The expeditionary armies of Grand Cathay are even now surging west in order to reinforce a beleaguered Old World struggling under the shadow of Chaos. But what actually is Grand Cathay? True, merchant ships and ambassadorial delegations are not uncommon in the great port cities of the Empire, but Marienburg is a long way from Wei-Jin – and the average citizen knows little of the wonders of the Celestial Dragon Empire. In the second part of an extensive chat with the design team behind Grand Cathay, we discuss the lore.
Owen: Grand Cathay is the mightiest human empire in the World of Legend, a place of civilisation, prosperity, and magic – and harmony, above all else. It’s ruled by the Celestial Dragon Emperor and his Empress consort. These are immortal beings of immeasurable power, but they rule with benevolence over a people united in purpose.
They are dragons who can assume human form, ruling from the capital city Wei-Jin, a wondrous place that literally floats in the sky – unlike much of the Old World at this time, Grand Cathay is intrinsically magical by its very nature, and its people could not imagine a world without.
The Emperor and Empress have nine children, each of them Dragons, several of whom administrate the different regions, and unlike the Empire of Man in the Old World, these regions are at peace. Of course, they’re well aware of the threat of Chaos, and have dispatched a mighty fleet headed by Miao Ying, the Storm Dragon, to bolster the Old World.
Much of this will be familiar to players of Total War: Warhammer 3, which maps out the entire empire in great detail.
JTY: Grand Cathay is almost a world unto itself in scale. We quickly realised not just that we could create connections with the Old World and its past – but that the size and scope of Grand Cathay is every bit as vast and diverse as the Old World. With the Hinterlands of Khuresh, the Hobgoblin tribes, Nippon and so on, it’s almost a completely contained setting. Warhammer has spent 40 years in the Old World, and there would be enough here to do the same – not that we’re planning on it!
Rob: We did lots of work on Grand Cathay itself to try to make it its own thing, but our focus is on the story of the Old World. This meant looking at how their forces arrive in the Old World, what they do when they are there, how they coexist… and what might provoke them to battle!
JTY: Whenever we take on a project like this, there’s lots of supporting material that doesn't make its way into published material. It exists in IP documents which we can keep referencing whenever we revisit them, and in notes, touchstones, and concept art. In this case, players are lucky enough to see more of Grand Cathay than usual thanks to the video game; most of that would usually only appear in the margins!
From our point of view, Grand Cathay is connected to the Old World through Kislev – far more than during the Era of Karl Franz, because by then the world has changed.
Rob: Grand Cathay has more or less given up on the Old World by the time of Karl Franz, and they are too busy defending against Chaos invasions from the north.
JTY: They retreat after the Great War against Chaos. It’s like our Horus Heresy – the characters believe that a great victory has been won and Chaos defeated, but it hasn’t. The result is a disaster: Chaos has returned to the world, and its shadow never retreats again. All those Kislevite settlements that extend across the Great Steppe from the Western Marches to Grand Cathay gradually become Marauder tribes over the next two centuries. All those relationships change, all the trade routes shut down.
You can see these cities on our maps – like the interactive one available here – always pay attention because the clues are there! This is the main route through which Grand Cathay is connected to the Old World – and all of that ends after the Siege of Praag. Asavar Kul is defeated, but the world changes and Grand Cathay becomes more distant.
Rob: In our time period however, Cathayan ships are not an unusual sight in Marienburg. It’s not right to say that there’s a settlement of Cathayans in every big city – but merchants, ambassadors, and military escorts are all commonplace at this time.
What’s rare is for the Dragons to come to the Old World at the head of an army that looks like it could be an invasion fleet – which is what we get into in the second Cathayan Arcane Journal…
Owen: One of the first things Creative Assembly asked was the alignment of Grand Cathay. They wanted another ‘good’ faction – which Grand Cathay genuinely are – but they oppose Chaos without being lily-white in virtue.
The Dragon Emperor is a long-established concept in Cathayan lore, but there was no particular mention that he was a dragon – we had his title, but not his species. However, it’s well known that dragons lived on the planet even before the Old Ones turned up, and we quickly came to understand him as one of the original inhabitants of the world. This weaves him into the setting, and sets him up in opposition to the Old Ones.
JTY: Xen Yang is one of the original Dragons, and his hunting grounds were what became Grand Cathay. He was a little smarter than his kin and the other elder beings, for when the Old Ones arrived he didn’t try to fight them and their saurian armies. He bided his time and learned the magic they brought into the world, and was able to survive as the world changed. The people of Grand Cathay soon started looking to him for leadership, and he reluctantly took up the role of Emperor, leading them through the collapse of the polar gates and the Age of Chaos.
He remembers the world as it was, before the Old Ones established the Geomantic Web and moved the planet closer to the sun. He did not want them messing with things – they brought about the extinction of many races that have been forgotten, the Sky Titans and other monsters. He preferred the climate as it was, when it was colder and more suitable for dragons.
He will remember the oldest of the Dragon Ogres before they signed their pact with Chaos – and oldest of the forgotten dragons who slumber beneath Ulthuan and the Worlds Edge Mountains. He’s one of the last of that vintage still active, and will know many of the other elder beings by reputation at least – he’s aware of Kroak and might have known Galrauch before he was corrupted.
Owen: He is definitely of this world – but his consort, Quai Yin, is not. Though she is known as the Moon Dragon and regularly takes on a draconic aspect, she is a shapeshifter who arrived from Manslieb after the Old Ones had appeared. It’s from her that he learns to assume a human form, though the rest of her origins are obscure…
Together they have nine children, and Grand Cathay begins to grow into a proper empire. This number is deliberate, as it reflects certain Chinese myths. We know of five of the children who are currently active in the world: Miao Ying, the Storm Dragon; Zhao Ming, the Iron Dragon; Yuan Bo, the Jade Dragon; Yin-Yin, the Sea Dragon; and Li Dao, the Fire Dragon. Two more are named yet dead or missing: Shiyama, the Spirit Dragon, who guards the underworld, and Shen-Zoo, who is lost in the Chaos Wastes.
Mark: As for the other two, it’s a bit like missing Primarchs…
JTY: The Monkey King is worth mentioning because he’s an example of how we’ve managed not to retcon anything. Some of the first sources with any detail on Grand Cathay are the Genevieve books by Kim Newman. There’s an agent from Grand Cathay who mentions the Monkey King as being the ruler of Grand Cathay. At that point we didn’t know anything about him – the Dragon Emperor and the Monkey King might just have been titles applied by foreigners.
But because it was so important to the story, and because we’d decided that the Dragon Emperor was immortal, we had to decide how to deal with a real reference in a foundational text that had done so much world building back in the early 90s. We decided that the Monkey King – who is a very real character living in the Mountains of Heaven – was allowed to believe that he was in charge of Grand Cathay for a period of time.
Owen: There’s a separate entry we found stating that the Monkey King even appointed a representative of Clan Eshin as an adviser. Whether that’s true or not we’ve left open – but it’s certainly a period of history people in the Warhammer World might be aware of. Is he good or bad? That’s a good question…
JTY: Several Vampires whom we haven’t named fled here from Nehekhara, as did Hekate, who is named in certain novels. The Jade-Blooded do exist, though they’re probably not as you might imagine. We’ve steered clear of any tropes, but also of traditional Chinese Jiangshi – which fans of Chinese cinema will recall as stiff-limbed ‘hopping’ vampires. I love them, but they aren’t Warhammer.
Rob: We have consciously avoided any body horror, and we decided that while there are indeed Vampires in Grand Cathay, they aren’t relevant to the stories we are telling in the Old World. Like the Tigermen, they are another idea for the background file.
Owen: And the Hobgoblin Khanates!
Rob: We are unlikely to see any of these on the battlefields of the Old World any time soon – but they are fun to consider as part of a much larger part of the World of Legend.
JTY: The bottom line is that Grand Cathay has been in the background since the earliest days, even since before the World of Legend had grown to become the setting we know and love today. There’s still a tremendous amount more that could be explored, but we now know a lot of things we didn’t just seven years ago. We got to look at all this old material and lay the groundwork for something very special.
We had no idea what it would mean when we were approached by Creative Assembly – we didn’t even realise we would be working on our own game. But it’s become incredibly important for everything that we’re now doing in the Old World.
Holly: Despite the fact that the pandemic happened right in the middle of the job, we still carried on working on it in our own separate pockets – and it feels very complete. It’s a testament to how much we all bought into the project.
JTY: It’s a daunting prospect to be tasked with a project of the scale of exploring Grand Cathay. We didn’t know what it would look like, and longtime fans of the World of Legend have expectations, some going back 30 years or more. Meeting all of those expectations as well as our own high standards is a big task.
Owen: Grand Cathay has been a huge, studio-wide endeavour and we should celebrate that. As designers, we borrow these worlds. Different people become custodians of the IP at different times, and Grand Cathay wouldn’t be what it is without this incredible collaboration between so many different people.
Rob: I love how it has become a relay race of creativity. The people here today were mostly involved from the start, and I wasn’t part of that group. So when it was handed to me, It was so exciting just trying to understand it all! Watching it develop as it gets passed onto other people is very satisfying. We’ve hired new artists to work on it, and they’ve all become passionate about it too. JTY obviously dived into all the material Owen wrote, and there’s a lot more to come!
As with any of the other Old World factions, we expect Grand Cathay to develop as a faction as the project continues.
Thanks guys! That’s it for this week – but we’ll be back next week for a look at the rules.
