Archaon
The Everchosen, Lord of the End Times, Chaos Incarnate, Herald of the Apocalypse, Warlord of the forces of Chaos United, Scourge of the Empire.
He is Archaon (real name: Diederick Kastner)... and he is not a fun guy to be around.
The Legend
Unlike in 40k where one loser keeps failing over and over to bring about the setting-wide apocalypse, Archaon is only the latest in a line of Everchosens. He started out as a devout servant of Sigmar (a Witch Hunter specifically, in older lore he was an Arch Lector), just as Failbaddon started out a Space Marine. That's about where the similarities end. Diederick was the bastard son of a Norscan Chaos Champion from the Varg clans, making him a half-Norscan child by rape. One day Diederick, after a long day of being a bad-ass, decided to do a little light reading. Finding a little book whose cover caught his interest, he flipped through the pages. This book being, of course, completely evil. When Diederick saw the horrible blasphemies contained in the book, he flew into a RAGE! This rage was so intense, that even in another universe, the Angry Marines felt a disturbance unlike any they had ever felt before. Their rage was NOTHING compared to Diederick. Within the texts there was repeated mention of a being named "Archaon" who would defeat a reincarnation of Sigmar and bring about the End Times.
Some time later, whilst Diederick was out hunting Beastmen with his sidekick Emil he ran into a spot of bother. After defeating an entire herd of Beastmen by himself, he accidentally knocked a piece of Warpstone into his eye. While he was trying to get it out, Emil turned into a Chaos Spawn. Whilst Emil did not survive, Diederick remained human by sheer manliness (and a little help from Be'lakor). Fate worked against him however as hordes of the different servants of Chaos pursued him everywhere he went, and he was forced to fight all the way to the Arch Lector's Palace (Empire equivalent of a Catholic church in Vatican city) to find out why he was being hunted. He also wanted to know who Archaon was. In a bit of a mindfuck, he found out that he was going to become Archaon, because only Archaon himself would come in confirmation of his true self. This made him incredibly angry and caused him to become Archaon which may have been what the Chaos Gods intended (sounds like something Tzeentch would do, if he ever did anything in Fantasy).
That is right children, Archaon is Archaon because he went searching to find out who Archaon was. Derp His predecessors in the title of Everchosen came from different tribes of the Warriors of Chaos; Morkar the Uniter and Asavar Kul were a Norseman (Vikings) and a Kurgan (Turks), respectively, with Archaon as the Norscan. So far the only race that hasn't produced an Everchosen are the Hung (Mongolians). But GW seems to have forgotten that the Hung exist or are (not so) secretly racist against Asian people.
He, by sole fact of being a badass, did what no other Everchosen before him could do. He gathered all of the Treasures of Chaos. Though the quest took nearly a hundred years to complete, Archaon did many awesome things throughout. This includes defeating hundreds of monsters in pitch dark, stole the horse Dorghar (steed of the apocalypse) from the stables of the Daemon Prince Agrammon, resisting the visage and voice of Slaanesh, killed a Bloodthirster with its own whip, resisted every disease that Nurgle could throw at him, and made it through a maze designed by Tzeentch. During his quest he was followed by his wife who continuously tried to turn him back to the path of good and convince him that he could still find forgiveness. Upon discovering an altar which, in Chaos language, revealed to him that all gods and all mortals and all magic were a product of Chaos (too bad he didn't get the memo about the Old Ones from the Lizardmen proving that as bullshit). Any hope that there was of turning him from his path died with the lie, and when he informed his wife she too fell to Chaos. They had passionate sex, then... well, we know she dies at some point along the road. Or becomes a Daemon, either way she's out of the story.
His journey ended when he found a helmet which sealed his armor, making him a Warhammer Fantasy Dreadnought. He then proceeded to slaughter his remaining family, renounce his name, and take off into the Chaos Wastes. Thanks to the time fuckery of the Warp, the Chaos Gods had been waiting since they discovered the material plane with the opening of the Warp Gates for him to become worthy yet they still needed to debate on what to do now that they had discovered the material plane and because every other Everchosen they had elected had failed miserably along with the fact that Everchosen is a dumb idea that will never work along with the discussion on whether mortals should be entrusted with Chaos blessings along with the side discussion about how everyone else's mortal Champions have a better chance alone than some "Chaos Undivided" experiment. So Archaon waited.
Eventually, the Chaos Gods gave the order and he lead the most ferocious and largest army of Chaos Warriors ever assembled against the Empire during the Storm of Chaos campaign for 6th Edition. Before he reached the location where he was to end the world, he faced Valten (a reincarnation of Sigmar himself), who had managed to kill Dorghar and smash Archaon's armor before being beaten near death. Then the Orc warlord Grimgor met smashed through his army single-handed, headbutted him in the junk, laughed at his sorry ass then went back to gather another army of greenskins.
The reason this bullshit happened? GW built the narrative around their battle reports, army by army. The problem is that Chaos kept losing. In fact, the good guys were winning so badly the only reason Archaon was pushing them back was due to plot. But GW had already pre-planned the story to become the grimderpofthe41stmilleniumwherethereisonlywar and make "End Times" be in the past tense. In the end, they resorted to having fans call-in the way they wanted the story to end hoping that Warhammer Fantasy fans would pick the faction with the pointiest stuff on their armor.
They didn't.
They chose a faction that had been beaten in the last match.
Fans chose Orcs over Chaos.
GW had no backup plan.
Grimgor's entire army had been beaten by Crom while Valten and Archaon fought. Grimgor got sick of rallying his forces, went "ZOG DIS, I WANNA PIECE UH DA ACTION!" and charged in to sucker punch Archaon as he was about to deliver the final blow to Sigmar and end the world, shout for the silent and awed assembled armies of the world to hear that "GRIMGOR IZ DA BEST!", then went back home to rally his army. This resulted in the snide nickname of "Light Drizzle of Chaos."
Later on, GW retconned almost the entirety of Storm of Chaos and instead made it an alternate continuity. In the current narrative, he's still amassing his army.
GW recently realized that pushing ChaosChaosChaos in Warhammer Fantasy only turns off fans who want THEIR faction to be important (as the setting has a fair number of megalomaniacs that would put comicbook villains to shame), and as a result the End Times are finally being ushered in... by Nagash. The resident Undead supervillain, who aims to take over the world by rendering everyone into skeleton slaves then consume the Warp. In it's entirety. Upon hearing that Naggy's stealing his thunder, Archaon prematurely lead his forces to battle and found himself in a stalemate against Mannfred von Carstein, the last surviving head of the Dracula Bloodline. Mannfred's job is to keep Archaon busy while Nagash kills every living thing in the world and reanimates them. So far, he's doing a damn good job.
Things for Archaon to do
- Break the news to the Graeling tribe that Haargroth's dead. First order of business is obviously to recover his body, where ever that asshole Ar-Ulric left it. Then we're gonna give him the best Northman funeral ever. We're gonna get the biggest longship we can find, then place him on it atop the mountain of the corpses he made on the siege, under a barrow, then let the longship sail on a river of blood, and then we'll burn it.
- Find out where that fuck-up Styrkaar got to. And then bitch-slap him for his incessant partying which ruined his plans. All-mighty King of the Vargs my ass.
- Find and defeat Nagash, then turn that sociopathic old fossil into a xylophone and drums. If he's become a Chaos God, or even the Warp itself, simply consume him.
- Find that Orc who blindsided him and make him pay.
- Find a way to bring Orcs back to life, so he may torture, then kill, that damn Orc again.
- Repeat until bored (might take a while),
- Find every Orc that the ball-spores of that Orc sired, and do the same to them (by the time he's done, time will have flown by, say, about 40,000 years).
- Find Abaddon, beat him to death with his own arms, and assume command so that Chaos might actually get something done.
- Convert his chaos armor into chaos power armor.
- Find a way to bring the Norse with him. How is he gonna accomplish anything with power armored emos as his soldiers?
- Start spreading Chaos the only way he knows how, at the tip of his sword, no more pussyfooting around Chaos.
- March on Holy Terra itself.
- Beat the Tyranids into submission, then use as rations and mounts in his war against the Imperium.
- Beat the shit out of Gay Knights, so Chaos may have its long waited revenge.
- Give Daemonettes their missing boobs (and actually make them attractive again).
- Kill the Tau.
- Make the Eldar and Dark Eldar fight each other the way Elves should.
- Wipe out the Eldar and Dark Eldar at the same time.
- Kill the Necrons. Then kill them again, and again, and again, until they stop coming back from dead.
- Kill the Emperor. Which one, you ask? ALL OF THEM!
- Unleash all C'Tan Shards, and then kill them all.
- Kill the Orks (in memorium of his old friend Grimgor).
- Have a drink with Wulfrik. This'll be tough, since Wulfrik can down seven barrels of mead in one sitting. And when you also factor in that the Northmen mix their mead with warpstone-dust, Beastman blood and Chaos-infected plants, it becomes nearly impossible to outdrink Wulfrik.
- Teach Sigvald how to be a real man.
- Kill Games Workshop for the new Chaos Lord model. What the fuck is it with them and their inability to sculpt good heads?
- >Kill Games Workshop again for not updating Chaos Marauder models.
- Kill Games Workshop AGAIN for trying to own the term "Space Marine" and bullying a bunch people who use the term and don't have the money to fight back.
- Take control of Games Workshop and raise the prices of all boxes and models by 20%. You thought 40 eurobucks for 10 Elf scouts was bad? Just wait until the Herald of the Endtimes takes control! The entirety of Australia couldn't purchase a single model for the prices the prison colony is gonna get!
- Defeat Davros in ham to ham combat.
- Find out where Feytor fucked off to.
- Upon taking the entirety of creation, leave undead-Crom with rulership of Sylvania.
Archaon's Posse
In first Storm of Chaos and now in The End Times, Archaon isn't alone at the top of the hordes of chaos. He has some lieutenants to help him keep everyone organised. Closest of all is his Herald, Vardek Crom, although officially Crom gets killed in a failed invasion.
In Storm of Chaos, Games Workshop decided to go with the Your dudes approach, creating four lieutenants based on simply fluffing out the new Chaos Champion models for each of the four gods (save Khorne, who got a custom model based on an old Archaon head, Orc arms and an old Bloodletter body). Thusly, in White Dwarf, we were introduced to:
- Haargroth the Blooded One, Champion of Khorne.
- Feytor the Tainted, Champion of Nurgle.
- Styrkaar, Champion of Slaanesh.
- Melekh the Changer and the sorcerous mutant-child Cyspeth, Champions of Tzeentch.
The characters weren't received too well. So, perhaps realising their mistake, GW has revealed they're bringing back some of the big Chaos characters from their first ever Chaos Special Characters list:
- Representing Khorne, it's Arbaal the Undefeated, giant Flesh Hound-riding army-butchering Chaos Lord.
- Representing Slaanesh, it's Dechala the Denied One, corrupted High Elf turned six-armed poison-oozing snake-woman.
- Representing Nurgle, it's Valnir the Reaper, undead soul-harvester.
- Representing Tzeentch, it's Egrimm van Horstmann, former Magister of the Bright College turned dragon-riding daemon-commanding arch-warlock.
The End Times made a similar plan as well with champions representing each of the Gods, and again, Crom appears and gets his ass handed to him by Valten. This time, however, the posse is made of actually known characters:
- Valkia the Bloody representing her hubby Khorne.
- Vilitch the Curseling being the top champion of Tzeentch. As of ET: Thanquol, he's being sent to drag in Karl Franz so Archie may kill him once and for all.
- Sigvald the Magnificent being the only person of note dedicated to Slaanesh.
- The Glottkin taking the position of top 3 champions of Nurgle after the guy before him gets beaten. They get beaten in the same book they appear in by a superpowered Karl Franz and are currently sitting the rest of The End Times out in Nurgle's Mansion.
On the tabletop
In an interesting irony, though probably not intentional, Archaon is also in a lot ways the opposite of Abaddon, not in a bad way. Where as Abaddon tends to get changed fairly heavily each edition, Archaon stays the same with each book, with the only changes to him being armor save's not including bonus for him being mounted or whether or not you can field him on foot. Also, where as Abaddon is characterized by his hitting power while being respectably tough to kill, Archaon hits hard (base attack ignores armor and can double attacks for the rest of the game, though if does any 1s on to hit rolls have to be directed at him or his unit) although his most impressive trait is how freaking hard he is to kill. While his statline is only slightly better than a normal Chaos Lord, he has a 1+ armor save, a 3+ ward save, all to hit rolls against him have a -1 and he can't be wounded on better than 3+. Sadly, while an indestructible death machine, his cost keeps him from getting much use. Afterall, cannons are the solution to all problems in Warhammer Fantasy.
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Archaon's old model, on-foot.
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Archaon's new model. He gets a horsie now.
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Archaon, back in the early days of Warhammer Fantasy.
