Spoilers: Eight Peaks background and the End Times setup. The listening note on the later novel is collapsed.
Crooked Moon, from Karak Azgaraz to Eight Peaks
The King and the Warlord unlocks Skarsnik. Update 4 of the first game, on 20 October and on the same day as that pack, puts him in the Grand Campaign as leader of the Crooked Moon, squig hunting in the Southern Grey Mountains, operating from Karak Azgaraz. That sentence is the Warhammer I start. It is not an Immortal Empires settlement invented later.
In Immortal Empires the faction is still Crooked Moon, and the campaign job is Karak Eight Peaks. Since Update 6.0, holding the hold lets him build orc recruitment in his settlements. Losing it removes those buildings. Gobbla, the giant cave squig, is the bodyguard on the battlefield. Night Goblins are the troops who have to win before the orcs are available.
The novel and the short story
Guy Haley's novel Skarsnik is a Warhammer Fantasy Battles novel. A greenskin horde threatens the Empire, and Altdorf's military minds ask a disgraced poet, Jeremiah Bickenstadt, who claims he spent time with the Warlord of the Eight Peaks. The jacket frames that account as a monstrous legend grown from a low beginning. Black Library points from this portrait to a later return in The Rise of the Horned Rat.
The King of Black Crag, also by Haley, is a separate Orcs and Goblins short story. While Skarsnik is securing his place as Warlord of the Eight Peaks, Gorfang Rotgut, the Troll-Eater at Black Crag, has not decided whether the night goblin is ally or enemy, and he looks for the shaman Zarrgakk. Skarsnik is named. Gorfang is the one who acts. Gorfang is not a playable Greenskin lord. The 2019 omnibus Warlords of Karak Eight Peaks collects the novel, Headtaker, the novella Thorgrim, and this short story among its pieces.
End Times, labeled
The Rise of the Horned Rat is book 4 of The End Times, also by Guy Haley. The jacket puts Queek Headtaker on an assault against Karak Eight Peaks and calls Skarsnik and Belegar rival kings in that hold. Thorgrim is in Karaz-a-Karak. Publication order places this novel after the Eight Peaks books. It is End Times fiction. An Immortal Empires Crooked Moon campaign that takes the hold is a sandbox result, not this novel's plot.
What the listening note adds
The listening note on the audiobook says the long war for Karak Eight Peaks is lost in this novel, and that several familiar characters meet their end. The open jacket stops at the preparations: Queek's assault, the two rival kings in the depths, and Thorgrim at the capital. That loss is the note's. It is not the opening state of a Crooked Moon campaign.
Skarsnik: gameplay and availability · More character stories
Sources
- Total War: WARHAMMER — Update 4 — wiki.totalwar.com
- Skarsnik (eBook) — blacklibrary.com
- The King of Black Crag (eBook) — blacklibrary.com
- The Rise of the Horned Rat (MP3) — blacklibrary.com
- SEGA Immortal Empires ownership guide — support.sega.com
- The King and the Warlord — store.steampowered.com
- CA: Gorbad and the Greenskins update — community.creative-assembly.com