The Coming of Chaos

The Coming of Chaos was the catastrophe that broke the world. When the northern and southern polar gates of the Old Ones collapsed, the barrier holding back the Realm of Chaos was torn asunder, and a tide of raw warp-stuff flooded creation from both poles. Where once the Old Ones had channelled orderly magic, now boiled seas of unfettered sorcery, and from that maelstrom the first daemons were spat screaming into the material world.

The consequences fell upon every race. The elves of Ulthuan rose to war against the daemonic hosts in a struggle that nearly annihilated them; the dwarfs sealed their holds against the madness; and the young race of men, scattered in primitive tribes, was driven south from the corrupted northern wastes. From the poles spread the Chaos Wastes, blighted lands where reality itself ran molten and the Warriors of Chaos would one day gather beneath the shadow of the Dark Gods.

Mutation and madness became facts of existence. Warpstone rained upon the world, twisting flesh and mind, seeding horrors in every dark place, and giving rise in time to the ratmen who would gnaw at civilisation's foundations.

The Coming of Chaos did not end: it never ends. It marked the moment the world was condemned to perpetual siege, its every future age defined by the eternal war between the fragile works of mortals and the ravening powers of the northern dark.