The Empire of Man: Lamplight in the Forest

Stand on the walls of Altdorf at dusk and you can read the whole contradiction of the Empire at a glance. Behind you, lamplight and spires: cathedrals, universities, the workshops of engineers who have taught black powder to speak. Before you, the forest: vast, ancient, and close, its treeline a dark tide lapping at the edge of civilisation. The Empire of Man is the mightiest realm of humankind in the Old World, and it survives not because it is safe but because its people refuse, generation after generation, to let the light go out.

A Nation Forged from Tribes[edit]

Two and a half thousand years ago there was no Empire, only a scatter of warring human tribes clinging to the forests and river valleys, preyed upon by greenskins and worse. They were united by a single man: Sigmar, a chieftain's son who forged an alliance with the dwarfs, broke a great goblin horde at a mountain pass, and welded the tribes into one nation before laying down his crown and walking into legend. That founding deserves its own telling, which our article on Sigmar and the founding of the Empire provides. What matters here is that the Empire was born from unity wrested out of chaos, and it has been fighting to keep that unity ever since.

The Provinces and the Elector Counts[edit]

The Empire is no tidy kingdom but a federation of provinces (Reikland, Middenland, Talabecland, Averland, Ostland, and more), each with its own ruler, dialect, rivalries, and pride. These rulers are the Elector Counts, and by ancient right they choose the Emperor from among their own number. It is a system that guarantees both continuity and endless intrigue. A weak Emperor watches his provinces drift toward open feud; a strong one spends as much energy managing his jealous vassals as fighting the realm's true enemies. Disputed elections, provincial grudges centuries old, and the occasional civil war are woven into the Empire's very constitution. That it functions at all is a small miracle, renewed daily.

Faith and the Cult of Sigmar[edit]

If politics divides the Empire, faith binds it. Sigmar is worshipped as a god now, his cult the closest thing to a unifying church the realm possesses, its warrior priests marching to war with hammer and hymn. Other gods share the calendar (Ulric, grim lord of wolves and winter; Morr of the dead; Shallya of mercy; Taal of the wild), and their cults wield real temporal power. Faith in the Empire is not gentle piety. It is armoured, political, and frequently the only thing standing between a frightened town and the horror at its gates.

The Colleges of Magic[edit]

For much of its history the Empire feared and burned witches. That changed when the great mage Teclis, of the High Elf Realms, taught a generation of human wizards to master the eight winds of magic without being destroyed by them, founding the Colleges of Magic in Altdorf. Each college studies a single wind (bright fire, golden metal, amethyst death, jade life, and the rest), and its graduates serve the state as battle wizards. It is a uniquely human bargain: a realm that once feared sorcery now marches to war with it, disciplined, licensed, and pointed squarely at the enemy.

Engines, Guns, and Gunpowder[edit]

What the Empire lacks in elven grace or dwarfen endurance it makes up in ingenuity. Its engineers, schooled in part by smiths of the Dwarfen Mountain Holds, field cannon, mortars, and outlandish contraptions: the volley gun that spits a hail of shot, the steam tank that shrugs off blows no horse could survive. Handgunners hold the line beside crossbowmen and archers, and a well-served artillery battery can decide a battle before the regiments even close. The Empire fights like what it is: a nation of practical, inventive people who would sooner solve a monster with a well-aimed cannonball than a heroic duel.

The Enemy at Every Gate[edit]

No realm is more besieged. From the north descend the Warriors of Chaos, pouring out of the Wastes whenever the winds blow foul. In the deep forests that thread the whole country lurk the Beastmen Brayherds, children of Chaos who need no invasion to appear: they are already inside, waiting. To the southeast, the haunted county of Sylvania breeds the Vampire Counts, whose undead legions have marched on the Empire's heartland more than once. Add greenskin Waaaghs boiling out of the mountains, ratmen gnawing at the foundations, and the realm's own heretics and cultists, and the wonder is not that the Empire suffers but that it endures.

The Lamp Still Burns[edit]

That endurance is the Empire's whole meaning. It is a flawed, quarrelsome, corrupt, magnificent thing: a civilisation that should have fallen a hundred times and has not, because ordinary men and women keep taking up halberd and prayer book and marching out to hold the line one more season. Its story runs all the way to the cataclysm of the End Times, but that is a doom for another day. For now the lamps of Altdorf are lit, the watch is set, and the forest waits. To see the wider world the Empire anchors, walk our tour of the Old World.