Herald’s Start Positions – Northern Chaos Wastes

Herald’s Start Positions – Northern Chaos Wastes is a lua script based mod which changes the faction start positions in the Northern Chaos Wastes in Immortal Empires, with the goals of greater world immersion and fixing some of the border gore present in the early game in vanilla TW: Warhammer III.

Like its thematic predecessor Herald’s Start Positions – Kislev & Norsca, this mod is aimed at players who generally enjoy the vanilla Warhammer III experience, but would like to have some of its gameplay issues fixed, or are looking for a new experience, while conserving the vanilla feeling of the game.

It is not aimed at players using a lot of mods which bring new factions and/or change start positions in the area affected by this mod, and it wasn’t developed with their changes in mind.

This mod marks the end of my start position changes in and around the north of the Old World, besides smaller updates, at least until Creative Assembly decides to introduce some changes themselves. After this, I will try to enhance the south of the Old World – check my mod collection’s description to see what’s planned.

Here are the main changes of this mod:

– Boris Ursus now starts in the Skull Road, in the settlement of Tribeslaughter, fittingly renamed to "The Red Fort", with a campaign map skin change to a Kislevite minor settlement;
– Lazarghs have been entirely moved out of the Skull Road into the Fort Dwarrslav region, starting only with their camp, able to supply Ogre mercenaries to both Boris Ursus and Astragoth on turn 1;
– the Bloody Sword, Boris Ursus’ starting Khornate enemy has been moved to the settlements of Karak Dum and the Pillar of Skulls in the Skull Road, the latter having its campaign map skin changed to a Chaos settlement;
– the Broken Wheel Tzeentchian minor faction, which used to be Malus Darkblade’s starting enemy, has been moved to Stormvrack Mount in the Skull Road, to provide a different early Chaos enemy to Boris Ursus, or a different potential Chaos god faction vassal to Archaon when he is controlled by the player;
– Archaon the Everchosen now starts at war with the reintroduced Septic Claw Nurgle faction in the Blood Marshes;
– Arbaal the Undefeated has been moved to the Howling Citadel in Bloodfire Falls, starting at war with the Exquisite Pain Slaanesh minor faction, which now owns the rest of Bloodfire Falls;
– the Daemon Prince has been slightly moved to the outside of the Lucent Maze, ready to advance towards the Port of Secrets;
– Epidemius starts without the Bilious Cliffs, which have been given to the newly introduced Gharhar Warriors of Chaos minor faction – Epidemius’ new starting enemy, along with the Tower of Flies, letting Epidemius finish his starting province in peace, without crossing paths with the Daemon Prince;
– Malus Darkblade starts at war with the Khrag minor Norscan faction, now present at the start of the campaign, which has been given ownership of The Eternal Lagoon province;
– all armies of Hag Graef are now immune to Chaos Wastes climate attrition (not to Chaos corruption attrition) – Malus’ faction starts with Chaos Wastes as a suitable climate in vanilla, this change extends the same logic to his armies.

The mod includes a variety of balance, flavour and polish changes in the area.

You can see the most important changes in the screenshots, and all of the territorial changes on the map created using nopeace.net. Factions starting without a settlement are shown controlling the region in which they start their campaign.

I recommend using this mod alongside Herald’s Start Positions – Ostankya near Kislev, as well as the aforementioned Herald’s Start Positions – Kislev & Norsca. This mod could be considered HSP – Kislev & Norsca’s standalone expansion, so make sure to check them both out.

I also recommend using these mods together with other Herald’s Start Positions mods, and my mods in general, as they are all being developed in conjunction.

Herald’s Start Positions are now also available as a single subscription mod compilation, which will be continually updated with every future HSP mod release and update.

This mod is fully compatible with Mixu’s Unlocker and Immortal Empires Expanded.

Herald’s Start Positions mod series should work with mods like SFO: Grimhammer III, which rebalance different aspects of the game, but generally do not touch the start positions of the factions.

Credits go to Porkenstein and Swissbob for the script framework which I’m using across my start position lua script mods. The province overview map was created using nopeace.net.

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You can find the list of all of my upcoming mods in my complete mod collection‘s description.

If you’d like to know when the newest mods and mod updates drop, you can follow me on the Steam Workshop, Facebook[www.facebook.com] and X.[x.com]

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If you’d like to browse news about my mod releases and updates, find links to my social media and more, you can now access everything in one place on my website, Herald’s Journal.[heraldsjournal.com]

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Any form of support means a lot. Thank you!