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The Border Prince Confederacy, known also as the Borderlands, the Frontiers or simply as the Border Princes, is a region within the Old World located between the Black Mountains and Black Fire Pass to the north and the shores of the Black Gulf to the south. This region of vast wilderness is home to a multitude of petty Human kingdoms that were established by highly ambitious adventurers who sought to create realms of their own. Many times, these adventurers consisted of political or religious refugees from lands such as the Empire, Bretonnia and Kislev.
Tilea is the southernmost of the realms of men, located between the Border Princes to the east and Estalia to the west. Tilea is home to a series of city-states whose internal wars are legendary and attract mercenaries of all races from all across the world to battle for the wealthy merchant-princes. Tilea also sits right next to the Skaven capital of Skavenblight, and has the most experience of all human nations on battling the furry plague.
Estalia is a region of the Old World consisting of a peninsula to the south-west of Bretonnia, bordering the Great Ocean to the northwest and the Tilean Sea to the south. The region is mountainous and humid, with territory that is easy to hold and a nightmare to take, and home to a number of petty kingdoms that are dominated by the two biggest city-states of Magritta and Bilbali. With the grip of chaos weak so far away from the Northern Wastes and no great threats of orcs or beastmen present, the people of Estalia spend most of their time fighting each other and their neighbors, Bretonnia and Tilea. Six hundred years ago Estalia was the staging ground for an invasion by the southern kingdoms of Araby, until a combined alliance of the Empire, Bretonnia and Tilea repulsed them.
The Southern Realms are a group of three minor factions representing independent human nations of minimal importance to the greater setting. They are not playable, and reuse many, if not all, units from the Empire.
General Tropes:
- Ascended Extra: The Pirates of Sartosa became a major faction in their own right following the Vampire Coast DLC, lead by the legendary lord Aranessa Saltspite.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Tilean politics make the internecine wars of the Empire look like playground fights by comparison.
- Duel to the Death: Honour duels are an important part of Estalian culture. Unlike the nobles of the Empire (who settle duels with pistols) or Bretonnia (where jousting is preferred), Estalian nobles perform their honor duels on foot using rapiers.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
- Tilea is one for Renaissance-era Italy, in case the name didn't already make it obvious.
- Estalia is this for the middle-ages/Renaissance Iberian peninsula, before the rise of a united Spain. According to the lore, their armies are mostly based on the tercio (a mixed formation of pikemen, handgunners and swordsmen in the same formation) much like real-life Spain at the time.
- Sartosa bears some similarities to the Nassau Pirate Republic, although it's located where Sicily would be rather than the Bahamas. Which is appropriate, as Sicily and nearby Malta were also big pirate bases during the early modern era.
- The Border Princes are vaguely one to the Balkan states. Geographically, they are located where the Balkan states should be, and they even border a Dwarf faction that somewhat resembles Byzantium (having a purple color scheme and a thriving trade city where Constantinople should be).
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- Each of the Southern Realms is a collection of city-states and petty kingdoms that are as independent from each other as they are from the major factions, united at most by shared culture — except the Border Princes, who are a mix of basically every Old World human culture with a smattering of Dwarfs and Elves also thrown in. The Estalian and Tilean regions at least have a few prominent city-states large enough to justify making single-settlement minor factions, but the Border Princes don't even have that; there are literally hundreds of them, each ruling on average only about 10,000 subjects (able to support around 100 soldiers and marginally more militia on a medieval economy), and with their highest level of unity being occasional loose coalitions of a few dozen such microstates.note The game treats each of them as singular factions for simplicity's sake.
- The Border Princes are notorious for their Perpetual Poverty, with individual princedoms usually amounting to a smattering of small, impoverished settlements and "armies" numbering only a few hundred souls at best. In Total War: Warhammer, the Border Princes faction is equal to any province of the Empire of Man.
- Hired Guns: Lacking a standing army or levies to call upon, the city-states of Tilea do most their fighting using the Dogs of War mercenaries. While these mercenaries do not exist in the game proper, mods have been created to give Tilea a mixed army of units drawn from multiple races to represent this.
- Hufflepuff House: Estalia, Tilea and the Border Princes are minor human nations with only nominal importance in the history of the Warhammer world, and they don't even have unique unit rosters — instead, they reuse the Empire's units.
- Lady of War: The southern nations worship Myrmidia, Goddess of War, and her high temple is located in Magritta, in Estalia. Clicking on their cities reveal their temple buildings are dedicated to Myrmidia instead of to Sigmar.
- Merchant City: All of the Tilean city-states are this, as they control the southern sea trade. In-game the province capital of Miragliano has a special main building chain that further boosts the province's economy.
- Non-Player Character: In the campaign, the Southern Realms are controlled exclusively by the AI.
- Pirates: The island of Sartosa, south of mainland Tilea, is infamous as a pirate haven. See the Vampire Coast for more details.
- Palette Swap: Of the Empire.
- Throw-Away Country: As factions with no real importance to speak of, the Southern Realms have increasingly become little more than real-estate for playable characters to gobble up:
- Khazrak One-Eye in the first two games, and Morghur Shadowgave in the third, start their campaigns in Estalia, which must be burned as part of their short campaign victory requirements.
- With the Prophet and the Warlock expansion, Ikit Claw starts the combined campaign in Skavenblight, situated between Estalia and Tilea (which must both be destroyed to satisfy the short campaign victory).
- Aranessa Saltspite of the Vampire Coast begins the combined campaign controlling Sartosa, which is connected to Tilea by a ford crossing. Ironically, she's the only character to start in the Southern Realms who doesn't strictly need to conquer her neighbor (Sartosa is its own province, and her short campaign requires her to go after the Dreadfleet instead), but she begins the game at war with Tilea regardless.
- In the third game's combined campaign, Skrag the Slaughterer starts in the Eastern Border Princes province, and his short campaign victory requires the Border Princes faction to be destroyed.
- Weird Historical War: Estalia was the site of a fantasy counterpart to the Muslim invasion of Spain, except it failed.
Numerous expeditions have been launched from the Old World to the New, drawn in no small part by the tales of wealth and gold to be found in the ruins of Temple cities. The towns of Port Reaver and Swamp Town are the culmination of those efforts; two semi-established human coastal settlements bordering the Lizardmen homelands. For their part, the Lizardmen regard these new settlements with a mixture of indifference, curiosity and periodic xenocidal disgust, and subsequently these settlements tend to be temporary at best.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: To Hernan Cortes and the early European expeditions to Central America. They've been far less impactful.
- Hungry Jungle: Usually on the receiving end, and one of the main reasons they haven't advanced further.
- Misplaced Wildlife: From the Lizardmen's perspective.
- Palette Swap: Of the Empire.
- Took a Level in Badass: As of Immortal Empires both The Empire and Bretonnia have Legendary Lords in Lustria, which has put the human presence on that continent in a much stronger position.
- Wacky Wayside Tribe: They more-or-less exist to give Mazdamundi an early-game ally and later the opportunity to kill some humans.
Araby is a minor human nation based in the western half of the Southlands. Whether they are a descended from the Tomb King empires of old or are an expedition from more temperate climates goes unstated, but they were once powerful enough to occupy Estalia before being driven out by a combined Empire/Bretonnian force. The resulting animosity has lead to several Crusades being launched in the modern day and the occupation of northern Araby by the Crusading Bretonnians.
- Always a Bigger Fish: At one point in history Araby threatened Bretonnia itself, before being pushed back to its holdings in the western Southlands. The mass awakening of the Tomb Kings threatens to engulf both warring factions.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The two other Crusader States will happily propose confederation with Repanse de Lyonesse once she takes the region capitals of their respective provinces.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Araby is one of North African Arabs and the Middle East in general. They even mounted an invasion of Estalia and Bretonnia like the Umayyad Caliphate. The Bretonnian Crusader States are directly based on the crusader states established by the first and second crusades.
- Palette Swap: Of the Empire and Bretonnia respectively.
- Took a Level in Badass: The arrival of Repanse de Lyonesse technically puts the Crusader States at the same level as the other non-vortex major factions, though their overall situation is still rather dire.
- Inverted with Araby who has gone from a regional minor nation to the starting victims of Clan Eshin.
- Un-Inverted in Immortal Empires in a fashion as Araby, or at least its lands, have been reinforced/occupied by the Cult of Sigmar under Volkmar the Grim. While the Arabyan people may no longer be independent, they are in a much more secure position.
note
Besides Grand Cathay, two other major human nations are known to exist at the eastern end of the world; the fractured city-states that comprise the Kingdoms of Ind and the isolationist island nation of Nippon. Precious little is known of them, but the lands they have influence over will be central Total War: Warhammer III.
- Ambiguous Innocence: The Kingdoms of Ind have an interesting relationship with the local tiger-headed Beastmen tribes; they openly worship them, making offerings of meat and rice to them to keep them appeased and are forbidden to harm them in any way. Amazingly, it seems to work, as there are accounts of tiger-men forces coming to the rescue of Indan villages. On the flip side, one relic of Ind the player can acquire is a small statuette of an unnamed Indan deity that instinctively frightens servants of Chaos, implying the presence of something quite powerful that keeps the Ruinous Powers at bay.
- Cat Folk: Ind is home to a mysterious species of beastmen that possess the attributes of tigers and other big cats, rather than caprids and bovines as seen in the west. Raids across the border by these tiger-men tribes is said to be one of the many threats to Cathay's embattled southern provinces, but the human peoples of Ind seem to successfully co-exist with them, even regarding the beastmen as sacred creatures.
- Horrifying the Horror: One of the items the player can claim is a small statuette of one of Ind's yet-nameless gods. From the flavor text, the minions of the Chaos Gods are absolutely terrified by the sight of it, for reasons unknown.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Ind is an obvious stand-in for India, being famed for its spices and having a vast pantheon of animal-headed gods. Nippon, meanwhile, is actually named after a historical name for Japan and has similar traits like not allowing foreigners outside of certain port cities.
- Ninja: One of the very few things we know about Nippon is that Skaven Clan Eshin picked up their ninja skills there.
