Tear Jerker / Gotrek & Felix

• Felix helpless to do anything as Kirsten, his First Love, dies in his arms after being fatally stabbed by a madman.
• When Gotrek is knocked from a cliff by and is thought to have died, Felix nearly does cry.
  • Later in the same book, the Dwarfs learn, to their horror, that the Diamondsmith Clan have fallen under possession by some alien menace called the Sleeper and have become People Puppets that try to attack their friends and families.
  • Prince Hamnir later falls under the Sleeper's control, and Gotrek is forced to fight his oldest friend, with whom he just reconciled after a long time, to the death, all the while begging Hamnir to fight its control.
  • After the Sleeper is defeated, are the Diamondsmith Dwarfs returned to normal? No. They have become dead-eyed husks that continue to attack and must be put down.
    "Fall in, sons of Karak Hirn. There is sad work to be done."
• In Slayer's Honour, one of the short stories in the Gotrek & Felix Anthology, Felix and Gotrek meet another Dwarf Slayer/Human Remember pair, Agnar Arvastsson and Henrik Daschke. Over the course of the story, it turns out Henrik has grown sick of Agnar's continued survival and wants him to just die already, so he can claim the share of Agnar's gold that was promised to him and stop leading the wandering life, eventually telling this to the Dwarf's face as he betrays him. The elderly Slayer's befuddlement at this is just heartbreaking.
• Snorri Nosebiter forgets why he shaved his head and became a Slayer. This means he can't explain to Grimnir what sin he died atoning for, and will never be allowed into the afterlife. To make matters worse, he forgets that he forgot.
  • Even more so, the following book is largely Gotrek delaying and fleeing from his own doom in the hopes of keeping Snorri alive long enough to remember his shame.
    • Snorri's saga culminates in Kinslayer, where we finally find out Snorri's shame: he blames himself for Gotrek getting lost during their attempt to return back from their failed expedition to the Chaos Wastes, which he talked Gotrek into going on. And he also blames himself, implicitly quite rightly, for the destruction of Gotrek's home village by Goblins, because he got drunk and addled and had a fight with some dwarven rangers who were trying to stop the raiding party, meaning he may have prevented them from warning the village. Finally, he made his way to the village after it was destroyed: Gotrek's wife had survived the goblin raid, but Snorri got confused when she emerged from the burned ruins and cut her down, as he mistook her for a goblin that had stayed behind.]] And then Snorri's doom comes in the wake of this: he confesses his shame to Gotrek, and allows his old friend to kill him.
    • Actually, the two Slayers fight to the death because a Slayer must die in honourable combat to be allowed in Grimnir's halls; no suicides or letting their opponent win. Gotrek is utterly furious and Snorri sobbing in shame and anguish the whole time. Felix desperately begging the two to stop is just icing on the cake.
• Pretty much all of Temple of the Serpent. Most of the human characters are extremely sympathetic, and every one of them dies horribly for the sake of a Slaan experiment. Towards the end of the book the Slaan realizes there was a flaw in his test and the whole thing was entirely pointless. Seriously, the entire human part of the book is a sequence of gut-punches.
• The last words of the series (and the last published book in the setting), written while Felix is trapped in a collapsed temple and implicitly dying from lack of air:
  If this journal is found, if the day was won, then remember this - here a Slayer lies.
• Realmslayer, which sees Gotrek emerging from the Realm of Chaos to find his world destroyed and replaced by the Eight Realms of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, has its share.
  • Gotrek breaking down and revealing how lost and betrayed he feels after Grimnir effectively tricked him into taking his place for what, in the end, seems to have been nothing.
  • The story of Jordainn, a prince from Edassa whom befriends Gotrek during the Slayer's first travels on Aqshy during part 2. It ultimately ends with Jordainn throwing himself in front of a Chaos Champion's blade to save Gotrek's life at the cost of his own. The real kicker is Gotrek's reaction after the Chaos Champion is driven off. He finally admits that Felix, the person he's been seeking, has been dead for literal ages, and he blames himself for it. Then he takes Jordainn's lion-emblazoned breastplate and turns it into a pauldron for his left shoulder, in memory of the two manlings who stood by his side and guarded him.
  • In part 3, Gotrek displays a shocking moment of vulnerability when the necromancer Barrowwalker assures him that Felix is alive and waiting for Gotrek in Hammerhal. The jaded, weary slayer just sounds so vulnerable and hopeful that it's heartbreaking.
  • Also in part 3, Gotrek learns firsthand just how much duradin have changed from their dwarven ancestors when he learns the fyreslayers will actually work for Chaos armies in exchange for their precious ur-gold, an act that would have been unthinkable to a dwarf in the World-That-Was.
  • Gotrek messing around with a Stormcast Eternal in a bout of drunken idiocy at the start of the final quarter of Realmslayer? Funny. Ripping off the Stormcast's helmet and seeing the almost spitting image of dead Jordainn underneath? Sobering. Gotrek then learning that Reforging strips a Stormcast of their memories, so even if Felix has been Reforged, he almost certainly won't remember Gotrek, meaning Gotrek's only hope for a semblance of the life he once knew has been shattered? Heartbreaking.