The Era of the Beast

Every age of the Mortal Realms is defined by the power that rises to threaten it. In the current era that power does not scheme in shadow or raise the dead; it simply smashes. The Era of the Beast takes its name from a twofold truth: that the Grand Alliance of Destruction has surged to dominance, and that the untamed beast-realm of Ghur has become the beating, bloody heart of the world's wars. It began with the waking of a god who had slept since before the realms grew old.

The End of Empires Wakes

Deep beneath the wilds of Ghur lay imprisoned Kragnos, the End of Empires, last of an ancient race and a god of pure, catastrophic ruin. For untold ages he had been bound behind unbreakable wards, a fury too great for the world to hold. When the godly wars of the Broken Realms era shook creation to its bones, those ancient bindings finally failed, and Kragnos burst free into a realm that had forgotten he existed. Astride a body of iron muscle and stone, he charged into the world with a single instinct: to bring low every wall, throne, and empire he could find. His waking was less an invasion than an avalanche given purpose, and it announced that the age of careful schemes was over. No wall could hope to contain him, no throne command him, and no bargain tempt him, for Kragnos desires nothing that can be granted and everything that can be broken. Older than the reckoning of even the eldest gods, he remembers a world that existed before the realms took their present shape, and he charges into the present like an ancient grudge given hooves, horns, and a mace the size of a keep.

The Beast-Realm at the Centre

Kragnos ran toward the fighting because the fighting had gathered in Ghur, and Ghur is a realm that fights back. The Realm of Beasts is not a passive stage but a living predator: its mountains prowl, its plains hunger, and its very soil will swallow the unwary. As the wars of the era intensified, this savage realm became the strategic centre of the world, its coasts and crags contested by every power at once. The great city of Excelsis clung to its shore like a jewel in a wolf's jaws, and the deeper heartland of Thondia drew gods and armies toward it as a wound draws scavengers. To fight in Ghur is to fight the ground itself, and in this age that ground had become the prize.

The Green Tide Rises

Kragnos was only the loudest voice in a rising chorus. Across the realms the Grand Alliance of Destruction swelled to its greatest strength in an age, and at its head roared the brutal Orruk Warclans, who worship the twin-faced god Gorkamorka and live for the simple ecstasy of a good fight. The thunder of a gathering WAAAGH! rolled across whole realms as orruks, grots, and greater beasts answered the call of war. To the destroyers, the crumbling of empires was not a tragedy but a festival, and the freeing of Kragnos felt like a blessing from the gods of ruin themselves. Nor is Destruction a single kind of foe. Among the orruks rose the cruel and cunning Kruleboyz, swamp-dwelling greenskins who fight with poison, trap, and ambush rather than honest brawling, proving that a green hide can conceal a sly mind. Alongside them stomped the colossal Sons of Behemat, living mountains of muscle whose every stride flattens whatever others have dared to build, while the cackling grots of the deep caves spill out beneath their leering Bad Moon to drag the unwary into the dark. Each wants something a little different, yet all share the same simple joy in seeing proud works thrown down. For the full story of the greenskins and their war-god, see the Orruks and the Waaagh.

The Dawnbringer Crusades

Yet the age is not only one of ruin, for it also witnessed the boldest gamble of civilization since the founding of the free cities. Rather than cower behind their walls, the Cities of Sigmar launched the Dawnbringer Crusades, great columns of soldiers, settlers, priests, and pioneers who marched out into the deadly wilds to plant new strongholds where none had stood. Each crusade was a moving city, hauling the seeds of civilization into lands crawling with monsters, and most were doomed the moment they set out. But some took root, and every lantern lit in the dark was an act of defiance against a realm that wanted them dead. Alongside them fought the Stormcast Eternals, for even immortal warriors could not be everywhere at once against a rising tide. These expeditions were as much acts of faith as feats of engineering, blessed by priests and armoured in the conviction that to raise a wall in the wilderness was itself a blow against the dark. Most were doomed, swallowed by beasts or greenskins before their foundations were dry. But for every crusade overrun and forgotten, another dug in and endured, becoming a beacon for those who would follow, and the slow, stubborn spread of these frontier holds is the nearest thing the current age has to hope.

A Harsher, Wilder Age

The Era of the Beast marks a deliberate turn in the story of the realms, away from the clashing schemes of gods and toward a rawer, more heroic struggle at the frontier. It is an age of monsters and pioneers, of empires falling and settlements rising in the same breath, with wild Ghur as its blood-soaked stage. Kragnos still rampages, the WAAAGH! still gathers, and the Dawnbringers still march into the dark. Whether civilization can hold its ground against the joyful ruin of Destruction remains the open question at the heart of the current age. To meet the divine powers wagering their strength across these wars, read the gods of the Mortal Realms, and for the ground they fight over, see the Mortal Realms explained.