Total War: Warhammer 3 video accidentally leaks 4 DLC factions

Creative Assembly revealed an awful lot of detail about the upcoming Immortal Empires campaign for Total War: Warhammer 3 yesterday, including a little bit that it may not have intended to. Sharp-eyed fans watching the Q&A session picked up on what they believe are the names of four factions that will be released for the game as DLC.

The relevant bit can be seen at around the 9:55 mark of the video embedded above, during a segment in which lead designer Mitchell Heastie discusses victory conditions while scrolling through different lists of required goals: Capturing coastal regions, razing settlements, destroying factions, controlling provinces, that sort of thing.

The dime dropped when he got to "Domination Campaign Victory" conditions, which includes a long list of factions that must be destroyed. There's something like 60 of them in total by my quick count, which is reasonable because Immortal Empires will merge the factions and maps from all three games in the Total War: Warhammer trilogy into a single, massive campaign. But four of the factions in the list have never appeared in any of those games:

The Ecstatic Legions
The Fecundites
Legion of the Gorequeen
Puppets of Misrule

Here's a still from the video where the faction names can be seen:

Total War: Warhammer 3 video still — (Image credit: Creative Assembly)

It's possible that these are simply unannounced factions, but Creative Assembly has already revealed the new Chaos factions and so the feeling among fans on Reddit is that these groups are more likely to be released as DLC.

Of course, Warhammer fans being Warhammer fans, there's already plenty of speculation about who will be heading each of these factions: Niheli21 pegs it as Azazel, the Prince of Damnation for the Ecstatic Legions, Festus the Leechlord for the Fecundites, the Gorequeen Valkia the Bloody, and Vilitch the Curseling for the Puppets of Misrule. It's all very Warhammer.

Creative Assembly hasn't commented on the leaked factions at this point, but I've reached out for comment and will update if I receive a reply. Total War: Warhammer 3 – Immortal Empires will be out on August 23.

Thanks, NME.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.