Warhammer Fantasy

A dark-medieval Europe that never was, eight invisible winds of magic, and a hole in the sky at the top of the world. This is the Old World — the fantasy setting Games Workshop built over thirty years, then deliberately blew up in 2015.

Dwarfs who write their grudges in a book that never ends. Rats who deny their own existence. Elves split by a single denied throne. A tour of the powers fighting over a dying fantasy world — and the hatreds that keep them from ever uniting against the thing that will kill them all.

The Old World was never going to win. From daemon-haunted poles to a rat empire under every floor, here is why Warhammer Fantasy is a story about civilizations fighting entropy with one hand tied behind their back.

In 2015, Games Workshop did something almost no franchise dares to do: it ended its 30-year-old fantasy world for real — cracked the planet in half and let it die. Here is how the Old World fell, and what rose from its ashes.