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Gotrek in AoS


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12 hours ago, xking said:

That's a great interview. I really like that the author acknowledges the old world fans who are on a fence about the new setting and Gotrek now as a character, kinda represents this feeling.

I always wanted a book that functions as a sort of a "bridge" between the lore of WFB and AoS. My brother in law for example, is an avid reader of old warhammer novels but he isnt interested about AoS fiction yet. We'll see if this might get him on board. 

 

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On 10/27/2018 at 8:52 PM, xking said:

Pretty great interview. I love this quote:

Bringing an Old World classic like Gotrek to the Age of Sigmar was honestly the best bit. He hates that dwarfs now ride magmadroths. He hates that you can’t get a Bugman’s anywhere. He hates that Teclis is a god now. From my very first thoughts on this I wanted Gotrek to represent the old fan who never got on board with the Age of Sigmar. He’s the guy who snarks on message boards, who closes his eyes and prophecies the doom of Games Workshop. He’s the guy who sets fire to his Tomb Kings. But he’s in the Age of Sigmar now, he’s got to deal with it, and in doing so, reluctantly acknowledges that there’s a place for him in it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

QUICK(ish) REALMSLAYER REVIEW AND SUMMARY (SPOILERS BEHIND TAGS):

 

Hi all,

I listened to Realmslayer over the weekend and was overall very impressed. Here's a fairly rambling review of the audio drama and spoilery primer of Gotrek, Felix and their old supporting cast's new condition in the Mortal Realms for anybody allergic to audio/curious/planning on reading The Bone Desert when it comes out on Saturday. ?

Spoilers are behind tags and I've kept anything concerning the plot of the audio drama not directly tied to Gotrek and friends' new status quo in the Mortal Realms (including Gotrek's new look) to a bare minimum. Pick up the audio drama if you want to know know the ins and outs of what happens, it's very good and 100% free if you haven't signed up for a 30 day free trial with Audible yet.

 

Right, spoiler free part (scroll through this to get to the good stuff):

I'd been pretty apprehensive about Realmslayer since it was announced, as as fantastic an actor and personality (and all round lovely human being), Brian Blessed is I'd never imagined Gotrek as sounding anything like him (probably in a large part by measure of exposure at a young age to a suitably gravely Yorkshire Gotrek making a brief cameo in the 1995 video game Shadow of the Horned Rat); and hadn't been massively into David Guymer's previous Gotrek and Felix novels, particularly Gotrek's characterisation and seeming lack of attachment to Felix in Kinslayer and Slayer, despite having been adventuring with him for 20+ years by then and having been shown to hold him in high regard under previous authors; and his three novels overall humourless tone (though he can hardly be blamed for that, they were all written at a time when it felt like GW had big NO FUN signs hanging in their IP offices).

In hindsight I'm actually grateful for these misgivings, because I was pleasantly surprised on both counts. Brian Blessed gave an excellent performance that I very quickly came round to, and while I still think he was miscast based on how I'd personally read Gotrek, there's nothing I can remember in any Gotrek and Felix novels or stories by Bill King or anyone else that go into any particular detail on how Gotrek's supposed to sound, and so any hang ups I've got on how I think he should sound are entirely subjective. The plot and dialogue of the audio drama were both excellent and very funny; and without giving anything away Gotrek... feels like Gotrek, and is shown to value and miss Felix an appropriate amount, more than being simply annoyed that he's not there, putting my previous concerns about David Guymer to rest.

 

Over the course of the audio drama's four (roughly hour long) chapters Gotrek emerges in and proceeds to go on a rambunctious romp through the Mortal Realms, encountering new companions and villains and at least one other returning character from the old setting (more on this behind the spoiler cut), that probably feels the more like a Bill King story than any Gotrek and Felix story since Redhand's Daughter. By the end of the drama Gotrek's new Age of Sigmar status quo (or at least the state he's in and who he's travelling with ahead of The Bone Desert, anything can happen in the Mortal Realms...) are firmly set up. 

Realmslayer has a fantastic sense of tangible danger that the post Bill King Gotrek and Felix books (and Giantslayer) lacked, with the earliest Gotrek and Felix stories (found in Trollslayer) feeling very visceral and real, with the duo feeling like a pair of mid level WFRP characters, able to be killed, damned mutated or at least loose an eye to a stray arrow with a little bad luck. Post Daemonslayer it was obvious neither Gotrek or Felix was going to die, or change very much, with the pair having become very pair of hugely likeable, but very static characters, with Gotrek having some great mystical destiny that was never going to be resolved and having warmed up to Felix, and Felix having toughened up significantly; but King had introduced a solid supporting cast of friends and foes, who could evolve or unexpectedly die (in Ulrika's case, both ?‍♂️). The post King books were largely well written but became formulaic, with anyone who wasn't Gotrek, Felix, a surviving member of King's supporting cast (Max, Snorri, Malakai Makaisson), or an established Warhammer special character expected to suffer a grim and perilous fate (Kinslayer and Slayer being the exceptions here, having been written to tie up the saga!). Realmslayer completely avoids this pitfall, placing an overconfident but purposeless and unfamiliar Gotrek in situations that quickly force him to adapt and develop, and a likeable new set of companions and foils who's stories have some surprising twists and turns - the possibility of the new setting is a welcome breath of fresh air for the series and I can't wait to speed through The Bone Desert on Saturday.

As David Guymer mentioned in this interview, Gotrek is very much an old-timey WFB grognard begrudgingly getting to grips with the new setting, complaining about dwarfs riding "wingless runt dragons", Teclis status as a god, and even the quality of the eggs he's served at a Freeguild outpost. Gotrek still unabashedly calls dwarfs and elves "dwarfs" and "elves", to the confusion of many of the characters he meets (though it's pointed out by a returning character from his old adventures that he only calls dwarfs dwarfs because that's what humans called them, causing Gotrek to point out that he's spent enough time around humans that he'd actually grown to like them, which is a nice touch and reflected in other parts of the story) It's an innovative and hilarious angle to take, and without giving too much away a running theme of the book is Gotrek getting around his existing preconceptions of the very tightly defined conducts of races and factions from the old WFB setting, and the more free flow nature of AoS, where much more is likely to surprise you.

 

The quality of the audio drama was probably the best of the already high GW audio dramas I'd previously listened to, with the large cast lending themselves excellently to differentiating between characters from from factions that had been assigned distinct accents (Yorkshire Fyreslayers, sub-Saharan Adasan Freeguild). Noteworthy shoutouts to Brian Blessed himself, giving as energetic and thunderous performance as anything else you've ever seen or heard him in, and the amazingly horrible helium/coffee/cocaine voices used for the skaven, on par with Shadow of the Horned Rat's skaven voices, and a welcome step up from the disappointing skaven-who-were-vocally-orcs-with-the-occasional-repeated-verb from Total War: Warhammer 2.

Audio is the perfect medium for a story centred on Gotrek without Felix (Gotrek's mindset not exactly lending itself to being the main POV character in a novel), and Guymer and the drama's producer have done a great job capitalising on that, with the slayer on bombastic, sarcastic form. Realmslayer is the perfect listen for an old WFB or Gotrek and Felix fan who's stayed away from AoS since launch and does a great job of introducing the new setting (with only a few cursory Google image searches needed to find out what a Fyreslayer or Tzeentch Arcanite looks like). I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in Gotrek, dwarfs or AoS, and would easily call it Black Library's best AoS output to date. ?

 

Right, that was a wall of text and a half. tl;dr, Realmslayer good, go buy it. Here's the bit you actually want to read:

SPOILER SECTION (below tag):

Spoiler

As I said in the intro I'm keeping this part light on stuff that doesn't concern Gotrek and his Old World friends and foes' post End Times status quo. If you want to know the ins and outs of the audio drama's plot, go buy it/get it for free on Audible, I can't recommend it enough.

Realmslayer's (conveniently for this summary) split into four chapters, and I'll be covering the relevant bits individually here. I hope I've managed to spell at least a few of the new characters' names properly, Realmslayer being an audio drama I've got no way of knowing! ?

 

Chapter 1:

The story opens outside Karag-Unback, a Fyreslayer hold in Aqshy, where a force of Fyreslayers from the Unback Lodge (a lodge that to my knowledge has yet to turn up in any other publication) lead by a an Auric Runeson, and Brodor, a Battlesmith have assembled to protect Kragg Blackhammer, an Auric Runemaster during the forging of his ur-gold master rune. As an aside, I felt "Kragg Blackhammer" was a really weird choice of name for a Runemaster - Kragg the Grimm and Skalf Blackhammer were both famous dwarf Runelords in WFB, and givinng a Fyreslayer smith a mashup of both their names is like calling a new Primaris Space Marine hero Dante Calgar.

After a decent Fyreslayer posturing session Brodor and friends are greeted by the hulking figure of a single duardin covered in strange tatoos, dragging steel chains behind him. This is obviously Gotrek. The Fyeslayers assume Gotrek is a drunk Dispossessed outcast, Gotrek thinks he's still in the Realm of Chaos, saying he got where he was after falling down a pit, and that the Fyreslayers in all their weird getup must be daemons playing tricks on him. After a hilarious confrontation with the Auric Runeson, Gotrek starts swinging at the Fyreslayers and is eventually immobilised by the molten rockbolts fired by Auric Hearthguard. During the melee Brodor feels that there is more to Gotrek than meets the eye, and notices the similarities between himand the likeness of Grimnir on the icon he carries.

As an aside it's never explained how Gotrek and the Fyreslayers are both able to understand each other off the bat - it's not clear if Gotrek is speaking Khazalid or Reikspiel, and could be totally possible that the language spoken by the Fyreslayers could have started out as one or both, and dwarfy observation of tradition and resistance to change has ensured that their language hasn't changed very much in however many thousand years have passed between settings, and that Brian Blessed's flowery manner of speaking next to the gruff Yorkshire accents given to the Fyreslayers represents a very antiquated accent. AoS has yet to go into any detail on the languages spoken by the disparate civilisations and factions in the Mortal Realms, with everyone able to fully understand each other off the bat for the most part (Gotrek is later able to understand skaven, when I'm not sure he'd ever been fluent in Queekish, and modern skaven language would almost certainly would be unrecognisable after so long  , though it could be No-Prized as him simply hearing the common word for Grey Seer) I fully understand that characters not being able to immediately understand each other makes for a very boring barrier in genre fiction, but it would be nice if the design studio or Black Library's editors could find an elegant way to handwave it breaking suspension of disbelief.

 

Thrown in a cell by the Fyreslayers, Gotrek meets his cellmate Malaneth Witchblade, a Khainite assassin  with a mysterious agenda who talks to a mysterious mistress through a locket round her neck. Gotrek treats Malaneth with immediate hostility, calling her a Dark Elf, though mentions her that he spend centuries in the Realm of Chaos before the Chaos Gods grew bored of sending him daemons to fight and eventually stopped paying attention, causing him to "go looking for them" and follow them to the Mortal Realms.

Skaven suddenly invade the Fyreslayer hold. Malaneth announces this as her cue to escape, picks the lock and disappeares.  Brodor releases Gotrek from his cell and hurries to get him to the magmavaults where his lodge's Runefather will know who or what Gotrek is. Gotrek is separated from Brodor and somewhere along the way picks up an unused Grimwrath Berzerker's Fyresteel Greataxe (the one he's seem wielding on the cover). Confronting Malaneth as she attempts to steal Kragg Blackhammer's master rune (explaining that getting caught was part of her plan to get close enough to steal it all along), Gotrek exclaims that the axe "reminds him of one he used to have".

Gotrek emerges to where Brodor is stationed, carrying an unconscious Malaneth. Brodor and and the other Fyreslayers are in awe of the axe Gotrek is carrying, naming it as Zangrom-Thaz, and claiming it to contain a shard of Grimnir's original axe and only able to be wielded by the strongest Grimwrath Berzerkers with the most ur-gold runes hammered into their bodies. Gotrek laughs this off, claiming that Grimnir's axe belongs to him.

There's a commotion and the master rune is stolen by skaven . After chasing through the hold, Gotrek is confronted by a massive magmadroth, three times the size of a regular one, emerging from a pool of lava, described by the Fyreslayes as Ignimbris, the first spawn of Vulcatrix and a godbeast in its own right. Gotrek is delighted to fight Ignimbris, taunting it and claiming it to be smaller than Skajalandir (the massive warpstone corrupted dragon in Dragonslayer). Gotrek reels off a list of his feats from the old novels and Adjur, recognising something in him slinks away into the lava, much to his dismay.

 

At the end of the chapter, Gotrek concludes that his world - and Felix are gone, and has been gone for thousands of years, calling Grimnir a liar to a confused Brodor. The Fyreslayers realise Malaneth has escaped - again, and Gotrek is simultaneously praised confronted by the innovatively named Kragg Blackhammer who states that all that matters is reclaiming the master rune. Brodor is now convinced that Gotrek is Grimnir returned.

Gotrek spots a bolt of lightning on the horizon with the shape of a man inside it, and Brodor gives him a quick rundown of the history of the Mortal Realms, Sigmar, Grungni and the Stormcast Eternals. Gotrek is delighted to find out that Stormcast Eternals are the greatest heroes of humanity, plucked from history and reforged by Sigmar and concludes that Felix must be one of them. Excited to at last have a purpose (having already died and achieved a mighty doom) Gotrek announces that he's going to Hammeral, where the largest concentration of Stormcast Eternals can be found.

 

Chapter 2:

Gotrek, Brodor and a small party of Fyreslayers have left the hold and are journeying towards Hammerhal. On the way to Hammerhal they encounter Prince Jordain, an inexperienced, but eager to heroically prove himself Freeguild officer from the lion-focused city of Adasa. The Freeguild under Jordain's command have been slaughtered by Tzeentch Arcanites and he must reach Hammerhal, currently under siege by Chaos forces to warn the defenders of a terrible Arcanite scheme he has uncovered.

Much to Brodor's jealousy, Gotrek immediately takes a shine to Jordain... I think because Jordain is supposed to remind him of Felix, though outside of wearing a red cloak and wielding a sword there's not a lot to go on (Jordain as pictured on the second CD certainly doesn't look very like Felix ?‍♂️). Maybe Jordain is simply the first human Gotrek's encountered in however many hundreds/thousands of years and that's enough; maybe a combination of being nothing like Felix and a fixation with reckless battlefield heroism are what does it for Gotrek? Regardless, Jordain's a very likeable character and fantastically voiced.

The party concludes that the quickest way to beat the Arcanites to Hammerhal is a Realmgate shortcut taking them through the Realm of Death. Brodor and the Fyreslayers break from Gotrek and Jordain to block a force of burning Sylvaneth, so that Gotrek and Jordain can fight through the Arcanites blocking the gate to Shyish.

Gotrek is confronted by the towering Champion of Tzeentch  who slaughtered Jordain's regiment. The Tzeentch Champion observes that Gotrek does a poor job of guarding his left hand side in battle and wounds his shoulder, alluding to Felix not being there to watch his side. I thought this was heavy handed and didn't like it at all. We've seen Gotrek fighting without Felix dozens of times (unit coherency rules don't apply in novels!) , and even if he ever did need Felix to watch his flank, but Gotrek's own reckoning he's spent more time in the Realm of Chaos fighting on his own than he ever spent alive in the World that Was, let alone the 20 odd years he spent with Felix. ?

A flaming Treelord breaks through the Fyreslayer line and falls on Gotrek, pinning him down and making him easy prey for the Tzeentch Champion. Jordain charges the Champion to free Gotrek, and we cut to Brodor, the other Fyreslayers slain, racing to Gotrek's side. When we next see Jordain he's laying lifeless under his red cloak, Gotrek loudly mourning... Felix and blaming himself for Jordain's death. Uncaringly, Gotrek pulls Jordain's lion-head breastplate from his chest and slaps it on his left shoulder to better protect himself without Felix there to watch it (?), matching his look on the cover art (I've gotta admit, he might have a silly reason for putting it there but it does look awfully cool, so it gets a pass).

Now convinced Felix is waiting for him in Hammerhal, Gotrek departs for Shyish with Brodor.

 

Chapter 3:

Gotrek and Brodor are ambushed by skaven from the same clan that attacked Karag-Unback, and while fighting them overhear that the skaven are in league with the group of Tzeentch Arcanites they've already faced, and are taking orders from a Grey Seer who hates Gotrek and is offering great favour to "make him very very dead dead".

Sure that this Grey Seer is the same one who bedevilled him and killed Felix's father in his previous life, Gotrek asks himself if it could perhaps his unfulfilled oaths to end the Grey Seer's life, or the Grey Seer's sorcery in a desire to end his life that drew him out of the Realm of Chaos and into the Mortal Realms.

Gotrek is blasted on the left hand side by a Purple Sun, ageing the side of his face "a thousand years in the blink of an eye", putting grey streaks in his beard and reducing his left eye to a useless cauliflower mush (I thought Purple Suns were supposed to turn their victims into crystal? Maybe Gotrek's special).

Gotrek and Brodor encounter Malaneth and discover that the Arcanites have Kragg Blackhammer's master rune and are on their way to Hammerhal with it, referring to the Grey Seer previously mentioned by the skaven as the "Grey Lord", and being laughed at by Gotrek for serving under him (something unheard of by servants of the conventional Chaos Gods in WFB). A Shyish spirit tells Gotrek that Felix is in Hammerhal, instantly revitalising his spirit (Gotrek knows that this must be true because until now he hasn't spoken Felix's name out loud to anybody).

Brodor has noticed Gotrek sneaking away every night they've spent in Shyish. On the final night there Brodor summons up the courage to follow him and eavesdrops on him reminiscing with the shade of... ?

Spoiler

Snorri Nosebiter.

Snorri's spirit looks exactly like his body did, nails, metal leg, horrible face and and all. Gotrek asks Snorri how he always knows where Gotrek will be and reveals that they've been meeting every night Gotrek's been in Shyish. They talk about beer and nothing in particular, Gotrek eventually asking if Snorri's seen Ulrika, Max or Malakai Makaisson around.

Snorri replies that he thinks he once saw Ulrika and Max at a party together a very long time ago, but that parties don't really happen in Shyish anymore. It's not made entirely clear if the party Snorri saw Ulrika and Max at took place in the underworld or not, he's typically vague (he could just be thinking back to a reception held after siege of Prague or similar). Snorri insists that he definitely hasn't seen Makaisson in Shyish and suggests that maybe Makaisson "made it" through the End Times and is still among the living. Gotrek thinks this is ridiculous and attributes it to Snorri's inability to count, but it would tie in with/explain Makaisson's name being on a line of Azyrite flushing toilets in  Eight Lamentations: Spear of Shadows (no really).

Brushing off Snorri's suggestion that he isn't interested in Ulrika, Max or Malakai, and really wants to know where Felix is, Gotrek complains to Snorri about dwarfs being called duardin. Snorri reminds him that "dwarf" was just what men of the Empire called them and never what they called themselves, forcing Gotrek to admit that he actually enjoyed spending time among humans. Eventually Gotrek indirectly asks if Snorri's seen Felix around, suggesting that the oath he swore to protect Felix and his family could have been what drew him to the Mortal Realms. Snorri firmly states that Felix isn't in Shyish.

Gotrek then begins to bid Snorri farewell, asking that he greet Bjorni (from Dragonslayer and Beastslayer) and his other slayer friends in the halls of the ancestors for him, and apologising for all the horrible business in Kinslayer, which Snorri brushes off like he's apologising for having having eaten the last Rollo, and not having violently killed him. Snorri tells Gotrek that he hopes he finds Felix and eventually finds his doom, saying this will probably be the last time they see each other before Gotrek does the latter.

 

Overall, this is easily the best written, funniest, warmest and simultaneously most bittersweet scene in the audio drama, and Snorri's nonchalance towards his overtly silly, dramatic and most importantly second death (though you could probably No-Prize the troll falling on Snorri in the 4th edition Empire army book as only having knocked him unconscious for long enough for Gotrek to bury him, only for Snorri to dig himself out a day later and wander to the nearest tavern), goes a long way towards putting a band-aid on the jarring bolted on soap opera reveal in Kinslayer.

 

Chapter 4:

The final chapter opens with Gotrek on the besiged battlements of Hammerhal Ashqa merrily chopping away and reminiscing about Prague  (it's the Bill King stories that get the most references in Realmslayer, but Gotrek's feats under later authors do get brought up when relevant). He and Brodor have been there a while, and visited at least one tavern, which Gotrek enjoyed.

On the wall they enountere a Liberator-Prime from the Hammers of Sigmar, who after he mentions he has no memory of his past life, Gotrek is convinced is Felix and grapples to the floor and pulls the facemask off, to find out isn't Felix to his dismay. Gotrek notes the Stormcast's altered state and lack of memory of his past life.

Malaneth then appears, and after some subsequent hostility from Gotrek defies WFB convention, explaining that she is infact an agent of the Order of Azyr, and was sent to steal Kragg Blackhammer's master Rune because the Unback are a lodge still yet to pledge themselves to Sigmar, and she wants to use it as collateral. Bodor tries to rationalise the mercenary nature of the Fyreslayers and their neverending quest for ur-gold to Gotrek, but he's having none of it, horrfied to learn that Fyreslayers are capable of pledging their services to the likes of Chaos in exchange for payment (wish they could do this in game... ?).

Malaneth also explains that the Arcanites, under the direction of the Grey Lord, have brought the master rune to Hammerhal Ashqa in order to peform a dark version of the Fyreslayer activation rite, awaking the rune and using the power inside to destroy a large section of the city, allowing the besieging Chaos forces access. She, Gotrek and Bodor eventually fight their way to where the Arcanites are performing the ritual, and slay them all, but not in time to prevent the master rune from being activated.

Bodor explains that the only way to stop the master rune from exploding once it's been activated is to be combined with a Fyreslayer's flesh to balance its power. Gotrek tells Bodor that he's the only "fire dwarf" around and should probably give it a go. Bodor is reluctant to do this, explaining that he doesn't have the strength of body or mind to contain such a rune, and will probably be driven mad and/or have his body blasted apart, but with no other option picks the rune up. Greeted with a violent vision of Grimnir fighting Vulcatrix and a whole lot of searing pain, Brodor screams in agony and  is blasted across the room where he lays dying with his arm blasted off.

Gotrek eventually picks up the master rune, comparing the pain of it to his hangover after Felix's wedding and Krell's axe, cursing Grimnir and pressing the rune into his chest, where it transforms into a likeness of Grimnir's face, and recolours the white streaks in his beard Gotrek picked up from the Purple Sun in Shyish gold (matching his look on the cover of The Valley of Bones), and causing fire to shoot from his beard, hair and eye. Brodor dies happy, having never doubted Gotrek's status as Grimnir reborn.

 

We next see Gotrek and Malaneth back on the walls chopping up Chaos invaders. Gotrek has been sufficiently powered up the ur-gold rune feeding him it's strength, and is now an enhanced, souped up version of himself. Malaneth asks what he plans on doing next and Gotrek states that Felix is either gone or changed and wouldn't remember Gotrek's oath to protect him and his family even if Gotrek were able to find him, but that there are other WFB survivors who will remember Gotrek's oaths, Nagash and the Grey Seer mentioned by his servants previously, and that he's going to look for his axe and then look for both of them, and that he's glad Grimnir, the lying, doomthieving swine is dead. Malaneth resolves to follow Gotrek wherever he goes, saying that she can retrieve the Kragg Blackhammer's master rune from his body after he's been slain. Gotrek exclaims from the top of the battlements that he now knows why he's come back, that the Realmgate Wars are over and the gods have got lazy, neglecting to remember one thing... him. The master rune inside his body flares, pulsing golden and he yells "GOTREK'S ALIVE!!!" from the ramparts.

We're then treated to a quick epilogue where one of the Arcanites from earlier is somehow still alive and reporting back to the Grey Lord, who confirms himself as Thanquol and only seems to care that Gotrek isn't dead yet, throwing a screaming fit, saying it's "Always the same, not like this not again, I want him dead-dead! Dead!"

 

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It's a mighty shame that Gotrek didn't receive an AoS model and rules to tie into Realmslayer the same way Inquisitor Eisenhorn did recently. Please get on it @Ben Johnson!

As a bit of fun, what kind of rules would you give Gotrek post-Realmslayer in game? I'd see him as a much more powerful Grimwrath Bezerker, on roughly the same power/matched play points level as the Celestant-Prime (though much harder to kill and less mobile).

Unless Gotrek were given a Celestant-Prime style model with fire everywhere I couldn't imagine him being on anything larger than a 50mm base, it would make for interesting gameplay to have such a powerful model on a much smaller base (appropriately countered with a 4 inch move?).

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18 minutes ago, Double Misfire said:

As a bit of fun, what kind of rules would you give Gotrek post-Realmslayer in game? I'd see him as a much more powerful Grimwrath Bezerker, on roughly the same power/matched play points level as the Celestant-Prime (though much harder to kill and less mobile). 

According to this weekend Black Library event, it seems that sometimes around february 2019, there will be the same BL celebration than last year where they sold the model of Eisenhorn. Let's hope that this year we will have a model for Gotrek !

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I suspect Gotrek may tie into the rumors of a Fyreslayer re-release, and the hints from Spear of Shadows of that Doomseeker, Lugash, who was looking for a way to "help his people find their way." If Gotrek is truly becoming the new Grimnir of the setting, I could see him getting a new model and sort of "uniting" the Fyreslayers in a new crusade of...well, killing everything and anything.

Khazukan khazukit-ha!

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21 minutes ago, SirPergrin said:

I just finished Realmslayer and i think it was glorious. It felt like an action packed blockbuster movie with top notch performances and great sound effects. Are all recent BL audio books like this? I was blown away by this one. 

This is the only one.   You can see yourself in audible, it lists the narrators

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Just finished it this evening and I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

I thought that possibly the most interesting part was the implication of Gotrek wandering the Realm of Chaos for thousands of years. He suggests that after a while the Chaos Gods grew tired of tormenting him, and turned their eye to other things. This makes perfect sense as the Ruinous Powers have always been fickle, and easily distracted. However, given that Gotrek's modus operandi consists of seeking out the toughest monsters he can, and picking fights with them in the hopes of being killed it raises an interesting question, and perhaps confirms something which many have long suspected...

Did Khorne the Blood God, lord of War and Violence, ultimately discover that he wasn't 'ard enough to take Gotrek in a fight, and got bored of trying?

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  • 1 month later...
On 2/13/2018 at 2:29 AM, Clan's Cynic said:

Except Order is fighting back against Chaos and doing damn well at it. Sigmar is, as far as a Warhammer setting goes, an outright good God who's extremely active. The Super Human TotallyNotSpaceMarines can be brought back to life, and whilst I'm sure somebody will tout 'but memories!' as a smudge against that, the fact they can be resurrected at all is pretty damn, well, not that dark. The main driving force of the plot is not Chaos is coming and you're all screwed but Chaos has come, but now we're striking back and actually succeeding.  Hell, the opening crawling to every book is about Sigmar taking vengeance back against Chaos.

The problem that AoS has in comparison to 40k/WHFB's Grimdarkness is that it's not very gritty. Gritty doesn't necessarily mean dark (see pretty much any BBC production) but it goes a hell of a long way to setting the tone as such. Bright, bombastic colours, super human good guys, titanic outright heroes and villains... WHFB was so iconic because it lacked all of this, at least most of the time. I think ultimately that's my main issue with finding AoS all that dark. WHFB focused a great deal on the everyman. Your Empire, Dwarf and Elven armies were largely made up of men-at-arms with a few professional soldiers mixed in. Even the nigh-superhuman Warriors of Chaos had huge screens of Average Viking Joes. I wouldn't go so far as to say it felt grounded, but there was a real depth to the civilisations that Age of Sigmar lacks.

I feel that for something to be dark one of the key ingredients is giving us something either to care about or on some level feel the significance of  and then witnessing all the horrible things that may, and do, occur to it. AoS doesn't really have that yet because despite their recent efforts the actual depth to the Mortal Realms is so lacking. They've taken strides with things like Hammerhal, but there's still a long way to go.

AoS has the same problem as 40k, where we hear about how much it sucks to be the Everyman, but when the vast majority of the fiction and armies played are some variety of Super Human working for the closest thing to Good Guys I feel like it really robs the setting of the same 'connection' of sorts to the grassroots - if fictional - civilisations of the Old World. 40k gets around this somewhat because the Imperium really is a horrible place to live with horrendous leadership and, as above, Chaos is knockin' and they're all doomed anyway. AoS doesn't have that and in fact it's far more optimistic than any other Warhammer setting.

Is AoS dark? Yeah, sure, it's pretty dark. But compared to WHFB/40k? Ehhh... Malign Portents is going the right way about it, but until the focus shifts away from Sigmar's Golden Boys I doubt it will feel overly such. I know most of the replies to this will be "but not being dark isn't a bad thing!" and no, not necessarily, but my point was more aimed towards those claiming it's as dark, or even more so, than WHFB/40k.

Exactly my feelings on the matter, the old world had so much irreplaceable character that I honestly just wish they could do a reset pre-endtimes and act like they never messed with it

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6 hours ago, Dagness said:

Exactly my feelings on the matter, the old world had so much irreplaceable character that I honestly just wish they could do a reset pre-endtimes and act like they never messed with it

You don't need GW to do that. Just find ppl to play older edition (eazy to say than to do, Fantasy was dead even before AoS on my region...).

I loved the old world too, but you can't compare a 3 years old game with fantasy (btw, early Fantasy wasn't really grimdark..). Wait some years (to be fair, you should wait 30 years), and then see who has better/grimdark lore.

Btw, for me, if GW can continue the story and follow with campaigns, new releases and books, imho, the answer should be: both.

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