The Warhammer world drew inspiration from Tolkien's Middle-earth, but also from Robert E Howard ( Conan the Barbarian) and Michael Moorcock, as well as history, particularly European history. The development of the setting began with the release of a game simply called 'Warhammer' in 1983. The world itself was populated with a variety of races such as humans, high elves, dark elves, wood elves, dwarfs, undead, orcs, lizardmen, and other creatures familiar to many fantasy/role-playing settings.
From Michael Moorcock, its creators took the theme of 'Chaos' as a force unceasingly attempting to tear the mortal world asunder. Warhammer is notable for its 'dark and gritty' background world, which reference a range of historical cultures, along with other fantasy settings, in particular Tolkien's Middle-earth. Warhammer Fantasy is a fictional fantasy universe created by Games Workshop and used in many of its games, including the table top wargame Warhammer Fantasy Battle, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) pen-and-paper role-playing game, and a number of video games: the MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the strategy games Total War: Warhammer, Total War: Warhammer II and Total War: Warhammer III and the two first-person shooter games in the Warhammer Vermintide series, Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2. A crowd gathered around a Warhammer set-up
