A new narrative initiative has launched at the Great Weave, and this one connects many events around the world together into a single mysterious plotline that is happening all across the Mortal Realms!
The Tapestry of Fate: a new way to interact with the narrative player community and their creations within the Mortal Realms.
Players can get involved with this storyline during an event itself, and/or can follow the plot developing in the Great Weave website and pitch their theories.
Can YOU find out what’s happening?
As the Burning Skies continue to cause havoc on the war efforts, and as old gods clash with the new, dark eyes are being found staring out from the realmgates. The war on the Hungering Steppe is coming to a head as Excelsis takes a long-awaited breath, while rumours of all-out war increase near the Brimstein Heartlands.
Tales abound around the repercussions of the events at Nassollotyl, and realmgates are malfunctioning, re-routing, or being destroyed entirely. A new undead threat has been heard of at Har Kuron, as the salt-wind carries stories of a new force plaguing the shores of the realms, at odds with the ascendancy of Life.
Tall tales of entire Waaagh’s of Orruk and their ilk found wandering aimlessly, their eyes wide in shock, are eerily similar to stories of gheists floating listlessly around crypts, ignorant and uncaring of those alive around them.
Many individuals have now started to truly focus on a number of these changes, and in particular, the rise in unique events surrounding the ever-important realmgates. Someone is out there doing something to the gates, but to what end, only time will tell. Needless to say, the stories of eyes staring out of a dark void beyond the gates send shivers down the spines of Chaos worshippers and Sigmarite soldiers alike. Nightmares plague cities across the realms, but are they truly omens or premonitions? Or simply what would be expected in a world of war and strife?
We chatted with the lead NEO for this initiative, Keegan West (@horizonslackey) about what players can expect from it.
Q: Please summarize the Tapestry of Fate for us, and what players and readers can expect.
A: Tapestry of Fate came out of a desire to create stories that are grander in scope, and more impactful to players that like to represent the changing nature of the Mortal Realms reflected in their games. Within The Great Weave, one of our guiding boundaries is that we don’t include storylines that directly contradict the overall AoS Narrative (like killing Morathi for good, or eliminating Chaos from the Realms). That said, we also want to tell stories that have the kind of scope that the Burning Skies, Morathi’s apotheosis, or the revelation of Stormvaults have. Tapestry is our way of pushing our plots as close to that level of influence, while still maintaining AoS canon, the ability of NEOs to tell their own stories, and our ability to create a living world for our players. It’s a set of stories that spans multiple events, so sits “atop” them, but still “below” official GW lore.
We felt that if we were to push the stories to this level, a level that, in theory, would affect not only individuals but events and campaigns, then it should be the NEOs themselves that craft this narrative. By pulling together writers and NEOs from online and IRL events, we’re able to craft grand narratives that affect our respective events, while still maintaining freedom and control over said events and their stories, as well as staying clear from stepping on the toes of official canon.
Q: Exactly how does the plot presented via Tapestry actually manifests during in-person Narrative Play Events? Can players playing in them influence it?
A: Essentially, when players attend Tapestry-linked events, they influence and impact the story at the event, which then goes on to influence the grand narrative being told by the narrative community as a whole.
Tapestry really manifests “in-game” within the games played at the events themselves, and it’s good to note that the extent of this involvement fluctuates with each event (some include Tapestry plot in significant ways, others include in more like an ‘easter egg” sort of way). The Great Weave already provides a platform for players to change and influence the Mortal Realms that may or may not impact other players. But this level of influence is usually quite ‘local’ for want of a better term, as most players, understandably, aren’t going around destroying cities or killing off other players’ characters. Tapestry allows players to participate in stories, through the respective events, that really do have these greater repercussions.
The duplicitous kharadron-enthusiast merchant Brob Grungnisson and the Chaos cultist Kal’Doe each orchestrated their own plots to take over the nullstone mining operations in the Gibbering Dome… but a lost piece of knowledge found there will have great repercussions for places far far way in the Realms. (as experienced in Adepticon 2022).
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsSOUND ON
— WitneyWarhammer (@WarhammerWitney) February 21, 2022
Event pack coming Friday 25th February#WWTwo pic.twitter.com/39L0NM5f0f
Realmgates are malfunctioning… does this have anything to do with the arcane key found in the Brimstein Heartlands? Find out how it all shakes out this summer at WarhammerWitneyTwo: The Maklatan Project.
Q: Can players and organizers interact with the plot of Tapestry? Say, use some of its plot hooks for part of their army background, and maybe even contribute some story pieces to it?
A: Players are able to ‘interact’ with Tapestry in essentially the same way they interact with the existing Age of Sigmar canon. They can include Tapestry locations and characters in their games, create their personal lore that involves itself, or stems from, the narratives being told, develop hobby creations that reflect the story in different ways, the list goes on. Additionally, Tapestry will also result in some fairly unique changes to the Realms which I’m sure players will want to get in on, in-game this has the possibility of including specific table rules (similar to Realm rules), bespoke character warscrolls, and entire faction additions.
Organizers can obviously do all of the above. Additionally, though, NEOs are welcome to get in touch if they’d like to run a Tapestry event, giving them the opportunity of influencing and shifting the current, and future, plots in much more robust ways.
Q: Tapestry weaves a grand plot across the realms, right? How does this story interact with the wider canon of Age of Sigmar, and can players engage with Tapestry without breaking with the official lore of the game?
A: Events from Tapestry, like other creations on the Great Weave, are occurring at the same time as the main storylines from Age of Sigmar, in parallel. So Tapestry will reference Age of Sigmar canon, or official lore, occasionally, to ground the timeline for players, so they know the time period things are occurring. We tell stories about characters after all, and those characters live in a world where the Burning Skies ravage realmgates, where characters like Arkhan are rumored to have been pushed off the edge of a realm, where it’s whispered that the Stormcast are becoming just a touch more sinister in some respects. So of course this will seep into our stories. That being said, no, our stories don’t alter official GW lore.
Q: How many events can players expect to be connected to the Tapestry Plot? How long is the current story in Tapestry going to run?
A: I’m expecting Tapestry to run for quite some time. We’re not talking about a single story, and we’re certainly not talking about a single year. This is very much a project that weaves together the narrative community in a way that has never been seen before. The scope of this, and the goals that we have, mean that we’re looking at years of different stories, with dozens of events getting involved over time. We’re just getting started…
————————
Thank you, Keegan!
We will all be following, or participating (!) in the event online, and coming up with our best theories on what’s happening!
You can find the Event Page page here.
What do you think about this event?
Do you want to organize an event based on these happenings? Do you want to discuss your own tinfoil hat ideas of what’s happening?
Leave your comments below!
Narrative Event Organizer Network 