In recent times, the Ascended god Sigmar has led the forces of Order in taking back many of the Mortal Realms from the rule of Chaos, establishing new settlements of the Free Peoples and helping to reinforce those uncorrupted mortal nations that survived the long reign of Chaos. Several of the greatest and most powerful of those essences became the Ascended deities of the new realms.įollowing the invasion of the Mortal Realms some centuries ago by the forces of Chaos, initiating what became known as the realms' Age of Chaos, the Chaos Gods' Chosen Archaon spread his domain across seven of the eight Mortal Realms, sparing only Azyr, the Realm of Heavens from the destruction wrought by Chaos. Many of the souls of the people of the World-That-Was were reborn as mortals of the Eight Realms. In time, they became able to support new life.
They gradually coalesced over the passing aeons into eight new planes of existence defined by the characteristics that embodied their dominant lore of magic. These aetheric energies flowed out uncontained into the void once that world was consumed by Chaos. The Mortal Realms are physical embodiments in roughly spherical form of the eight Winds of Magic that once were wielded by the mages and sorcerers of the World-That-Was. They were born out of the destruction of the World-That-Was during the End Times and coalesced from the magical energies and physical remnants of that lost world which remained behind after its dissolution. The Mortal Realms, also called the Eight Realms, are a group of eight expansive planes of existence floating within the Aetheric Void of the Cosmos Arcane that were first revealed to the god Sigmar by the Great Drake Dracothion.
The commonly accepted symbols for each of the Mortal Realms drawn from the eight lores of magic and depicted on this Arcanoscope clockwise from the top is Azyr, Ghyran, Ghur, Chamon, Aqshy, Shyish, Ulgu, and Hysh.