Nightmare Fuel / Total War: Warhammer

"Kill them! Raise them!"

"There is no light, no hope..."

The Warhammer Fantasy universe is filled with horror, and Creative Assembly certainly did the source material justice.

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• The cinematic announcement trailer shows us a light wizard reading a tome of Tzeentch. He has apparently gotten so desperate to save the Empire from attacks from the Greenskins, Undead and Chaos that he is willing to use the Tzeentchian tome in order to find a final solution to end all these threats. It works as well as you would expect; tendrils sprout from the book and mutate his flesh (even turning his eyes blood red) and its implied that he has become possessed. He then takes his staff and uses it to summon a Lord of Change (which then utters a nightmarish shriek)
• The results of the Vampire Counts and Forces of Chaos conquering enemy territory: Lands controlled by the Vampire Counts are transformed into dark, gloomy, haunted and decaying wastelands. The lands conquered by Chaos are worse as they are transformed into hell on earth.
• Linger over a Vampire Counts settlement and you might hear a very distinct, piercing female scream...
• Pretty much the entire Vampire Counts trailer.
• One in game event features a portion of a settlement's population mysteriously vanishing. The only clue is a triangular symbol painted on a nearby wall...
• The Chaos invasion. Especially the first time you experience it.
  • Horsemen that effortlessly crush your forces under literally burning hooves, hideous mutated Chaos Spawn that lurch into your armies and flail misshapen limbs to lethal effect, Hellcannons that fire balls of warpfire that scream and howl as they sail across the battlefield...when Archaon comes beating down your door, you'd better be ready.
• Fighting late-game Vampire Counts could also be horrifying, considering you're dealing with fell magics and armies filled with undead knights, ghosts, zombies, skeletons, crypt ghouls, and more. Definitely a far-cry from early VC armies, which are focused around zombies and run-of-the-mill skeletons.
  • Though even the skeletons and zombies have their own horror to them. They are not like Empire troopers; they have no free will, they do not reason or feel mercy and they never break ranks or retreat no matter how much you pepper them with arrows, bullets and cannon fire. They just keep marching forward in their vast numbers, determined to extinguish your life so that you may join their ranks in the next battle.
    Imperial State Trooper: Heinrich just got back up...
  • Special mention goes to the the various abominations they can field. Essentially Vampires further corrupted into bestial vestiges of their former forms. The Varghuf is a tank sized bat monster, that acts as living siege weapons, being vampires who gave into their bloodlust. The utterly horrifying Vargheist, is a vampire forcibly turned into what it's become, having endured a century long And I Must Scream situation, a perpetually grinning nightmare of pale, muscular flesh, that haunt the night eternally.
  • Then there's the Terrorgheist (pictured above). Basically nightmarish bat dragons, the Terrorgheist are horrors corrupted by black magic, and live in the deepest, darkest parts of Sylvania, hunting humans, horses, bears and griffins. If some vampire lord wants some extra muscle for his army, he'll go down into the cavernous lairs of these creatures and raise the dead ones as undead horror, because the living ones weren't scary enough.
• The first expansion, Call of the Beastmen
  • It adds the Beastmen as a playable faction. Essentially, a collection of horribly mutated, cannibalistic, daemon-worshipping, insane, braying goat-headed savages who lurk in the forests of the Old World and mercilessly slaughter anyone who ventures in, out of a spiteful hatred of anything that resembles humanity and civilization. And many of them were human once, or born to human parents. The Beastmen are plenty good Nightmare Fuel in the source material, and the trailer really does them justice.
  • The empire captain in said trailer remains intent on reaching his pistol even when wounded and surrounded. As beastmen take pride in the many ways they can torture and defile their captives, he probably wasn't intending to use it on the beasts...
  • The captain's ultimate fate is revealed in the intro to the "Eye for an Eye" campaign. He is beaten half to death and locked in a small cage hung from a tree, along with whatever remains of other unlucky captives of Khazrak and his warherd.
• While playing the Wood Elves, you will sometime receive a message claiming that their "guests" are feasting well, and will make a fine sacrifice when the time comes. You are given the choice to either continue fattening them up, or demand that they repay the elves' "hospitality". The way the message is worded makes it very unlikely they were referring to dumb animals... and if you remember a certain bit of tabletop lore, you'll know that they are very much referring to random people who wandered into their realm and got tricked into eating the enchanted food from the Wood Elves' feasts, being left to mindlessly gorge themselves until the Elves can lay their insensate forms before certain caves as offerings to the things that live in them...
• Fear being Eaten Alive? You won't like Squigs then, or their kill animation where they swallow struggling enemy soldiers whole.

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