Warhammer Lore - Magic Explained

[Avder]

Up to date explanation of magical system in Warhammer, includes 8 schools of magic, Chaos Magic, High Magic, Dark Elf Magic, Orcish Magic, Skaven Magic, Ogre Magic and their relations to most of the races, also includes necromancy etc, basically everything you need to know in a short format - 57 minutes I have 12 years experienced of being a Warhammer nerd so hopefully I know what I'm talking about, fun vid to watch before game releases, more to come and if you are wondering where are the dwarfs? Yeah... They don't use magic, they use runic enchancements, will make separate vid for it More to come and enjoy!

[Avder]

This is the script I wrote in case you hate my voice or want to get to specifics faster





Magic in Warhammer universe is unlike any other, it isn’t generated by wizards, witches or whoever, it is a fluent stream of energy, it’s like a wind originating from the chaos rifts. We know that chaos is home to demons, evil gods etc, and similarly to its environment the magic wind called Dhar is chaotic, powerful and dangerous, it splits however into 8 smaller streams that are far less powerful and feed specific kinds magic. There is certain wizards, for example elves and Slann who is a lizardmen highest ranking wizard who are able to force all 8 winds back together in order to control extremely powerful high magic Sapheri. The problem is that these winds are very unpredictable and sudden turn in its flow or too much confidence from a sorcerer can end with terrible consequences, wizard can be torn apart, blinded, get his ability to feel and use winds of magic taken out of him or simply kill everything and everyone around him!
We already mentioned that the main magic wind is called Dhar. It splits into 8 smaller ones, each responsible for its own lore, most races use them equally, aside from Vampires and Skaven off the top of my head, since they specialise in Necromancy, Plague, Destruction or High Magic.

1st of the winds is the wind of Hysh responsible for the lore of light which is a signature magic of the good guys, it is used to destroy tainted creatures, undead and demons, it has egyptian flavour to it since the usual gear of a light mage is pharaoh like headwear and a cobrahead staff, they are the shining icons in the middle of the allied forces, meaning to destroy the unclean and protect the righteous.

2^nd of the winds is the wind of Chamon, lore of metal, extremely powerful alchemy, one of my favourite winds in the tabletop Warhammer, it is used against heavily armoured opponents, the likes of chaos warriors, dwarfs and any kind of heavy cavalry that other armies can field, it literally transforms metal, so you can basically use dwarfs heavy armor and heat it up until its white so the user burns/cooks or melts alive to your amusement or if you are merciful, you can just disintegrate it completely and leave him defensless, definitely a core unit in any army.

3^rd wind is called Ghyran, lore of life, it is a druids lore, based on healing, buffing and reviving, it can basically make your mediocre into an unkillable juggernaut that will tear through the enemy lines, regenerating wounds, dealing damage to everything around it and if you happen to kill it? It will revive and continue the carnage. Compared to other lores it might sound boring, but believe me, it is one of the most obnoxious to deal with.

4^th wind is the wind of Azyr, lore of heavens, sounds awesome, but doesn’t do much, you basically end up controlling the skies, wind, lightning and you can even call down a comet, yes, a comet, in tabletop games, this spell can do obscene damage since the longer it takes to land, the higher impact it has, annihilating EVERYTHING it hits, spells are however hard to cast and their results are way too unreliable to make them competitive, interesting how they may be reflected in the game though!

5^th wind is the wind of Ulgu, lore of shadows amazing supportive magic, opposite of light, obviously, compared to light, shadow is extremely proactive, it doesn’t really buff allied units vs the others but taints the enemies, weakening them to the point where even the smallest, weakest unit can club them down, but the ultimate spell, at least in tabletop is the ability to convert leadership value into strength, meaning that even normal imperial footman is able to strike down a dragon powered by shadows and other weird gimmicks, similarly to hexes in dark souls and the shadowy assassin thing in game of thrones, altho u don’t get to sleep with the red women which is a bummer.

6^th of the winds is Shyish, lore of death, oh yes, it is exactly what it sounds like, one of the most badass and powerful winds, the wizards mastering this lore look not much better than necromancers, magic revolves around killing single targets, powerful beasts and driving enemy characters crazy with visions of death and despair, it can imbue a unit with a vision of death itself causing it to terrorise the enemy and force them to run away in fear or fight with reduced attributes, which for a total war game is HUGE. The most powerful spell of this lore is called The Purple Sun of Xereus, where huge purple globe moves around the battlefield, basically killing everything that it touches, it is one of those extremely difficult to cast spells where a purple sun moves slowly, sucking the souls out of anyone in its path but you really do not want to miscast that otherwise you will probably never see your army again.

7^th wind is probably the most known and promoted out of them all, wind of Aqshy, lore of fire, it is all we know and expect, pure damage, fireballs, infernos, firewalls, fire cages etc, you can probably easily visualise a fire wizard calling down an inferno, scorching everything, and throwing fireballs at anything trying to get close to him, yes, that is basically it.

Last but not least is the 8^th wind of Ghur, lore of beasts, similarly to lore of life, it can buff your allied units, it is a little bit more beast focused though, think of shamans, you get bonuses if you are around animals or if you are a beast yourself, basically you can make one of your heroes invincible, extremely strong so that even a weakling can rip a rat ogre in half or you can turn into a monster yourself! Anything, you can turn into a dragon or Hydra and go into close combat in order to rain havoc over those filthy peasants in your way.

As mentioned before, all the winds, can be merged back together by the most powerful wizards, called High Magic, it is everything you could wish for including extremely high damage swarm killing spells, basically burning entire units alive, healing, dispelling, targeted damage, destroying magical items and some more massive explosions. It doesn’t really specialise in anything but gets the best out of the most winds, relatively easy to cast compared to effects and available only to few since most are not able to master magic up to a level where they can merge uncontrollable winds back together.

This is where the magic “accepted” by most ends, this is what humanity studies and where the barrier ends into the forbidden schools of magic that would never be allowed due to being too dangerous and is classed as straight up heresy.
One of the most hated and the most used undercover lores of magic is Necromancy, corrupted chain of the wind of death, used to summon legions of the dead, ghouls, beasts and swarms of insects that devour human flesh, gravediggers, power-hungry people and vampires love this and use it to take control over smaller areas, expanding their armies as they go by slaying and conquering more and more souls, powerful necromancers are able to take over kingdoms unless they are slain quickly, the armies of the dead are impossible to stop, unless their leader is killed and his magic dies with him, collapsing the legions of the dead all at once. If only slaying the necromancer was that easy.
The most forbidden of all, however, is the Chaos magic. Since winds of magic come from chaos, the chaos gods obviously have their own powerful abilities, they create their own lores depending on what they represent and as we know there is 4 of them, Slaneesh, Tzeentch, Khorne and Nurgle, they manipulate their pawns among the realms of men to spread whatever they feel is necessary or more likely, amusing for them. They are eternal and do not care for the lives of their followers, but chaos and suffering pleases them.

Khorne, thrives in battle, bloodshed and sacrifices, he seeks the strongest and bravest warriors and imbues them with resistance to magic that he despises, gives them his strength and thirst for blood, he cares not for magic tricks but wants a fair melee and bloody combat, this is not really a magical lore but it provides buffs for his followers that bases on protecting them from magical trickeries and gets them to kill as much as possible ignoring tactics and logic.
Tzeentch on the contrary is a god of subtle plans and deceptions, loves to use powerful magic to infiltrate the enemy lines, take control over the minds of weak humans and use them for his own purposes. He provides extremely powerful spells. Wizards following him are able to rip the barrier between our world and chaos world open, exposing everyone to the direct winds of magic that tear units and monsters apart with its force, they can rain blue fire of Tzeentch on the enemies and flood the battlefield with pink demonic fire.

Nurgle is the god of diseases and rot, he loves his mutations, meaning that allied units will get massive buffs to toughness and regenerations, while the enemies will get exactly the opposite, mostly a supportive lore which makes your unit impossible to kill, imagine a soldier or a demon that is half rotten, impervious to pain and damage, walking to you smelling like no other and basically making sure that you pass out before you can even blow a strike against this invincible walking rotting corpse.

4^th god is Slaneesh, god of sex and pleasure, sounds amazing, and I wont argue that, Slaneesh loves distributing pain and pleasure at once, killing the enemy while he begs you to give him more, it makes your followers immune to fear and pain, they do not care, they want it. This specific god specialises in playing with enemies psychology, lowering their speed, damage and making them suffer in the best way possible. You can categorise him as god of tits and wine and it wouldn’t be far off.

These are the most “popular” lores of magic but certainly not the only ones, we have to remember that orcs are way too primitive to master these winds of magic and they rely on their 2 gods, Gork and Mork, called respectively Da Big Waagh and Da little Waagh, I will not dwell into explaining exactly what their beliefs are like, but basically gork, reflects a big brute orc and mork is a goblin who uses gork to his advantage, just like it happens in orcish clans. The bigger, the stronger, the better, their magic reflects that, unstable and dangerous but directly damage dealing oriented spells that will either smash enemy unit, add strength to your unit or make it reach the enemy faster in a nutshell, while Morks magic used by goblin shamans is focused mainly on misfortune of the enemy, goblin are known as thiefs, cowards and backstabbers, well, mork is no different, he would hinder the enemies roll values, initiative and other statistics, deal mild amounts of damage and basically try to drag the enemy down to the goblins level where they can outswarm and kill him.

Another main magic discipline is the one used by skaven, powered with the warp stones, addicted to it, skaven grey seers are the smarter out of the rat flock who are highly respected and dangerous, they will either try to inflict plague and sickness, just like nurgle, and they are actually very close to the green god of chaos, or the magic of ruin to do very similar things but focusing on more direct damage, magic is not the huge thing for skavens since they mainly focus on their warpstone powered technology but that doesn’t mean its not extremely dangerous.

Im not sure if these will be in the game but its worth mentioning that Egyptian like undead race of tomb kings uses something of a mix of death and necromancy to boost their own, debuff the enemies and raise troops, not much that haven’t been mentioned before but pretty spectacular on the battlefield.

Lastly there is lore of ogres, which is simplistic, brute and revolves around gut magic offering some simple buffs and damage similarly to the orcish magic. I doubt it will play a big role if any in the game so I wont dwell any further.
Last lore that will play a bigger role I believe is the dark elves and their Lore of Darkness, covering bases of the Lore of Death and Shadow as well some of the metal, they offer a direct damage, buffs and debuffs, making it very versatile, those half naked, blood loving Khaine sorceresses are a huge threat against any army.

[Bobington]

What of the lore of Hashut, and the magic robots the Chaos Dwarfs make?

[scoicarius]

Thank you Avder. Keep it up!

For those who want to read more on the subject:
http://whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/Magic
http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Warhammer_Magic

[Baron of Hyrule]

What of the lore of Hashut, and the magic robots the Chaos Dwarfs make?

Not certain on Hashut's lore but their machinery is powered by trapped daemons of industry and hatred. It's like how dwarves hammer raw magic into runes. The chaos dwarves just do it with daemons instead, complete with all the agony and screaming you expect from living materials.

[Avder]

What of the lore of Hashut, and the magic robots the Chaos Dwarfs make?

I didn't talk about Dwarven "Magic" since Dwarfs use runic power and Chaos Dwarfs use demonic power as far as I remember, I think I mentioned I will talk about dwarfs in a separate vid since they too complex to explain in a few words this is just a quick "cheat list" or whatever you want to called, like compressed lore, I didn't explain colleges of magic etc

[Avder]

I wish I could edit my posts

[Bobington]

The Chaos Dwarfs have a completely different magic set than the ordinary Dwarfs....

[Avder]

Chaos Dwarf magic was really revealed more in the End Times that are very recent, bear in mind that before, they were just a myth, tightly guarded secret, taboo topic for dwarfs, not really revealed since it was a great shame for the entire race to betray the "good" side of the conflict.

[Flinn]

I wish I could edit my posts

just get to 25 posts and you can (a bit of spamming around, I'm sure you'll find somewhere to post something that would not be total spam )

also nice work with the WH lore, I'm virgin and I need to learn

[scoicarius]

nice work with the WH lore, I'm virgin and I need to learn

If you like to read, the Warhammer Lexicanum has a huge amount of information, Wikipedia style.

[Bobington]

But they wer a separate faction, and had a few old edition armies with unique units, rules, and err....... Magic.....

[Avder]

they were ultimately removed from any official lore and rulings since they were breaching some copyright for the longest time, same thing with space dwarfs that only remained in the game as "squats" for imperial guard, there was a lot of licensing issues, this is the main reason why space marines were changed into adeptus astartes codex etc etc, it was really out of date so I don't like to include the "ancient" lore aspects since updated lore isn't released including it, dwarfs hate magic, they deem it too unpredictable (even tho some of their inventions might be as dangerous), I will talk widely about dwarfs some time in the near future, but you have to remember that even the magical lore I have covered, is very vague and basic jsut to introduce people into it, it is not an in depth analysis, otherwise each wind and each college of magic would get around 1 hr video of its own, and that's only for hjardcore fans, it would be amazing to make a vid like that but no until there is enough interest from them bigger channels may do that since audience is big, I have to cater to people from outside of warhammer universe since my channel is focused around RTS not warhammer in the past

[Avder]

just get to 25 posts and you can (a bit of spamming around, I'm sure you'll find somewhere to post something that would not be total spam )

also nice work with the WH lore, I'm virgin and I need to learn

Hopefully I will be able to help Lore is amazing and if you are a virgin that likes to go balls deep, pick up gotrek and felix saga, strats with a trollslayer title, short amazing books that will give you a great grasp on everyday life in the empire if you'd rather watch a video, wait for more

[Lordaeron55]

Awesome this lore