Khaine - Spoilerific Discussion

[eldargal]

If it doesn't say Morathi is dead then she probably isn't, ditto Teclis.

[buggle]

I wonder if light went to Huss instead of Valtan

[eldargal]

Hopefully neither, Empire already has one empowered guy.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

So. Where to even begin? There's a lot of twists and turns here. Spoilers throughout. Please read this carefully. I'll answer questions, but not if I've already answered them here.

Lileath is clearly something like the Elven trickster god. She plays something like the role of the Laughing God for the Eldar here. Firstly, she's the Lady of the Lake. Secondly, she poisoned Ariel - so the latter would be reborn through Alarielle. Thirdly, her game is not to win - she doesn't believe that the Gods of Chaos can be defeated, although she allows her servants (mostly Teclis) to think so. Instead, it's to set up the new world, for the Elven cycle to begin again. To this end, Eldyra (not a vampire!) is shaped and created into her new dimension's equivalent of Ereth-Khial, Goddess of Death. Into that world, right at the end, she sends Araloth, who will play the part of Asuryan (he even has a hawk, for crying out loud!). Lileath believes that the Gods of Chaos can only be made so weak in the Warhammer World that it'll take them millennia to discover the new dimension. But the cycle always repeats.

Whether she's right - I mean, this is only Elven cosmology, and it doesn't take into account the Human gods or the Dwarfen, or indeed the Old Ones - is anyone's guess. She's a classic trickster.

At this point, I think this is the setting change we're going to have. The events of the End Times won't be the final victory for Chaos the Dark Gods assume; nor will it be a triumph for the forces of Light. Instead, what would be a sudden cataclysm is drawn into a long, grinding war between all the factions; the Warhammer World becomes an eternity of war, in which the chance of success for the forces of Order is present but slight, but the forces of Chaos and darkness are held at bay from achieving their crushing final victory. That makes sense to me as a background in which there's all the reason in the world for the Warhammer races to be at war constantly - they're closer together and everything is on the line - where previously it was sort of... border wars and skirmishes. It'll make the setting look a bit more like the "two minutes to midnight" of the 40k universe. That's my guess, anyway.

To the person who's worried about the Wood Elves: don't be. Give the book a read, it was, to my mind, handled well. The Wood Elves don't fight for Malekith; they fight for Alarielle, incarnate of Isha as Ariel had been. They fight for the Elven race, and do a good job of it. Durthu is awesome. Orion goes out with a bang. Daith the blind swordsman is actually Vaul. Araloth's journey into the Realm of Chaos is the best part of the book.

Oh, yes, better mention the gods. Several characters are, or are aspects or reflections of, the Elven gods. Everything is but an echo of the fall of the Elven gods. Imrik plays the role of the god whose betrayal performs a noble service; Morathi is Hekarti reborn (or so she says), whispering in the ear of Khaine (Tyrion) to begin his war. She's opposed by Hellebron (Atharti). And Malekith is Asuryan's chosen. Always has been. All the Phoenix Kings were false kings, protected from the fires by the magic of their mages. None of them actually went through the ritual properly. The throne was stolen: Asuryan had chosen out Malekith to continue Aenarion's line; the Phoenix Court went against his wishes in deciding that Elven rulership was suddenly a sort of democracy. As a result, they all suffered for it: Asuryan made the Phoenix Kings mad, or vain, or foolish in turn. Poor old Finubar was a good man, but he knew his throne was stolen and the guilt ate away at him. It's why he was reluctant to go into battle. It's why, when Malekith - at Teclis' assistance - finally killed him in his tower of seclusion, Finubar was happy to die.

By the end, the Elven leadership is restored to what it was - a powerful (and my god is she powerful and wonderful and awesome) Everqueen, and the anointed of Asuryan at her side. And that's very much the relationship.

So, what happens with the Vortex?

Teclis' plan is to unchain the remaining winds of magic and thrust the power into avatars of his choosing; people he can rely upon to do good with the power. Nagash already took one, which is the only thing that even makes unbinding the Vortex possible. Teclis planned to invest Malekith with the wind of Fire, in order to chain him to a bright (heh) and vigorous future, but because of the disruption to his ritual - by the battle, and eventually by a maddened Morathi - Fire breaks free, seeking an unknown host. Metals follows quickly. Heavens is interesting: it seeks a host somewhere in the Empire. Teclis isn't worried by this because he feels some kind of familiar but alien intelligence guiding its hand. What's left to him is to bind Life to Alarielle (who is now even more awesome than she already was, like really) and Shadow to Malekith, which means he'll always be trapped in a bitter path. At least he leaves cool smoke trails everywhere now.

And finally, he binds the Wind of Light to his staff. It's a throwaway, blink and you'll miss it. Whether he's saving it for himself or for another is anyone's guess.

Morathi threw herself into the vortex (she can survive it because her body is immortal; her Pegasus isn't, bye bye winghorse), maddened with grief at the death of Aenarion Reborn and (apparently) her son from Alith Anar's arrows. She starts blasting away with ever more powerful magic from within the Vortex at all the trapped elven mages; only Caledor Dragontamer is protected enough to survive and help Teclis finish the ritual. Her... well, it's not a plan, but her final vengeance was to summon Slaanesh's attention with cool magic so that he'd eat up the remaining Elves, destroy Ulthuan, and maybe - although she's not afraid of Slaanesh's grasp at this point - earn herself an apotheosis. But the ritual finishes too soon, Slaanesh gets bored, but not without whisking Caledor and Morathi off. RIP? We'll see.

On which note, Teclis, carrying Tyrion's body, waits on Ulthuan for the waves to claim him. He doesn't go with Imrik, Alarielle and the remaining elves to Athel Loren. But where does he go? He shouldn't be able to carry Tyrion: he broke the Moon Staff banishing the Daemons at the start, and has been suffering terribly from his natural infirmities ever since. Suddenly he has strength enough to lift Tyrion's corpse (he ain't heavy, he's my brother). He's possibly empowered by something: the wind of Light, is my guess. As a result, I very much doubt he's just dead because of waves. I think he's working a longer, more complicated plan, not least because he didn't allow anyone to tend to Tyrion. But there's another throwaway line earlier: there's no salvation for Tyrion this side of death. What's he up to? We'll have to wait to find out, I think.

So, those are the main things, I think. If you have questions, ask.

These are all the deaths I can remember. Once again: if you don't have a model, unlikely you'll survive!

Valkia the Bloody (?): probably not dead. "Fell" at the hand of Malekith's armies, but strong rumours suggest she's still around. Can she even die?
N'Kari: daemons can't die, but N'Kari gets the closest possible treatment from Teclis.
Malus Darkblade: possessed by Tz'arkan, then killed by Tyrion.
Tullaris Dreadbringer: dies taunting Tyrion; makes his mind snap and ushers in the return of Khaine.
Kouran Darkhand: deaded in battle, I forget how.
Korhil: sacrificed to Khaine with his own axe; later becomes one of Malekith/Asuryan's spirit army.
Tyrion: shot by Alith Anar.
Teclis (?): vanished beneath the waves as Ulthuan sinks. Probably not dead. See above.
Morathi (?): swept into Slaanesh's embrace. Probably dead. Possibly not.
Orion: killed by Tyrion. Was going to die with the winter and never return anyway, so went out with a bang.
Lokhir Fellheart (?): shot in the back, dragged away by his men. Might have made it off the island.
Daith: I don't know my Wood Elves well, but he dies heroically. Was Vaul All Along.

If there's others, I'll remember them eventually!

And the Winds of Magic, as we currently know:

Death: Nagash
Life: Alarielle
Shadow: Malekith
Light: Teclis' Staff
Heavens: Guided by some intelligence to someone in the Empire!

Worth noting that the timeline has once again moved on. The fall of Ulthuan and the unmaking of the Vortex is one full year on from the end of Nagash and Glottkin. So who could be in the Empire one year on to incarnate the Lore of Heavens is anyone's guess; it needn't necessarily be a human Imperial. I had thought Tetto'Ekko before we knew "in the Empire". Maybe it still is! Interesting that Heavens is being guided by something, also. Is Heavens important?

[eldargal]

Neat. What happens to Hellebron? She does have a model after all.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

Hellebron's fine! If they're not on the list, they're fine. Hellebron's specifically in the Eternity King list. Shadowblade is too, although he has a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day for a bit. He gets his own back.

Hellebron faced the Khornate invasion of her homeland and all that happened was she had the time of her life slitting throats. She eventually got bored and went to Ulthuan, where she faces off against Morathi. They sort of both lose that one.

As to the women angle, because I know this is important: again, a mixed bag, but better than Glottkin. A lot of named female warriors and heroes on both sides. Most of them die, but most of everyone dies. Some of them come back as heroic spirits (the chief Handmaiden shoots Lokhir, I remember now). Alarielle is awesome; very much responsible for fixing everyone's mess. She tells Tyrion precisely where he can go, also.

Morathi is her usual self. She rattles around causing destruction and mischief, outwitting a whole bunch of people, but also eventually herself. So it goes. I kind of hope she gets a rebirth in some form, but I don't know how much chance there is of that.

Drane Brackblood, who was meant to head up the invasion of Ulthuan before everything went to hell, gets to be a good, successful admiral for a while before eventually being done in by politics. She's not an idiot like Malus or a traitor like Lokhir, though.

The Eldyra plot thread was picked up and run with. The resolution for that was very good, I thought. She's now the Queen of her own pocket dimension, the hope of the Elves. (Something like Cegorach for the Eldar, but not).

Lileath is the one god powerful enough to Fix This ****, although what angle she's really working is a mystery to the very end. She's the only one of the Elven gods who's still around.

[eldargal]

Yay!

[Cap'nSmurfs]

Updated the post above.

Oh! Caradryan speaks! All of one word. He knew his fate, and then his fate didn't transpire. Fate's like that.

[eldargal]

Thanks, feeling much happier. I don't mind having women heroes dying when they do it heroically and there are plenty of them, so that's really positive. Also glad they did Stuff with Eldyra because I was half convinced they would forget about her entirely. Now if they can jsut give some more of them models...

[Cap'nSmurfs]

I think one of the purposes behind the End Times Character Cull is to give sculptors and writers both the opportunity to create new characters, rather than being trapped in the recurring cycle of "well, let's do a new version of X". This has already sort of started with the likes of Araloth and the Dwarf king from their release. I hope that what follows is a bit more diverse! There's plenty of room for it!

Oh oh oh: you have to see the Ghost Phoenix Kings models they've made. Those are amazing. The illustration of them all is also wonderful.