Is the old world the 40k tera?

[Biggle_Bear]

I've been pondering. Is the world of Warhammer fantasy the Tera that mankind came from? I have a few thoughts but what are your theories that support or contradict this idea?

The only rule I can really see is that as mankind reaches the 40k era the elves, dwarves, orcs, etc must already be long extinct from the planet.

And as a side note feel free to drop ideas of what 'Warhammer modern day' looks like.

 

[nooker]

I kinda thought it might be a lost planet currently in the 40k universe. One that experienced a cataclysm and all the races reverted back to feudal times.

 

[prewarsalad]

I reckon in the 40k universe chaos eventually wins and destroys the entire universe, fracturing into the different spheres. The emperor survives but loses his memory due to being blasted through realities. Remodels himself as sigmar and starts his quest to save humanity again.

 

[Biggle_Bear]

I reckon in the 40k universe chaos eventually wins and destroys the entire universe, fracturing into the different spheres. The emperor survives but loses his memory due to being blasted through realities. Remodels himself as sigmar and starts his quest to save humanity again.

So the old world follows the 40k universe! Now that's a twist and a half.

 

[Biggle_Bear]

How about an eldar craft crash landed after a battle with orks? The descendants becoming the fantasy versions. The crash causing a near extinction of giants, and an end to their reign. The young dwarf species are protected by hiding in caverns and the humans yet to enter the picture. Perhaps the high elf island IS the crashed ship.

 

[katfezza]

I recommend you read "Vengeful Spirit" from the Horus Heresy series. It will certainly help with an answer.

 

[TabulaRasa]

I believe that they at one time explicitly said they are not interlinked. Same with BB and the old world - a lot is similar, it’s even called ‘The Old World’ in BB, but is essentially separate. Of course I’m not up to date with all HH novels and so on. But regardless, they have a tendency of leaving everything in the fluff open ended and open to interpretation.

 

[Atom-Cat]

Not now.

In Rogue Trader days it’s was suggested the old world is in the 40k universe but cut off by warp storms. Or something like that.

But it was clear by 40k the two universes were separate and not related.

 

[Punktaku]

i like @prewarsalad ’s take on it. very Terry Brooks.

 

[Biggle_Bear]

Sorry but I'm not starting the horus heresy novels just to find that out.

I don't blame GW for not linking them together. That restricts their evolution to their product. Even though separating BB and the old world is a leap.

 

[Wulfyn]

They were never strictly linked. It is more that the core themes of 40k were copy+pasta jobs from WHFB. They took all of the armies in fantasy and basically added "in space" behind them. As well as Orcs in space (Orks), Elves in space (Eldar, a term also from LotR), Dwarves in space (Squats, who were squatted), we had the same chaos factions and also the Slann being the Old Ones (a term also for them in WHFB).

It was nothing more than a lack of originality, but it is important to understand that back in the Rogue Trader days they didn't think that 40k would do that well, as "sci-fi doesn't sell". So they didn't put a lot of effort into it, they just made some space versions of their Tolkein universe, and adapted the Space Marines from Starship Troopers. Of course it did do very well, but even back at this point it's not really recognisable as the 40k universe. The Emperor is not dead but just very old and being kept on life support (as per Dune), and there are basically empires for each of the factions without much thought to how they got their or what their motivations were.

The making of 40k is in the 2 Realm of Choas books (Slaves to Darkness and The Lost and The Damned - the former of which has been reprinted). This set out the background of the Emperor being made, the Horus Heresy, and the relationship with Chaos. Both books started to talk more about the chapters of the 40k universe and introduced some of the Primarchs. Then shortly before the introduction of 2nd ed we had the full list of the 1st founding chapters and the HH was now fully fleshed out (forming the basis for all the narratives for the book series).


So TL;DR they were linked at the start in the sense it was WHFB in space copy paste.

 

[Biggle_Bear]

Thanks guys. Anymore wild theories of how they could be connected?

 

[DArquebus]

Wulfyn has the gist of it.

WHFB World was originally in the 40k Galaxy but certainly not Terra (our Earth). It was in effect a 'low tech' fantasy world isolated somewhere within the Galaxy inside a raging Warp Storm. NB: the things below may have been retconned since I read them, as I do recall them later stating that they were not linked in anyway . Certainly AOS is deliberately it's own thing as per the GWS Canon. But if you were so inclined then those Realms could just be 'pocket universes' contained within the Warp somewhere within the Galaxy of Man.

Further examples:

40k 2nd Ed N'kari was a special character Daemon Prince of Slaanesh. Same character was chasing Tyrion through Ulthaun in 4th Ed WHFB High Elf Army book. I recall one of the designers actually mentioning that in a White Dwarf article later on.

Old World was seeded with races by the Slann. It was the Slaan gate collapsing that unleashed Chaos onto the Old World. Slaan were prevalent in Rogue Trader as well but became mostly background noise in 2nd Ed 40k onwards.

 

[Biggle_Bear]

It's because of the demons featuring largely unmodified in both that I started pondering the idea.

I reckoned that if they were pushed GWS would say that they are multiverses. That the Old World universe and the 40k universe were both next to the warp universe but not next to one another, allowing demons to break into each of the realities.

 

[Biggle_Bear]

That would help explain the cross over a lot. Like Sigmar and the emperor are the same person but from two different realities. And why all the races are present.

Perhaps the next reality over has all the races put have made peace, and therefore too boring to play as a game. This would suggest though that the warp reality is the odd one out. The parasite reality that is not meant to be. I find that very fitting.

 

[Biggle_Bear]

Old World was seeded with races by the Slann. It was the Slaan gate collapsing that unleashed Chaos onto the Old World. Slaan were prevalent in Rogue Trader as well but became mostly background noise in 2nd Ed 40k onwards.

This idea that the Slaan seed planets inspires me. I'm now thinking of a battle royal game where the different 40k races must find gun parts to assemble their native armaments. Orks perhaps don't have parts specific to their race but build guns from the parts of other races. And other races get special rules too.

 

[Aulenback]

I kinda thought it might be a lost planet currently in the 40k universe. One that experienced a cataclysm and all the races reverted back to feudal times.

In Rogue Trader days it’s was suggested the old world is in the 40k universe but cut off by warp storms. Or something like that.

WHFB World was originally in the 40k Galaxy but certainly not Terra (our Earth). It was in effect a 'low tech' fantasy world isolated somewhere within the Galaxy inside a raging Warp Storm. NB: the things below may have been retconned since I read them, as I do recall them later stating that they were not linked in anyway

Yes, there was a lot of that hedging in Slaves to Darkness and Lost and the Damned, back in 1988 and 1990. GW were pretty explicit that the planet was a lost Feudal world, and its troubles were from two Slann-created warp gates at the poles which had collapsed.

Fan speculation back then was that Sigmar was one of the lost primarchs listed in Rogue Trader.

At this point, as well, the Slann were the space frog descendants of the ancient space frog civilization that had built warp gates around the galaxy until their civilization collapsed and many of those warp gates/tunnels with it. [These days, a mix of the Eldar and the "Old Ones" fill that niche, and the space frogs have become just a part of the dinosaur people.]

Talisman explicitly connected the two settings, showing the Old World to be one warp-lost planet in the Rogue Trader galaxy, the WHFB summer Albion campaign's magical items were Space Marine wargear that had fallen through the exploded warp gates at the poles, the Realms of Chaos books explicitly included cross-over, with occasional Chaos Marines serving as chaos champions in the Old World, and of course White Dwarf #93, the issue that introduced Warhammer 40,000 said that the Warhammer World was in fact just one world within the 40K galaxy.

Then, more recently, GW decided to try to specifically and explicitly separate the two settings.

I believe that they at one time explicitly said they are not interlinked.

More recently, yes, they have aimed to undo that tie. Then again, more recently, they have aimed to make the Empire of Man into the 'good guys' of the setting, rather than the dystopian satire they started as.

 

[Valnar]

The two worlds might be loosely connected, as in the Daemons Army Book for WHFB 8th edition the map of the Realm of Chaos showed, in a corner, a vortex called "Eye of Terror" (this Eye of Terror was missing in the map's counterpart from WH40K 7th edition Daemons Codex, published on the same month).

Maybe it's like a multiverse-scenario, with the Old World being in a different reality from the Imperium of Mankind, but connected to it through the Realm of Chaos, that works a bit like the Ethereal Plane in D&D (even tough much more dangerous).

 

[Aulenback]

The two worlds might be loosely connected, as in the Daemons Army Book for WHFB 8th edition the map of the Realm of Chaos showed, in a corner, a vortex called "Eye of Terror" (this Eye of Terror was missing in the map's counterpart from WH40K 7th edition Daemons Codex, published on the same month).

Maybe it's like a multiverse-scenario, with the Old World being in a different reality from the Imperium of Mankind, but connected to it through the Realm of Chaos, that works a bit like the Ethereal Plane in D&D (even tough much more dangerous).

Again, depends on when you are asking.

Prior to AoS? Up until around when the Necrons got a full codex and background [2002-ish], the Old World really was one world of many in the 40K galaxy [see post immediately above for citations], but that started to be changed around the time the Slaan stopped being the "seeding species" of the galaxy, and were replaced with The Old Ones. And then the Old Ones were retro-fitted to having been 'gods' equivalent to the Chaos Powers, or the Eldar divine gods, and then were all killed:

The background book Xenology also makes a potential reference to the Old Ones. They are referred to as the "Old Gods" who lived prior to the birth of Slaanesh when they fought a war in heaven and hell against Star Devils. According to the author Kurdo Salvador, the Star Devils emerged victorious in this war and killed all the Old Gods, though one managed to survive. This survivor hid away where he continued his Old Ways of tweaking, dabbling, poking and prodding. When he was done with his work, he departed into the Warp in order to hide and watch. When "She" was born of the "longears," Slaanesh chopped the remaining Old One into millions of pieces with the shards kicked into the cold void in order "to linger like always..." These shattered remnants, according to Salvador, became known as "the Umbra." The entity that was sent to linger also shares many qualities to that of Qah, a deity within the Hrud pantheon.

-- Which of course, is also a description of the Cegorach, one of the eldar pantheon of non-Chaos gods.

The Old Ones also around this time replaced the Brain Boys - the incredibly intelligent Snotlings that had created the Ork species as a subervient slave species, but then catastrophically lost their intelligence. That stopped having been true, it seems, and now the Old Ones were the species that created the Orks, for the same reasons, but who were killed off by the C'tan and by Slaanesh.

This was around the same time the Lizardman army books stopped having the Slaan frog-men be the decayed remnants of the "galactic Slaan species," and started having the Slaan also be a created subservient species to the Old Ones, and about the same time that GW started trying to divorce the two settings.

Then AoS came, and theoretically divorced the two settings completely, elevating Sigmar to an actual pantheon-style god [ending the "Sigmar was a lost primarch" idea], and elevating Nagash likewise, each equivalent to the full fourfold Chaos pantheon, skewing the dynamic of the setting away.

Except now we see rumours and hints [such as in the demons codex and army book] that the two might still be linked, and fan speculation that the warp-rift in 40K simply "ate" the Old World into the Realms of Chaos, making it in effect a contested "daemon world" within warp-space.

Phew!

Madness.

* Addendum to the earlier post up above this one: Liber Chaotica also repeatedly makes reference to Chaos Space Marine champions in the Warhammer World setting, and it was published in 2005, so they were the same setting for SOME of the setting folks, at least that late, despite changes starting as early as the writing of the Necron codex that was published in 2002.

• WD 100 includes the scenario "The Floating Gardens of Bahb-Elonn", which mentions that the Pygmies are the descendants of a crashed spaceship before the Slann arrived on the world.
• Realm of Chaos : The Lost and the Damned mentions explicitly that the Known World is a planet cut off from the rest of the Imperium due to important warp storms ("The Warhammer World is bound by storms of magic so that it remains isolated form the other wolds of the human galaxy"). It also has some ambiguous mention of a scenario with a crashed spaceship, and another with "The Obsidian Crag", a mysterious place full of weird technology in the Chaos Wastes (obsidian is quite often associated to the Slann). And of course one of the divine rewards was to transport a Chaos band to and fro from the Known World and the galaxy, and WFB followers and chaos gifts could include 40K troops and technology.
• WD 108 contains a scenario about a warp gate linking the Known World to some random planet, which has unleashed an Ambull in some cave in the Empire.
• The Star Boat, a novel by Stephen Baxter, has a Norse expedition to the Chaos Wastes to recover a Slann spaceship.
• Both the Albion summer campaign, as mentioned earlier, and the Amazons and Lizardmen groups from Lustria [Mordheim and WFB] include magic equipment such as flamers, power fists, and so on, found either near the collapsed warp-gates or in ancient Slaan tombs, again - like the RoC books - setting the two in the same galaxy.

* Another addendum: I actually prefer the "von Daniken" Slaan origin of the species, from Rogue Trader and old WFB, to the "divine War in Heaven Old Ones" story that replaced it, despite being a fan of Cosmic Horror SF.

* Last Addendum, post AoS, the Slaan are being 'elevated' once more, though not as high as the "Old Ones" are now in the 40K setting. The AoS Slaan are now a void-faring species, with only a few remnants of their former numbers, seeking to guide and manipulate lesser species and able to manipulate warp-gates, and worshipped as gods on multiple planets.

Go figure.

 

[prewarsalad]

Again, depends on when you are asking.

Prior to AoS? Up until around when the Necrons got a full codex and background [2002-ish], the Old World really was one world of many in the 40K galaxy [see post immediately above for citations], but that started to be changed around the time the Slaan stopped being the "seeding species" of the galaxy, and were replaced with The Old Ones. And then the Old Ones were retro-fitted to having been 'gods' equivalent to the Chaos Powers, or the Eldar divine gods, and then were all killed:



The Old Ones also around this time replaced the Brain Boys - the incredibly intelligent Snotlings that had created the Ork species as a subervient slave species, but then catastrophically lost their intelligence. That stopped having been true, it seems, and now the Old Ones were the species that created the Orks, for the same reasons, but who were killed off by the C'tan and by Slaanesh.

This was around the same time the Lizardman army books stopped having the Slaan frog-men be the decayed remnants of the "galactic Slaan species," and started having the Slaan also be a created subservient species to the Old Ones, and about the same time that GW started trying to divorce the two settings.

Then AoS came, and theoretically divorced the two settings completely, elevating Sigmar to an actual pantheon-style god [ending the "Sigmar was a lost primarch" idea], and elevating Nagash likewise, each equivalent to the full fourfold Chaos pantheon, skewing the dynamic of the setting away.

Except now we see rumours and hints [such as in the demons codex and army book] that the two might still be linked, and fan speculation that the warp-rift in 40K simply "ate" the Old World into the Realms of Chaos, making it in effect a contested "daemon world" within warp-space.

Phew!

Madness.

* Addendum to the earlier post up above this one: Liber Chaotica also repeatedly makes reference to Chaos Space Marine champions in the Warhammer World setting, and it was published in 2005, so they were the same setting for SOME of the setting folks, at least that late, despite changes starting as early as the writing of the Necron codex that was published in 2002.

• WD 100 includes the scenario "The Floating Gardens of Bahb-Elonn", which mentions that the Pygmies are the descendants of a crashed spaceship before the Slann arrived on the world.
• Realm of Chaos : The Lost and the Damned mentions explicitly that the Known World is a planet cut off from the rest of the Imperium due to important warp storms ("The Warhammer World is bound by storms of magic so that it remains isolated form the other wolds of the human galaxy"). It also has some ambiguous mention of a scenario with a crashed spaceship, and another with "The Obsidian Crag", a mysterious place full of weird technology in the Chaos Wastes (obsidian is quite often associated to the Slann). And of course one of the divine rewards was to transport a Chaos band to and fro from the Known World and the galaxy, and WFB followers and chaos gifts could include 40K troops and technology.
• WD 108 contains a scenario about a warp gate linking the Known World to some random planet, which has unleashed an Ambull in some cave in the Empire.
• The Star Boat, a novel by Stephen Baxter, has a Norse expedition to the Chaos Wastes to recover a Slann spaceship.
• Both the Albion summer campaign, as mentioned earlier, and the Amazons and Lizardmen groups from Lustria [Mordheim and WFB] include magic equipment such as flamers, power fists, and so on, found either near the collapsed warp-gates or in ancient Slaan tombs, again - like the RoC books - setting the two in the same galaxy.

* Another addendum: I actually prefer the "von Daniken" Slaan origin of the species, from Rogue Trader and old WFB, to the "divine War in Heaven Old Ones" story that replaced it, despite being a fan of Cosmic Horror SF.

* Last Addendum, post AoS, the Slaan are being 'elevated' once more, though not as high as the "Old Ones" are now in the 40K setting. The AoS Slaan are now a void-faring species, with only a few remnants of their former numbers, seeking to guide and manipulate lesser species and able to manipulate warp-gates, and worshipped as gods on multiple planets.

Go figure.

Wow. Someone did their homework.