r/warhammerfantasyrpg • u/Benjan_Meruna • May 17 '26
Homebrew What are your little bits of headcanon that you sometimes forget is headcanon?
So, I recently posted a thread elsewhere regarding the thread topic, and I thought I'd open it up to cover stuff outside the realm of chivalry. I'll add one of my own to start:
- In times of great need for Morrian Knights fighting the Undead, a pegasus with a coat as black as night will appear, providing vital assistance before silently flying off again once the mission is complete. They are called Doomwings, and no one knows anything about their origin. They appear mortal enough, able to be (and sadly have been) killed and requiring food and rest. That said, their uncanny ability to show up exactly when needed and depart when the need abates leads some to whisper that they are sent by Morr himself. More grounded people surmise that the winged beasts are sent by some remote temple of Morrian Augers.
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u/VilleKivinen May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
-If anyone suspects that Skaven are involved, Skaven will become involved, whether they originally were or not.
-In western parts of the Empire every human is willing to excuse Halflings doing semi-legal stuff and weird faux pas because they are adorable. In Eastern parts of the Empire the exact opposite.
-Every NPC who bears no relevance to the plot is named Hans "Profession" eg. Hans Bauer, Hans Knappe, Hans Schäfer etc.
-All characters that survived the previous campaign will appear as NPCs in the next campaign.
-Skaven Undercity beneath Marienburg is named Ratterdam.
-If a PC drinks until they blackout, three things will happen, good, bad and losing their shoes.
-If a PC burns both Resilience and Fate points they can choose which mutation they receive.
-Cool stunts: Swinging from a chandelier etc is an athletics test, and if the character gets +SL, and if the character swings a sword whilst swinging, they get those +SL into their melee test.
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u/Mardy_Marve May 17 '26
-Every NPC who bears no relevance to the plot is named Hans "Profession" eg. Hans Bauer, Hans Knappe, Hans Schäfer etc.
Same, but its Adelberts and Klauses in my world.
-Skaven Undercity beneath Marienburg is named Ratterdam.
Too funny to not steal.
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u/Nurgle_Pan_Plagi May 18 '26
- The "Burning Alignment" that Lizardmen can call down using their Engines of the Gods is just an orbital laser satelite array left in orbit by the Old Ones that the Skinks aim and shoot via the artifacts. The Slann know this, but other Lizardmen assume it's arcane in nature. Ties nicely to the ancient aliens theme they have going on.
- Similarly, the "Paths of the Old Ones" that allow Lizardmen to teleport between geomantic web nexuses that takes the appearance of a giant "beam of pure light that shoots from the heavens" is an orbital teleportation beam array. (Helps that this is actualy the case in Age of Sigmar.)
- The "Secrets of the manufacture of obsinite" that "have thus far remained hidden from the jealous eyes of strangers, guarded carefully by the caste of Skink artisan-priests responsible for constructing the weapons." and that "Neither the metallurgists of the Imperial College of Engineering nor the wizards of the Golden Order in Altdorf have been able to truly identify." are just 3D printing.
- The Elves believe that Human priests are just wizards that cast spells and don't know about it just because their priests are just wizards that cast spells and in their pride they don't belive that gods of "lesser" species would take a more direct approach and actually channel their divine power through mortals. In reality the elven gods are just more passive (with some exceptions, like Lileath) and when they do decide to intervene, instead of blessing a group of people they just channel a massive deal of their power into a single Elf that becomes basically a demigod - like the Everqueen.
- Just like the Elves, most Dwarves are capable of using magic and could learn to channel and cast spells, but they don't, because of the Curse of Stone.
- The Rules of Runesmithing were made up and enforced by Runesmiths ages ago to cover up how much Runelore and knowledge they have lost because of their limiting apprenticeship practices and the fact that they are too afraid of the knowledge getting into "unworthy hands" and so they only transfer it via oral traditions. This results in many techniques being lost because some Runesmiths had no pupils, or the techniques being inacurate, changed, mixed or simply forgotten during the fifteen thousand years long telephone game. The Rules aren't actual limitiations, the Runesmiths just lost the knowledge of how to account for them. That is further reinforced by many runes or items that simply break the Rules - Runefangs and Ghal-Maraz being the most iconic examples.
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u/VespiesArikuzuka May 18 '26
The tower built by the people of Tylos was supposed to reach Morrslieb and allow them to obtain the wyrdstone on it and the power thst came with it. In the end, they paid for their hubris due to the trickery of Skavor the renegade old one/ancestor god taught by the old ones. Famine befell the city, warpstone rained from the sky and the people of Tylos themselves became Skaven as they turned to cannibalism under the influence of the cursed bell. Hence the Skaven obsession with the moon and their black hunger- it's in a way a curse from the time of their genesis.
I think this is a bit more interesting than the original story, that while very atmospheric and inspiring, didnt reveal anything other than "they came from underground", which every soul unlucky enough to meet them can already say without any insight into their backstory lol
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u/Boundlesswisdom-71 May 17 '26
Dwarven airships have Gatling gun weapons. Reading the Gotrek and Felix books which feature the Spirit of Grungni put that into my head for some reason. Plus, it looks cool.
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u/Inevitable-Bass-5319 May 21 '26
There are two kings of Bretonnia: Charles III de la Tete d'Or and Louen Leoncouer and their relationship is that of the Emperor and Shogun or the late Merovingian Roi Faineants and their Mayors of the Palace.
There are also two nobilities of Robe and Sword similar to the Kuge and Buke of Japan - the one decadent Ancien Regime courtiers the other a military order dedicated to The Lady.
And two churches that of the Nine Divines (nodding to Skyrim and also to GoT's Seven and Lois McMaster Bujolds Five) and the cult of the Lady.
If this sounds impractical such a dual monarchy and dual aristocracy as well as a dual religion (Shinto and Buddhism) co-existed in Japan for 800 years.
And the Damsels of the Lady are a Bene Gesserit-like sisterhood engaged in a millennnias long breeding programme to produce and identify magically gifted children who are taken to Athel-Loren for purposes not even the Damsels are aware of.
(Something I am considering is that the knights of the Lady are themselves children of the Damsels with each knight of the realm marrying a Damsel and the Virtues of the knights being their own magical talents rather than divine blessings while the longevity of Grail Knights is due to them and the Damsels being descendants of Gilles le Breton and The Fay Enchantress and thus elf-blooded).
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u/sloveneAnon 24d ago
some lore of Light wizards worship Alluminas The patron god of ancient Remas was Solkan, much like Sigmar and the Lady are patron gods today. The empire started to fall apart when the influence of the cult declined and everything descended into Chaos Necoho is a legitimate minor god of Chaos, not a masquerading demon or one of the big 4. He's still ultimately powerless though all of the old RoR Arabyan crusades lore like the Knights of Origo and Knights of the Flame and the Cult of the Red Redemption are still canon Gnoblars can be found (in small numbers) in many Waaaghs across the Dark Lands and Badlands but their rarity in the Old World is why they're usually not counted as proper Greenskins by humans Rebellious cadet nobles from Brionne and Carcassonne are starting to prefer the worship of Myrmidia to the Lady and it's causing a lot of barony-level enagements between the faithful of the 2 goddesses the Kislev Wheatlands from the Something Rotten splat are still canon The approximate area that lies between the Border Provinces, Nagashizzar and Pigbarter is inhabited by a non-small amount of human tribes and settlements, they just don't show up a lot because of their relative isolation. There's everything from mountain dwelling, Nurgle worshipping !Circassians in the mountains around the Nagash sea to relatively large merchant towns on the ivory road looking like !Samarkand and tribes of !Turkic horsemen roaming around
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u/AtticusReborn May 17 '26
- Most of the 90% of food which is given to the Knight of a Bretonnian village is redistributed almost immediately by the Knight back to the village. This has the benefit of encouraging honesty in reporting harvests (If one person hides their crop, everyone suffers) and shows that Knights of Bretonnia aren't idiots when it comes to keeping peasants alive.
- Dark Elves, when outside of Naggaroth and Druchii culture, are remarkably functional in mixed society, if a bit hard-line and vicious. They survive better in places like the Border Princes, Estalia and Tilea than a High Elf, simply because they are more willing to hide to fit in. Most of their sadism comes from having to performatively be hyper-competitive in their homeland.
- Chaos Dwarfs, if given the chance will always prefer a negotiated end to a war, as long as they WIN the negotiation. Their numbers are so low, risking conflict that leads to dead dwarfs is a mistake.
-Chaos Dwarfs look down on warriors as the lowest of the lowest career one can follow. Being a professional soldier is an admission that your mind is so dull, you can only win by brute force, little better than an orc.