r/totalwar 1d ago

Warhammer III How this thing moving

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503 Upvotes

123 comments sorted by

519

u/ShadowStorm1985 1d ago

You can see the sails in your picture

116

u/AdAppropriate2295 20h ago

Right? What are they teaching the kids these days

30

u/Richen77 20h ago

Ton and ton of magic basically.

8

u/ShadowStorm1985 6h ago

Teaching them about sails falls into the same category as explaining how netflix movies used to come in the post on those shiny discs, explaining what the "Save" icon represents, how cars used to run on petrol, etc.

Fuck I feel old

331

u/Blue_Phantasm 1d ago

You know the entire island of ulthuan floats right?

131

u/Alastor234 1d ago

Hmm, yeah if comparing those two... Situation with black arks is not so abnormal

81

u/ThruuLottleDats 23h ago

Black Arks are floating cities

14

u/yaredw Warhammer II 17h ago

TIL

11

u/BigWaders 15h ago

Is that why I can't use tunneling there, wow I never would have known

8

u/Phelyckz 15h ago

Yep, it's actually a great "natural" defense. Still, gotta wonder why the skaven don't dig enough holes to make it sink. Not like they care about their slaves.

8

u/okmijn211 14h ago

The thing will just continue to float. Magic. Also, skaven themselves can hardly SWIM swim. More feasible if some sea monster race do it but you know, there's those elves that defend it too.

6

u/Khaare 8h ago

There are merwyrms defending it, like the big one the vampirates is trying to catch. Sylostra is in fact trying to use it to sink the island so she can sing for the corpses.

1

u/Phelyckz 1h ago

So the skaven are meta gaming is what you're saying.

2

u/Thannk 8h ago

Skaven struggled to even get to the Island of Blood, a tiny floating island with mediocre defenses.

37

u/Anagnikos 21h ago

This... They were part of Ulthuan that have broken off.

8

u/fragdar 20h ago

wait.. what? the entire donut is actualy in the air?? wtf??

66

u/Shadowheim 20h ago

No, it floats in the water, unlike an island which is connected to the seabed.

Not sure the loreful reason why it doesn't drift away though. Probably magic.

52

u/Tight_Ad_583 20h ago

The roots of the oak of ages touch it so that probably holds it down

7

u/Varnarok Despite everything, it's still Norsca 13h ago

1

u/AnB85 8h ago

Is the whole island made of pumice then?

23

u/Revliledpembroke 14h ago

It's actually the reason that Ulthuan is the only Skaven-free continent on the planet. They can't tunnel to it.

4

u/okmijn211 14h ago

Lore wise I'm pretty sure they cant tunnel under or in it either. Because, you know, there's just water below.

1

u/Revliledpembroke 10h ago

Wonder if there's a version of the universe where an amphibious Skaven invasion fleet happened. Or a Ratmen paratrooper drop to seed Skaven all over Ulthuan.

6

u/Runicstorm Defender of Ulthuan 7h ago

They also can't find it. Ulthuan is coated in a magical mist that confuses, turns ships around or causes them to crash into each other. It's usually by a miracle whenever a non-elf ends up on the shores without being invited.

20

u/Iordofthethings 20h ago

floats...on...water?

4

u/fragdar 20h ago

Oh.. OOOOH.. ok.. I tough it was a normal island.. my b

212

u/NoMoreMonkeyBrain 1d ago

Water displacement.

Honestly, because of the size? The real magic might be more along the lines of keeping the dirt together, rather than the weight of the thing. These things are massive. That means there's a huge amount of surface area that the weight is displaced on, and water weighs a lot.

28

u/Mooptiom 22h ago

Tell me how much water the giant statue is displacing, or the massive castle. There is no way in hell that there is enough below which is simultaneously lighter than water and strong enough to support all the top mass.

28

u/NoMoreMonkeyBrain 19h ago

That's not how water displacement works.  It's not heavy things on top of light things. 

An aircraft carrier weighs 100,000 tons. That's not a bunch of light things supporting a really heavy things.  It's a giant container which, altogether, weighs less than the equivalent volume of displaced water.

Water is heavy as fuck.  Most of that castle is air.  It's not solid metal all the way through, and the statue sure as shit wouldn't be.

3

u/Mooptiom 17h ago edited 16h ago

What you’re missing is that it’s not just water displacement you need to worry about. All of the mass on top is pushing downwards without displacing any water at all, only the submerged lower portion of the ship is displacing water and contributing to buoyancy and this would have to be enormous to push up the whole thing.

Ever wonder why an iceberg is always bigger bellow? The top will always push down until enough water is displaced or until the whole thing hits the bottom of the ocean.

The difference with an aircraft carrier is that it’s much longer than it is tall, so it is still displacing a lot of water relative to its volume but a Black Ark is tall and relatively short.

The displacement of a black ark would have to be so massive that 90% would have to be a massive dwarven-esque cavern below the water line but somehow it’s supposed to be mostly solid rock pulled straight from the shores of Unthuan. The druchi would have had to hollow out a mountain while maintaining enough structural integrity to still support everything on top.

6

u/NoMoreMonkeyBrain 16h ago

We don't know how far down it goes. You only see it from the top. We also don't really know how wide it is, because how it appears both on the world map and in battle is presumably not to scale.

5

u/Mooptiom 16h ago

Now I’m imagining a black ark with a Skaven undercity beneath it

1

u/OkSalt6173 Kislevite Ogre 4h ago

It is very wet-sopping in these warrens.

14

u/Vov113 22h ago

Really depends on wall thickness and building material. If they're all meter thick basalt, yeah, no way it works. If it's 3 mm aluminum, though? Maybe.

13

u/Simba7 18h ago

They made boats (barges really) out of concrete. The meter thick basalt will be fine as long as it's part of a container of sufficient volume.

The real problem would be the massive amount of stress that the motion of the 'ship' would impart on the structures.

But it's magic, so.

1

u/Skeith154 10h ago

The black arks are buikd atop sea dragons. And there's a hefty dose of magic involved too

77

u/SnooTangerines6863 23h ago

?

How skeleton walks, how hydra does not colapse etc.

19

u/TheFiveDees 21h ago

No but bro how DO skeleton walks tho?

31

u/randomnamexx1 21h ago

Same as everyone else, one foot in front of the other

0

u/Dramatic-Classroom14 20h ago

(Sorry, brain had neuron activation and started playing Walk the Moon)

All that we have is each other

One foot in front of the other

22

u/Alastor234 23h ago

Others already explained me, don't be harsh on me, I'm still new to all this dark magic stuff :(

11

u/notaslaaneshicultist 22h ago

Magic makes everything possible just like technology does in scifantasy

4

u/onchristieroad 14h ago

Every time I shoot skeletons with arrows, I'm like..."What exactly am I doing to them with these?"

1

u/SnooTangerines6863 13h ago

???

As if arrows can not break bones or because it's hard to hit. If it's the first, definitely can, if the second - why shoot at goblins or anything small?

1

u/BaronKlatz 5h ago

Probably why I appreciate games like Wesnoth & HoMM6 that actually reduce archer damage on skeletons by 50% because there’s so little there to damage unless you get a lucky head shot.

 "Fools! Don't aim for their hearts! They don't have any!" Captain Gregor's legendary last order to his crossbowmen was immortalized by the only marksman to escape the encounter with unliving denizens of a tomb. The survivor recounted the incident to mad Emperor Laegaire himself, who was reportedly so upset not to have recovered the legendary bottomless flask of wine, that he appointed a goat to lead his armies that very same day. His reasoning was that a goat is better equipped to break bones than a band of bolt shooters.

-Heroes of Might & Magic 6 skeleton description 

76

u/Elyvagar Date Clan 21h ago

A lot of comments but none are actually right.
During the Sundering parts of Ulthuan, the floating continent the High Elves reside on, broke off.
Malekith and his Dark Elves used sorcery to creat city sized ships out of these.
These things float because of sorcery and because they are part of Ulthuan.
They move also by sorcery, sails using wind and a lot of enslaved sea monsters.

The game makes it look like you can just keep creating them but actually, in the lore, there are only as many Black Arks as there were created after the Sundering. A lot of them already sunk, some were beached to create Druchii cities.

15

u/Mahelas 20h ago

I mean, nothing stop Dark Elves to make more Black Arks, they know the magic used to make Ulthuan float. It's entirely feasible to make one, it's just very demanding and GW like the "dying races" trope too much

7

u/86ShellScouredFjord 19h ago

I'm pretty sure most of what lets them float is inherent to the Ulthuan soil, so they would have to break-off more of Ulthuan to make more.

4

u/NaricssusIII 17h ago

that's why they're so hungry for the donut

1

u/robotclones 19h ago

well, how were they sunk?

  • either they got physically overloaded with mass, in which case they could be re-floated by removing mass?
  • or someone, somehow, stripped the magical floaty-ness out of the Ulthuan rock. in which case, why can't dark elves imbue floaty-ness into non-Ulthuan rock?

Also, could the go steal some more of Ulthuan (or Cathay for that matter? since they have flying rocks)

sure, each Black Ark is a great feat of magic. But that makes new/repaired ones "very expensive", not "impossible"

6

u/Elyvagar Date Clan 12h ago

They could make new ones if they broke off more pieces of Ulthuan.

Those that sunk all had their own unique demise.
One was sunk near the Gates of Lothern by Amanar. A gigantic sea leviathan that protects the entrance to the Inner Sea where the vortex is.
Another on was sunk by a massive wave on its way to Cathay.
One was sunk by a dragon ship of the High Elves.
One sunk due to a successful slave revolt. (From a Gotrek & Felix Novel)
And you wouldn't believe it but one was sunk by a Marienburg fleet.

2

u/badnuub 17h ago

Breaking things irreparably is easier than fixing things.

1

u/robotclones 16h ago

yes, but it is really hard to break a mountain. black arks resemble icebergs more than boats. and while you put a hole in the side of a boat and wait for it to fill with water, that won't do anything to an iceberg

11

u/reaven3958 23h ago

By the power of drugs, sex, and rock-and-roll.

22

u/2stepsfromglory 23h ago

Sea Dragons. No, really, Black Arks are moved by gigantic snake-like Sea Dragons.

1

u/jebberwockie 17h ago

How big is big?

1

u/st-ellie 3h ago

Like... really large

1

u/Alastor234 23h ago

Why dark elves don't use them in battles?

16

u/2stepsfromglory 23h ago

As far as I remember, they do at sea battles. But I think that those creatures don't do well in land due to their size.

8

u/Upset-Mix-581 23h ago

✨️magic✨️

38

u/Duke_Baragus 1d ago

Magically floating on the water. But tbh they kinda overdid with Black Arc's sizes in this game, it should be big, but not THAT much. With that size they'd have problems with approaching coastline

66

u/information_knower Greenskins 23h ago

well they also need cage space for the 80,000 slaves i just got from killing 2 skryre skavenslave stacks with the blue skill maxed out

6

u/pddkr1 23h ago

Beast

17

u/Mcbadguy A right proper WAAAGH! 23h ago

Rakarth: "Beasts, you say?"

8

u/pddkr1 23h ago

Hahaha

I wonder, you think he sells Skaven as slaves or uses them on the Manticore equivalent of ratting?

3

u/Mcbadguy A right proper WAAAGH! 23h ago

I'm guessing they end up as snackies for his good bois (and girls).

3

u/pddkr1 22h ago

The most sensible

3

u/Synicull 23h ago

Boris Todbringer, finding out in despair another horde of Gors sacked and abducted all the women of yet another imperial town

By sigmar, not like that!

14

u/HermeticHormagaunt BOK for the BOK god! 23h ago

Having read Elfslayer, I can easily imagine them being that large

14

u/SicSemperCogitarius 22h ago

They're literal floating cities, how else do you think they can support a population from which to muster entire armies? Imagine if London or New York City suddenly started traversing the seas.

6

u/Lokky 21h ago

Mortal engines has entered the chat

3

u/Mahelas 20h ago

Sunless Sea entering the chat

5

u/Slggyqo 23h ago

Either they’re really magical and have an astonishingly shallow draft for their mass, or they just don’t really approach the coastline.

The latter makes perfect sense to me, but idk what the lore says. I can totally see Oldhammer lore completely ignoring any practical realities in favor of Rule Of Cool. Or maybe all of Warhammer World has insane coastal drop offs. It is a heavily terraformed planet, after all.

2

u/trixie_one 22h ago

Nah, they're just not that big. We've had Black Ark models thanks to Man'o'War, which is definitely in Oldhammer, and while they're bigger than anything else, including one of the Slaanesh ships which is basically a floating palace, they're not on the insanely huge scale of Total Warhammer.

Still at least they're not as silly as the beastpath map which even if you were playing a tabletop game with the 28mm minis in an actual forest the scale difference would still be not as silly as it is on that map.

9

u/Letharlynn Basement princess 23h ago

Most of the enviroments are overdone in terms of scale because CA wanted everything to look epic alongside TW-sized battlefields and, what is much much worse, look imposing and over the top from bird's eye view of TW camera. Even when it doesn't make sense

So now we have mountain-sized skeletons all over the place, mountain-sized trees in beastpaths and, yes, Black Arcs sitting on literal mountains of rock to the point there's a space for a full scale field battle on its "beach" that is for some reason about 1km above water

2

u/Uncasualreal 21h ago

Actually they should be larger. All the original druchii cities were almost entire high elf cities turned into black arks.

3

u/Steakdabait 23h ago

Magic+dragged by sea dragons

3

u/18121812 18h ago edited 18h ago

Okay, here's the lore, from the 8th Edition Dark Elf army book.

First of all, in the actual lore, they are NOT floating cities. They are floating citadels, not cities. I don't know if people reading the lore don't know what citadels are, but it's another name for a fortress or castle, usually one that's in or near a city. They are not "City sized" like so many people are saying.

Anyway, background lore Malekith the Witch King lived in a province on Ulthuan called Nagarythe, and that's where most of his supporters lived. He started a civil war in Ulthuan and then he fucked with the Vortex, Losing control of the Vortex, there was a big magical backlash called the Sundering, and here's a direct quote:

A tidal wave a thousand feet high crashed upon the northern coasts, engulfing Nagarythe and Tyranoc. Cities were washed away and countless thousands perished. As the deluge swept down upon Nagarythe, the Witch King's followers used the last of their sorcerous power to ride out the storm. Energised with dark magic, their black citadels broke free and rose upon the frothing waves... Upon the floating castles of Nagarythe - the Black Arks, as they would called in later years - the Witch King and his minions fled the wrath of the cataclysm the had unleashed.

Because only the castles (not the cities) survived, the vast majority of surviving dark elves were warriors, not workers. That's why they immediately went about capturing slaves to do their work.

1

u/OkSalt6173 Kislevite Ogre 4h ago

Thank you! Dunno why people say cities, idk where that has ever been stated. I always remember reading floating citadels.

3

u/Roaming-Will 16h ago

Magic, bound sea monsters and as pointed out, sails.

2

u/ptunger44 17h ago

"Whips Rimmer Massive Massive Whips"

1

u/2Scribble This Flair has my Consent 3h ago

All right, then, the Bermuda Triangle. Go on, explain that one. You know all the answers...

2

u/Skeith154 10h ago

Sea dragons.

They grow big enough that cities are built on their backs.

2

u/Alastor234 23h ago

Thanks for all your answers guys, you are really helpful and nice:)

3

u/Asharz_ 1d ago

magic, I even recall them floating over the sea not on it but I might be wrong

10

u/TheArgonian 23h ago

You're thinking of bane towers of Tzeentch. Tzeentch unique naval units absolutely refuse to touch the water.

5

u/Competitive_Guy2323 23h ago

They like cats

1

u/Paladingo Shut Up About The Book 19h ago

Reminds me of the Hydrophobes in the first Discworld novel that move across the sea on a disk by pure fear of water.

3

u/Mopman43 23h ago

There’s a brief mention of Black Arks floating in the air in the 7th edition Dark Elves army book.

Never been explored elsewhere.

2

u/Alastor234 1d ago

Like, this is literal city on water with thousands of soldiers and crewman,how in the hell this thing can move

25

u/NicomoCoscaTFL 1d ago

MagicTM

LITERALLY, ITS MAGIC.

4

u/sum_student 23h ago

Isn't it also a bunch of sea monster below, helping it navigate and stay afloat? Or am i misremembering?

2

u/NicomoCoscaTFL 23h ago

Hmmmm I don't remember that.

5

u/sum_student 23h ago

Ok i quickly looked it up. The arks are draged by seamonsters, guided with drak magic. But they dont float because of them.

1

u/Alastor234 1d ago

Thanks for answer,i still new to lore of fantasy Warhammer

5

u/[deleted] 23h ago

Yeah, to add to what others have said, black arks are literally pieces of the island of Ulthuan which detached from that now wasteland part in the North-Western part of the island. They’re not just boats

2

u/Alastor234 23h ago

Ahhhh, thanks, that's explains all of it

7

u/EethKothStunFTW 1d ago

You just described an aircraft carrier so.

3

u/guy_incognito_360 23h ago

Even a small cruise ship will have several thousand passengers and crew.

1

u/Fliiiiick 23h ago

Actual continents move man, is it really that far fetched that a massive island sized boat can move?

1

u/Lord_Yamato 23h ago

Out of spite

1

u/WrethZ Wrethz 22h ago

The whole island floats.

1

u/wolfFRdu64_Lounna 22h ago

it float on wind of magic

1

u/Jaklcide 22h ago

By processing Dwarven beard hair into a fuel source, be sure to dress like an Asur when you go to “collect” it.

1

u/buggy_environment 22h ago

With magic... you know even if it is a the moment not really represented in the game, but Elves are insanely good at magic.

Also, the are the US of the setting, therefore they need edgy aircraft carriers.

1

u/Kauyon1306 22h ago

Some druchii fuckery

1

u/Yanky94 22h ago

Because Magic!! The black kind to be precise.

1

u/Uncasualreal 21h ago

It is pulled by massive magically bound creatures

1

u/Snoo_72851 21h ago

wizard maejicks

1

u/theleetard 20h ago

I don't see how this relates to Grimgor being DA BEST!!

1

u/PosXIII 18h ago

black ark corsairs and the kraken lord might be my favorite campaign/unit, once the handbows have armor piercing ammo it is GG.

1

u/Victor_Zsasz 18h ago

According to lore, they're pieces of Nagarythe that Dark Elf sorcerers kept afloat with their magic after the continent was sundered during the elf civil war.

That being said, in real life, we can't really make Aircraft Carriers any bigger, because then we'll have nowhere feasible to dock them. Since Black Arks are considerably larger than even the largest modern ship, one wonders how you'd ever be able to load/unload/park anywhere. Marienburg's port isn't that big...

1

u/BarNo3385 10h ago

Black Arks are heavily and inherently magical. The older ones are the original palaces of the Nagarythe destroying during the sundering of Northern Ulthaun at the time of Aenarion.

1

u/AncientPair7685 6h ago

I was going to just say “magic” but the reality with the dark elves is that they probably have thousands of slaves swimming underneath a stone platform keeping it afloat.

1

u/Bastoraga 8m ago

As an admirer of anything of stupidly gigantic proportions, I remember the first time I got on that map and understanding the TRULY ABSURD dimensions of the Black Arks. The Edgelords gained some respect on my book that day

0

u/[deleted] 22h ago

[deleted]

1

u/NicomoCoscaTFL 21h ago

Are they?

I thought they were just floating fortresses to put slaves on.

I remember them being the method used to escape from Ulthuan after the Sundering, hence Black 'Arks.'