After many long centuries of hammering away in their ziggurats, binding daemons, and plotting world domination, the Helsmiths of Hashut have been rudely forced into action by the madcap schemes of the Skaven. Now roused, they’re out to take what is rightfully theirs – which is to say literally everything they can see.
The tale of how they were designed is equally grand, following many years of toil – and no small amount of fettered daemons – within the Citadel Design Studio.
We were summoned to meet the team of sculptors, painters, background writers, and rule makers from the Warhammer Design Ziggurat for a roundtable interview, bowing our heads low as we passed snorting tauroid guardians. There we found carved upon an obsidian slab the full story of how Helsmiths of Hashut made their triumphant return to Warhammer.
Sam – Miniatures Design Manager: This is our first sword-and-board, rank-and-file duardin army in Age of Sigmar. We wanted to remain authentic to the dwarven image of old, but we didn’t just want to copy Chaos Dwarfs in the Mortal Realms. They are duardin of Hashut, which is an important distinction. We didn’t want Chaos to influence their iconography or visual language, but more in tone and feel.
Max – ’Eavy Metal Lead: That’s referenced very much in how they aren’t pledged to any of the Ruinous Powers, just Hashut.
Jordan – Background Writer: They’re duardin that have been exposed to the power of Chaos through their own choice, they’re not being manipulated by the primary Ruinous Powers, nor are they things of Chaos themselves.
Martin – Miniatures Designer: We did many rounds of mockups and revisions before we reached a design for the basic warrior of the Infernal Cohorts. This formed the cornerstone of the range – getting the core infantry right is vital to the whole project.
Figuring out an identity can be quite difficult as there have been several iterations of Chaos Dwarfs over the years. Key aspects were of course the tall hats and the ringed beards of old, but as we were creating a new faction for Age of Sigmar, we didn’t want to only repeat previous imagery.
We also avoided things like the eight-pointed star and the traditional spiky trim that you might see across other Chaos armies, and earlier duardin recruited to Chaos that have been seen in Warcry, for example.
Ben – Product Developer: With the original Chaos Dwarfs, the Legion of Azgorh, and the new Blood Bowl team all having their own image, a lot of ground had already been covered.
Martin: It was certainly tricky to find a new angle! One aspect of discovering that new direction was the concept of them binding daemons into their weapons, which provided something unique. It was fun to work on that idea, as well as the runes and Zharralid language with Max, and it was a fantastic collaborative approach.
Max: The different teams collaborated quite early on in the process. Conversations with Phil and Jordan from the background team provided strong throughlines for the whole range. I think the challenge of creating something that fits in the Age of Sigmar universe is what’s most interesting and exciting about designing a new faction. For the Helsmiths of Hashut it was interesting to work out what happened to the different duardin societies during the Age of Chaos, and what the Helsmiths would represent alongside them. From those conversations, interesting tangents appeared too, like their internal hierarchies.
Martin: Their language became a large part of that. There’s the standard Zharrdron language, the more basic impersonation used by the hobgrots, and the more elegant and complex script of the Daemonsmiths. Discussion of symbology is important beyond just explicit shapes, we have to talk about where we want to leave room on miniatures for transfers – it’s all key.
Max: We also spoke a lot about the idea of binding daemons, and what it would be like for the Helsmiths of Hashut. Carving runes into something to bind a daemon – that takes a long time: you can’t sleep or take breaks, it’s demanding. You make one mistake and the daemon breaks free and kills you.
Jordan: Only a duardin has the concentration and the craftsmanship to do that, and it also helps separate them from other sorcerers and summoners. It also plays on the core duardin identity, taking the things that are seen as good about them – their craft and patience – and pushing them to an extreme in the way that Chaos does. Only they are good enough to be this evil.
Max: It gave us so much to work with – top-level themes of control and order that helped define them in the context of other duardin and Chaos factions.
Jordan: What made it all click for me was the designs of the banners, which are weighted at the bottom. In the face of terrible decisions they’ve made in the Age of Chaos, they’re so determined to show that they’re right that they’ve driven themselves a little mad. Not even the wind will affect the banners.
Sam: We wanted to honour the heritage of dwarfs from the World-that-Was and some of the real-world elements from them that resonate with us as people outside the fiction of Age of Sigmar, and to make them feel unique to that setting at the same time. After setting down that identity early on, we designed a duardin army with a veneer of evil and a despotic, tyrannical edge.
Finding motifs early is quite important. Settling on things like the shapes of the helm and the razorblade-style trim design were both key to creating their identity. From there, things like the shape of gems, how their sashes work, and the rest of the armour all fell into line.
Duardin fit into specific geometry; they look better when their silhouettes are strong, defined shapes like triangles, squares, and hexagons. We wanted to avoid fancy, fluted designs across the majority of the range, only deploying that intricacy where it made sense, like on Daemonsmiths.
The core uniform, including the shapes and forms that make up the helmets, armour, and weapons, reflect that they are a strong, disciplined, and controlling faction. On top of that image, we worked in the themes of sorcery, temple worship, despotic tyrants, and evil engineering, and found characters and units to inhabit those thematic pillars.
Max: Rather than have some original duardin form that the Helsmiths have deviated from, I think it’s important to note that the background essentially has the whole of the duardin empire embroiled in a battle with Chaos. Separate elements responded to that in different ways. Some took to the sky to avoid the conflict and prospered elsewhere, others met Chaos head on in the fury of battle and bloodied themselves against the hordes, while some ended up working with Sigmar and cohabiting with his people. The Zharrdron stayed locked in their holds, delved into dark arts, and eventually agreed to accept power from Hashut. They tried to control their enemy, digging themselves deeper into a bad situation.
Jordan: These are the guys who, for better or worse, didn’t run away. They had their pride, their treasure piles, their cities. In their mind they're still the Khazalid Empire from before the Age of Chaos. For them, there is no before or after, and in their mind they are the duardin archetype.
Max: They are the ones who didn’t buckle, and they see all of the other routes the duardin took as weak – even the Fyreslayers who were fighting tooth and nail. Their god died, yet Hashut lives on. So there’s really no standard archetype that stands before all the different interpretations of duardin, just different reactions to the Age of Chaos.
Martin: Following from that, your average Helsmith warrior is really quite elite, perhaps even more so than your average duardin might be. They’ve got rich materials like nice sashes and silken sleeves contrasting with all that hard edged armour. They’re important and wealthy, with nicely kept beards and moustaches, and lots of jewels.
Sam: They’re ostentatious, showing off about the wealth, power, and status they have.
Jordan: They’d probably appear quite garish to other duardin. That fastidiousness of appearance is another aspect of their display of control over the powers they’re meddling with. It’s an exaggeration, they’re in control.
Sam: Apart from the ones who have meddled too much and are turning into stone – they may regret their decisions...
Max: That factors into the idea that a human practising this same art of daemon-binding would have turned to a spawn a long time ago, only these guys can manage it through the qualities innate to them.
Jordan: You can also see how this invites the institutionalised cruelty they practise as a society. If making a mistake is as costly as letting a daemon run rampant, there’s no room for error. You can’t just try again tomorrow.
Sam: We wanted to lean into duardin archetypes, so although they’re practising daemonology, they possess an innate resistance to magic and Chaos. Other than the most powerful Chaos warlords and sorcerers, they're probably the only people in the setting who can force a daemon into a weapon.
Jordan: It was an interesting challenge, as the Chaos Dwarfs have never had a proper book of their own. The original Chaos Dwarfs were part of Realm of Chaos. Then they had a smaller supplement that collected White Dwarf articles,** and the Legion of Azgorh had a section in the Tamurkhan: The Throne of Chaos book,*** but that was it. If you’re a fan of the Chaos Dwarfs – like us! – there are plenty of things you’ll recognise, which we wanted to honour and take forward, but the Helsmiths of Hashut are far more than a remake of an old faction – as with every faction in Age of Sigmar.
We took the chance to talk about what they do all day, who is in charge, how their economy works. They don’t build wealth in a traditional way, instead forming these long chains of toils – owing each other time, resources, work, or something more esoteric. That’s their take on grudge culture – another very duardin trait which went undeveloped back in the day – but now we’ve got the time and space to explore that.
It’s similar to how the Lumineth Realm-lords are just as much an expression of concepts underpinning the High Elves of Warhammer Fantasy Battle as they are a new thing. The High Elves of Warhammer: The Old World add even more texture to the whole picture by focusing on a very long-running culture during yet another time period.
Martin: Time has passed – are the Helsmiths an evolution or a revolution? It’s an exciting new world to explore.
That’s it for part one – tomorrow we’ll be talking about the miniatures.
* Every other Warhammer Fantasy Battles faction got a fully fledged Warhammer Armies book.
** A legendary supplement for the 8th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles produced by Forge World.
