Flagellant
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Flagellants are smelly religious hobos who have different origins but one thing in common...purge every fucking heretics who dare to stand 400 miles radio from them. they roam around the Empire, spreading their belief, gathering followers and help out the empire army against the occasional brawl against goatfuckers, vikings raiders and undead hordes.
Old lore also had a Chaos equivalant in the diseased flagellants, basically people who caught some manner of incurable disease and were exiled from their homes so they started wandering around, whipping themselves in hopes of getting Nurgle's mercy.
Warhammer Fantasy
Flagellants are something unique for the empire (Bretonnia have something similar call "battle pellegrins, but we will see later the key differences), and the lore behind them is both easy and credible. Life in the Empire is difficult if not shitty. while your position in society surely determine your lifestyle, there aren't assurances that all you have will be destroyed by one of the many, many enemy of the Empire. Everything that you have will be destroyed or stolen, your family and friends will be killed horribly, taken prisoners or sacrificed to horrid gods who will torture their souls for all eternity. Who go throught such harshness cannot possibly remain sane or hope to retake what they have lost. They will become bandits, desperados and this if they have enough mind to keep their sanity. But for this madmen, faith and vengeance are also an option. Inevitably, a Prophet of doom will arise between this madmen, conviced that what they had saw and goes throught are clearly sign of the coming of the apocalypse. The Empire will fall, nothing can save it from such a destiny, and if eveyone are doommed, the only ""logical"" thing to do is to take care of our souls throught zealous act of faith to impress the empire's pantheon, especially Sigmar, the God-king. when this happens, a band of like-minded fanatics will band together with this prophet, and start to trvel far and wide the Emire, spreading their message of doom and looking for the only possible outcome, a martyr death in the name of the gods in a bloody battlefields. in their bloody pilgrimage, more men will join the band of flagellants, creating a crazy parade of undeniable madness zealoutry. Common eople have mixture feelings torward them, a combination of respect, fear and owe. The state church of Sigmar support the flagellants indeed, found them to be a useful assets. What better retinue for a witch hunter or a Warrior priest that devoted people who don't fear death, but actively look for it? Flagellants on the other side obey the official clergy men with owe and fanatically loyalty, because their word is that of Sigmar itself. Some grous of flagellants indeed follow a particulary famous man of the church, such the crazy and obsessed stalkers DEVOTED, LOYAL AND ABSOLUTLY NOT CREEPY FOLLOWERS know as Tattered Souls
it must be noted however, that while many flagellants are obvious followers of Sigmar, some band will dedicate themselves to anothe god of the phanteon, such as Morr, Ulric, Shallya or other. (Someone can actually argue the sense of venerating the goddess of health with Flails and self-torture, but flagellants don't give a fuck about logic and common sense.)
On Tabletop
On the tabletop, they are a ludicrously expensive unit that needs to be in numbers of 30+ to even be worth taking, and even then they'll die to anything within a turn or two of combat. Their strength is that they'll take down whatever they're fighting too. For example, say the enemy has a 500pt unit of chaos knights with a fancy chaos lord marching towards your flank; just send in your 300pt unit of flagellants to delete the fuckers. Sure, your flagellants are dead, but so are the enemy, so who cares.
In total Warhammer: War, they are a part of the 'Grim and the Grave' DLC that should have just been in the base fucking game. They are unbreakable, with little to no defence so they cave quickly in the face of strong opponents which makes them less useful than your normal state troops unless you're going for a gimmick.
Age of Sigmar
In Age of Sigmar their lore is...Peculiar. While is said that Sigmar, being the fabulous order God he is, tends to invoke unquestionably zealous and unbreakable faith in his followers, flagellants now are quite varied in the lore. In the Grand Alliance: Order book, flagellants are citizens of Azyr who become completely devoted to Sigmar, following his holy crusade and re-conquering lands fallen to chaos. They are incredibly useful indeed, because thanks to processions, martyrdom and self-mortification across the corrupted land, their blood removes the chaos taint,allowing normal people to occupy and settle on those lands. And this time we don't have someone to pin the blame on for this bullshit since GW doesn't give names for the lore-writers of these books.
It's still true that flagellants can be just simple men, devoted to Sigmar but without an ounce of military training who nonetheless raise up arms and rebel against their chaotic oppressors once the armies of order arrive. The most notable example of this case are the Tempest Lords, a Stormcast Chamber who inspired a clan of humans to stand up against their Minotaur slavers, and have several other flagellant warbands attached to them.
The new book of the Cities of Sigmar actually confirmed that band of flagellants go out of the Cities for purify the country around the former, purifying the land with "holy rituals and act of sacrifice" (aka, suicide and flogging their backs bloody). This also means that all the crap that flagellants are doing from the times of the world-that-was is actually THE Sigmar's way, because their faith can literally eliminate chaos corruption. This give you the awkward question... Is Sigmar really that goodly a god if people have to do such crazy acts of supplication for his blessing? Not that this isn't a recurring theme, But the other gods of order and peace aren't that good either. Also, who else would make his priests look so fucking cool while he answers their prayers? (search cinematics of mark of chaos and warhammer online for see what i mean.)
Early in the game they were the only ones that got buff from warriors priests prayers (and we are talking about insanely strong buffs) but now they are just loonies since Warrior Priests are effectively gone. Their role changed to trash infantry, with a good move, incredibly bravery and a great buff if they charge, and shit combat stats. Don't expect to them to stay alive more than 3 rounds, but don't be afraid to sacrifice them, because they got more attacks if they die. Also they don't run away, they LAUNCH THEMSELVES IN A CRAZY, FINAL ATTACK TO KILLING ONE LAST HERETIC BEFORE THEY DIE!