Thommy H:
Lord-Celestant Darius Thunderpeal
In the bleak darkness of the Ulgulands, the Realm of Shadow, the monuments of ancient civilisations pierce the mists. In one such forgotten city �?" a complex of truly titanic proportions, built with masonry the size of mountains and with walls that blot out the sky �?" can be found an artefact that is the wonder of even the strange and sorcery-infused Mortal Realms. This is the Infinity Stair, a location of such power that physical echoes of it sometimes spontaneously manifest in other realms. It is a colossal pillar of stone circled by a great spiralling staircase, each tread miles high and each surface the breadth of a nation. In cracks and fissures, and long-eroded runic inscriptions, the mists of the Ulgulands coalesce and form watercourses and lakes. Flora and fauna live on the vast stone plains, and even human tribes cling to the enormous construction, most never leaving the Infinity Stair, or even their native step of it. Above a certain height, the air is thin and each mighty step is coated with frost and snow. Mighty glaciers march ever down the staircase, carving through stone, until the air warms and they melt into surging waterfalls that feed the rivers further down. What lies above the snowline, none have ever lived to tell. At the bottom, the continental weight of the Infinity Stair bears down on its own foundations, pulverising stone into viscous ooze, so that the lower levels are lost in a morass of swamp. The mists wreath these foetid depths, and evil creatures multiply in the fell darkness.
Since the beginning of the Age of Chaos, a terrible war has raged across the Infinity Stair. The agents of the Dark Master �?" who is also known as Be’lakor, the first Daemon Prince of Chaos, an ancient terror of the world before time �?" the so-called Dark Emissaries, have struggled for dominance, goading the twisted creatures of the lowest steps into battle. Their chief servants are Brayherds, Skaven and the cyclopean mist-haunters known as Fimir, hideous reptilian monsters who long ago sold their souls to the Gods of Chaos. Opposing them are the Truthsayers, the keepers of a great power. Their ancestors erected stone circles up and down the Eternity Stair, and it is the magical energy ensnared by these mysterious monuments that ensures the enormous tower remains standing aeon after aeon. Their allies are the barbarian human tribes, the wild aelf Wanderers and the uncouth gargants who, it is said, are the stunted remnants of the forgotten race that built the great city and perhaps the Infinity Stair itself. Darius Thunderpeal, who was once known as Derwyn ap Llewellyn, was a chieftain of one of the greatest tribes of the upper steps, a race of nomadic herdsmen who fought on horseback and called themselves the Sons of the Wreath.
Derywn would fall during the Battle of a Million Spears, the culmination of a brutal offensive by Chaos forces that had carried them all the way to the Sons of the Wreath’s homelands. A palisade stood on the edge of their step, so that the enemy was forced to scale miles of vertical stone to even begin launching their assault, but the servants of the Dark Gods were numerous and unafraid. Gargants hurled boulders over the edge and eagles soared through the swirling mists, their aelven riders peppering the climbing foe with arrow after arrow. In the unseen world of magic, Truthsayers and Dark Emissaries wrested for dominance, their wills pitted against one another even though their bodies were many miles apart. But, unbeknownst to the Truthsayers and Derwyn’s warriors, the Skaven and the Fimir launched a daring attack. A turn of the Infinite Stair below, the mutated creatures climbed the central column itself and began to dig and gnaw away at the underside of the step on which the cataclysmic battle was fought. Though it took many weeks and the lives of thousands, they finally broke through and surged up far behind enemy lines. Caught between two armies, the tribesmen were slaughtered, and their people had no choice but to flee, risking the perilous climb to the wintry heights of the steps above. Derwyn fell with his great fists wrapped around the throat of a screeching Fimir Balefind, and as other enemies crawled over him to deliver the mortal blow, a bolt of lightning scattered them. When they recovered, the chieftain was gone. Had he been destroyed by the freak thunderbolt, or was some other power at work on that ruinous battlefield?
Reborn in the Realm of Azyr as Darius Thunderpeal, the skill and determination of that noble tribesman made him an ideal candidate for leadership within the Stormhosts, and the God-King granted him the honour of being one of the Lord-Celestants of the Bronze Brotherhood. Always more comfortable fighting from the saddle, Darius trekked alone into the lightning-wreathed peaks of the Azure Mountains to find and break an adult Dracoth to serve as his mount. The beast, whose respect he earned in their battle in the skies, is named Surge and is a truly deadly foe.
With the disastrous appearance of the Bronze Brotherhood in Aqshy, Darius Thunderpeal has had his resolve sorely tested. He knows all too well the danger that Chaos represents and has sworn to serve Sigmar in his great war across the Mortal Realms. He longs too to return to Ulgu and try to free his home from the servants of Be’lakor. If he and what remains of his Stormhost survive their journey to rejoin the rest of the Stormcast forces on the Brimstone Peninsula, perhaps he will have the opportunity to lead a future crusade to the Infinity Stair. The realms are vast though, and the Stormcast Eternals numerous; Darius knows the chances that he will find his way home are slim, and that he can never return to the life he once led even if he did go back. But it is perhaps only this fragile hope that sustains him, and so he holds onto it desperately, while never revealing the truth to any of his warriors, save perhaps the Lord-Relictor Mortus Shadowfane, whose burning gaze pierces the minds of all men.
Nothing too fancy here �?" the scheme is identical to the rest of the army, although obviously the dracoth needed some planning to get it to fit. What I did was paint it in the same turquoise basecoat I used for the Stormcasts’ armour and worked it up a little, before giving it a mid-blue glaze to make its colouring sympathetic to the glowing weapons and stuff as well. I think it fits in pretty well.
So that’s the starter box Stormcasts complete. I have a centrepiece model to add to this �?" something a little unexpected, I hope �?" and beyond that I’m not sure how (or even if) I want to expand the force. I have some spare Retributor bits which I may use to create a Knight-Vexilor and I also have an idea for making some human tribesmen to fight beside the big guys, led by a warrior priest or two. Of course, soon I’ll turn my attention to the Bloodbound, and given the Khorne Warriors army I already have and the numerous bitz in the eponymous box as a result, I have lots of plans for expanding them!
Admiral: to address your suggestion, it’s something that crossed my mind a while ago, and I spent a short time giving some thought to how I’d make “Warhammer: Stormcast Eternals”. Some bits would be straightforward, others not so much. But Age of Sigmar has a different set of expectations to earlier editions of Warhammer, and the effort to contort these units into the right shape for the old rules would hardly be worth the effort. And, besides, I don’t play 8th Edition any more, and have no real interest in developing further material for it, any more than I do for 6th or 7th Edition or whatever. As something of an evangelist for AoS, I also think it would send the wrong message. I don’t want these models to be usable in 8th Edition, or some tourney players’ hack of it; I’d much rather people who liked the background or the miniatures take a chance on the game they’re actually designed for and discover that it’s not at all what the received wisdom of the internet claims it is (or isn’t).
