Total War:Warhammer Factions The Empire Lore

[Music] greetings and salutations friends now before i get started on the empire a bit of a public service announcement for the coming week and for a little while i am going to be quite busy with real life things so expect some delays in the lore videos you'll still be getting your weekly lore videos but they'll probably be concentrated around the weekend as that's the only time where i'm going to have time to actually edit and do this stuff properly but i have some stuff that i had pre-recorded originally planning for when i eventually ran out of factions to do so i'll give you that to watch during the weekdays and while you're looking forward to the next lore videos so never fear there will be something for you even though i may not be able to respond to your comments quite as frequently as i've been doing simply because well i'm gonna be busy with you know life things anyways on to the empire now the empire is the largest and by direct consequence the most important of the human factions within the warhammer world it is loosely based on the renaissance holy roman empire of our own world being more a confederation of individual feudal states united by a common language reich spiel a common religion and shared cultural heritage rather than a centralized nation state now as for their religion their primary religion is the cult of sigma which is the worship of the living god sigma this cult or church as they prefer to call themselves is led by the grand theogonist and below him two arch lecters representing essentially the pope of the old world and his rather small college of cardinals however the empire is far from a single religion nation the empire is actually fairly liberal when it comes to its religious policy while the open worship of other gods is somewhat frowned upon they are more or less accepted within imperial society of course you're not allowed to be worshipping the chaos gods because well you know evil but the worship of other human deities along the lines of ulrich and manan is perfectly accepted and since there are rather large colonies of dwarfs within the empire and also quite a few high elves the worship of both the higher deities and the dwarven answers to gods is more or less accepted within the empire i say more or less because while the followers of the church of sigmar of course who don't take too kindly to this and would much rather seem the church of sigma being the only allowed religion these other religions are not persecuted in any obvious or stately sanctioned way and are therefore more or less free to go about their daily worship this does vary slightly from province to province but for the most part there is religious freedom within the empire to the point where some provinces for example the empire province of midland primarily worships the old god ulrich rather than sigma though the worship of sigmar is perfectly accepted the vast majority of the population still worship ulrich and while ulrich has become much less of a common god in the rest of the empire he was a god long before sigma became a god in fact sigma himself would pray to ulrich and held him as his own personal god and while sigmar is considered much more of a protecting fatherly figure ulrich is the god of warriors viewed as a distant and aloft figure that don't care too much for the machinations of mayhem mortals other than the primary gods of menon sigma are in ulrich there are several minor deities along with the dwarfs worship of their ancestors of course permeated throughout the empire but most of these are tiny and insignificant things mostly dating back to when the empire was a gathering of barbarous tribes rather than a civilized nation speaking of the empire contrary to what the name might suggest the empire is not a hereditary monarchy it is in fact an electoral monarchy and although the current emperor reigns until death or until overthrown in some form of civil war etc etc though extremely rarely i might i'm seeing as the emperor is considered to be the chosen of sigmar and is therefore considered almost a divine entity so civil wars are very very rare although they have happened but back to the point the ones who elect the next emperor once the old one is dead are called the elect accounts which is a council made up of 16 members each with one vote although there is a slight catch you see the grand theogonist of sigma the the pope if you will of the church of sigma has essentially three votes because he has his own vote as the grand theogonist and he also has essentially the votes of his two arch lecters and while it has happened that the two arch lecters had us voted either individually or in some way in contrast to the grand theogonist either on direct order from the grand theorist or due to a bit of a rebellious streak the three votes are usually united behind the grand theogonist which means that the church of sigma has an immense amount of political power within the empire seeing as they are sitting on three times the vote of any other individual and while the leader of the cult of ulrich also has a seat on the elector counts council he only has one vote the other 12 votes stems from 11 elector counts and a courtesy vote that is offered to the mootland and i say courtesy wrote because while the moot is technically an empire province well it's not inhabited so much by humans it is in fact inhabited by well essentially hobbits or as they are called in the old world halflings and while the halflings offer very little real contribution to the empire at large the imperials have basically accepted them as part of the empire and while they are able to draw some taxes from them although the halflings have become quite adapted avoiding the taxations leveled against them they have very little real say within the empire as they have essentially no real military strength and as such their vote usually flips flops between their various neighbors that are threatening them with varying acts of potential violence or even worse an increase in tax collectors or even worse than that they might take away some of their food because halflings just like the hobbit counterparts love to eat usually 7 to 12 times a day but enough about the hairy foot savages the remaining proper elect accounts all rule over one of the provinces of the empire and these positions are hereditary though they have sometimes been disputed by various claims over titles so they're not so much hereditary as in genetically hereditary but they are hereditary as in the title will pass from father to son etc so if that title somehow gets usurped then the next dynasty will essentially take over the title and therefore also take over the position as a lecture count now i'll give you a quick rundown of the various provinces there is avaland hawkland midland nordland ostland lakeland in which the imperial capital of altdorf is located and the capital will move along with the emperor so for example if walmart von raukov of austin became the emperor then the imperial capital could be moved to the capital of austland or the new emperor could decide to just simply move to lachlan which is usually the best choice simply because reichen is a bigger city and the sitting emperor is essentially the governor of said city and as such he gets to take all of the taxes and various other benefits but back to the list there's stirland talibiklund wiesenland soaland drockwall and the mootland of course now some of these provinces no longer exist and therefore the elector count for that province either is essentially a noble in exile or his vote has been absorbed by one of the other members of the council for example soland was essentially destroyed as an independent imperial province in the wake of gorbad iron claws orc invasion of the empire and its territory was ultimately absorbed by the grand bernie of wiesenbend and the title count of solon was essentially destroyed and as such the elector count of reason does not actually have two votes he simply inherited the land without the title then there's weston westerland's primary city was the great commercial city of marienberg that seceded from the empire in 2429 in the imperial calendar and became an independent city state and after beating the absolute living [ __ ] out of an imperial army sent to restore compliance the emperor wilhelm iii officially recognized the westerlands independence and currently exists as a city-state with its own government ruled over by essentially merchant princes turning it into a little bit of a merchant republic and exists in more or less peace with the empire as a valued trading hub although there are plenty of elected accounts that would just absolutely love to take it back as whoever managed to recover it might have a shot at two votes in the electoral council not to mention the fact that you'd have control over an extremely wealthy merchant city then there's sylvania which many of you might remember from my vampire accounts videos and is today technically an official victim of the grand count of starland less so by choice than by well forth says well no one really wants control over sylvania because well it's filled with vampires undead and unruly populous but somebody's got to do it and sterling was the unlucky province that got saddled with this particular blind death and limping dog the two last one is the drachwald which was an original founding electoral province of the empire but was well after being completely naturally overrun by the beastman simply divided up between midland and northern then there's sudenland the grand barony of sudan which was an electoral province in the very very very early version of warhammer fantasy which has later been retconned by games workshop and so has been whisked out of existence by the uh well gods over at games workshop which are well more powerful than even the chaos gods and so we simply do not talk of certain which means that the current electoral council essentially consists of 11 proper elect accounts including the harry toad bastards and the religious fanatics now as for the government of the individual provinces that is pretty much up to the local baron or elect account the elector counts somewhat confusingly like to call themselves grand barons rather than counts purely just to piss off anyone actually doing research into this stuff i am sure with some provinces being run more or less like a merchant republic where the grand baron just simply skims off the province to some of them being run as extremely militaristic and controlled nations like for example midland though granted midland is surrounded by all manners of evil things both outside and inside its borders so a little bit of discipline is probably a good idea and then of course there's the moot which is also technically a bloody province and is governed by a system of well food bribery more or less with whatever local clan of farmers can ply the local grand baron i really hate the mote by the way with the tastiest dish and thereby gain better landowning right it's a silly place but in essence the local governor basically decides the rules now there are some common imperial rules like for example you shall not worship the chaos gods and you shall not beat death your neighbor with his wife and other such things you know basic things though some provinces have some uniquely interesting little rules pertaining to certain activities of a carnal nature which i shan't go too deeply into here because while hilarious they are most certainly not safe for all ages let's just say that there is a particular joke about the people of averland concerning their wives and their local cattle something slightly more interesting though is that like i said all of these provinces are essentially their own little states within the empire they are miniature nations united by the common rule of the emperor and as such they have their own standing armies and this is one of the really interesting parts of the empire because all of the different provinces have wildly different martial traditions they also have their own unique color schematics and ways of fighting though of course the differences are less dramatic than in races like the skaven or the orcs because well they are humans and they have to rely on much the same doctrine but they do do it in slightly different ways [Music] for example the armies of reichland being extremely wealthy province has vast armies of highly trained extremely well-equipped soldiers drilled to fight in disciplined formations while being supported by extensive batteries of artillery and considerable amounts of gunpowder weaponry while poorer provinces might have to rely on units of professional soldiers kept trained and equipped by the local lord supported by peasant militia and given ranged cover not by the brilliant gleaming artillery parks of newland but by veteran hunters that act as skirmishers and at later stages in the battle as good old fashion archery support and this is one of the really interesting parts in a total war game now i kind of hope that they let us pick which province we want to play so that if i want to play raikland i can play reichland and only raglan whereas where i am essentially forcefully allied with all of the other nations within the empire so you can't just randomly declare war on your neighbors because that's simply not how the empire works if one of the electoral provinces of the empire simply just declared war on its neighbor more often than not every single other province would use a dog pile the rebellious little bastards of course you could add in a really interesting system of politics where you could maneuver for the throne and either be elected emperor or come up with some random contrivant [ __ ] political reason to say like hey you know what i should actually have been elected emperor instead of that little bastard because of reasons and thereby maybe making some form of um realm divide event a la shogun too where you can actually grab power from the sitting emperor could be cool but on the other hand implementing all of this is going to be a absolute ton of work like you're gonna have to make unique color scams for all of the provinces like that alone is quite a job then you need to make individual rulers and family trees for all of the promises then you've got to make unique units for all of the provinces then you've got the implement the politics systems which would essentially only be used for this fun faction etc etc etc it would be an absolute ton of work for the boys over at creative assembly so while i would prefer that solution i wouldn't be too sad if they just gave us the empire as one nation maybe a little disappointed but as long as you can recruit units from the various provinces for example i want to have my hockland longer and i want them to be wearing the colours of the hawkland army i have want austrian spearmen and i want them to wear the colours of ostland which could create a really really really cool looking army where you have all of these really awesome colorful uniforms from all across the empire gathered in this one big beautiful army it would be a real magnificent sight to behold almost to the point that i kind of want them to do the empire as a single nation i don't know i'm kind of conflicted on this because as a warhammer dude i would really like to play the individual provinces but as a total war player i'm thinking like ah yes that'd be cool but think of all of the awesome stuff they could do with the empire as one nation so i'm not actually entirely sure on that and i'll be more or less fine whichever way they decide to do it as long as of course they stay relatively true to the fluff and why all the gods by sigma ulrich menon and even the four evil ones to the north please ca i know that the empire is offering you the biggest juiciest possibility of absolute crazy ass dlc milking you have ever experienced like you could literally sell us color patterns and say like hey you want to play as hawkland well give us 10 bucks and we'll give you some [ __ ] colors i know that must be tempting you right now but please please don't do it because honestly now with the stuff you're pulling with the tiller the good faith and trust of your consumers is getting damn thin so i hope they don't do it that might be a fool's hope but you know optimism yay anyways let's actually move on before i just sit here whining for 20 hours about creative assembly's dlc policy i figured i'd give you a bit of information on some of the more important locations of the empire so that you can get a bit more of an understanding of the empire as a nation rather than just you know how it works so i figured i'd start off with one of the quite interesting things namely the college of magic now in most human nations magic is viewed as very very very dangerous and therefore something to be made quite illegal indeed because of course untrained mages running around is a serious fire hazard not so much because the mage wanted to burn down the local tavern but because well he couldn't control where his flames were shooting out from the empire however decided that instead of just essentially making this stuff illegal why don't we actually offer them a license so to say where if they come to the colleges of magic in altdorf and if you submit yourself to training testing etc then you can use magic we'll use you within the empire you'll have civic duties it's essentially a job like you get your schooling or your tuition paid for you and in return you offer your service in the empire's armies and as part of the empire as astrologers as physicians and as battle mages etc now it wasn't always so the colleges of magic was essentially founded by the emperor magnus the pious after the first great war against chaos when he realized that well the crazy bastards up north is using plenty of magic so to defend against that we should probably start using some magic of our own and so the colleges of magic were created now they are divided into eight different colleges each corresponding to one of the eight magical wins each of which has a very different characteristic and therefore different spells that can be used by drawing upon it for example you have the college of the amber order the college which studies gore the lore of beasts they are essentially druids with a bunch of buffing spells some nature spells you know manipulation of nature and can summon animals etc that kind of stuff and are used partially as battle mages but they're also used to control some of the wilder more forested areas of the empire or the college of the celestial order which studies azir the lord of the heavens they are astrologists they can see into the future well or at least they claim they can see into the future by studying the positions of the stars etc and they have several spells that draw upon celestial powers mostly used as battle mages they also of course have a fair bit of use because well they can occasionally see the real future and well that's always useful and there are also exceptional astrologers using charts and illustrations to map out extremely accurate maps of the stars which aid in navigation for example and of course you have the bright order which studies the wind of a sheikh the lore of fire and well what you do with fire you set people on fire with it and they are one of the few orders that is essentially a purely battle magic order the bright order has very little civic duties because well there are very very very few times indeed in which you just go like hey i would just love it to put that house on fire you know they don't have much real uses because while they can to some degree control fire they can't actually put it out or stop it from spreading so if they're not really good at being fire fighters either although they actually tried to make them into firefighters at some point the problem is that most bright wizards as they call themselves being you know surrounded by fire and being taught about fire their entire lives tend towards just a little bit of a pyromancy streak and so when you tell one of them to put out a fire you might just decide that you know i don't want to put it out it's just so pretty to look at and that is of course the best case scenario the worst case scenario is that the guy goes like you know what this city street needs more fire in it and gets to work but even though the colleges of magic present a pretty obvious danger to anyone living nearby from you know stray fireballs and the likes it's still a hell of a lot safer than just having untrained magic users wandering the streets and it shows that the empire is a remarkably accepting nation really while most human nations either just enslave their magic users or just you know kill them because witches and all that the empire actually takes a far more civilized view to it and accepts its magic users for the danger and also the possible boon that they are and train them in the workings of their art this is also evidence in my next little example which is the city of newland which is home to the imperial gunnery school now as the name might suggest the imperial gunnery school is a place where they train artillerymen and artillery being a key part of many imperial armies well-educated trained disciplined crews of course come at a premium and the teachers at the imperial gunnery school are the absolute best in the field in fact many of them are actually dwarfs and the dwarves have a particularly fine touch when it comes to the arts of black powder weaponry as such the gunners trained at the school are some of the finest in the world now they can't quite match up to their dwarfish colleagues but they are pretty damn good at what they do and this excellent standard of training has led to an artillery core that is not only capable of pointing their cannons in the rough direction of the enemy and firing off but also to make accurate guesses of distance they understand ballistics they understand range they understand how the weather might affect their projectiles and as such while the studies at the imperial gunnery school are considerably lengthy they also produce extremely fine gunners and while this has led to some problems simply because the teachers at the imperial gunnery school insist on maintaining their high standards wanting to produce fewer but better gunners rather than large numbers of sub-standard graduates has led to some severe lackage in artillery crews as the armies of the empire grow ever bigger and required to deal with ever bigger threats the demand for such gunner is ever increasing but the output of such gunners stays more or less the same as like i said the teachers aren't too keen on anyone else doing their job for them because they don't really trust anyone else which is why there is only one imperial gunnery school where they could be the need for several so while the empire is considerably more open to new ideas and innovation than most human nations they still have some traditions that hinder them now an interesting little note i mentioned that the empire is a very innovative nation they allow the mages to be trained into proper mages for example as one of the first civilized nations in the all the world and they have produced many fantastic inventions like the hellblaster cannon or the grenada launching blunderboss for example something the dwarves being much better at well you know cannons and uh general engineering you would think have not thought of so why is that well the reason is the dwarfs really don't like new ideas and so any invention within the dwarven school of engineering needs to be put through a prototype test stage that can last well a couple hundred years before actually being accepted as a working model the empire is far more lenient but the ones that create these new inventions is not in fact the imperial gunnery school but the college of engineering of which there are two the well-known one in alt dolph where the luminous one mankoff created the hell blaster volley gun and philemon who invented the grenade lodge in plunder boss along with some slightly less successful inventions like for example the homing pigeon bomb which was well exactly what it sounds like a bomb strapped to a pigeon problem of course being that the homing pigeon didn't really understand what it was supposed to home in on and so it flew a little distance with the bomb fuse lit of course because you know field testing and then came right on back home with predictable consequences or the slightly less expensive one in newland once either college creates a war machine and it has gone through its basic testing stages and been accepted as a working model the imperial gunnery school then starts training gunners to actually use it now additionally newland is the primary forge of the empire where it creates most of its war machines and the vast majority of black powder weaponry although some other provinces have minor manufacturing points like some provinces can create minor cannons but they're not quite up to the quality of proper newland made cannons and they can't hope to match the sheer output of nolan and while these smaller handguns can be produced in many other places of the empire again they're not up to quite the standard of newland and this has led newland to adapt a very interesting fighting style quite unique to the rest of the empire while the rest of the empire fights more along the lines of a renaissance era nation newland fights more in a pike and shot kind of way using units of solid heavily armored pikemen flanked by units of handgunners supported by mass amounts of artillery far more comparable to the english civil war between the parliamentary round heads and the royalist chevaliers than the renaissance style of warfare preferred by the vast majority of the empire speaking of the empire's armies i'm probably not going to do a tactics video on the empire in fact i'm almost certain i'm not going to do it and i'm saying almost because well my mind won this and i might suddenly find a good reason to actually do it but don't hold your breath i'll talk a little bit about the imperial army in general here first and foremost why would you actually want to play the empire in tabletop or in total war well it's because they're so incredibly versatile being just humans they have access to a wide variety of tactics that might not suit many of the other races for example you're never really going to have a proper ranged heavy awk army just as you're never going to have a proper melee-ish wood elf army for example for those of you who don't know the wood elves primarily rely on bose and light-ranged weapons read though very little artillery or in fact any artillery rather than actually getting stuck in in melee you could technically kinda make a full-on melee wood elf army but it requires a little bit of fluff bending shall we just say the empire however has a huge amount of flexibility in this you can have an armies of disciplined blocks of professional soldiers supported by citizen militia backed up by some crossbowmens and archers in a very early renaissance style or you can have grand artillery batteries provided by the city of newland where you have essentially pike and shot formations with tons of cannons and mortars at the backs or you can have an army almost entirely made up of the various nightly orders which i'll cover in slightly more detail in a bit or you can have extremely heavy magic armies in fact the empire is capable of doing magic artillery to an extent that is only really matched by the skavens or the ielts and they can also be extremely magically defensive being able to take enough wizards to really screw with any attempts by the opposition to actually get their magical barrage going you can also do a far more ad-hoc army from one of the poorer provinces with very little in the way of artillery and no black powder weapons so essentially they're relying entirely on crossbows and bows with units of professional soldiers paid and capped by the local lord supported heavily by a citizen militia and light outrider cavalry or you can do one of the wealthy provinces armies like reichlen with tons of professional disciplined extremely well-equipped soldiers wearing half plate equipped with beautifully crafted halberds supported by professional marksmen armed with crossbows handguns with artillery parts at their backs with nightly orders on their flanks and elite outriders with repeater pistols to fill the skirmishing role all of these things are possible within the empire and of course the empire just looks good on the table top and i hope they will in total war as well now again if you're going to be limited to one army you're going to be a little bit more limited in your color schematic but if they do the empire as one nation oh it could be beautiful you could have all manners of different provinces all gathered up in one army if this big beautiful army of all kinds of colors and different patterns etc i've already mentioned this i know but i just i really like the idea of that now due to the simple fact that they're humans most imperial armies rely on somewhat the same tactics they prefer to be able to deploy in solid blocks of infantry and take a bit of a defensive role where they can hold off the enemy and pound them at range with various ranged units you can make a very offensive attacky empire army it's perfectly possible but because they're so good at everything they're not going to be so good at individual things as armies that are properly geared towards it a very attacky empire army based almost entirely around melee combat is going to be absolutely stomped on by chaos for example and an all-ranged army while probably being the most viable all-out solution for the empire is still just simply going to get outshot by the wood elves so really the key here is combined arms which is another thing that i just love about the imperial army it really really rewards you for planning ahead it's less of a case of scissors beats paper and more of a case of beating their sister with your rock while protecting your paper if you get my drift now i've already mentioned the colleges of magic so instead of talking more about magic i thought i'd give you a quick little look into the nightly orders because that's also a very interesting part of empire society many prominent noblemen sends their sons off to serve inside these nightly orders to gain themselves position fame power you know all of these things as of course having a prominent member of a nightly order in the family boosts the family's prestige considerably now some of the most famous nightly orders are so-called templar orders they are dedicated essentially to one god or another now like i said the empire is a fairly accepting nation with several gods so for example you have the knights of the white wolf which are ferocious followers of ulrich the god of war primarily based up in midland they maintain their order fortress in midnight and quite different from most other nightly orders they follow ulrich more in their nightly traditions and as such they go into battle carry great two-handed cavalry hammers and they do not wear helmets so they've got considerably less of a charge impact than heavy lance cavalry however those big ass hammers are damn good for taking down powerful elite units or monsters they also have a sub faction in the tutorial guard the bodyguard of the cult of ulrich's religious leader the ar ulrich which fight on foot to protect him they are essentially drawn from the more prominent members of the knight of the white wolf and is mostly considered a ceremonial detail though they are most definitively no slouches in actual combat either then you've got a really interesting one that shows just how accepting the empire can actually be it's the knights of the blazing sun they follow the wargostus mirmida which is not an imperial god at all it is in fact an estilan god and therefore it is considered one of the civilized gods yes but it's not a common god in the empire and the fact that a knightly order is even allowed to worship a foreign god is quite remarkable now the backstory to this is quite long so i won't recount all of it essentially during a war with another human nation named arabi the knights of the blazing sun were aiding the estelians the recapture of one of their cities and in this city was a temple to the god of miramida the knightly order was overwhelmed by a particularly vicious arabian warlord named emir vazir the cruel and they looked set to overwhelm the knights and butcher them to the last man when a freak earthquake shook the temple dislodging the huge bronze statue of mumbida atop the building and sending it crashing to the ground where it crushed emily of azir the cruel and the majority of his soldiers the leaderless arabian horde thereby abandoned the temple to the night and ever since that day the knights have decided that well the goddess clearly interceded on their behalf and as such it's only right and proper that they pay back the favor and they have since established themselves as one of the more prominent and honorable noble orders within the empire additionally of course they just look kick-ass now an example of a non-templar order is the knights panther the knights panther is one of the most famous and most prestigious orders within the empire and they dedicated themselves to the preservation of purity in the human form now with purity i'm not talking racial superiority or any such other nonsense allah our own wonderful history rather they are fighting against the corruption of chaos so it's not that they dislike people of a certain religious persuasion or a certain skin color they just really really don't like mutants and are fanatically devoted to hunting them down now this fanatical conviction has also caused some minor quirks within their organization for example while most nightly orders will head north to support their cousins at kislev whenever they're being attacked from there by the chaos hordes to the north the knights panthers first and foremost loyalty is to the empire and therefore send very few forces up north considering themselves more of a uh policing force within the empire working for the empire's protection rather than anyone else's the simple fact that should kiss them fall then the empire will surely be next on chaos to-do list it doesn't really concern them that much and their origins story so to say is also based upon the war of araby though not by any divine intervention they simply took a liking to all of the cool animals down there and brought several of them along with them back to the empire at the end of the war and these days they usually drape themselves with whatever exotic animal pelts they can come across and so while they call themselves the night panther there are several knights to decorate themselves with leopards for example or lions etc rather than the panther of their name then lastly you have the reichsguard the reichsguard is not a templar order nor are they a private secular order they are their own military order based around the protection of the emperor they are essentially his bodyguard so well they're more than that i think the closest comparison although a somewhat horrible one is adolf hitler's leibstandatta during world war ii as while they are technically ceremonial bodyguards they also fulfilled a battlefield rogue the reichsguards in the same vein are technically the ceremonial bodyguards of the emperor but they are also a considerably sized military order and will take part in many of the empire's campaigns and they are also responsible for the security of all palaces and all castles belonging to the imperial family and they are divided into a mounted arm known as the reichsguards and knights or imperial cavalry and an infantry arm the imperial foot and although the imperial foot does not have quite the glorious imagery of their shining knights on horseback they are nonetheless some of the finest fighters within the empire recruited as they are not purely from the sons of nobility but from the absolute cream of the empire's fighting crop though that might mislead you into thinking that the ranks god will take anyone not quite so they do restrict their recruitment to the sons of nobility though they don't have to be direct descendants so technically with a little bit of fudging in the paperwork a particularly promising bastard of a noble family could be accepted and there has been on occasion acceptance of technically lowborns although they've essentially just been given some random noble title to justify their joining although i stress that that is extremely rare and this is mostly due to the sheer prestige of being a member of the rice god being a member of the reichsguard just just being a simple member is essentially the equal and prestige to being the commander of armies of local provinces they are considered to be the finest fighting force within the empire and therefore the men who make up its rank are considered to be the finest amongst nobility and therefore they are also afforded some of the finest equipment within the empire while most knightly orders will equip its members to a considerable degree wearing exquisitely crafted full plate armor the armor of the reichsguard is particularly fine comparable to that of extreme late age medieval european history where suits of armor was constructed with such ingenious design and use of rounded curves and interlocking plates as to be nearly impenetrable and even just a single suit of such armor would cost thousands upon thousands of crowns crowns being the standard uh currency of the empire they have pretty much a normal currency system unlike many of the other races they trade in gold silver copper etc and not only would it cost an absolutely ridiculous amount it would also take months if not years to complete finally a note on the empire's relations with its neighbors the empire has essentially always been allied with the dwarfs there are bonds of loyalty between men and dwarf that stretch back all the way to sigma's time and the two can usually rely on one another to come to the other's aid if so required they also have looser alliances with the high yards of orthot and though these are mostly alliances of you know just common benefit eg they'll march off to war together to fight the chaos hordes for example simply because well if the kislev and the empire gets overrun again the high elves are probably next up on the [ __ ] list and they are also well allied with britonia is a very very strong word they're friendly-ish you know they've been a war many many many times yes but when threatened by green skins or by chaos for example or particularly large concentrators of beastmen they can usually be relied upon to find enough common ground to stop stabbing each other and go off to fight the common enemy as to their relations with the other human nations like the border princess estelia telia and arabe well they're reasonably friendly with estelia and telia having merchant relations with both of them if not outrage alliances and when it comes to arabi well they've been at war with them several times but at this point arabic is so far away that it's mostly a live and let's live a policy and then there's kislev of course to the north now kislev doesn't technically have a proper army within they are a very well fleshed out nation to the point where i'm probably going to do a video on them at some point though i can't say when but essentially the short version is that kinslab is a human nation that is very very close to the borders of the chaos wastes and as such whenever the angry little chaos worshipping bastards up north start moving south kislev is always the ones who get the brunt of the bastard dream and kislev itself being a fairly poor country of large steps and very little fertile ground you could kind of compare it to siberian russia doesn't really stand much of a chance of beating off major chaos invasions by themselves although they have pulled off some absolute miracle victories by themselves during the course of their history and as such most of the civilized nations of the worlds will march to kislev's aid because again much better that kislev eats the majority of the brunt and the chaos invasion gets stopped up there rather than them starting to roll into the proper civilized lands of the south and as such the empire has strong bonds of alliances with kislev to the point where kislev can almost be guaranteed in fact i'd go so far as that it can be guaranteed imperial support in the case of a chaos invasion and while the dwarfs can be reasonably sure of aid er that somewhat depends on which local imperial noble they decide to go asking for help and well dwarves don't really go ask for help in the most diplomatic of manners let's just say well i have rambled on for quite long enough i think so i hope you've liked this video i hope it has been informative and i hope to see you in the empire army video which is also going to be quite considerable because well the empire's got a lot of units to go through but nevertheless i hope to see you then i have been arch thank you very much for watching and have a good day

Channel: Arch

Views: 418,926

Keywords: The Empire (Fictional Setting), Warhammer Fantasy Battle (Game), Warhammer Fantasy (Interest), Lore, Warhammer Lore, Arch, Total War: Warhammer

Id: E39Ne07qo4k

Length: 52min 6sec (3126 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2015