Chaos has always been present to some degree or another in the Total War: Warhammer strategy games, but with the arrival of Total Warhammer 3, it has taken centre stage. That’s raised some important questions about the organisation of factions: Chaos isn’t just one race or faction, it spans mortals and daemons, and itself is split between the four dark Chaos gods. Creative Assembly’s Warhammer team has published a new post that dives into how the studio is handling this complex knot of interlocking factions, lords, and deities.
The upcoming Champions of Chaos DLC, which will be launching alongside the Immortal Empires campaign in August, is the focal point of a lot of the confusion around Chaos. It’s a Lords pack, and each of the four Legendary Lords it adds is explicitly aligned with one specific Chaos god – Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle, and Tzeentch.
However, these lords are joining the Warriors of Chaos faction, which was originally introduced in the first Total Warhammer. This faction of bandits worships Chaos generally, and their lords have spread Chaos Undivided corruption. These new lords will spread both ‘normal’ Chaos Undivided corruption and the corruption specific to their chosen Chaos god, and have access to some of those gods’ units and mechanics. It’s gotten a bit tricky to know for sure who you’re working for with a given lord.
Creative Assembly says the new lords pack has offered the studio a chance to “reintroduce” the iconic Warriors of Chaos race in a way that adds flavour and mechanical depth to the faction. The new daemon lords, of whom Azazel and Festus have been revealed so far, will offer new ways to play Warriors of Chaos in a way that’s shaped by a particular Chaos god rather than the broad umbrella of Chaos Undivided.
The studio also says that adding these daemon lords to the Warriors of Chaos will not preclude the addition of mortal characters to the ‘monogod’ faction rosters. Creative Assembly says it’ll handle this on a “DLC-by-DLC basis,” with some mortal characters slotting in more comfortably with daemonic rosters in monogod factions, while others might demand mechanics of their own.
The new DLC lords have some special traits that set them apart from the rest of the Warriors of Chaos, and from their monogod equivalents. They’ll be able to start recruiting daemons and marking mortals on turn one, and that whole process will be easier and cheaper for them.
They also share a special tech tree that allows them to specialise in units and mechanics specific to their god, and they’ll spread their god’s corruption. They’ll also gain their god’s battle mechanics and army abilities, and have versions of campaign features from their god’s faction – Festus, for example, will be able to brew and spread plagues like Ku’gath can, although they’ll be a bit different for both lords.
Creative Assembly also notes that it won’t initially be possible to confederate all of the Warriors of Chaos – the team had hoped to allow Archaon to be able to pull this off, but this idea ran into balancing problems.
“We know that this is important to you, and will be looking to enable some form of confederation for the Warriors in a post-release patch,” Creative Assembly says. “We’ll talk more about how we’ll aim to accomplish that feat in the future!”