As the name implies, a special character competition is a competition of... well, special characters. You create a character of the Warhammer world, complete with fluff and rules, and you post it here. Then we vote for the one we like the most.


Rules:

-Fluff-wise, stay moderate. Don't write a series of novels about your character's history. Or don't create a character whose fluff changes the whole Warhammer world.

-Create your own magical equipment. We want to avoid things like "See page X of Chaos army book", because not everyone has that book.

-Though the stats may be high, respect the standards for your army. A Skaven with Ld9, an Elf with T5 or a Dwarf with I7 just don't make sense.

-This is not a competition of the strongest character: everyone is perfectly able to create a dragon-mounted level-4 wizard with six S7 attacks. It's a competition of originality: coolest equipment, most interesting fluff and such. If you have a character that wouldn't be seen in any game under 4000 points, tune it down a bit, please.



Let the 2007 Special Character Competition of the Warhammer Palace begin.

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Mayhaps not the most active topic right now, what with the Summer Slumber.

I will be thinking up my entry though, Burro Boskov himslef.

Burro Boskov

Just to get it started, I'll post here the character I've been working on for the last few days. I'm not sure yet this is going to be my entry: I might get a better idea later.

Any feedback would be appreciated. ;)

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Johanna


Background:

Though the name of Johanna is used to scare unruly children everywhere in the Empire, most rational men scoff at the claims of her existence. Yet she is not merely a local legend: many people from Kislev, Tilea and Bretonnia have supposedly sighted her ghostly form. But there are also those who did not live to tell the tale.

Johanna was born several centuries ago, nearly a hundred years before the Great War against Chaos, in a nameless village of the Empire. In these days, practitioners of magic were burned at the stake by the fanatical witch hunters, who considered all magic as coming from the Ruinous Powers. That is why the young Johanna, gifted from birth with an ability to instinctively control the winds of magic, carefully hid her powers. She was extremely curious, however, and she secretly made experiments with her powers. At a very early age, the self-taught girl already mastered the arcane arts.

Of course, with so many witch hunters roaming the Old World with their bands of ragged zealots, a wizard could not go on forever in total secrecy. One day, at the age of sixteen, Johanna made the mistake of using her magic to heal her young brother, who was terribly sick. Unmasked, she was chained and brought to one of the most ruthless Sigmarite priests to ever walk the land of the Empire. After a quick and unfair trial that found her guilty, the young girl was given over to the mob of zealots and beaten up, raped, tortured, then publicly burned alive. Yet, when Johanna's body was burned, she did not die entirely: such were her magical powers that her soul stayed in the world of the living in a state similar to that of a ghost. Though she is now immaterial, she can still bend the winds of magic to her will.

Johanna appears to be at the same time good and evil. Her motivations are unknown: while some claim that they have seen her destroy whole villages to the ground using her spells, others swear that they witnessed her healing their baby or guiding them out of the woods when they were lost. Highly unpredictable, she is known to show monstrous cruelty one day and great generosity the next. Most people just hope they never meet her.


Appearance: Johanna is a beautiful dark-haired girl of about sixteen with an unsubstantial and shimmering form. She still wears the same old-fashioned rags she had when she was burned at the stake centuries ago. Her eyes are mismatched: her left iris is light-blue while her right one is as black as pitch. It is supposed that they represent respectively the good side and the evil side of her soul.



Johanna may be taken as a mercenary choice in any army, even Bretonnia. She takes up a Lord slot. She may never be the general and cannot join friendly units.

Cost: 360 points.
Equipment: None.
Magic: Johanna is a level-4 wizard. She may use spells from the Lore of Light and the Lore of Shadow.

Special rules:
Immune to Psychology: Johanna knows that she cannot be slain permanently. She has thus become Immune to Psychology.
Ethereal: Only magical attacks can wound Johanna. In addition, Johanna may walk through any kind of terrain and even unpassable obstacles (except units) without movement penalty.
Aura of Light: Johanna has a Magic Resistance (1) and a 5+ ward save.
Aura of Shadows: Johanna may be deployed either as a scout or in her army's deployment zone. Additionally, she causes Fear.

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My main source of inspiration for this character was this Magic card's image and flavor text. I got the idea for Johanna's ambivalent morality from the Wood Elves' Sisters of Twilight.

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She looks pretty good, not too overpowered. The ability to have a level 4 scout is pretty good but then again she's expensive enough.

The one thing I'd say is slightly overpowered is her defence. She's ethereal and has magic resistance; this means that hitting her with magic is hard, and so an army that doesn't have widespread access to magic attacks (such as daemons or wood elves) would most likely have to send a valuable character her way in order to sort her out. But that's my only gripe.

I'm intending to enter a character myself, once I write him up.

Double post ahoy! Here's my submission.

Kharnath, Harbinger of Ghur

Kharnath has always been one of the blessed, for he was a true Child of Chaos from before the moment of his birth. Born of human parents, a mutated child such as he was would usually have been killed immediately in the civilised world, but the circumstances of his conception and birth led to his survival.

His mother was a poor Bretonnian teenage peasant living not far from the forest of Châlons who was raped by a knight who was part an expedition travelling from the forest back towards the city of Bordeleaux after an unsuccessful campaign to purge the forest of greenskins, beastmen and other undesirables. Shunned by her family and neighbours, the girl began wandering the countryside, stealing food and working where she could to support herself and her unborn child.

This, inevitably, would turn out to be a mistake. Some nine months later, as the girl went into labour, her tainted child awoke into consciousness before he had been delivered. The whelp proceeded to tear his way out of his mother with all of his bestial might, and the damage caused here, added to earlier complications in labour, contributed to her death soon after. Rumour has it in beastman society that the infant Kharnath turned on his mother and began to feed upon her even before she died, but this is most likely exaggerated. Regardless, the girl was not mourned as she was unknown in the community where she went into labour and alone at the time of Kharnath’s birth. The whelp instinctively headed east, making for the forest where could sense others of his kind living.

For a human baby, travel through the forest would have been impossible, farcical even, but as one of Chaos’s children Kharnath had the strength to make the journey. Some ten hours later, the whelp appeared at the edge of a clearing where the mutants of the forest were making camp. Stumbling in from between the trees, he uttered a few brays to attract the attention of the tribe before collapsing into unconsciousness, his short-lived strength expired and his hours-old body threatening to die after the exertion of the trek.

The bemused gors watched the whelp enter the clearing indifferently. When he stumbled and fell, a few of them grabbed the young mutant and brought him to the centre of the clearing in front of the Beastlord. Most of them put forward of killing the infant there and then – after all, it hardly looked as though it would survive the night and most of them could see no return in devoting time and energy to support one more potential beastman.

The tribe’s chief bray-shaman interrupted their arguments, however. He had been intrigued by the whelp’s appearance from the moment Kharnath had entered the clearing. There was a strong sense of magic about the young mutant – the winds of magic, though concentrated about the old shaman himself in the clearing, were definitely attracted to the newcomer – no more strongly than one would expect them to be to potential shaman, but enough for the tribe’s bray-shaman to see the glimmerings of wizardry about the infant. He explained that the whelp could grow up to be a great aid to the tribe, and the Beastlord was swayed into accepting Kharnath as one of the tribe’s own.

The young beastman was nurtured in his infancy and over time most of the tribe forgot the arguments over his induction, properly considering the mutant to have always been one of them. Under the great bray-shaman’s tutelage, he became proficient in the winds of magic as he matured, although it would of course take many decades of hard work before he could take the title of Great Bray-shaman for himself. It seemed, however, that this would never be the case.

The beastman living in Châlons that Kharnath had joined were mostly nomadic, travelling between different sections of the forest as the seasons changed. It had just so happened that at the time of his birth, they had been close to the eastern edge of the forest, close enough for the infant to sense their presence (and, indeed, for the great bray-shaman to sense his) and make his way to join them. Perhaps one of the Ruinous Powers was watching over him and ensured that his first steps in the world were easy ones, but, whatever the case, with the tribe he ended up. Over the course of his childhood and adolescence he learnt that it was not, in fact, the Bretonnians that were his people’s greatest foe, but the wood elves. Châlons was close enough to Athel Loren that the Asrai would sometimes send expeditions north and wage war against their ancient foe. It was one of these occasions that would change Kharnath’s life.

In the summer of Kharnath’s twenty-eighth year, his master and tutor, still the tribe’s greatest bray-shaman, led the beastman to an area of the forest that seemed no different to any other – but Kharnath could sense what was special about it. Magic pooled around the mutants, a stronger field of background magic than any he had ever come across before then, and perhaps fittingly it seemed to be mostly Ghur magic, or beasts magic as other races would know it. The great bray-shaman asked the Beastlord to set the tribe to building a herdstone to harness the magic in the clearing, and the Beastlord agreed. The gors of the tribe set to felling trees around the spot where the great bray-shaman wanted the herdstone built, at the centre of the magical field, and gathered stone and boulders to be used to create the megalith. As the first building blocks were assembled into position, Kharnath, as the most accomplished of the great bray-shaman’s students, and his master began the long ritual to infuse magic into the blocks of stone.

The process took weeks to complete – as each stone was hauled into position, another part of the ritual demanded completion, and at least one of the shamans had to be with the stones for the whole time. The pair of shamans took shifts at keeping the clearing’s magic in bay as it became more and more attracted to the growing herdstone, but the process was delicate and at any time the magic could break free of its bonds and diffuse across the forest, releasing enough energy to obliterate the shaman on duty and, possibly, the entire tribe as it did so.

Evidently the Asrai sensed the dark intentions of the beasts of Châlons and were determined not to allow creation of the arcane megalith to succeed, for they chose to intervene before the herdstone was completed. Several kindreds shadow-walked to Châlons from Athel Loren and attacked the tribe of mutants one night as Kharnath was in a trance at the half-finished herdstone. While battle was waged, two elfin spellsingers made their may to the stone and attempted to undo what the beastmen had begun.

Kharnath awoke from the trance to find the two Asrai minds pressing against his own and attempting to break his concentration. He gave a cry for his master to help him and the elder shaman rushed to his assistance, but by then the damage had been done. The elves had made him mentally stumble and break the ritual, unleashing the power contained within the incomplete megalith. Frantically, Kharnath tried to find some way to hold the power back and prevent it from sweeping across the clearing and killing both factions, his mind buzzing and slipping with the power washing over it. With a cry of anguish, he managed to draw the magic into his own body.

Ghur swept across him, ravaging his mind and invading his very soul. Instead of annihilating him as he expected, however, something unprecedented occurred. The magic flowed into his soul and out again, some of it settling within him but most of it just touching him briefly before passing through him and away, not into the material world but back to the realm of Chaos. A change came over Kharnath as his sense of magic changed. He could feel Ghur all about him, not just the magic congregating in the clearing, but magic from beyond the mortal plane. It seemed that he was directly accessing the realm of Chaos.

Turning his attention back to the battle, he saw and felt his master engaged in a battle of wills with the two spellsingers. Instinctively, he harnessed some of the magic welling up within him and sent it towards the elves. The power came easily and the elves were swiftly slain. The rest of the Asrai were quick to realise that theirs was a lost cause and so retreated from the clearing, leaving the beastmen victorious.

The work on the herdstone was restarted and eventually the megalith was completed, but life would never be the same for Kharnath. His magical abilities had dramatically changed – now he no longer needed to draw magic to him to use but could access Ghur directly and easily from the realm of Chaos. Ghur acceded to his suggestions with only the subtlest guidance and little difficulty, for his very soul had been altered and now consisted partly of brown magic. Over time and experimentation he discovered that he had some control over the Brown Wind in the area close to him – he could gently direct it towards other shamans and steer it away from enemy wizards. Most intriguing of all, though, was the connection he felt with the herdstone when it was completed, which enhanced his abilities further when he was around it. Fashioning a staff from a part of the herdstone, he took his leave of his own tribe and set out into the rest of the world, devoted to aiding his kindred Children of Chaos wherever they fought for their own existence and always widening his knowledge of Ghur.

Kharnath may be taken as a Hero choice in any Beasts of Chaos army. He must be fielded exactly as presented here, and no extra equipment or magic items can he bought for him. He may never be the army’s general.

Points: 200

Equipment: Beastshard staff, Chaos armour

Magic: Kharnath counts as a level 2 wizard using the Lore of Beasts for the purposes of generating power and dispel dice.

Special Rules

Mark of Chaos Undivided
Kharnath may re-roll failed psychology tests.

Conduit of Ghur
No bray-shaman has to work hard to learn to control magic like other weakling races; what marks these Children of Chaos apart is that they are born with an instinctive knowledge of how to control the winds of magic and bend them to their will. Kharnath is no different, but the unusual relationship he shares with the Brown Wind sets his use of magic apart from those of his peers. It is not his nature to harness large quantities of Chaotic energy and blast them at his foes, but rather to subtly guide the wind of Ghur as it blows in his presence, shaping small currents of it smoothly and effectively as suits his current inclination and the strength of the Brown Wind.

As stated above, Kharnath counts as a level 2 wizard for the purpose of generating power and dispel dice. However, do not generate spells for him at the start of the game as you would for other wizards. Instead, Kharnath may harness Ghur once per friendly magic phase in place of casting any spells.

When harnessing Ghur, roll both of Kharnath’s power dice to generate a power level. Both of Kharnath’s dice must be used at once while doing this, and he may not draw from the communal pool of the army’s power dice as other wizards can. Once you have generated the power level for this turn, consult the Lore of Beasts in the Warhammer Rulebook and choose any spell from it with a casting value equal to or less than what Kharnath rolled. For example, if Kharnath’s power level in a particular turn were 9 or more, he may choose any spell, whereas if it were 6 he could only choose between The Bear’s Anger and The Oxen Stands. Kharnath counts as having cast the chosen spell at the power level rolled, and the opposing army can attempt to dispel as normal. A roll of double sixes for his power score does not generate Irresistible Force, and a roll of double ones dose not cause a miscast. Note that if Kharnath rolls a power level of less than 4, he will not be able to cast a spell that turn.

Magic Items

Chaos Armour
Kharnath’s suit of Chaos Armour is made of flayed elfskin stretched across a wooden frame, hung with various bones and trinkets.

This is a normal suit of Chaos armour; it provides a 4+ armour save and does not restrict the wearer from casting spells (or, in Kharnath’s case, harnessing Ghur).

Beastshard Staff
This staff is made from wood from a mutated tree interwoven with strands of stone shaven from the herdstone at Châlons. At its head is a lump of stone that was once a piece of the same megalith. Carrying a piece of the monument at which Kharnath underwent his spiritual transformation allows him to persuade the winds of magic to change even more than usual, gently coaxing it from enemy wizards’ grasps and tenderly accentuating the powers of the Brown Wind in the use of friendly shamans.

Counts as a braystaff that adds +1 to all dispel attempts made by Kharnath. In addition, if there are one or more other Bray-shamans or Greater Bray-shamans in the Beasts of Chaos army using the Lore of Beasts, the staff may have an effect on the closest of these (determine which is closest to Kharnath at the start of each friendly magic phase). Enemy wizards suffer a –1 penalty when attempting to dispel spells cast by that bray-shaman. If there are no eligible shamans, this rule has no effect (that is, it never affects Kharnath himself).

(For those who haven’t read the Beasts of Chaos army book, a braystaff is a weapon available to Bray-shamans and Great Bray-shamans. At the start of a combat engagement, the bearer can choose to use it either as a great weapon or to add +2 to the model’s armour save. The bearer must stick with his choice for the entirety of that combat engagement.)

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The intention with Kharnath was to create a complementary spellcaster. He's not supposed to be the uber caster on his own, but rather to strengthen an already existent magic phase - in a 2k or 3k game, alongside two or more friendly shamans, he should prove to be a valuable asset that rounds off the Beasts of Chaos magic phase nicely. Any feedback on any aspect of him would of course be appreciated.

I'll contribute, but I is a little busy at the moment. Just ask Chili, who has seen neither hide nor hair of me for nie on a sixmonth.

You and everyone else.

And it's 'nigh', not 'nie'.

I may get around to contributing something, if some free time wells up out of nowhere. As it stands... we'll see.

Stupid spelling. You have deafeated me for the last time!