Realmslayer

Realmslayer by David Guymer is the story that dragged Gotrek Gurnisson out of legend and into the Age of Sigmar. First released by Black Library in 2018 as a full-cast audio drama (with Brian Blessed's thunderous performance as Gotrek becoming instantly iconic among fans) it was subsequently published in print, and it is the version of record for one of the most consequential character returns in Warhammer fiction. The Slayer who marched into the End Times of the old world emerges, impossibly, into a cosmos of god-forged realms he does not recognise and pointedly refuses to respect.

Guymer's masterstroke is playing Gotrek's return as grief wearing the armour of comedy. The Slayer wants two things: to find Felix Jaeger, the human companion who chronicled his doom-quest across the World-that-Was, and to get answers from Grimnir, the Slayer God whose oath shaped his whole existence. What he finds instead is a world of Stormcast Eternals he dismisses as Sigmar's lightning-puppets, Fyreslayers whose gold-hunger he regards as a mockery of the Slayer cult, and a new travelling companion in Maleneth Witchblade: a sardonic aelf assassin serving the Order of Azyr, assigned to watch the volatile dwarf and increasingly unable to leave his side. Their bickering double act became the engine of every Gotrek story since.

As a hinge between settings, Realmslayer matters far beyond its own plot. It gave Age of Sigmar a living, growling link to classic Warhammer Fantasy continuity and an outsider's voice licensed to say what old-guard fans were thinking about the new setting, then made him care about it anyway. The novels and audios that followed under Guymer, Darius Hinks and others all build on the foundation laid here: an unkillable relic of a dead world, stomping through the Mortal Realms looking for a doom big enough to matter.