Editing Warhammer Meta-Setting (section)

=== Fantasy ===

Knights knights vikings daemons hammers horses knights

====The Proto cycle====

The cycle that came before the fantasy cycle. We don't know much about this cycle: are most concert bit of information comes from a quote from the Obernarn Stone found in Tome of Salvation. The quote reads as follows: 

''"And then the Cataclysm came. King Taal rose from His Forest, and with Dark Morr muttering dire portents in His ear, He banished all immortals from the world. But the Cataclysm’s architects refused His order. The Crow, the Hound, the Serpent, and the Vulture were jealous of King Taal, and had tried to use the Great Gates to take what was His. They had failed. As the other immortals fled, the Four attacked, bitter and angry with their frustrations. Many died. After countless battles, King Taal was eventually surrounded. There were few still by his side. Ulric the Wolf. Noble Margileo. Just Verena. Sotek the Snake. Manann of the Sea. And Gentle Shallya, tear-stained and afraid. Even Smiling Ranald had fled, and now hid in the Places Between, fearful for the future. Then, just as the Four and their allies arrived for the Final Battle, Flaming Phoenix, whom all had thought dead, returned from atop His Gleaming Pyramid, and He smote about Him. Thus the rebels were pushed behind the Great Gates, and were sealed there forever. But they were restless in their cage, and soon worked to escape."''

Why does this matter? Because the Flaming Phoenix is clearly Asuryan, and the Elven gods were all refluffed to be survivors of the proto-cycle, therefore this could be a recording of an event that actually happened in the proto-cycle. If we take this as assumption as true this indicates a few things.

First that the [[Warhammer_Fantasy_Gods#Humans|Human gods]], are all survivors of the protocycle, with status comparable to age of Sigmar Gods. [[Sotek]] is an odd addition as well as the only non human god mentioned by name. 

Second: Asuryan is not typically associated with 'Gleaming Pyramids', but Sotek of the lizardmen very much is so, in fact lizardmen have temple-pyramids-spaceships. As the stone refers to him '''returned from atop His Gleaming Pyramid''' thus implying the thing is moving (replace pyramid with chariot and it makes just as much sense), this could be the first (both in and out of setting) depiction of these star ship-pyramids. Also Asuryan is associated with prophecy, something the old ones are also very much associated with. This perhaps points to Asuryan BEING an old one.

Third: old lore has the old ones had polar gates ([[Webway|webways]] in all but name) that broke apart and let chaos into the world. In the Obernarn Stone however the gates are not destroyed but instead chaos is merely 'pushed back' beyond them. As you read bellow the idea of chaos emerging into a world, running rampart, then being pushed back is replicated both in the Fantasy and Age of Sigmar so it thematically fits with the other two settings.

Ultimately though we can't ignore that the Obernarn Stone is only found in Tome of Salvation, and that book was published in 2008, long before the end times or age of Sigmar. Still it is the only real look we have at that proto-cycle and the parallels between it and later cycles are interesting. Additional nothing in the stone is self have been contridicted. . . yet so it is still canon, albeit as canon as an in universe stone can be.

====The Fantasy Cycle====
This is [[Warhammer Fantasy]] as we know it - It is comprised of one planet, two moons and one star, has some different Gods from different pantheons and, of course, Chaos. The Fantasy world was destroyed in the [[The End Times]], when Chaos upped its game, Archaon went berserk, Sigmar came back into the current Emperor's body, the Chaos moon was blown up and the First Necromancer ate three gods. Long story.

The gods of this world were leftovers from the last one, according to [[Lileath]], who first revealed the existence of the cycle during the End Times. The first beings to have an influence on the created world seem to be the Old Ones, who ''supposedly'' created all the races, including, but not limited to, the humans, elves, ogres, halflings and dwarves, all in the pursuit of making the perfect anti-chaotic race (Elves were first and despite their great magic, frailty and low fertility made them unable to stop Chaos alone, the Dwarfs were next and while they were able to make Chaos free Runes and were tough but were too stubborn to adapt to daemon trickery, then humans who were capable of adapting but were vulnerable to corruption more than the other two, then they tried others like the Sky Titans who were magically adept like elves and tough like dwarvers but were too isolated, some others who were presumably wiped out or quickly abandoned to be the minor races around and the last two were the Halflings who were a prototype of the ogres and are resistant to mutation and the ogres made capable of reproducing like humans tougher than dwarves and had occasional magical talent but who were left half finished, unable to be given a culture and with no knowledge not naturally acquired and left extremely gluttonous as the Chaos invasion came). When that didn't end well (all races being susceptible to Chaos in one way or other, the Dwarfs eastern colonies turning to Chaos God Hashut as the [[Chaos Dwarfs]] and individual Elves like [[Dechala]] turning to Chaos), they created the Lizardmen, who worked, but were both misplaced (being placed far from anything of importance in the continent of Lustria or not!South America) and too few to do an actual difference as the first incursion killed the most powerful of the [[Slann]] leader caste and severely damaged the cities. It's unclear how much of the old fluff is still holding about the creation of the other races, but since the elven gods are also leftovers from an old universe it's unlikely. It can be assumed that the Old Ones fashioned the templates based on the surviving gods.

Speaking of elven gods, the elven pantheon is one of the most active ones in the Fantasy world, as all of them ([[Asuryan]] especially) are actively battling Chaos. As they are now fluffed to have been survivors of the old proto cycle this make sense.

Timelines from the High Elf army book (7th edition is the copy I'm looking at) say that a cycle lasts longer then 4 and a half thousand years. For a point of reference the bronze age was roughly 4,000 years ago.

====Age of Sigmar cycle====
It's unclear if the [[Warhammer: Age of Sigmar|Age of Sigmar]] counts as a cycle, or is the time between cycles. The problem is the world in the [[Warhammer: Age of Sigmar#The Age of Sigmar|the Age of Sigmar]] still exists as a number Realms made from each of the [[Warhammer Magic|Winds of Magic]], implying that the Winds of Magic are consistent across each Cycle, and and compared to the last cycle there is nothing we would understand as a 'planet'. If this is a Cycle and not just the period of time between cycles, where the realms will collapse into a single planet, that says there is a high degree of variances between the actual make up of the world between Cycles. The Fantasy Cycle was just one planet, in total, not part of a larger galaxy that presumable also would have been unmade.

The date we got from the Warhammer High Elf army books, 4500, is the start of reign of the first Phoenix King [[High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)#Aenarion the Defender|Aenarion the Defender]], who became king in the wake of the first chaos incursions into the world. We don't have any dates before that, as the [[High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Asur]] didn't keep calendars before and the [[Dwarfs (Warhammer Fantasy)|Dawi]] never shared (and also, their dating system ''also'' takes this as year zero: when [[Valaya]] erected the Pillars of Karaz-a-Karak). This means that from the point chaos first begins to invade in bulk to the end is somewhere in the ball park of 4.5 thousand years. In [[Warhammer: Age of Sigmar|Age of Sigmar]] canon the point where chaos broke into the world would either be the [[Warhammer: Age of Sigmar#The Age of Chaos|Age of Chaos]] or the later part of the [[Warhammer: Age of Sigmar#The Age of Myth|Age of Myth]], so from that point Sigmar's got him self 4.5 thousand years until the next cycle assuming that's a constant.

Here's where things start unraveling; when Chaos first came to the Mortal Realms, they ''WON''. All organized resistance was crushed except for [[Sigmar]]'s realm of [[Azyr]], the chaos hordes being left to raid and despoil all of the now-isolated kingdoms and empires of the other seven realms. They then proceeded to putter around aimlessly while [[Sigmar]] got his counterattack ready, making no attempt to destroy the world and dragging their fights with the remaining centers of resistance out as far as they could. The time period the game is set 500 years later (reference: The Realmgate Wars - All-Gates, page 4), when the powers of Order are finally striking back to reclaim a world that Chaos has dominated for half a millennium.

*The counterpoint is that something similar happened to the [[High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|High Elves]]. Chaos invaded and they got their shit kicked until [[High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)#Aenarion the Defender|Aenarion the Defender]] became the Phoenix King and the [[High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|High Elves]] started writing dates down. While it did not last an age, there was a large period of time where chaos ran rampart across the world before the elves got it's shit together to pull together win by deus ex machina (Caledor's vortex). So this pattern of chaos coming, then receding at first does not seem to be unprecedented.
*On the other hand, this time [[Sigmar]] is here, alive and kicking, the Celestant-Prime can purify Chaos-enslaved people with [[Ghal-Maraz]] (though only if they still have some sliver of soul that can be saved, not [[Daemon Prince|Daemon Princes]]), and the novels have shown even [[Nurgle]] can get hurt by the power of [[Azyr]], while things are still on the balance it's the first time the potentiality of a real victory against Chaos is plausible.
*To further elaborate on that last point, the [[Chaos Gods]] might decide that this cycle they'll continue the eternal stalemate, so as to avoid potential destruction.