AoS: Getting All The New Factions In Order
The Idoneth Deepkin are a bunch of raiders who venture up out of the depths and sack towns, stripping them of inhabitants and dragging their souls screaming to the depths. Sounds like an Order faction to me.
Or there’s also the Daughters of Khaine. A coven of Witch Aelves who swarm their foes with gleaming knives and blood-soaked faces, hungry and eager to spread the word of their bloody handed god, Khaine. And the way they spread that is via blood and magic–some of the Daughters are created using blood magic as they go around murdering and drinking the blood of their friends and enemies.
Definitely sounds like the sort of people who want to see the land return to the glory that used to be, ready and eager to follow the charge of the Stormcasts. Or, as the Grand Alliance Order puts it:
The gates of Azyrheim are cast wide open, and the heroic forces of Order march forth to loosen the iron grip of Chaos that blights the Mortal Realms. From the Free Peoples to the Fyreslayers, each warrior is determined and strong – whatever their motives, each wishes to see their lands returned to the verdant glory of times much missed. Leading the charge are the glittering Stormcast Eternals and their Extremis Chamber, with their unlikely allies the seraphon; hardy duardin, aelfs and Devoted of Sigmar follow in their blazing path. The war for the realms has begun!
Which puts the latest releases for Age of Sigmar in an interesting place. They both seem to be Order outliers at best. And sure, it’s possible that they’re in Order to represent the fact that Order isn’t just “the Good Guys” faction, which is kind of a hard thing to step away from when the iconic part of your Grand Alliance is a bunch of gleaming golden heroes and legends reforged time and again by the literal god who gives the game its name. But even so, where does the line of “Order but from a weird twisted angle” and “Destruction” exist?
Right now Destruction is united in both their love of violence and at least one aspect of Gorkamorka. Which is an interesting distinction when you look at the other factions. Sure, Death all follow Nagash, they have to, Nagash is the ultimate Necromancer and has literally seized command of all the Underworlds. But it’s pretty clear when something is alive or not. And if undead: it goes in Death.
Similarly, Chaos is very clearly “followers of the gods of Chaos.” You get warriors and daemons and everything in between. There’s room for a lot of variety to be had–but with Destruction it’s more their allegiance to Gorkamorka than a love of, well, destruction that seems to be the big defining part of the Alliance. And that doesn’t leave room for a lot of variety. You have Greenskins, Grots, Ogors…and that’s it. It limits them, and it leaves Order working as this catch-all alliance for “not-Chaos, not-Death, or not-Destruction.”
The members of Order are decidedly not unified in following Sigmar–they’re more about the Principle of the alliance. Order. We’ve even seen this used to justify why the Daughters of Khaine belong in Order.
They’re there because they build cities and have rules–they’re not the sort that the Azyr or indeed the other Elves or Dwarves or whatever would enjoy–but they build things instead of just murdering everyone. Similarly, in what we’ve seen of the Idoneth Deepkin, when they attack they’re taking the souls of everyone and leaving the buildings intact. Go Order.
I think it’ll be interesting to see what else fuels the Deepkin. They probably have some kind of underwater civilization, but they are fitting into this odd, alien place. They’re driven by the need to consume more souls to survive–which kind of sounds like the same gnawing hunger that fuels the Ogors–again it makes them really feel like they might belong in Destruction. And since they don’t, it really hammers home that Destruction isn’t really about people who go around causing destruction, but rather following Gorkamorka.
What does a Destruction without that restriction look like though? And what does an Order that isn’t “not-Others” feel like? How would that change the game? Should it be that way? Let us know what you think!
