Dungeons The Dragoning Redux: The Immateriums, Chaos, Daemons and other nasties

Yes, I'll keep posting Dungeons The Dragoning 'remake' stuff because it amuses me. There is just something so stupid, so hilarious but also so liberating in just saying 'screw it, let me be silly' and imagine a universe where the basic D&D stuff co-exists with the properties of Games Workshop, White Wolf and others. This is basically the tabletop equivalent of picking your favorite toys and smashing them into each others, creating a weirdass story where Optimus Primal team up with some Pokémon and three or four Power Rangers...from different teams across several season.

Hey, look: while I was a very lucky kid when it came to toys I sadly never got to have a full Power Rangers team due to how quickly these toys went off the shelves and were replaced.

One thing I have noticed as I get older is that, paradoxically I care less and less about trying to be mature, at least not at all times. Elfgames are inherently stupid/silly and even in today's era we would still be scorned as weirdoes by anyone suitably older and un-nerdy to have no damn clue why all of a sudden the dorky stuff has entire industries built on exploiting the money of hipsters and aging neck beards alike. Its just silly, its just fun and I need to stop feeling so insecure damn it!

A Dissection of the Immaterial

The ancient form of the Immaterium, its most primordial and ancient form was not the churning chaotic mass of the Warp but rather the impossible Wyld. To most people not very well versed in the natures of the Realm of Souls it would seemingly appear as completely identical: both are chaotic endless expanses of thoughts, souls and potential matter and energy constantly churning. The Wyld still exist but it only exist in the deepest regions of the Immaterium, having been tainted and corrupted into the Chaotic expanse (note the capital C here!) of the Warp: its energies corrupted and tainted to be tinged with all the fear, madness, rage and possibly bodily fluids of countless lives collectively crapping their pants at the War in Heaven and Usurpation of the Old Ones.

The Immaterium, as a dimension, encompass the entire galaxy and far beyond it. It is composed of the following parts:

• The Ethereal Plane is the part closest to the Materium, created from the immediate thoughts of all life forms. It is a boring, grey reflection of the material world and generally isn't very useful for long distance travel. There are entities which have the ability to phase into it and switch between a material and immaterial form such as Phase Spiders. The Old Ones (and several other beings) call it The Umbra or The Shadow.
• The Shadowfell is a specific part of the Umbra which has morphed into its own thing primarily due to the use of necromancy. It can be accessed through the Ethereal Plane or the Material Plane and exist as a dark realm of death and gloom, inhabited by the fossilized form of souls: what we would call ghosts. It is also called The Underworld.
• Within the Warp are other self-contained Realms, which are often the domain of beings who have ascended to become Gods. While many beings claim to be Gods, for the purpose of this section it will refer to potent spiritual beings who have become one with the Immaterium but are distinct from Daemons.
• Around and constantly gnawing at these parts of the Immaterium is the infamous Warp, which is the corrupted and twisted Chaotic mess which most people are familiar with. The Warp is the domain of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos and of their Chaos Daemons. Its energies induce madness and uncontrolled mutations.

The Ruinous Powers

You know them well! Except Malal, of course...

While they are called 'Gods of Chaos', these beings are both much more than Gods but also less. The oldest Dragons and other survivors of the War in Heaven sometimes call them the 'Heads of the Wyrm' for they are all conjoined and part of the same ultimate, undivided Chaos even if no Chaos God would ever concede such a fact. The concepts they embody are fundamental and were always part of the Wyld when it first formed. Once corrupted, however, these concepts slowly coalesced into malignant entities of which the main pantheon is composed of four and an additional member. They are:

• Khorne, the Blood God: Embodiment of rage, bloodlust, strength and survival among other things. This guy needs no introduction, being obsessed with war and destruction as well as the shedding of blood in all forms.
• Nurgle, the Lord of Decay: Embodiment of pestilence, plagues, decay, entropy and corruption. Kind of a nice guy by comparison.
• Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways: Embodiment of change, mutation, fate, hope and general RNG fuckery. He also the Chaos God most associated with magic and sorcery even if he lacks monopoly on it. If anything has a % chance of failure you could blame it on him.
• Slaanesh, the Prince of Pleasure: Embodiment of passion, lust, desire and general obsessions that turn a bit too grim or self-destructive. Slaanesh is generally the Chaos God most associated debaucheries that turn a PG-13 rating into something that makes the MPAA kill themselves.
• Malal, the God of Team-Killing Fucktards: Also called the Unspoken God, the One-Who-Doesn't-Exist, Malice and 'That Asshole'. Malal is the embodiment of Chaos own self-contradiction and self-defeating douchery.

Below each Chaos God is an innumerable host of Daemons, ranging in power and intellect between mindless and useless slug-daemons to towering Daemonic Nobles (sometimes called Daemon Lords, Daemon Princes, Archfinds and more) who is each an endgame boss who can devastate entire worlds on a whim. Adding to this are endless permutations of cultists, madmen, mutants and other Chaos-aligned horrors.

The ultimate goal of a Chaos worshiper is Apotheosis into a Daemon Prince (again, title may vary): in doing so they become infused with a portion of the Ruinous Powers, shed their mortal form and become immortal beings of immense power. Each of these beings is a dreaded monster of legend: former tyrants, impossibly skilled assassins, twisted necromancers and more. Some ascended during their life time through service to Chaos while others found themselves rewarded after their death even without having ever known of the powers of Chaos, having caught the eyes of the Dark Gods who didn't want such a gifted (unwitting) servant to pass on when they could keep doing what they were doing for eons to come.

The ranks of Daemon Lords are vast and include many horrid figures such as Orcus, Daemon Lord of the Undead who serves primarily (but not exclusively) Nurgle and Tzeentch as a patron to all manner of undying abominations as well as their potential creator. Just as he spread a Chaotic sickness and corruption he also is a patron to Necromancers, imparting upon them foul sorcerous secrets to transcend life and death. Doge Klypse, the Archbishop of Madness scribbles mad texts which may or may not hold horrific prophecies involving even the end of Chaos itself while the Knight of Entropy exist to only end things, turning the entire world to dust and ash as it bring about the annihilation that ultimately is Chaos. Meanwhile, Asmodeus, Lord of the Nine and (Self-Proclaimed) God of Tyranny exist just to show how confusing Chaos is. Having been infused with the power of Malal, Asmodeus turned Chaos against itself and created a Realm which combine the twisting and corrupting powers of Chaos with an iron-clad, terrifying rule of tyranny and he now wage a never-ending war against Chaos with his armies of Devils.

The Gods

Sigmar in his Age of Sigmar depiction.

There exist in the Immaterium beings of immense power which are not the Ruinous Powers or their servants. The process of their ascension, in many ways, echoes that of Daemon Princes but the ways it was achieved are different. The Gods (sometimes called the Incarnae) are powerful and unique beings, possibly creations of the Old Ones or possibly purely through the will power and belief of life itself. Like Daemon Princes they shed their material form, becoming indestructible beings who dwell within the Immaterium. However unlike Daemon Princes these creatures neither obey the Ruinous Powers nor do they resonate of its energy. Perhaps, in ancient times, before the Immaterium became tainted by the Warp this is what happened to truly exceptional mortals and not the birth of a Daemon Prince.

Wielding the power of an Incarnae as a Cleric is far less dangerous than channeling the corruption energies of Chaos but also much more difficult. It requires a special gift, a sense of communion with beings greater than oneself whereas everyone and everything can fall into Chaos in due time. Because the Gods represent Order (or at least, Neutrality in the Law/Chaos axis) they have a harder time interacting directly with the World than Daemon Princes since they innately try to preserve and maintain the fabric of reality to some degree whereas servants of the Ruinous Powers simply want to break things and care not if oxygen molecules become tiny shrimps that shoot rainbows from their eyes...rainbows that melt your brain, of course.

Dungeons The Dragoning Redux: Ancient History Of The Wheel

The history of the Great Wheel is a great sprawling tapestry, embroidered in blood and steel and gold, stretching from the furthest reaches of the distant past to the current hour. Near-immortal wizard kings once shaped the Wheel to their will and made it a place of miraculous splendor. Today, men fight with sword and bolter in the ruins of ancient glory. However, the story of the current era cannot be told without a look to the deep past...

Primordial History and the Old Ones

Slann may or may
not be Old Ones.

They have been known by a thousand name by a thousand cultures which were but infants when the age of Gods came to an end. They've been called Precursors, Progenitor, Preservers, Syrne, The Ancients, The Endless. For simplicity sake we will call them The Old Ones. They emerged, the first race to progress in magic and technology enough to become part of the larger universe. They were almost immortal, patient and wise.  Or so the story goes. The Syrne were potent mages who routinely used the powers of the warp for a large variety of applications, constructing the Portal Relays.

But the Syrne were not alone in this young galaxy. While they may have been the first mortal race to ascend to such height, sentience had evolved elsewhere in the galaxy in a completely different form. Vast creatures of great power, with many souls, the Primordials (or Yozi) claimed this young galaxy and took offense at the Syrne’s preposterous idea of supremacy, for the Syrne were at that time still and nowhere near the peak of their power. Nevertheless, the Syrne found allies in the Primordial known as Autochthon, the great Maker (sometimes known as Primus). A thinker, a builder and peerless engineer, Autochthon had more in common with the ambitious and industrious Syrne than his destructive and abusive brethren. The war between the Old Ones and the Primordials was a long one, with both side unleashing powers which at the time were new to the nascent universe but in the end, the Syrne won against the legions of the Primordials: elementals, giants armed by a race of stunted elemental humanoids called Earthen. The Yozi were defeated, imprisoned and in some cases mutilated and altered, the mechanism of their existence laid bare for the young Syrne, which led them to become the mighty Old Ones of legends.

The Deliberative

You could also call them 'Orokin' and it would
still work because of how cliché 'precursors' are.

Mighty in power and unchallenged, the Old Ones ruled all of creation, for a time, even if that time was eons. The greatest of the Old Ones were God-Kings who ruled entire crystal spheres, warriors leading armies pushing back creatures of primordial darkness and scientists and mages who controlled existence on a level unmatched even to this day. Countless races were created in this era to serve the Old Ones. The Dragons were forged from the essence of an elemental Primordial known as Gaia, while countless mortal races were designed to populate the Great Wheel. Some say the oldest deities in the cosmos were creations of the Old Ones or members of that race which ascended to a level of power to transcend mortality. No one knows for certain.

Progenitor Races

How did the great wheel develop so many forms of life...and why do so many share an eerie similarity between each others despite being light years apart? The Old Ones did it, of course! This is the current, leading theory on the origin of so many vaguely-similar life forms across the galaxy. The Old Ones created and uplifted many life forms, that much is known but some believe that beside the ancestors of all Elvenoid (The Eldarin) and Orkoids (The Krork) there were other progenitor races such as the Aeree (ancestors of Avian sapients), Sarrukh (ancestors of reptilian Sapients) or even the potential ancestors of Humans the Archaen.

The War In Heaven

The War In Heaven....pretty much unchanged.

Eventually, a great conflict later known to the Eldarin as the War in Heaven arose between the C'tan, immensely powerful, incorporeal beings composed of pure energy who existed solely in the material universe, and the Old Ones. At that point, the Old Ones had grown somewhat complacent and some say, weak. The Old Ones, physically weak and few in number, uplifted the Eldarin to serve as their soldiers. In response, the C'tan enslaved the Modrons, almost elemental creatures of pure order, bonding them within geometrical armored shells of a living metal called necrodermis. The C'tan directed the Modrons into Great Marches of all intelligent life. In response to this threat, the Old Ones created the Orks (or rather their ancestors, the Krork) to wage what would seem like an eternal war. How the war ended isn't known. The Modrons were forced into stasis in Mechanus and other forgotten clockwork worlds. The C'tan were put into hibernation.

The Usurpation

The remaining Old Ones were not the same creatures as they had been before the War in Heaven. Some stories speak of a curse, one last act of vengeance from the defeated C’tan. Others say the curse was given to the Old Ones by the Primordials, having taken eons to mature. A third version of the story claim that the Primordials and C’Tan were, somehow, one and the same as a species. Whatever the case was, the remaining Old Ones were a dying, paranoid and misguided breed. The Dragons, greatest of the creations of the Old Ones, slew their masters and assumed their place as the rulers of the known universe, forming a Draconic Shogunate. The Old Ones were rendered completely extinct, the Portal Network shut down while the Webway began its long decay.

When the Old Ones were lost, their other creations were left to their own devices. The Orks immediately turned on themselves, the joy of combat all they desired in life. Some of the Eldarin escaped their Crystal Spheres and constructed giant worldships, Craftworlds, to sail through the astral sea. They repaired and opened many Portal Relays, and found the city of Sigil. The Lady of Pain was, even then, the ruler of the city, already sitting on the throne of blades before the Eldarin arrived. Scattered across the Great Wheel were the Hedron, ancient monoliths of great power designed to help bind the fabric of reality and ensure nothing from the Far Realms entered the galaxy. With most of the Old Ones presumed dead, these constructs begin shutting down, weakening the barrier, allowing something from the outside to slowly make it’s way toward the Great Wheel.

The Corruption of Chaos

Prior to this, there had only been the Realm of Souls. However all the cosmos-shattering conflict which had occurred from the rise of the Old Ones to the Usurpation began to take its toll upon the Immaterium. Negative thoughts and ideas had a bad habit of sticking to together like space magic psychic bullshit being pulled together like atoms, slowly coalescing into increasingly complex singularities of pure spite and madness. These imbalances corrupted and twisted it with all the ill will, fears and general lack of common fucking decency that life now collectively experienced. This is what spawned the Gods of Chaos, living embodiment of all the nasty things that ever existed.

Ancient History and the Draconic Shogunate

An ancient, shiny dragon looking smug.

The first dragons were not natural creatures: they were the result of complex techno-arcane biological and spiritual manipulation. The ancient dragons (or Elder Dragons) were near-immortal creatures of vast power, a power which would only increase with age. Unfortunately, with the death of their Old Ones creator, the dragons were quickly met with the problem that they could not create more of their kind directly through such ancient science. They had to resort to naturally reproducing, which immediately began the dilution of their blood and power, which account for the variety in draconic shape, appearance and abilities in this day and age, from the noble and pure (but rare) gold dragons to the bizarre and degenerate Howling Dragon to even more obscure breed of dragons which exist only on a single world.

To fill their ranks and build an empire worthy of their might, the dragons began experimenting on various saurian life forms, leading to the creation of races such as the Kobold and Dragonborn, amongst others. These mortal races carry within them the gene of the dragons. The shogun of the dragons was Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon. Powerful, wise, noble and perhaps a tad bit too haughty, Bahamut held his rivals in check. That is until he was betrayed by a fellow warlord: Tiamat, the Five-Headed-Dragon. Tiamat waged war on Bahamut, nearly half of the living dragons siding with her. The two armies clashed, and on the slopes of Mount Celestia itself, Tiamat was struck down. But the Draconic empire was shattered. Several of the immortal Elder Dragons fled to Sigil.

The First Hive-Fleet

Omnomnom...

The arrival of the Great Devourer in the Great Wheel is quite ancient but only recently has it been understood. Where they came from, none can say, but these creatures infested every corner of the galaxy, falling upon the weakened Draconic Shogunate like hungry locust. Fortunately for the galaxy, this was a small hive fleet, seemingly only scouts and ill-prepared ones at that, but their impact upon the galaxy is one which is still felt today. Like a cancer, these organism would develop into the countless Aberrations. Separated from the hive mind, the confused aliens which had remained on countless worlds were forced to adapt. Some became lone predators, such as the dreaded Fenrisian Kraken, others reformed a primitive hive society, such as the weak Kruthik. Countless species of alien monstrosities can trace their ancestry to those early invaders of the Great Devourer. On the moon of Ymgarl, however, something different was biding its time… 

Formation of the Realm of Arkhosia

Using a forgotten Old Ones weapon known as the Sword of Creation, one dragon disrupted the hive mind of the alien invaders. This dragon then went and crowned herself the Scarlet Empress, forming her own empire of dragon blooded creatures. The Realm, while powerful, was a shadow of the Shogunate and a mere speck of dust compared to the Old Ones Deliberative. The Great Devourer had, in many ways, somewhat wiped the slate clean. For the first time in untold eons, the hand of the Old Ones was missing. The dragons were still around and the Realm was slowly and carefully building its power but nonetheless, this era was marked by the emergence of many new forms of life who began leaving their homeworlds and spreading across the Great Wheel.

Bael Turath and Asmodeus

Lord Douchebag McAsshole
the First! aka Asmodeus.

In those times a race of humanoids, possibly distant relatives to Humans, had developed into a small but extremely ambitious empire on the planet Korriban which started to clash with the much more powerful Realm. While genocide is never a good thing, one could argue that had everyone known what would happen next in their centuries of war then everyone involved would have rooted for the dragons and their servants to wipe these upstarts off the face of the galaxy.

The God-Kings and sorcerers nobles of that realm, Bael Turath, were powerful and dreamed of complete galactic conquest. Something which would obviously never happen. Inside their twisted minds, dark desires festered until they began to hear the call of a power which had been growing stronger and stronger with each century: the power of Chaos. The mightiest of Bael Turath's God-King slew his brother Ihys and took absolute control over their council, setting himself as the Lord of the Nine. His name was Asmodeus.

The war between Arkhosia and Bael Turath lasted centuries and had untold casualties on both side. In time, Bael Turath's tyrannical rulers lost more and more their grasp on their people until a single Crystal Sphere remained under their power, known as Baator. In the final days, Asmodeus chose to damn his entire people and utterly dedicate each and every single one of them to the power of Chaos but not before betraying Chaos itself by choosing to align with a renegade Chaos God known as Malal, god of trolling, backstabbing and general team-killing fuckery. It was thus that the Baatezu, or Devils, became creatures of (twisted) Order as one last middle finger to their benefactor, wielding the power of Chaos to enforce an iron rule, because Asmodeus is just that much of a dick.

Dungeons The Dragoning Redux: Remaking The Clusterfuck

If you are confused by this insanity of a crossover, I've written about Dungeons: The Dragoning 40 000 7th Edition here. Its a brief intro but it should explain what this insane mess of a game is.

Getting Back To More Solid Roots

Dungeons The Dragoning is a ridiculous concept. Its 'official' releases (if we can even call them that!) consist of only two books, the core book and the expansion called 'For A Few Subtitles More'. This would be the end of the publication of this monstrosity of a game but homebrew beget more homebrew: as a result, a game that itself is a mash up homebrew of references had a very active community which added an utterly humongous amount of homebrew races, exaltations and more to the setting. While this is all fine and dandy it made the game, at least in my opinion, lose its identity. This may seem contradictory but the original game was clearly based off a few major IP with references to others added in there. The homebrew crowd for all the good it did basically went and crammed every single thing under the sun.

This made the game lose its identity.

Without the 'core' fusion of Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, World of Darkness and Exalted it seems to me the setting lose what makes it a silly, funny crossover in the first place. D&D alone has had so many settings and re imagining under its brand that there is a massive wealth of content to base a silly, crossover space fantasy setting around it. The rest still has room to exist as dumb in-jokes or genuine (as much as such a silly game can be genuine) setting elements. As such the key settings here are:

• Dungeons & Dragons 4th and 5th Edition: Yes, really. The 3e era is arguably so much like a poor man's Planescape in some aspects that by comparison 4th and 5th stand more as their own thing.
• Planescape: The massive universe, the factions and of course Sigil.
• Spelljammer: The concept of fantasy+spaceships and the Crystal Spheres model is used here, albeit with ships looking more like spaceships than whatever the hell Spelljammer vessels were.
• Star Wars D6: The Star Wars of the early days of the Expanded Universe, before it was all defined and then thrown away to be defined again.
• Warhammer 40 000: Forms a massive portion of the lore and setting metaphysics as well as the setting history. Most of the setting's scifi window dressing take heavy inspiration from Warhammer. However, rather than the 'grimderp' Warhammer of modern times I'd rather take as many cues from the sillier Rogue Trader era.
• Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Oooh this one is going to get so much crap! That said, while it came after DTD was released there are a few elements of AoS which seems like they came out more of the space fantasy DTD than the grim fantasy world of the classic Warhammer.
• World of Darkness and Exalted: Much like how Warhammer Fantasy and 40 000 were connected, these two settings share a common root, a common publisher and many setting elements in common despite being separate. Quite a bit of the setting history and metaphysics take from these two.

The Materium

The name Great Wheel is the modern name of the known universe. It has had many other names for every culture, every species has called it something or other throughout their history as soon as they glanced upward and saw an endless sea of blinking lights where the Gods were said to live. In term of size it is massive, dwarfing our own Milky Way and is said to hold so many worlds as for them to be uncountable. The Great Wheel is also said to have four poles, based on the outdated model developed by ancient Dragons. There is some truth to this elemental models, however. The 'south' of the Great Wheel (its all a bit relative) is in fact home to much warmer crystal spheres and burning stars which can tear even shielded spelljammer vessels, for example.

Most worlds are found inside Crystal Spheres, which usually house a sun (or some close analogue) and has one or more habitable worlds inside. I'd say orbiting but that implies that a heliocentric model would always be accurate: it isn't. It is not unknown for some of these spheres to have their own oddities when it come to the laws of reality but the vast majority of them are considered to be stable and non-hostile to most known forms of life. Some spheres have air inside them, allowing people to breathe in space beyond the confine of a planet inside it. Most don't, however. Beyond this is nothing but airless void but this is hardly the end of our exploration of that universe.

There exist a massive, impossibly vast network once built and inhabited by the Old Ones and later the Eldars. It is called the Webway and sometimes the First World or Feywild. Some parts of it are small enough to exist as passages for individuals while others are impossibly vast caverns filled with glowing, alien life and some other parts are so larger as to be able to hold entire Crystal Spheres. Most of it is unexplored and dangerous, filled with fickle and ageless creatures engineered by the Old Ones. Even the passages explored and used by the ancient Eldarin have crumbled and those that remain are jealously guarded by them.

Like this but bigger.

The Immaterium

When people speak of the Immaterium, in hushed tones I should add, they usually speak of The Warp:the hellish dimension of Chaos where Daemon dwells. However this is not the only part of the Immaterium, the realm of thought, souls and ideas. In ancient times it was the Realm of Souls, the Supernal Realms or The Wyld: an endless expanse of possibility and thoughts. The growth of Chaos and its ravenous powers has tainted the Immaterium.

The shallows of the Immaterium are called the Umbra or the Ethereal Plane: it is a reality which exist overlaid the Materium and is where lesser spirits, daemon and ghosts exist. This reality can be entered through astral projection or the use of spells. Deeper in the Umbra still exist certain domains of powerful beings which might be entire Planes of their own. A domain which exist parallel to the material world is the Underworld also known as The Shadowfell.

The Abyss is a massive rift in the Materium where the Immaterium (especially all the Chaos-ey and tentacle-ey parts!) is leaking. The worlds trapped inside this anomaly exist in both the material and immaterial and they are terrifying places where  Daemons roam free, chaos cult is the only law and madness and mutation are a constant.

"I feel the Warp overtaking me!"

Magic, The Warp and Trying Not To Explode

Most forms of Magic derive from the Warp (or rather, the Immaterium as a whole) in some form or another. This is both extremely useful, as it allow to bend the material world to one's will but it is also extremely dangerous. Psychic abilities have existed in most lifeforms in some shape or another and that power is both feared and revered in equal measure. The four most common forms of Magical powers are as such:

• Wizards, sometimes called Thaumaturge, Arcanist or Magisters rely on complex and ancient formula developed by the Old Ones (and later Eldarin and other races) which allow one to bend the forces of the Warp (sometimes called Winds of Magic) in a mostly safe and non-corrupting way. While the method itself is extremely safe and clean learning it is a whole different ordeal and requires keen intellect and solid memory.
• Sorcerers, sometimes called Psykers or Witches rely on pure will and desire alone to channel raw Warp energy. This make them the magic-users most apt at utterly spamming their powers to no end. Obviously this has a major drawback: their innate power is exceedingly volatile and an unprepared mind will find itself consume by the powers of Chaos. Having an innate connection to the Warp is a dangerous thing and often seen as a sign of mutation.
• The third major category is the one with the most names: some are called Clerics while others are called Shamans, Druids or even Warlocks. Rather than learning to channel the Warp through complex multi-dimensional formula or through innate ability they acquire their ability through some patron and higher power. This power is given and further augmented and sustained by belief and some form of code or behavior. Their abilities vary immensely depending on this outside power source.
• Finally there are Adepts: they channel the energies of the Immaterium through their bodies and mind in a more esoteric way which is both simpler and strange than the spell formula of the Wizards or the surge of power of the Sorcerer. These include the likes of the Monks, the Psion and the Paladins among others.

Most spellcaster classes are mechanically a form of Magister with the exception of most type of Wizards. There are possibly classes which, lore-wise, are Wizards but mechanically function like an Magister. The War Mage of the Codex of the Black Sun is an example which fit right in unchanged in lore or mechanics.