Valkia the Bloody
"I tell you that neither eating, drinking, nor sleep has as much savor for me as to hear the cry 'Forwards!' from both sides, and horses without riders shying and whinnying, and the cry 'Help! Help!', and to see the small and great fall to the grass at the ditches and the dead pierced by the wood of the lances decked with banners."
- – Bertran de Born
Valkia the Bloody is a character from Warhammer who happens to be the single most badass female Viking ever. Badass enough that even Khorne's got a hard-on for her. Literally. And anyone with a muscle fetish. Difference is that the latter people will just have to put up with being plowed by an angry demon-woman with wings in hot, sweaty hatesex.
She also happens to be the closest thing the Warhammer world has to a Valkyrie, which is a big thing in Norse mythology. They're the one ones who pick out who gets to die and join the Blood God in the halls of the afterlife where they can fight for eternity. And yes, we already know how unsubtle it is about Khorne being Odin.
Origins
See, once she was just a badass viking chick. And considering that vikings here are already, like, 40% Testosterone at birth, that's a serious lot of manly. She got her first taste of battle being a shield-maiden as a child and found she liked it. As she grew up, she found herself liking war and hating her father's increasing willingness for peace, eventually killing him and taking over the tribe, with one of Valkia's two childhood friends (willingly) taking the fall for her father's death. So this accounted, she killed a bunch of other chaos champions, which is the closest thing the Norse have to consenting, heterosexual sex in the missionary position for the sole purpose of procreation.
She later met the leader of another tribe who worshiped Khorne and he introduced Valkia to his faith. She really liked the Khornate faith and the god behind it while also respecting the man, so after awhile the two married. Soon he made it clear that he wanted to be the boss of the tribes and their relationship (yes, the "stay in the kitchen" argument). While butting heads with him over this, Valkia one day felt like becoming a mother so she got him drunk, banged him (apparently whiskey dick isn't a thing in the Warhammer world) and got pregnant, later giving birth to two daughters.
Shortly after their children were born, he revealed that he wanted sons and didn't think much of his daughters (that's right, we're also doing the "heir club for men" trope). Valkia decided this was a prime subject to troll him about and did so often - especially in front of his bros, which eventually got him so mad he tried to kill her. She offed the unfortunate fool and ruled his tribe as a single mother and a warqueen (somehow doing a good job of both at the same time) while her girls became women. Though neither served Khorne like their mother did, one of them got smitten with an up-and-coming young warrior in the tribe while the other decided to remain single (between her and Valkia, we know what you're thinking; something something "don't need no man").
After this, Valkia's tribe was visited by Locephax, a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh who sought to plunder him some ass; Valkia's and her daughters' to be precise. While her daughters started to succumb to the daemon's beguilement, Valkia's Khornate faith enabled her to resist Locephax's powers. She responded by killing him in a duel, cutting his head off, and mounting it on her shield. LIKE A BOSS. Oh, and the head's still alive and trash-talks her regularly.
So Valkia decided to go up north with some of her warriors to see Khorne and present the shield with Locephax's head to him, leaving her daughters to rule the tribe in her absence. Despite being a badass, she trips at the finish line and dies after she is crushed by the weight of her muscles because lolchaos. And this made Khorne blow his load (both figuratively AND literally), so explosively that it literally brought her back to life and then turned her into a demonic valkyrie (this provides a counter example to assertions that Chaos gods never reward a failure... then again, Valkia lost due to some of her followers betraying her) who judges who shall live and who shall die while reducing Locephax to a hypnotic shield that Valkia can use in battle to disorient her enemies. Oh, and be Khorne's personal stress management resource when Slaanesh starts laughing about Khorne's killhatemurder homosex club.
When she left Khorne's realm and returned to the world, she turned her last living loyal soldier (who'd gotten got his arm torn off by a lion) into a Chaos Lord of Khorne, fixing his physical handicaps while hooking him up with an awesome axe, Chaos armor and a Juggernaut mount. On the way back home, she learned that things had gone to pot in her absence. Her tribe was fractured due to the scheming of other tribes and traitors within her own. Those loyal to Valkia were getting killed or annexed into other tribes. Worst of all, her married daughter was murdered in her sleep while pregnant with the killer cutting the baby out of her body and the surviving daughter now hated Valkia. After killing some Dwarfs in a gruesome ritual called the Blood Raven (another viking reference, this one just a grimdark in real-life as it is in Warhammer), she returned to her tribe to try and fix things. Naturally, this involved Valkia killing a lot of people, sadly including her surviving daughter, who challenged Valkia to a duel because she now considered her mother an Abbadon-tier screw-up.
Over time Valkia regained control of her tribe and threw away anything other than serving Khorne as a leader, consort and Chaos Valkyrie. She also appeared to Archaon in his quest to become Everchosen after he got the ultimate Mark of Chaos, where she killed a black dragon and the Dark Elf Sorceress riding it.
In the End Times she led a Khornate army alongside Skarbrand to attack Naggaroth, smashing through the watchtowers and Ghrond's army, making it to the gates of the capital city Naggarond. She and Kouran, who led the defense of Naggarond in Malekith's absence, dueled twice. The first ended in a stalemate and the second she forfeited to duel the newly arrived Malekith and his dragon in combat. After a lengthy fight she lost, blasted by Malekith's magic and his dragon's breath weapon, but Khorne made her fighting fit again to do more in The End Times. Sadly, she goes out like a chump in End Times: Archaon, accidentally impaling herself on Ludwig Schwarzhelm's standard pole as she runs him through with her spear (there's a sex joke in there somewhere).
A lot of people that died in The World That Was during the End Times are alive and active in Age of Sigmar and Valkia is one such case. She came back complete with ruling her own version of Valhalla in Age of Sigmar. I guess this makes her Chaos Freya or something. When not busy with either killing or with her husband, she is known to accept challenges to mortal combat from worthy mortals trying to prove their mettle to the boss.
Tabletop
Warhammer Fantasy
Half-way between a Chaos Lord and a Daemon Prince, Valkia is a Duelling/Character killing machine even by the Warriors of Chaos standards. She has a Strength and Toughness of 5, 9WS and 6 attacks, which increases to 7 thanks to her having the Mark of Khorne giving her Frenzy and she comes with both Fear and Fly (those wings aren't just for show). Her Daemonic spear Slaupnir increases her Strength by +2 and inflicts killing blow when she successfully charges and it also has the Armour Piercing rule, giving her an Armour Penetration of at least 3 at all times. While having Eye of the Gods meaning she must always Challenge any time she is required to make a roll on the EOTG table, as she automatically gets Slaughters Strength (+1S) result each time instead of rolling, meaning her Strength and Armour Piercing will snowball after each challenge. The Scarlet Armour gives her a 3+ armour save and reduces the Strength of attacks against her by models in contact with her by 1, and paired with her Daemonshield it increases her Armour save to a 2+, gives her the standard 6+ parry save and also decreases the number of attacks of enemy models in contact with her, which gives her further survivability during challenges. Finally Gaze of the Blood God allows all friendly units with 12" of her to re-roll break tests, but with the caveat that if any unit near her flees, she inflicts D6 S6 hits against the unit that broke, because Daddy Khorne hates cowardly little bitches.
She does have a few downsides, mainly the fact that she lacks Daemonic or any Ward save despite being repeatedly named as a "Daemon Prince/Princess. Khorne clearly doesn't care from if the Blood flows from Valkia or her opponent. This also makes her vulnerable if she decides to go it alone and Fly around the battlefield, since while the Dwarfs and Empire don't have their own flying Daemon girls, they have cannons instead, and she will disappear in a spray of red mist is she's hit by one. And if she joins a unit of Chaos Warriors to keep her safe, she's stuck marching along side them with their Movement of 4" (nothing else apart from monsters has Fly), making it less likely she'll get into the combats you want her to get into. Still despite being high risk, she can give very high rewards if you keep her out of ranged fire and get her into challenges with pathetic mortal Lords and Heroes so she can bring their skulls to her beloved.
Total War: Warhammer III
She shows up in the third game's "Champions of Chaos" DLC, alongside Azazel, Festus the Leechlord and Vilitch the Curseling, where all four champions are trying to make their ways to Zanbaijin, to claim all the souls absorbed by the city over the centuries. Even accounting for the fact that her unit card was displayed on turn 70+ on the campaign map, Valkia's stats are monstrous and easily make her a contender with Skarbrand and Nkari as the best duelist lord in the game. Unfortunately she comes off as a bit of a chump in her trailer where she gets beat down by a bunch of Slaanesh marauders and flies away. CA probably wanted to show off Valkia's temporary invincibility ability, but there's better ways to do that! Have her tank a cannonball, WITH HER FACE!
