Editing Warhammer: Age of Sigmar (section)

== Broken Realms ==
Meanwhile, Morathi enacted the final stages of her master plan to achieve godhood. First she stole the Ocarian Lantern, an ancient artifact of Teclis, from the Idoneth Deepkin - who themselves had stolen it from Teclis first. Then she stole a shipment of Allpoints realmstone from Archaon (tricking the Daughters of Khaine into thinking the ritual was to summon Khaine so he could lead them directly), while Archaon was distracted by another Ossiarch Bonereaper assault on the Varanspire led by Katakros, who had been secretly bribed by Morathi with tonnes of bones to carry out the attack. The final part of the plan was Morathi entering the belly of Slaanesh and extracting the souls of the elven kings of the World-That-Was to consume their raw power as the final ingredient for her ascension. It almost worked until she gets to the soul of Aenarion (while not named, the souls' spark of divine power is described as a "sacred flame" stronger than the others, they're someone she "...shared a closeness with that her cruel heart had never experienced before or since" and she hesitated to attack him so clearly it's Aenarion). Aenarion literally sliced her soul in half for what she did to the others, combining with the ritual to have a dramatic effect on Slaanesh (see below).

Morathi remerged from Slaanesh's belly as a true goddess, but now with one soul in two bodies: Morathi-Khaine, the fusion of Morathi and Khaine but with Morathi's aelven form, and The Shadow Queen, the most monstrous parts of Morathi's psyche given physical form thus having her winged snake-woman form. She bargained with Volturnos, giving him the Ocarian Lantern and the souls of Volturnos' Cythai peers in exchange for an alliance. She then invaded and conquered Anvilgard through a hidden army of insurrectionists in the city and an army of Daughters, renaming it Har Kuron (though the city has Sigmar loyalists forming a resistance movement against Morathi, [[Crunch|meaning players can still use the Anvilgard rules in the game]]). Initially, the coup went off almost flawlessly, as the city's defenses were overrun from within, and Morathi gave specific instructions to capture all Stormcast within the city alive, preventing them from being sent back to Azyr upon death and informing Sigmar. The Daughters of Khaine and their Idoneth allies then went on a bloody purge of the city and all surrounding settlements along the coast, stamping out any resistance groups they came across and even murdering/sacrificing some Lumineth Realm Lords who were there acting as advisors and ambassadors. At first it seemed that Morathi would get away almost scot free, until one of the captive Stormcasts was freed by a strange shadowy figure (later revealed to be Be'lakor trying to undermine the Order Grand Alliance). Sigmar found out about the treachery and sent an army of Stormcast to retake Anvilgard. The fighting raged until the Celestant-Prime arrived with Sigmar's voice speaking through him, and negotiated with Morathi. Afterwards the Stormcast withdrew and Morathi was allowed to keep the city; what Morathi had to give in return is unknown [[/d/|though some have been making guesses over what happens when evil witch and barbarian warlord meet]].

Even worse, an unintended side effect of the ritual and Aenarion's attack was that [[What|Slaanesh gave birth to some sort of godspawn]]. The Newborn followed Morathi back to the Mortal Realms before splitting into twin demigods called Dexcessa and Synessa, who have started rallying the Hedonites to exact revenge on their father/mother's behalf. Among these forces is [[Sigvald]], whose soul was released from the prison Nagash threw him in and ascended to not-quite Daemon Prince after his mortal body was killed (and pissed on) in the End Times.

Meanwhile Teclis and Nagash make major moves, Nagash seeking to spread the Necroquake across the realms and Teclis seeking to end the Soul Wars. The end result sees Arkhan slain by the Light of Eltharion, the Necroquake ended and Nagash losing his nine books and being bound to Nagashizzar for a time, thus ending the Soul Wars. After Nagash's defeat, Teclis learns he's been marked by Nagash and receives an ominous warning from Alarielle, stating that with the power Death now being pushed back in the Realms, the energy of Life will start to grow in its place, with some unforeseeable consequences.

Malerion later showed up in Har Kuron and confronted his mother about her actions and how they’ve endangered their long-term plans by angering Sigmar. Morathi cut off one of his fingers in retaliation for his sass and told him to chill out, as she’s confident Sigmar isn’t going to do anything else, and that he should focus on his own problems like the fact Tyrion is apparently trying to make a stable path from Hysh into Ulgu so he can invade it. Malerion responded that he had it under control by seeding sleeper agents in Tyrion’s ranks to sabotage the Lumineth while other servants of his gathered artifacts from places like Shyish to serve as bargaining chips for him.

In the next book, Be'lakor took things to a whole different level by destroying the Seraphon’s future seeing devices and tricking them into killing one of Archaon’s Gaunt Summoners, further undermining the Everchosen's plans to invade Azyr. After Be'lakor discovered the explosion of the summoner’s silver tower has destroyed the realmgates connected to it and unleash a storm of chaos energy in Chamon, Be’lakor now seeks to destroy all the realmgates in existence and flood the realms with chaos demons. That said, he realizes that even by starting with the reclusive realm of Hysh he won't be able to do much by himself. So to this end, he manages to parley with [[Lady Olynder]] while she's living free of her asshole boss. He convinces/threatens her to join forces with him to assault Sigmar's forces in Chamon and to lift the curse she had placed upon him in their previous encounter, and in return he promises her the souls of the Stormcast they slay to drag back to Shyish and torture them to her heart's content. The two of them manage to overrun the defenders of the Chamon city of Vindicarum in a desperate siege and destroy all realmgates in Chamon. The few hundred scared survivors of Vindicarum are only saved by the intervention of a combined armada of the Kharadron Overlords, who decide to intervene after the Second Conference of Madralta. Be'lakor moved to destroy the Kharadron interlopers, but stopped when he sensed a strange presence amongst the sky dwarves that he hadn't felt since the World that Was; a white haired dwarf stood upon the deck of one of the ships, radiating an almost godlike energy in Be'lakor's eyes. Be'lakor, not wanting to take any unnecessary risks, called off his attack at this point and left, satisfied in knowing that the damage he did would have severe consequences. This proved particularly devastating for the local Stormcast, who realize that due to the storm of chaos now raging around them they're cut off from Azyr and their deaths are well and truly permanent. Not only that, but two entire Stormhosts, the Celestial Vindicators and the Hallowed Knights, have been severely depleted, while a third, the Sigmarite Brotherhood, was wiped out completely, with little hope of rescuing or reforging their souls.

In the final book Alarielle's attempt to revive the Oak of Ages via her Rite of Life, while successful in its goal, accidentally unleashes Kragnos; a powerful, ancient, Drogrukh (centaur) Destruction god sealed away in Ghur during the Age of Myth by Lord Kroak. Unaware that any time had passed since his imprisonment, Kragnos rampages across Ghur, recruiting a couple of Mega-Gargants and reveling in his newfound freedom and eager to reunite with his people - who unbeknownst to him had been wiped out while their nation of Donse was now ruins... and partially occupied by the free city of Excelsis. Upon reaching the edge of what was left of Donse, Kragnos was enraged by the loss of his people, the city built over the ruins and the arrival of a Waaagh! composed of Gordrakk and his tribe along with some Gloomspite Gitz lead by the Loonking Skragrott. The two sides fight for a bit, with Kragnos causing a landside, and it looks like it will be a fight to the death until the Bad Moon itself stops the fight and calls it a draw. Kragnos then shrugs and the Orruks decide to follow him on his quest to destroy Excelsis... something they were more than happy to do given they were already on their way to do just that with their giant battering ram made from a godbeast's skull when they ran into Kragnos. Fortunately for the Orruks Excelsis is already in a weakened state, as a prior Tzeentchian daemon incursion led to a reactionary anti-magic civil war. Which would have been bad enough on its own...but then on top of that the twin Newborn daemons of Slaanesh then went and manipulated the anti-magic movement into a pogrom against elves allowing the daemons to both feed on elf souls and to deplete Excelsis' magical defenses through elves being killed or leaving the city. This combined with them also organizing a Skaven assault to undermine the city defenses further, allows the Newborn daemons to fully manifest in Excelsis just before Kragnos and his goons arrive.

Around that time Lord Kroak arrives, but despite his best attempts to reinforce the city's defenses with magic he's unable to stop Kragnos from smashing his way through the city's Southern Wall while the defenders are distracted by Gordrakk's failed attack on the main gate with his battering ram. Kragnos' success combined with the city’s Ogor mercenaries turning on the defenders due to them secretly being agents of the Loonking, allows the Orruk army to pour into the city. The carnage is only ended when some witch hunters and their Stormcast allies manage to banish the twin demons, and Morathi unexpectedly shows up with a wholeass Black Ark worth of Daughters of Khaine to reinforce the defenders. Morathi unleashes her serpentine Shadow Queen half on Kragnos while her Elf half helps Lord Kroak create a giant portal laced with an illusion that tricks Kragnos into getting teleported to the other side of Ghur. What was this illusion? It was dragons. Apparently Kraggy's hateboner for them is so great that he will literally drop everything to have a chance to fuck them up.

Without Kragnos' support, the defenders were able to drive out the Greenskins. Upon realizing he’s been tricked, Kragnos takes out his frustrations on a local chaos fortress while a [[Kruleboyz|nearby Orruk tribe]] watches in awe. Nagash's evil skelepope spirit comes to Teclis and says he'll come back on Teclis twice as hard for ruining his soul collection. Be'lakor goes to the Garden of Slaanesh to dunk on the Newborns for getting banished by a pair of human witch hunters, only for them to say it was [[Just as Planned]]. While that’s happening, Morathi and the Celestant Prime are busy getting into a shouting match over her backstabbing Sigmar, but they're stopped by the newly arrived Grungni, who points out the good from Morathi's actions as evidenced by the mess with Kragnos, and claiming that there are bigger problems to worry about - as the Storms of Chaos unleashed by Be'lakor are spreading.