The End Times

Every world must end, and the world of the Old World ended in fire and daemon-light during the cataclysm called The End Times. What began as another Chaos incursion swelled until it consumed all creation, as the Dark Gods threw the full weight of the Realm of Chaos against a world too divided to save itself.

The northlands vomited forth an endless host under Archaon the Everchosen, while in the south Nagash rose from death to claim the world for the grave. The winds of magic themselves ran wild, and the sky bled colours no mortal eye was meant to see. City after city fell (Praag, Marienburg, mighty Altdorf itself) as the Empire of Man and its ancient allies were ground relentlessly down. A handful of heroes were raised as Incarnates of the winds of magic, avatars of a last desperate hope, and around them the free peoples made their final stands.

Old enemies became reluctant allies as elves, dwarfs and men set aside grudges older than kingdoms to face annihilation together. Ancient artefacts were spent, gods walked the earth and fell, and every reserve the world had hoarded against disaster was thrown into the fire at once. It was not enough. One by one the last bastions were overwhelmed, until the fighting reached the very ground where the world's fate would be decided.

The End Times closed with the world itself unmade, swallowed by Chaos even as its defenders struck their final blows. For the full account of that apocalypse and the twilight of gods and men, see the End Times: the war that ended one age and, from its ashes, gave rise to the Mortal Realms born from the shards of everything that had been lost.