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. It is pity then the quality of the series has gone downhill somewhat in the most recent books, as BL is milking the series now and stringing it out in the name of the noble profit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Exactly what will succeed in killing Gotrek, nobody knows, but it's been assured that he is going to die eventually. During Elfslayer, Gotrek encounters a Keeper of Secrets, which proclaims Gotrek is destined to die killing something even mightier than itself before pissing off back to the Realm of Chaos like a pussy. Furthermore, the most recent book, Kinslayer, pronounces itself to be book 1 of "The Doom of Gotrek Gurnisson", thus hinting the homicidal stuntie isn't much longer for the world.

Possible Killers

The question everybody is asking, of course, is "If Gotrek's still got a mighty doom, what the hell kinda doom is gonna be mighty enough to do the job?!" Well, it is The End Times, and we know that whoever it is will be stronger than a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh. So, there's a couple of possible candidates...

• Nagash: The Arch-Necromancer, murderer of entire nations, devourer of the God of the Dead and a spiritual leech who drained the essence of the dwarven goddess Valya; if there's anyone who needs to taste Gotrek's axe, but would probably take Gotrek with him, it's this bastard. The only problem is, Nagash is presently in Sylvania and Gotrek is up in Kislev, so it's unlikely that the two of them will cross paths.
• Archaon: If there's anyone who can officially match Nagash for the candidate of "Big Bad Evil Guy of the setting", it's this guy. One bad fucker, Archaon has achieved Gotrek-like feats of badassery before, culminating in his killing a Bloodthirster of Khorne, in single combat, by strangling it to death with its own fucking whip. The dwarves do have credit for killing some of the past Everchosen, so it'd be fitting for Gotrek to get this one, and he's up in the North, where Gotrek is, so their paths are likely to cross. Taking down the chosen champion of all four gods of Chaos and the guy currently poised to stomp all over humans, elves and dwarves alike would certainly be a mighty doom. Archaon's also going to be the focus of the fifth and final books for The End Times, so who knows?
• Be'lakor: The first Daemon Prince, the first Chaos Champion, the guy who was Everchosen before there were Everchosen, and a credible candidate for the title of "Fifth Chaos God of the Warhammer world". If there's any Chaos nasty more deserving than Archaon for the title of Gotrek's Doom, it's Be'lakor. There have been rumblings that he's going to be the one responsible from GW, too, which adds further fuel. Plus he's on the cover for the last book, so there's that.
• Malekith: A former top-ten contender for "guys who could at least match Gotrek in a fight," and one with a big grudge against the guy for blowing up a sky-city full of his stuff. On the other hand, having become the Eternity King of the united elves, and having finally moved out of his mom's house, he's gotten a lot less petty and a lot more chill, having finally received like three-quarters of what he always wanted. Some random dwarf dead just don't seem to be on his to-do list anymore.
• Thanquol: The Grey Seer is on his way up in the world lately, slaughtering entire human nations and receiving a dangerous competence boost from the Horned Rat itself. But his oldest and most notorious enemies are still around. Who will finally triumph?
• Grimgor Ironhide: The Green demon a probably the most aggresive black orc in existence. In storm of chaos he was able to win a fight with Archaon. Grimgor or Gotrek??? who IS DA BEST ???
• Gods: Let's face it, with what Gotrek has already killed, there are not many mortals left at all that could pose him a challenge, let alone enough to kill him - surely it will take an immortal being, a god, to do the job. The four Chaos Gods, the Horned Rat, Gork and Mork... there are many Gotrek would hold a massive grudge for, and at this point he could almost walk to their doorstep and kick the door in for a final showdown. Interestingly, there is talk of Chaos Dwarves, and non-Chaos dwarves hate their guts, so him taking on their god, Hashut, would be an awesome and fitting end. And besides, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a better name for his final story than Godslayer.