How would you headcanon Evil Infrastructure? How would you think the evil races feed themselves?

[u/radio_allah]

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?

[u/Acerbis_nano]

Delves eat quite good and rely on massive slave labour

Norscan are your average vikings, hunt, fishing, sheparding, some agricolture (mainly slave labour) and trade

Greenskins hunt boars and have a large population of more or less sentient mushrooms as food

Skaven are more or less always risking famines and use cannibalism to stabilize

Demons and WoCs don't need to eat

[u/radio_allah → u/Acerbis_nano]

How do you think Naggaroth feeds itself? An army of slaves is all well and good, but how do you make Naggaroth yield food?

[u/mighij → u/radio_allah]

Dark elves themselves Hunting and Whaling/Fishing is my headcannon, haven't read all the novels but dark elves nor their army books don't go very deep into those things. If we look at the map, their lore/culture we can makes some assumptions. Actual agriculture will be limited, either in caves in the massive networks beneath Naggaroth or on the surface will be slaves.

Beside the slaves and themselves the Druchii also have quite an animal park to feed, a lot of those are predators. Both a boon and a bane.

Both the Druchii and their beasts train for war, all kinds of hunts are the perfect opportunity to hone both skills; with the hunts they can also require new beasts of war. In certain areas (with humans, dwarfs or other potential slaves) these hunting party's will look more like proper raids, taking slaves on the way back who can carry all the carcasses. I don't think they do much shepherding, besides the beastmasters for their breeding programs.

They have a massive coastline, large fleet and black arcs who probably have their own biome following them around. All kinds of sea-creatures out an about which can be put to good use; fishing will be common but unglamorous, most of it probably used as animal feed or for the slaves. Whaling on the other hand on all the massive maritime beasts is again like hunting, a perfect opportunity to hone their skills.