One of the more striking factions in the Age of Sigmar are the Flesh-Eater Courts, an army of ghouls and cannibals that surge forward in a naked mass of flesh, claws and teeth, lorded over by their vampiric rulers. Beneath this simplistic appearance is a deeper system of viral mass delusion, where the ghouls see themselves as shining knights,brave soldiers and courageous nobility, that protect the land against various threats under a banner of chivalry. Where we see a naked, deformed ghoul swinging a bony club, the ghoul perceives itself as a soldier with a sword, fighting against an impossibly evil enemy for the right cause. The epicentre of these delusions are the leaders, who spread infectious thought with their mere presence.
This paper explores the Flesh-Eater Courts as an avenue for political satire of how hegemonic belief systems are reinforced by the influential people who form the said hegemonies (Hoere & Nowell-Smith, 1971; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). This is achieved by looking at the Flesh-Eater Courts narrative fiction as a form of discourse about hegemony (Laclau, 2005) and how certain symbols and signs of the hegemon lose their meaning in order to support the ravenous empire of conquerors who see themselves as just and righteous.
The Age of Sigmar’s Mortal Realms, much like our own world, is in the midst of polycrisis, and provides multiple opportunities for contemporary political satire. Flesh-Eater Courts are an example of gothic marxism (Cohen, 1994), where the framework of vampire stories about infection, madness, and hunger are used to criticize hegemonic belief systems such as nobility, or in a more modern sense, liberalism. Hence, the Flesh-Eater Courts provide one of the most topical and striking satires found in all of Warhammer, one that relates to our own political reality in a visceral and upsetting fashion
Author bio
Aasa Timonen (MA) is a doctoral researcher from Tampere University Game Research Lab. Her research is focused on transmedia worldbuilding in games, competitive gaming, and gendered discourse in game-related spaces. Her upcoming dissertation is a critical look into the transmedia worldbuilding of Warhammer.
