The Claiming

Long ago, Zevanna Agha, the Old Witch of Khador—a powerful and mysterious entity who had made the northern lands her home since the time of prehistory—had foreseen the coming threat of the infernals and the cost of the Twins’ bargain with them. In response, she concocted a scheme to unleash the grymkin, creatures created by the Defiers in their nightmare prison in Urcaen, in a time that came to be known as the Wicked Harvest. Her reasoning was simple: by cutting down those whose own wickedness reflected the twisted souls of the grymkin themselves, the Defiers’ scythe would be certain to cull many of the carefully placed infernal agents—whether rich or poor, noble or commoner—who had been deployed in secret throughout the world in order to set their masters’ plans into action.

Zevanna Agha’s gambit worked, albeit at great cost, and the infernals of the Nonokrion Order were forced to tip their hand before they were ready. A terrible bill had come due, and the infernals themselves came to collect it. Western Immoren had been rocked by innumerable conflicts since the first humans emerged from Menoth’s shadow, but not since the days of the Orgoth had it seen a reckoning such as the one called the Claiming. The price of the Gift of Magic that Thamar had brought to humanity was fully two-thirds of all the souls in Caen, and in 612 AR, the infernals arrived to collect what they were due.

Across the Iron Kingdoms, highly placed individuals of seemingly spotless renown revealed themselves as having been secretly in league with these malignant entities, and they opened gateways through which horrors beyond comprehension poured into Caen. Born in the abyss outside both Caen and Urcaen, the infernals were enemies unlike any the world had ever faced, although they had been at its edges since time began. Reliant on souls to survive, their armies swept across the continent, and wherever they appeared, countless numbers fell before them.

All seemed lost, and yet this was not the first time that an apparent dusk had settled upon the people of the Iron Kingdoms. Just as it appeared inevitable that the infernals would claim their terrible price, all the nations in the land united in an unprecedented show of force to drive them off. Khador and Cygnar, enemies for ages, declared a truce, and the armies of these two kingdoms marched side by side against the infernal threat. Undead soldiers of the Nightmare Empire fought shoulder to shoulder alongside holy warriors from the Protectorate of Menoth and clockwork priests of Cyriss, while the skorne and the Iosans forged an unlikely partnership that ultimately ended in betrayal. Throughout western Immoren, bitter enemies set aside their differences to combat a shared foe, and even the gods themselves sent forth their archons—divine beings capable of turning the tide of even the most forlorn battle.

Despite such combined might, the losses were unfathomable. One after another, heroes of every nation fell in battle against the infernals. But with the infernals on the cusp of victory, a combination of Cygnaran ingenuity and Cyrissist technology opened a gateway to safety: one that led to the distant constellation that was the celestial body of the clockwork goddess Cyriss herself. Yet ushering the many refugees through the gate would take time. And so, with the infernals closing in, the forces of the Iron Kingdoms gathered at Henge Hold, where the gate had been built, for the greatest battle that the world had seen since Menoth’s first struggles with the Devourer Wurm.