Site editor · September 30, 2026
Replaced the universal memory-summoning explanation with publication-specific Starborne and Coalesced accounts, spawning pools, and a clearer account of distinct species.
lore+18-4
| Before the Mortal Realms were born (before, some whisper, anything now living drew breath), the god-like Old Ones charted a design for all existence called the Great Plan, and shaped cold-blooded servants to carry it out. When the world that held their first temple-cities was devoured, the slann mage-priests fled into the deeps of the heavens aboard ziggurat-ships, bearing their spawn-kin, their star-charts, and their unfinished orders. The realms condensed out of raw magic; civilisations rose and learned to write; and all the while the Seraphon were already there, waiting between the stars, older than the ground the new gods stood on. |
| The Seraphon serve the Old Ones' Great Plan under slann mage-priests. They include saurus, skinks and kroxigor. Their temple ships escaped the destruction of the World-that-Was, carrying survivors into the Mortal Realms.[1](#reference-1) |
| ··· |
| Most Seraphon descend to battle as the Starborne: creatures of celestial magic wearing scaled and fanged shapes, summoned from the memory of the slann rather than born. Their hosts blaze into being wherever the Great Plan requires them, a jungle of azure light erupting in a heartbeat, and when a Starborne warrior falls it leaves no corpse, only a drift of fading starlight for the slann to dream anew. They are daemons in every sense but allegiance: entities of pure purpose, as tireless and unbargainable as the mathematics they serve. |
| ## Temple ships and the Great Plan |
| ··· |
| But stars can fall and take root. The Coalesced are Seraphon whose long ages within the realms have thickened starlight into flesh, blood, and appetite. Their temple-cities rise from the deepest jungles: pyramids of gold and worked stone tended by generation after spawned generation of saurus and skinks, ringed by wilderness that obeys them like a trained beast. The Coalesced are hotter-tempered and hungrier than their celestial kin: order expressed not as geometry but as ecosystem, where everything has its place and everything out of place is prey. |
| The Old Ones are absent, but the slann continue to interpret their designs. The 2024 faction introduction describes temple ships that either remain in the heavens or land to become the centres of cities. It also explicitly describes spawning pools producing fresh warriors. A single explanation that treats every Seraphon as a memory conjured into a temporary body leaves out this account.[1](#reference-1) |
| ··· |
| Above them all drift the slann, toad-like mage-priests of stupendous power who sleep for centuries and reorder battlefields between heartbeats. It is their burden that the Old Ones are gone and left no complete copy of the Great Plan; each slann remembers a different fragment, dreamed and re-dreamed across the ages until memory and hope grow hard to tell apart. So the Seraphon wage their patient, star-guided war carrying the terrible question at its heart: whether they still execute their masters' design, or are lovingly reconstructing it from grief, and whether, after so long, there is any difference. |
| ## Starborne and Coalesced |
| The distinction between Starborne and Coalesced concerns their relationship with celestial and terrestrial magic. The 2021 faction article describes Starborne as closely bound to Azyr, arriving through portals from their travelling ziggurats and dissolving into starlight when destroyed. Coalesced have settled within the realms and acquired a more permanent physical existence.[2](#reference-2) |
| ## Roles within the host |
| Slann provide direction and magical power. Skinks administer the society, attend their masters and handle many of its beasts. Saurus are bred for warfare and possess a focused battlefield intelligence. Kroxigor provide powerful labour as well as strength in battle. These are different roles within the civilization, rather than successive ranks through which one creature progresses.[1](#reference-1) |
| The distinction is useful when reading a story or inspecting a collection: a small skink beside a slann is not simply a junior version of the mage-priest. Look for the relationship between the figures rather than assuming size alone establishes authority. |
| ## Painting an identity |
| In its 2023 painting interview, the 'Eavy Metal team describes narrative as the basis of the range's colours, using the difference between Starborne and Coalesced to guide its choices.[3](#reference-3) For a personal project, decide which environment and identity you want the force to suggest, then test a shared palette on one small model before extending it across the army. |
| The [Lizardmen of the Old World](/the-old-world/factions/lizardmen) provide earlier-setting context, while the entries below concern Age of Sigmar. Use the [rules guide](/guides/check-current-warhammer-rules) when moving from this background to a current army: the older articles also contain game mechanics that belong to their publication era. |