Editing Cathay (section)

==How come all this lore is new?==
Grand Cathay has been listed in Warhammer's Lore since the early days, a location that was referenced on numerous occasions. A vast human Empire standing against chaos on the Eastern End of the primary continent with a role in the history of the world. It is based on a real-life civilization whose history and mythology could easily be mined for inspiration as Medieval France or Early Modern Germany or Norse and Egyptian mythology and the general melange of 20th-century fantasy. The setting could have been easily expanded with new stories and armies by developing Cathay, all without upsetting the stuff which people liked.

But until 2021 Games Workshop did not.

Despite being both vast, wealthy and powerful Cathay was just a background element. A land which was almost exclusively referenced indirectly in regards to other races (Hellstorm Rocket Batteries were based on Cathayan fireworks, Cathay once sent a fleet to Lustria that fought the lizardmen, etc) and with only a few scant scraps of lore to itself. We did not even have as much as a mercenary unit in The Dogs of War. 

Exactly why this was the case is up in the air. Maybe the original GW guys were not into Chinese history and mythology. Maybe they could not get worthwhile reference material (a large part of this was pre-internet and what print material you could get on Imperial China in the 1980s was not as good as what we have now). Maybe they had it in a to-do list that just kept growing. Maybe they did not feel that Cathay was particularly relevant to the stories they wanted to tell. Maybe they were afraid of it turning out like the [[Pygmies (Warhammer Fantasy)|Pygmies]]. Maybe it was some combination of these and other elements.

Similar to the world building of Song of Ice and Fire, where the further East on a map a location is the more strange and unknown things get, details about Cathay remained shrouded in mystery and speculation.

[[Awesome|Fortunately, this has now changed.]]