Overview of the Old World

[Pancho]

I think we should note that in the HQ text Mentor says that Rogar came from the borderlands, not the Border Princes. It’s possible that it’s the same thing, but the Empire has a very long border which isn’t confined to just the Border Princes.

The back of the Heroquest box also states that the new Barbarian, I.e the guy that we are going to play as, is also from the Borderlands. This is a potential contradiction with the later Barbarian quest pack, because the Barbarian hero’s homeland is in the far frozen north (“Welcome Barbarian, to the land of your youth!”). We’re not talking about the Border Princes here, which are south of the Empire.

[Davane]

The eastern Border of the Empire is the World's Edge Mountains, the shattered home of the Dwarves. That means the Borderlands could stretch as far north as Kislev, giving many possibilities for the Barbarian homeland. Whilst Norsca is famed for it's Barbarians, it's not the only source of Barbarians.

Note that Rogar amassed a great army against Morcar by rallying them behind the Star of the West, which could be taken to be a symbol of the Empire. Presumably, therefore, the Borderlands are to the east, which is pretty much anywhere in the Worlds Edge Mountains, from the Border Princes right the way up to the Northern Chaos Wastes.

As mountainous wildlands, anywhere in this vast stretch of mountains could hold Barbarian clans of some kind, struggling for survival. It should also be noted that all of the Eastern and Northern provinces of the Empire still hold on to some of their wild, barbaric traditions - plus, you have the Cult of Ulric, which are pretty much barbarians still.

When you get down to it, the Empire is only civilized on paper, and mostly concentrated in largish settlements behind thick stone walls and wooden palisades. Most transport is by river, or by coach using routes that run either through mountain passes or alongside the rivers, resing in fortified coaching inns. You also get a few defended farmsteads or villages, which farm a few fields in the fertile floodplains.

Other than these spots of civilization, the rest is still pretty much untamed wilderness, be it rugged mountains, dark forests, open grasslands, or swampy wasteland. There can, and indeed is, anything out in these wilderness locations, so it's not impossible that you may find Barbarians, Hunters, Rangers, and other wildfolk living in these fringes, away from civilization.

Personally, if we go with the BQP as being canon for the barbarian's homeland, chances are that the Barbarian hails from from Kislev, which is pretty wild northland region of the Old World north of the Empire that can be considered Borderlands. Plus, Norsca is still a viable candidate and famous for it's barbarian clans that fight each other, and Chaos, and everything else, trying to survive and not become Chaos Marauders.

Of course, if you don't want to go with the BQP telling you where the Barbarian comes from, the northern provinces of the Empire are all suitable places for the Barbarian to come from. Most of these provinces are much less "civilised" than the Riekland, with more wilderness and fewer settlements, that still provide the barbaric trope of the Hero. Talabecland, for example, if the province closes to Kislev, and is extremely rural, with rolling plains between the Drakwald Forest and Worlds Edge Mountains, moving away from the more settled Reikland to the sparsely populated barrens of Kislev proper. This provides a nice contrast to Heinrich Lowen, the warrior from AHQ, who quite clearly is a Reiklander...

[Cael Darkhollow]

Borderlands versus Border Princes or Border Kingdoms terminology certainly does lend some ambiguity to the possible location for Rogar specifically.

I always took that to mean the Border Princes personally. Border Princes is a lawless region ruled by petty fiefdoms and outlaw bands, "prince" is a bit of a euphemism where noble lineage isn't required to rule, just strength of arms. When it says Rogar is a prince from the Borderlands I put two and two together and always placed him from the Border Princes south of The Empire. That lawless region would certainly be barbaric compared to the kingdom of Bretonnia or the Empire.

I do agree that there are many types of barbarians and even barbaric tribes in the Empire.

Just because Rogar is from the "Borderlands" doesnt mean the player's hero character is, there is no correlation between the two beyond barbarian type.

Also because Kislev is Russian themed with it's own figurine and artwork style in Warhammer as Slavic infuenced, it would be very strange indeed to have a barbarian with a Russian accent, and whose appearance is atypical of all other Kislevites.
I always envisioned a proto-germanic barbarian (real world history barbarian) with a thick accent like Arnold Schwarzenegger, so I would never dream of the barbarian hero as originating from Kislev, I put his Homeland in Norsca as is made clear in the HeroQuest novel during his home faring.

The Barbarian Quest Pack on the back says "the tribal elders have summoned you to protect the Northland from great danger." The BQP questbook mentions the Barbarian on leave exploring "warm lands to the south," which logically rules out any non perpetually frozen environs or any Eastern or Western locale such as the Worlds Edge Mountains directly east of the empire, the Grey Mountains to the West or the southern Border Kingdoms. The northern portion of the World's Edge Mountains would be suitable. Even the barbaric northern provinces of the Empire aren't sheathed in ice all the time like Kislev or Norsca is, so a Middenheimer barbarian wouldn't fit the narrative of BQP. We can interpret those passages to mean anywhere north of the empire including Norsca, the Northern Chaos Wastes, Troll Country or Kislev, if we are just using the Barbarian Quest Pack to indicate the Barbarian hero's homeland. However, if we include the HQ quest "Growl of Thunder" or the HQ novel Tyrant's Tomb and the provided maps (and I certainly think we should!) it becomes abundantly clear the Barbarian hero of HeroQuest is from Norsca as it explicitly states "your Norscan land where you are really at home." page 64 intro text to Growl of Thunder, and similar comments in the story, not to mention the very clear map showing Norsca filling the whole map.

We all know the archtype of the fur diaper wearing bare chested sword or axe swinging barbarian is really Conan from the Robert E. Howard stories and the Frank Frazetta art on the old paperback novels, interestingly there is a "Border Kingdom" separating his homeland of Cimmeria in the north from the civilized kingdoms to the south on maps of the Hyborian Age. Warhammer/HeroQuest being a ripoff of Tolkien, Howard, Morcock etc. I use those literature sources to fill out things, clearly GamesWorkshop was heavily influenced by them and did the same.

[Cael Darkhollow]

I think we should note that in the HQ text Mentor says that Rogar came from the borderlands, not the Border Princes. It’s probable that it’s the same thing, but the Empire has a very long border which isn’t confined to just the Border Princes.

The back of the Heroquest box also states that the new Barbarian, I.e the guy that we are going to play as, is also from the Borderlands. This is a potential contradiction with the later Barbarian quest pack, because the Barbarian hero’s homeland is in the far frozen north (“Welcome Barbarian, to the land of your youth!”). We’re not talking about the Border Princes here, which are south of the Empire.

????? none of my HeroQuest boxes have that on the back, my NA version says, "The Barbarian- the mightiest warrior! Few can match him in mortal combat!" (and to think I usually play Sub-Zero in Mortal Combat all this time...)
My Advanced Quest Edition EU says nothing specific about the Barbarian just Morcar and heroes.

I do not have a 1st edition EU HeroQuest box so am unsure if the back or any other part of the box is different

[Kurgan]

The text:

The Barbarian --- A mighty warrior from the Borderlands...

...indeed appears on the back at least of the EU game box (the same box that refers to the Evil Wizard as "Morcar" and carries the 1989 copyright date). How many times did we actually flip over the box to read that text? My NA GS box omits the part about the Borderlands and skips right to the part about mortal combat (I remember Mortal Kombat as well, though it wouldn't exist for another year after we got HQ in the US).

The following text appears in Mentor's introduction in the BQP quest book (thanks Phoenix):

Welcome, mighty Barbarian! To the land of your youth! It seems only yesterday that the tribal leaders gave you leave to explore the many wonders of the warm lands to the south. You return now as a renowned warrior, tall and strong, well-versed in the skills of battle. Happy though your homecoming is, bitter tidings are on the minds of the tribal elders. They wearily tell you why you have been summoned back to aid your people in their time of need. An ancient evil, long thought banished, has arisen to threaten the Northlands once more.

The back of FH box reads:

Welcome, mighty Barbarian to the land of your youth! The tribal elders have summoned you to protect the Northland from great danger! The Frozen Horror, an evil creature long thought banished, has burst forth from its icy tomb to await Zargon's command.

Each goes on but you get the point. I thought maybe there was some other mention of the HQ Barbarian's origins in one of the rules of play (instruction manuals) or maybe Growl of Thunder, but I couldn't find it, so must have been my imagination, perhaps some half remembered bit from the novels (Fellowship of Four and Tyrant's Tomb) that I've been reading lately. Each spinoff fiction of HQ uses different names for the characters, incidentally, so who is to say its even the same ones in those cases but that's another story (I think its to reflect the fact that you get to name the heroes whatever you want in the actual game!).

[Davane]

I wouldn't take the Borderlands = Border Princes so literally, because there's a LOT of lands around the Empire that could count as borderlands.

The Conan stereotype barbarian would have been mostly the tribes that made up the Empire, so they either joined the Empire after Sigmar unified them, stayed in the lands as wilderfolk, or were displaced to other places like the Border Princes, Kislev, or Norsca.

It's worth noting that the WHQ Barbarian specifically states that he's from Norsca, which makes him more Nordic than Germanic. But given the close cultural tropes of Germanic, Nordic, and Slavic barbarians, these could be seen as to be largely interchangeable in many ways, creating a variety of Barbarian phenotypes that could, quite easily, all be part of the same culture.

In the CJ write up of Kislev, although the people are more slavic, there are Barbarians in the wilderness of Kislev. They tend to have the Great Bear as their "totem", much like how the Cult of Ulric Barbarians favour the Wolf. So, it's entirely possible that the Northlands refer to the wild tundra of Kislev as much as the fjords of Norsca. Plus, to the East, over the Worlds Edge Mountains, you have the Hun-like Barbarians, as well as the Ogre Lands.

A key point to recall in that the further north you go, the more these seemingly separate lands merge together to become the Northern Chaos Wastes. Thus, members of all these types of barbarians can intermingle, and potentially become Chaos Marauders. Then you have the Dwarf barbarians and the Ogres as well.

Ultimately, you can just say barbarians come from the Northlands, because like with Borderlands, it's very ambiguous, but ultimately, the specifics are generally lost to the Chaos Wastes. Chances are, whether you go with Nordic, Germanic, Slavic, or Mongol for your Barbarian, they are going to come from the north of the Old World.

Of course, nothing is saying that none of these tribes couldn't come down and inhabit the Border Princes. Or even exist in constant warfare with the Orcs and Goblins of the Badlands for that matter...

[Cael Darkhollow]

I was wondering why I never read that sentence that Pancho mentions on the back of the box.
Ah, that makes more sense since I do not own the 1989 first edition UK box, well either basic UK box 1989 or 1990 version really, instead I own the EU 1990 HeroQuest Advanced Quest box, and the NA 1990 HeroQuest box. Clearly that sentence was omitted from all versions except the first, yet Rogar's origins in the Borderlands are the same in all versions of the rules book.

my UK HeroQuest expansions and boxed sets


Indeed in the introduction text for the Growl of Thunder HQ adventure (and the accompanying map in the book) inside the Tyrant's Tomb novel, it identifies Norsca as the barbarian's homeland.

Map included in two of the HeroQuest novels: the Screaming Spectre, and The Tyrant's Tomb


In the Barbarian Quest Pack it just says Northland which is a lot more vague.
in the base game no mention is found in the booklets, and apparently on the UK 1st edition box only it says the barbarian is from the Borderlands.

In the Realm of Chaos box set 1997 Warhammer 6th edition we get this map of the North and descriptions in the text of the various barbarian tribes:

the red headed Vargs and the blonde blue eyed Aeslings found in northern Norsca are obviously the Vanir of Vanaheim and the Aesir of Asgard both barbarian nations from Conan the Barbarian's Hyborian World
the rest are dark haired when mentioned (like our hero) in the game box art, matching Conan's world again (Hyperborians were pale with dark hair to the east of Asgard in Hyperboria, while Cimmerians from Cimmeria just south of both Vanaheim and Asgard were black haired giants with tanned outlander skin.
The Kurgan are raven haired and dark skinned
The Hung are asiatic. Either of these two (or both) could be based on real world Huns or Mongols
the Norse in general are equivalent to Scandinavian origin real world Norse, or viking Rus (origin of the word Russia)
interestingly the Norse Dwarf hold of Kraka Drak is very viking in theme in the artwork and is located towards Norsca on the map according to the arrow that describes its location off-map.
Then we have the proto-Germanic barbarians brown or blond haired Middenheimers, within the Empire (think Goth or perhaps visigoth Germanic barbarians in the movie Gladiator) with their models released for both Warhammer and Mordheim games.
The Border Princes represent the Carpathians just north of Turkey and the Mediterranean historically thought of as a wild, backward and more primitive area of Europe

[Kurgan]

Northlands vs. Northland (back of box vs. quest book) in BQP. And hair dye in some form or another is extremely ancient in our world, so probably for theirs too.

HQ Historical detective work is fun!

[Pancho]

Ha, I’ve just been looking at that map from 6th edition and lo and behold it’s posted here when I get back .

I was going to say that the Sarls and the Baersonlings at least could be seen as northern Barbarian tribes that are in or near the borderlands of the Empire, before we even mention the Kislevites. Another very important tribe are the Kurgan, who are a bit more distant but are powerful enough to penetrate down into the Empire from time to time.

How the ancient Unberogen (Sigmar’s tribe) fit into all this is not clear to me.

Edit; maybe the Baersonlings are one of the tribes that have the great bear as their totem, as mentioned by Davane.

[Davane]

Woah! Great find there for the barbarians re the Northern Chaos Wastes. I have never actually seen that map.

Prior to the formation of the Empire, barbarian tribes covered pretty much all of the Old World. They are pretty much the Goths of our world, that ravaged the northern borders of the Roman Empire and when it collapsed in what we call the Dark Ages, the barbarian tribes essentially took over the land.

This is mirrored in the Old World, because if I recall correctly, Tilea was supposed to have had an ancient empire that covered most of the civilised lands of the Old World, including Tilea, Estalia, Bretonnia, the Border Princes, and the southern lands of the Empire. Although this Tilean empire is supposed to be analogous with the Roman Empire, it's actually detailed as a much more classical empire, like that of ancient Greece, favouring city states and colonies, rather than the much more efficient Roman Empire that we know. In essence, it's as if the Romans never really got out of the City-state stage, didn't leave Italy, and never got to Britain or Gaul, so these cultures got to flourish a bit more, and the ancient Greeks lasted a little longer and made headway into the rest of Europe, before collapsing.

Sigmar is said to have come from the Unberogen tribe, one of the tribes of the Old World lands and managed to unify the Empire, in much the same way that Frederick or Charlemagne unified the city states and provinces of what would become the Holy Roman Empire and Germany in the future. Each of the provinces of the Empire would ultimately retain a lot of their individual barbarian heritage, through the rural class, much like many of the European provinces retain much of their culture today.

Ironically, Sigmar is seen as the big civiliser of the Empire, and thus Reikland, backed by the Cult of Sigmar, is heavily civilised compared to the other provinces of the Empire. Thus, most of the Unberogen tribe would actually become the first nobles and burghers of the Reikland, retaining the least of their barbaric traditions, but still retain the proudness they had as a barbarian tribe as citizens of the Empire. I know the capital of the Empire hasn't always been Altdorf and the Riekland, but in general, that's the heart of the Empire.

It's interesting to see how Cubicle 7 has continued with this idea with WFRP 4th Edition, particularly with their starter set. There's much more detail on the Reikland as the heart of the Empire, as well as the way it's governed in an highly bureaucratic form of feudalism. Basically, the provinces are broken down through several layers, and the detail provided for the Reikland is really thorough. One of the sub provinces of the Reikland is the basis of the WFRP 4th Edition Starter Set, featuring the area around Ubersriek.

Ubersreik has never been mentioned in Imperial History before, but is essentially a microcosm of the Reikland itself, and the political instability of the region has it wavering between local control and Imperial control from Altdorf. It's a great example of how the hands-off bureaucratic method of governance behind the Empire actually works, with the basic threat that if local authority doesn't do a good enough job, Imperial forces will come in an seize control. Interestingly, local control is typically between several noble family linages, some of whom may have been displaced, as well as rising merchant guilds and town governors. Ubersreik is the name of both the urban settlement and the surrounding province, which is basically a parcel of land awarded to some petty noble to run as their own fiefdom in the name of the Empire, with many such provinces belonging to noble families for generations.

Ubersreik is actually positioned by the Grey Mountains to the north east ish of Castle Drachenfels, guarding one of the minor passes to Bretonnia, and the upper regions of one of the tributaries of the River Reik. It's a small region that really only gets noted on a map of the Reikland, not maps of the Empire as a whole. The map of the Reikland is one of the most comprehensive, and busiest, maps I have ever seen, and is worth looking into if you want to see where WFRP is going currently. It's a bit too far away from the areas referred to by HQ, but there's still plenty of ideas in there that might be worth exploring and adapting for HQ...