The Empire of Man is the human realm founded by Sigmar, but the Empire of Warhammer: The Old World has no universally accepted emperor. Rival claimants and regional powers compete within a shared Imperial identity. This is an earlier period than the reign of Karl Franz familiar from later Warhammer Fantasy stories.[1][2]
The Anarchy[edit]
The studio's December 2024 explanation distinguishes this period from the Age of Three Emperors. That earlier arrangement ended after the attempted election of Magritta of Marienberg in Imperial Calendar 1979. Opposition from the Cult of Sigmar helped break it apart, leaving the period known as the Anarchy.[1]
Four major blocs and smaller free states retain a shared Imperial identity despite their shifting alliances.[1]
Four claimants and their centres[edit]
The development diary identifies four principal powers in this setting:[2]
- Westerland: Elspeth Magritta VI, associated with the wealth and trade of Marienburg.
- Osterland: Count Sigismund Ulric, ruling from Middenheim.
- Reikland: Prince Wilhelm I of Altdorf, a devotee of Sigmar.
- Talabec: Duke Ludwig XII, ruling from Talabheim.
This is a political map for the earlier setting, not a list of the rulers in every later Warhammer publication. The familiar provincial names do not all represent independent blocs at this point. A reader comparing two maps should first compare the dates and campaigns they depict.
Armies of towns and provinces[edit]
State Troops and State Missile Troops form recognizable parts of an Imperial army, alongside knights, artillery and machines such as the Steam Tank. The 2024 range preview also presents characters, engineers and religious figures, showing how a force can combine regional soldiers with specialist support.[3]
For a collection, choosing a town or province gives a useful starting identity. Decide what its regiments share in their colours, banners and basing before expanding into every available kind of specialist. A political bloc can contain several local traditions, so a campaign army need not make every regiment look identical.
Magic before the Colleges[edit]
Magic is present, but the later Colleges of Magic have not yet been established. The studio describes Battle Wizards, Elementalists and Necromancers as examples of traditions before that organized system of teaching. Their acceptance varies between regions and religious cultures.[1]
Earlier history, later consequences[edit]
The setting precedes the Great War Against Chaos and the Siege of Praag. Magnus's eventual unification of the Empire belongs to the later events towards which this period leads.[2] Keep that sequence in mind when following character links: a famous Imperial figure from a later era is not automatically active in an Old World campaign.
Units
- Celestial HurricanumRare · War MachineA rolling orrery of brass and crystal from which a Celestial wizard hurls storms of comets, wreathing the army in the fury of the heavens.
- Demigryph KnightsElite · Monstrous CavalryInner-circle knights mounted on demigryphs: feathered forest predators of beak and talon that turn a cavalry charge into a monster attack with heraldry.
- Empire HandgunnersBattleline · InfantryBlackpowder marksmen whose massed volleys make no distinction between a charging marauder and a charging monster: Nuln's answer to the terrors of the Old World.
- Empire KnightsCavalry · Heavy CavalryThe templar cavalry of the great knightly orders: full plate, barded warhorses, and a lance-tipped charge that has ended battles before the second trumpet.
- Empire Steam TankBehemoth · War MachineA riveted steel behemoth driven by a boiling iron heart: the rarest weapon in the Emperor's arsenal, and the loudest promise of the age to come.
- FlagellantsSpecial · InfantryDoom-maddened penitents who march half-naked into the foe, certain the world is ending and desperate to prove themselves worthy when it does.
- Great CannonArtillery · War MachineBronze-barreled Nuln artillery that speaks the Empire's final word in any argument: roundshot that fells giants and dismantles fortresses at half a mile.
- GreatswordsElite · InfantryThe Empire's grim professional heavyweights, veteran swordsmen who wield six feet of steel and hold the line where lesser men would break.
- Helblaster Volley GunArtillery · War MachineA fearsome multi-barrelled engine that unleashes a wall of shot in a single earth-shaking salvo, when it does not blow its own crew to pieces.
- OutridersCavalry · Light CavalryGrim professional horsemen armed with repeater handguns, who ride circles around the foe and hose them down with disciplined, mechanical fire.
- PistoliersCavalry · Light CavalryHighborn young hotheads who gallop close to blast the foe with a storm of pistol-fire, then wheel away laughing before the enemy can reply.
- State TroopsBattleline · InfantryThe halberd-and-spear backbone of the Empire's armies: ordinary men in provincial colors, drilled until discipline does the work of courage.
Characters
- Balthasar GeltThe Golden AlchemistThe gold-masked Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of Magic: master of the Lore of Metal, whose face no one has seen and whose ambitions no one has measured.
- Karl FranzProtector of the EmpireThe elected Emperor of Sigmar's nation: the finest statesman of the age, wielder of Ghal Maraz, and the one man who can make a dozen feuding provinces move as one.
- Kurt HelborgThe ReiksmarshalSupreme commander of the Empire's armies: Grand Master of the Reiksguard, bearer of the Runefang of lost Solland, and the sternest soldier of his generation.
- Ludwig SchwarzhelmThe Emperor's JusticeKarl Franz's silent champion and standard-bearer, a peerless swordsman who carries the Emperor's honour into battle and never speaks a word he does not mean.
- Marius LeitdorfThe Mad CountThe brilliant, unstable Elector Count of Averland, as likely to converse with his sword as to command, and a genius of war whenever he happens to be lucid.
- Volkmar the GrimThe GrimThe iron-willed high priest of Sigmar, who rides his War Altar into the thickest fighting and preaches damnation to the foe with a warhammer for punctuation.
Subfactions
- AverlandThe gold-and-black province of the southern grasslands, grown fat on cattle, grain, and the trade roads to the dwarfholds, and kept forever watchful by Black Fire Pass at its border. Every greenskin surge out of the mountains breaks on Averland first, and its yellow-coated regiments have held the pass so many times the province calls it their second home and their first graveyard. Averlanders are open-handed, sun-loving, and a little eccentric; famously, on occasion, their Elector Counts most of all.
- MiddenlandThe great forest-province of the north, where blue-clad regiments are hardened by the haunted dark of the Drakwald. Middenlanders keep faith with Ulric, the old god of winter, wolves, and war, and regard southern hammer-piety with a fighting man's suspicion. They ask nothing of the Empire but a hard front line, and they usually are it.
- ReiklandThe Emperor's own province: the richest, proudest, and most powerful of the Empire's great states, seated on the river Reik with Altdorf (capital, cathedral city, and home of the Colleges of Magic) at its heart. Its white-coated regiments are the pattern the rest of the Empire drills to match, and Reiklanders never forget that Sigmar himself was born of the tribes that held these lands. The other provinces call it arrogance; the Reikland calls it inheritance.
- StirlandA poor, proud province of moors, hills, and hedgerow farms, whose green-clad levies are mocked as bumpkins right up until the fighting starts. Stirland's burden is its geography: the haunted county of Sylvania lies within its bounds, and Stirlanders learn young to bury their dead with silver, prayers, and a spade kept sharp. No province digs better graves, or fills them more reluctantly.
Sources & further reading
- Old World Almanack: What's up with the Empire of Man?. Warhammer Community, , The lore and The wizards: Anarchy, regional identity and magic before the Colleges. Accessed .Official source checked during the 2026-09-29 assisted audit; whole-page human review pending.
- Old World Development Diary: Explore the war torn lands of the World-that-Was. Warhammer Community, , Anarchy in the Empire, the four claimants and the period before the Great War. Accessed .Official source checked during the 2026-09-29 assisted audit; whole-page human review pending.
- World Championships Preview: The Empire of Man is united in war. Warhammer Community, , State troops, cavalry, artillery and specialist models; publication-era range preview. Accessed .Official source checked during the 2026-09-29 assisted audit; whole-page human review pending.
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