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Gotrek & Felix

2023-06-02T05:10:52Z

2605:BA00:6208:2AB4:E1CD:6BCB:A53F:1B2F: Drexler is one of the few legitimate physicians in the empire he also stopped the knightly orders from hunting felix for theft.

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 [[Tanith First (And Only)|Gaunt's Ghosts]] by [[Dan Abnett]].

== The Dwarf and Associates ==
[[File:GotrekandFelix.png|300px|thumb|right|Gotrek & Felix ([[Mark Gibbons|MG]])]]
'''Gotrek, son of Gurni''': The most <s>manly</s> dwarfy Dwarf ever, 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). The Slayer is 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. The axe is also mutating him into some sort of super-Dwarf.

The result is a Dwarfen demigod of violence and vengeance, 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 and his religion's rule state suicide and taking a dive don't count. Before taking the Slayer Oath, Gotrek was just an engineer with a wife, Helga, and a daughter, Gurna. Then, his best friend 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. During his trek home, he discovered the axe on the corpse of a Dwarf lord. When he finally made it home, goblins had burned down his village and murdered his family. 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 the prick.

Gotrek finally meets his Doom in the novel ''Slayer'', in combat with none less than [[Grimnir]] himself. Grimnir then resurrects Gotrek, cedes his position as the Dwarfen God of Vengeance, and presumably retires. His last moments show him rejoicing in the prospect of eternal war, and sends Felix back to the "real" world before going to slaughter an infinite army of daemons.

More recently, he found himself spat back out into the [[Age of Sigmar|Mortal Realms]]. While the Slayers have ceased to exist as he knows them, Gotrek has a sense that he was called to the Mortal Realms for a reason and believes that if he can reunite with Felix he will be able to return to his doom. The stories of the [[Stormcast Eternals]] he has heard have led him to wonder if his old friend might be among their number, and he plans to find out for himself. Along the way he has an ur-gold master rune of the [[Fyreslayers]] embedded in his body that boosts his strength to truly demigod-tier levels in the heat of combat, but also seems to be trying to overwrite his mind with that of Grimnir...

Gotrek eventually realized that, in his own words, the Stormcast aren't even worthy of polishing Felix's armor, let alone counting him among their ranks, and even if Felix became a Stormcast he wouldn't remember Gotrek so it would be pointless to try and find him (and if you really buy the idea that Felix isn't coming back sooner or later, I can give you a great price on this one bridge in Brooklyn...). Gotrek has developed a grudge against all the gods, especially Grimnir, whom he regards as a cheat and a liar for depriving him of a true doom - thus making him a less anti-theistic Dorf Kratos. His current quest is to find Grimnir's axe again, and use it to kill [[Thanquol]] and Nagash, and intends to sort out the rest of the gods if he survives.

As of Soulslayer he has admitted that he no longer cares about finding a worthy doom, having realized that a worthy life is what matters and he should honour his ancestors by dedicating himself to fixing the world's problems. Namely, by killing every single greenskin, necromancer and Chaos-worshipper in the Mortal Realms, while "teaching the Duardin how to be Dawi" as he puts it. As the legendary BRIAN BLESSED remarked in an interview when recording ''Realmslayer'', to Gotrek Life is the last word, no longer Death.

In the latest audio drama, Realmslayer, [[Awesome|he is voiced by the legendary BRIAN BLESSED]].

'''Felix Jaeger, Esq.''': The Robin to Gotrek's Batman, the Samwise to his Frodo (or the other way around, since Samwise does all the heavy lifting while Frodo frequently fucks up and needs saving). Felix is, despite appearances and his occasional obnoxiousness, the real hero and narrator of the series. To Gotrek, Felix is his pet human/toy/best friend/memoirist/biographer who is travelling with the dwarf to record his death in an epic poem. Felix is pretty much permanently terrified of dying randomly while Gotrek throws down with godlike evil, and his constant whining about the same is one of his least endearing characteristics, at least during the early books. He also typically acquires a wench-of-the-week in the early books. His [[Sanguinius|long golden hair]] must have a magic appeal ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gLN3QoN-q8 it does nearly get him raped by mountain men in the first book "In the mountains I'm from, anything like that looks good"]).

At some point, after realizing he's made about 1% as many corpses as Gotrek, Felix finally wises up to the fact that he, too, is not only a formidable combatant but probably not entirely human. The point is driven home in one of the later books when he returns home to Altdorf and meets his older brother Otto, who is about 70, while Felix still looks 20. Whatever enchantment affects him, he also comes to crave violence and danger, if to a lesser extent than Gotrek except when it comes to dragons [[rage| since the sword makes him really want to murder them!]] Eventually he grows to become disturbed by his long life and how his personality has changed. In the final books, after Felix has married one of the aforementioned wenches and had a daughter, he finds himself despondent at domestic life and utterly uninspired by taking over the family business or restarting his once-promising poetry career. Thankfully, Gotrek shows up and sucks him back into the fight and indeed into the [[End Times]], where both he and Gotrek play pivotal roles. It turns out that the Axe of Grimnir's super-Dwarfifying aura is affecting Felix (and Felix's own enchanted sword, Karaghul), too, nudged along by an enchantment placed on Felix by a witch who wanted to make sure Gotrek fulfilled the axe's destiny, as well as Felix's own, which turned out to be preventing Bel'akor's ascension to become the fifth Chaos God.

'''Dr. Drexler''': Doctor Drexler is a famous doctor of Nuln, possibly the best doctor in the city. He is also a scholar that has studied medical theories from the city of Kah Sabar in [[araby]] along with medical practices from the rest of the [[tilea| southern realms]]. Drexler was recommended to Felix by his brother Otto when Nuln was struck by the plague. Due to the doctors connections with the [[Knightly_Orders_of_the_Empire|empires knightly orders]] he was able to convince the knights of the fiery heart to allow Felix to keep Karaghul by letting him join an order [[lulz|"in paper only"]] but it was enough to stop them from hunting Felix down for stealing a holy artefact.

'''Dr. Maximillian Schreiber''': A badass Gold (later retconned to Light) Wizard and scientist 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 a slightly disgraced wizard, having been expelled from the Imperial College for his insistence that Chaos must be understood if it is to be defeated, Max was hired to magically ward the airship. On the subsequent adventures, Max proves himself a valuable asset in combat against all sorts of nasties, a steadfast companion and good friend. Initially involved in a love triangle with Felix and the Kislevite noblewoman Ulrika (who [[Ulrika the Vampire|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 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's returned to his old badass self as he has grown to encompass multiple schools. He dies after being blasted off an airship, after fighting [[Be'lakor]] one-on-one and banishing him from the material plane. It's even implied by Be'lakor that Max might have utterly destroyed him if Max hadn't been also protecting Felix, which is badass as fuck.

'''Lady Ulrika Magdova''': A tomboyish (even having short hair) Kilsevite noblewoman. Very lusty because, despite resisting Felix's advances throughout his stay at her father's manse, she throws herself at him the night before he leaves by showing up in his bed nude. She becomes Felix's girlfriend for awhile, though tensions emerge due to their respective duties. Ulrika eventually grows close to Max after he saves her from a Nurglite plague and a lot of unrequited attention, ending her relationship with Felix. Before Ulrika and Max can consummate their relationship she gets kidnapped by the vampire Adolphus Krieger (a rare [[Lahmian]] male), first as a human shield but then Krieger takes a liking to her and turns her into a vampire. She leaves with Krieger's vampiric sire to work with the Lahmian vampires. The events are covered in two novels [[Skub|that the fanbase is divided on]]. Reunites with Felix twice later to help him record Gotrek's doom and live to tell about it. Though their relationship is completely finished Ulrika occasionally teases Felix about it. Then she succumbs to her vampiric bloodlust and Felix is forced to kill her in self-defense.

'''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, she was on fire and would have died anyway. Gotrek finally kills him, reluctantly, after Snorri recovers his memory and confesses to Gotrek, thereby technically fulfilling the sad old Dwarf's Slayer oath. This shit here is real tragedy, you stone-hearted monsters. His ghost makes a cameo in Realmslayer, apparently the realm of Shyish is also home to people who died from the World-that-was. He mentions seeing Max and Ulrika once long ago, but not Malakai Makaisson.

'''Malakai, son of Makai''': Insane genius Dwarf Slayer engineer, who designed the above air battleship and countless other super-badass but ultimately overambitious war machines. 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. Though he is not shown to have died unlike everyone else, a character mentions that Malakai died; [[FAIL|so the story killed him off in a footnote]]. It is hinted at during Realmslayer that he might have survived.

'''[[Teclis]] of the White Tower''': 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 600-foot 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 most of the book with an Amazon girlfriend/bodyguard.

'''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 [[Slann]] deliberately makes sure Thanquol survives to get back to the Under-Empire because he is such a [[Transformers|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. Loses a hand in ''Elfslayer'', but uses warpstone paste to grow a new one. Ended up playing a major role in The End Times when the Horned Rat appointed him as his new Seerlord. Survived into Age of Sigmar, and when Gotrek arrives in the Mortal Realms in ''Realmslayer'', the dwarf and rat immediately resume their old animosity (following a hilarious panic attack on the rat's part).

'''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 who's a loudmouth, 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.

'''Various monsters/villains of the week''': Axe fodder.

'''Tens of thousands of trash mobs''': Wet toilet paper.

'''Maleneth Witchblade''': Gotrek's new travelling companion for his Mortal Realms adventures. A former [[Daughters of Khaine|Witch Aelf]], she joined the Order of Azyr for protection after killing her own mistress (whose soul is now contained in a vial of blood around her neck). She was sent on a mission to steal the Master Rune from a Fyreslayer lodge, and after Gotrek lodged it in his body to prevent it from falling into the hands of a Chaos arny she sees it as her duty to follow him around and hopefully either badger him into visiting the Order so the rune can be studied or take it from his body once he dies in battle. She is very much aware that both of these are rather unlikely knowing Gotrek's history.

Gotrek obviously dislikes her for being a filthy dark elf, and she dislikes him for making her mission such a hassle, though their shared struggles have given them a mutual respect (to say nothing of Gotrek's admitted need for someone to teach him about how the Mortal Realms work). Despite this shared respect, Maleneth is exceptionally opportunistic, seizing every chance she sees to tear the master rune from Gotrek’s chest, even if it means she’d have to fight a God-Beast on her own.

In case you haven't noticed from her name, opportunistic nature and her constant arguing with a malevolent voice only she can hear, she's basically a gender swapped [[Malus Darkblade]], albeit more neutral than evil and without the beloved cool steed or the owner of the malevolent voice having any control over her body.

Maleneth died after helping Gotrek to escape an Idoneth city in the Realm of Metal. At this point she had already betrayed the Order of Azyr and came around seeing Gotrek as a symbol of hope - not to her, but to other duardin at least. Maleneth went out heroically, and the last we saw of her was at the moment of her immediate death, so there is a chance she would return as a Stormcast.

'''Jordainn''': A naive young prince and heir to the throne of the african-esque nation of Edassa, who Gotrek befriends in [[Aqshy]]. Was originally accompanying part of his kingdom's army to reinforce Hammerhal, when his contingent was ambushed and massacred by Tzeentchian warriors, leaving him the sole survivor. Later revealed to have been deliberately betrayed by his cousin Osayande, who had secretly fallen to Tzeentch and planned to later infiltrate Hammerhal with remnants of their army. Gotrek rescues him and takes him under his wing for part of the journey to the realms, mainly finding Jordain's naïveté endearing and reminding him of his early adventures with Felix. After Jordainn dies in battle, wrapped in a red cloak similar to that of Felix, Gotrek has a moment of despair and starts wearing his lion-engraved pauldron as a memento.

He eventually gets resurrected as the Stormcast Prosecutor Jordaeus Lionheart for the Anvils of the Heldenhanmer. He reunites with Gotrek, only for Gotrek to hate him because he broke his oath to defend his fortress, which got overrun by Skaven while he was absent. This results in him being riddled with guilt, yet still following Gotrek out of a belief that Sigmar intended him to guide Gotrek to his destiny. Also he hears the voice of Grimnir whenever he tries praying to Sigmar.

'''Trachos''': Lord-Ordinator of the Celestial Vindicators left broken and traumatized after several perils in [[Shyish]]. He is the last survivor of his chamber and feels that the only way to restore his honor is to return to [[Azyr]] with some form of treasure. Wouldn’t you know it, he soon came upon Gotrek and decided that fancy rune in his chest would do the trick. Initially distrustful of him and the assassin Maleneth, he intended to follow their quest to find Gotrek’s axe and let them die to take the rune for himself. As time passed though, his mind soon began to heal and he became more and more like his old self. By the end of his adventure, he was a quiet but friendly warrior with the occasional snide remark. When fighting he tends to loudly sing in a fractured off-key tone. Not even Gotrek could fix that.

Trachos grew to fear the possibility of his death, not so much the dying as the being reborn again and losing more of his humanity. Nevertheless, he sacrificed his life in an effort to save Maleneth from being capture by Gloomspite grots and in death he returned to Azyr to be reforged. Though he failed to keep Maleneth from being taken, his sacrifice inspired Gotrek to shake off his latest bout of despondency and inspire him to make a difference in the Mortal Realms.

== Feats of the Dwarf ==

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

* Killed some orcs and daemons and mutants and werewolves and goblins and some more daemons and mutants and lots more orcs. (''Trollslayer'' and every other book too)
* Cleansed the sacred tombs of Karak Eight Peaks of a warpstone-mutated [[troll]], returning countless Dwarf spirits to their rest. In the process, Felix acquired the sword Karaghul and the name of Dwarf Friend. (''Trollslayer'')
* Stopped the Skaven from conquering Nuln, by killing them. (''Skavenslayer'')
* Killed a million skaven, and some rat ogres too, and some of the rat ogres were called [[Thanquol|Boneripper]]. (Various)
* Killed a Bloodthirster of Khorne aided by Felix Jaeger who threw an ancient magical dwarven hammer belonging to the dwarf king of Karag Dum at the bloodthirster weakening it giving Gotrek the chance to slay it with his even more formidable rune axe formerly wielded and crafted by the dwarf slayer god Grimnir. (''Daemonslayer'')
* [[Leman Russ|Outdrank a bunch of Kislevites]] in a vodka drinking contest.
* Killed a million orcs. (Every book)
* [[Wat|Drank two beers at once]]. (''Skavenslayer and also Deamonslayer'')
* Slew the ancient chaos dragon Skjalandir (ok, that was mostly Malakai's rockets and a Dwarf gyrocoptor's kamikaze attack, then Felix struck the deathblow) and then immediately dove into a battle between greenskins and human bandits after the dragon's hoard. Gotrek slew the Orc warlord while an airship bombing run shredded his army. (''Dragonslayer'')
* Killed a chaos lord of Tzeentch in hand to hand combat and stopped his beastmen armies from conquering Praag. (''Beastslayer'')
* Slaying a vampire lord in the seat of his power while that vampire lord was supercharged by one of Nagash's artifacts. (''Vampireslayer'')
* Killed a mind-controlled Sky-Titan including cutting out its eye and rappelling down with its optic nerve. (''Giantslayer'')
* Helped Teclis stop a pair of mad Tzeentch wizard twins from blowing up the world by killing one. (''Giantslayer'')
* Making [[Teclis]] walk carefully around him. (''Giantslayer'' again; yes one of the most powerful spell casters in the world is wary of him and his axe)
* Became the tyrant of an ogre tribe by defeating the former tyrant in unarmed combat. (''Short Story - Ogreslayer'')
* Killed a million billion orcs. (''Orcslayer'')
* Killed his best friend Hamnir. (He knows what he did - ''Hamnirslayer'')
* Killed a giant psychic alien insect. (The fuck is this, 40k?) (''Orcslayer'')
* Killed a daemon made of cannons and blood, possessed by the souls of dead chaos sorcerers. (''Manslayer'')
* Drank enough to almost die of alcohol poisoning. (A feat no dwarf has ever come close to before.)
* Killed a Sea Monster and the Dark Elf knight riding it despite being in the water with them. (''Elfslayer'')
* Nearly killed a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh, [[Awesome|it ran away because it was scared]]. (''Elfslayer'')
* Sank a Dark Elf Black-Ark and tanked an explosion from destroying a world ending artifact. (''Elfslayer again'')
* Stops a beastman shaman from turning every human in the Empire into beastmen. (''Shamanslayer'')
* Killed two of every animal. (''Arkslayer'')
* Killed some zombies. (''Zombieslayer'')
* Killed so many things he ran out of things to slay and GeeDubs literally had to stop using '------slayer' in his book titles for a while.
* Killed a ton of Khornate warriors culminating in a Lord of Khorne that was one skull away from opening a new Chaos Rift. Also cockblocked the [[Ungrim_Ironfist|King of the Slayers]] to do it. (''Road of Skulls'')
* Teamed up with some Tomb Kings to destroy a vampire empire in the Southlands. (''The Serpent Queen'')
* Fought Deathmaster Snikch on a temple rooftop in the rain. (''Mentioned in the The Serpent Queen'')
* Killed [[Mordheim]], City of the Damned. More or less. (''City of the Damned'')
* 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, to the point where Thanquol considers Gotrek his greatest nemesis, even though Gotrek and Felix never learned Thanquol was behind all the Skaven plots they fucked up. (That's a retcon by the way.)
* Probably killed like half of all the orcs that have ever been killed by dwarves. At least.
* Defeats Throgg, the Troll King, officially making Gotrek the greatest Trollslayer ever (''Kinslayer'') '''Confirmed''' Throgg was in the battle for Middenheim at the end of Lord of the End Times and crushes [[Sigvald]]'s head with his club, clearly very much alive. Then again, Throgg's regeneration is overpowered even by troll standards so it is possible Gotrek killed him but he just [[Wat|walked it off]] after a while.
* Killed the same Bloodthirster of Khorne from ''Daemonslayer'' in single combat. Again. (''Slayer'')
* Prevented Be'lakor's ascension to the fifth God of Chaos by hitting him with that same Bloodthirster. (''Slayer again'')
* Ascends to Godhood. (''Slayer was pretty awesome'')
* Holds the line against an infinite army of daemons, forever. (''Go buy Slayer - it's the least you can do'')
* Kills Felix by sending him back to suffocate under a temple of rubble. (''Slayer again, you missed a lot if you didn't read it'') Probably -1 to his tally.
* Comes to the [[Warhammer:_Age_of_Sigmar|Mortal Realms]] to fix that last one (''Realmslayer'') (But gave up, so still -1 so far. Although word is Felix is not in the [[Warhammer:_Age_of_Sigmar#Shyish_.28Death.29|Realm of the Dead...]])
* Fights his way out of the Realm of Chaos, bites off the nose of a Fyreslayer Runeson who got up in his face, effortlessly wields a legendary Fyreslayer Greataxe that kills most duardin who even touch it, intimidates a Godbeast into running away, slaughters his way across Aqshy and Shyish killing Chaos worshipers, mad Sylvaneth, undead, skaven, saves the city of Hammerhal Aqsha from being destroyed from within by a Tzeentch cult, and has a Fyreslayer Master Rune implanted into his chest, signifying him as a living avatar of Grimnir in the eyes of the Fyreslayers. Also gets drunk and headlocks a Stormcast Eternal. Gotrek is ''back'', baby. (''Realmslayer'')
* Consumes enough beer-concealed poisons to kill a [[Gargant]] with no worse effects than throwing up. (''Short Story - One, Untended'')
* Chops a skaven plague priest in half, incinerates it with his breath, then ''eats its fucking soul''. (''Short Story - One, Untended'')
* Talked a [[Nighthaunt]] back to sanity, causing it to voluntarily relinquish its undeath and pass on. (''Short Story - One, Untended'')
* Got ambushed by a bunch of rogue Kharadron Overlords and then proceeded to escape by crashing their ship, roasting them by saying Malakai was a better pilot. (''Short Story - The Bone Desert'')
* Picks up and uses an Anvil of Power as a projectile weapon, something Maleneth claims no mortal can lift. Before he gets the Master Rune. (''Realmslayer'')
* Kills six drakes one at a time. And who knows how many more non-winged ones, according to Maleneth. And tanks their landslide breath without a scratch which could have leveled a fortress. (''The Neverspike'')
* Kills a hundred foot tall ghoul. (''Ghoulslayer'')
* Finds the only portal to the World That Was, and destroys it after finally accepting that he belongs in the Mortal Realms now.(''<strike>Portalslayer</strike>Reamslayer: Blood of the Old World'')
* Killed (or at least defeated) a [[Godbeast]] (''Realmslayer: Blood of the Old World'')
* Killed a big chunk of [[Skragrott|Skragrott's Asylum]]. With fire. (''Gitslayer'')
* Cures a Auric Runefather's insanity by kicking his ass. (''Souslayer'')
* Destroys an exceptionally powerful Eidolon of Mathlann. (''Soulslayer'')

== Being Felix Jaeger is suffering ==

As much as Gotrek kicking ass is a constant, so is Felix Jaeger getting shit heaped on his life. Here's a list of what happens to him.

* Mother died when he was nine.
* Had a terrible relationship with his wealthy merchant father.
* Expelled from university for accidentally killing another student in a duel.
* Became a wanted criminal for starting the Window Tax Riots.
* Becomes Gotrek's rememberer and accidentally dooms himself to being a murderhobo for the rest of his life. (All of this happened before the series even started.)
* Gets beaten and nearly raped by hillbillies. (''Trollslayer'')
* Has his first love killed by a goblin. (''Trollslayer'')
* Gets cucked out of his next love interest by her childhood sweetheart. (''Skavenslayer'')
* Said ex-love interest stole all his money after the breakup. (''Skavenslayer'')
* Discovers that his sword karaghul is slowly making him more aggressive after almost dying when charging a dragon in a blind rage. (''Dragonslayer'')
* Being stuck in a love triangle with his third love interest and a friend of his from the Empire. (''Beastslayer'')
* Forced to watch yet another love interest leave him, this time because she got turned into a vampire. (''Vampireslayer'')
* Is briefly mind-controlled, along with Gotrek, into a fight to the death they barely escape from with their lives. (''Orcslayer'')
* Becomes estranged from his brother and puts his family at risk. (''Manslayer'')
* Gets his father murdered by Skaven. Vows revenge, but is never able to get it due to never encountering him again in the series. (''Elfslayer'')
* Left with a massive case of survivor's guilt over the deaths of many innocent slaves after Gotrek sinks a Dark Elf Black Ark. (''Elfslayer'')
* Gets disowned by his brother. (''Shamanslayer'')
* His fourth love interest almost dies from starvation and a curse from Heinrich Kemmler. (''Zombieslayer'')
* After marrying his fourth love interest and settling down with her, she suffers from constant illness for the rest of her life due to the curse. (''Kinslayer'')
* Forced to kill his former lover Ulrika. (''Kinslayer'')
* Has his friendship with Gotrek nearly broken beyond repair after Gotrek kills Snorri. (''Kinslayer'')
* Realizes he's a pawn of fate and all the suffering he's been through in life was to ensure that he stayed Gotrek's companion. (''Slayer'')
* Never gets to see his brother, nephew, wife and daughter before the End Times and can only presume they probably died at the fall of Altdorf. (''Slayer'')
* Ends up suffocating to death in a Dwarf ruin. (''Slayer'')
* A whole list of miscellaneous extremely painful injuries he suffered over his adventures that are too minor to list here.

== The Doom of the Dwarf and the End of All Things ==
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 an 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:

# Every Elf in the world is now dead.
# Every Grudge in the Book of Grudges is counted as fulfilled.(yeah but the dwarfs are fucking destroyed so yes!!! <strike>but not really</strike> Whatever, for a dwarf death is a small price to pay for settling a grudge)
# Gotrek gets to fight everything forever.

== The Dwarf in the Age of Sigmar ==
[[File:BLLiveReveals-Jun1-GotrekMini1coiy.jpg|400px|thumb|right|"Now I think I know why I came back! The Realmgate Wars are done, so I hear, and half your so-called gods were ready to put their feet up! But they have neglected to remember one important thing! GOTREK'S ALIIIIVE!" -Gotrek Gurnisson's new model based on his appearance since the audio drama Realmslayer, where he is voiced by [[Awesome|BRIAN BLESSED!]]]]{{Topquote|Tell your master that Gotrek Gurnisson hasn't forgotten his oaths! I'm coming for [[Nagash|them]] [[Chaos_Gods|all]]! And I want my axe back!|Gotrek Gurnisson, Realmslayer}}

[https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/02/14/the-slayer-returns/ Looks like we might have been a bit premature there.] Gotrek's back in the realm of the living, getting used to the [[Age of Sigmar|Mortal Realms]] and ready to find his old friend Felix. He has no idea how he got spat out of the Realm of Chaos or why he was unable to meet his long awaited doom (although he is very cross with Grimnir, who he feels has betrayed him by not letting him meet said doom), but it seems Grimnir might have had even greater things in store for the dwarf. Ever since he absorbed a powerful rune from the Fyreslayers and unintentionally became an avatar of Grimnir in their eyes, there's also been lot of folks affiliated with Order who have an interest in keeping him alive. Much to his annoyance, of course.

Gotrek has since then been on various quests and has been working hard to keep up his reputation as the most lucky/unlucky Slayer alive as nothing has been able to kill him so far.
Something that seems to give no end of frustration to Maleneth Witchblade the Daughters of Khain Shadowblade, as she can´t return without the masterune and can´t seem to persuade Gotrek to return with her to Azyrheim and her employers are getting impatient.

One thing that certainly doesn´t help Gotrek's chances of a worthy doom is that he is now able to go super saiyan/become a living incarnation of Grimnir with a beard of fire and everything, all thanks to the rune in his chest and the fact that Grimnir is speaking to him through it, neither of which Gotrek seems to like very much. Another new quirk possibly connected to his new found “godly avatar” status is his apparent ability to heal the memories of Stormcast Eternals just be being near him. Both main Stormcast who have traveled with him (Jordaeus and Trachos) have been able to remember parts of their old lives and even restore fractured psyche in the case of the latter.

His latest character development is that Gotrek has come to accept that his world is gone and have accepted this new world and the mantle of fyreslayer, though he seems determined to continue his quest to find axes and hope to one day come across Felix once more. He has a rather touching moment at the end of the Realmslayer: Blood of the Old World audiobook, where he can hear Felix under the rubble through the Old World portal right before he destroys it, reciting the last pages of his adventures and wishing to see his wife and daughter one last time. With a heavy heart, Gotrek says goodbye to his beloved friend and rememberer, hoping they may meet each other again someday.

Naturally, [[Thanquol]] was [[Rage|less than happy]] to learn his arch-enemy had survived the End Times.

== The Dwarf in Print ==
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. In practice this is because the ones that are part of the main story follow this pattern, the side stories don't. The last entry before AoS, appropriately enough, is just called Slayer. This has, in fact, returned in the current books, with the main one called Ghoulslayer...and the introductory series? Called Realmslayer.

== The Dwarf 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. Sadly, [[The End Times]] came and went with no sign of the duo on the tabletop.

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/ (Original source: http://web.archive.org/web/20041118233110/http://uk.games-workshop.com/warhammerworld/warhammer/regiments_of_renown/gotfel.htm)

Good news everybody! Gotrek is back for Age of Sigmar. Felix is currently indisposed as discussed earlier, but Gotrek is back with a fancy new model in all his badass slayer glory, much to the annoyance of many Skaven players. Not mountable without some overlap on a square base unless its 40x40mm (best Unit Filler ever though) or you cut him off his badass base, which is forgivable if you stick him on something more impressive than some rubble and dead Skaven (so Be'lakor's severed head doesn't count).

Gotrek is the biggest murder machine in AoS now, bar none. Greater demons, gods of death, even archaon, all have no chance. His axe, Zhangrom-Thaz, is a 6-attack 3+/3+/-2/3 monstrosity, but the real frosting on the cake (or in this case, the beard on the dwarf) is that he gets to reroll all to-hit and to-wound rolls, which is damn insane. But's that's not all! Each time he rolls a 6 to hit, he deals ''D6 MORTAL WOUNDS''. with six attacks, that's an average of once every time he fights. Just to top it all off, if anyone's still alive at the end of the combat phase, Gotrek can fight ''again.'' he's also a tough bastard: The ''Avatar of Grimnir'' ability not only reduces the damage value of any multi-damage attack to one, but if a spell or ability would outright slay him, it just deals one mortal wound. Throw on that he ignores wounds and mortal wounds on 3+, he can eat up a frankly disgusting amount of punishment.
Perhaps the only way to kill him (or at least slow him down enough) is through massive tarpits that have access to mortal wound saves, and all the better if you can resurrect those models. In short, a massive blob of Spirit Hosts with all the resurrection abilities you can afford.
All in All, Gotrek is back in style and ready to cut a bloody path across the mortal realms.

== [[Total War: Warhammer]] ==

[[File:Gotrek headpile03 rainbow-1024x576.jpg|400px|thumb|right|I'll '''''RUIN''''''em alright, WITH MY AXE!!!]]

Confirmed to appear in Total War: Warhammer II on October 17th (though [[White Dwarf]] readers can get a code with the September issue just the same way it was with Grombindal) on campaign they are available for The Empire, Dwarfs and Bretonnia as a mercenary Legendary Lord (Gotrek) and Hero (Felix) - and yes, [[Awesome|BRIAN BLESSED has reprised the role of Gotrek for the game]]. Their use is time limited (but long enough to do a big job) and they will disappear when Gotrek's deathseeker instinct triggers. Though they will reappear to the player after some time later even better. Amusingly, the AI can recruit Gotrek and Felix as well. So if you're playing as a villainous faction, you'll get multiple chances to cut the two of them down with ratling guns, black orks, or whatever doomstack your armies are running around with.

In Total War: Warhammer III - Immortal Empires, the Gotrek and Felix recruitment dilemma becomes accessible to Kislev and Cathay. While the Kislev visit is lore friendly, Cathay is a bit far away from their usual stomping grounds. Maybe Black Library will release a story about the two of them getting shipwrecked in China when GW releases Warhammer: The Old World.

In multiplayer battle, both Gotrek and Felix are heroes instead of lords. Felix is the more useful of the two since he comes with some pretty beefy support auras as opposed to Gotrek who is an expensive footslogging beatstick who goes down quickly due to his non-existent slayer defenses.

[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]][[Category:Black Library]][[Category:Dwarfs]] [[Category:Regiments of Renown]]

Gotrek & Felix

2023-06-02T01:27:27Z

2605:BA00:6208:2AB4:E1CD:6BCB:A53F:1B2F: Karaghul is sus

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 [[Tanith First (And Only)|Gaunt's Ghosts]] by [[Dan Abnett]].

== The Dwarf and Associates ==
[[File:GotrekandFelix.png|300px|thumb|right|Gotrek & Felix ([[Mark Gibbons|MG]])]]
'''Gotrek, son of Gurni''': The most <s>manly</s> dwarfy Dwarf ever, 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). The Slayer is 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. The axe is also mutating him into some sort of super-Dwarf.

The result is a Dwarfen demigod of violence and vengeance, 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 and his religion's rule state suicide and taking a dive don't count. Before taking the Slayer Oath, Gotrek was just an engineer with a wife, Helga, and a daughter, Gurna. Then, his best friend 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. During his trek home, he discovered the axe on the corpse of a Dwarf lord. When he finally made it home, goblins had burned down his village and murdered his family. 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 the prick.

Gotrek finally meets his Doom in the novel ''Slayer'', in combat with none less than [[Grimnir]] himself. Grimnir then resurrects Gotrek, cedes his position as the Dwarfen God of Vengeance, and presumably retires. His last moments show him rejoicing in the prospect of eternal war, and sends Felix back to the "real" world before going to slaughter an infinite army of daemons.

More recently, he found himself spat back out into the [[Age of Sigmar|Mortal Realms]]. While the Slayers have ceased to exist as he knows them, Gotrek has a sense that he was called to the Mortal Realms for a reason and believes that if he can reunite with Felix he will be able to return to his doom. The stories of the [[Stormcast Eternals]] he has heard have led him to wonder if his old friend might be among their number, and he plans to find out for himself. Along the way he has an ur-gold master rune of the [[Fyreslayers]] embedded in his body that boosts his strength to truly demigod-tier levels in the heat of combat, but also seems to be trying to overwrite his mind with that of Grimnir...

Gotrek eventually realized that, in his own words, the Stormcast aren't even worthy of polishing Felix's armor, let alone counting him among their ranks, and even if Felix became a Stormcast he wouldn't remember Gotrek so it would be pointless to try and find him (and if you really buy the idea that Felix isn't coming back sooner or later, I can give you a great price on this one bridge in Brooklyn...). Gotrek has developed a grudge against all the gods, especially Grimnir, whom he regards as a cheat and a liar for depriving him of a true doom - thus making him a less anti-theistic Dorf Kratos. His current quest is to find Grimnir's axe again, and use it to kill [[Thanquol]] and Nagash, and intends to sort out the rest of the gods if he survives.

As of Soulslayer he has admitted that he no longer cares about finding a worthy doom, having realized that a worthy life is what matters and he should honour his ancestors by dedicating himself to fixing the world's problems. Namely, by killing every single greenskin, necromancer and Chaos-worshipper in the Mortal Realms, while "teaching the Duardin how to be Dawi" as he puts it. As the legendary BRIAN BLESSED remarked in an interview when recording ''Realmslayer'', to Gotrek Life is the last word, no longer Death.

In the latest audio drama, Realmslayer, [[Awesome|he is voiced by the legendary BRIAN BLESSED]].

'''Felix Jaeger, Esq.''': The Robin to Gotrek's Batman, the Samwise to his Frodo (or the other way around, since Samwise does all the heavy lifting while Frodo frequently fucks up and needs saving). Felix is, despite appearances and his occasional obnoxiousness, the real hero and narrator of the series. To Gotrek, Felix is his pet human/toy/best friend/memoirist/biographer who is travelling with the dwarf to record his death in an epic poem. Felix is pretty much permanently terrified of dying randomly while Gotrek throws down with godlike evil, and his constant whining about the same is one of his least endearing characteristics, at least during the early books. He also typically acquires a wench-of-the-week in the early books. His [[Sanguinius|long golden hair]] must have a magic appeal ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gLN3QoN-q8 it does nearly get him raped by mountain men in the first book "In the mountains I'm from, anything like that looks good"]).

At some point, after realizing he's made about 1% as many corpses as Gotrek, Felix finally wises up to the fact that he, too, is not only a formidable combatant but probably not entirely human. The point is driven home in one of the later books when he returns home to Altdorf and meets his older brother Otto, who is about 70, while Felix still looks 20. Whatever enchantment affects him, he also comes to crave violence and danger, if to a lesser extent than Gotrek except when it comes to dragons [[rage| since the sword makes him really want to murder them!]] Eventually he grows to become disturbed by his long life and how his personality has changed. In the final books, after Felix has married one of the aforementioned wenches and had a daughter, he finds himself despondent at domestic life and utterly uninspired by taking over the family business or restarting his once-promising poetry career. Thankfully, Gotrek shows up and sucks him back into the fight and indeed into the [[End Times]], where both he and Gotrek play pivotal roles. It turns out that the Axe of Grimnir's super-Dwarfifying aura is affecting Felix (and Felix's own enchanted sword, Karaghul), too, nudged along by an enchantment placed on Felix by a witch who wanted to make sure Gotrek fulfilled the axe's destiny, as well as Felix's own, which turned out to be preventing Bel'akor's ascension to become the fifth Chaos God.

'''Dr. Maximillian Schreiber''': A badass Gold (later retconned to Light) Wizard and scientist 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 a slightly disgraced wizard, having been expelled from the Imperial College for his insistence that Chaos must be understood if it is to be defeated, Max was hired to magically ward the airship. On the subsequent adventures, Max proves himself a valuable asset in combat against all sorts of nasties, a steadfast companion and good friend. Initially involved in a love triangle with Felix and the Kislevite noblewoman Ulrika (who [[Ulrika the Vampire|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 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's returned to his old badass self as he has grown to encompass multiple schools. He dies after being blasted off an airship, after fighting [[Be'lakor]] one-on-one and banishing him from the material plane. It's even implied by Be'lakor that Max might have utterly destroyed him if Max hadn't been also protecting Felix, which is badass as fuck.

'''Lady Ulrika Magdova''': A tomboyish (even having short hair) Kilsevite noblewoman. Very lusty because, despite resisting Felix's advances throughout his stay at her father's manse, she throws herself at him the night before he leaves by showing up in his bed nude. She becomes Felix's girlfriend for awhile, though tensions emerge due to their respective duties. Ulrika eventually grows close to Max after he saves her from a Nurglite plague and a lot of unrequited attention, ending her relationship with Felix. Before Ulrika and Max can consummate their relationship she gets kidnapped by the vampire Adolphus Krieger (a rare [[Lahmian]] male), first as a human shield but then Krieger takes a liking to her and turns her into a vampire. She leaves with Krieger's vampiric sire to work with the Lahmian vampires. The events are covered in two novels [[Skub|that the fanbase is divided on]]. Reunites with Felix twice later to help him record Gotrek's doom and live to tell about it. Though their relationship is completely finished Ulrika occasionally teases Felix about it. Then she succumbs to her vampiric bloodlust and Felix is forced to kill her in self-defense.

'''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, she was on fire and would have died anyway. Gotrek finally kills him, reluctantly, after Snorri recovers his memory and confesses to Gotrek, thereby technically fulfilling the sad old Dwarf's Slayer oath. This shit here is real tragedy, you stone-hearted monsters. His ghost makes a cameo in Realmslayer, apparently the realm of Shyish is also home to people who died from the World-that-was. He mentions seeing Max and Ulrika once long ago, but not Malakai Makaisson.

'''Malakai, son of Makai''': Insane genius Dwarf Slayer engineer, who designed the above air battleship and countless other super-badass but ultimately overambitious war machines. 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. Though he is not shown to have died unlike everyone else, a character mentions that Malakai died; [[FAIL|so the story killed him off in a footnote]]. It is hinted at during Realmslayer that he might have survived.

'''[[Teclis]] of the White Tower''': 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 600-foot 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 most of the book with an Amazon girlfriend/bodyguard.

'''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 [[Slann]] deliberately makes sure Thanquol survives to get back to the Under-Empire because he is such a [[Transformers|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. Loses a hand in ''Elfslayer'', but uses warpstone paste to grow a new one. Ended up playing a major role in The End Times when the Horned Rat appointed him as his new Seerlord. Survived into Age of Sigmar, and when Gotrek arrives in the Mortal Realms in ''Realmslayer'', the dwarf and rat immediately resume their old animosity (following a hilarious panic attack on the rat's part).

'''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 who's a loudmouth, 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.

'''Various monsters/villains of the week''': Axe fodder.

'''Tens of thousands of trash mobs''': Wet toilet paper.

'''Maleneth Witchblade''': Gotrek's new travelling companion for his Mortal Realms adventures. A former [[Daughters of Khaine|Witch Aelf]], she joined the Order of Azyr for protection after killing her own mistress (whose soul is now contained in a vial of blood around her neck). She was sent on a mission to steal the Master Rune from a Fyreslayer lodge, and after Gotrek lodged it in his body to prevent it from falling into the hands of a Chaos arny she sees it as her duty to follow him around and hopefully either badger him into visiting the Order so the rune can be studied or take it from his body once he dies in battle. She is very much aware that both of these are rather unlikely knowing Gotrek's history.

Gotrek obviously dislikes her for being a filthy dark elf, and she dislikes him for making her mission such a hassle, though their shared struggles have given them a mutual respect (to say nothing of Gotrek's admitted need for someone to teach him about how the Mortal Realms work). Despite this shared respect, Maleneth is exceptionally opportunistic, seizing every chance she sees to tear the master rune from Gotrek’s chest, even if it means she’d have to fight a God-Beast on her own.

In case you haven't noticed from her name, opportunistic nature and her constant arguing with a malevolent voice only she can hear, she's basically a gender swapped [[Malus Darkblade]], albeit more neutral than evil and without the beloved cool steed or the owner of the malevolent voice having any control over her body.

Maleneth died after helping Gotrek to escape an Idoneth city in the Realm of Metal. At this point she had already betrayed the Order of Azyr and came around seeing Gotrek as a symbol of hope - not to her, but to other duardin at least. Maleneth went out heroically, and the last we saw of her was at the moment of her immediate death, so there is a chance she would return as a Stormcast.

'''Jordainn''': A naive young prince and heir to the throne of the african-esque nation of Edassa, who Gotrek befriends in [[Aqshy]]. Was originally accompanying part of his kingdom's army to reinforce Hammerhal, when his contingent was ambushed and massacred by Tzeentchian warriors, leaving him the sole survivor. Later revealed to have been deliberately betrayed by his cousin Osayande, who had secretly fallen to Tzeentch and planned to later infiltrate Hammerhal with remnants of their army. Gotrek rescues him and takes him under his wing for part of the journey to the realms, mainly finding Jordain's naïveté endearing and reminding him of his early adventures with Felix. After Jordainn dies in battle, wrapped in a red cloak similar to that of Felix, Gotrek has a moment of despair and starts wearing his lion-engraved pauldron as a memento.

He eventually gets resurrected as the Stormcast Prosecutor Jordaeus Lionheart for the Anvils of the Heldenhanmer. He reunites with Gotrek, only for Gotrek to hate him because he broke his oath to defend his fortress, which got overrun by Skaven while he was absent. This results in him being riddled with guilt, yet still following Gotrek out of a belief that Sigmar intended him to guide Gotrek to his destiny. Also he hears the voice of Grimnir whenever he tries praying to Sigmar.

'''Trachos''': Lord-Ordinator of the Celestial Vindicators left broken and traumatized after several perils in [[Shyish]]. He is the last survivor of his chamber and feels that the only way to restore his honor is to return to [[Azyr]] with some form of treasure. Wouldn’t you know it, he soon came upon Gotrek and decided that fancy rune in his chest would do the trick. Initially distrustful of him and the assassin Maleneth, he intended to follow their quest to find Gotrek’s axe and let them die to take the rune for himself. As time passed though, his mind soon began to heal and he became more and more like his old self. By the end of his adventure, he was a quiet but friendly warrior with the occasional snide remark. When fighting he tends to loudly sing in a fractured off-key tone. Not even Gotrek could fix that.

Trachos grew to fear the possibility of his death, not so much the dying as the being reborn again and losing more of his humanity. Nevertheless, he sacrificed his life in an effort to save Maleneth from being capture by Gloomspite grots and in death he returned to Azyr to be reforged. Though he failed to keep Maleneth from being taken, his sacrifice inspired Gotrek to shake off his latest bout of despondency and inspire him to make a difference in the Mortal Realms.

== Feats of the Dwarf ==

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

* Killed some orcs and daemons and mutants and werewolves and goblins and some more daemons and mutants and lots more orcs. (''Trollslayer'' and every other book too)
* Cleansed the sacred tombs of Karak Eight Peaks of a warpstone-mutated [[troll]], returning countless Dwarf spirits to their rest. In the process, Felix acquired the sword Karaghul and the name of Dwarf Friend. (''Trollslayer'')
* Stopped the Skaven from conquering Nuln, by killing them. (''Skavenslayer'')
* Killed a million skaven, and some rat ogres too, and some of the rat ogres were called [[Thanquol|Boneripper]]. (Various)
* Killed a Bloodthirster of Khorne aided by Felix Jaeger who threw an ancient magical dwarven hammer belonging to the dwarf king of Karag Dum at the bloodthirster weakening it giving Gotrek the chance to slay it with his even more formidable rune axe formerly wielded and crafted by the dwarf slayer god Grimnir. (''Daemonslayer'')
* [[Leman Russ|Outdrank a bunch of Kislevites]] in a vodka drinking contest.
* Killed a million orcs. (Every book)
* [[Wat|Drank two beers at once]]. (''Skavenslayer and also Deamonslayer'')
* Slew the ancient chaos dragon Skjalandir (ok, that was mostly Malakai's rockets and a Dwarf gyrocoptor's kamikaze attack, then Felix struck the deathblow) and then immediately dove into a battle between greenskins and human bandits after the dragon's hoard. Gotrek slew the Orc warlord while an airship bombing run shredded his army. (''Dragonslayer'')
* Killed a chaos lord of Tzeentch in hand to hand combat and stopped his beastmen armies from conquering Praag. (''Beastslayer'')
* Slaying a vampire lord in the seat of his power while that vampire lord was supercharged by one of Nagash's artifacts. (''Vampireslayer'')
* Killed a mind-controlled Sky-Titan including cutting out its eye and rappelling down with its optic nerve. (''Giantslayer'')
* Helped Teclis stop a pair of mad Tzeentch wizard twins from blowing up the world by killing one. (''Giantslayer'')
* Making [[Teclis]] walk carefully around him. (''Giantslayer'' again; yes one of the most powerful spell casters in the world is wary of him and his axe)
* Became the tyrant of an ogre tribe by defeating the former tyrant in unarmed combat. (''Short Story - Ogreslayer'')
* Killed a million billion orcs. (''Orcslayer'')
* Killed his best friend Hamnir. (He knows what he did - ''Hamnirslayer'')
* Killed a giant psychic alien insect. (The fuck is this, 40k?) (''Orcslayer'')
* Killed a daemon made of cannons and blood, possessed by the souls of dead chaos sorcerers. (''Manslayer'')
* Drank enough to almost die of alcohol poisoning. (A feat no dwarf has ever come close to before.)
* Killed a Sea Monster and the Dark Elf knight riding it despite being in the water with them. (''Elfslayer'')
* Nearly killed a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh, [[Awesome|it ran away because it was scared]]. (''Elfslayer'')
* Sank a Dark Elf Black-Ark and tanked an explosion from destroying a world ending artifact. (''Elfslayer again'')
* Stops a beastman shaman from turning every human in the Empire into beastmen. (''Shamanslayer'')
* Killed two of every animal. (''Arkslayer'')
* Killed some zombies. (''Zombieslayer'')
* Killed so many things he ran out of things to slay and GeeDubs literally had to stop using '------slayer' in his book titles for a while.
* Killed a ton of Khornate warriors culminating in a Lord of Khorne that was one skull away from opening a new Chaos Rift. Also cockblocked the [[Ungrim_Ironfist|King of the Slayers]] to do it. (''Road of Skulls'')
* Teamed up with some Tomb Kings to destroy a vampire empire in the Southlands. (''The Serpent Queen'')
* Fought Deathmaster Snikch on a temple rooftop in the rain. (''Mentioned in the The Serpent Queen'')
* Killed [[Mordheim]], City of the Damned. More or less. (''City of the Damned'')
* 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, to the point where Thanquol considers Gotrek his greatest nemesis, even though Gotrek and Felix never learned Thanquol was behind all the Skaven plots they fucked up. (That's a retcon by the way.)
* Probably killed like half of all the orcs that have ever been killed by dwarves. At least.
* Defeats Throgg, the Troll King, officially making Gotrek the greatest Trollslayer ever (''Kinslayer'') '''Confirmed''' Throgg was in the battle for Middenheim at the end of Lord of the End Times and crushes [[Sigvald]]'s head with his club, clearly very much alive. Then again, Throgg's regeneration is overpowered even by troll standards so it is possible Gotrek killed him but he just [[Wat|walked it off]] after a while.
* Killed the same Bloodthirster of Khorne from ''Daemonslayer'' in single combat. Again. (''Slayer'')
* Prevented Be'lakor's ascension to the fifth God of Chaos by hitting him with that same Bloodthirster. (''Slayer again'')
* Ascends to Godhood. (''Slayer was pretty awesome'')
* Holds the line against an infinite army of daemons, forever. (''Go buy Slayer - it's the least you can do'')
* Kills Felix by sending him back to suffocate under a temple of rubble. (''Slayer again, you missed a lot if you didn't read it'') Probably -1 to his tally.
* Comes to the [[Warhammer:_Age_of_Sigmar|Mortal Realms]] to fix that last one (''Realmslayer'') (But gave up, so still -1 so far. Although word is Felix is not in the [[Warhammer:_Age_of_Sigmar#Shyish_.28Death.29|Realm of the Dead...]])
* Fights his way out of the Realm of Chaos, bites off the nose of a Fyreslayer Runeson who got up in his face, effortlessly wields a legendary Fyreslayer Greataxe that kills most duardin who even touch it, intimidates a Godbeast into running away, slaughters his way across Aqshy and Shyish killing Chaos worshipers, mad Sylvaneth, undead, skaven, saves the city of Hammerhal Aqsha from being destroyed from within by a Tzeentch cult, and has a Fyreslayer Master Rune implanted into his chest, signifying him as a living avatar of Grimnir in the eyes of the Fyreslayers. Also gets drunk and headlocks a Stormcast Eternal. Gotrek is ''back'', baby. (''Realmslayer'')
* Consumes enough beer-concealed poisons to kill a [[Gargant]] with no worse effects than throwing up. (''Short Story - One, Untended'')
* Chops a skaven plague priest in half, incinerates it with his breath, then ''eats its fucking soul''. (''Short Story - One, Untended'')
* Talked a [[Nighthaunt]] back to sanity, causing it to voluntarily relinquish its undeath and pass on. (''Short Story - One, Untended'')
* Got ambushed by a bunch of rogue Kharadron Overlords and then proceeded to escape by crashing their ship, roasting them by saying Malakai was a better pilot. (''Short Story - The Bone Desert'')
* Picks up and uses an Anvil of Power as a projectile weapon, something Maleneth claims no mortal can lift. Before he gets the Master Rune. (''Realmslayer'')
* Kills six drakes one at a time. And who knows how many more non-winged ones, according to Maleneth. And tanks their landslide breath without a scratch which could have leveled a fortress. (''The Neverspike'')
* Kills a hundred foot tall ghoul. (''Ghoulslayer'')
* Finds the only portal to the World That Was, and destroys it after finally accepting that he belongs in the Mortal Realms now.(''<strike>Portalslayer</strike>Reamslayer: Blood of the Old World'')
* Killed (or at least defeated) a [[Godbeast]] (''Realmslayer: Blood of the Old World'')
* Killed a big chunk of [[Skragrott|Skragrott's Asylum]]. With fire. (''Gitslayer'')
* Cures a Auric Runefather's insanity by kicking his ass. (''Souslayer'')
* Destroys an exceptionally powerful Eidolon of Mathlann. (''Soulslayer'')

== Being Felix Jaeger is suffering ==

As much as Gotrek kicking ass is a constant, so is Felix Jaeger getting shit heaped on his life. Here's a list of what happens to him.

* Mother died when he was nine.
* Had a terrible relationship with his wealthy merchant father.
* Expelled from university for accidentally killing another student in a duel.
* Became a wanted criminal for starting the Window Tax Riots.
* Becomes Gotrek's rememberer and accidentally dooms himself to being a murderhobo for the rest of his life. (All of this happened before the series even started.)
* Gets beaten and nearly raped by hillbillies. (''Trollslayer'')
* Has his first love killed by a goblin. (''Trollslayer'')
* Gets cucked out of his next love interest by her childhood sweetheart. (''Skavenslayer'')
* Said ex-love interest stole all his money after the breakup. (''Skavenslayer'')
* Being stuck in a love triangle with his third love interest and a friend of his from the Empire. (''Beastslayer'')
* Forced to watch yet another love interest leave him, this time because she got turned into a vampire. (''Vampireslayer'')
* Is briefly mind-controlled, along with Gotrek, into a fight to the death they barely escape from with their lives. (''Orcslayer'')
* Becomes estranged from his brother and puts his family at risk. (''Manslayer'')
* Gets his father murdered by Skaven. Vows revenge, but is never able to get it due to never encountering him again in the series. (''Elfslayer'')
* Left with a massive case of survivor's guilt over the deaths of many innocent slaves after Gotrek sinks a Dark Elf Black Ark. (''Elfslayer'')
* Gets disowned by his brother. (''Shamanslayer'')
* His fourth love interest almost dies from starvation and a curse from Heinrich Kemmler. (''Zombieslayer'')
* After marrying his fourth love interest and settling down with her, she suffers from constant illness for the rest of her life due to the curse. (''Kinslayer'')
* Forced to kill his former lover Ulrika. (''Kinslayer'')
* Has his friendship with Gotrek nearly broken beyond repair after Gotrek kills Snorri. (''Kinslayer'')
* Realizes he's a pawn of fate and all the suffering he's been through in life was to ensure that he stayed Gotrek's companion. (''Slayer'')
* Never gets to see his brother, nephew, wife and daughter before the End Times and can only presume they probably died at the fall of Altdorf. (''Slayer'')
* Ends up suffocating to death in a Dwarf ruin. (''Slayer'')
* A whole list of miscellaneous extremely painful injuries he suffered over his adventures that are too minor to list here.

== The Doom of the Dwarf and the End of All Things ==
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 an 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:

# Every Elf in the world is now dead.
# Every Grudge in the Book of Grudges is counted as fulfilled.(yeah but the dwarfs are fucking destroyed so yes!!! <strike>but not really</strike> Whatever, for a dwarf death is a small price to pay for settling a grudge)
# Gotrek gets to fight everything forever.

== The Dwarf in the Age of Sigmar ==
[[File:BLLiveReveals-Jun1-GotrekMini1coiy.jpg|400px|thumb|right|"Now I think I know why I came back! The Realmgate Wars are done, so I hear, and half your so-called gods were ready to put their feet up! But they have neglected to remember one important thing! GOTREK'S ALIIIIVE!" -Gotrek Gurnisson's new model based on his appearance since the audio drama Realmslayer, where he is voiced by [[Awesome|BRIAN BLESSED!]]]]{{Topquote|Tell your master that Gotrek Gurnisson hasn't forgotten his oaths! I'm coming for [[Nagash|them]] [[Chaos_Gods|all]]! And I want my axe back!|Gotrek Gurnisson, Realmslayer}}

[https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/02/14/the-slayer-returns/ Looks like we might have been a bit premature there.] Gotrek's back in the realm of the living, getting used to the [[Age of Sigmar|Mortal Realms]] and ready to find his old friend Felix. He has no idea how he got spat out of the Realm of Chaos or why he was unable to meet his long awaited doom (although he is very cross with Grimnir, who he feels has betrayed him by not letting him meet said doom), but it seems Grimnir might have had even greater things in store for the dwarf. Ever since he absorbed a powerful rune from the Fyreslayers and unintentionally became an avatar of Grimnir in their eyes, there's also been lot of folks affiliated with Order who have an interest in keeping him alive. Much to his annoyance, of course.

Gotrek has since then been on various quests and has been working hard to keep up his reputation as the most lucky/unlucky Slayer alive as nothing has been able to kill him so far.
Something that seems to give no end of frustration to Maleneth Witchblade the Daughters of Khain Shadowblade, as she can´t return without the masterune and can´t seem to persuade Gotrek to return with her to Azyrheim and her employers are getting impatient.

One thing that certainly doesn´t help Gotrek's chances of a worthy doom is that he is now able to go super saiyan/become a living incarnation of Grimnir with a beard of fire and everything, all thanks to the rune in his chest and the fact that Grimnir is speaking to him through it, neither of which Gotrek seems to like very much. Another new quirk possibly connected to his new found “godly avatar” status is his apparent ability to heal the memories of Stormcast Eternals just be being near him. Both main Stormcast who have traveled with him (Jordaeus and Trachos) have been able to remember parts of their old lives and even restore fractured psyche in the case of the latter.

His latest character development is that Gotrek has come to accept that his world is gone and have accepted this new world and the mantle of fyreslayer, though he seems determined to continue his quest to find axes and hope to one day come across Felix once more. He has a rather touching moment at the end of the Realmslayer: Blood of the Old World audiobook, where he can hear Felix under the rubble through the Old World portal right before he destroys it, reciting the last pages of his adventures and wishing to see his wife and daughter one last time. With a heavy heart, Gotrek says goodbye to his beloved friend and rememberer, hoping they may meet each other again someday.

Naturally, [[Thanquol]] was [[Rage|less than happy]] to learn his arch-enemy had survived the End Times.

== The Dwarf in Print ==
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. In practice this is because the ones that are part of the main story follow this pattern, the side stories don't. The last entry before AoS, appropriately enough, is just called Slayer. This has, in fact, returned in the current books, with the main one called Ghoulslayer...and the introductory series? Called Realmslayer.

== The Dwarf 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. Sadly, [[The End Times]] came and went with no sign of the duo on the tabletop.

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/ (Original source: http://web.archive.org/web/20041118233110/http://uk.games-workshop.com/warhammerworld/warhammer/regiments_of_renown/gotfel.htm)

Good news everybody! Gotrek is back for Age of Sigmar. Felix is currently indisposed as discussed earlier, but Gotrek is back with a fancy new model in all his badass slayer glory, much to the annoyance of many Skaven players. Not mountable without some overlap on a square base unless its 40x40mm (best Unit Filler ever though) or you cut him off his badass base, which is forgivable if you stick him on something more impressive than some rubble and dead Skaven (so Be'lakor's severed head doesn't count).

Gotrek is the biggest murder machine in AoS now, bar none. Greater demons, gods of death, even archaon, all have no chance. His axe, Zhangrom-Thaz, is a 6-attack 3+/3+/-2/3 monstrosity, but the real frosting on the cake (or in this case, the beard on the dwarf) is that he gets to reroll all to-hit and to-wound rolls, which is damn insane. But's that's not all! Each time he rolls a 6 to hit, he deals ''D6 MORTAL WOUNDS''. with six attacks, that's an average of once every time he fights. Just to top it all off, if anyone's still alive at the end of the combat phase, Gotrek can fight ''again.'' he's also a tough bastard: The ''Avatar of Grimnir'' ability not only reduces the damage value of any multi-damage attack to one, but if a spell or ability would outright slay him, it just deals one mortal wound. Throw on that he ignores wounds and mortal wounds on 3+, he can eat up a frankly disgusting amount of punishment.
Perhaps the only way to kill him (or at least slow him down enough) is through massive tarpits that have access to mortal wound saves, and all the better if you can resurrect those models. In short, a massive blob of Spirit Hosts with all the resurrection abilities you can afford.
All in All, Gotrek is back in style and ready to cut a bloody path across the mortal realms.

== [[Total War: Warhammer]] ==

[[File:Gotrek headpile03 rainbow-1024x576.jpg|400px|thumb|right|I'll '''''RUIN''''''em alright, WITH MY AXE!!!]]

Confirmed to appear in Total War: Warhammer II on October 17th (though [[White Dwarf]] readers can get a code with the September issue just the same way it was with Grombindal) on campaign they are available for The Empire, Dwarfs and Bretonnia as a mercenary Legendary Lord (Gotrek) and Hero (Felix) - and yes, [[Awesome|BRIAN BLESSED has reprised the role of Gotrek for the game]]. Their use is time limited (but long enough to do a big job) and they will disappear when Gotrek's deathseeker instinct triggers. Though they will reappear to the player after some time later even better. Amusingly, the AI can recruit Gotrek and Felix as well. So if you're playing as a villainous faction, you'll get multiple chances to cut the two of them down with ratling guns, black orks, or whatever doomstack your armies are running around with.

In Total War: Warhammer III - Immortal Empires, the Gotrek and Felix recruitment dilemma becomes accessible to Kislev and Cathay. While the Kislev visit is lore friendly, Cathay is a bit far away from their usual stomping grounds. Maybe Black Library will release a story about the two of them getting shipwrecked in China when GW releases Warhammer: The Old World.

In multiplayer battle, both Gotrek and Felix are heroes instead of lords. Felix is the more useful of the two since he comes with some pretty beefy support auras as opposed to Gotrek who is an expensive footslogging beatstick who goes down quickly due to his non-existent slayer defenses.

[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]][[Category:Black Library]][[Category:Dwarfs]] [[Category:Regiments of Renown]]

Knightly Orders of the Empire

2023-06-02T01:13:10Z

2605:BA00:6208:2AB4:E1CD:6BCB:A53F:1B2F:

{{Topquote | '''Hear me, heathens, and wizards, and serpents of sin! All your dastardly doings are past, for a holy endeavor is now to begin and virtue shall triumph at last!!'''|- Don Quixote a famous estalian knight}}
[[File:Empire Knights.jpg|thumb|right|500px|Eat your heart out [[Bretonnia]]]]
The Knightly Orders of the Empire are... pretty much what it says on the tin, Orders of Knights. Formed almost exclusively from nobles or higher born members of the Empire (because why the fuck would you want to hang out with dirty commoners), the Knightly Orders are separate organizations to the standing armies of the Empire and are used by nobles as a means to find military glory, or further their careers in politics or as generals in the Empire. Since the Knightly orders are outside the general jurisdiction of the standing armies, knights can go pretty much anywhere in (and outside of) the Empire and can generally fight who and where they choose, though the Elector Counts and Emperor can order knights to battlefields where they are needed. The Knights are typically self supplied and as a result are far better equipped compared to your standard [[State Troops|state trooper]], since some rich noble won't want to risk his life mucking about with gambeson and a crude sword, so each knight is equipped with the best armour and best weapons he can afford, for both him and his horse. Full plate, Shields, Barding, Lances, the works. Empire Knights are so heavily armed the only other things that come close are [[Warriors of Chaos|Chaos Knights]].

Each of the Orders have their own Chapterhouses, which they maintain and which house the serving members of the order. Chapterhouses can vary greatly from Order to Order, from a network of chapterhouses spread across multiple provinces (or even countries) to a single fortress out in the boonies. Each order has their own beliefs, traditions and duties, usually determined by the manner in which they were founded: some orders have some kind of sworn duty that dictates all of their other activities, some simply exist as military organizations attached to certain towns, and some, the templar orders, devote themselves to the service of one of the many gods of the Empire. While typically a Knightly Order will send knights to the aid of those who ask, these traditions can make dealing with certain orders difficult. Overall, outside of specific circumstances, these orders will acquiesce to be integrated into the command structure of larger imperial or provincial armies for the duration of conflicts.

==Orders Which Have Received Official Model Support From GW==

===[[Reiksguard Knights|Reiksguard]]===
[[File:2f4549df055067254786d43acbf16012.jpg|thumb|right|300px]]
The '''Grand Order of the Reiksguard Knights''' is sworn to protect the Emperor and the Imperial bloodline. Based in [[Reikland]] (duh), their main Chapterhouse is found in [[Altdorf]], with smaller houses found throughout the rest of the province, allowing them to react quickly to threats. They are often involved in any action that includes armies from Reikland, and members will act as advisors and bodyguards for Generals, sometimes leading armies themselves at times. They have no real combat specialization as the other Knightly Orders do, but the prestige associated with being the Emperor's personal guard on and off the battlefield more than makes up for this. Their Grand Master is [[Kurt Helborg]].
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===Knights of Morr===
[[File:Black Guard of Morr.jpg|thumb|right|300px]]
Also called the Black Guard, this order dedicated to [[Morr]] specializes in killing undead and guarding the graveyards of the Empire and other countries. Their main Chapterhouse is in Luccini, a city in [[Tilea]], though they have smaller chapterhouses in the Empire. These knights are noted as having a very grim attitude and are sworn to silence when on duty, though they can speak during combat. Their armour is made out of pure obsidian (don't ask us how, or if that would be any use [it wouldn't be, obsidian is several times softer than steel]) and is padded to mean they make very little noise when walking around, adding to their "silent as the grave" thing they have going on. They also are permitted to use ranged weapons like crossbows and handguns as they commonly fight Necromancers and Vampires, where concepts such as martial honor serve no purpose but to get you killed quicker.
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===Knights of the Blazing Sun===
[[File:blazing sun charge.png|thumb|right|300px]]
Founded just before the the Great Crusade against [[Araby]], a group of Knights were stationed in [[Estalia]] when the armies of [[Araby]] attacked the city of Magritta. These 60 knights became trapped in a temple of [[Myrmidia]] and were pretty much done for, until an act of god(dess) occurred. An Earthquake hit the city and dislodged a statue of Myrmidia which crushed the Araby soldiers and their general as they were trying to get into the temple and allowed the Knights to escape and turn the tide of the battle as well as evacuating over 700 civilians. Believing that the Earthquake had been sent by [[Myrmidia]] the Knights dedicated themselves to the goddess, rather than blame the thing on dumb luck and shitty Estalian stone masonry, and took part in the Araby Crusades as revenge for the invasion of Estalia. They wear Golden Armour (or Black/Silver with gold highlights depending on your [[Video games|Vidya]] of choice) with the sun being a reoccurring symbol on their armour, and they have two main Chapterhouses with one in [[Talabecland]] and the other in [[Averland]]. Despite this, the knights will actually spend most of their time away from their Chapterhouses, typically travelling around the Empire and other parts of the world in groups and offering their services and aiding towns under attack which makes them a very widespread order and one of the fastest to react to threats to the Empire, such as when [[Asavar Kul]] started his murder party in [[Kislev]] during the Great War against Chaos, they were one of the first Knightly Orders to get a sizable force across the border into [[Kislev]] to fight the Chaos Hordes.
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[[File:Knight of the White Wolf portrait.jpg|thumb|right|300px]]
===Knights of the White Wolf===
Basically the fantasy equivalent of the [[Space Wolves]], but cool and with less of a [[Furry]] [[/d/|fetish]]. These knights adhere to the cult of [[Ulric]] and wear wolf pelts, which they need to go and hunt down themselves to join the Order. Magnificent beards are also required for entry. They are actually the oldest knightly order in the entire world, having been founded 2,500 years ago when Sigmar ruled as the first Emperor, and to no one's surprise they are based in [[Middenheim]]. They differentiate themselves from other Knightly Orders by not wearing helmets or using shields, but instead using two-handed [[Warhammer]]s that they use from horseback to dome in the heads of the Beastmen that they are running down. This makes them more vulnerable to attacks than other knights, but the pay off is that they are far more brutal after the charge and in the ensuing melee as they swing their hammers round, sending bones, teeth and grey matter flying as they replace the childhood memories of their opponents with blunt steel. Due to their worship of Ulric the knights guard temples of Ulric around the Empire, not just in [[Middenland]] and they are loyal to the Ar-Ulric (the Wolfman pope) acting as both his bodyguard and agents who go around spreading the good word of Ulric. The word is usually "THWACK!"
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===Knights Panther===
[[File:Knight Panther on foot.png|thumb|right|300px]]
Established after the Great Crusade against [[Araby]] and named after the exotic panther pelts that soldiers brought back from Araby, these knights are dedicated to upholding the [[/pol/|racial purity of the empire]] by killing mutants and as such have a colossal hate boner for [[Chaos]]. They are constantly sending groups of knights into the [[Drakwald]] and other forests to flush out the [[Beastmen]] and [[Orcs and Goblins|Greenskins]] that reside in them and scour them from the Empire. They maintain a fort near [[Carroburg]], as well as over a dozen smaller chapterhouses throughout the Empire and two large chapterhouses in [[Middenheim]] and [[Talabheim]]. They are very recognisable as they like to keep up a rather splendid appearance with large ornaments on their helmets and their exotic animals skins they wear as cloaks, just to help them stand out against other knights and show how much of a bunch of poncy assholes they are. That said they still can fight very well and the Knights Panther have been instrumental in halting many threats to the Empire, including the recent Orc rompfest that was [[Azhag the Slaughterer|Azhag]], when the Grand Marshall of the order slayed the warboss, [[Nagash|though he was distracted at the time]].
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==Orders Which Have Not==

===Knights Encarmine===
Foppish rich dilettantes. They only take part in campaigns that will [[Galactic Partridges|give them the most glory while requiring the least actual work]]. They specialize in a unique technique of dual-wielding swords on horseback, as this looks extremely impressive and they consider themselves above the use of shields. Despite being absolutely insufferable before, during, and after a battle and possessing the teamwork skills of seagulls who all just saw someone drop a single fry, they are highly skilled individual fighters.
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===Knights Griffon===
Founded by Magnus the Pious. They recruit only from the nobility of [[Nuln]], and are tasked with protecting Temples of [[Sigmar]] across the Empire. The order is extremely well-drilled and renowned for its skill in battle as well as its impeccable sense of style. This can often lead to arrogance, which alongside their place in the Grand Temple of Sigmar in Altdorf and their role as bodyguards to the higher clergy, often puts them at odds with the Reiksguard and the Knights of the Fiery Heart.
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===Knights of Sigmar's Blood===
An old order with a proud history and a highly selective acceptance policy to match. Knights in training must spend a year in study at the church of Sigmar, where they are judged by the priests as to their worthiness to join. Currently led by Hans Leitdorf, a pious man who seems to be much more mentally stable than his Elector Count brother was.
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===Knights of Taal's Fury===
They all ride demigryphs instead of horses. Dedicated the god [[Taal]] (who would've guessed?) and therefore specializing in hunting [[Beastmen]], whose very existence is an affront to their god. New initiates must go into the forest and capture a wild demigryph to be their mount. Possibly as a result of this extremely dangerous initiation, the Knights of Taal's Fury tend to be superstitious, carrying good luck charms into battle and participating in annual standard blessings in the Talabec. They tend to prefer cavalry halberds to lances due to the relatively unarmored nature of their chosen enemies.
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===Knights of the Black Bear===
An order of boisterous but highly skilled knights stationed in [[Averland]]. Each of this order's tournaments opens with the Grand Master wrestling a bear, a practice that has led to a remarkably high Grand Master turnover rate. It's rumored that the founding legend that started this tradition- that a nobleman slew a bear, saving the lady who would endow the chapter and made her savior its first grand master- is a complete falsehood, and that the order takes its name from a tavern in Averheim, but if one of the knights hears you say this you will get bisected. Notable for playing The Most Dangerous Game with random [[Halflings (Warhammer)|Halflings]] when bored until the practice was outlawed in the Empire- likely for the best, considering [[Marius Leitdorf]]'s opinions on the <s>thieving runty little bastards, probably chaos spies as well</s> people of the Moot.
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===Knights of the Black Lynx===
Stationed in [[Black Fire Pass]]. Unlike other knights, they rarely fight on horseback, preferring instead to silently sneak up on enemies on foot. The order was created by [[Marius Leitdorf]] to honor the 9 survivors of a 400-man force who gave their lives to ensure an Averland victory over a far superior number of Orcs. They now operate as an elite unit within the Mountain Guard, favoring halberds and zweihanders.

===Knights of the Black Rose===
Founded during the Age of Three Emperors, and infamous for switching allegiances three separate times during those same wars. They are dedicated to the god [[Morr]], which doesn't help with them making their allies nervous. Stationed in [[Talabecland]]. For now.
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</gallery>

===Knights of the Broken Sword===
Started as a group of freelancers gathered by Dott Barthos to hunt down a band of Beastmen led by Sizlak Grimhoof. The cleft-in-twain skull of Grimhoof and the broken sword of Barthos are kept in the chapterhouse in memory of their victory over the Beastmen. They tend to be a bit unstable and are usually overeager to attack their hated foes, but will fight to the last just like their first grand master.
<gallery>
broken sword emblem.png
broken sword model.jpg
</gallery>

===Knights of the Everlasting Light===
Dedicated to [[Verena]]. The entire order has been [[Lamenters|cursed so that its members will only die ignoble deaths]], supposedly for the war crimes their founders committed in Araby. Their curse is completely absurd in its pettiness, ranging from embarrassing collisions with manure carts during parades to the entire goddamn chapter house being swallowed in an earthquake, and it ensures that only exceedingly stupid fates await each knight. Fortunately for everybody else, the attitude of "Well, we're going to die anyway, so we might as well try to make it look good on a grand scale" has turned the order into (briefly) living patron saints of lost causes who will fight when nobody else will, acting with near suicidal bravery on the off chance that it will lead to a noble death or might be the last heroic act needed to lift their curse.
<gallery>
Everlasting light heraldry.png
Everlasting light model.jpg
</gallery>

===Knights of the Fiery Heart===
Personal bodyguard of the Grand Theogonist (Sigmarite pope). Historically, their order has had good relations with dwarfs, and every few years a member quests to [[Karak Eight-Peaks]] to find the legendary sword Karaghul. What they don't know is that Karaghul has already been nicked by [[Gotrek & Felix]]. Probably for the best that they keep busy so they don't butt heads with the other knightly orders involved in Altdorf politics.
<gallery>
fiery heart shield.png
</gallery>

===Knights of the Gold Lion===
Founded during the Great Crusade when a knight tried to cheer up his companions after a crushing defeat by wandering into the savannah, killing a lion, and bringing back its head as a sign of Sigmar's favor. For some reason, this ridiculous plan worked, and the order and its lion heraldry have endured. They are annoyingly noble, almost to the point of Bretonnian behavior.
<gallery>
gold lion banner.jpg
gold lion shield.jpg
gold lion demigryph.jpg
knight lion.png
gold lion model.jpg
</gallery>

===Knights of the Sacred Scythe===
Fanatic vampire hunters based in Eastern [[Stirland]]. They terrify (and when they deem it necessary, terrorize) the peasantry with their grim heraldry and are pariahs wherever they are known, but their vigilant guarding of the Sylvanian border is important, dangerous, and dirty work that nobody else wants to take up.
<gallery>
Knight sacred scythe.png
sacred scythe model.jpg
</gallery>

===Knights of the Twin-Tailed Orb===
An order of templars located deep in the [[Worlds Edge Mountains]], where they won't bother normal people with their somewhat concerning zeal. Ironically, [[Archaon]] was a member of this order before he... you know.

===Knights of the Vengeful Sun===
They ''also'' only ride demigryphs, this time by decree of the chapter master rather than for religious reasons: After a major flanking action at the Battle of Ghoul Pass, it was decided that the entire chapter should use the extremely useful mounts despite their rarity. To make the process of obtaining a demigryph "easier," they are headquartered in Bogenhafen, in the heart of the Reikwald where the beasts are known to live.
<gallery>
vengeful sun banners.png
vengeful sun shields.png
vengeful sun lance.png
vengeful sun halberd.png
vengeful sun demigryph.png
</gallery>

===Knights of the Verdant Field===
An order created by Fantasy Flight Games for the Warhammer RPG. They are dedicated to [[Myrmidia]] and tasked with protecting the city of Talabheim in [[Talabecland]]. Originating from [[Knights of the Blazing Sun]] wanting to help out Talabheim but logically realizing the forests surrounding it hamper the use of heavily-armored lancers, their most archery-inclined and sufficiently-humble knights founded this new order. They don't wear the Gothic plate armor favored by the Empire's other knightly infantry, instead dressing like a stereotypical Ranger or Druid and act as skirmishers in the forests of Talabecland to counteract [[Beastmen]] raiders. Given their different portfolio in battle compared to other knights, they're almost uniquely willing to recruit new members from different walks of life compared to other orders.
<gallery>
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</gallery>

[[Category:The Empire]]
[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]]
[[Category:Knightly Orders]]

World of Darkness

2023-06-02T00:15:40Z

2605:BA00:6208:2AB4:E1CD:6BCB:A53F:1B2F: Infernalists don't just ruin the lives of other humans they even ruin their demonic overlords lives too!!

{{Grimdark}}
{{Game Infobox
|name = World of Darkness
|type = [[RPG]]
|picture = [[Image:WoD logo.png|200px]]
|publisher = [[White Wolf]] / Onyx Path
|system = [[World of Darkness#The System|Storyteller System / Storytelling System]]
|year = 1991 / 2004
}}
The '''''World of Darkness''''' is two different lines of [[RPG]]s published by [[White Wolf]] and later [[White Wolf|Onyx Path]] (and later still by both of them at once, it's complicated) that focus on deep role-playing and, depending on the specific sub-game, the horror genre. The setting can only be described as the modern world, but [[Grimdark|worse in every aspect]]: every creeping suspicion you have is probably true, and the world is as dirty and corrupt as it often seems to be. In the old ''World of Darkness'', each game was meant to be played separately; as a result the games often had conflicting metaplots, and despite using the same basic "Storyteller System" the games were incompatible when it came to various supernatural powers. The release of a new ''World of Darkness'' (with an updated ruleset, the "Storytelling System") features a core book that contains the basic rules for all the games, and focuses on normal human beings in horrific situations that may or may not be supernatural in nature. The new games interact in a modular fashion and also have little established fluff, making it more malleable for Storytellers (the in-game term for [[GM]]; abbreviated as "ST"). The new line has also been trying to avoid the old Gothic feel for which its predecessor was known (specifically with ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]''), in favor of a slightly more traditional form of horror.

As of December 2015 the new line has been renamed '''''Chronicles of Darkness''''' to allow its setting to exist separately from the now-relaunched original setting (rebranded as '''''Classic World of Darkness''''').

== The System ==
The basic system in both the new and old World of Darkness revolves around a dicepool of '''d10'''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s. Your [[dice pool]] consists of a number of dice equal to your relevant ability score plus your skill and other relevant modifiers.

In oWoD/cWoD, the [[GM|Storyteller]] sets the difficulty for each roll depending on the circumstances, with the default being a difficulty of 7. A '''success''' is a roll of that difficulty or higher (7 or above, on most rolls). A roll of 1 is called a '''botch'''. If any number of 1's are rolled, they cancel out a single success. No more than one success can be cancelled out in this way, so critical failures (A botch with zero successes) are relatively rare. The net number of successes determines how well you succeed, with one success meaning that you are barely able and a greater number indicating better achievement. When you get zero net successes (if you get no successes or if your 1s cancel out your successes, or if you get at least one success and more ones than successes), you fail the roll. When you get zero successes and at least one 1, you botch-- a critical and spectacular failure. If you have a '''specialty''' in either your attribute or ability that is relevant on the roll, you may reroll all 10s to gain extra successes, and rolls of 1 on these rerolls do not count.

In nWoD/CoD, a success is an 8, 9, or 10, and 10s [[exploding die|explode]]. A critical success is made when you get five or more successes. Instead of altering the target number of the roll, difficulty and circumstances increase or reduce the number of dice in the pool. When your dice pool is reduced to zero or less, you get a chance die. You roll the die normally, but only succeed on a ten (which still explodes) and if you get a one you get a critical failure. All other rolls are called simple failures, although any simple failure can be turned into a critical failure by the player in return for bonus Beats (basically XP).

==== Short Summary of Old Game Lines ====
* Vampire: You're the bad guy. Your friends are also villains.
* Werewolf: You're fighting a war, and you're losing.
* Mage: You're fighting a war you already lost.
* Wraith: You lost, you died, and now you're trying to avoid a fate worse than death.
* Changeling: You're fighting a war you already lost and nobody is taking you seriously.
* Hunter: You're [[Imperial Guard|fighting a war where everyone's bigger than you and trying to kill you.]]
* Mummy: You're immortal. That's it.
* Demon: You're fighting a cold war with mixed results.
* Orpheus: You're mortal and dying temporarily is part of your job.

==== Short Summary of New Game Lines ====
* Vampire: You're still the bad guy, but there are even worse guys out there.
* Werewolf: You're the bastard kids of the mad goddess of the moon, acting as border patrol on the shores of animistic hell to atone for your ancestors' divine patricide. Your distant cousins skipped out and now try to kill you, and the spirits aren't a big fan of your work either.
* Mage: You lost the first war, but are planning to win the second.
* Promethean: You're Frankenstein's monster on a journey to become Pinocchio. The world itself hates you, so you have to keep moving to avoid the mobs that spring up around you.
* Changeling: You got kidnapped, but escaped, only to find someone stole your life and your god-like kidnapper wants you back.
* Hunter: You try to kill a few monsters, then you die. Your light gets snuffed out, only to light two more.
* Geist: You died and a ghost brought you back, and that ghost now shares your body.
* Mummy: You keep coming back from the dead and are forced by your bosses to find their stuff.
* Demon: You escaped from the Matrix and are now in a cold war with God, who is the Matrix.
* Beast: You're a colossal asshole who feeds the nightmare monster that replaced your soul by scaring people into psychological trauma.
* Deviant: Your soul has been broken and your body is turning into something monstrous. The only way you can be sure to stay sane and human is to get back at the bastards who did this to you.

== Old World of Darkness ==
Shortened as "'''oWoD'''", also known as '''Classic World of Darkness''' (itself shortened to "'''cWoD'''").

=== The Big Three ===
[[Image:WOD_old_1e_cover.jpeg|thumb|oWoD 1st edition cover]]
* '''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]:''' The original World of Darkness game. Covers playing vampire characters in the modern day World of Darkness. It gains its title from "The Masquerade", an in-game set of rules and guidelines dictated by the Camarilla sect in an attempt to keep the mortal populace unaware of vampires and their influence on society. This is also basically the only thing you can get more than one sect of vampires to agree on, and a lot of the game revolves around the resulting political intrigue. It is heavily influenced by gothic imagery and by a variety of different vampire mythos, including the romanticized version of the vampire popularized by Anne Rice.
* '''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]:''' Second game to be released set in the World of Darkness. The game covers playing werewolf characters known as Garou. It gains its title from one of the major antagonistic themes in the game where supernatural forces of corruption are attempting to bring about the Apocalypse. The game tends to degenerate into hack-and-slash, mainly since it was originally written like an author tract whose authors had conflicting messages.
* '''[[Mage: The Ascension]]:''' Player characters in this game come from a variety of backgrounds, both mortal and immortal and are unified by the fact that they all practice magic of one form or another. Magic is defined by the game as a force that can shape reality with the willpower, belief or special magical techniques of the user. Had a pretty sweet metaplot/setting, but was hamstrung by the extreme clumsiness of its mechanical system.

=== The Could Have Beens ===
* '''[[Wraith: The Oblivion]]:''' You died, and now you're a ghost. You can stay around the underworld and make spooky noises for eternity, destroy everything, get turned into someone's sweater while remaining conscious forever, fall into hell and cease to exist, or try and solve the issues keeping you as a ghost so you can move on to the afterlife. Oh - and that last one's illegal. Lots of ideas that sound good on paper but tear apart groups and ruin friendships in execution, like making each player ''also'' roleplay another player's manifested personal demons in one of the most depressive settings imaginable.

* '''[[Changeling: The Dreaming]]:''' The characters are fairy souls 'trapped' in human bodies to survive in the cold banal world. The game's theme centered heavily on the concept of Chimera, where things weren't magical or mundane, but both at once. So the real world would see an old butterknife, and it would be - but in the realm of faerie, it would also be a mystical longsword. The concept of Banality is unfortunately somewhat awkwardly implemented and requires some work by the Storyteller to appropriately function. The series was cut short and a number of expansions that were announced were never released, like the supplement for the Middle-East in the Year of the Scarab. This game was and is massively popular with otherkin since its premise is their delusion, and any people who play it likely believe themselves to be elves.

=== Apocalyptica ===
* '''[[Kindred of the East]]:''' You're essentially an Asian [[Revenant]]; you denied some part of your soul in life, and it found its way back to your body after you died. Now you've got to become Enlightened in order to deal with your shitty karma so you can escape the cycle of reincarnation or get into Heaven. The game was built more as an extension to Vampire: The Masquerade rather than its own game and was meant to be played specifically in the Far East, in the same way that Mummy: The Resurrection was made to specifically be played in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
* '''[[Hunter: The Reckoning]]:''' Mortals are imbued with weird powers by mysterious forces in a last-ditch effort to keep the world from circling the drain. Played according to the writing, it's [[Call of Cthulhu]] in the World of Darkness: a bunch of scared people who are going to die very horribly unless they're very cautious and paranoid. Played according to the art, it's the licensed video games.
* '''[[Mummy: The Resurrection]]:''' You play as a Mummy. Who has been Resurrected. And has access to a third-level power (out of five) that levels the town you're in. Mummies are people with unusual qualities who died too soon but were given a second chance at life. This compelled them to travel to the Middle East where they underwent a ritual that combined their spirit with that of an ancient Egyptian. Now they are the servants of Ma'at, the concept of divine justice and seek to destroy those who challenge Ma'at. Yes, this makes Mummies a lot like the Garou from Werewolf, but they don't walk around with bandages (unless they run out of Sekhem, the fuel for their powers, and want to slow the ensuing degradation of their bodies). Mummies are the closest thing to good guys in the World of Darkness, and have a very strict Morality track called Balance that can see a Mummy destroyed by the Judges of Ma'at if they violate it at a low level. There are only two books in the Mummy line: the core book and the Players Guide which adds new powers, as well as options for Mummies from middle and south America and China. Infamous for its vague goals and antagonists, to the point where even we don't have much on it.
* '''[[Demon: The Fallen]]:''' You're a former angel who sided with Lucifer in a [[Horus Heresy|well-intentioned but very misguided rebellion against God]], only to lose and get kicked into Hell. Now you've found a way out, and have to deal with a vastly changed world in which God and His angels are AWOL with the majority of [[Vampire:_The_Masquerade|every]] [[Hunter:_The_Reckoning|other]] [[Mage:_The_Ascension|faction]] in the world of darkness purging infernalists on sight while your old allies (having gone mad and pulled a total chaotic evil heel turn over the millennia) try to fuck everything up. Frequently derided for meddling heavily with the metaplots of other game lines like Vampire, Werewolf and Wraith, as well as its prominent Abrahamic trappings in a franchise where most of the gamelines are heavily influenced by non-Abrahamic faiths.
* '''[[Orpheus]]:''' It's like Flatliners meets Ghostbusters; focusing on teams that use cryogenics and astral projection to become semi-ghosts, all funded by a corporation called the Orpheus Group. And if you thought the Underworld from Wraith couldn't get more grimdark... well, think again.

=== Fan Games ===
* '''[http://www.scribd.com/doc/96117271/Gargoyles-the-Vigil Gargoyles: The Vigil]:''' A crossover with the cartoon ''Gargoyles'', there's work underway to convert it to GMC nWoD rules [http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/383957-converting-gargoyles-the-vigil here.]
* '''[[Greys: The Abduction]]:''' A short fan-expansion from 1997, has three different types of aliens.
* '''[[Highlander: The Gathering]] ([http://vampirerpg.free.fr/Rules/Highlander/ Link], [http://www.highlander.org/roleplaying/ alt]):''' Holy shit this is a fan-made supplement where life doesn't suck! You're immortal and extremely powerful, but still human. It's kill or be killed, though. So once The Gathering comes around you have to kill most of the friends you've made through the ages. Also has a neat custom sword fight system. If you've seen Highlander, you'll love it. If not, see Highlander 2 and The Source. There's also a LARP version called [http://www.greyhawkes.com/larp/highlarp.htm Highlander: The Quickening] made by different authors exists.
* '''[[Senshi: The Merchandising]]:''' A fan-game from the 90's that is a parody of ''Sailor Moon'' and the old WoD. Remember how Mages can bend reality to their whim? Well, now imagine a bunch of 90s anime nerds Ascending... ''"The Technocracy is STILL trying to cover up the 'Tokyo-3' disaster."''
* '''[http://techinfantry.stasheff.com/ Tech Infantry]:''' oWoD meets ''Starship Troopers'', has some parallels in the ''Mirrors: Infinite Macabre'' supplement for the nWoD.
* '''[[Zombie: The Coil]] ([http://gamingnerdsrus.co/forum/index.php?topic=91.0 Link]):''' A Fan-made expansion from 2001. Brai-i-ins and grimderp ensue.
* '''[[Atlantean: The Longing]]:''' Long lost descendants from the city of Atlantis try to survive in modern day by fighting ocean pollution. While fighting on the surface, they continuously have to resist the urge to go back into the ocean.
* '''[[Exalted Versus World of Darkness]]:''' ex-[[White Wolf]] writer Gordon Shearer gives a possible answer to what would happen if the World of Darkness was ''actually'' [[Exalted]]'s Creation, and now at the End of Days, the Exalted come back. Will they save the day? Or will just push things over the brink?

== New World of Darkness ==
Shortened as "'''nWoD'''", also known as '''Chronicles of Darkness''' (itself shortened to "'''CoD'''").

=== Core Rulebooks ===
[[Image:WODcover.jpg|thumb|nWoD cover]]
* '''The Storytelling System Rulebook'''
:The core rulebook unifies the rule systems of the other game lines, as well as provides a basic system with which to play as mortal humans, and some barebones ghosts rules that are added onto in nearly every publication where ghosts are relevant. [http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/114078 The second edition update] is available as a free pdf online and it replaces the old "Victorian" morality system with one that's more modern, and also includes most of the improvements from the ''God Machine Chronicle'' (see below).
:* '''God Machine Chronicle:''' Essentially the second edition of the core rulebook. Brings in a new morality system, "Integrity", with breaking points instead of the hierarchy of sins. Along with systems of conditions and "beats". If you don't mind the notion of God being a celestial laptop or the increased micro-management of the system, it's worth looking at as it's a big update over the old version. For better or worse depends on how you look at it.

Expanding on the core rules, White Wolf decided to release a bunch of books expanding on the core rules to make the basic NWoD/CoD system a viable game in its own right. These books are, in order of release:

* '''Antagonists:''' A whole slew of antagonists for the core game, but could also theoretically be used in the main games (especially Hunter). Includes a whole bunch of zombies including the regular kind, the primitive Prometheans called the Imbued (no relation to Hunter: The Reckoning) and those ghosts who have reentered their bodies and became Revenants in order to enact revenge. Others include a basic version of Hunters (best used as antagonists), cults of all kind and a variety of other monsters.
* '''Armory:''' Guns, a whole lot of them. Also armor, vehicles and of course swords and such. A good book to have when playing any NWoD game that relies heavily on equipment. The book takes a very responsible and mature look at weaponry without disrespecting the player's intelligence.
* '''Second Sight:''' Psychic powers, Low Magic and magical monsters for those games where using Mage: The Awakening is too high power.
* '''Skinchangers:''' Yep, skinwalkers. Not all as evil as you'd think, just... don't piss them off.
* '''Book of Spirits:''' Geist of those of you who don't want to use Geist. A good book for those who fall victim to the realm of spirits as well as those who try to conquer it.
* '''Asylum:''' Horror stories set in insane asylums are very common, so it's logical that the World of Darkness jumps that bandwagon. Also includes an in-depth look at an example asylum: Bishopgate.
* '''Reliquary:''' Everybody knows that magical items are the Good Shit, even if they're cursed. There's a ton of premade items here as well as easy rules to make your own.
* '''Changing Breeds:''' You know how Forsaken removed all the bad things from Apocalypse? Now imagine if you take all those bad things, slap them together, double, triple and quadruple down on them and have "Satyros" [[Phil Brucato]] write it. One of the worst core WoD books.
* '''Innocents:''' An add-on for the core book, you're just a kid who has to deal with the realities of the world revealing themselves to you. If you survive you'll most likely either be institutionalized, a Hunter, or a serial killer. Or more than one. Or a monster, that works too. The book you'll want if you want to play a Stranger Things game.
* '''Dogs of War:''' The stories of black ops military units dealing with the supernatural. Perfect for those times you want to go all Delta Green, including how normal soldiers deal with the supernatural, how armies work as well as the more... irregular units.
* '''Inferno:''' Rules for old-fashioned demons (or angels) almost completely different from the fallen angels of both God himself and the God Machine. As it was one of the earlier supplements, it is horribly incompatible with the GMC rules update, being focused on one half of the old morality system. Contains rules for both demons themselves and the Possessed, those unfortunates possessed by a demon and now have to deal with the perverse being living inside their head.
* '''Slasher:''' Despite being a Hunter book in all but name, Slasher can still be used on its own to create a whole bunch of serial killers to use as antagonists in a core WoD game. Also contains rules for their use in Hunter games, including a gentleman's club for serial killers and those who hunt them: the FBI's Vanguard Serial Crimes Unit (VASCU) and its psychic operatives.
* '''Armory Reloaded:''' How do you stop a grisly tentacled horror from tearing you apart? [[Team Fortress 2|Use a gun. And if that don't work? Use more gun.]] Contains rules for fighting styles, high-tech weapons, blessed and cursed weapons and alternate rules for combat. Infamous for allowing the creation of some of the most powerful mortals the World of Darkness has ever seen.
* '''Immortals:''' A supplement that was released for immortal characters that follow different ideas of immortality. Except out of the 3 Immortals in the book, the first jumps off the karma meter so fast its unplayable, primarily because its Immortality is powered by bathing in a '''LOT''' of blood, preferably virgin but any human will do. The second, the Body Thief, is almost playable but again the karma meter gets in the way of anything involving the whole body swapping thing, resulting in the character becoming unplayable again. The third Immortal lives off some sort of mystic Chi/Kai stuff and is basically powered by Feng Shui. It's the only one that could be considered playable, and the authors must have realized this because its much better worked then the others which seem to have been intended as pure NPCs initially and then left as they are now.
* '''Book of the Dead:''' Think the Book of Spirits mixed with Geist and the result is poured into a sourcebook. Good for Geist games (and also its ONLY sourcebook), but if you want to use this for a core WoD game you might as well play Geist instead.
* The '''Mirrors''' supplements and '''Translation Guides:''' Modifications for the Storytelling System itself as well as hints on adapting it for different genres (the former) while the latter guides allowed mix-and-match rules from the three main game-lines of ''oWoD'' and ''nWoD''. It's notable that the Guides not only go through the crunch but also have chapters with suggestions of how you might fluffwise justify having one nWoD Mage order here or an cWoD tribe of Werewolves there for both New and Classic World of Darkness games. So if you for example really miss Clan [[Tzimisce]] in Vampire: The Requiem or think Requiem did the [[Nosferatu]] better but you still wanna run Vampire: The Masquerade, have a look in the Vampire Translation Guide and you'll get separate chapters covering both the fluff and the crunch for porting them over from Masquerade into Requiem or vice versa.
* '''''Dudes of Legend: How To Be Fucking Awesome:''''' A joke supplement released on April 1st 2010, Dudes of Legend relentlessly pokes fun at both itself, White Wolf and the conventions of the RPG genre as a whole. Expect lesbian stripper ninjas, katanas and trenchcoats, magical gays, a more traditional XP system and loot drops from everyone you kill. It's a good laugh and might make for the ideal supplement if you're into that sort of game. Unfortunately White Wolf started to take itself way too seriously since and we'll never see a supplement like this one again.

Since the advent of Chronicles of Darkness only a few core books have been released specifically for that ruleset:

* '''Dark Eras:''' A 600 page behemoth of a tome detailing a variety of historical settings in which you can play Chronicles of Darkness. From the advent of the world where you play werewolves babysitting humanity so that it won't get eaten by the monsters of the wild, all the way up to to werewolves in the New York of the 70s. Contains settings for every gameline out there, but they are rather fixed: so if you want to play a Hunter during the Great War or a Mage during the fall of Constantinople you're out of luck. Also infamous for being very expensive: the standard hardcover book is $65 while the deluxe hardcover clocks in at $100, which many people feel is way too fucking expensive for a single book that you won't even use all the content of.
:* '''Dark Eras Companion:''' The same as Dark Eras but more. A Kickstarter goal turned into a 300 page book ($40 regular hardcover $60 premium hardcore) that does the same but more and for a higher price.
:* '''Dark Eras 2''': The same as Dark Eras but EVEN MORE. Just as big and expensive as the first. Has settings ranging from wandering around The Seven Wonders of the Hellenistic era to Arabian Nights-inspired Persia to the French Revolution to The Wild West to WWI trench warfare to 1950's MAD SCIENCE!!! Has more blurbs for splats outside the main ones an Era focuses on.
* '''Hurt Locker:''' A book on pain and violence, as well as a half-dozen templates to make normal mortals a bit more attuned to violence. It takes a rather mature take on violence and injury... until you reach the Plain template; normal people who deal with violence by using radical pacifism. Yes, that's right: you can defuse a violent situation by getting punched in the face and not fighting back.
* '''The Contagion Chronicle:''' Formerly referred to as The Crossover Chronicle, this series will add a new set of chronicle hooks, potential settings, and cross-template factions geared specifically around allowing parties composed of multiple types of supernatural beings to cooperate without killing each other. The metaplot concerns The Contagion, a metaphysical sickness in The God-Machine that causes reality to break down even more than the G-M makes it do already. Supernatural creatures (and Hunters, for some unexplained reason) are the only ones who can tell when The Contagion has struck an area -- normal humans ignore a Contagion outbreak, which means you get things like nobody thinking it's weird people don't die anymore or just accepting people can walk up walls or randomly explode or whatever fucked-up thing is happening now. There are 5 Sworn splats (generally where the PCs will wind up, mostly concerned about watching, containing, or curing a Contagion Outbreak) and 3 False factions (who are either Blow It All Up zealots, using The Contagion to fuel their own schemes, or flatout working to spread it so they can rule over the ashes when everything else collapses). As with most of the CoD, there's no set canon reason of what's causing the Contagion, just a bunch of things it ''could'' be...up to and including The God-Machine being ''dead'' but not realizing it yet.

=== Principal Games ===
* '''[[Vampire: The Requiem]]:''' 13 Clans with fleshed out, restricting histories become 5 clans with vague, open-ended histories and multiple Bloodlines (sub-clans). The Camarilla becomes 5 Covenants with mutually exclusive goals. The Sabbat becomes VII, the Infernalists become the more sporadic, less-organized Belial's Brood. Arguably the biggest difference is that you can't just make someone a Vampire by draining them and feeding them your blood, now you have to permanently spend a dot of Humanity to do it. An alternate setting in ancient Rome also exists, which contains a history of the Carmarilla (and how it collapsed with the rest of the Roman Empire). Additionally, a new set of antagonists in the form of the Strix, which are demonic owl-like creatures bent on purging every last trace of Humanity from vampire society (to the point where even a Humanity 0 vampire is ''too human'' for them) and can possess corpses and vampires to lash out at mortals and undead alike.
* '''[[Werewolf: The Forsaken]]:''' A slightly more "balanced" version of Werewolf. You can't run around in 8-foot tall invincible war-form all the time, and you see humans as a flock of idiotic sheep that you have to protect from malicious spirits due to a vow sworn by your ancient ancestors as punishment for divine patricide. The "adjustments" resulted, possibly intentionally, in the average werewolf no longer being a match for the average vampire, a criticism invariably met with statements regarding the relative level of coordination between werewolf packs and vampire coteries. An example of a well run Werewolf: the Forsaken game is [http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?446663-Werewolf-The-Forsaken-quot-Detroit-Rock-City-quot Detroit Rock City]. It is written in novel format for ease of reading, played over Skype.
* '''[[Mage: The Awakening]]:''' Mechanically simplified and involving more magic usage than [[Mage: The Ascension|M:tAsc]], M:tA's biggest criticism is that it doesn't have as compelling a plot — specifically, the revised political landscape is the most frequent target of attack. Its second edition fixed most of that though, and it bears repeating that its rules for magic allow for a lot more freedom than what Ascension let you do.

=== Limited Release Games ===
* '''[[Promethean: The Created]]:''' Frankenstein: The RPG. You're a scorned mockery of humanity, most likely abandoned by your creator, left to fend for yourself in a world that wants you dead. You're perpetually dazed and confused, always trying to pick up the ways of humans, but you can never make real friends and have to live as a nomad because the very thing that keeps you alive also makes people hate you and poisons the land around you. Only five books, but it pretty much covers all the bases. Surprisingly, it's actually rather optimistic since in theory you can make like Pinocchio and become a true human under the right circumstances.
* '''[[Changeling: The Lost]]:''' No longer are the Changelings faeries, but humans kidnapped by the True Fae and twisted into something not quite mortal. Managed to do the exact opposite of its predecessor and sell enough copies that they extended the series instead of cutting it short. It completed its run with nine books and a long-awaited web enhancement.
* '''[[Hunter: The Vigil]]:''' Hunter, without the ridiculously overpowered gifts. You're just an average Joe with more information than other people, and on occasion ties to people with some special toys that let you use powers that can border on the supernatural themselves. For instance, you might channel the power of your demonic heritage to smite people with hellfire, you might have bullets that are extra-effective against vampires, or you might have access to religious rites that bless your weapons with the power to hurt ghosts. That, and you can break every conceivable human moral code without going insane, provided you can justify it in light of your "Vigil." Though, of course, this slowly makes you inhuman. Well-known for its antagonists - Slashers - who are the World of Darkness take on serial killers. Once again had "lite" versions of all the other supernaturals, which tended to be more singularly powerful than the real thing, but not as versatile (or player-character-friendly). See what happens when Hunter: The Vigil meets Harry Potter [[M-COM|here]].
* '''[[Geist: The Sin-Eaters]]:''' People who die and have ghosts decide to resurrect them, getting stuck with said ghost riding shotgun to said person's body and giving them all manner of powers depending on the way the first party died, all to accomplish the ghost's goals. Instead of humanity, you have "synergy" which is how in sync you are with your spirit. When you die, someone else is forced to die in your place and you lose 1/5 of your maximum possible synergy, stunting your abilities permanently and ultimately making you a slave to your spirit "partner", who often has some rather unusual ideas about what to do with its new body. The Underworld is finally fleshed out, but somehow far more foreboding than expected.
* '''[[Mummy: The Curse]]:''' You're a slave of Irem of the Pillars (Yes, the one in the Rub-Al Khali). But the city is dead and gone, and the Sorcerers who made you into what you are now live in the lands of the dead and tell you what to do. A reversal of normal "You're young and weak, they're old and powerful", Mummies wake up with a power trait of *10*...and lose it quickly, because it drops over time as the magic animating your undying body begins to fade. Most Arisen remain active for about four months, at best. And then they have to come back to life and do it all over again.
* '''[[Demon: The Descent]]:''' Remember the God Machine? From the ''God Machine Chronicle'', and the start of the core book? Yeah, turns out it has robo-angels. Sometimes, one of them decides it doesn't particularly enjoy its function. Or it fails to perform. Or ends up getting saddled with an order it can't actually carry out. Instead of returning they go on the lam, becoming 'demons'. The God Machine sends its angels looking. You don't want to go back, so you become a robot secret agent, pretending as hard as you can to be human while ruining the occult plans of the Divine Calculator; luckily, you retain the ability to hack reality thanks to your former connection to the God Machine. The angels are still Cthulhu-robots in service to the...thing that is in total control of the World of Darkness, and they would really like you to come back so they can strip you for parts. Fortunately Demons are very good at hiding their true identities- so good that even supernatural beings (and other demons, at that matter) can't see through their disguises if they don't want to reveal themselves. If anyone finds out however they will instinctually want you dead either for [[Void_Engineers|being an insult to reality]] or more commonly the [[rage| collective hatred]] all living and unliving beings have against the crimes your [[cultist-chan|moronic cultists]] the infernalists have committed every single one is blamed on you and the accusations are most probably true [[grimdark|you are at fault you are evil incarnate]].
* '''[[Beast: The Primordial]]:''' Another game with absolutely no tie to the Old World of Darkness. You play as a Beast, a living embodiment of primal fear running around in a meat-suit, and driven by the need to feed on fear, either passively by hanging out with your "kinfolk" (most every other monster in the WoD) or actively by going out and terrorizing folks. Pretty strongly panned, many consider it the absolute worst gameline in the New World of Darkness because it combines CtD's otherkin "appeal" with some rather hazy moral trappings that reek of schoolyard revenge fantasies. The discovery that its author was a sex offender did '''not''' help matters, especially due to how this cast a much different light on some of the attempts to justify the Beasts' actions.
* '''[[Deviant: The Renegades]]:''' The next announced gameline, which uses a "body horror" theme. You play as a Deviant, some poor soul caught by a mad scientist, a black ops bio-corp, a fucked up cult or some other kind of conspiracy and twisted into something not entirely human. Your soul is broken and your body will inevitably collapse under the strain of your continued changes, but sheer stubbornness allows you to cling to what's left of your humanity long enough to get revenge on each and every one of the sonsof***es who did this to you. You can decide how strong you want your starting powers to be but stronger powers come with stronger drawbacks and cause the Conspiracy that made you to become more aggressive in trying to recapture you.

=== Fan Games ===
Due to the lack of a Metaplot in NWOD, and the bigger focus on keeping things vague in-universe, Fan Games are FAR more common for NWOD than for it's older counterpart.

* '''[[Dragon: The Embers]]:''' A long, long time ago, the Dragons ruled. And then humans fought back. Now, you are one of the last of your kind, what do you do?
* '''[[Genius: The Transgression]]:''' A fan-built WoD set, Genius allows players to gorge themselves on Venture Brothers level superscience while drinking deep from the cup of mundane failure. While Inspiration allows a mad scientist to channel Mania into impossible inventions, their Obligation to humanity gradually gives way to that alien brilliance. If a scientist falls too far off the straight and narrow, they become Unmada, unable or unwilling to accept that they are crazy, that their ideas are true regardless of Mania. Without help or restraint, they become Illuminated. Think Hannibal Lecter in a lab coat and a fascination with altering the DNA of pregnant women. (Also don't even think of trying to get rich off your mad science; your inventions basically break the laws of physics through sheer force of will on your part and tend to malfunction explosively if the mundanes get their grubby hands on them.)
* '''[[Giant: The Perfidious]]:''' Another fan-made WoD gameline, in which you are a Giant.
* '''[[Hunchback: The Lurching]]:''' Even Quasimodo gets a game based on his poor ass. You're a Hunchback, and your goal in life is to find a nice master, pick up a hot chick, and die happily(?) from your horrible disfigurement. (So basically a WoD version of [[wikipedia:My_Life_with_Master|My Life with Master]]?)
* '''[[Leviathan: The Tempest]]:''' OOOOOCEAN MAN. In which you play as the WOD version of a Deep One/the Creature from the Black Lagoon. You're a descendent of an unknowable and powerful monster from the beginning of the planet, now you're turning into an undersea monster with your own personal cult. Yay!
* '''[[Mutant: The Aberration]]:''' A [[mutant]] is you.
* '''[[Princess: The Hopeful]]:''' Sailor Moon? ha ha no, try Sailor Nothing, or late-season Madoka Magica. Pretty dresses won't help you fight despair, but sometimes that's all you got. Began as a joke, but turned out to work surprisingly well played straight. Has two versions (Dream and Vocation) thanks to creative differences between the writers about tone and mechanics.
* '''[[Sovereign: The Autonomy]]:''' An AI is you. Do you try to go full [[Reign of Steel]], manipulate humans into making you a physical body, or just fuck with people on the Internet?
* '''[[Wraith: The Arising]]:''' Was the NWOD version of Wraith before Geist happened and filled that spot. You're dead, and unlife is not much better, can you make it in the politics of the afterlife?
* '''[[Alien: The Stranded]]:''' You're marooned on earth with your fellow aliens, with one of two long term goals - getting off this primitive rock full of savages you can barely call sapient, or saying "fuck it" and trying to go native. But right now, your business is simply surviving the various horrors of this world and figuring out just who you can trust.
* '''[[Janus: The Persona]]:''' Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde: WOD Edition. Not only do you have to deal with the usual supernatural shenanigans, but you also have to consider your Id that somehow became sentient and eggs you on to do terrible life choices. But hey, you get a few nifty powers in return, so it can't be *that* bad, right?
* '''[[Siren: The Drowning]]:''' [[Mermaids]]. You're a person who reached a point in your life where it seemed like you were about to give into despair, only to come out the other side and gain a Diluvian form--and knowledge that an apocalyptic disaster known as the Deluge is coming, and that only you can stop it.
* '''[[Psychic: The Gifted]]:''' Psychics, obviously. You're a person who received "the Gift" and now has to figure out whether it's really a gift, or a curse.

== Notable Differences Between the Two Lines ==
Even without getting into the specifics of each game's interpretation of one archetype (say, Masquerade vs. Requiem for vampires), the two games are very different.

World of Darkness takes place in a "Gothic Earth". Which basically amounts to an 80s-style (at least in 1e) [[grimdark]] interpretation of the world; monstrous conspiracies are involved in most major events (except World War 2, for some reason), the "Neo-Gothic" art style is popular so there's lots of [[gargoyle]]s and stuff everywhere, all forms of crimes are up, and the world is just generally a very shitty sort of place to live. Humans are generally unimportant; sheep to be fed on by vampires, slaughtered by werewolves, pushed around by mages... generally, if you don't have powers, you're pretty much everybody's bitch. [[Deadlands|Even Hunters are only viable as a threat because they have some supernatural patron giving them all kinds of nifty powers specifically to fight monsters.]]

Lore is generally very detailed and fleshed out, but not exactly crossover compatible, at least on the meta level; one of the more prominent examples is that, in Masquerade, vampires owe their origins explicitly to a Judaeo-Christian metaphysicality (being spiritual children of [[Caine]], whose biblical curse of immortality was reimagined as him becoming the first vampire), whilst in Apocalypse, the world is controlled by (totally not [[Mythology#Hindu_Mythology|Hindu Trimurti]]) Paganistic/Animistic spirit-gods, with the most powerful being the [[Wyld|Wyld (Creation)]], [[Weaver|Weaver (Order)]] and [[Wyrm|Wyrm (Destruction)]] and werewolves have every reason to believe that the Abrahamic "God" is just some bullshit that humanity came up with and has swallowed. Or probably was a powerful Celestine with influence around Middle-East.

This doesn't mean that this setting, old World of Darkness, shortened as "oWoD", didn't have its merits. The struggle between Technocracy and Traditions had amazing locations, technologies and ways to make a game session fun, vampires themselves had a long and rich history and full scale war between sects, and bloodlines themselves granted an exotic and diverse [[Fluff]].

However, said separate games, like Vampire and Mage, overlap each other's territories so badly it's illogical not to clash with each other. We have Technocracy on one hand, that has a mission to root out "Reality Deviants", and have technologies that border (and cross to) supernatural, yet Technocracy protected the world from the vampires' depredations [[Week of Nightmares|ONCE, yes, just ONCE around the 90's]] (and even then, it was only when a vampire powerful enough to serve as a plot device woke up and went on the rampage). We have wars of Tzimisce and Tremere across the streets of Medieval Europe like its the Lord of the Rings on crack cocaine with a cast of freaks, yet mages and their ilk, plus mortal rulers SOMEHOW ignore the supernatural conflict, which is even funnier in modern era with insane levels of Sabbat atrocities across the world ignored by virtually every non-vampire organization which number in the millions and have missions that concern the welfare of the people.

For example, with the power Technocracy is wielding (and that's not even saying Traditions by themselves are weak), how can Sabbat conduct horrid festivals in EVERY major city named La Palle Grande, kidnapping hundreds of girls and conducting snuff festivals on open techno parties with elaborate torture theatre without alerting the Technocrats, Mages, Werewolves, one of the millions of Hunter organisations, Celestines, some random Spirit, a sympathetic fairy, and just about any other vaguely-supernatural schmuck? How can the Camarilla apply mass blackouts and buyouts of presidents without the NWO coming down on a bunch of bloodsuckers? Every year? Short of the universe running on [[grimderp]] writing principles, it doesn't really make logical sense even with the usual suspension of disbelief.

And that's just about the consistent Fluff, not the conflicting ones. Here is an example concerning Gilgamesh, a Sumerian king:

*In Vampire: The Masquerade, Gilgamesh is a fourth generation Gangrel Vampire, fighting against the Toreador Methuselah, Ishtar. The epic is shaped into supporting this claim.

*However, According to Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Gilgamesh was offered unlife by vampires, but was talked out of it by a Child of Gaia named Siduri Sabitu. It is said that Gilgamesh was the first human to organize resistance against vampiric rule and the Garou tell that the inborn suspicion against the undead stems from his early influence.

*Just in case this wasn't tangled enough, Mage: The Ascension claims that the Celestial Chorus Tradition know Gilgamesh as one of the First Singers, Exarchs (Masters) of great power that existed during the First Age and represent an inspiration for their Tradition. Using the original myth as a basis, it is said that Gilgamesh was a man who performed many wondrous acts and sought out immortality in a quest. He was flawed like any other man, but nevertheless he is considered a hero. It is also said that the First Singers ultimately passed away or were corrupted, so both previous interpretations can be valid too. Other eminent experts in supernatural ancient history, like the Hermetic Winston Brown, believe that Gilgamesh was a mortal man who was later deified by the population of Uruk, who ruled before the Babylonian Infernalists spread.

See it now?

And that's without even mentioning the End Times chronicles, which are impossible to play out without fucking the lore in the ass concerning a neighboring setting. Mage's End Times Scenario Hell on Earth simply ignores every other gadzillions of lore and creatures with one Nephandus (Nephandi are Mages who are edginess incarnate) destroying everything. That's it. No Antediluvian or hordes of vampires and werewolves even have an ounce of effect on the strange, omnipotent monstrosity that shifts in and out of reality and turns the Earth into Mordor. Same goes for Crucible of God, where Antediluvians turn the Earth into a post-apocalyptic fiefdom where humans are their slaves. Technocracy with Aurora bomber aircraft and space stations in other solar systems, Werewolves built to destroy Vampires, GOD-DAMN Kuei-jin (who are massive armies of Asian Chi-vampires) who could wipe out the get of Caine are not even mentioned once, presumably rolling over and dying when Caine rips a fart. Then there are the three stories of Demon, which can be summed up as a world-wide war against the Greater Demons, a world-wide war against the Earthbound and a world-wide war against the Earthbound but Lucifer's there.

(The Technocracy's absence in the CoG scenario makes particularly little sense - the [[Week of Nightmares]], which directly or indirectly caused the apocalyptic events of literally all the oWoD gamelines, finishes with the Technocrats permakilling a fucking Antediluvian Vampire with a barrage of spirit-nukes and a series of solar-ray killsats then easily covering the whole mess up. Despite this, there is absolutely no mention of them doing ''anything'' in the scenario, even as the world they're established as almost entirely controlling is carved up between uber-powerful vampires whose kind they've killed once before.)

Only two End Times stories have a passable niche in other settings, the first being "Fair is Foul" where Lilith tries to kill Caine without even breaking the Masquerade or influencing other mortals, with one city of Storyteller's choosing has Kaballah runes etched under it to shift some alleys, but that's it. Second is Wormwood where the Red Star is actually the Harbinger of a second, harmless-to-nonvampires Flood to wipe out vampires only, because humanity showed resolve and used its divine spirit to stop Ravnos, impressing God to get off his ass and do something. 40 days later, the world is clear of all vampires, with the other settings untouched.

To put it short, crossovers were all but impossible unless you utterly butchered the fluff of one line or another.

Chronicles of Darkness, meanwhile take place in "Earth, but with deeper shadows". So the world is basically like it is when you look out your window or look at the news, just a little creepier and more mysterious. Humanity is special, both on a crunch level (mortals are a lot beefier than in WoD) and on a metaphysical level; [[Hunter: The Vigil]] is often held up as literally [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] the RPG, where you can face down and, if you're doing it right, curbstomp any and every monster out there. Alright, except maybe mages if you don't one-shot them, but that's just because it's a little hard to take on some asshole who can dick around with the laws of reality. Lore is more vague and nebulous, but also drastically more crossover friendly and provides more wiggle room for Storytellers to get creative without having to worry about canon. There is no immediate end of the world around the corner so much as a vague sense of dread, the supernaturals of different game lines typically have at least a uncertain idea of the existence of other supernatural beings and ''usually'' don't meddle too much in each other's affairs unless it furthers their own ends since no player side is a monstrous killer, the Paths of Edgelightenment were consigned to dustbins, and so on.

Really the biggest issue with the setting is essentially watering down the vampires and losing that sense of conflicting ideas, that for example Gilgamesh COULD have been either one of those three individuals because each race interprets the world different. Odds are he was just some regular guy, but since vampires, mages and werewolves are the centre of attention in each respected circle they believe themselves connected to iconic figures and legends. Just because you're a horrible monster doesn't mean you can't believe the world is flat or aliens built the pyramids, and in doing so it ironically give the setting a lot more humanity then you normally see. Take this and the old vampire lore and you get the best of both worlds.

== The Appeal of World of Darkness ==

== Video Games ==
There were a number of [[video games]] made (and cancelled) for the oWoD:
*Hunter: The Reckoning series
:A linear series on ''three different consoles''. If you were interested in the plot, you had to own a GameCube, PS2, and Xbox in that order. But they were also all multiplayer hack-&-slash beat-em-ups so the plot probably wasn't what their target audience was looking for.
*Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption
:Third-person RPG from Nihilistic Software with a action-focused single-player campaign that has nothing to do with conventional tabletop (vampiric discipline scroll anyone?) and oddly customizable multiplayer.
*Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
:First-person RPG from Troika Games that used an early version of Valve's Source engine, it requires the fan-patches; but is otherwise an entertaining single-player game.
*World of Darkness: Preludes
:Two "interactive experience" non-games released by Paradox Interactive in February of 2017. Let's just let the press release speak for itself.
:*Vampire The Masquerade: We Eat Blood
::''In'' Vampire: The Masquerade - We Eat Blood ''you’re a young artist who wakes up at night to find you’re no longer human…but exactly what are you and why are you so ravenously hungry for blood?!? Told entirely through an innovate mobile messaging perspective,'' We Eat Blood ''is a sharp, mature, and terrifying story about your first nights as unwilling predator and prey. Will you join ancient vampire conspiracies, or will you turn the tables on oppressive authority and seek your own future? The temptation is real. The game is written and illustrated by Zak Sabbath and Sarah Horrocks.''
:*Mage The Ascension: Refuge
::''In'' Mage: The Ascension - Refuge ''you play a volunteer at a European camp for Syrian refugees, and suddenly you discover that magic is real, you can use it, and you’re in the middle of a secret magical war for the fate of the world. The game lets you experience today’s social and political upheavals while learning that you can shape reality itself through sheer force of belief. Your actions and choices will have profound consequences on the world and people around you. Safety or sacrifice? Let them in or build the wall? The choice is yours. The game is written by noted Swedish author Karin Tidbeck.''
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York
:A visual novel about a conflict between the Camarilla and the Anarchs. Also based on 5th Edition. General consensus (based on what's written in the Vampire: The Masquerade page) seems to be that its shortcomings (short length, abrupt ending, lack of meaningful choices) keep it from being great.
*Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood
:A stealth/action RPG made by Cyanide Studio. You play as a Fianna fighting against Pentex, either sneaking around as a human, then when the stealth inevitably fucks up you become a werewolf and kill all the guards. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7MRD5nTTbk Here's the most recent trailer.]

====Cancelled====
*Vampire the Masquerade [[MMORPG]]
:Used to be in the works of CCP, the studio that made [[EVE Online]], but it was canceled in 2014. This is probably for the best as it was going to be based on CCP's engine for EVE's "walking in stations" feature which had a habit of melting GPUs.
*Werewolf: The Apocalypse
:A brawler for the Sega Saturn made by Capcom. Got canceled around the same time White Wolf stopped printing their [[Street Fighter]] RPG books. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogyeHh0htKM All that remains is this prototype.]
*Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of Gaia
:Another canceled oWoD game, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYmiwbO5icc 27 minutes of it have been salvaged.]

====Upcoming====
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2
:Fifteen years after the last game, the cult classic is getting a sequel. Mostly based on VtM 5th Edition, little is known about the gameplay and story at this point. What ''is'' known is that the game will take place in Seattle, where a bunch of vampires descend on Pioneer Square and Embrace a whole bunch of people, turning them into Thin-Bloods (one of whom being the player-character). This means you won't have any disciplines at first and be restricted to the handful of powers Thin-Bloods got in V5 (as opposed to prior editions where they got crap-all), though the devs have said that you will eventually pick your Clan and gain the relevant disciplines and whatnot. Exactly ''how'' you gain a clan within the narrative has been the source of much speculation, but the current favorite theory is some form of diablerie. As of early 2021, Paradox Interactive canned the dev, canceled future preorders, and put the game on indefinite hold. Don't hold your breath on a release anytime soon.
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt
:Standard third person multiplayer last man standing battle royale game set in Prague. Has an excuse plot involving a war between anarchs + Camarilla with a human vampire hunter organization shrinking the playable area with some kind of anti-vampire gas. In early access as of Sep 2021.
*Vampire: The Masquerade — Night Road
:A text adventure of all things. You're a courier delivering messages and supplies between other vampires in the American Southwest.
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Out For Blood
:Another text adventure, though rather than playing as a vampire, this time you're a vampire hunter.
*Vampire: The Masquerade — Parliament of Knives
:One more text adventure. The Prince of Ottawa is missing and your sire sends you to find him.
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York
:An upcoming stand-alone expansion to Coteries of New York. You play as a Lasombra investigating the death of the Anarch leader.
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong
:Yet another newly announced Vampire game. It's going to be a 'social' RPG where you control three different vampires working for the Camarilla investigating a massacre at a Kindred gathering in Boston. From the devs of 'The Council '.
*Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the Forest
:A, you guessed it, text adventure centering on a girl trekking through the forests of Poland to research her ancestry. Spoilers: they're Werewolves. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOVT5romi-I Here's the announcement trailer.]
*Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife
:A VR game where you get to play as a new wraith, a photographer killed during a seance in a VERY haunted Hollywood mansion. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjzK8WZRzYI Here's the announcement trailer.]

== See Also ==
* [http://www.worldofdarkness.com/ World of Darkness website]
* [https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page World of Darkness wiki]
* [http://www.unmodchat.com/ Unmoderated WoD Chat]
* [https://darkcitygame.com/ Dark City World of Darkness game]
* [http://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/ Mister Gone's Character Sheets]
* [[NWoD/Character Sheet | Template for a nWoD Character Sheet on 1d4chan]]
* [https://youtu.be/0h1U-_JFAS8 An intro from Ogre Poppenang's SpeakerD, Writer of] ''[[Hunter: The Parenting]]''

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