Cathay

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Until recently, this was the only official picture we had of anyone from Cathay.

"Goddamn Mongorians Kurgans! Stop tearing down my shitty warr!"

– What the Cathayans have to say roughly 12 times every hour or so

Cathay is the uninspired name for the analogue to China in the Warhammer Fantasy universe. That said, it is at least marginally more inspired than their name for the Japan analogue (and only because Nippon is a better-known name for Japan than Cathay is for China in Europe).

THEY'RE GONNA BE IN TOTAL WAR WARHAMMER 3

Geography

The country is huge (as in the case with a certain real-world country), much bigger than the Empire and the other western lands. To the north is the Mongolian steppes Eastern Steppes and regions of chaos, which are held at bay by the huge-ass Great Wall Bastion of China Cathay which prevents the hordes from pillaging. Why the Empire never took this up themselves isn't explained.

To the west is the Mountains of Mourn, the warpstone deserts and the Great Maw. Incidentally, you can blame the Cathayans for the Great Maw’s existence as the Dragon Emperor had his celestial wizards summon the thing to punish the Ogres for eating some of his citizens. Although recently there has been some evidence Tzeentch had a hand in how tits up it went. To the south is a mysterious jungle where the lost city of the old ones is. Eastwards is the sea, with Nippon and the Lost Isles of Elithis.

Cities and Provinces

  • Imperial Cathay - Located just south of Northern Provinces. It is a small region ruled by Emperor and Empress directly.
    • Wei-Jin - The Capital of Cathay that normal mortals can enter. Weirdly little lore is available currently.
      • The Celestial City - in the clouds above Wei-Jin; Home of the Jade Court. Location of the Wu Zing Compass, through which the Emperor directs the winds of magic to strengthen different areas of the empire in need.
  • Central Provinces – Breadbasket of empire. Ruled by Yuan Bo. It is reasonably safe. If you want to live in the Warhammer world, this is a pretty good choice. Even here though, forests are risky.
    • Shang Wu - The most important city in Central Cathay. It is the seat of the Jade Dragon, Yuan Bo, who rules Central Cathay. Shang Wu lies where the Great River and other rivers meet and is also where the Broken Road and the Great Road meet, making it an incredibly important trade hub. The city is located near rich farmland.
  • Eastern Provinces - The wealthiest region, with numerous major cities and lots of trade. It even has a large high elf population, as well as other races from across the world. Home of Dragon Fleets which guard against those pesky emos and Nippon.
    • Fu-Chow - A cosmopolitan sea trade city located in the east. The palace of the Sea Dragon is there. This city is full of ghettos for different races. It's possibly the most metropolitan place in the world, eclipsing even Marienburg and Lothern.
    • Bei Chai – Another eastern city, having a dark reputation for harbouring the cults of Tzeentch. Mention of a Cult of the Painted Skin growing here. Other chaos gods struggle to get a foothold in Cathay mainly due to this lot.
  • Western Provinces – Other than the city of Shan Yang and the Iron Dragon, there is a place called the Tower of Ashshair, which was featured all the way back in Tamurkhan: Throne of Chaos, as well as the warpstone desert. In this desert, caravans have to use mirrored shields to protect from chaos radiation. Also home of the Great Maw.
    • Shan Yang - It is the largest city in the west, a bustling metropolis full of foreign traders despite its location in the middle of the Warpstone Desert. Sometimes invaded by Ogres, Hobgoblins and Skaven. The door between the Old World and Cathay; Estalians, Tileans and Empire travellers and ambassadors all have permanent quarters within the city. It also draws in cabals of alchemists and hedge wizards, who use the city as a base for their expeditions into the desert. Since it's all unofficial and unsanctioned, a lot of warpstone and other elements get used in ways that aren't exactly the safest. Home of the Iron Dragon.
  • Northern Provinces - Consisting mainly of the Great Bastion and its supplying towns, its other notable aspect is being home to the river that in Cathayan mythos leads to the underworld. Rumoured to be trapped under this river is the lost Spirt Dragon, a child of the Dragon Emperor and the Moon Empress.
    • Nan-Gau – The major city of the north, known as the city of smoke. A fortress city linked to the Great Bastion, it has never fallen to any invader. The Lords of Nan-Gau are not as deferent to the Dragons as the ruling classes in other cities. This is because the city is home to countless forges and workshops that furnish the armies of the empire with weapons and provide countless war machines for the defence of the Great Bastion. So, the Lords are powerful, granted more independence than most and have occasionally even dared to challenge Miao Ying, the Dragon nominally in charge. She does quickly exert her power to make them fall in line when needed.
  • Southern Provinces – lots of foothills rolling into the Mountains of Heaven. It contains lots of tribes and is an unruly region due to the Monkey Kings presence. Also, there is the "occasional tiger man village”. Home of the Fire Dragon, Li Dao.
    • Fu-Hung - Known as the chanting city. It is the home of the Phoenix Temple, a great structure shaped as a giant vermilion warbird, close to the Mountains of Heaven. Whilst religion dedicated to deities and the Dragons isn't allowed, ancestor worship and veneration of local items of interest are tolerated. Vermillion warbirds are smaller phoenixes native to Cathay and very important in Cathayan culture.
  • The Great Bastion - The Great Wall of China Cathay. In history there is a mythic telling of how it was built by the dragons: Every brick fashioned by the Iron Dragon, breathed upon by the Fire Dragon, Blessed by the Emperor. In reality, thousands of people were used to build the wall. It has 10 small fortresses built into it, each a miniature city in scale and population. The Dragon Emperor has tied his very essence to the wall, so if it ever fell he would die too. He almost died when a certain hypnotoad slapped the plates of the planet around, causing the walls to be royally messed up for a while. Ruled by Miao Ying, showing the level of trust and/or favouritism the Dragon Emperor has for his number one daughter.
    • Dragon Gate –
    • Snake Gate –
    • Turtle Gate –

Who Rules Cathay?

The dragon emperor and his wife the moon empress (both of which were around when the Old Ones were alive) are the official rulers of Cathay. The emperor is pretty hands-off. His wife likes to go around pretending to be a regular human to check on things, and also root out cults of Tzeentch (other chaos gods don't seem to have much interest in Cathay). The emperor has 9 children and four are missing. One is strongly hinted to be trapped under a river in the north of Cathay, and another one is hinted to be the one Archaon ripped apart in older lore. Two Remain completely unaccounted for. The 5 remaining each rule a piece of Cathay.

Miao Ying

The Storm Dragon. She rules the north and has the duty of protecting the Great Bastion. She is also daddy's favourite and her siblings are jealous of her. She's known for being cold and aloof, beyond the normal Dragon Children level, which might be from having to watch thousands of her subjects constantly die due to chaos attacking the Great Bastion every other Tuesday.

Zhao Ming

The Iron Dragon. This guy rules the west which borders the warpstone desert. He has a green rock in his hat, right over his forehead. During an interview Andy Hall, lead writer of the Total War: WARHAMMER series, was asked if this rock was jade or warpstone. Andy refused to say which one it was. While his siblings are quite aloof towards their human subjects, Zhao is far more friendly and sociable to them and most of the Dragon-blooded trace their ancestry to him. Zhao also has an interest in alchemy. Fun fact: Real Life Daoism alchemists were interested in cinnabar (which was a frequent ingredient in their attempts to make an elixir of immortality), so Chinese alchemists messing around with poison stuff in ways they shouldn't does have real-life precedent. Also, Zhao's siblings think his mental health has declined, with his friendliness towards humans being considered some of the evidence of this. Hmmm... He's protected by his mother though, being her favourite. So you end up with a guy snorting lines of warpstone, partying with his subjects and getting it on with cute alchemist girls. A true hero of the Cathayan people.

Li Dao

The Fire Dragon (master of the burning winds and lord of the phoenix) - Male Ruler of the South, described as bitter that Miao Ying gets all the attention for defending the north when he has the challenging and thankless task of protecting the empire from Ind and Kuresh. Also has to deal with the Monkey King the most out of all the Dragon Siblings, who basically constantly trolls him from Warhammer Nepal. Being stuck as the second best and second favourite behind Miao Ying whilst constantly getting dunked on by some overgrown furry has left him with some unresolved issues.

Yin Yin

The Sea Dragon, Female Ruler of the East, admiral of the Grand Dragon Fleet. Apparently, she’s more impulsive than the others and has an oddly expansionist outlook. In the past, she led a failed naval invasion of the Southlands and Lustria, so she was in charge during the old lore where Cathay got absolutely destroyed by Lizardmen. She also got wrecked by Araby when she tried invading them. As a result of wasting so many Cathayan lives, she is the least popular of her siblings with both the parents and her brothers and sister. When not being defeated by every other faction, she spends most of her time dealing with the Dark Elves raiding her coasts and Nippon looking angrily at Cathay.

Yuan Bo

The Jade Dragon. The boring middle child. He rules over central Cathay and is in charge of the main bureaucracy. He spends most of his time telling the rest of his siblings to shut up and listen to Daddy, whereupon the rest of his siblings tell him to shut his nerd ass up. He then cries to his parents who pretend to listen, and then send him back down because he's the only one who can be bothered to figure out all this 'administration' business that's needed to run a nation. Despite this, he is still the most 'liked' if only because everyone dislikes him equally enough that he isn't anyone's most hated sibling.

Recent events

According to the eight ed BRB, the Kurgans once mounted a massive raid on Cathay's Great Bastion. Which is funny, because Kurgans are basically Chaos-Turko Slavs to the Norscan's Chaos Vikings. In the end times, they are invaded by Chaos and skaven. Remarkably, the dragon emperor drives out the Skaven and stalemates the forces of chaos, but ultimately loses to Grimgor's massive WAAAGH! The ruins of Cathay become the stage for an endless battle between the orcs and the remaining forces of chaos. Grimgor himself gets teleported away as he had become Incarnate of Beasts, and when the last effort to save the world fails, Cathay is destroyed along with the rest of the planet, revealed in Age of Sigmar to have been called Mallus.

Dammit, Forge World

Tamurkhan: Throne of Chaos, a book from Forge World's fantasy line, quite surprisingly contains a battle scene where the forces of Cathay are involved. A chaos sorcerer dupes a Beastman army into attacking the Tower of Ashshair, a Cathayan watchtower outpost at the edge of the Ogre Kingdoms which it uses to scry on the Old World. Its defenders included fancy bronze cannon that shoot harpoons, "crow-men", stone "temple dogs", elite warriors with back-banners and "thousand-folded" swords, and "Dragon-blooded Shugengan" who wield elemental magics (fire, water, earth, air and wood). In other words, your usual collection of oriental cliches, mostly Japanese. And sadly, it's likely the closest thing we'll get to an official Cathay army list along with the mention of them having elementals under their control in the Vampire Genevieve books.

But then, things get interesting when the Tower's garrison started to get overwhelmed by the Beastmen's numbers. The Tower turns the tide by dropping a frikking' Comet of Casandora into the horde, then starts sending "strange creatures of living stone" that can swim through the ground and minotaur-suplexing "living statues of onyx" to beat the shit out of the survivors. So at least we know that Cathay isn't to be messed with in the Warhammer world.

Total Warhammer 3 AKA: "HOLY SHIT WE'RE ACTUALLY GETTING SOMETHING FOR CATHAY"

A new challenger appear!

During the announcement of Total Warhammer 3, CA confirmed that Cathay will be one of the 6 playable factions. They've been working with GW in bringing the faction to life and making them one of the core races in the game. This is also great news for anyone hoping for Cathay in Warhammer: The Old World. More info will come soon, but this minor faction is finally getting the fleshing out it deserves. Between them and Kislev, this is a lore grognard's wet dream.

With the Reveal trailer, the first CA FAQ and GW discussion on Cathay's design + background we finally get our first proper looks at Cathay.

Front and centre is Miao Ying, daughter of the Celestial Dragon and his wife, and commander of the Northern Bastion (meaning that when Sayl attacked the wall it was her forces that drove him off). She's a dragon that can take a human form like her parents and its been shown that the Celestial Dragon spends his time in the Celestial city and overseeing Cathay while his children take direct control of different provinces (like a certain golden giant and his kids) as her brother Zhao Ming commands the western province and will be the other playable lord.

In the trailer we see rocket batteries, war balloons and those suplexing statues from the Tamurkhan book, in addition to regular human infantry and some lady earth bending. To help establish Cathay's playstyle GW themselves made rules for each unit and for the army (using 8th edition) to aid CA to understand how Cathay should act in-game. Yes there are currently rules for 8th edition Cathay and GW are just sitting on them and not releasing them.

An interesting thing to note is that both Miao Ying and Zhao Ming seem to be based on the Four Dragons from Chinese mythology, who are four children born to the "King of the Dragons" each of whom were granted their own land in a cardinal direction and are associated with an element. Zhao is The White Iron Dragon and the ruler of the Western province (because metal is an element according to the ancient Chinese) and Miao is the Black Storm Dragon and ruler of the Northern province, both of these line up with the four dragons mythology.

The three other active Dragon children have since been named, while four others have been confirmed to be AWOL and used as juicy plot hooks for any future expansions.


Cathay finally arrives on the scene

Canon Lore

With a recent blog release on the Total War blog, we have official lore on these guys. So once upon a time, The Dragon Emperor and his wife lived on the world before the Old Ones came, where it was mostly a frozen wasteland. Eventually, the space hypnotoads came and did their thing, terraforming the planet and creating all of the little races of the Warhammer World. When humans started to show up, The Dragon Emperor learned to take human shape and gathered a few tribes under his banner. When Chaos eventually came, more tribes flocked to him in order to protect their new empire, eventually creating the Great Bastion himself and instilling a section of his magic in order to prevent the Chaos Hordes from breaking into Cathay. Once Cathay started to take shape, The emperor and his wife decided they were happy with the lands they have and decided to settle down to defend them.

The Dragon pair and their kids would eventually rule over the land and teach them the ways of Harmony, to be one with themselves and the land around them and find their natural place in the world. The Dragons aren't tyrants but act more like teachers and wardens to the humans that are beneath them, as they feel they need the humans on their good side to fight Chaos. They've gotten so used to being with humans that they spend most of their time in human form, only going dragon in an emergency. They don't wish to be worshipped as gods, but it usually happens anyway, and the people of Cathay treat them with such reverence that talking shit about them is a good way to get murdered, especially if you're a foreigner.

Unfortunately for big D, while he seems to have done a decent job of instilling harmony in the people of Cathay, he hasn't done a good job of it with his kids because they all fucking hate each other. There are a confirmed nine children, but four of them are missing who knows where. Miao Ying is the most favoured and powerful of the Dragon kids, which has given her a massive superiority complex, and Zhao Ming is viewed as too experimental with his magic and many fear he is losing his mind due to how much time he spends around the Great Maw, snorting lines of warpstone and actually treating his subjects like human beings. The Dragon of the South is called the Fire Dragon and despises Miao Ying as well. They constantly have to deal with invasions from the Southlands from the Monkey King and Naga. The Dragon of the East is the Azure Dragon, the only one with an expansionist mindset, and the one who fought Dark Elves who made their way over the boiling sea. She also tried conquering Araby and once got stranded in Lustria, so Mrs Worldwide. The Final Dragon we know of is the Jade Dragon who rules the centre of Cathay and spends most of their time hating that they are surrounded by idiots and trying to tell their siblings to listen to Daddy. Evidently, they all spoil for mom and dad's attention and bicker a lot.

There is also the slight problem that Tzeentch cults hold a massive amount of power in the empire and has caused no shortage of problems. Not helping that even humans plot to either gain the favour of the dragons or usurp them. This all came to a head when the Dragon Emperor and his wife disappeared, leaving the kids alone to watch the place. This resulted in Cathay's version of the Warring States, as they fight for the throne while Cathay endures an invasion from the North and South.

Eventually, the Dragon Emperor and his wife came home from their four-century vacation to find their kids fighting, Chaos armies rampaging in their lands and the throne occupied by a god damn monkey.

Oh yeah, The Monkey King is still canon, but not much is known about him other than him taking over Cathay convinced the other Dragon kids to put aside their differences and fight him, until dad came home and won the war.

So on paper, we have a utopian society of harmony where Dragons and Humans act as one and stand defiant against the forces of Chaos in peace and tranquillity. Once you look closer though, we have a landmass led by spoiled children at each other's throats and only held in line by their parents, along with a fanatical population who are willing to kill any who so much as slightly criticize their rule, and is only held together because of the power and charisma of a single, semi god-like being.

In other words, pretty much what the Imperium would have become if Big E wasn't put on the golden toilet seat.

Gallery

Originally the only images we've had of Cathay and its people were a single picture in the Warhammer rule books and from a White Dwarf article where they showed off somebody's converted army. Suffice to say the converter did a great job, and the pictures are included below. Later on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Total War: Warhammer had their own stabs at what Cathay should look at.

  • Yabo Chao, an ambassador from Cathay in Altdorf.
    Yabo Chao, an ambassador from Cathay in Altdorf.

Links

Regions and Areas of the Warhammer World
Areas of The Old World: The Empire of Man - Bretonnia - Albion - Estalia - Tilea - Kislev - Norsca - Border Princes - Worlds Edge Mountains - Karak Eight-Peaks
Areas of The New World: Naggaroth - Lustria
Areas of The Eastern Lands: Cathay - Nippon - Ogre Kingdoms - Dark Lands - Kingdoms of Ind - Khuresh - Eastern Steppes
Areas of The Southlands: Nehekhara - Araby - Badlands - Marshes of Madness
Other Areas of the world: Ulthuan - Athel Loren - Chaos Wastes - Skavenblight - Lost Isles of Elithis
Main bodies of Water: The Great Ocean - The Far Sea - The Sea of Dread - Inner Sea of Ulthuan
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