The history of Chaos is mainly recorded by the Men, Dwarfs, and especially the Elves. For eight thousand years, Chaos has struggled to bring the free people of the world to ruin. Countless lives have been lost, kingdoms toppled and entire cities wiped from the face of the world. Yet beyond mortal sight, great wars have been fought between the daemonic armies of the Dark Gods. The infernal region known as the Realm of Chaos is an eternal battlefield, the arena for so called "Great Game" of the Chaos Gods. Here they send forth their greatest servants, the Daemon Lords, who vie for supremacy and fight against each other like rabid wolves. These are wars of attrition where daemonic legions clash across the immaterial planes, claiming and counter-claiming territory and the magical life-blood that goes with it.

Several times these wars have brought the mortal kingdoms to the brink of destruction. The intelligent races have remained ignorant, however, dismissing them as random feuds between the forces of Chaos. Only the Elves of Ulthuan have kept record. When the Daemon Wars have split over into mortal lands, all manner of villainous creatures have been drawn to the conflict, from vile Skaven to twisted Dark Elves. The High Elves have intervened in these times of peril, assembling bands of the finest warriors and mages to counter the threat posed by the Daemon Lords and their minions. Few of these heroes survive, and those who do forever keep with them a terrible sense of dread for they have made enemies with the most powerful servants of Chaos.

The Elemental Gate

It is said that the Old Ones were the supreme masters of the elements at the height of their powers. Their influence over the world was absolute. At some point in history they harnessed the power of the elements into eight jewels. With these devices the Old Ones were able to move the planet closer to the sun, altering its orbit to make the climate warmer and more habitable. Oceans and mountains were moved and reshaped, and the natural energies of the air, fire and water were refined to power their industrious society.

They used the jewels to split apart the single mega-continent; the great plates underneath the earth were shifted and a civilization was built the likes of which would never be surpassed in splendor on this world.

The designs of the Old Ones, however, were not flawless and in the end it was their desire to control the elemental powers that led to disaster. Through the treachery of one of their own, one of the Jewels of the earth element was stolen and corrupted. The resulting unbalance in the elements caused an earthquake of gigantic proportions in the northern pole of the world. History knows this event as the fall of the northern gate where one of their interstellar gates, used by the Old Ones to transverse the Galaxy, crashed to earth and tore a hole into the fabric of reality, unleashing Chaos upon the world. In their darkest hour, the Old Ones decided to abandon the world to Chaos, disappearing into space and leaving behind their creations to fend for themselves.

Some of the world's oldest recorded history starts from here, when in fact a great war raged for many centuries earlier as the creator Old Ones struggled against Chaos for control of the inter-dimensional gateways in the skies above the world. The energies unleashed during this time wracked the lands but slowly the Old Ones began to gain the upper hand in the titanic struggle.

During this time, the Old Ones devised numerous strategies through which they hoped to close the gateways that were doorways through which Chaos could enter the world.

Their final plan was the construction of another gateway. The Old Ones believed they could use this Elemental Gate as a weapon to bury the remaining gates under a tide of earth and ocean. This unorthodox gate was a wonder of science and arcane technology. It sat upon a pedestal as an octagonal-shaped slab of stone, its surface imbued with ancient runes of power, and with grooves around the outer circle of the slab where the eight jewels would act as the gate's power source.

It is speculated that the Old Ones, divine as they were, were dangerously vulnerable and susceptible to the attentions of daemons. In an act of betrayal that would have tragic consequences, the Old One Sha' Dwen was lured by Chaos and stole the Jewels of Earth, the most enchanted of the eight. The Old One, who would later come to be known as Eablis, Drakyr the Devourer, and a whole host of other cursed names, fled to the Old World and using the power of the jewels caused a catastrophic explosion of absolute darkness that caused the gates above the poles to collapse in on themselves. Eablis was destined to become a god of Chaos, but the tale of his decent into madness and eventual imprisonment is told elsewhere.


The collapse of the warp gates marked the end for the Old Ones. Some believe that they were instantly destroyed by the influx of chaotic energy. Others believe that they realized that the world was doomed and so abandoned it to its fate. Whatever the case, the fabled gate of the elements was buried in a secret location and the remaining jewels were scattered throughout the world to prevent them falling into the clutches of Chaos.


Without the power of the elements, the favoured servants of the Old Ones, the Slaan, were forced to re-awaken the shattered series of wards that were spread cross the globe in areas of power, usually where the lines of energy that criss-crossed the world. In the end, however, doom was averted by the selfless actions of the Elves of Ulthuan. Under siege from the daemons overrunning their island, the Elves created a powerful vortex of energy that siphoned most of the magical winds back to the poles. The magic surging across the landscape was suddenly halted and pulled back, and the daemons were banished into stronger collections of chaos energy in the extreme north and south.


Many wars have since been waged by Chaos, but none on the same scale as the first incursion. Except to the most ancient of the Slaan, all knowledge of the gate and the Jewels was lost in time. The elemental gate, the weapon created by the Old Ones to be the bane of Chaos, was forgotten. That was until the coming of the Dwarfs. In the year 2515 a Dwarf expeditionary force in search of the lost stronghold of Karak Zorn uncovered an enormous underground chasm beneath the site. News quickly spread of the discovery of an ancient hall created by an alien race wherein a strange arcane structure had also been found....