Reading up and Picking forces

Well, I have been doing two things the past few days in order to start painting again, and that has been reading and making some choices.

As I said before, my main goal is to repair / patch up / repaint my Union corps again, but in the meantime, I`m plannng on refurbishing a small warhammer force and get some dice rolling at least.

As I opened the boxes of my old armies, well, it was to say as good as nothing survived without at least some paint chips or small things that broke off, like feathers.  And those where the guys in GOOD condition, so you can imagine the havoc wrought in tossing figures on a pile, stuff in bags and put away in shoeboxes.

Now, before me I have my Union, both in sealed boxes and in trashed piles, but it was the big box labelled Fantasy that I was ruffling through first, to see what I could mash together in a small 1000 point force.

I have been reading all the Age of Sigmar books, websites, lore (aka fluff) and such to see what has changed, and it seems quite a few forces are redistributed.  Warscroll battalions, armies (my Empire for example) torn over various factions, those sorts of things.

While my Chaos Dwarfs are doing once again what they are very good at, namely disappearing from the radar entirely, my other two forces are basically split in two each.  My Wood Elves, back then about 3000 points, are now a force of elves, and one of forest spirits (led by an awesome Allarielle model to boot).  My 10k Empire army, including even one of the old metal steam tanks, is split over the Freeguild and a war machine force mixed with Dwarves.

And then I dug up an oddity... a plastic bag containing an old Cauldron of Blood and 20 Witch Elves of various sorts, including some non GW characters.  For the love of Sigmar, I can`t exactly recall why I ever bought this, vaguely remembering it was a lot of some sorts and I wanted to use the female figures for an additional War Dancer unit.  Or at least, that`s about the only thing I can imagine I would ever have gotten those for.

So I went to the GW site to look at what happened to them (yup, split up as well of course), and saw the plastic Witch Elves they have in their range at the moment.  Those are some damn fine models!

After doing some "studies" I think I`m going to use this as a good starting point to build a small 1000 point Vanguard of Daughters of Khaine.  It wouldn`t require that many models, and the "nakedness and black leather" of the models makes it so that they will paint up relatively quickly (faster at least then all the plumes and ribbons of the classic metal Empire figs). 

A first draft would get me the Cauldron (it`s the old lawnmower style thing), a unit of 20 old metal Witch Elves, a unit of 10 of the new Witch Elves, 10 Sisters of Slaughter (no idea who that are), and a unit of 5 Doomfire Warlocks (seems like Outriders with wizard abilities).  Not much of a figure investment to do there, with about three small boxes.

Okay, and the fact they are half-naked is a visual bonus ;-)

Now, on the reading part I found out the Dark Elves are now part of the "good guys", not bad for what used to be (in my time) a sort of covert Slaanesh worshippers force.

Which leaves me with one thing I can`t seem to find back in the new lore, and what must have happened during my hyatus.  New realms, based on the classic 8 winds of magic, after the sundering of the world that was (aka, the old Warhammer world).  That far I can follow.  Sigmar tries to free the people from the Forces of Chaos, that won that big war it seems.  Awright, I`m following...

... but what actually blew up the world?  Where / what should I read to get to that story?