If the control of the Arcways were seized and fortified by undead sentinels unfailingly loyal to Nagash, it would further strengthen his grasp upon the Mortal Realms but even for Nagash’s near-limitless legions, such a conquest would be tremendously costly, with no surety of success.

Nagash still remembers when Archaon himself cut him down before the gates of Nagashizzar, and the bite of the Everchosen’s dread sword, the Slayer of Kings. While the Eightpoints and the Varanspire still stand, the armies of the Everchosen cannot truly be defeated, and the threat of their dark crusades will always loom on the horizon. Sigmar’s great cities occupy but a small bridgehead in a near-infinite expanse of territory.

Still, only a fool would question the dominance of the Dark Gods in the Mortal Realms. The loss of many important transitory routes during the Realmgate Wars greatly impacted on the Everchosen’s ability to redirect his hordes across such distances in an instant, isolating many Chaos fiefdoms. It is a strategic location of unmatched importance and the domain of Archaon the Everchosen, Exalted Grand Marshal of Chaos whose stronghold, the Varanspire – a monumental fortress-citadel haloed by a swirling crown of infernal magic from which spills the raw, protean energy of Chaos into reality. The fortified sub-realm of the Eightpoints lies at the very centre of the cosmos, equidistant from each of the Eight Realms connected to them by immense arcway portals. The mortal armies of the Dark Gods were already embroiled in grinding wars of attrition against the God-King’s forces and plagued by a drastic increase in greenskin raids now found themselves swarmed by spectral horrors and shambling hordes of risen dead. Since the Necroquake and the beginning of the Soul Wars the undead armies of Nagash have swept across the Mortal Realms, overrunning and destroying many Free Cites and attacking the decentralised empires of Chaos.

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