sacrificed to Khorne to become the physical vessel for a Bloodthirster Greater Daemon who battled Sigmar during a Norsii assault on Middenheim and was ultimately defeated by the first emperor.[9]
  • Mortkin - His true name having been lost, even amongst the Norscans, the Chaos Champion and Chaos Lord known as Mortkin was said to hail from the long-dead village of Ulfennik, destroyed at the hands of the Elector Count Valmir von Raukov of Ostland and his son Oleg von Raukov, who had personally carried out the sacking of Ulfennik. Mortkin swore before all his wicked gods that he would one day carve his weregild from the bones of the Ostlanders. After eight years of bringing the tribes of Norsca to his banner, Mortkin's warriors charged out of the north, butchering their way through Kislev until they reached Ostland and began to ravage the northeastern Imperial province. During the war, Mortkin destroyed the ancestral seat of the von Raukov line, razed the cities of Kludburgh, Volganof and Saltraken, and personally slew Oleg von Raukov in single combat. However, desiring to end his life as a free-willed man rather than become the eternal slave of the Ruinous Powers, Mortkin allowed himself to be slain after achieving his vengeance rather than destroying the rest of the Empire as his divine patrons wished.[4a]
  • Valkia the Bloody - A fabled warrior-queen of the Norscan Schwarzvolf tribe, and recognised as such by all the tribes of Norsca by her later Daemonic apotheosis, Valkia earned the favour of the Blood God by slaying all those who questioned her right to rule in honourable combat and by bringing her tribe firmly into the worship of Khorne. Tales of her victories drew a lecherous Daemon Prince of Slaanesh known as Locephax to her, who was excited by the Norscan queen's feral beauty and athleticism. He demanded that Valkia forsake her rulership and instead join him as a pleasure-slave, believing the carnal delights of Slaanesh better for her than the violent power of Khorne. Enraged at this insolence, Valkia flew into the berserker rage and took up her terrible spear, Slaupnir. In the ensuing battle, Valkia defeated the Daemon Prince, decapitating it and nailing its head to her shield. With such a trophy in tow, Valkia resolved to carry it to the Chaos Wastes and lay it at the feet of the Blood God's own throne in the Realm of Chaos. Yet, not even one so fierce as a ruler of the Norscans could survive the perils of the Chaos Wastes alone, and though she slew many of the Chaos beasts and other creatures found in that accursed place, Valkia eventually fell to a horde of slavering Daemons of Slaanesh. Yet Khorne was impressed with Valkia's dedication, nonetheless, and bade her to rise up once more, reforming her frail mortal body into a creature more pleasing to his savage eyes. Valkia was thus reborn as a Daemon Princess of the Blood God, and charged forever by Khorne to shepherd the worthy fallen to his halls. Valkia, revered now as queen and goddess alike by many among her people, has led the Norscans to victory into battle many, many times since her ascension, and the warriors of the north fight with even greater vigour in her presence.[2j][6a]
  • Egil Styrbjorn - Egil Strybjorn was a high jarl of the Skaelings and a profoundly mighty Chaos Lord sworn to the worship of bloody Khorne. Egil Styrbjorn is one of the mightiest chieftains of Norsca; a bloodthirsty warrior-king who ascended to leadership of his clan by defeating the previous chieftain in single combat, beheading him and thus claiming lordship of the Skaeling city of Strovengaard. He bore the mighty hellforged Daemon Axes Garmr and Gormr; named for the bloodthirsty Flesh Hounds said to accompany the Blood God Khorne in his wild hunts across the heavens in Norscan myth.[30][30]
  • Urlfdaemonkin - Urlfdaemonkin was the name his tribesmen gave him upon his ascension to Daemonhood as a Daemon Prince, but the man once known as Urlf was originally a great Champion of Khorne and a jarl of the Snaegr tribe. In ancient days he slew many foes, and in time his victories in battle could no longer be easily counted. As a reward for his loyalty, Khorne granted Urlf the greatest reward any servant of Chaos can hope for -- he ascended to become a Daemon Prince of Chaos and the ultimate manifestation of his god's wrath. The warriors of the Hall of the Snaegr began to revere Urlfdamonkin as a lesser deity of Chaos in his own right and an exemplar of their tribe; a symbol of what they too could become. On the day he ascended every year, called the moon-time of Urlf, the tribespeople of the Snaegr enact the rituals required to summon their chieftain back to the realm of Men, so that he may impart the blessings of Khorne upon them before they go to battle against the south.[1b] 
Wulfrik

Wulfrik the Wanderer, a legendary Norscan Chaos Lord

  • Wulfrik the Wanderer - One of the greatest warriors to walk the Known World, Wulfrik, called the "World Walker," has slaughtered long in the black names of the Dark Gods. As a Chaos Champion and Chaos Lord, he earned untold glory by slaughtering every rival who crossed his path and taking their skulls as grizzly trophies of his victories, affixing them to his heavy black plate armour for all to see. A mighty giant of a man, clad in hulking Chaos Armour and bedecked in the trophies of his many kills, Wulfrik travels the four corners of the Known World in his enchanted longship Seafang. It is capable of crossing vast distances through the Realm of Chaos using its Daemon-enchanted figurehead, allowing the World Walker to seek out and bring to battle across the world the most deadly warriors and beasts as demanded by the Chaos Gods. Wulfrik has made offerings of lords, kings, sea-serpents and Dragons to his masters. To Khorne he offers up their skulls, to Nurgle the contents of their slit bellies, to Slaanesh their still-beating hearts, and to Tzeentch their dying breath.[1a]
  • Einarr Sigdansson - A fierce Baersonling of the fallen village of Vinnskor and a mighty Champion of Tzeentch, Einarr, also called "Einarr Steelfist," was marked by the Raven God when he slew a mighty Bloodbeast unleashed upon his people by their traditional foes; the vicious Khorne-worshipping Aeslings of Skraevold. The avenging Baersonling was then met by a travelling Kurgan raider, Vallac of the Khazags, who spoke of how Tchar had marked him for glory, and thus pledged his life to the Chaos Champion's service. Einarr, on the other hand, desired only the chance to tear a bloody swathe through the Aesling tribe. But a god does not ask, he takes, and thus Einarr was set upon the road his god had willed, enticed onto a perilous quest to retake a relic of Tzeentch stolen by Nurgle and given to the Chaos Sorcerer Skoroth in the Chaos Wastes by the Plague God. In return, Tzeentch promised Einarr that he would restore the Norscan's people. Einarr overcame many obstacles, slew countless foes, including Greater Daemons of Nurgle, and drew followers to his banner from all the tribes of Chaos, Norscan and Kurgan alike, eventually bringing together a disparate band of diverse followers, including a Chaos Dwarf. Einarr eventually fought his way into the decaying halls of Skoroth's Palace and defeated him in a duel of magic, using a dark incantation that bathed the sorcerer in the changing fires of Chaos, thus burning him alive.[13]
  • Alfkaell the Aesling - Alfkaell was the Bloodfather of the Aeslings of Skraevold, an adviser to Jarl Kolsveinn, a Champion of Khorne. To gain the status of Bloodfather, Alfkaell tended to the cairn of the infamous Tong warlord Teiyogtei Khagan far from Norsca in the Eastern Steppes. At the time he cared for the resting place of the apostate Chaos Champion, a terrible, iron-clad warrior began to wreak havoc upon the heirs of the mighty khagan. The Kurgan zars and Hung khans convened, and in their small way attempted to unite to face the threat of the warrior, with Alfkaell watching over their meeting. Each and every one of the Kurgan chieftains rightly feared the Norscan; for the Bloodfather, marked by Khorne as he was, was as much a creature of his vengeful god as the armoured destroyer afflicting them. Alfkaell mocked the Kurgans' efforts, decrying them as weaklings and fools hapless before the vengeance of a god -- a god whom their forebear had dared to cheat. When Alfkaell took his leave of the convocation, none of the Kurgans dared bar his passage. Soon enough, after his charge in the Eastern Steppes was fulfilled, Alfkaell returned to Norsca to serve as Bloodfather to his people, guiding the Aeslings of Skraevold down the path to Khorne's favour. Several years later, Alfkaell was slain by Einarr Sigdansson, the Champion of Tzeentch.[13][50]
  • Garmr Hrodvitnir - Perhaps one of the mightiest Champions of Khorne to have walked the earth, Garmr Hrodvitnir was the chieftain of one of the Norscan tribes who, like all Norscans, hungered for glory and battle. He endeavored to finish the fabled Road of Skulls leading to the Dwarf hold of Karak Kadrin, paving that ancient path with the skulls of every foe he faced in order to open a gate to the Realm of Chaos which would transform the Old World into an endless Daemonic battlefield. He was foiled in this ambition, however, by the efforts of the Dwarf Slayer Gotrek Gurnisson and his Human companion Felix Jaegar. Notably, Hrodvitnir is one of the few beings to have matched Gotrek on equal terms in battle.[32]
  • Losteriksson - Losteriksson is a legendary Norscan warrior, explorer and sailor who was the first man of the Old World to "discover" the mysterious continent of Lustria, where he established the Norscan outpost of Skeggi in 888 IC. Losteriksson's raids and establishment of the new outpost of Skeggi led to the Chaos Gods establishing a foothold in the New World, forcing the Slann mage-priests of the Lizardmen to contend with their ancient foe of Chaos from ages past in the form of their new Human followers. In time, many warbands sailed from Norsca to Lustria, eager to plunder its ancient treasures and slay its inhabitants.
  • Scyla Anfingrimm - Scyla Anfingrimm was a mighty Norscan warrior and famed raider who earned great glory as a Champion of Khorne. His saga began when a Chaos beast began wreaking havoc on the lands of his relative, Jarl Grundval Fang-Scar of the Graelings. Khorne himself had spoken to the Bloodfather of the Ulfthras tribe, and demanded a champion; a man with the brutal strength and savage fury required to face such a beast in single combat and lay its smoking heart at his table. Many of Khorne's Chaos Chosen journeyed from the length and breadth of Norsca, and some from even as far afield as the lands of the Kurgan, to answer Khorne's call. All failed, save for Scyla, son of Thurrik, of the Ironpelt tribe. He slew the beast, tearing out its eye and bathing his crimson armour in its black blood, carrying his trophy back to the hall of Jarl Grundval. The assembled Graelings roared Scyla's name, and Ulfthras placed around Scyla's mighty shoulders a black-tusk pendant -- Khorne's symbol of favour for the one who would succeed in his test. From then on, Scyla ranked high in the esteem of the Blood God. In time, he furthered his ambitions. It was Scyla who slew the great Jabberslythe that troubled the lands around the River Voltag and led the slaughter of the Skaven city of Black Gulch. When Scyla was brought to battle by a vengeful army of Imperial farmers left bereaved by his raids, he slaughtered the entire force and attached the bodies of its leaders to the prows of his longships. Soon, his name was legendary throughout the north and feared in equal measure from the coastlines of the Empire to as far south as Ind and as far east as Grand Cathay. Khorne had clearly favoured him, and it was oft whispered that soon the Blood God would reward his champion with the gift of Daemonhood. But so passionate was Scyla for the favour of Khorne that he took on the blessings of his god far to quickly for his body to handle the strain, and when he had carried out the destruction of the bestial Gorgers of the Undermountain, it was then that his blessings overcame his will, and he was transformed into a bestial Chaos Spawn. Yet, such was Scyla's favour that Khorne did not abandon him, and so does the Blood God continue to watch over and bless his Champion despite his mutated state. Scyla prowls the northern Chaos Wastes to this day, seeking battle eternal and a bloody end that will no doubt please his god all the more. [2k] [52] 
  • Sigvald the Magnificent - The unholy bastard spawn of incest between a famed Norscan chieftain and his own sister, Sigvald the Magnificent, Champion of Slaanesh and Chaos Lord, is the mightiest and most favoured of all Slaanesh's mortal servants and master of the Decadent Host -- an army of psychopathic, amorous madmen enthralled by the charms of Slaanesh and unquestioningly loyal to him. Sigvald wields the rapier Silverslash, a blade said to be forged from a shard of Slaanesh's own sword. During the End Times, Sigvald was commanded by Archaon to defend the occupied city of Middenheim against the forces of the Incarnates alongside the Troll King Throgg. Sigvald, aggrieved that he would have to share the battlefield with "an ape in a crown" attempted to slay the Troll King but was defeated, his head crushed by Throgg's barbarous mace. Throgg proceeded to urinate upon the Slaaneshi Champion's corpse, bringing a truly ignominious end to Sigvald's time in the mortal world.
Haargroth the Blooded

Haargroth the Blooded, a Norscan Chaos Warrior

  • Haargroth the Blooded - Once but a simple goatherd amongst the clans of the Graeling tribe of Norsca, Haargroth rose to become one of the mightiest warriors of the north and the jarl of his tribe. A search for missing cattle led him to the darkened pine forests of Norsca, where dwelled vicious tribes of Beastmen and their abominable war-leaders. By chance, the young Norscan happened upon one of these beastly warlords, slumbering with its snout stained red with the blood of sheep that had been thought lost. Anger coursing through him at the sight, and memories of his countless abuses at the hands of fellow tribesmen rising to the fore, the goatherd took up the slumbering Beastman's axe and brutally hacked him apart into screaming pieces. The axe itself was marked with Khorne's power, and through it the Blood God bestowed his favour upon the wrathful Northman. Soon, Haargroth's frame swelled with the power of the Blood God until he was a giant even amongst the Norscans, and his skill at warfare improved daily until he had became a capable Chaos Warrior in his own right.
  • Styrkaar of the Sortsvinaer - A chieftain amongst the Sortsvinaer tribe, Styrkaar earned great glory on longship raids against the lands of the Empire and the Kurgans. His great skill was actually the work of a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh, who, since birth, had been his constant, albeit unseen companion. After a particularly successful raid, the warriors of Sortsvinaer feasted and caroused within their mighty hall, giving thanks to their god Shornaal (an aspect of Slaanesh) for their victory. Styrkaar's father, Svengor, the old lord of the tribe, a mighty Chaos Champion of the Dark Gods in his own right, belittled his son's accomplishments, claiming that his own bloody deeds could never be matched. Incensed by his father's disrespect, Styrkaar leapt from his seat and demanded the chieftain raise his horn in recognition of his son's achievements. Angered by this disrespect, the Jerg thrashed the champion to the ground. When Styrkaar arose, Svengor was shocked to hear that the tribesmen bellowed his name, rather than his own. It was then that Svengor realised how he had let his power slip in his dotage; nonetheless, Svengor was a Champion of the Dark Gods, and he would break before he bent. Hands balled into fists, the aging warlord charged his son with a vicious warcry. That night, the Sortsvinaers had a new chieftain. In the following years, Styrkaar led the Sortsvinaer on countless conquests, his unseen Daemonic ally strengthening him with untold power. To his fellow tribesmen, it appeared that Styrkaar had been given fulsome blessings by the Dark Gods, and they too began to venerate him with a fervour that bordered upon adoration. Yet he did not allow himself to grow old and weak with such laurels, as his father had. Styrkaar and his mightiest Chaos Chosen had roamed the cold wastes of Norsca, defeating countless rival warbands and tribes. Styrkaar slew Karnak, the dread Champion of Khorne, and his bloodthirsty shield-brothers, and also the mysterious Asgeiir and his masked warriors of Tzeentch. The Prince of Pleasure looked favourably upon the chieftain, and he willed that the Daemon who had watched over Styrkaar be merged with his body. That night, Styrkaar became an entity undeniably beyond the mortal scope of mere Humanity. In time, his exploits reached the ears of the thirteenth Everchosen Archaon himself, who strode boldly into Styrkaar's hall. When the two warlords emerged, they clasped their arms in the manner of the Norscan tribes in full view of the Sortsvinaer, and Styrkaar pledged his legions of warriors to the cause of the Herald of the Apocalypse.
  • Melekh the Changer - An Aesling blacksmith, Melekh's wife died during complications in childbirth that were exacerbated by the aid of the tribal shaman, Gaerkoll; his drunkenness caused his spell-craft to spiral out of control and thus cause the child to mutate in a horrific manner, and so did Melekh's only child become a monstrous aberration. Seeing this turn of events as the sign of favour from Tzeentch, the clan chieftain ordered much feasting in Melekh's and the child's honour. Melekh eventually rose to become a champion of the tribe, and by extension, Gaerkoll's apprentice in the arts of shamanism. Gaerkoll, recognising this in the entrails of a sacrifice as a sign that Melekh would rise to become pre-eminent in the eyes of Tzeentch, became deeply concerned for his own prestige and influence within the tribe, for Melekh had not forgiven him for the death of his woman during the aberrant birth. Gaerkoll hatched a plot to do away with the rising warrior, stealing away his son and charging him to journey into the Chaos Wastes and retrieve the true name of a Lord of Change, the tribe's very own Daemonic patron, as his final test to prove himself Gaerkoll's successor as tribal shaman. Though the thought of such a thing struck black fear into Melekh's heart, he knew that to refuse or fail was to forever lose his son to the keeping of Gaerkoll, and thus, a father's love drove him to take up this doomed quest. Against all odds, Melekh fought his way through the Chaos Wastes, through hordes of Horrors and stood before the Lord of Change itself. Though his time in the Wastes had transformed into a true Champion of Chaos, clad in spell-wrought iron Chaos Armour and arcane robes of Dark Magic, no mortal spellcaster, however skilled, could ever hope to match the might of a Daemon. But Tzeentch himself chose to aid Melekh, and even as he lay dying against the Daemon's assault, he heard the gibbering of the Horrors suddenly turn to the chanting of a single name. He drew the Daemon towards him, and deceived it into revealing its True Name, and thus did the Lord of Change scream as it found itself bound to the service of Melekh. Yet, in grudging respect for the mortal's cunning, the Lord of Change did grant the Northman its boons. Melekh returned to his tribe, at the head of a thousand-strong host of Daemons, his charge complete, only to find that decades had passed since he had been lost to the Chaos Wastes, for time flows differently within the very Realm of Chaos. His son had grown to a man, and Gaerkoll had risen to become chieftain and a Chaos Champion of the Dark Gods in his own right. Thirsting for vengeance, and realising he had been deceived, Melekh and his Daemons waged war against Gaerkoll and the Aeslings, until, in an unforseen twist of fate, Melekh's son, now known as Cyspeth, turned a blade against his mentor and thus secured his father's triumph. With this, Melekh became lord of the tribe. Archaon, recognising this outcome from one of the prophecies of Necrodomo the Insane, rode down into Melekh's clan-hold and extracted an oath of fealty from both father and son, granting the two Champions of Tzeentch leadership of one his mighty hordes.
Engra Deathsword, Destroyer of Praag

Engra Deathsword, a Norscan Chaos Lord in service to Asavar Kul.

  • Engra Deathsword - One of the three Norscan lieutenants of the twelfth Everchosen Asavar Kul, Engra was primarily notable for his utter devastation of the northern Kislevite city of Praag. After destroying the city, he joined his army with that of Asavar Kul, who was striking from the southeast, and together they marched upon the capital of Kislev itself. Though Asavar fell in the siege, slain by one of his own warriors, Engra was nowhere to be found, and his ultimate fate remains unknown.[36]
  • Valnir the Reaper - Valnir was a chieftain amongst one of the tribes of Norsca, but so consumed was he by hate and spite that it was often said amongst the Norscans that were Valnir's misery to flow as a river, it would have enveloped all the north in its bitter waters. At a certain point, the hopelessness of Valnir's condition drove him to forsake his lordship amongst his people, swearing by the Dark Gods of the north that he would not cease in his quest until he had found a way to hold up a mirror to the mortal world and show to it the futility of all its endeavours and the folly of hope. North he went, passing through the mountains and fjords of the Vargs into the lands of the Chaos Wastes, where he overcame countless horrors and monstrosities as he pressed further and further into that haunted place. Daemons whispered to Valnir, mocking his quest and demanding he kneel before the gods, but the Norscan shouted them down, and reaffirmed his black oath. It was when Valnir found himself upon an isle made from corpses, holding a dead tree from which hung rotted fruit, that he at last relented in his quest, for here was the emblem of the misery he sought to inflict upon his fellow Men. He knelt before the tree, pure evil and despair emanating from it, giving himself unto the powers that created it if they would only impart upon him the power to subject the world to the same horror that he endured every day. In answer, Nurgle, known amongst the clans of the Norscans as Neiglen, appeared before Valnir. The Crow God demanded only that his followers spread his "gifts" of sorrow and decay with joyful abandon, and in Valnir, he saw the greatest emissary. He bestowed upon the Norscan his most bountiful favour, transforming him into the first amongst his Champions.
  • Valgar the Butcher - Valgar was a Norscan Chaos Lord who led his warband to Khemri to raid the tombs of its ancient kings. The horde was ambushed on its return by the armies of the Tomb King Settra. Valgar was slain, and barely half a dozen of his Chaos Marauders returned to Norsca, bloody yet wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. Several years later, the legacy of Valgar's raid reached back to assault the north, as the iron-clad Chaos Warriors of Norsca did battle against the restless Undead armies of Settra. For 5 years, the Norscans battled the Undead amidst the snow-drifts and glaciers of their homeland, culminating in an epic battle before the Hellwyrm Glacier.
  • Hakka the Aesling - A mighty Chaos Lord of Khorne, hailing from the savage Aesling tribe, Hakka led his warband of mighty Norscan warriors and slavering Bloodbeasts into the Chaos Wastes to the ancient city of Zanbaijin in 2509 IC to earn the right to lead the next great Chaos incursion by defeating his adversaries. Though the strength and fury of Hakka and his Marauder Berserkers was unmatched, it was countered by numbers of his Slaaneshi rival, Sargath of the Kurgan and his hordes of hedonistic madmen, and the Daemonic magics of Urak the Soulfiend and his coven of southling warlocks. Finally, the arrival of Tamurkhan the Maggot Lord, Champion of Nurgle, sealed the fate of the other three armies. Tamurkhan slew the arrogant Sargath, and the Kurgan's warband was then slaughtered by the brutal Aesling Khornates. The fury of Hakka and his warriors was then marshalled against the plagued warriors of Tamurkhan. Against the rage of Khorne, the warriors of Nurgle wavered but did not break, and slowly but surely began to push back the Norscans, though with rivers of their filthy, plagued blood spilled in the doing. Hakka, realising he and his brothers were set against an impossible foe, roared out his defiance and committed his soul to the Norscan god of battle, swearing to the Blood God that he would slay as many of these rotting monstrosities as he could before Valkia the Bloody carried his soul to Khorne's Brass Citadel. The Khornates fought with all the fury of their people, and many of Tamurkhan's slaves fell to their northern rage, but in the end, Hakka was swept away from his fellow warriors by the tide of battle. Though many thousands fell to the whirlwind fury of his twin axes, Hakka was eventually slain by four Bile Trolls.[25a]

Forces of Norsca

"And then those sails appeared on the horizon. White, but dripping with the bloody symbols of their foul gods. And then came the black wood of the boats, dragged through the froth by tireless, muscled arms pulling on a hundred oars. I rang the warning bell from my lookout and me lads formed up, each one sweating at the arrival of these beasts. The crossbowmen loosed bolt after bolt, and many fell, but still the howling fiends ran up the beaches with no care for armour or shields. They looked like rabble, but fought like daemons, crashing through our lines, butchering men left and right, clubbing limbs into gore and hacking heads from bodies like they were attached with butter. I'll never forget that morning..."

—Account transcribed from an Ostland sergeant, 2517 IC[5b]
Norseraiders

The fearsome Chaos Marauders of Norsca unleash their fury upon the foe.

The Norscans have a wholly deserved reputation across the Old World for being incredible warriors. Thick-set and incredibly muscular, all Norscans are possessed of an unquenchable battle-thirst, though not through any blight on their souls, but rather as a product of the world in which they live. Their homeland is a haunted, arctic wasteland infested with terrifying beasts such as Chaos Spawn and Trolls, infused with the very essence of Chaos and lashed by furious, freezing winds.[1a][25a][37]

Their gods are terrifying idols of darkness, who favour only the strong and demand the destruction of the weak. To their east are the bloodthirsty horse-nomads of the Kurgan, to their south lies the heirs of Sigmar and to their north, the very abode of their gods, lying somewhere in the Chaos Wastes where reality finally merges with the Realm of Chaos. Norsca is a land where living even a single day is a victory. Thus are the Norscans inured to violence and horror from an early age, and there are few among their numbers unprepared to fight and die for their honour, material gain or for the favour of the Ruinous Powers.[1a][25a][37]

Comparing the Men of Norsca unto the soft-bellied wastrels of the south is to compare a wolf to a sheep, for where the Men of the south would cower secure behind their high walls, the Men of Norsca roam the far corners of the Known World in search of adventure and plunder. Where the Men of the Empire indulge themselves before a fireplace glutting on fine wine and cheese, the Men of the North must hunt and kill for their daily bread and rip into raw meet with their bare hands and teeth for their efforts. Where the Men of the south complain bitterly of travelling abroad in fog or sleet, the Norscans brave howling blizzards clad in little more than flea-infested scraps of fur. Little wonder then that the raids of the Northmen are feared throughout the Old World.[2a][2i] 

The conditions of their environment and the savage strictures of their faith in Chaos have moulded them into a true warrior race. Each Northman towers over any man of the Empire, their powerful bodies hardened by lives of ceaseless toil and endless war. The Norscans fight for their very survival from birth, and every man is expected, nay demanded, to be an accomplished warrior -- hardy, fierce and independent.[33][2i][23b] 

The Norscans have no inclination for the ways of the ploughshare or sickle; their tools are the sword, axe and shield, and that which their own lands cannot provide for them, they merely take from the lands of lesser Men. Their legendary strength and endurance has been built by centuries of living in a land that does not tolerate weakness, and has been further enhanced and strengthened by the corrupting influence of Chaos that inevitably affects all those who live so close to the Chaos Wastes.[33][2i][23b] 

The largest form of organisation for the Norscan warriors is known as a freigattur -- "free-gathering" in the common tongue -- when the Chaos Champions of Norsca bring their tribes and warbands together in common cause, usually for a massive invasion of the Imperial or Kurgan lands, or in order to defend their own tribes from invaders.[28] 

It is a time for warriors to meet and feast and swear oaths of blood and glory for when they stand together in battle, and for their chieftains to meet in conference with one another aboard the deck of the dragonship of he who has called the meeting to order to plan cunning strategies to fell their enemies. These convocations allow for a massive raising of forces, comprising thousands of blood-hungry Chaos Marauder tribesmen. Its unity, however, is never truly certain, for it depends upon the strength and iron will of its leaders, as well as the promise of victory and wealth for its warriors.[28] 

Norscans

Even the eldest Norscans are mighty, and in many cases, highly accomplished warriors.

The next largest organisation of warriors is the warband itself, or the warhird, as it is called in the Norscan tongue. Most folk in the northern reaches of the Empire and Kislev are likely well-acquainted with the common Norscan warband; brutal reavers either charging down the Kislevite steppes or leaping fur-clad from longships to savage the coastlines. The Norscan warhirds comprise the bulk of the Chaos hordes, alongside the warrior-bands of the Kurgan and Hung. In times of war, the Norscans flock to the banners of the great Chaos Champions, throwing their weight behind the cause, whether it be the favour of the Dark Gods or simply the bright lure of plundered gold. When not part of a great army, many Norscans spend their days raiding the towns and villages of the south.[1a][1b]

Though perceived as a single, mindless horde of heathen warriors bent on rapine and slaughter by the peoples of the south, Norscan warbands are often wildly distinct in terms of tactics, appearance, and Chaos allegiance. Some warbands are characterised by only using axes in battle, others by only armouring their fronts so that they cannot retreat from the battlefield, while others by a particular style of beard. Regardless, the fact remains that any Norscan warhird is invariably comprised of mighty, hardened warriors of superlative skill and deadliness. Hardened by a bleak land and bred for battle, they hold all others in contempt and hatred.[7b][7c]

Though Norscans recognise no authority except that which they pledge freely to their warlords and champions, and even this can evaporate quickly if they are defeated or if the lord shows any sort of weakness, there exists a barbaric sort of brotherhood between the warriors of Norscan Chaos Marauder bands. Bonds so strong as to endure even as the warband divides or grows. These bonds may be rooted in tribal bloodlines or be forged in the fires of battle, but are regardless impossible to break and allows the Chaos Marauders extensive battlefield cohesion and discipline that belies their savage mien.[25a]

The Norscans are a semi-nomadic people, although many Norscan tribes live the year-round in primitive villages from which they set sail to terrorise the Known World. Other tribes wander the north; erecting their temporary villages near sacred sites of the Ruinous Powers where they might catch the favour of their malefic masters. Despite this, the Norscans are still the most settled of Chaos Marauders, at least with respect to the ever-roving Kurgan horse-tribes of the Eastern Steppes. As a result, the Norscans alone have developed the means to manufacture weapons and armour of superior craftsmanship among the northern peoples. Thus are the Norscans most likely to be clad in armour of steel and wielding mighty blades honed to razor-sharp deadliness, making them far more formidable on the battlefield than the Kurgan or Hung.[1a][2a][3a][48][33]

Such is the Norscan respect for steel, that among warbands of Norscan Chaos Warriors there exists the tradition of the "Mound of Blades." This is a collection of infernal weaponry, some plundered from southlanders, some fashioned by Norscan hellsmiths. To take a weapon from the Mound of Blades a Chaos Warrior must first place another upon it. The offered weapon cannot be his own, it must be taken from the corpse of a sworn foe.[48]

The rare few who forswear this custom discover to their cost that this is one tradition that the Chaos Gods seem to appreciate. Among larger tribal warbands there are also Chaos reliquaries, unholy stores of a warband's most treasured weapons. It is true that Chaos Champions keep their most prized accoutrements on their person at all times, but for those lucky enough to acquire a fine blade or ensorcelled axe, a reliquary will keep it safe from rivals.[48]

Norscanwarrior

A Norscan Champion of Khorne

In battle, the Norscans invoke the war god Khorne, from the lowliest Chaos Marauder to the highest Chaos Chosen (provided he is not a worshipper of Slaanesh, of course). By bellowing and roaring his dark name, the Norscans believe that they can drive themselves into an uncontrollable battle-fury -- whether by their own will or that of Khorne himself, who can say. The blood-crazed Khornate Marauder Berserkers of Norsca are truly fearsome opponents, and many thousands have been undone by their psychotic, blood-lusting fury.[5a][13][14][17c] 

When set loose on the battlefield, each Marauder is like a beast scenting blood, and they will not rest until their lust for death is sated, for they know that the eyes of the gods are upon them, judging their strength and testing their courage. They know too that those who fight well will be honoured by the Dark Gods, and will receive their blessings and the marks of their favour, and so they fight with no regard for their own lives, only for how many they can take on the battlefield. Death, after all, is the destiny of all, and so it is that when it comes the Norscans do not court it like the weak Men of the south, but rather embrace it. A bloody end with blade in hand and the red ruin of their foes strewn all about them -- an end to make both gods and ancestors proud; the Men of the North fear dishonour more than the touch of the valkyrie.[5a][13][14][17c]

The armies of Norsca are feared and renowned for their sheer ferocity and the strength of their infantry, comprised chiefly of merciless Chaos Marauders and bloodthirsty iron-clad Chaos Warriors. They favour the battle-axe, heavy flail and violent exultation of melee combat over any sort of tactical nuance or stealth. Due to the heavy prevalence of Khornate worship amongst the Norscans, the use of ranged weaponry and subtlety are decried as the weapons of cowards, and as cowards are seen as being below the scrutiny of the Dark Gods, many Norscans prefer the fury of close quarters and are given to acts of suicidal bravery and barbaric heroism, that they may attract the attention of their deities and thus receive the blessings they so crave.[7b][7c]

Norscans generally field very little cavalry, for the icy, mountainous landscape of Norsca is even less conducive to horses than the barren Kurgan steppelands to the east. Added to this is the fact that most Norscan tribes tend to look upon horses with a fair bit of ambivalence; seeing mounts as uncertain investments at best and dangerous liabilities at worst. However, groups of mounted Chaos Knights are not overly uncommon and indeed, an armour-clad warhorse is considered the provenance of a great warrior or jarl among many Norscan tribes. However, due to extensive contacts with the Kurgan and Hung tribes, the Norscans have began to slowly but surely accrue horses, either through trade or by stealing them in raids upon the eastern Chaos Marauders.[2g][48][2i][9][30][31][25b]

As not even the sturdy steppe ponies of the Kurgan steppes are equipped enough to survive here, some Norscan tribes have begun breeding their own horses; snorting, savage beasts who having been born so close to the Realm of Chaos, eschew grain and grass to be fed on a diet of Human flesh and diluted blood, corralled in crude shielings in order to shelter them from the worst of the ice-storms. Norscans are expert hunters, taking their steeds from corrals they travel the length and breadth of the land, crossing immense frozen glaciers and endless tundras with mighty axes in hand, searching for terrible Chaos beasts and mighty foes to slay in tribute to the Dark Gods.[2g][48][2i][9][30][31][25b] 

In battle, the speed and mobility of Marauder Horsemen leaves even the most able cavalrymen of the Old World sorely lacking. Able to steer their steeds with the subtlest of movements of the waist and knees, the tribesmen have both hands free to wield wicked blades and hooked axes. Many Norscan horsemen favour throwing axes and javelins, while others prefer wicked barbed flails that catch their enemy, dragging them behind their horse until their bodies come apart in a welter of blood.[2g][48][2i][9][30][31][25b]

Some Norscan tribes, such as the Vargs, have also tamed the titanic mammoths of the northern Chaos Wastes, using them as gargantuan beasts of war and living siege engines. Most terrible of these creatures are those who have been twisted and mutated by the influences of Chaos, transforming them into insane, hate-filled beasts that await the chance to vent their suffering upon others.[2g][48][2i][9][30][31][25b]

Though the favoured tactic of many a Norscan warband is to simply charge across the battlefield and close the distance with their enemies, getting to grips with them in melee where their superior strength and martial skill will see them to victory, the Norscans are highly skilled at many other forms of warfare. One particularly ubiquitous formation amongst the Norscans is the "Boar's Head," or "Swine's Head," a wedge formation where the warriors lock their thick shields together to protect themselves from enemy fire. Like the jaws of some great beast, the serrated ranks of the phalanx charges forth, coming to grips with the foe, where the Norscans then cut them down with vicious abandon.[14]

The indomitable shield-wall is another mainstay of Norscan military tactics, and arguably one of the most ancient as it stretches back to the days of the original Norsii raiders. Similar to the Boar's Head, the shield-wall is a flexible military formation, capable of defending a Norscan warband from even the heaviest of projectile fire, and blunt the force of even the most devastating charge. Only the most brutal and savage Norscan warriors are allowed to serve in the first row of the shield-wall, for it is a hellish place where only the greatest of warriors can triumph.[2i][27][28][29]

Norscan Infantry

  • Bondsman - The Bondsman is a Norscan warrior in service to a particular jarl. He is expected to live in the jarl's hall, share the jarl's food, and be steadfastly loyal.
  • Freeholder - Freeholders are Bondsman who have been given one of the most valuable commodities in the north; farming lands. Since this is a gift given to only the most accomplished warriors, these warriors are often a class above the regular Bondsman.
  • Chaos Marauder - Most Chaos Marauders serve as the core of the Chaos hordes that emerge from the north and the Chaos Wastes, whether they are comprised of Norscans or other Northmen. They flock to the banners of their Chaos Champions, throwing their weight behind any cause, whether it is the bidding of their Dark Gods or simply the call to battle. The tribes of Northmen that flock southwards with any Chaos invasion are known by those in their path as "Chaos Marauders," natural fighters born into hardship and brought up in a world where surviving each day is no small victory. They have no time for plough or sickle, for their tools are the axe, the sword and the shield. What their own lands cannot provide, they simply take from the lands of lesser men. They have little fear of dying in battle, for they know that they fight under the scrutiny of their gods, and that cowards are beneath their deities' notice.
  • Marauder Berserkers - Marauder Berserkers, also known as "Savages," are a brutal sect of Northmen warriors, known chiefly for being subject to terrifying battle-frenzies. Most berserkers are followers of Khorne, the Chaos God of war and murder, crying the praises of the Blood God Khorne while ravaging many a foreign shore. Marauder Berserkers are driven by one thing alone; a lethal intent to inflict unparalleled brutality upon their enemies. Like all Chaos Marauders, they are unrelenting combatants who habitually take what their own lands cannot provide from lesser men, but are set apart by their bizarre pre-battle rituals and unequalled fanaticism for killing. They immerse themselves in a psychotic state of mind before a fight, always consuming vast quantities of beer and indulging in head-butting contests prior to entering the battlefield. Once they see their enemies they attack without regard for their own lives, wild-eyed and frothing at the mouth. Upon reaching their target, the Berserker turns into a Human whirlwind -- with an axe in each hand, he spins, chops, and dismembers with a strength only achievable by a madman.
  • Marauder Axe Throwers - Hailing from the barbaric tribes of the Men of the North, these are groups of Chaos Marauders that specialise in throwing axes. They are able to throw heavy, weighted axes great distances with deadly precision. While they may not range as far as an archer, the damage from these axes arching down from the sky will split a head in a helm with ease. They wear little to no armour, as it hinders their movement for a long throw.
  • Marauder Hunters - The ruthless martial societies of the northern tribes of Norsca see many of their people cast out into the wastes due to some transgression or another against their tribe. An unforgiving way of life means that it is often impossible for these men to re-assimilate themselves into the warrior hierarchy of their tribe. The few exiles that avoid death out in the freezing tundra of Norsca often come together to form bloodthirsty bands of wild hunters, armed with javelins, etching out a brutal existence that makes them even more hardened, callous, and adept as warriors -- Chaos Marauders with the skill of ambush hunters. Attaining such skills is a way back into the battle ranks of their tribe: when larger forces of Norscan tribesmen come together, the Marauder Hunters' terrifyingly efficient ambushes and service as skirmishers frequently mark the beginning of their raids.
  • Marauder Champions - In the eyes of the Northmen, there is a natural distinction between the mass of roving warriors, and the favoured few. The ultimate ambition of a Chaos Marauder is to die fighting under the gaze of the Dark Gods, or otherwise become worthy and powerful enough to travel to the far north to face their judgement directly. Individuals strong enough to walk that path emerge only occasionally: Marauder Champions, who fight and kill with more skill and ferocity than their brethren, and so gain a higher status in their warrior hierarchies. The otherworldly rewards are not always clear, however -- these standout fighters epitomise both the glory and the risk of seeking the attention of the Dark Gods, treading along a knife's edge between immortality and oblivion. Some Marauder Champions, nicknamed "Maulers," charge into battle wielding brutal, two-handed weapons such as maces, greatswords and greataxes. They believe that the bigger the blade, the greater the chance the fickle Dark Gods will notice them.
  • Norscan Reaver - Norscan Reavers are brutal warriors who plunder the coastlines of the Old World in search of foodstuffs, gold, and slaves. They are a merciless lot, hardened from their frequent battles with Imperial Navy sailors and the feeble local militias that stand against them.
  • Norscan Seer - Norscan seers are self-appointed authorities on all matters involving the spiritual world. They can be found in any Norscan town or village, proclaiming their latest revelation to anyone who will listen.
  • Skald - Norscan skalds in warfare are typically the musicians and standard bearers of their warband and serve as keepers of lore and memory for their clans and tribes.
  • Norscan Slaver - Norscan Slavers are a common sight in the north, but in the past, slavery was quite common in the Old World.
  • Whaler - Norscan Whalers are not just typical hunters, they are also able warriors. Since whaling is an important trade for Norsca, Whalers are respected even among the warriors due to the extreme dangers of the waters surrounding Norsca.

Norscan Cavalry

  • Marauder Horsemen - Marauder Horsemen are Northmen ranged and melee cavalry who serve as the eyes and ears of a Warriors of Chaos and Norscan army. Their swift steeds and merciless riders are known throughout the Old World to be amongst the greatest horsemen to have ever lived. Some tribes of Chaos Marauders hold horses in high esteem, while others regard them with fear and superstition. To many, a warhorse is a sign of status, and only the best warriors may ride them. The steeds ridden by these tribes are powerful beasts, foul-tempered and strong of limb. Once a rider has broken such a horse, it will remain loyal to him until death, but they remain vicious and unruly should a stranger approach. Fed on a diet of Human flesh and watered-down blood, these snorting, high-spirited steeds have a glint of intelligent menace in their eyes, and will trample, kick and bite as if berserk when engaged at close quarters.
  • Marauder Chariot - A Marauder Chariot is a type of Chaos Chariot employed by the Chaos Marauders of Norsca. Norscan Marauder Chariots are drawn by a pair of huge destriers swollen to unnatural size by the corrupting energies of Chaos. Each of these beasts is clad in tempered steel plates in the manner of their unholy masters. As these deadly creatures gain momentum, balefire flickers from their eyes and nostrils, giving the impression that the chariot has galloped straight from the realm of nightmares into reality. When a Chaos Chariot slams into the enemy lines, the bone-splintering impact is only the start of the carnage it can wreak. As the enemy is hurled in all directions by the sheer force of the chariot's charge, the hellish steeds plough through the enemy ranks, iron-shod hooves trampling bodies, and fanged maws snapping at exposed flesh. Spinning scythes slice apart the legs of those who attempt to flank the chariot, and the barbs and spikes that cover its chassis rip and tear at any foolhardily enough to stand their ground. But the chariot's cargo is just as deadly: the charioteers stab and slash from their fighting platform, maiming and decapitating those nearby with their cruel blades and spiked whips.
  • Marauder Ice Wolves Chariot - A Marauder Ice Wolves Chariot is a type of Chaos Chariot employed by the Chaos Marauders of Norsca. With axe-flinging Chaos Marauders in tow, drooling and crazed Norscan Ice Wolves pull these chariots with overwhelming speed. The Marauder Ice Wolves Chariot is an interesting take on the standard war chariots commonly used by the Northmen and other Warriors of Chaos forces. The same spike-laden Chaos Chariot chassis gives it a similarly devastating impact on the charge, but instead of being pulled by Chaos-mutated destriers, it is pulled by brutish Ice Wolves. This gives the chariot several advantages -- firstly, the swift, muscle-built beasts enable the chariot to move faster over short distances. Also, unlike horses, Ice Wolves are natural killers in their own right -- bloodthirsty animals concerned only with biting and tearing at enemy flesh. This makes the Ice Wolves Chariot a truly scary prospect up close; snapping, slobbering jaws await any who engage the charioteers in melee.

Norscan Monstrous Infantry

  • Skin Wolves - Many are the dark horrors of twisted flesh and nightmares made real that the Ruinous Powers have visited upon the mortal world; few though are as strange as the Skin Wolves. Witch-cursed and Chaos-tainted, these creatures are half-feral and subject to savage appetites. They were previously men and women who carried within them the tainted blood of the mutated beast, which was somehow unleashed. Half-insane with insatiable hunger, a Skin Wolf has shredded flaps of skin and chunks of bloody gristle clinging to it, left behind by the unfortunate individual who the fully-formed humanoid wolf-thing ripped itself from. It is these clinging shrouds of skin that give the beasts their common name. It is the clinging shrouds of skin that give the beasts their common name. Only once battle is spent and a Skin Wolf has glutted itself on the raw and dripping gore of its enemies will the terrible transformation be reversed and the bubbling and overworked flesh of the Skin Wolf collapse, then like a newborn the Human within must tear its way out of the monster it once was.
  • Fimir Warriors - A Fimir Warrior, who is a member of the Fimm warrior caste, are the footsoldiers of the ancient, amphibious humanoid Fimir race, bedecked in heavy plate armour and wielding clumsy maces into battle. To isolated and lonely settlements on fog-shrouded fen and swamp, from the hinterlands of the Empire to the edges of far Grand Cathay, the Fimir are a creature of horrific legend made manifest. Cold and cruel and mightier than any man, with a single baleful eye atop a pointed snout bristling with jagged fangs, to some these scaled nightmares are Daemons incarnate, but the truth is much stranger and darker. With a single eye atop a fanged snout, and deathly yellow-grey flesh that can shrug off blows that would kill a mortal man outright, the amphibious humanoid monsters known as the Fimir are horrific living legends. Their origins are unknown to most, but millenniums ago they were roaring the praises of the Dark Gods as they despoiled the lands of Men living in the area that would later become the Empire. Then, one day, the Chaos Gods abandoned them in favour of Men. Despite hating Mankind, the Fimir have a common cause with the Norscan tribes, as they both crave the attention of the Dark Gods, but even so, it is an uneasy and fractious alliance.
  • Norscan Troll - A Troll is a large, brutish, monstrous humanoid created by the energies of Chaos that is native to the northern Old World, particularly Troll Country, Norsca and the Chaos Wastes. They are as witlessly stupid as they are bone-crushingly powerful. They care for little save the acquisition of their next meal, though this need makes them exploitable for use as powerful infantry by several factions, including Greenskins, the armies of the Norscans and the forces of Chaos.
  • Ice Troll - Like other Trolls, the Ice Trolls who live much further north than their counterparts who reside in Troll Country are strong and stupid, and have potent regenerative abilities. However, what sets Ice Trolls apart is that, where most Trolls possess acidic vomit, their closer proximity to the Chaos Wastes has led to a mutation that has granted them the ability to freeze their prey with one blast of their frigid breath. Though they are as intellectually limited and difficult to control as their more common brethren, Ice Trolls often find employment among the armies of the Norscans.

Norscan War-beasts

  • Norscan Ice Wolf - Ice Wolves, also known as "Marauder Warwolves," are a deadly species of mutated wolf native to the frozen wastes of Norsca. As with all creatures of the Old World, the further north one goes, the more likely is an encounter with a beast touched by the mutations of the Ruinous Powers. Marauder Warwolves are one such afflicted beast -- like their Warhound cousins, the Ice Wolf mutation is the result of exposure to the energies of Chaos deep in the malign wilderness of Troll Country where they originate, enabling them to freeze foes in their stride with only their icy breath. Woe betide any unfortunate soul who strays into the Ice Wolves' territory, who will likely hear their mournful howls before being hunted, frozen, and devoured.
  • Norscan Warhounds - In Norsca, wolves and hounds prowl in the flickering shadows of the campfires made by the barbarian tribespeople of the frozen lands. The further north the tribe dwells, the more likely it is that the hounds that follow them will be mutants, their bodies swollen by the energies of Chaos. Brutish and bloodthirsty, Norscan Warhounds are natural killers built of muscle and fang that prowl the wilderness in ravening packs. They will even charge a spearwall with total abandon, their only concern the moment when their slobbering jaws sink into juicy, yielding flesh.
  • Chaos War Mammoths - The Chaos War Mammoth is like unto a living mountain, a wooly colossus bedecked with an elephantine trunk and great curved tusks. Of all the terrible beasts that roam the wastes of the uttermost north, few are as dangerous as these great primeval creatures tainted by Chaos and known to the scholars of the Old World as Mammoths. Roaming across the frozen north are the woolly colossuses of the Old World -- the gargantuan, feral Mammoths. With their elephantine trunks and great curved tusks, they are not unlike living mountains, feeding off the thorny barrens and causing the ground to quake as they follow their endless migration paths. The Northmen frequently seek them out as abandoned calves, for if a mammoth is trained early enough, it can be brought into battle as a highly effective trampling weapon that can easily reduce enemies to bloody ground-smears. Exposure to Chaos-tainted materials has resulted in some of the species mutating into larger and more aggressive versions of the regular feral variety, sometimes sprouting extra horns that make them desirable to be ridden into battle as War Mammoths.
  • Feral Manticore - Manticores are huge, leonine Chaos beasts that soar on leathery wings. They are amongst the most powerful of all the predators that live in the north's mountain ranges. The mutating power of Chaos ensures that no two Manticores are truly alike. Some have manes of writhing serpents, others pelts of iron scales, and many sprout spiked tales with a poison strong enough to boil a man's blood in his veins. However, all Manticores are berserk killers saturated with primal fury. They are so fierce that they are held by the Dark Elves to be incarnations of Khaine, the god of war and murder.
  • Norscan Giant - Giants are monstrous humanoids with a prodigious appetite for violence. They are single-minded engines of destruction most often encountered in the far north of the Known World, being fond of the cold, rocky climes. Many find themselves lumbering alongside the warring Northmen tribes, either for their fill of fresh meat and strong alcohol, or simply for the promise of slaughter and battle. Many Giants of the north are instinctively drawn to the raiding Men who seek to bear the favour of the Dark Gods -- perhaps because the corpses are always thick on the ground in the company of such individuals. Smashing into enemy ranks to kill and feed, they have no real concept of obeying orders but, rather importantly, do have the intelligence to recognise friend from foe.
  • Chaos Frost Dragon - The mutating power of Chaos has touched more than just Trolls and wolves in the malign wilderness of Troll Country. In its northern reaches, just below the surface of the frozen tundra, Frost Wyrms lurk in their underground lairs. With the appearance of giant, winged, two-headed reptilian monsters, nobody is entirely sure of their true nature or origins, but they are certainly abominable creatures tainted by Chaos. Some say that before the species mutated, they may have been Ice Dragons -- a creature with a similarly dangerous killing ability in its icy, freezing breath, and a gargantuan size proportional to its age. Lying motionless beneath the frozen tundra, the cold-blooded Frost Wyrm waits for the footfalls of trespassers before emerging to freeze them to death in their tracks.

Norscan Lords

  • Norscan Warleader - Warleaders are proven Norscan warriors who have seen countless battles and are entrusted by their jarls and kings to lead detachments of other Norscan warriors and Chaos Marauders against their enemies.
  • Marauder Chieftain - The tribes of Northmen that flock southwards with any Chaos invasion are known by those in their path as Chaos Marauders. These savage barbarians fight with heavy axes and cruelly barbed flails, and charge in great howling mobs towards the foe. They have little fear of dying in battle, for they know that they fight under the scrutiny of their Dark Gods, and that cowards are beneath their deities' notice. The chieftains that lead these warriors are a daunting sight, brooding hulks of muscle and hair whose bodies are covered in the scars and trophies of battle. Bearing weapons worn from dealing a thousand mortal injuries to those foolish enough to face them, these savage leaders are independent and fierce. These battle-hardened killers are the products of a people so steeped in conflict that, even in times of prosperity, they will fight to the death for the honour of leading the next raid.
  • Skin Wolf Werekin - Werekin are former Marauder Champions afflicted by feral mutations, whom the Chaos Gods deem not yet worthy to join them as immortals. Although feared by the local tribes where they dwell, they are not hated and indeed, they are respected. For the Northmen believe that even those cast down have been chosen, and it is better to be chosen than to live your whole life beyond the sight of the gods. Werekin are much larger and more distorted in body than the lesser Skin Wolves, living in caves deep within the frozen wastes. In times when they are not being brought to war by the raiding tribes, they feed on offerings from the locals, or otherwise devour unknowing passers-by who happen to carelessly dwell too near to their dens.
  • Vikti - The Vikti are the healers and local shamans for most Norscan tribes. Admittedly, most Norscan spellcasters are sorcerers, witches, and warlocks.
  • Shaman-Sorcerer - The Shaman-Sorcerer is, more often than not, a practiced murderer. They pursue dark pacts and bargains with numerous petty Chaos godlings and Daemons as the source of their arcane powers, and use their prophetic influence to guide the tribes towards war. Shaman-Sorcerers are rightly feared due to their prophetic seer-craft and unholy mastery of the stormy Winds of Magic of the frozen north, conducting Daemonic rituals as a way of gaining favour from the Dark Gods. That is not to say they are incapable of face-to-face combat -- they take to the battlefield with both staff and axe, wielding magic as well as cutting down any unfortunate foe who happens to get too close.
  • Fimir Balefiends - A millennia ago, amphibious humanoids known as the Fimir were favoured by the Chaos Gods. Then, as the gods turned their attentions to the more vibrant and amusing race of Men, the Fimir were abandoned. Having since existed in reclusion, they now have a common cause with the Norscan tribes, doing the bidding of the Ruinous Powers as way of regaining their favour. Their mysterious Balefiends wield a powerful magic that appears crude and ritualistic to outsiders, but is incredibly potent. They spend prolonged periods away from the swamps of the Wasteland that is their ancestral home, harvesting power from Daemons to destabilise the barrier between the mortal world and the Realm of Chaos.

Sources

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