Eastern Steppes
This is NOT a stub, that's all there is to know. For now???
Basically, the Warhammer Fantasy version of the Siberian Steepe and Mongolia mashed together. It lies just to the North of Cathay and borders the realm of Chaos and the Dark lands that the Chaos Dwarfs call home. Its primary inhabitants consist of the marauding human tribes of Kurgan and Hung plus the self-styled empire of the wolf riding Hobgoblin Khan. As you can expect the people of Cathay wanted nothing to do with that nonsense and built the giant ass wall known as the Great Bastion to keep the smelly Chaos worshipping tribes and Greenskin folk out. Beside the Great Bastion thing, it's only notable for two other reasons within the lore: first for being the place where the ancestors of the people of Kislev (the Ungols and Gospodars) originated from, and secondly for being where the lost city of Zanbijin lies. Located in the western part of the steppes just north-east of the destroyed dwarf hold of Karag Dum, the chaos corrupted city of Zanbijin has lain since before the dawn of mankind atop the desolate K'datha Plateau (a blatant nod/ripoff of H.P Lovecraft’s Kdath of the Cold Wastes, aka the home of Nyralathotep). There every couple of years various chaos champions and their armies would duke it out beneath the gaze of the chaos gods in a giant battle royale to see who was the strongest. Whichever champion managed to defeat the others would be marked for greatness, gaining the favor of the gods and taking command of any of the loser’s forces that managed to survive. The last time this contest happened the Nurgle champion Tamurkhan the Maggot Lord won and took the survivors on a bloody campaign across the old world that was detailed in Forgeworld’s Tamurkhan: Throne of Chaos.
Interestingly, on the revealed Total War Warhammer III map Eastern Steppes are massively downplayed, with Cathay lying insanely close to the Realms of Chaos and the Gods' domains, only being two-three provinces away from it. How are they gonna handle Hobgoblins (who were recently implied to be a playable faction in Warhammer: The Old World, from which they already borrowed a lot like with Kislev for example) and other possible Warrior of Chaos is now a mystery. Zanbijin though is the one exception to the above mentioned downplaying, as the final end goal/battle of the Champions of Chaos DLC is said to occur there.
Strangely enough, mentions of Hobhounds, Centaurs, and Half-Orcs,the latter created via dark sorcery gene splicing since greenskins don't possess genitals but reproduce asexually via spores, were rumored to exist here in a recent Warhammer Community Post.
| Regions and Areas of the Warhammer World | |
|---|---|
| Areas of The Old World: | The Empire of Man - Bretonnia - Albion - Estalia - Tilea - Kislev - Norsca - Border Princes - Worlds Edge Mountains - Karak Eight-Peaks |
| Areas of The New World: | Naggaroth - Lustria |
| Areas of The Eastern Lands: | Cathay - Nippon - Ogre Kingdoms - Dark Lands - Kingdoms of Ind - Khuresh - Eastern Steppes |
| Areas of The Southlands: | Nehekhara - Araby - Badlands - Marshes of Madness |
| Other Areas of the world: | Ulthuan - Athel Loren - Chaos Wastes - Skavenblight - Lost Isles of Elithis |
| Main bodies of Water: | The Great Ocean - The Far Sea - The Sea of Dread - Inner Sea of Ulthuan |