Gods of The Old World

The Gods of the Old World are a collection of fictional supernatural beings modeled after real-world pagan deities. In the Warhammer Fantasy setting, there are many fictional deities provided to add color and verisimilitude to the game’s background. Most or all of these entities seem to be analogues of real-world gods, chosen to present a war-torn, grim, perilous, and adventurous world.

The setting does not emphasize a creation myth, origin stories, or myth-cycles. The core stories for the setting tend to focus on Sigmar, the national patron god of the Empire, the Empire being the main setting of the Warhammer background.

The Warhammer setting’s artificial mythology presents views of the gods as evolving over time, and worship of particular gods waxing or waning as political and social changes affect the people of the Old World. Gods that are presented as popular and influential in the early timeline may be presented as less important in the later, “current,” period. The mythology also presents differing perspectives and conflicting accounts of the gods, similar to inconsistencies in real-world mythologies.

Different material presents slightly different ideas on what the gods are; whether they are genuine local divinities, Chaos entities created or shaped by mortal minds, or leftover intelligences from the great disaster that shaped the Warhammer world, is unclear.