The Mortal Realms, Explained

Ask where Age of Sigmar takes place and the answer sounds like a riddle: everywhere, and in eight places at once. The Mortal Realms are the setting's great invention. Born from the magic released when the old Warhammer world died, each realm is not a planet but an entire plane of existence, a dimension of near-limitless breadth with its own lands, seas, skies, and rules, all bent around a single governing idea. At a realm's heart, that idea only whispers, and the country can seem almost ordinary. Toward the edges it howls, and geography dissolves into raw magic. What follows is a tour of all eight, along with answers to the two questions every newcomer asks next: how anyone travels between realms, and how anyone survives in them.

Azyr, the Realm of Heavens[edit]

Azyr is the realm of stars, storms, and high celestial magic, and it is the only realm the armies of Chaos have never despoiled. When the other realms fell during the Age of Chaos, Sigmar sealed Azyr's gates, and the refugees who reached safety in time became the ancestors of today's free peoples. Beneath skies where constellations wheel like living omens stands Azyrheim, greatest of all cities, along with the celestial forges where the Stormcast Eternals are remade between wars. To mortals elsewhere, Azyr is less a place than a promise that civilization endures.

Aqshy, the Realm of Fire[edit]

Aqshy runs hot in every sense. Its lands are a panorama of ash plains, brass deserts, volcanic island chains, and seas that steam, yet it is no barren hellscape; that same warmth breeds fertile valleys and bold, generous peoples. Tempers flare quickly here, courage comes easily, and grudges smolder for generations. Aqshy was among the first realms invaded and among the first reconquered, and it remains thick with old battlefields, the mercenary fyrd-lodges of the Fyreslayers, and boomtown cities raised defiantly in the shadow of active volcanoes.

Ghyran, the Realm of Life[edit]

In Ghyran, life is not gentle; it is a flood. Jungles swallow roads overnight, rivers knit wounds closed, and fields yield harvests rich enough to make the realm the breadbasket of civilization. That abundance made it a target. During the Age of Chaos the Plague God tried to rot Ghyran into his private garden, and the long war between blight and growth scarred the realm deeply. Its fiercest defenders are the Sylvaneth, spirits of root and branch who serve the goddess of life and do not always distinguish kindly between invaders and careless allies.

Ghur, the Realm of Beasts[edit]

Ghur is hunger with a horizon. Everything in it hunts, including the land itself: continents drift and collide like fighting animals, mountain ranges migrate with the seasons, and the bones of monsters the size of cities jut from its steppes. Predatory instinct seeps into anything that lives there long enough. Small wonder that Destruction thrives here, from the ever-brawling Orruk Warclans to the wandering hunger of the Ogor Mawtribes. In the current era, Ghur is the setting's wild frontier, where new settlements gamble their existence against the wilderness every day.

Chamon, the Realm of Metal[edit]

Chamon is the realm of metal and transmutation, where alchemy behaves like weather. Rivers run with quicksilver, forests grow leaves of gold, and islands of ore drift through skies stained with chemical color. Its peoples are makers, merchants, and engineers, none more famous than the Kharadron Overlords, duardin sky-sailors whose floating ports harvest the realm's airborne riches. Chamon's gift for change is also its curse: the God of Sorcery covets it above all others, and his hidden cults labor to transmute the realm into something unrecognizable.

Shyish, the Realm of Death[edit]

Shyish is not one land of the dead but thousands. Every afterlife mortals have ever believed in takes form somewhere in its amethyst expanse, making the realm a patchwork of underworlds: silent gray shores, eternal feasting halls, deserts of purple sand. The living dwell here too, in kingdoms that honor their ancestors and mind their funeral rites very carefully. Over it all looms Nagash, the Great Necromancer, whose ambition to own every soul unleashed the spectral tides of the Nighthaunt and empowered the vampire dynasties of the Soulblight Gravelords. At the realm's center yawns the great Nadir, a pit where the gravity of death draws all things slowly down.

Hysh, the Realm of Light[edit]

Hysh is illumination made geography. Its mountains rise in impossible symmetry, its seas glow from within, and its very air sharpens thought, for this is the realm of light, logic, and enlightenment. Its brightest civilization belongs to the Lumineth Realm-lords, aelves of such refinement that their own hubris once cracked the realm to its foundations. Hysh teaches the setting's subtlest lesson: perfect clarity can blind as surely as darkness, and reason pursued without humility becomes its own kind of madness.

Ulgu, the Realm of Shadow[edit]

Ulgu is the realm no map survives. Thirteen great dominions shift within its mists, borders wander, and roads have moods. It is the natural home of spies, assassins, smugglers, and anyone whose power depends on never being seen clearly. The shadow queen Morathi rose to godhood here, and her Daughters of Khaine rule temple-cities wreathed in secrets, while the soul-raiding Idoneth Deepkin slip through its gloom-shrouded seas. In Ulgu, truth is a commodity, and it is always a seller's market.

Realmgates, the Roads Between[edit]

With the realms separated by the void, travel depends on realmgates: ancient portals that link one plane to another. Some are grand arches raised by forgotten civilizations; others are humbler and stranger, a cave mouth, a whirlpool, a ring of standing stones that only opens at dusk. Whoever holds a realmgate holds trade, reinforcement, and escape, which makes gates the most fought-over ground in all the Mortal Realms. The greatest nexus of them all, a crossroads once linking every realm, fell to the Everchosen of Chaos long ago, and its loss still warps the strategic map of every Grand Alliance.

How Civilization Survives[edit]

Given all of the above, the miracle of the Mortal Realms is that anyone farms, trades, or raises children in them at all. The answer is stubbornness, organized at scale. Mortals cluster around realmgates and rivers of commerce, behind the walls of the free cities, where the Cities of Sigmar muster professional armies and Stormcast garrisons keep their long vigils. Beyond the walls, pioneer columns march out to found new settlements, knowing full well that many will fail. Danger is simply part of the climate. Farmers work fields that occasionally bite back, sailors learn which stars can be trusted, and whole cultures build their calendars around the moods of their home realm. It is this defiant, ordinary life, as much as any battle, that gives the realms their heartbeat. If you are just beginning your journey, start with What Is Age of Sigmar?, then pick the realm that calls to you and follow its stories.