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But as far as I can tell - the Gods are definitely real. Some may be exaggerated, but the powers they have shown to mortals means their "reality" is pretty hard to deny.
Sigmar for example? He almost certainly is a God of some kind, given his final moments and the powers he inspired after his mortal death are well documented.
The Gods of the Tomb Kings? They almost certainly were real, though perhaps were not true "Gods."
The Old Ones - the ones who actually built the world? They are definitely real, just as the Chaos Gods are definitely real, but who knows where they went or what happened to them.
It's a complex thing to question whether the Gods are real in this world. Some are less direct in their effects, but pretty much all of them inspire magical prowess - or have documented history of their power - which would not work if they were simply "believed in as false Gods" or such.
As far as "where the other Gods come from," well - where did the Old Ones come from? They simply are extremely powerful beings as far as we have been told, and yet for whatever reason they abandoned the world due to the power of Chaos - implying that the Chaos Gods are on par with their power. Those like Sigmar apparently can rise to Godhood, but the mechanism behind how this happens I am unsure of. The Gods of the Elves and such also likely fall into this camp.
What you consider a "God" as in this series is simply a matter of degree. After all - even the Chaos Gods are not all powerful, or else they would not struggle at times to overwhelm the mortal world - let alone the Old Ones, who needed helpers and long plans which apparently did not work out perfectly. An elf who becomes powerful enough could become a God, even if they were just an "elf with magic" originally - presumably.
Though this is all just based on my own speculation and reading.
Others may disagree, or may certainly know more.
I believe most are real, only that chaos and the horned rat take a much more active role in mortal affairs.
Atleast a handful of the elven gods are active or have living avatars. Khaine is probably the most active followed by Isha and the hunter one.
The human gods tend to not do much but I believe they do bless their followers. I'm not 100% sure they exist other than sigmar.
Gork and mork may or may not be real and more of a psychic force the greenskins believe in.
Plus in this universe it seems like some mortals rise to the level of gods through their actions (like Sigmar). But again, this could be because they've had such a big impact in the minds of mortals, they're imprinted into the Warp, so to speak.
Really GW has never explicitly stated where the gods originated from AFAIK. I'm not a huge lore buff, though. If you read more into what the Warp is, then it may make a bit more sense how gods come to be.
I think godhood/ascendancy to godhood in Warhammer is similar in many aspects to another popular fantasy series: The Malazan Book of the Fallen. Belief and emotions are very powerful things in these franchises.
I think all the gods are a psychic force, really. It's just that the Old Ones bridged the gap between this reality and the Warp, allowing the "psychic realm" much more control over reality. Effectively making all these gods both real and a psychic force. It's actually how mankind achieved faster than light travel in 40k, and is likely how the Old Ones travelled around the universe as well.
Sigmar would beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of you for talking ♥♥♥♥ about his god Ulric
GW has, as mentioned above, generally left it open ended so you can role play things in your tabletop games. There's nothing preventing you from having characters do what Sigmar did if you want to roll with it.
There are some impressions, explicitly stated if you go with the End Times, that some of the order gods are the same individual worshiped by different names by different races. So humans, elves, and dwarfs may share the same god with 3 different names. But that's getting into continuity and lore messes that GW has sometimes with their retcons. I'm not 100% sure myself of the official canon standing because it partly seems to rely on which author you're reading at which time.
In End Times, which some people refuse to acknowledge (and I don't blame them), some of the gods become incarnate and take physical forms and fight directly on the battlefield with their peoples. One of the Empire's gods, Ulric, for example, fights in battle against the Chaos hordes and demons, personally defeating one of the demon princes of Tzeetch while bonded/possessing the Supreme Patriarch of the Empire. They warp the world, wipe out entire lands and populations, and give their chosen champions basically demi-godhood.
To Gachis point above on beings impact on the warp, I've thought it's more clear in 40K about that with regards to the possibilities with the god emperor that there is some aspect of this. But I'm less sure if they're going with that in Warhammer Fantasy. I honestly don't know.
TLDR: Real, but GW is vague to give freedom to role play house rules/characters for tabletop.
I know you said, vague for roleplay purposes - but is there anything that might hint as to their actual origins or nature? Something even a little concrete? :(
The answer to that really depends on which version of Warhammer you read. The current 8th Edition / End Times version is that the gods are either The Old Ones for the Lizardmen with Sotek being created from the power of belief while the rest were suddenly retconned to be empowered mortals from another world destroyed by Chaos.
The older versions which include a lot of Black Library books was very, very vague as the gods being entities who were always were there but not as powerful as the Chaos ones, empowered mortals for at least two beings or are the Old Ones. One book series such as the Florin and Lorenzo trilogy implies the Lady of the Lake may have been an Old One once worshiped by the Lizardmen while the Nagash books details the creation myths of the Tomb Kings back when they were alive and that their gods are very similar to the Old Ones as well.
I honestly don't know for WFB (Fantasy), I know a ton about 40K and far less about WFB.
In WFB I believe the old ones, who were not gods but treated as gods by some of their creations like the Lizardmen, knew of and had battled the Chaos Gods in other "realms" before the creation of the Warhammer Fantasy world. The Chaos Gods "followed" them there and broke through the gates the old ones used and the old ones fled and left their created beings (lizardmen, elves, humans I know for sure, can't remember who else they created).
So my understanding in WFB is the world is one of an ongoing, larger series of battles/extermination events between the Chaos Gods and other beings. I believe one of the Lahmian Vampires has a vision in End Times (again, widely disliked but it is canon) in which they see the futility of fighting the vastness of the Chaos Gods and realizing the their power is far greater than has been revealed. I presume this means the Chaos Gods are actually fighting the same war across various realms/dimensions/realities/whatever...but that's my presumption and I am open to other understandings on this.
In 40K it is explicit that the Chaos Gods came later. The Warp was "calm" early in the existence of the universe and it is the later actions, and their resulting psychic/spiritual echoes (for lack of better term) in the Warp that create the Chaos Gods.
Slaanesh, for example, was born in the 25th (+/-) millennium due to the immense depravity across the universe but mainly from the Eldar (Aeldari) civilization. Slaanesh's "birth" happened in the middle of the Eldar/Aeldari realms and destroyed everything that hadn't already left the Eldar empire (Craftworld, Webway, and Exodites).
Likewise, its heavily hinted or shaded at times that the belief of the people in the Imperium really does help give the god emperor power despite his original attempt to make the Imperium an atheist empire and hide the existence of the Chaos Gods from humanity.
In 40K, Lorgar, Primarch of the Word Bearers, was sadly right all along and if his father the emperor had listened to him maybe there wouldn't have been a Horus Heresy and the Chaos Gods may have been crippled, or at least massively weakened, by creating an Imperial Cult for the unified Imperium.
Sigmar, as a mortal, did worship Ulric. As a God he has no use for lesser deities.
Ulric is fit for worship only by NPC's like Boris Todbringer.
What is the "Earth" called in WFB anyway? is it just Earth or something more unique? Like Nirn from the Elder Scrolls.
I do kind of like A.Pot's explanation though. That the Old Ones were hinted at being the gods or godlike beings of WFB. Wasn't The lady of the Lake revealed to be one of the elven goddesses in The End Times anyway? So... maybe the Old Ones ARE the gods after all, just most of them have departed from the physical world, to watch from afar!
I'll go with that, Warhammer's lore is so messy and there are more retcons than I can count anyhow, so - for the sake of Total War's version of the setting, I'll just pick and choose from the various versions of events, unless otherwise stated directly in-game.
The universes of WFB and W40K are completely independent and there is no "cross over" between them despite the similarities.
That's basically what I do. And it's kind of in the spirit of the original intent of the the game. GW wanted a "backstory" to provide lore for the tabletop game. They've worked themselves into a hole sometimes by providing too much information when some things were better left to players imagination.