Gotrek & Felix

The characters and name of a classic series from GW's Black Library, the series is on the top tier of the library's publications alongside Gaunt's Ghosts by Dan Abnett.

Characters

Gotrek, son of Gurni: The most manly dwarf ever (ironic turn of phrase noted), he's butchered his way through so many legions of monsters, horrors and demigods it just makes your balls shrivel in honest to gods jealousy (and more than a little fear). Armed with a mighty rune axe that was probably forged and used by the Dwarf ancestor god of war and vengeance in the first big throw-down with Chaos, which is also mutating him into some sort of super-Dwarf, Gotrek is a mythical ass-kicker of truly earth-shattering proportions. He wants to die in battle, but is just too good at winning. Also, the axe won't let him. Used to be just an engineer with a wife, Helga, and a daughter, Gurna, until Snorri convinced him to sign on for a crazily ambitious plan to travel to the Chaos Wastes and recover treasure from a lost Dwarfhold. The expedition went wrong and Gotrek got lost, eventually finding his way home... where goblins had burned down his village and his family was dead. And then some dick of a dwarf thane (possibly his own, since Snorri confirms Gotrek is a "kinslayer") provoked him until he snapped and killed him. His doom is finally revealed in Slayer as he faces and dies at the hands of Grimnir, before being resurrected by the same an inheriting the God's position. His last moments have him happy at this new fate, and sending Felix back to the "real" world before going to slaughter an infinite army of daemons.

Felix Jaeger: The Robin to Gotrek's Batman, the Samwise to his Frodo, Felix is, despite appearances and his occasional obnoxiousness, the real hero and narrator of the series. Felix is the dwarf's pet human/toy/best friend/memoir writer who is travelling with the dwarf to record his death poem. Constantly in terror he is going to get killed one of these days to the extent it get annoying, at least in the early books; he gets more blaise as he keeps on fighting and killing improbable monsters. Constantly picks up a new busty wench for nooky in nearly every book. His long golden hair must have a magic appeal. Winds up married to one, with a daughter as well, at some point after the post-William King timeskip, and hasn't aged a day in years, due to getting sucked into the fate-vortex of Gotrek's doom. Slayer reveals that the magic that binds him to Gotrek was created by a witch who wanted to ensure Gotrek's ascension to the new Grimnir, and that Felix would survive to thwart Be'lakor's ascension to Godhood.

Max Schreiber: An badass Gold wizard who accompanies Gotrek, Felix, and bunch of other Dwarfs on a giant air battleship to investigate the fate of the lost hold Karak Dum, in the Chaos Wastes. Originally hired to magically ward the airship, he proves himself a valuable asset in combat against all sorts of nasties. Initially involved in a love triangle with Felix and the Kislevite noblewoman Ulrika (who later became a vampire, for reasons too idiotic to go into), which was a source of pointless tension between them and prevented them from becoming real friends, even though holy shit! they're the only two Empire dudes for hundreds of miles. Disappeared from the series when Gotrek and Felix got teleported to Albion. Showed up again much later, and was retconned to a stupid fucking non-combat Light wizard, and as the guardian of the most butt-fuck retarded witch girl in the entire Old World; this caused yet another quarrel between Felix over a girl, but this time it was because the loopy bint came on to Felix and Max thought Felix was being a lech. Reappears in Kinslayer as a prisoner of Throgg. His capture prompts the gang to reunite in order to rescue him. By Slayer he has grown to encompass multiple schools, at the cost of his sanity. He dies after being blastded off an airship, after banishing Be'lakor from the material plane.

Assorted Slayers:Thoughout the series, starting in the book Dragonslayer, Gotrek and Felix are joined by several slayers. The most notable two are mentioned below, the others include a former cowardly Dwarf, a slayer with a hate-boner for the dragon, a Dwarf who's hairless due to Skaven weapons and a lecherous Dwarf (he's so horny he bangs a half-elf chick despite Dwarves usually hating elves) who gets more nooky than even Felix though he's in fewer books.

Snorri Nosebiter: Gotrek's best Dwarf friend and fellow Slayer. Complete idiot without two brain cells to rub together, he's still a badass and can almost keep up with Gotrek. He and Gotrek go way, way back, when they were the sole survivors of an expedition to the Chaos Wastes. A massive sweetheart for a Dwarf, he's good friends with Felix as well. Disappears from the series around the middle, he returns much older and even more befuddled, to the point where he can't remember the shame that drove him to become a Slayer, which is a massive dishonor in and of itself. This is exactly as pathetic and sad as it sounds. Still kicks ass, though, and finally manages to find his doom with his memory restored, and go on to whatever awaits. It turns out his shame is his blaming himself, justifiably, for Gotrek's taking up the Slayer Oath. He was the one who convinced Gotrek to go on the disastrous expedition, which is bad enough. But on the way back, he got drunk and got into a fight with some rangers, preventing them from stopping a goblin raid, which is heavily implied to be the same one that killed Gotrek's home town. And then it turns out Gotrek's daughter was killed by goblins, but he killed Gotrek's wife on arriving at the burnt out village, since he was drunk and it was smokey, so he mistook her for a goblin that had remained behind to loot.

Malakai, son of Makai: Insane genius Dwarf Slayer engineer, who designed the above air battleship and countless other super-badass but ultimately overambitious designs. Speaks with an awesome Scottish funetik aksent that makes him one of the funniest (and funnest) characters in the whole series. Only side-character to make the jump to the fantasy game besides Thanquol; one of his war-machines was part of the Slayer Army of Karak Kadrin in Storm of Chaos. He comes back in Slayer, still alive and having invented the Dwarven version of the Vindicare assassins. He has also rebuilt his airship and was planning on using it to drop bombs on Chaos, before being convinced to seek out the Temple of Grimnir. His fate at the end of the series is unknown, but he is not shown to have died unlike everyone else, and Felix thinks he hears someone calling his name as he lays trapped in rubble, so he may have survived.

Teclis: Showed up in one book to help Gotrek and Felix kill possibly the greatest threat (though not the greatest physical challenge) they ever faced, the sorcerer twins below and a brainwashed giant (of the ancient Sky-Titan variety, not the current 60-foot inbred variety). Earned something within shouting distance of Gotrek's grudging respect by kicking almost as much ass, which speaks volumes considering how much he hates elves. Also spends the book with an Albionian-Amazonian girlfriend.

Various monsters/villains of the week: Axe fodder.

Grey Seer Thanquol: The primary recurring villain, a Skaven wizard whose incredible power is matched only by his incredible arrogance and exceeded only by his incompetence. Seriously. In one of his spin-off novels, a Slaan deliberately makes sure Thanquol survives to get back to the Under-Empire because he is such a Starscream that he will certainly cause unparalleled disaster for the Skaven whilst he lives. Yeah, that's right, this guy is so good at screwing things over for his own damn team that a member of a race dedicated to the destruction of his race considers him more useful alive than dead. Is the only member of the novels to repeatedly get playable rules in Warhammer Fantasy throughout multiple editions.

The series

Written first by William King (before it taken off him by BL for some random reason) and then given to a bunch of other writers to continue, the series at first followed the ingenious idea of naming the book after whatever is going to feel Gotrek's axe thumping into their heads. So you ended up with titles such as Trollslayer, Skavenslayer, Dragonslayer etc. Recently though they have dropped this brilliant approach to whack any old title on the cover. This can only confirm the fact BL and GW is stretching out the series as far as they can, as they have literally used up all the possible names to slay things with that they can.

Feats of the Dwarf

Gotrek's feats are legend. Read this and wet yourself in terror/awe/appreciation:

• Killed a Bloodthirster of Khorne in single combat
• Sank a Dark Elf ark
• Helped Teclis stop a pair of mad Tzeentch wizard twins from blowing up the world
• Killed a Sky-Titan
• Has slaughtered countless skaven and rat-orges and practically destroyed a skaven army intending to take Nuln
• Killed a chaos lord of Tzeentch in hand to hand combat
• Constantly giving a middle finger to the chaos gods and spoiling every plan they try to put in motion
• Causing Grey Seer Thanquol countless losses and headaches
• Making Teclis walk carefully around him (yes one of the most powerful spell casters in the world is wary of him and his axe)
• Slaying a vampire lord in the seat of his power
• Defeats Throgg, the Troll King.
• Killed the same Bloodthirster of Khorne in single combat. Again.
• Prevented Be'lakor's ascension to the fifth God of Chaos
• Ascends to Godhood
• Holds the line against an infinite army of daemons, forever.

On the Tabletop

As mentioned in passing above, Gotrek and Felix were playable special characters, once upon a time. But that was way back in the mists of time, 6th edition specifically, before William King stopped writing, and so they haven't gotten rules since; officially, they're so insanely awesome that they can't figure out how to make them balanced characters. Still, with The End Times: Archaon approaching in March 2015, maybe they'll get to shine on the tabletop again. Compared to some of the other absurdities to come out of the rulebooks, Gotrek & Felix don't look so overblown...

For those chasing them up, here's their last set of rules, from Dogs of War back in 6e: http://www.bugmansbrewery.com/tutorials/article/82-gotrek-and-felix/

Gotrek's Doom

With The End Times upon us and the world's destruction, Gotrek has finally met his doom. Although the last book heavily teases Be'lakor as his killer, the actual doom is at the hands of Grimnir, the God of the Slayers who has been waging a ceaseless war against the forces of Chaos for time untold. Grimnir tells Gotrek that ever since Gotrek found his axe, he has been reshaped into Grimnir's heir, then proceeds to effortlessly kill the Slayer.

He then laughs at Felix's attempts to attack him, resurrects Gotrek, and proceeds to endow him with the axe of Thorgrim Grudgebearer, and instructs Gotrek to head off and prevent Be'lakor from ascending to Godhood inside the Realms of Chaos. Gotrek fights first the Bloodthirster he beseted in Daemonslayer, and then once Felix draws the aggro of every daemon present faces off against Be'lakor, beating him back and cutting off the daemon's arm.

The series ends with Gotrek inheriting the mightiest doom of all - Grimnir's. He is charged to forever hold back and endless tide of daemons to prevent them from overwhelming all of creation. This news seems to put Gotrek at peace for the first time ever, and he sends Felix back to the real world so that someone can write down and remember his story.

Then the world ends and presumably everyone else dies. However bear in mind

1) Every Elf in the world is now dead. 2) Every Grudge in the Book of Grudges is counted as fulfilled. 3) Gotrek gets to fight everything forever.

and you may realise that the true winner of the End Times was Gotrek Gurnisson