Characters / Total War: Warhammer - The Warriors of Chaos

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"Champions of the Dark Gods!"

"To the ordinary, we are unknowable. Fallen. Corrupted. Rightly feared. You cannot understand our origins, our motives... the dawning realization that we are not "fallen". We. Are. Ascended."

To explain Chaos is to define the undefinable; it permeates the world — the ultimate foe against which the forces of Order must battle to survive. Chaos — and all magic, for that is of Chaos — seeps into the world from the two poles, one of which lies at the Realm of Chaos in the far north. This is the legacy of the Old Ones, an ancient star-faring race who, in their arrogance, used the immaterial dimension to travel and manipulate the tangible. Unknown to them, the empyrean was home to the sub-conscious desires, aspirations and emotions of all sentient races. Over time, this force coalesced into the Chaos Gods – the Ruinous Powers. It is these omnipotent beings that control the fates of all, viewing the world as a game board, the mortal denizens on it as nothing more than playing pieces to be pushed aside and destroyed at will. The Chaos Gods have many names and aspects. For most in the Old World who are aware of such things they are Khorne the Blood God, lord of murder, rage, violence and battles; Tzeentch the Arch-Manipulator, master of magic and weaver of time; Nurgle the Lord of Decay, father of plagues, poxes and contagions; Slaanesh the Dark Prince of Chaos, the great summoner of excess, desire and perversion.

To the north of the Old World lies Norsca and beyond that the Chaos Wastes, which lie in the shadow of the Chaos realm — its people the Gods’ primary pawns. The Northmen congregate in tribes. They are savage and brutal, for the lands are harsh, full of ice-covered fjords and roving monsters. No crops grow here so they must raid south to survive. They do this not just out of necessity but for glory and the chance to be recognised by the Chaos Gods. Those that do well will be gifted with all manner of mutations, and for the very few, even Daemonhood. However, those that disappoint the Ruinous Powers will be turned to Chaos Spawn — mewling mountains of flesh, teeth and tentacles.

And so Chaos armies march south, consisting of Chaos Marauders, the aforementioned fur-clad barbarians, and Chaos Warriors — particularly ruthless fighters chosen by the Ruinous Powers and gifted with arcane suits of all-encompassing armour. A Chaos force is also accompanied by a mass of mind-fraying creatures – from Hellcannons to Dragon Ogres and abhorrent Spawn. These hordes can be raiders that cross the icy seas in longships, large armies that raze entire cities, or full-scale invasions where entire nations quake in fear, convinced the End Times are upon them… And quite possibly they are, for now is the time of the Three-Eyed King. Archaon the Everchosen gathers his countless servants, who are ready at their Lord’s whispered command to bring doom down upon all!

Introduced in Total War: Warhammer, the Warriors of Chaos are playable in custom battles, the first game's Grand Campaign, and the second game's Mortal Empires campaign (with the Chaos Warriors DLC installed). In Total War: Warhammer III, the monogod factions are playable in the Realm of Chaos campaign (with the Champions of Chaos DLC installed), but with different objectives to the starting factions from the vanilla game, and all of their factions are playable in the Immortal Empires combined mega-campaign for owners of I, II and III.

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General Tropes

Warhost of the Apocalypse

Heralds of the Tempest

The Shadow Legion

Legion of the Gorequeen

Puppets of Misrule

The Fecundites

The Decadent Host

The Ecstatic Legions

• Achilles' Heel:
  • Their lack of proper ranged units. It is true that the Hellfire Cannon is rather powerful and that their Marauder Horsemen and Horsemasters can be a great annoyance, but outside of that, the Warriors of Chaos have no reliable way of trading fire from afar, leading to them possibly taking heavy damage on their way to the enemy. This is most likely to compensate for how almost nobody can stand up to them once they get into close quarters. Compounding this is that they're among slowest factions in the game on the battlefield, giving ranged units, especially armor-piercing ones, ample time to shred them.
  • Since the Warriors of Chaos rely primarily upon Heavily Armored Mooks, armor-piercing damage (which is always dealt in full regardless of armor value) is especially dangerous for them. Part of why the Warriors are considered a fairly low-tier army in competitive play is because they're so easily countered by stockpiling anti-armor weaponry, similar to the Dwarfs.
  • For the Monogod factions, their unique advantages are heavily negated by their rival god. Azazel's Ecstatic Legions rely on debuffing Melee Attack to survive with their lower armor, but Valkia's Legion of the Gorequeen has such high Melee Attack that it's almost unnoticeable. Likewise, the Khornate's rely heavily on having such high Melee Attack that they can shred even armored opponents without specific anti-armor weaponry, but the debuff to their attack means they lose that advantage against the Slaaneshi forces that DO have armor. Vilitch's Puppets of Misrule rely on high damage magical attacks to kill and barriers to defend themselves, but Festus's Fecundites can heal the damage before the next spell, and specialize in high-damage great weapons that can shred barriers. The Nurglites, on the other hand, can ignore all damage EXCEPT magical attacks and are so slow that, if the Tzeentchian forces pull back to let their barrier recharge, they won't be able to catch them. The end result is that, whenever opposing Gods have their forces clash, you might as well have two armies of Undivided Warriors of Chaos and victory is more a matter of tactical skill than overpowering the opposition.
• Adaptation Expansion: The Champions of Chaos DLC for Total War: Warhammer 3 provides the Warriors of Chaos with a slew of variant units aligned to each of the Chaos Gods, many of which never existed on the tabletop, such as Chaos Warriors of Slaanesh wielding helscourge whips.
• All Trolls Are Different: Chaos corrupted trolls commonly travel alongside hordes of Norscan Warriors, in search of fresh meat. And when we say Chaos corrupted, we mean Chaos corrupted, Chaos Trolls being infamous for the sheer insanity of their mutations, and practically an image of Chaos itself. They come in two variants, "regular" Chaos Trolls, and the more expensive Armored Chaos Trolls, which have a good deal more survivability to them.
• Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Averted with Chaos Armour which was forged in the Chaos Realm and made so it doesn’t disrupt a wizard’s spellcasting. As such, Chaos Sorcerers wearing Chaos Armour are among the best-protected wizards in the game, practically Magic Knight onto themselves, especially when mounted on Chaos Dragons.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: How Chaos Lords and Marauder Chieftains get their positions. The strongest survive and thrive. As of the Foundation Update it's much easier to turn a Norscan tribe into a vassal if you defeat their leader, showing their respect for the leader with the most strength.
• Ax-Crazy: A side effect of worshipping the Chaos Gods is the gradual erosion of ones sanity, until they're reduced to screaming, and salivating at the prospect of battle. Most Chaos Warriors in-game will be screaming at the top of their lungs, demanding blood and skulls.
• Badass Army: The Northern Hordes are made up of warriors without equal. The wargame's army books tend to take great pains to emphasize just how scary, badass and manly the Norscans are compared to everyone else in the setting. Imagine an entire army of hulking Viking/Tatar warriors, the stronger among them being 7-foot daemon-blessed mutants in full plate armor, while even the weakest ones are still giants and clad in the hides of the various monstrous beasts they've killed, all wielding massive axes and swords.
• Bald of Evil: Standard Chaos Warrior unit models can go without helmets, revealing themselves to be clean shaven.
• Barbarian Tribe: Most of the Chaos Warrior faction consists of Northmen from Norsca, which is composed of dozens of tribes with their own unique customs and culture (even entirely different ethnicities). Like most stereotypical examples of this trope, they live off plundering, and looting the more wealthy and fertile lands to the south. Chaos Marauders are formidable barbarian warriors wearing fur and whatever armor they can get, forming the bulk of the Northmen's forces when they attack Kislev and the Empire.
• Badass Boast: Their entire announcement trailer is one of these.
• Badass Cape: Several of their units have these (and ones with fur-hides on the top), mainly regular Chaos Warriors.
• Barbarian Longhair: Chaos Marauders have long hair, topknots and scalp-braids.
• Being Evil Sucks: Don't let all the talk about how badass they are fool you. The Warriors of Chaos are a textbook example of this. Sure, the lucky few become immortal and godlike Daemon Princes, but the vast majority are doomed to become consumed by their emotions and end up as blood-crazed berserkers who live only to kill and die in battle, jaded hedonists who have to keep doing more and more depraved things simply to feel something, sorcerors who are forever driven to expand their knowledge in an attempt to reach an impossible goal, or disease-ridden husks who are kept alive by supernatural powers despite their bodies rotting away. That is all if you don't simply end up a mindless mass of be-tentacled gribblyness because of all the mutations you've been receiving, or simply sacrificed as cannon fodder, as an experiment, to slate the hunger of ravenous daemons, as a sex toy to rapacious daemons or simply For the Evulz. Never mind the part where they live in a frozen wasteland populated by horrible Chaos-corrupted monstrosities on the whole, or that you will probably be killed point blank if you say a single thing against the Chaos Gods. Part of their drive to invade the Southern regions is so they don't have to live in the Chaos Wastes any more. Wulfrik in the Norsca trailer seems to understand this, lamenting the fact they've all become monsters enthralled by the Dark Gods.
• Beard of Barbarism: The Marauders and their chieftains have them, at any rate, usually long beards of brown, though occasionally you can find a grey one belonging to an elderly marauder. Being an entire race of evil Vikings, they do love their beards. Lorewise, Chaos Warriors and the other units in the roster also have beards; since they too are Norscans by and large and shaving isn't exactly common in the Umbra Chaotica. This isn't shown in-game because the majority of Chaos Warriors tend to be helmeted, and the few that aren't opt for a Bald of Evil look.
• Beast of Battle: Chaos Warriors can beckon dark beasts to their armies, such as Manticorees, and Chaos Warhounds.
• The Berserker: Followers of Khorne tend to come most often from Norsca, and the Norscans are Vikings while Khorne is the god of rage. Do the math
• Black Knight: An entire faction of them. Chaos Knights have both the name and the horses.
• Blood Knight: Yep. All of them, doesn't matter which God's they worship, they all live to main, and burn anything gets in the path of their raving hordes. Followers of Khorne triple this, being living weapons of destruction. Also, being a Blood Knight is practically a survival mechanism in the North.
• Black Vikings: Inverted. In 2 and even more so 3, the Warriors of Chaos troops explicitly include the Turkic and Iranic-inspired Kurgan and Mongol/Hunnic-inspired Hung; some generic armies even have titles like "Kurgan Warband." Despite this, they still use the same character models as the pale and blonde/redheaded Norscans (when the Kurgan are supposed to have mostly black hair, bronze skin, and slightly slanted eyes), and their leaders will invariably have Germanic names like "Soren Kalsarikannit" or "Hrorthrax Shiptaker."
• Body Horror: Living in a land where the raw stuff of Chaos seeps into the material plane invariably induces some mutations, which can be voluntarily given by the Chaos Gods as rewards. Nearly all beings in the thrall of Chaos exhibit this to some degree, but the Forsaken and Chaos Spawn are the most extreme, the former being horribly mutated Chaos Champions that have had their armor fused to their boil infested bodies, with disgusting crab-like claws for hands, the later having completed mutated into raging balls of pink flesh, tentacles, and gaping maws with giant barbed tongues! Especially the Regiment of Renown known as The Daemonspew, Forsaken who are infected by Nurgle and surrounded by flies who nest in their bodies at all times.
• Born in the Saddle: The Kurgan and some tribes of Norsemen. Though the Kurgan are more intense about cavalry warfare being among the best equestrians in the world, whereas Norscans tend to see horses as merely a way to get from point A to point B faster.
• Bright Is Not Good: Followers of Slaanesh (Like Sigvald and his mirror guard) are Sense Freaks who wear hideously garish clothing and choking perfumes at all times, being so blasé it's the only way they can feel anything.
• Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: Marauders who like Axes. Lots and lots of axes, coming in plenty of different flavors. A fair number, especially those devoted to Khorne, use two weapons and eschew shields. They are no-nonsense born warriors and boisterous vikings, so close combat is what they're all about. They also have no traditional missile weapons beyond the odd throwing axe or throwing spear. Most of the weapons used by the Warriors of Chaos are forged by Chaos Dwarf smiths, and thus tend to be of high quality, and occasionally intricately detailed. Some of their heroes wield sentient weapons possessed by daemons.
• Canon Immigrant: The Regiment of Renown Chaos Spawn, are the Wyrdspawn, which surprisingly, weren't featured in the tabletop but a spin-off game, Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, which somewhat ironically, was a Total War clone.
• The Chosen Many: The aptly named Chosen are a special type of Chaos Warriors who are noticeably more favored by the Gods, having undergone dozens of grueling trials and found worthy by the Gods, being elite warriors among the already fearsome Chaos Warriors. They clad themselves in heavy, horrible ornate runearmor that blocks both magic and black gunpowder, wield Chaos Forged weapons of red hot steel, and the single most powerful elite infantry unit in the entire game. They come in three variants, Axe and Board, Great Axes, and heavy Halberds.
• Clingy Costume: Becoming a Chaos Warrior involves long rituals where their armour is fixed permanently around the body. The rituals fuse man and armour together. Petty biological necessities like eating and excreting are shed by this process: once complete, battle is the only sustenance a Chaos Warrior needs. Of course, in the greater tabletop background, some sets of Chaos Armour have been shown to be removable, and even in the game itself there are helmless Chaos Champions.
• A Commander Is You: An Elitist/Brute/Gimmick faction, focused on having a few very powerful soldiers who pound the enemies into the ground and easily instill fear into the heart of the enemy. In the first two games they were a horde race, carrying their infrastructure inside of their armies. In the third game, their gimmick changes to a unit upgrade mechanic, where lowly marauders can be upgraded to chaos warriors and other advanced units, as well as bestowed marks of the dark gods to morph into themed variant units with augmented stats and abilities.
• Cool Helmet: Scary, badass great helms, made of dark iron. The higher a given unit sits on the chaotic totem pole, the more ornate their helmet tends to be, with Chosen and the various Hero Units having the fanciest headgear.
• Crippling Overspecialisation: They have exceptionally powerful infantry, alongside strong monster options... but are sorely lacking in ranged damage. Their units are also really expensive, meaning unless they spam subpar units for a net loss, they'll almost always be fighting heavily outnumbered, which offers its own host of problems. There's a reason most veteran players consider them Awesome, but Impractical, in contrast to their Game-Breaker status in tabletop. Decent artillery will wreak absolute hell on their ranks due to their high range and inherent armor-piercing qualities, which they don't really have an answer to.
• Dark Is Evil: Most of them wear dark iron armour, and black fur cloaks. They also fight for the greatest evil in the setting.
• Demon of Human Origin: The ultimate goal at the end of the Path to Glory. If a Champion of Chaos survives long enough, endures enough mutations without going crazy and earns enough respect with their patron god or Chaos Undivided, they may ascend to daemonhood and become a Daemon Prince. The third game's rework added the option for generic Chaos Lords and Sorcerer Lords to ascend as Daemon Princes at level 20 for five thousand Souls (as a servant of one of the four Gods) or level 30 for ten thousand Souls (as a servant of Chaos Undivided) at the cost of having their extant levels reduced by half. Availability of each option depends on the Warband being played.
• The Dreaded: Without doubt, the most feared race of humans in the setting. Fitting, they have come perilously close to destroying the world several times, after all.
• Elite Mooks:
  • The Chosen are a direct upgrade from the standard Chaos Warrior units, and even share the same three variations of axe-and-shield, halberd and greataxe. They're also far stronger than regular Chaos Warriors, wearing even tougher armor, and wielding stronger weapons. They cost a ton, but are easily the best melee infantry unit in the game, and will handily stomp their equivalents into the ground. Not even Phoneix Guard can truly stand up to them.
  • Marauder Horsemasters are just a rather hefty upgrade to the regular mounted marauders, their main advantage being they are actually decent in melee combat, and have solid upgrades to damage, speed, and armour.
  • Aspiring Champions are the elite of the elite, the mightiest warriors in the warband. The third game allows them to gain a wide variety of upgrades via the Research tree, including upgrades reserved for Chosen, Knights and even Daemons.
• Evil Is Burning Hot: A common motif. Many of their units feature flame effects of some kind, Archaon has access to the Lore of Fire, and lands suffused with Chaos corruption become scarred with rivers of lava.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: Zigzagged.
  • Averted, because If two Chaos Warrior armies are parked too close to one-another, they'll both suffer attrition. This is due to the leaders of both armies starting to obstinately compete for space and Chaotic favor. Also, because Chaos Armies are tribal in nature; being drawn up primarily from the Norse clans, there is a lot of strong animosity due to blood feuds and unsettled weregelds. As of the Foundation update this is further Downplayed, with all their elite tier units no longer causing infighting among themselves, because of their discipline.
  • As a whole however, this trope is also played straight, as Archaeon's horde seems to be "Chaos Undivided". Different warriors within a unit will say different prayers to each Chaos God, some praising Nurgle, others offering pledges to Khorne, for example. More often than not, having followers of different Chaos Gods inside the same warband is not a good idea, but in this case, followers of all four Chaos God are fighting side by side, which is a rare feat.
  • The third game's overhaul for the Warriors campaign mechanics introduces Dark Authority, representing a given Chaos Lord's ability to command loyalty from his minions. Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, Slaanesh and generic Undivided each have their own measure of authority, which makes units of those types cheaper to recruit and upgrade. Chaos Lords that specialize into a single alignment will gain more Dark Authority for that god's units, but will quickly lose authority for units of their rival god (Khorne versus Slaanesh and Tzeentch versus Nurgle).
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Chaos welcomes anyone willing to damn themselves for power, and the Warriors of Chaos reflect the diversity of its mortal servants. Thus, alongside the human Marauders, one can witness Ogres, Dragon Ogres, Giants, Trolls, Dragons and other creatures who all either serve Chaos of their own volition or were broken by the Dark Gods' power to become beasts of war.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Predominantly, the army has a very heavy Germanic/Nordic feel to it as the resident Viking culture, the Norscans, are the most heavily featured in the canon. At least half of the Warrior special character list is made up of Norscans as well. And the universal Dark Tongue of Chaos used by all servants of the Gods is heavily influenced by Elder and Younger Furthark. That said, the Warriors are actually culturally diverse, being a coalition of various barbarian human races drawing upon influence from both Northern European and Central Asian warrior cultures. The Kurgan are a mix of Turkic and Iranic influences.
• Fantasy Pantheon: Worship of the Chaos Gods is something of a folk religion for the tribes of the north, and each clan/ethnic group tends to put their own particular spin on it. In many ways, the manner in which Chaos is portrayed in Warhammer has a lot in common with a lot of pre-Christian pagan beliefs, particularly Norse paganism. For instance, rather than viewing the Chaos Gods as pure evil, the Norscans tend to see them (as real Vikings saw the gods) as incredibly powerful, often Jerkassy war-mongering spirits who should be respected because pissing them off really isn't an option.
• Fantastic Racism: Norscans despise any humans from the south, thinking them to be weak-willed, cretins that stole the land that should have been theirs! They are also on the receiving end of this, as the people of the civilised Old World view them as nothing more than savages who want to bring down everything they hold dear.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Chaos heavily averts Evil Is One Big, Happy Family in the lore, and ingame many Warriors of Chaos campaigns have goals that involve destroying each other instead of their mutual enemies. The Dark Fortress mechanic also encourages players to attack their own side first, as these are economically vital and primarily found in the hands of other Chaos-aligned factions.
• Geo Effects: Chaos-aligned armies and heroes spread "Chaos Corruption" in provinces they occupy. This corruption is represented by the landscape slowly warping into a Lethal Lava Land the higher the corruption gets. While they suffer no penalties for a region having low corruption, Chaos armies receive bonuses to army leadership and unit replenishment when corruption is high. Non-Chaos factions, however, suffer mounting public order problems and attrition, and rebel armies formed in high-corruption provinces become themed after the Warriors of Chaos rather than the local empire.
• Grim Up North: Norsca, a barren land of ice, snow and mountains, is the homeland of the Warriors of Chaos. Go even further north and you end up in the Chaos Wastes, a Hell on Earth where daemons walk among men.
• Had to Be Sharp: Thanks to living so close to the Chaos Wastes and thus, HELL, the Norse, Kurgan, and Hung have become the fiercest human warriors to walk the Old World.
• Heavily Armored Mook: Every non-Marauder in their warhost is clad in full-body heavy plate armor, often covered in profane sigils declaring their patron gods' favor and further protecting them with eldritch power. Needless to say, Chaos Warriors are some of the toughest forces in the game.
• Hellish Horse: The steeds of the Chaos Knights, with flames adorning their hoofs and muzzles. Even the more normal looking horses ridden by the marauders are covered in sinister armor, and in the lore their noted to devour human flesh, and have horrible tempers.
• Horse Archer: The Kurgans are described as having something like this as a hat. However in game, Marauder Horsemen and Horsemasters only get javelins or throwing axes as shooting weapons.
• The Horde: A rampaging Horde of Daemon-worshiping marauders whose ultimate goal is the destruction of civilization. In the first two games, the Warriors of Chaos were an outright nomadic faction that carried their infrastructure inside their armies, with no ability to control settlements. The third game changed this, but now the Warriors can only build the bulk of their infrastructure in special "dark fortresses", with all other settlements they hold being tiny outposts.
• Horns of Villainy: The hordes of Chaos decorate their helmets with horns of various shapes and sizes, emulating their daemonic masters. The Chosen of Chaos get to wield the more impressive helmets, with Archaon's essentially acting as a crown with those enormous horns of his.
• Horny Vikings: An entire army of them what worships demonic gods and thrives off slaughter. Essentially, the most hardcore Vikings in all fiction.
• Humans Are Warriors: As the strongest humans in the setting, it's a given. The Norse have a hugely war-like culture.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: These humans choose to worship the Chaos Gods, making this faction one of the more legitimately evil ones in the setting. This is also the reason they enjoy favour with the Dark Gods beyond the Beastmen; the fact they have options and pick Chaos anyway makes their worship much more meaningful.
• Humans Are Special: The Norscans and other tribal confederations that worship the Chaos Gods, are all human, and are noted to be Chaos's most favoured servants, besides the daemons themselves, mostly due to the fact unlike the Beastmen, who are born into the role of the monster, humans choose it of their own free will.
• Hybrid Monster: Dragon Ogres can fight alongside the Warriors of Chaos. Being centaur-like mix of muscly humanoid up the stomach and scaled quadrupeds below, Dragon Ogres are strange but powerful monsters who act as a Lightning Bruiser shock monsters.
• Irony: Their current leader used to be an Imperial Templar of Sigmar, this is both ironic for them and the Empire they fight. That the greatest servant of Chaos in the Old World is not a Norscan, Kurgan or Hung warlord but a one-time worshiper of Chaos' greatest enemy.
• Killer Gorilla: The Gorebeast, a powerful, but dim witted, corrupted gorilla-esque abomination. The Warriors of Chaos capture them, cover them in thick, hell forged black plate, and use them as living rams, and beasts of burden that pull their elite chariot riders into battle.
• The Legions of Hell: Or the closest thing to a hell this setting gets, and with a big emphasis on the legions part. This, however, is somewhat subverted as it's more accurate to call them the servants of The Legions of Hell, as the true legion are the Daemons of Chaos, who weren't in the game until the third title.
• Lethal Lava Land: Areas corrupted by Chaos will gradually turn into this, dealing attrition damage to non-Chaos armies.
• Magic Knight: Chaos Sorcerers are decent in melee, especially when you compare them to other wizards, and can be mounted on Chaos Dragons.
• Magikarp Power: In the first two games, each horde starts with only the ability to recruit marauders, the faction's basic infantry. As the horde grows, however, it will eventually gain access to a roster of heavily armored troops and deadly monsters. In the third game, progression instead involves upgrading recruited marauders into more advanced forms as they gain experience points, eventually transforming even the lowliest norscan into a mighty chaos knight or aspiring champion.
• Mark of the Supernatural: One of the special rules of the Warriors of Chaos in the tabletop is the Mark of Chaos mechanics, representing a model swearing allegiance to a particular god, earning him special stigmatas or other symbols signaling to whom he belongs, and giving him bonuses in game. In Warhammer III, units can be marked by the gods to morph into variant units appropriate to each patron, altering their stats and bestowing useful new abilities.
• Mordor: Norsca and the Chaos Wastes serve as this — few other races are capable of settling these lands without serious penalties, but for the Warriors they contain the largest concentration of Dark Fortresses to build their empires with.
• Mooks: Chaos Marauders, warriors of Norsca that regularly raid the coasts of the south. Marauder units barely hold a candle to the actual Chaos Warriors, but they're cheap and numerous, and the two variants of Marauder Horsemen serve as your primary ranged units. This isn't a knock on them per sé as they're still quite powerful, but even in an Elite Army, someone has to be at the bottom of the ladder. A late game Chaos Gift introduced in the third game's rework highlights this, as it removes all unit replenishment for footslogging Marauders, reduces their upkeep by half, and with the right research gives them the Expendable trait that causes Warriors and above to ignore them when they break.
• The Need for Mead: Northmen like drinking mead, so much so that it is even brought up in their codex descriptions because they're Vikings.
• Obviously Evil: The spiky black scary armor, glowing runes, Hellfire motif, and throaty vows of destruction are dead giveaways.
• Oh, My Gods!: Warriors units can occasionally be heard speaking of the Chaos Gods this way. "By Khorne's bloody glory!/Tzeentch's many glories!/Nurgle's pestilent glory!/Slaanesh's radiant glory!"
• Our Centaurs Are Different: The Dragon Ogres, although instead of the usual human above and horse below body plan, they're a monstrous horned humanoid on a wingless draconic lower body. In the lore, their one of the most ancient races in the setting, having made the storm shrouded crags of Norsca their home since before the coming of the Old Ones. They made a deal with the Chaos God's some time after for immortality, in exchange their undying service in war, and are known to go into century long hibernation, awakening only to cause destruction and mayhem.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Two-headed Chaos Dragons are an available mount for Chaos Lords, and are the corrupted offspring of Galrauch, the first Chaos Dragon, and progenitor of countless other monsters. They are twisted monstrosities covered in growths and corruption, that spew out warp-fire. Other Dragons see them as Tragic Monsters trapped in a Fate Worse than Death.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The Hellcannon artillery unit is crewed by a team of Chaos Dwarfs, a corrupted offshoot of the main Dwarf species native to the barren lands beyond the World's Edge Mountains. They're distinguished from their cousins by porting small horns, tusks, and beards styled into thick, vaguely Assyrian-esque ringlets.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: Lumbering, and heavily mutated Chaos Giants fight against the Southerners for food and drink, being horned and covered in Chaos iconography. Champions of Chaos adds a Regiment of Renown chaos giant, Bilious Thunderguff, who bears the mark of the plague god Nurgle, granting him poison attacks and area-of-effect Fartillery that corrodes armor.
• Our Manticores Are Spinier: Ferocious leonine monsters with bat wings and scorpion tails found in the Chaos Wastes, which the mightiest champions of Chaos can, at great personal peril, attempt to capture and break into a war mount. They also can field feral Manticores, whose savagery often comes them to loose control, and enter a state of frenzy.
• Paper Tiger: Ironically, for such a powerful and scary army, the Warriors of Chaos have a big problem with mass routs. This makes sense as the Warriors are individualistic and are mainly in it for the glory, and lack the martial discipline and motivation to knuckle down and keep fighting when things look bad. The Warriors all go to war absolutely certain that the Chaos Gods (or at least their chosen one) will protect them, and should that conviction waver then the courage of the warriors will melt like snow in midsummer. A Chaos Lord can only convince warriors to follow him because they believe he is favoured by the dark gods, and should he die abruptly in battle... Yep, you guessed it, they take it as a sign that they have offended the gods and lost their favour.
  • For all their strength, durability, and apocalyptic reputation, those swarms of Chaos hordes in the first game can be beaten through good tactics or sheer numbers. Since the Warriors of Chaos have no settlements or cities, they have no staying power compared to all other factions. Factions can take a beating and retreat to their holdings, or at least recruit new armies to replace losses; any Chaos horde that gets totally destroyed will lose all their infrastructure. This prevents a swift recovery and in most cases, this means that particular horde will never get the chance to recover their strength again.
• Praetorian Guard: One Regiment of Renown are Sigvald's eunuch Mirror Guard; elite warriors who wear ornate armor and wield mirror shields for Sigvald to gaze upon his beauty when not using his own mirror shield. Another example are the Chaos Knights known as the Swords of Chaos, the personal bodyguards of Archaon himself, who have been with him from the very beginning of his journey to become the Everchosen. Whilst they trade even the small numbers regular Chaos Knights have, they are individually incredibly powerful, and bring forth an extremely strong army wide buff,
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Every culture in Warhammer counts as this due to the nature of the setting, but the Norse tribes are the most psychotically obsessed with bloodshed and strength in arms.
  Chaos Warriors: 'FACE US! MY LORD OF MURDER DEMANDS IT!
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Like the Greenskins, this is their modus operandi. They actually have very few buildings that give them internal income, and those they do have aren't all that good. As a result, their only reliable source of money is from sacking and pillaging defeated cities and armies, or raiding enemy held lands.
• Religion of Evil: The Warriors of Chaos are a heavily-armed cult to the Chaos Gods, to the point that several of their building chains are built in reverence to the Chaos Gods. While the baseline Norscans, Kurgan and Hung may view their worship as that of unknowable deities who are Above Good and Evil and/or cannot be judged by mortals because their moral systems are impossible to understand, by the time one has become a Chaos Warrior generally you know enough about them to see that they're a malign influence on the world, and you either agree with them or you don't care and either way, you've probably done enough evil that it's too late to back out. As there are four gods, there are five dedicated faiths among Warbands — one for each individual Chaos God, and a fifth one that tries to worship them all together.
  • Khorne is a brutal, bloodthirsty War God who only accepts worship in the language of shedding blood and piling the skulls of defeated enemies before him. He has a blood hatred of magic users second only to his hatred of cowardice on the battlefield, and has no place in his heart for those who are physically weak or incapable of defending themselves. Khornates raid the lands of men and beast alike butchering anyone who can hold a sword, using their big spikey axes to slash and decapitate those who oppose them until the blood flows like wine and the skulls are arranged in piles on their altars.
  • Tzeentch is a devious, manipulative Trickster God who manipulates friend and foe alike and is fond of toying with his own followers for fun. His doctrines include ruthless ambition, chronic backstabbing and endless physical and mental mutations in order to ensure a constant cycle of change and disruption. Tzeentchians spend their down time plotting grand and complex schemes, eyeing each other's positions and pouring through the contents of many a Tome of Eldritch Lore to increase their knowledge and power, descending onto the battlefield to draw their enemies into traps and burning them to cinders with the blackest magics in the setting.
  • Nurgle is surprisingly kind and generous for a God of Chaos, but still a Plaguemaster par excellence. He professes an unconditional love for all living beings and bestows mortals who serve him with Beneficial Diseases that make them very difficult to kill, but also gradually reduce them to corpulent bags of rotting flesh or put them through so much pain that death would be a mercy. Nurglites fill themselves with corrupting diseases while also spreading them around the world, magical alchemical and otherwise, to ensure that everyone is "blessed" with the fruits of "Grandfather" Nurgle's labours.
  • Slannesh is a hedonistic, torture-loving sex fiend of a Love Goddess. He/She preaches experiencing as much of the world as possible, pursuing perfection in all things, and making no allowances for anyone who might get in the way of or have something to say about how you get your rocks off. Slaaneshi are often incredibly vain but powerful warriors who enter battle purely to inflict and receive delectable pain and indulge all of their nasty and depraved appetites once the battle's over.
  • Chaos Undivided is a form of worship that attempts to reconcile the four gods' deep and abiding differences and honour all of them at the same time. What this typically amounts to is a lot of killing, the only thing all four Gods accept as a way to earn their favour. Some few warriors actually manage to earn the favour of all four Gods of Chaos, and even fewer earn the right to be called the Everchosen, a unique champion bearing the marks of all four Gods at once.
• Religious Bruiser: The Warriors of Chaos are usually very eager to prove themselves to their gods, and if they are sworn to one in particular, fight in his name. That makes them generally very devout and hard to discourage, as they know the Gods are watching and rewards for exceptional feats of arms are as easily given as punishment for cowardice.
• Savage Wolves: The Chaos Warhounds, wolves that have been mutated by chaos. One variant glows green and can deal poison damage.
• Screaming Warrior: All of them, loud and proud.
• Shock and Awe: Dragon Ogres and Shaggoths are empowered by lightning, and the Dragon Ogres' Regiment of Renown, the Summoners of Rage, can cast a chain lightning spell once per battle.
• Sickly Green Glow: The poison variant of the Chaos Warhound glows bright green, and its maw constantly drips with luminescent saliva.
• Sigil Spam: The unit models usually mostly display the eight-pointed star of Chaos Undivided, one of the most famous symbols that represents Chaos as a whole and is guaranteed to not piss off 75% of all Warriors of Chaos on sight.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Let's just say the Chaos Warrior's love putting skulls on their armour.
• Spikes of Villainy: They love this trope, adorning many of their armour parts with spikes. Some even grow out of their body due to chaos mutations. Greenskins derisively refer to them as "spikey boyz" as a result.
• Tin Tyrant: A whole army of them, ranging from Chaos Lords to Chaos Warriors, all of them equipped in heavy plate armour.
• This Is Your Brain on Evil: Anyone who worships Chaos deeply will end up all kinds of wrong in the head.
• Too Many Mouths: Chaos Dragons have fang-lined mouths on their shoulders.
• Was Once a Man: Chaos Spawn and Forsaken are warriors whose minds and bodies broke under the strain of receiving too many mutating "gifts" from their masters, and are now psychotic, feral berserkers herded into battle by their fellows.
• Warrior Heaven: Khorne's domain in the Realm of Chaos is implied to be something like this for worthy warriors who die in battle, basically an evil version of Vahalla. Once again playing off the heavy Nordic flavor of this army, this is more like War 'is heaven.
• Unstoppable Rage: The standard state of mind for Warriors of Khorne, sprinkled with a Proud Warrior Race Guy mentality and a little Honour Before Reason. Units that adopt the mark of Khorne uniformly gain the Frenzy trait.

Champions of Chaos Undivided

Archaon the Everchosen

Archaon the Everchosen, Lord of the End Times

"I will prove once more that I am the Everchosen... for I am the Anointed, the Bringer of Woes — the one, true Lord of Chaos!"

"This fool dares challenge me, as if I care about his trivial lust for power! I will teach him a bitter lesson — one for all who defy me, who dare to oppose the will of the Chaos Gods! Here is a maggot to make an example of; it will be a warning to all the chieftains of the north."

Voiced by: Gary Martin

A former Sigmarite Templar, Archaon stumbled upon an ancient doctrine that contained within the secrets of his faith. Renouncing his allegiance to Sigmar he journeyed north to the dreaded Chaos Wastes to offer his service to the Chaos Gods. Here, the Ruinous Powers gave him their blessing to set out on his quest to become the Everchosen; the Lord of the End Times. Out of all the Everchosen of Chaos who have assailed the world over the ages, Archaon is by far the most ruthless and perhaps the most powerful. He is an individual that shall decide the fate of entire nations, whose sword can lay waste to heroes and armies and whose unbreakable will can break and dominate those of Gods. Archaon is truly the Herald of the Apocalypse, blessed with dreadful artifacts of ancient evil, each one bestowed as a reward for accomplishing impossible trials.

The Daemon Prince Be'lakor performed the coronation that made Archaon the Lord of the End Times. As the crown was fully placed, the last spark of Archaon's humanity was finally extinguished, finally accepting the Gods of Chaos to be the true Gods of the Cosmos. With his quest finally complete, Archaon now set forth upon the World as the Herald of the Apocalypse, a warrior who did the unthinkable and succeeded where hundreds of other Champions had failed.

In the first two games, Archaon is part of the general "Warriors of Chaos" faction. In the third game's Immortal Empires campaign, he instead leads the subfaction "Warhost of the Apocalypse" from the Blood Marshes, far to the north.

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• 13 Is Unlucky: Archaon is the thirteenth champion of Chaos to earn the mantle of Everchosen. According to a prophecy, he will also be the one who successfully brings about the end of the world.
• Adaptational Personality Change: In the lore, Archaon is quietly plotting a villainous Faustian Rebellion in regards to his destiny, hoping to double-cross the Chaos Gods by exterminating all life and depriving them of mortal worship. In Total War: Warhammer, this bit of characterization is absent, leaving Archeon as a bombastic Evil Overlord that seems to revel in his servitude to the Dark Gods.
• Animation Bump: Archaon shared the same skeleton and animations with the general Warriors of Chaos units since the first game. When the Warriors of Chaos received their rework, Archaon was given a unique set of combat animations, both on foot and mounted on Dorghar.
• Antagonistic Offspring: In some versions of the lore, Archaon's father is Be'lakor who took the guise of a Norscan warrior when violating his mother. And considering the amount of times that Be'lakor has tried to screw over Archaon, they do not get along at all.
• The Antichrist: The Warhammer world's equivalent, being the man destined to bring about the End Times on behalf of the Chaos Gods.
• Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: The Eye of Sheerian is a powerful talisman of protection granting Archaon a variety of buffs that increase his stats.
• Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: If one goes down his unique skill tree (added by the Foundation Patch) the flavor text indicates he becomes a Daemon Prince. Becoming a Daemon Prince is more or less synonymous with becoming a demigod. And the difference between a God and a Daemon in Warhammer largely depends on where one is standing at the time anyway.
• Badass Cape: Extra points for being bearskin.
• Big Bad: Of the first game and Mortal Empires, to the point where wounding Archaon (either in battle or by assassinating him) is a campaign victory requirement for every single faction, meaning even most of the evil factions are out to stop him. Of course, there's also the possibility of you playing as him.
• Black Knight: Has this look down to a tee, even moreso than other Chosen. It fits him even more, since he was a Templar Knight when he served humanity.
• Child by Rape: His mother was raped by a Norscan Champion (who may or may not have been Be'lakor in disguise) during a raid on the village of Hargendorf.
• Child of Two Worlds: As a half-breed child born out of rape between a Norscan Champion and a Nordlander woman. He was raised as a man of the Empire, but later became Everchosen of Chaos and leader of a vast horde of northerners.
• The Chosen One: As the Everchosen, Archaon is empowered by the favor of all four of the Dark Gods simultaneously, and granted total authority over their vast armies. In fact, Archaon's rise is a matter of prophecy, penned by a mad seer who tore his own eyes when he witnessed a vision of the apocalypse.
• Cool Helmet: The Crown of Domination is an ancient, golden helmet coated in fiery glyphs and sporting gigantic Horns of Villainy, with the Eye of Sheerian mounted in its forehead. It exudes an aura of malice and authority that keeps Archeon's bloodthirsty followers under control, and in-game it both grants Archeon Terror and a passive area buff that makes friendly units Immune to Psychology.
• Despair Event Horizon: Crossed it long ago. After finding out about his destiny as the one to bring the End Times, he went into a temple of Sigmar and begged his deity to aid him, but received not a whisper or sign of Sigmar's presence. He took this as a sign that the gods of the south were false, and that he might as well embrace his destiny.
• Demoted to Extra: In Immortal Empires, to an extent as he's still present and playable. But with the removal of the Chaos Invasion event, defeating him is no longer a requirement for most factions Victory Conditions, meaning the majority of the cast can actually ignore him and the Warhost of the Apocalypse for most of the game and he loses the ability to spawn in with endgame armies. In exchange, he's present throughout the campaign and can build up his forces to become a problem like any other faction, though ironically as an NPC faction he has a bad tendency to get taken out early game should the A.I. Roulette be unkind to him.
  • In fairness, the Immortal Empires trailer features him quite heavily as THE reason the Order factions need to get their shit together.
• The Dreaded: The entire world fears him. So much so the mere thought of him rampaging across the world is enough for all the Order factions to band together under the Shield of Civilization.
• Elite Mooks: A few of his unique skills heavily buff Chaos Chosen, and Chaos Knights — the best infantry, and one of the best cavalry units, in the game respectively.
• Evil Overlord: The mightiest champion of Chaos in existance, calling all the dark forces of the north to his banner in a campaign to burn the entire world.
• Evil Sorcerer: His thrall to Chaos has granted him immeasurable powers, including the gift of being able to cast magic from the Lore of Fire. When casting spells in-game, he'll often gloat about how his enemies might not have been expecting a brutish warrior to start slinging fireballs.
• Evil Sounds Deep: If you thought Mannfred's voice was deep, Archaon's harsh, reverberating tone makes him sound tame.
• Faith–Heel Turn/Go Mad from the Revelation: He was once a very devout Templar of Sigmar, but after reading a book called the Liber Caelistior, which detailed that he would be Everchosen of Chaos and bring about the End Times to the world, he went insane and forsook Sigmar.
• Fallen Hero: As a devout Templar of Sigmar, he was considered a peer among the paragons of the Cult. But now...
• Final Boss: Of the Empire, Vampire Counts, Greenskin, and Dwarf campaigns, and one of two possible Final Bosses for the Bretonnian campaign. He also serves as the final boss for the Champions of Chaos DLC.
• Flaming Sword: Wields one, known as The Slayer of Kings. It was created when the second Everchosen, Vangel, defeated a greater daemon and bound it into his sword. It deals magical damage, and can be activated to briefly give Archeon a tremendous +75% armor piercing damage, +50% splash damage, and +75% base weapon damage.
• Four-Star Badass: Is also known as the "Grand Marshall of Chaos", which is the same name as one of his unique skills which grant him better Lords. Not only is he a peerless strategist, a powerful warrior, and competent mage, his will is the only thing strong enough the unite the various factions of Chaos into Chaos Undivided.
• For Want Of A Nail: One of the main reasons why he fell was being convinced, no matter what he did, he would be the Everchosen. And not just an Everchosen, the Everchosen, the one who would successfully bring ruin to the world where the others had failed. This revelation convinced him he couldn't fight fate. As it turns out, not only can he be defeated, Wulfrik or Throgg can usurp his position, and gain the favor of the Chaos Gods over him. Archaon's destiny was never set in stone, he was actually fed lie after lie by the Chaos Gods until he snapped, making him even more tragic. And to add further salt to the wound, he can also be defeated in the Champions of Chaos DLC by one of the four monogod champions in their attempt to make their patron god the dominant force in The Great Game without the need of an Everchosen.
• Heroic Bastard: As a Templar of Sigmar anyway. Then the revelation that he was basically the Warhammer Anti-Christ turned him into a Bastard Bastard.
• Hellish Horse: His mount, Dorghar, Steed of the Apocalypse, a massive primordial demon of flame, and shadow.
• Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Takes a lot of inspiration from them, being a horseman who brings forth the end of the world. Notably though the implication here is that there is no need for four horsemen, since Archaon alone is enough to herald the End Times. His traits and skills are also heavily geared towards boosting Chaos Knights, encouraging a cavalry-heavy army.
• Horns of Villainy: The Crown of Domination sports a truly impressive set of horns.
• Knight In Shining Armour: Used to be one when he was serving in the Order of the Twin-Tailed Orb. He was even regarded by the Grandmaster as the most skilled, courageous, heroic and devout member of the order.
• Large and in Charge: Even compared to other massive lads like Wulfrik, Archaon towers over them◊.
• Large Ham: Probably the biggest in a World of Ham, mixed with Evil Is Hammy.
  Archaon: "Speak through your meek mouths. Mumble your pitiable words, so that I may use them as a lash to flay your soul!"
• Legacy Character: Archaon is in fact the thirteenth Everchosen of Chaos, and wields artifacts that previously belonged to the first two (the Armor of Morkar and the Slayer of Kings, respectively).
• Lightning Bruiser: When mounted on his horse, Archaon becomes incredibly fast, while retaining his power. The bruiser part comes in when you realize he has very close to monster levels of HP.
• Magic Knight: A mighty, mounted warrior who can also use the Lore of Fire.
• The Magnificent: When referred to by name, he's almost always referred to by his full title of Archaon the Everchosen.
• Nay-Theist: The discovery of Necrodomo's apocalyptic prophecy, and his prayers to Sigmar for salvation going unanswered, drove him to renounce the gods of the south. In the lore, he goes as far as to regard the Dark Gods of Chaos with the same level of contempt, and hopes to starve them of worship by exterminating all life.
• Nothing but Skulls: Count the amount of them just on his shoulders alone.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Archaon leads the Warriors of Chaos in a crusade to slaughter every living being in the world.
• The Paragon Always Rebels: Was once a devout Templar of Sigmar, now he's the greatest threat to the world and the chosen leader of Chaos's mortal hordes.
• Playing with Fire: Can use the Lore of Fire.
• Rape as Backstory: His mother was raped by a Norscan barbarian on one of their raids into Empire lands, leading to him being born.
• Red Baron: He's racked up a fearsome list of aliases for himself, including the Lord of the End Times, the Kingslayer, and the Three-Eyed King.
• That Man Is Dead: He abandoned his birth name, Diederick Kastner, once he completed the tests of the Chaos Gods and became their Everchosen.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: After learning that he was fated to become the Everchosen, he had a crisis of faith and prayed to Sigmar for salvation. When he was met with silence, he renounced the southern gods and embraced his destiny.
• Third Eye: He is called the Three-Eyed King for a reason. Mounted on the Crown of Domination is the Eye of Sheerian, which grants Archaon powers of prophecy and omniscience.
• Tin Tyrant: Archaon wears the Armor of Morkar, which was worn by the original Everchosen of Chaos, Morkar the Uniter, during his war against Sigmar at the dawn of the Empire.
• Tragic Villain: To a degree, Archaon never had any choice but to become what he did. He was a pawn of the Chaos Gods before he was even born. Even more tragic was that, despite being told he was forever destined to become the Lord of the End Times, it wasn't set in stone. Norsca figures, such as Wulfrik or even Throgg, could defeat him and usurp his title for themselves, or he could have been defeated before he ever brought about the End Times. Archeon was lied to until he finally believed it himself out of despair.
• 24-Hour Armor: Like most exalted champions of Chaos, Archeon is completely sealed off inside his armor, with no need for food or water.
• World's Best Warrior: Yeah, when you've taken down a Bloodthirster in single combat one-on-one with no outside interference, there's not much that'll ever be a serious threat to you other than an actual Physical God.

Kholek Suneater

Kholek Suneater, the Herald of the Tempest

"The whole world will burn before I rest again!"

Kholek is a Shaggoth of tremendous age. He is one of the first-born kin of Krakanrok the Black, father of the Dragon Ogres. Kholek was present when the terrible pact with the Dark Gods was forged, pledging their race to an eternity of servitude in exchange for immortality. The sagas tell that Kholek’s part in the bargain was such an affront to nature that the sun hid its face behind a bank of stormclouds and has never looked upon Kholek since that fateful day. True enough, Kholek’s coming is heralded by roiling black thunderheads. Where the Herald of the Tempest walks, a raging storm blots out the sun.

Like all Dragon Ogres, Kholek is energised and enlivened by the power of lightning, roaring with triumph as crackling bolts of pure power play across his ancient and scaly body. He wears great plates of brass as his armour, the better to attract the tempest’s kiss, encrusted with the patina of age and blackened by soot. In his shadow march the mountain tribes that worship him as a primal god of destruction.

If the rumours from the north are true, Kholek is abroad once more. Whenever the sky darkens with cloud and thunder rumbles on the horizon, all who know of the legend of the Suneater shiver in fear, for how can mortals stand against a being who has waged war in the name of the Dark Gods since before the dawn of Man?

In the first two games, Kholek is part of the general "Warriors of Chaos" faction. In the third game's Immortal Empires campaign, he leads the subfaction "Heralds of the Tempest" and starts in Chimera Plateau, in the Eastern Steppes.

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• Achilles' Heel: Kholek is one of the most fearsome Legendary Lords in the entire game, and he excels at destroying infantry and cavalry if they try to fight him. He's also the largest Lord by a great margin, so he's very vulnerable to being shot to pieces by artillery and armor-piercing ranged attacks.
• Ancestral Weapon: Wields a gigantic hammer that predates humanity.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: One of the largest units in the game, and the largest Legendary Lord. The average human stands barely higher than his ankles.
• The Brute: Even compared to the other Chaos warlords, Kholek only exists to kill and maim, and isn't that subtle about it. He's also an exaggerated The Big Guy, as he's the biggest being in the Chaos Warrior faction at over eighty feet tall.
• Deal with the Devil: The dragon ogres made a pact with the Chaos Gods in the ancient times; in exchange for near-immortality, which is acquired through being struck by lightning (which rejuvenates them), they would fight for the Chaos Gods whenever they called.
• Evil Is Bigger: A Lord of Chaos, and one of the few giant-sized creatures in the game who can command armies.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the lore, wherever Kholek goes, storm clouds follow (which is the reason why he's called "Suneater"). However, nothing of the sort occurs when he is present in battle, aside from Kholek's body crackling with electricity whenever his lightning strike power is charged.
• A God Am I: Worshiped as a living God by many Norscans (considering his pure power and abilities it's hard not to blame them). One of his quotes when moving on the campaign map is "Mountain God", so he at least seems to approve.
  • In Immortal Empires in the third game, Kholek's faction attribute is 'Strength From Worship' that makes Kholek bigger and more powerful for every faction he forcefully subjugates, suggesting that not only do Kholek's vassals worship him as a living god, it has a palpable effect on his power and strength.
• Horned Humanoid: Sports a set of three massive horns on his head.
• King Mook: One of Kholek's faction effects makes his fellow dragon ogres and shaggoths 60% cheaper to recruit, while his personal horde also enjoys 30% reduced upkeep for those same units.
• Large and in Charge: Not only is he one of the biggest lords in the game as-is, the trope is also enforced by his game mechanics in Immortal Empires. Kholek gains +5% to his mass (and a hidden +1% to his model size on the overland map) for every faction he subdues and vassalizes. In other words, the more in charge Kholek is, the larger he gets. Once over ten vassals, Kholek's size and mass becomes the biggest in the game (at ten or lower he's below Ku'gath in mass).
  • In the lore he is only the second largest of his race. His father, Krakanrok the Black, was described as being so large that Archaon and his followers (on a quest for the Slayer of Kings) mistook him for a mountain!
• Lightning Bruiser: Pun aside, Kholek is deceptively fast for his massive size, and in some cases being able to outrun cavalry.
• Luke Nounverber: A pretty intimidating example to boot.
• The Older Immortal: Holds the greatest claim to 'oldest playable character', being over 10,000 years old.
• One-Man Army:
  • One of Kholek's unique skills gives him a 20% ward save, giving him a flat reduction to all non-direct incoming damage. Add the right magical items and a Mark of Tzeentch to this and Kholek will break the cap on damage reduction (90%) and can solo entire armies while taking only Scratch Damage in return.
  • While the ward save stacking is no longer around in Immortal Empires, his faction bonuses makes Kholek 5% more powerful (his armour, damage and mass increases) every time he subdues and vassalizes a new faction. This means once he's got enough vassals (over ten or so) he's basically unstoppable, becoming immune to non-AP damage and capable of one-shotting most non-legendary lords in melee combat (doubly so if you can get him Regeneration through an item or by defeating Isabella).
  • Even in multiplayer, where such Game Breaker tactics is not available, Kholek has remained a high-tier monster lord for much of the game's lifespan. There are lords that can beat him (Skarbrand, Ku'gath and certain duel lords) and he's vulnerable to magic and mass missile fire, but for his cost Kholek is extremely powerful as a melee combatant to the degree that the yardstick of a good melee lord is how well they can trade with Kholek cost-wise.
• Shock and Awe: Like other shaggoths, he is empowered by lightning, and can even learn a spell to summon lightning strikes in battle.
• A Storm Is Coming: A walking literal example. His part in the pact with the Chaos Gods was said to be such an abomination, the sun never looked upon him since then. Wherever he goes, a thunderstorm follows.
• Time Abyss: He is the second-oldest of the still-living dragon ogres, meaning that he was present before the arrival of the Old Ones who created the Lizardmen and the coming of Chaos. This would make him tens of thousands of years old.
• Tin Tyrant: Unlike the rest of his race, who generally go without much physical protection beyond their scales, Kholek is covered from head-to-tail in thick, black armor, which gives him a really large armor rating (especially compared to most monsters), adding to his insane durability.
• With Catlike Tread: Kholek (as well as whatever army he joins) suffers a hefty -20% penalty to ambush chance, because it's very, very easy to see him coming.

Be'lakor

Be'lakor, the Dark Master

"I HAVE NO MASTERS!"

"You think you are the first to bear such dark honours? You are a nothing. Born of nothing. The hollow fruit of an empty womb. All that you are I put in there. But think not that I afford you any affection for that. My half-breeds roam the world. Thousands more serve me not in flesh but in deed. They carry my mark. They live for my favour. They know their place. They do not carp and question. They serve the darkness of this world through the darkness they find in themselves. They serve their father-in-shadow - the darkness that is Be’lakor..."

Voiced by: Richard Armitage

At the dawn of the World, Be'lakor, a savage primitive from an unknown land, became the first mortal to pledge his soul to the Chaos Gods. The Ruinous Powers rewarded his courage by destroying his mortal shell and recreating him in their image: that of a Daemon Prince, the first of his kind. However, Be'lakor grew arrogant, taking the blessings of his masters while giving little in return. Eventually, the Dark Gods grew tired of his greed and cast him down, stripping him of his physical form and only releasing him to the mortal world when they see fit.

To add insult to injury, Be'lakor was granted a new duty: to crown the Everchosen, a mere mortal given all the power and favor the Daemon Prince had once taken for granted. Twelve times now has Be’lakor fulfilled his destiny as harbinger, each time attempting to escape his pre-ordained fate, but ultimately meeting with failure. Now, as the hour of the thirteenth coronation draws near, Be’lakor is driven as never before to throw off his shackles...

In the Realm of Chaos campaign, Be'lakor is an extra Legendary Lord, with no campaign or faction of his own. Instead, he is rewarded as a new Lord upon completing the campaign, regardless of the faction the player is currently playing. He is also available as a Lord for Daemons of Chaos in custom multiplayer mode. In Immortal Empires, he is fully playable as a part of the Warriors of Chaos faction, leading the subfaction "The Shadow Legion" from the isle of Albion.

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• Ambiguous Situation: It is unknown how he managed to take control of the Forge of Souls from it's unseen masters. Whether he had driven them away, imprisoned them, slain them or made alliance with them in the game's continuity is uncertain.
• Archnemesis Dad: In some versions of the lore, Be'lakor is the father of Archaon, having possessed or taken the guise of the Norscan warrior who violated his mother. The two don't get along very well, considering the amount of times that Be'lakor has tried to screw over Archaon due to his resentment.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: In his backstory, he was the very first mortal to be granted daemonhood.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Be'lakor at the height of his power arrogantly demanded more of it from the Ruinous Powers... and received a beam of power in response as punishment for his hubris, which destroyed his Evil Tower of Ominousness and his physical form.
  • During the Realm Of Chaos campaign he states that he wants enemies to come to him to be turned into Soul Grinders. Come they do but (assuming the player wins) they ultimately overpower him.
• Big Bad: Of the Realm of Chaos campaign in III, as he is the one who has captured the bear-god, Ursun, and is attempting to fully drain him of his power.
• Casting a Shadow: Has access to the Lore of Shadows, as well as a number of unique traits that are themed on darkness and dread. Had he been successful in his ascension in the campaign, he would have become the Chaos God of Shadows.
• The Chooser of the One: Be'lakor's job as Harbinger is to crown the Everchosen, an Evil Overlord whom the Dark Gods and all the forces of the north unite behind for a massive invasion of the civilized world. Archaon, Big Bad of the first game, is the thirteenth (and according to prophecy, final) Everchosen. Of course, Be'lakor hates this job and would much rather have the power himself, leading to many attempts to escape his obligations (the kidnapping of Ursun merely being the latest of these).
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Be'lakor has absolutely no loyalties to anyone except himself and will not entertain the idea of bowing down to lesser mortals, even if they will succeed in causing the downfall of the civilized world.
• Cool Sword: The shimmering Blade of Shadow, which grants Be'lakor an increasing bonus to armor-piercing damage and weapon skill as he earns kills in battle.
  As more and more hapless opponents fall to Be'lakor's daemonic blade, so its hunger increases and its bite becomes ever more savage.
• The Corruptor: To Prince Yuri Barkov, speaking to him throughout the prologue campaign in the guise of Ursun. It is at Be'lakor's urging that Yuri takes up Wolfsbane and adopts increasingly unwholesome tactics, and in the final confrontation Be'lakor is able to convince the prince to betray and wound Ursun. However, this would later come back to bite Be'lakor hard because Yuri will later return as a new Daemon Prince hell-bent on subjugating his corruptor. This is taken further and made into its own mechanic for him in Immortal Empires. Be'lakor can defeat enemy lords and, instead of killing them, taint them with his mark and release. Over time these individuals will get more and more corrupt until they transform into Daemon Princes that will join his faction.
• Dark Is Evil: The Dark Master, a being heavily associated with darkness and shadow, and quite possibly the single most evil Daemon in existence.
• Deal with the Devil: After Be'lakor's defeat the hands of the player faction, Tzeentch offers Be'lakor a way to retain his corporeal form and avoid being banished, which Be'lakor agrees to in desperation. Tzeentch being Tzeentch, this results in Be'lakor, to his horror, being bound to the player's servitude forever. It hits doubly hard if the player is playing the daemonic Ungol Prince, who Be'lakor originally betrayed in the first place.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Highly likely at the climax of the Realm of Chaos campaign. He's a real beast in combat but he comes in alone after the player has battled through several waves of demons to get to him. Reinforcements do come to help but the battlefield makes it quite possible to block them off from reaching him for quite a while, meaning the player can simply swarm Be'lakor with every unit still standing and whittle down his health before any of his minions can help him.
• Defeat Means Playable: Defeating Be’lakor in the final battle of the campaign unlocks him for other modes (though he doesn't have his own Realm of Chaos campaign). In addition, your faction gains control over him as a lord for the campaign aftermath, even if you aren't playing as Daemons.
• Deflector Shields: When needed, Be'lakor can activate the ability "Shadow Shroud", gaining a 40% ward save that lasts for half a minute.
  The Father-In-Shadow wraps himself in a cloak of murk that protects him from lesser magicks.
• Demon of Human Origin: He was the very first mortal to ascend to Daemon Princedom. However, it is unknown what his race was before his ascension.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: He got to find out the hard way that while the Chaos Gods want you to beg them for power, they will unleash hell on you if you ever decide to order them around, even if you happen to be one of their greatest creations.
• Dying Curse: When the Chaos Gods struck down Be'lakor and destroyed his physical form, he growled "Damn the gods" before his body vanished.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Be'lakor's design makes use of his older model instead of his most recent one (which was revealed a month after the third game's announcement trailer).
• Fallen Angel: An Evil Versus Evil variant; Be'lakor was the first Daemon Prince created by the Chaos Gods, and the leader of their armies when they first invaded the Mortal Realms. However, his pride got to his head and he started demanding more power and authority, leading to the Gods smiting him. Now he lurks in the shadows, scheming to undo the gods' judgment and regain the position he lost.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride, and how! In addition to his initial fall by making demands of the Chaos Gods, his plots are technically good ideas but always fail for the same reason; Be'lakor's actions attract too much attention, resulting in several factions looking to stop him or take advantage of the very opportunities he created for himself. Be'lakor is well aware of this problem (and actively counts on it to happen, as he explains to Ursun), but sorely overestimates his own ability to win against the odds.
• Giant Flyer: Like other daemon princes, he is a towering behemoth that’s capable of flight.
• God Guise: As a disembodied voice, he pretends to be the god Ursun to manipulate and corrupt Yuri throughout the prologue campaign. In the past he's also frequently pretended to be one of the Chaos Gods (or at least still in their good graces) to manipulate their servants into advancing his ends.
• Heaven Above: The cutscene describing his backstory shows him sitting in a throne at the top of an Evil Tower of Ominousness, beseeching the dark sky as he arrogantly demands more power from the Chaos Gods. In response, the Gods unceremoniously destroy him and his tower with a Bolt of Divine Retribution.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: By capturing and holding Ursun in the Forge of Souls, Be’lakor actually causes the various playable factions of Warhammer III to race to his hiding place and defeat him. Any of them (including the Order factions) will be rewarded with control over him when they win, so Be’lakor will ultimately find himself a slave despite regaining his physical form.
  • This trope becomes even more strongly invoked if the Daemon Prince defeats Be’lakor, because the Prince is his former pawn Yuri. In fact, the Prince makes it a point to take revenge against Be’lakor because Be’lakor cheated him out of gaining Ursun’s power.
• Idiot Ball: Someone with the age and experience of dealing with the Dark Gods as Be'lakor really should have known better than to agree to a deal of any kind with Tzeentch. Although it can be chalked up to his desperation to avoid losing his corporeal form.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Once an almighty Evil Overlord, Be'lakor has been a chew-toy for the Chaos Gods for the better part of ten-thousand years, as they piled on the humiliations for his arrogance. Every scheme to escape his responsibility as Harbinger or steal the mantle of Everchosen ends in failure, whether due to the machinations of the Gods, the interference of plucky heroes, or some detail he overlooked. The Realm of Chaos campaign is no exception, as his lair in the Forge of Souls is invaded and ransacked by the player just as he's about to achieve his ultimate victory, and Tzeentch twists the knife further by forcing him to serve the player afterwords. All that said, he really does deserve it.
• Kick the Dog: Ursun uses his last moments alive to beg him to spare Kislev. Be'lakor merely laughs and gloats that he will destroy Kislev.
• Living Shadow: His current form following the Gods smiting him; Be'lakor drifts about the world and the Realm of Chaos as a shadow, unable to take physical form again as punishment for his arrogance.
• Magic Knight: In multiplayer, Be'lakor combines melee stats almost as good as Skarbrand's with more Hit Points than Kholek, a full spellcasting suite, ground speed that beats most cavalry, and the ability to fly. His only real lack is a ranged weapon (and the Lore of Shadows has no magic missile spells), otherwise Be'lakor is probably one of the most well-rounded lords outside of the dragon twins in terms of what he can do.
• Manipulative Bastard: Be'lakor's most defining characteristic is his cunning and his love for weaving long-term plans. He was responsible for two major disasters in the lore — the crushing of Mordheim beneath a warpstone meteorite and the war for Albion — and those are just the ones that are known about. In the campaign, it's revealed he was the one who corrupted Yuri into trying to kill Ursun, tricking the Ungol prince into thinking that slaying the bear make him a god, when in reality it would weaken Ursun enough for Be'lakor to enact his own scheme.
• Mecha-Mooks: The third vision reveals that Be'lakor isn't just hiding in the Forge of Souls, but outright controls it, giving him command over the soul grinders whose true names were sacrificed to it, as well as the facilities needed to build more using the enslaved essence of other daemons. Shortly after this reveal, Be'lakor starts sending stacks of soul grinders through the rifts to attack the player's empire, and during the final battle his army is composed almost entirely of the cyborgs.
• Orcus on His Throne: As Ursun points out, Be'lakor isn't doing much except hiding in the Forge of Souls, even building a recreation of his original throne to sit on. Be'lakor's counter-argument is that he's waiting for the Dark Gods to send their armies after him, so he can destroy them and use their essence to manufacture soul grinders.
• Power Parasite: When Ursun finally dies, Be'lakor starts to use the machinery of the Forge to absorb Ursun's power, to ascend as a new Chaos God. The Daemon Prince presumably hijacks this machine for his own use in a Legion of Chaos victory, where the Prince becomes the new Top God of Kislev.
• Pride: His pride went to his head, causing him to consider himself better than the Chaos Gods. They took issue with this.
• Rage Against the Heavens: He seeks vengeance on the Chaos Gods for striking him down and destroying his physical body.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: To Chaos. His faction is hostile to the big four and he wishes to become the sole Chaos God by killing all of them.
• The Resenter: He resents how he must be the one who crowns the Everchosen instead of being the Everchosen himself - an entirely invoked trope on the part of the Dark Gods.
  "Archaon is weak...It should have been me..."
• Sketchy Successor: He considers everyone to be this for Morkar the Uniter, the first Everchosen. A significant part of his current rebelliousness is driven by his belief that he is the only one worthy to inherit the title and he frequently insults other Chaos Champions, including Archaon, for not being Morkar.
• Spikes of Villainy: He has bone spikes poking out of his thighs and the sides of his torso.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: "Whispers in Darkness" is a passive leadership debuff aura that disables the Immune to Psychology trait, causing units that otherwise have Nerves of Steel to become vulnerable to fear and terror effects while in Be'lakor's presence.
  Even the most steadfast among a warband may find their morale waver when the Harbinger's voice whispers persistently in their ears.
• Winged Humanoid: Like many Daemon Princes, his default form is a large horned humanoid with a pair of bat-like wings.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: The prologue campaign sees him accomplish pretty much every one of his objectives to weaken and wound Ursun further, and allow him to begin his Power Parasite plan, and the full campaign shows he's already regained physicality long before you face him directly.

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Champions of Khorne

Valkia the Bloody

Valkia the Bloody, Sword-Maiden of the Blood God

"The Axefather's halls are only for the worthy!"

Once a fell chieftain and warrior-queen of the Norscan tribe known as the Schwarzvolf, Valkia rose in the Blood God's esteem by leading her warriors to vanquish tribes dedicated to the other Chaos Gods, and by slaying any who questioned her right to rule.

When the Daemon Prince of Slaanesh known as Locephax came into her hall, intrigued by her feral beauty, and commanded her to leave her throne and join him as a slave girl, the warrior-queen took up her great spear, Slaupnir, and slew the daemon in a berserk rage, swearing that she would lay its head at the very base of Khorne's Skull Throne. Though she died on the journey, Khorne was impressed with her devotion, and elevated her to daemonhood.

Charged with descending onto the battlefield to choose those worthy warriors of Norsca who will fight on in the Halls of the Blood God for all eternity after their deaths, Valkia has served her dark master well for uncounted centuries. She descends upon the field of glory, her armour drenched in blood and rays of light shining from her spear. The warriors of Norsca who praise mighty Khorne — which is to say, many of them — redouble their efforts in her presence, knowing that the Blood-Father despises cowards and will strike down those who flee or show weakness.

Introduced in the Champions of Chaos DLC for Total War: Warhammer III, Valkia leads the subfaction "Legion of the Gorequeen".

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: Valkia's tabletop model had her skull be elongated and coated in scales, giving her a visage reminiscent of a bloodletter. Here, the mutation is much less dramatic, so her skull merely tapers to a small point at the back of her head and otherwise remains in its natural shape. She also wears eyeliner and an earring on her left ear, which weren't present in her tabletop model.
• Adaptational Species Change: Before the game came out, it was never made consistent whether or not Valkia was a Daemon Princess or a mortal. On the tabletop she never had the "Daemon" special rule but several books describes her as a Daemon, while in the End Times she was explictily Killed Off for Real and had to be resurrected by the Chaos Gods in Age of Sigmar. In the game, she is referred as a demon princess but is mechanically a mortal unit... until one picks her capstone skill, which does turn her into a daemonic unit.
• Amazonian Beauty: Her "feral beauty" was such that, as a mortal queen of a Norse tribe, she caught the interest of a daemon prince of Slaanesh. Unfortunately, his less-than-flattering attempt to court her (i.e. demand she stop being a queen and instead be his sex slave) resulted in him getting his head hacked off. Even as a Daemon Princess, Valkia remains a relatively Cute Monster Girl compared to most daemons.
• Anti-Escape Mechanism: If enemy armies retreat from a potential engagement with Valkia on the campaign map, her army immediately regains 35% movement allowance, all but guaranteeing that she'll run the enemy down for their cowardice.
• Berserk Button:
  • Anything perceived as weakness or cowardice. Valkia's Anti-Escape Mechanism is implied to come from her absolute loathing of cowardice, while in the lore for the tabletop, she murdered her own father for offering protection to Norscan farmers. She also massacred her entire tribe (including her own daughter) when she returned as a Daemon Princess, punishing them for becoming lax and feeble in Khorne's eyes after her mortal death.
  • Looking down on her for being female. Beyond beheading Locephax for demanding she become one of his slave girls (and implying it would be a better position than being queen as she already was), Valkia in the tabletop murdered her husband for some misogynistic comments he made about her and her daughters (and also to use him as The Scapegoat for the murder of her father).
• Blood Knight: As you might expect from a champion of Khorne. The Legion of the Gorequeen has the Bloodletting mechanic from the Daemons of Khorne race, providing factionwide bonuses as they string combat victories, and armies regain 20% of their movement allowance after a victorious battle. In addition, Valkia's vassals gain the Frenzy trait for all of their units.
• Child by Rape: Depending on the Writer, she forced her husband to have sex with her at knifepoint after getting him drunk with wine in order to produce her heirs. This, along with the fact she murdered them later, really demonstrates how twisted and monstrous she could be even before she became a Daemon Princess.
• Cute Monster Girl: Valkia is a Daemon Princess, the same order of being as Be'lakor and Azazel, but she takes the form of a daemonic Amazonian Beauty rather than a colossal monster like the men.
• Dark Action Girl: She managed to become the foremost champion of the God of crazy, violent psychopaths by being an especially crazy, violent psychopath. Not to mention, she did this as a woman in what is otherwise a very male dominated society.
• Demon of Human Origin: She is a Daemon Princess, a mortal servant of Chaos granted the ultimate reward of immortality. This is notable as she was strongly suggested to be just a heavily-mutated mortal in the tabletop lore, and the setting is otherwise completely devoid of named female Daemon Princes.
• Devil's Pitchfork: AS befitting for the champion of Khorne, Valkia wield the spear Slaupnir, named for a terrible daemon of Norscan myth. It has been Valkia's personal weapon since the days of her mortal life. Now it bears the blessings of Khorne as a weapon of Chaos.
• Flight: Thanks to her powerful wings, she can soar above the battlefield with ease before swooping down with brutal relish.
• Frontline General: Any Chaos Lord can be this, but Valkia has the special ability Gaze of Khorne that grants nearby units a bonus to weapon strength, base and armour-piercing, and leadership, making her a useful buffer as well.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Being an extremely devout Khornate, Valkia shares her god's distate of magic users. However, since her Legion of the Gorequeen is a Warriors of Chaos faction, she can still recruit Undivided Sorcerers.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The Daemonshield is the disembodied head of the Slaaneshi Daemon Prince Locephax, reforged into a shield by Khorne as a gift to Valkia upon her ascension.
• Psycho Supporter: For Khorne, naturally. She's fit to rival his Daemonic servants for sheer psychotic bloodlust and dedication to indiscriminate bloodshed, such that she murdered her father, her husband and both of her daughters without remorse.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: She fought through all manner of horrors to personally offer the skull of Locephax to Khorne, only to fall within sight of a portal that would have taken her to his realm. Fortunately for her, Khorne was impressed with how far she made it, and elevated her to Daemonhood anyway.
• The Smurfette Principle: Exaggerated up to and past 11 — not only is Valkia the only female character explicitly dedicated to Chaos in-game (Morathi is a bit ambiguous), but she is to date the only female Daemon Prince who has rules and a major role in any Warhammer property whatsoever.^note Horus Heresy and by extension Warhammer 40,000 have Ingethel the Ascended, who was once a mortal woman from Cadia, but she has no presence in the game, merely being an important figure in the backstory, and Warhammer has Dechala the Denied One who is hovering on the edge of daemonhood but is explicitly being held back from actually becoming a Daemon Prince.
• Valkyries: She's based on the myth, as a flying warrior-woman who ferries the souls of the worthy to a Warrior Heaven in the Realm of Khorne.
• Winged Humanoid: Sports a pair of leathery daemon wings, allowing her to fly without a mount.
• Wowing Cthulhu: Although she had failed, her audacious quest to personally deliver a skull to the Skull Throne — fighting her way through the Chaos Wastes until she was within spitting distance of a portal to the Realm of Khorne — impressed the Blood God enough to resurrect Valkia as a highly-favored Daemon Prince.
  • Assuming her comments are to be taken literally, Valkia shot so far up in Khorne's eyes that she's outright dating him, openly referring to him as her "paramour" when he gives her a mission to reclaim Slaupnir.

Champions of Tzeentch

Sarthorael the Ever-Watcher

Sarthorael the Ever-Watcher, Lord of Change

"All are pawns to the Great Deceiver..."

Sarthorael the Ever-Watcher is a powerful Greater Daemon, and one of the main antagonists in Total War: Warhammer, serving as a sort of end game boss, and true Big Bad.

Sarthorael is a Lord of Change, a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, a powerful and cunning avian fiend. He is blessed with the multi-layered cunning and timeless wisdom of Tzeentch himself, a deep and subtle understanding of the mortal fears that drive the world within its well-worn rut. How thoroughly he understands and how much he despises the entrapping comforts of stability and familiarity. Nothing pleases him more than to see the world broken and made anew, to redirect the course of life or even history itself, to spill mortal hopes upon the ground while raising the ambitions of others up to an unexpected pinnacle of power. It is a playful and cruel mind that lies behind Sarthorael's bird-like gaze, deeply intelligent, as uncaring of consequence as it is fascinated by it. He is like a child playing upon an anthill, poking with a stick at its inhabitants and laughing at the hopeless antics of their defense.

Originally depicted in the announcement/cinematic trailer being summoned by a corrupted light wizard (whom in the Chaos Warrior campaign is revealed to be none other than the Advisor), Sarthorael has been manipulating the events of the game, and intends to usurp Archaon's position as Ever-Chosen of Chaos. He takes the form of a white crow that whispers lies and orders into the fallen light wizard's ear. Midway through the game, he murders him after he has served his role, before taking his true form as a mighty Daemon of Tzeentch!

In the first two games, Sarthorael appears as a non-playable Legendary Lord who shows up as part of the Chaos Invasion event, either as part of the Warriors of Chaos faction or as the leader of the "Chaos Gathering" faction if one is playing as the Warriors. The DLC Rise of the Beastmen has Sarthorael as a playable Legendary Lord for the Warriors of Chaos on custom and multiplayer battles, provided that you complete the Grand Campaign first and have the Warriors of Chaos DLC installed. In the third game's Immortal Empires, he appears as the leader of the minor Tzeentch faction called Sarthorael's Watchers, and can be confederated with by other Tzeentch factions. Notably, while the multiplayer version is the same as before, the campaign Sarthorael has been upgraded into an Exalted Lord of Change.

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• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: He and his fellow Lords of Change are among the few inherently giant-sized monster Lords in the first game, along with Kholek Suneater, Durthu and the Ancient Treemen.
• Big Bad: Of the Warriors of Chaos campaign in the first two games, where he seeks to slay Archeon and take the mantle of Everchosen for himself.
• Canon Foreigner: Sarthorael is original to the Total War: Warhammer trilogy, not being present in pre-established tabletop lore. Years after the launch of the first game, however, he would be mentioned by name in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
• The Chessmaster: Daemons are notorious for manipulating mortals and using them like pawns, Daemons of Tzeentch like Lords of Change triply so. Sarthorael has been pitting the various factions against each other, as if he was manipulating pawn pieces on a chess board.
• Creepy Crows: A giant, blue corvid-looking creature, Sarthorael's visage reflects Tzeentch's association with ravens — one of Tzeentch's titles is even "the Raven God". When he's hidden, he takes the form of a white bird perched upon the Advisor's shoulder. Doubles as Clever Crows, reflecting Tzeentch's status as the god of intelligence and wisdom and Sarthorael being an extension of such.
• Degraded Boss: Sarthorael was a Unique Enemy in the first game's launch, and afterwords his species appeared as rarely-encountered army lords. Total War: Warhammer 3 introduces the fully-playable Daemons of Tzeentch race, who use the old Lords of Change as mere monster units, while the lord slot is now taken up by Exalted Lords of Change with fancy new models.
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: Being a Lord of Change, a Greater Daemon of the god Tzeentch, he sits fairly high in the daemonic hierarchy. Notably, until the third game rolled around, Lords of Change were the only daemon species that appeared in the series.
• Demoted to Extra: After spending the first two games as the Greater-Scope Villain of the Grand Campaign/Mortal Empires, Sarthorael in the third game's Immortal Empires is now just a regular NPC faction leader with no narrative significance, statistically and vocally identical to any other Exalted Lord of Change.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: All the events of the first game were carefully orchestrated by... the Advisor's pet crow, who was a Lord of Change in disguise.
• Evil Laugh: Lets out a chilling laugh when he takes his true form, during a cinematic.
• Evil Sounds Deep: When he talks, he speaks in a deep, horrid, guttural voice.
• Extra-ore-dinary: He uses the Lore of Metal. Being a servant of Tzeentch, it's likely due to the lore's secondary theme of alchemical transmutation, turning flesh into gold and causing metal to rust.
• Feathered Fiend: A monstrous bird-like creature, thoroughly evil, and responsible for instigating the first game's conflict for his own amusement.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: If you're not playing Chaos he's just another high-level Legendary Lord that shows up for Archaon's invasion. If you are playing as Chaos, he appears with little advance warning and promptly starts chasing your forces across the map with a stack of elite units.
• Genius Bruiser: Sarthorael is a master of plots, deceit, and very complicated gambits, as well as a spellcaster. He's also a gigantic monster who can rip apart entire battalions of knights with his tentacle staff and talons.
• Greater-Scope Villain: In the non-Chaos Warriors campaigns in I. While you do fight him in all campaigns during the Chaos Invasion, the true extent of Sarthorael's role and manipulation is only revealed in the Chaos Warriors campaign.
  • Also, in the Realm of Chaos campaign in III, where he appears at the very last minute to enslave the Advisor and reveal that the game is a Stealth Prequel.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His manipulations with the Advisor might very well lead to the rise of a faction powerful enough to ruin his plans and send him screaming back to the Realm of Chaos.
• Magic Staff: He wields a towering staff crowned with writhing tentacles and a single staring eye, which he uses to cast his spells.
• Manipulative Bastard: Oh yeah. Lords of Change, as shining reflections of their Chaos God, pretty much embody this trope. Case in point, Sathorael makes Tzeentch very proud. Not only does he manipulate all the factions into fighting each other, Sarthorael casts aside his pawn with mocking laughter after pecking out his eyeballs with his beak once he's done with him. Interestingly subverted at the start of the Beastmen campaign, where the Advisor heavily implies that Sarthorael is working directly with Khazrak with no misdirection, and is merely using the Advisor as a middle-man to direct the brayherds.
  The Advisor: I know you feel a yearning to kill me, for I am but a man, but you have received the vision; you know who has sent me...
• No Campaign for the Wicked: Despite being a Legendary Lord, Sarthorael is not playable in any capacity in either the first game's Grand Campaign or the second's Mortal Empires. This is partially Averted in III, where Sarthorael has become the faction leader of the Sarthorael's Watchers NPC faction, meaning he can be confederated with while playing as Tzeentch.
• Not the Intended Use: Despite being mainly a magician, many players opt to simply charge him into battle and spread terror. Sarthorael might be a Squishy Wizard by the standards of Greater Daemons, but he's still a gigantic monster.
• One-Man Army: Sarthorael is a very strong contender for the title of most destructive character in the first game, thanks to being a spellcaster that doubles as a giant-sized monster unit. Watch him pulp infantry regiments while calling down bombardments and vortexes.
• Pet the Dog: After a fashion. In the Beastmen campaign it's implied he's formed an alliance of sorts with Khazrak the One-Eye, which marks the first time in many years that a God or Daemon of Chaos has offered the Beastmen a chance to be more than just a disposable first wave for an invading Norscan war party.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: As a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch he's pretty high up on the Chaos totem pole. Watch in horror as he blows apart entire units of soldiers with his spells and rips through your lines as he childishly giggles in laughter.
• Secret Character: The patch related to Call of the Beastmen enables Sarthorael to be unlocked for Custom and Multiplayer battles, provided you also have the Warriors of Chaos DLC and have completed the Grand Campaign at least once. However, he still isn’t usable in single player campaigns.
• Starter Villain: In Immortal Empires, he is this to Teclis, as the latter's campaign starts with him at war with Sarthorael's Watchers.
• Unique Enemy: Subverted in the launch version of I and eventually fully averted as the series progressed; Sarthorael is the only Lord of Change one would encounter in the first game until one played Archaon's quest battles, which feature another Lord of Change as an army lord. More Lords of Change were added over time, with Norsca in particular allowing the player to recruit a separate Lord of Change as a reward for siding with Tzeentch during their campaign. Finally, the third game throws out any pretense of this by having the Daemons of Tzeentch as their own faction, allowing you to recruit an entire army of Lords of Change, with the only unique trait left in Sarthorael being that he is a Lord of Change who can serve as an army general for the Warriors of Chaos faction in multiplayer battles (in a faction that normally has no access to Greater Daemon lords).
• Walking Spoiler: It's impossible to talk about Sarthorael without mentioning the Advisor's treachery or the Daemon's status as the first game's Big Bad.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He wastes no time in ridding himself of the Advisor once he has no more use of him.

Vilitch the Curseling

Vilitch the Curseling (and Thomin), the Twisted Twin

"We will show them, brother. We will show them all!"

Voiced by: George Coley

Once there was born a pair of twins; one healthy, strong and good to look upon, and one wretched, weak and tiny. Though the tribe's leaders expected the wholesome son to become a great warrior, it was the runt who was to change their fate forever.

As they grew up, Thomin became well-muscled and athletic, quickly learning the ways of the warrior. Vilitch barely managed to scrape by as an apprentice to the tribe's shaman, where he learnt a few meagre cantrips and a little knowledge about the powers that dwelt beyond the veil. Every night, the runtling prayed fervently to Tzeentch to reverse their fates, to make him the strong one and his brother the slave. The Great Sorcerer, who delights in anarchy, eventually agreed to Vilitch's request. One Geheimnisnacht, when the Chaos moon passed close to the world, Vilitch awoke to find that his body and that of his sibling Thomin had melded together. His brother's intellect had been added to his own, and there was nothing left of Thomin's mind save for a drooling automaton enthralled to Vilitch's command.

The grotesque fusion of warrior and runtling that staggered out of the twins' tent glowed with the power of baleful magic. Vilitch's budding magical abilities had been enhanced a hundredfold, and the hulking body to which his withered frame had been fused was possessed of diabolic strength. Laughing maniacally at his newfound powers, Vilitch embarked upon a bloody killing spree, sending crackling arcs of pure change into those who had looked down upon him in the past and forcing the body of Thomin to throttle any who tried to stop him. By the time the sun set, the village had been consumed by sorcerous fire and the streets ran with molten flesh.

But Vilitch's story did not end there. The malformed sorcerer-twin hunted down all of the warrior elite of his tribe and used his dire powers to enslave their minds, making them little more than walking puppets that lived and died according to his whims. Now, wherever the Curseling plots and schemes to further his own power, a band of hard-bitten veterans marches at his side, each of them under the fearful command of the disturbing creature that they know only as the Twisted Twin.

Introduced in the Champions of Chaos DLC for Total War: Warhammer III, Vilitch leads the subfaction "Puppets of Misrule".

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• All of the Other Reindeer: Deconstructed. The rest of the twins' village shunned Vilitch for his ugliness and frailty, forbidding him to so much as hold a sword and openly favouring his brother over him. As such, once they were fused together, Vilitch paid them back with interest using his new magical powers.
• Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: The Vessel of Chaos, one of Vilitch's many gifts from Tzeentch, is an arcane amulet that empowers his spellcasting. It triggers an aura that recharges his and Thomin's Barrier whenever he casts a spell. In Campaign Mode, it reduces the cost for Drain Magic, a Changing of the Ways that drains an enemy army's magic reserves and gifts them to Vilitch, to 0% as long as Vilitch is in the same province as them.
• And I Must Scream: It is rumored that Thomin is only given just enough awarenes to know what is happening to him thanks to his envious brother, but given no ability to do anything about it except to silently pray to Tzeentch to reverse their fates, just like how Vilitch would do before they were fused together.
• The Archmage: After receiving the gift of greater magic power from Tzeentch and a long path honing his sorcery, Vilitch has become a Loremaster of the Lore of Tzeentch, making him a proficient and powerful spellcaster. He also has access to the Functional Magic of the Changing of the Ways, using his spellcasting to give his faction advantages on the campaign map as well.
• Big Brother Bully: Thomin used to physically torment his brother for little or no provocation, which only deepened Vilitch's resentment of him. Vilitch has gladly paid him back for it directly and indirectly for years since.
• Body Horror: A relatively restrained example for Tzeentch, but still. Thomin is a pale giant of a man with five eyes and no free will of his own, and part of his Chaos Armour is broken off over his left arm and shoulder to accommodate Vilitch, a thin and equally pale creature growing out of his back with no legs, an Eyeless Face and rows of needle-sharp teeth.
• Brains and Brawn: The twins' current form is a twisted Literal Metaphor of Tzeentchian doctrine and how it prizes use of the mind and magic over raw physical might. Vilitch's sorcerous powers allow him to burn enemies to death with the Lore of Tzeentch while Thomin smashes them to pieces with his brute strength and weapons. Their unique ability enhances their melee stats and spellpower everytime they cast a spell or spend extended time in melee with enemies.
• Cain and Abel: An Evil Versus Evil version of this. Before they were fused together, Thomin was the strong and handsome one everyone in their village admired while Vilitch was the ugly runt they all shunned, making the latter insanely jealous of the former. But Thomin was also a Big Brother Bully who regularly abused his brother for kicks, while Vilitch was a beaten-dog outcast whom most people never gave a chance to improve his station or even receive basic decency from them.
• Conjoined Twins: As the result of a pact with Tzeentch, the blind and sickly Vilitch is attached to Thomin's shoulder, controlling his mindless brother's body like a puppet.
• Control Freak: After a lifetime of being bossed around by everyone in his tribe, Vilitch has grown quite the fondness of using Mind Control to keep everyone under his employ.
• The Dog Bites Back: At first, when he was most concerned with surpassing his thug of a brother and getting revenge on those who wronged him. Unfortunately, Motive Decay quickly set in and now, he cares only to expand his considerable magic and martial power.
• Dual Wielding: Thomin, who holds an Epic Flail in his left hand and a BFS in his right.
• Evil Sorcerer: Vilitch, after being blessed by Tzeentch, became a powerful sorcerer of Chaos. In-game, he wields the Lore of Tzeentch and has access to the Changing of the Ways, allowing him to invoke Tzeentch to sabotage his enemies on the campaign map.
• Extra Eyes: Thomin has five eyes and a custom helmet to see through. By contrast, Vilitch has an Eyeless Face and is reliant on Thomin to see. The distinctive pattern of Thomin's eyes is even used as Vilitch's faction emblem.
• Eyeless Face: Vilitch's face has nothing but flat skin stretching from its nose to the top of its head.
• Fate Worse than Death: Thomin is trapped in this; having your intelligence wiped in order to become someone else's meat puppet while being just self aware enough to know what's going on is a horrible way to live.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Several of Vilitch's idle quotes on the campaign map have him remark on the game itself, or directly address the player:
  Vilitch: If this were a strategy game, I would be many turns ahead!
  Vilitch: [In desert terrain] Think I'm a villain? Go play Settra.
  Vilitch: [In tundra terrain] You! Click me out of this accursed snow!
• Freudian Excuse: Bullied and victimised by his brother, ignored by his father and shunned by the rest of his village other than his shaman master, Vilitch was left with a deep seething bitterness against his tribe and jealousy for his brother. This motivated his spiteful prayers to Tzeentch and subsequently, his decisions to burn most of his village to the ground in Warpflame while enslaving the most powerful warriors to serve him.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Vilitch was never good at anything he attempted in life, only ever being fit to perform the chores of his dead mother at home. He wasn't even a good magician, barely managing to learn some very simple tricks and getting just a tiny bit of info regarding Chaos. The one thing he was ever good at was to never forget praying to Tzeentch to switch fates with his brother. And just because Tzeentch found it funny, he decided to oblige, turning the biggest loser of the tribe into one of the greatest mortal champions of Chaos by grafting him onto his brother and providing him with tons of magical powers to use.
• Green-Eyed Monster: A big part of Vilitch's motivation for praying to Tzeentch to reverse his and Thomin's fates was his venomous jealousy of his brother.
• Leaked Experience: Vilitch steals 15% of any experience gained by other lords in his faction.
• Magic Knight: Vilitch is a sorcerer and quite frail, but he happens to be "piloting" an armored brute capable of wading into combat with the best of them. In fact, their unique trait "The Twisted Twin" encourages Vilitch to get stuck in combat, as he gains increased spell mastery, melee attack, and melee defence while in close combat or casting spells.
• Mythology Gag: Vilitch's death animation is to pull a Villain: Exit, Stage Left by fleeing through a portal. In Warhammer: The End Times, Vilitch is undone when he attempts to traverse a portal after losing a battle and ends up stranded in the Realm of Chaos, with Tzeentch punishing his failure by granting Thomin control over their shared body.
• Underdogs Never Lose: A rare villain version of this trope. Vilitch was considered a weakling by his tribe and family and was bullied and beaten for it on a daily basis. However, he has since risen up to become one of Tzeentch's greatest mortal champions. Not out of any hard work or dedication, but merely because Tzeentch found it funny if it happened. Granted in doing so he has become just as bad if not worse than those who bullied him and enslaved those who tormented him to his will.
• Useless Bystander Parent: Their father knew about and saw Vilitch being abused by Thomin but never stepped in to help him. Unsurprisingly, he was among the many Vilitch killed.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Vilitch's "death" animation has him conjure up a portal to escape through.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: Upon fusing with Thomin and gaining both incredible strength and terrifying sorcerous powers, Vilitch's first act was to slaughter everyone who had ever wronged him and burn the village to the ground, only sparing the tribe's best warriors to enslave them with his magic.

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Champions of Nurgle

Festus the Leechlord

Festus the Leechlord, the Dark Apothecary

"I am the sickness AND the cure."

If an unfortunate traveller were to stray onto the twisted roads that lead from the northern forests into the Chaos Wastes, he might be paid a visit by a most unsavoury individual during the dark of the night. A shuffling, muttering figure stalks these lands, his moth-eaten robes gently clinking with vials containing unimaginable concoctions, which he is seeking to test out upon those he can catch or deceive. A devotee of the Plague Lord Nurgle, this mysterious apothecary is quite, quite mad, though he once bore the respect of physicians, alchemists and scientists across the length and breadth of the Old World.

It was the onset of Gnashing Fever that marked the beginning of the end for Festus. Try as he might, the doktor could not stem the spread of this new and highly contagious disease. As the last of his test subjects shook themselves to death, Festus dropped to his knees, crying out for help. One by one, the slack-jawed corpses in Festus' laboratory turned their heads to look at him. With one voice emanating from a score of parched throats, they promised to give Festus the knowledge necessary to cure not only this plague but all the diseases in the world, in exchange for a lifetime of service. In his desperation, Festus agreed.

In the blink of a bloodshot eye, Festus' mind was filled with every detail of every sickness, ailment and plague known to the great god Nurgle. This drove him entirely mad, washed away his compassion and left nothing more than an intimate knowledge of disease and a desire to experiment. Festus became the Leechlord of Nurgle, who goes to war in the name of furthering his revolting studies.

Though his curative powers are greater than ever before, woe betide the fool who crosses the doktor, for he is always in need of new test subjects, and not above force-feeding his latest concoctions to his victims in his quest to bring ever more repugnant forms of life into the world. It is a better fate by far to die on the field of battle than to be captured alive by Festus and used for his latest dark experiments.

Introduced in the Champions of Chaos DLC for Total War: Warhammer III, Festus leads the subfaction "The Fecundites".

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• Affably Evil: Like all Nurglites, he's friendly and pleasant even as he brews horrible poisons and diseases and spreads them around liberally. The skill "Bedside Manner" gives Festus a slight boost to relations with other Chaotic races.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Surprisingly subverted. Despite his hideous appearance he's actually not a daemon prince and is technically still a mortal. Though he's often referred to as being on the very cusp of achieving daemonhood.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: His fall from grace was caused by him wishing to know about diseases no one else could cure. He got it, and therein lay the problem, since he got much more than he asked for, or could contain without going mad.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Compared to most other Chaos Lords, he looks a bit goofy with his attitude and appearance. Even compared to most other highly revered Champions of Nurlge, such as Tamurkhan or the Glottkin, he might seem out of his league. But he has brought down thousands upon thousands with uncurable plagues, further increased the potency of his master's creations and now finds himself on the verge of becoming a Daemon Prince due to the favor he has gotten from his new god.
• Body Horror: Festus' body is hideously swollen and discolored by the diseases ravaging his body, with his most prominent feature being his massive, tumorous chin. His nose has also been eaten away to be little more than a cavity in his skull. A fleshy, umbilical cord-like tube connects his body directly to the backpack cauldron Festus uses to brew his poisons.
• Deal with the Devil: Out of desperation to cure a terrible plague, Festus accepted an offer from Nurgle to gain the dark god's very own knowledge of every disease in creation, in return for a lifetime of servitude. As you might expect, he was driven totally mad by what he learned.
• Evil Sorcerer: Wields the Lore of Nurgle, which spreads Mystical Plagues.
• Fallen Hero: Festus used to be a good doctor, and not just in the sense that he was competent; you could say he was born to become one. He wasn't in it for the money, but felt it was a calling and from the depths of his heart he just wanted to help people. He helped so many so selflessly that even the Cult of Shallya considered him favored by the goddess of healing. This makes his fall and damnation the more tragic, especially since he fell because he was trying to help people.
• Familiar: Has one in the form of a blue, one-eyed Nurgling with a goofy face, often sitting on the platform on Festus's back. It doesn't do anything special outside of stirring his pot and helping him find ingredients on the battlefield (while not being very good at it judging by his annoyance at it during his trailer), but it still accompanies him everywhere. Besides, he does have a tendency of using it as an improvised mallet during combat.
• Fat Bastard: In true Nurgle worshipper faction. Festus has been warped into a grotesque, morbidly obese creature that now spreads plagues far and wide.
• Force Feeding: One of his kill-animations involves him grabbing a poor victim and forcing down a horrid brew of disease down their throats, a reference to his rather gruesome tabletop model◊.
• Mad Doctor: He used to be an accredited medical professional, but an ill-advised Deal with the Devil for eldritch knowledge left him completely insane. Now he's an Evil Sorcerer more interested in creating diseases than curing them.
• The Medic: He can still heal people; he just prefers not to. Festus' primary gameplay gimmick is the ability to easily heal his troops in the thick of the fighting, and his army gets a higher healing cap to facilitate this. His battlefield ability Healing Elixirs projects an area-of-effect around himself to heal himself and his allies. The skill "Doctor's Orders" increases the healing cap further, and makes Fleshy Abundance, a healing spell from the Lore of Nurgle, cheaper to cast.
• My Skull Runneth Over: He accepted a bargain to gain Nurgle's knowledge of disease, in the hope of curing a particularly stubborn plague. Of course, Nurgle is the God of Disease and thus possesses limitless knowledge of every plague and ailment in all of existance, and Festus was immediately driven insane from the overload of information.
• Plaguemaster: Has access to the Plague Cauldron mechanic from the Daemons of Nurgle race, allowing Festus to brew custom plagues that benefit his forces and hinder his enemies.
• Professor Guinea Pig: Festus sees nothing wrong with testing his contagions on himself, and his backpack reservoir features a grostesque, fleshy tube that connects it directly to the Leechlord's body. One of his unique skills, "An Apple A Day", gives Festus extra hit points, unit mass and the slime trail attribute as a result of his self-experimentation.
  Self-medicating himself with infection, the Doctor instigates symptoms upon his own body that amplify his vitality.
• Stout Strength: All of the mass he has gathered from his many diseases has made him easily capable of overpowering most humans with ease and even veteran warriors can find themselves taken by surprise by his strength.
• Support Party Member: Unusual for a Chaos Lord, he has a lot more options for supporting and buffing his fellow warriors through his many brews to compensate for being less of a fighter than most other.
• Villain with Good Publicity:
  • Very few people of The Empire are aware of his fall to Nurgle, thinking that he just tragically disappeared one day or that he himself passed away from the Gnashing Fever in his attempts to save more people in need. The inner circles of the Cult of Shallya are aware of the truth, but are not willing to let the public know out of grief and shame of what he has become, only providing the information to those they trust with it, such as heroes they hope will kill him. No luck so far on that front...
  • This also goes for The Tinean Fellowship, a confederation of expert doctors in The Empire whose inner circle are secretly cultists working for Festus to spread further disease and misery. Those not in the inner circle are doctors unaware of Festus' plans and are tricked into infecting their patients through misleading education and methods, such as suggesting that patients should have their wounds treated with water from a supposedly healing lake that is secretly tainted. And through a cruel twist of irony, the Tinean Fellowship has a tendency to work at churches of Shallya, something that Festus finds hilarious.
• While Rome Burns: His debut trailer has him busy looking for the right ingredient for his concoction, despite the ongoing battle between his forces and the ogres.

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Champions of Slaanesh

Sigvald the Magnificent

Prince Sigvald the Magnificent, Scion of Slaanesh

"See how I stroll, stride, swagger and swirl, spin, slash and stab at stupid, senseless scum!"

"Sickly, sinful spectacles stand, shuffle, shamble and saunter shamelessly in mine scandalized sight! I suggest a solution... surely such sedition should sour and succumb to Sigvald — the salacious, scandalous and sensational servant of Slaanesh! Son of Succubi, scion of sordid acts and slayer of squalid serfs!

Voiced by: Kevin Bishop

Sigvald the Magnificent, known also as Prince Sigvald, the Geld-Prince and also the Prince of the Decadent Host, is amongst the most infamous of Slaanesh's favored servants within the Old World, made legend by his prowess on the battlefield and his disturbing yet angelic beauty. Though he appears to be little more than sixteen summers of age, Sigvald the Magnificent has blighted the world for over three hundred years.

The personification of beauty on the outside, but rot within, the Geld-Prince rides at the head of an army of utterly devoted followers who would give their lives for him without a second thought. His elite bodyguard bear mirrored shields so that Sigvald might bask in his own divine glory, and dozens of exotic females attend to his every whim and desire.

Beautiful from birth, Sigvald’s fondness for hedonistic excess saw him exiled from his tribe but also gained him a powerful patron: Slaanesh, the God of pleasure and depravity. Now, he heads an army devoted to himself. Slaying anything he deems ugly or unsavoury, he fights as much for his perverse ego as he does for Slaanesh.

In the first two games, Sigvald is part of the general "Warriors of Chaos" faction. In the third game's Immortal Empires campaign, he leads the subfaction "The Decadent Host".

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• Added Alliterative Appeal: Heavily invoked, as Sigvald's speech in one of his quest battles is filled with many words starting with "S".
  Sigvald: See how I stroll, stride, swagger and swirl, spin, slash and stab at stupid, senseless scum! Soon they shall swoon, shall seek solace and death from sundry torments wrought on them by my strategic, severing, scintillating shower of shimmering strikes! Send for the sword — summon Sliverslash!
• Agent Peacock: Yes, he's vain, foppish and ridiculously pretty. He's also a lethally skilled warrior whose cruelty is infinite.
• Bastard Bastard: He was born of an incestuous union of his father and his sister, and is one of the most depraved people in the entire Old World, if not the most.
• Beauty Is Bad: He's a very handsome man with flawless features, but he's also one of the most depraved and petty human beings to ever grace the Old World.
• Berserk Button: Ugly things and getting the slightest scratch on his body. He will even kill his own allies if he finds them unpleasing to his eyes or if they happen to look better than him.
• Bling of War: The Auric Armour is a sculpted suit of plate armor made of silver and gold, decorated with vivid purple gemstones for contrast. It's clearly for display as much for protection, but it grants him a potent Healing Factor.
• Brother–Sister Incest: His parents were brother and sister, which could explain Sigvald's... issues.
• Cool Sword: Sliverslash, a rapier forged from a tiny sliver of Slaanesh's own sword.
• Evil Is Petty: Apart from his extensive history of petty motive villainy in the tabletop lore like murdering his father for exiling him from their tribe, waging war on the Asur just because he heard they had nicer hair than him and burning a village to the ground just for giving him wine he didn't like, he's also fond of taunting his opponents in diplomacy and battle as well, including the pre-battle speech for his Auric Armour quest battle.
• Evil vs. Evil: His starting position in Immortal Empires pits him against the equally wicked and depraved Dark Elves of Naggarond.
• Faux Affably Evil: Just like any follower of Slannesh, Sigvald speaks with politeness and courtesy. It's all to hide that he's a horrible human being.
• The Fighting Narcissist: Sigvald has an ego bigger than the entire Old World, but he's also a master duelist who never shies away from the frontlines.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the lore, it is stated that Sigvald can never become dirty and that he floats a few inches above the ground so that his perfect feet don't have to bear the burden of walking on ugly surfaces. He also has a tendency to be distracted by his good looks when looking at his mirror shield, even in the middle of battle. In-game, however, he has to walk on soil like everyone else, but at least he learned not to blindly gaze into his shield anymore when it's time to kill. On the flip side, a later patch made it so Sigvald is exempt from blood-splatter decals, if one has the Blood for the Blood God DLC enabled.
• A Glass of Chianti: One of his quotes on the campaign map when putting up camp is "Shall I decant the wine?"
• Healing Factor: In order to keep his beauty eternal, his body can regenerate, even in battle, thus making him rather difficult to take down.
• The Hedonist: Like any good champion of Slaanesh, he enjoys the rush of battle, drinking wine and indulging himself with beautiful women.
• I'm a Humanitarian: One of Sigvald's self-indulgences. It's what got him expelled from his tribe in the first place.
• Inbred and Evil: His parents were brother and sister, and he's one twisted bastard.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: And he knows it.
• Light Is Not Good: While his appearance seems almost angelic, his behavior is anything but.
• The Magnificent: That's his title, alright, and he's got the ego to match.
• Narcissist: His most famous trait. He is so in love with himself that his shield also acts like a mirror so that he can admire himself, even in the heat of battle.
• Patricide: Ended up killing his own dad.
• Phallic Weapon: One of his starting units is a Hellcannon, which is notoriously phallic-looking. Considering who he worships, this is most likely intentional.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: With the emphasis on the first part. One of his unique character skills, Driven by Lust, increases the money gained from sacking settlements and winning battles, ostensibly because Sigvald sets his Slaanesh-worshipping minions loose to do anything they want to their victims.
  Sigvald inspires fanatical devotion in his followers, for they know that in the aftermath of battle they may satisfy their most unholy lusts without restraint.
• Really 700 Years Old: Although he appears to be fairly young (almost in his late teens), Sigvald has in fact been a champion of Chaos for over three centuries.
• Red Right Hand: The only physical flaw on Sigvald's entire body is the Mark of Slaanesh, which is found on the back of his neck.
• Self-Made Orphan: He killed his father after he banished Sigvald from the tribe for his fondness for eating human flesh.
• Spoiled Brat: Actually, calling him spoiled would be a huge understatement. His father apparently spared the rod when it came to his son. Only cannibalism was considered taboo enough to punish Sigvald, who made his father pay with his life.
• Vapor Wear: A male example. It's pretty obvious that Sigvald wears little to nothing underneath his armor, judging by how his inner thighs are clearly visible.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Not towards his own father, but Sigvald is absolutely dedicated to his adoptive "step-father/mother", Slaanesh.

Azazel

Azazel, the Prince of Damnation

"Behold your beautific master!"

When Azazel abandoned his humanity and pledged his mortal soul to the service of Slaanesh, none can say; but it is whispered that in the distant past he followed Sigmar Heldenhammer, in the days of the Empire's founding. The legend claims that he betrayed his liege lord and escaped to the northern wastes, pledging loyalty to Slaanesh, the young Prince of Chaos. Azazel was greatly favoured by his master, and rose quickly in his esteem. After slaying Arthar, a champion of Khorne, in single combat, Slaanesh turned his eyes upon Azazel and elevated him to daemonhood, naming him commander of his daemonic legions.

It is said that the beauty of Azazel is second only to his patron. But as irresistible as his beauty is, there is a deadly edge to it. All who know of him dread to face him in battle, for the cost of losing to Azazel is not only the death of the body, but the damnation of the soul as well.

Introduced in the Champions of Chaos DLC for Total War: Warhammer III, Azazel leads the subfaction "The Ecstatic Legions".

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: Azazel hasn't had a new model since 5th edition, and his existing one really hasn't aged well◊. His new design is more groomed and muscular, with a more human-like face, compared to the feral appearance his original model had.
• Ascended Extra: Azazel belongs to the older generation of god-aligned chaos champions, alongside Arbaal the Undefeated and Egrimm van Horstmann, none of whom have had tabletop rules (or much mention in the lore) since fifth edition. Word of God states that Azazel was included in Champions of Chaos purely because Sigvald the Magnificent (who is normally associated with the other three champions, to the point of sharing their "X the Y" naming scheme) was already included in the original game, and "things are often clearer in hindsight".
• Blood Knight: In his debut trailer, Azazel is seen lounging boredly while his minions carry out the pitched battle below him. It is only when the Chaos Lord of Khorne emerges from the mass of bodies and bellows out a challenge that Azazel takes an interest, before gleefully answering the champion's summons with a close up of his Slasher Smile.
• Charm Person: Has access to the Seduce and Gifts of Slaanesh mechanics from the Daemons of Slaanesh race, as well as a 25% boost to his pre-battle seduction budget. He focuses on beguiling humans in particular, giving him a +80 diplomacy bonus with the Empire, Bretonnia, Kislev and Cathay, as well as a 20% discount on seducing their units.
• Compensating for Something: Cheekily makes this observation about the elaborate headgear of the Chaos Dwarfs in diplomacy interactions with them.
• Deadpan Snarker: If Azazel has a defining trait, it's that he's a bitch. Regardless of who you are and how much he likes you, he has a cutting line waiting for you on the diplomacy interface.
• Demon of Human Origin: Like his fellow Daemon Princes, he was once a mortal who was given the reward of immortal daemonhood.
• Divinely Appearing Demons: Unlike most daemons, Azazel's appearance incorporates angelic motifs, including feathery wings, an exomis tunic and pale skin, to emphasize his unnatural "beauty". Notably, the Warhammer Fantasy universe has no equivalent to classic heavenly angels in any of its religions.
• Informed Attractiveness: Though a lot more appealing to the eyes than his 5th Edition model, he is still not quite as mind-enslavingly beautiful as the lore claims that he is. In fact, even CA themselves poked fun at this
  "I'm gonna be honest. If that's what counts as beautiful in the daemon world, I'm sticking with Ogres..."
• Power Pincers: Azazel's left hand is mutated into a fiendish pincer claw, a trait shared with many daemons of Slaanesh.
• Revenge Before Reason: What ultimately caused Azazel to fall to Chaos was his hatred of Sigmar, who he blamed for the death of his brother. He spent years waiting for an opportunity to kill him, during which time Azazel genuinely became friends with Sigmar, while Azazel's sister became Sigmar's betrothed. Despite all of this, Azazel still couldn't let his hatred go, and in the end he ended up killing his sister by accident when he ran his blade through Sigmar and into her.
• Satanic Archetype: Besides being a Divinely Appearing Demon, Azazel's tail is a pair of demonic snakes, alluding to the Garden of Eden and the guise taken by Satan to tempt Adam and Eve into sin. Even more apparent from the Empire's perspective, since he was a companion of Sigmar who betrayed and attempted to murder him.
• Slasher Smile: His reveal trailer has him mug the camera (under a Fish-Eye Lens for added creepiness) with a psychotic ear-to-ear grin. His character selection gif also features him leering at the camera in delight.
• Time Abyss: Even by daemon prince standards Azazel is old enough to have known Sigmar personally, making him thousands of years old.

Legendary Heroes

Harald Hammerstorm

Harald Hammerstorm

"FOR THE HAMMER!!!"

Tales among the Norse and Kurgans tell of a great Chaos Champion who was ambushed by a host of undead while plundering an ancient tomb city in the Chaos Wastes. Forming a wedge against the skeletal horde, Harald fought for a day and a night, leaving only broken bones behind. Tirelessly roaming the Chaos Wastes, always on the lookout for a fresh enemy to fight, Harald Hammerstorm now exists as an eternal avatar of Chaos and the bane of the undead.

Though never bested by mortal or undead, his deeds have been overshadowed by so-called "greater" men - it's time to set things right! Introduced in Total War: Warhammer III's Patch 3.1, Harald is a Legendary Hero available for all Warriors of Chaos factions.

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• Affectionate Nickname: His followers fondly refer to him as Harry the Hammer.
• Anti-Regeneration: An odd example, seeing as he doesn't actually do anything to a unit's healing or the actual Regeneration ability, but he does have a unique skill that takes away the Undead attribute from an undead unit. Not only does this make them able to flee the battle, but it also prevents the usual Undead healing spells like Invocation of Nahek from working on them.
• Carry a Big Stick: Harald's trademark hammer, a monstrous weapon that looks like a corrupted Ghal Maraz and which is capable of banishing spirits with its touch, making it extra nasty against undead and daemonic foes. In fact, before Sigmar and Ghal Maraz were introduced to the franchise, Harald's hammer was the titular Warhammer. To reflect this Harld gains a permanent buff for defeating Ghal Maraz's wielder Karl Franz, despite having no personal beef with him in lore.
• Color Motif: Averted unlike most Chaos forces. Most red armoured Chaos Champions are Khorne worshippers but Harald is an Undivided Champion who presumably just likes the colour.
• Counterpart Artifacts: Harald's weapon, the Hammer of Harry, bears a close visual appearance to a corrupted Ghal Maraz and possesses similar anti-spirit properties. One of his Paths of Glory even involves killing Karl Franz just to prove that his hammer is superior, giving him tons of extra damage.
• Evil vs. Evil: Unlike many Warriors of Chaos, Harald's story and features are centered around his particular loathing towards the undead, and his gameplay attributes are themed accordingly.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Putting him up against Vlad von Carstein will show that for all of his undead killing prowess, he still loses to the vampire one-on-one... just like how their duel went in The End Times.
• Horrifying the Horror: The man is such a horrific force for the undead that he is among the very few things they outright fear. This extends to his abilities; he is able to remove the Undead attribute from enemy units, meaning he can make the likes of zombies or skeletons rout and flee.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Harald uses an artifact shield, the Bane Shield, which reflects attacks back at whatever weapon strikes it.
• Mighty Glacier: Harald has stats equivalent to a Chaos Lord while still just a hero, and his unique items, reusable explosion move, Path to Glory bonuses and skill tree makes him a One-Man Army in campaign mode when fully powered up. However, with a base speed of 27 and no mount options whatsoever (and no with Anti-Escape Mechanism like Grimgor and Wulfric) he'll take his sweet time getting anywhere and he's very easy to evade for anything that can't take him on directly.
• Mythology Gag: At the end of his announcement trailer, he sees Vlad von Carstein and points his hammer at him, beckoning the vampire to a duel. This is likely a nod to Warhammer: The End Times, where Harry faced Vlad in a duel and lost.
• No Indoor Voice: The majority of his voice lines has him screaming at the top of his lungs.
• Shout-Out: His quotes include such gems as "IT'S HAMMER TIME!" and "RIP AND TEAR!"
• Tom the Dark Lord: Who would have guessed that a powerful Champion of Chaos who strikes fear into the hearts of even the fearless undead is nicknamed "Harry".