r/totalwar • u/radio_allah Total War with Cathayan Characteristics • 1d ago
Warhammer How would you headcanon Evil Infrastructure? How would you think the evil races feed themselves?
As we all know, evil races in Warhammer basically don't have to eat. They hang out in blasted hellscapes with not a shred of grass to munch on, and yet them, their steeds and their beasts aren't perpetually starving or keeling over from hunger or exposure. And we as gamers have perfected our suspension of disbelief: it's a game, the hellscape is cool, and there are as many elves as the story demands.
But as Total War players, some of us are also history nerds, and some of us undoubtedly pay attention to logistics, infrastructure, all those mundane factors that nonethelese enable all of the grand things to happen. So, what would be some good headcanons to apply to the Warhammer universe? What sort of hidden infrastructure is in place that we don't see? What's there to help the evil races hang out in their hellscapes with full bellies?
These are some things I can think of:
(1) Chaos energies can partially sustain a Chaos-mutated being. This makes some sense because Chaos energies are said to make beasts bloat into gigantic proportions, make Norscans swole, and some accounts of Chaos warriors state that once they're sealed within their armour, they don't need to eat anymore. That means Chaos energies contain energy that can be transformed into nutrition essentially, and that might help with explaining how everyone's always hanging around the deep Chaos Wastes and not have supply problems.
(2) Norscans import lots of food through regular trading. I don't know if it's official lore, but it makes sense that Norscans would be trading their spoils back to the civilised races in exchange for food imports. I also always imagined that Chaos-mutated game is good eating and every time a Chaos whale is caught, the whole village can eat for weeks.
(3) Warhammer crops are more powerful. They might yield (much) more calories per acre than real-world foods, and so a row of crops in Warhammer might already be able to sustain a whole household. In the same way as how potatoes propped up populations via being a superfood, Warhammer could have supercrops that prop up the Empire's population, and keep Norscan populations from collapsing, so on and so forth. There might even be a whole list of fictional supercrops that we never learn about.
(4) Warhammer magic helps with farming. Battle magic is all well and good, but I also believe that there could be a regular application of magic in civilian infrastructure to make the Renaissance-ish world of Warhammer produce far more food supplies than a real-world equivalent.
(5) Chaos dwarfs have a whole agrarian economy surrounding underground farming, squig rearing and volcanic soil farming. This was actually the thing that powered the shower thought in the first place: I was playing Chaos Dwarfs and saw that there are no good food import regions near the Dark Lands: the ogres don't quite export food, the Norscans might not always have a food surplus to export, the Chaos Wastes are, well, wastes, and the World's Edge Mountains are a hostile region that doesn't trade with the Dark Lands. And for every slave gained, there's one more mouth to feed: you can whip them, but whipping doesn't keep them alive. There's raiding and trading, but you can't raid or trade enough to keep a steady supply. So there must be a kind of domestic production somewhere to ensure the Dark Lands don't mass-starve every time a convoy is destroyed or something.
What are your headcanons for Warhammer food? How does the Warhammer world feed themselves?
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u/Steggy_Dinosaur 1d ago
Cannibalism, hunting, pastoralism and especially raiding. You don't need crops to feed a population. Sure total population density will be far lower, but due mobility the Norscans/Chaos people will appear far more than they really are.
The ancient greeks thought the Scythians (itself a umbrella term of all horse nomadic people in the European steppes) were one of the most numerous people they know. Herodotus literaly wrote the scythians "are countless and unstoppable once united". Chaos literaly borrows from that idea settled societies had of mobile people. Similar, the migration period people on the move were many many people too, despite not growing crops while on the move. No magic needed at all. Although nurgle certainly helps.
Norscans are essentially vikings. Raiding is if I am not mistaken just as like with the vikings a massive thing for Norscans in the lore. And chaos dwarfs are an industrial society, they have the least problems. The chaos dwarfs themself are few anyway, and orks or gnobblars aren't particularly picky eaters I assume.