Warhammer Fantasy is a fictional fantasy universe created by Games Workshop and used in many of its games, including the table top wargame Warhammer Fantasy Battle, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) pen-and-paper role-playing game, and a number of video games: the MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the strategy games Total War: Warhammer, Total War: Warhammer II and Total War: Warhammer III and the two first-person shooter games in the Warhammer Vermintide series, Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2, among many others.
Warhammer is notable for its "dark and gritty" background world, which reference a range of historical cultures, along with other fantasy settings, in particular Tolkien's Middle-earth. From Michael Moorcock, its creators took the theme of "Chaos" as a force unceasingly attempting to tear the mortal world asunder. The world itself was populated with a variety of races such as humans, high elves, dark elves, wood elves, dwarfs, undead, orcs, lizardmen, and other creatures familiar to many fantasy/role-playing settings.
The development of the setting began with the release of a game simply called 'Warhammer' in 1983.[1]
The Warhammer world drew inspiration from Tolkien's Middle-earth, but also from Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian) and Michael Moorcock, as well as real-world history, particularly European history. What is recognizable as the Warhammer World began with the expansion material to the first edition of the game Warhammer, but was formulated as a distinct setting with a world map in the second edition.[citation needed]
The Warhammer World borrowed considerably from historical events and other fantasy fiction settings. The Old World is recognisably Europe approximating to various historical periods including the Renaissance - the Empire being set over what was the Holy Roman Empire - medieval France, Roman Italy and Celtic Britain. Many events are lifted and modified directly from history, including the Black Plague and the Moorish invasion of Spain, and others from original fantasy sources. Like Middle-earth, Warhammer's Dwarfs are declining in population, the Elves have mostly departed for homelands in the West, and a Great Necromancer is reborn after the defeats in his Southern stronghold.[citation needed]
There are numerous nations, races and ethnicities in the Warhammer World. Mankind, the most prominent, often proves to be the most susceptible to the corrupting influence of Chaos. Most of the featured human nations are based in the Old World (analogous to real world Europe): The Empire (Holy Roman Empire), Bretonnia (France and Arthurian Britain), and Kislev (Slavs of Russia, Poland, and Ukraine). Further east of them is another powerful human civilisation known as Grand Cathay (corresponding to China).[citation needed]