Spoilers: Character background and the Cloak of Skulls. No campaign ending.
The Blooded Wanderers
Skulltaker leads the Blooded Wanderers in Immortal Empires. The campaign is the paid Skulltaker pack inside Omens of Destruction, sold on its own or in the bundle. It is not included with the base game, and it is not Arbaal’s free lord. The pack also adds Skarr Bloodwrath, a Legendary Hero, to eligible Khorne and Khorne-aligned campaigns. Skarr is a recruit. He is not a second start.
The campaign job is a hunt. Powerful enemy lords are the prey, and their deaths feed the Cloak of Skulls. The cloak is both a relic and a score. A duel that never happens does not improve it. The army’s work is to give Skulltaker that duel without letting the rest of the enemy line decide the battle first.
He fights as a melee duellist on foot among Bloodletters. Skarbrand is the larger monster and the base-game lord. Arbaal is the mortal champion who travels to distant challenges. Skulltaker stays with the hunt for named heads.
Slayer of kings
The Omens of Destruction account gives him three names: the slayer of kings, the blooded wanderer, and Khorne’s champion. He has a reputation for beating the strongest fighters he can find and adding their skulls to his cloak, an offering that keeps the dead in torment. Pride in his own skill is the whole of his character. He does not refuse a challenge. He wants the fight that proves he is the better killer.
That is a daemon’s vocation, not a mortal’s curse. He is a Bloodletter champion, Khorne’s herald with a cloak for a tally. The cloak in the campaign is the same idea turned into a progression: win the right fights, and the relic grows. Lose the thread of the hunt, and the faction is just another Khorne army.
Khorne’s other killers
Skarbrand was punished for striking Khorne and now leads the Exiles, a faction other Khornate powers are slow to forgive. Arbaal has never been allowed to lose, and his axe, the Destroyer, is the mark of that service. Skulltaker’s pride is narrower. He wants kings. He is not collecting a pardon, and he is not protecting an undefeated name.
Valkia the Bloody serves Khorne among the Warriors of Chaos. She is a consort and a warleader, not a Bloodletter. Karanak, the three-headed hound, is a free hero who hunts for several Khorne lords. None of them wears the cloak.
Update 9.0 lets Archaon subjugate Skulltaker after a defeat and give the Wanderers’ land to a Khorne vassal. The same rule covers Skarbrand and Arbaal. It is a campaign lever for the Everchosen. It does not make the cloak Archaon’s, and it does not end the hunt in the older account.
Skulltaker: gameplay and availability · More character stories
Sources
- Omens of Destruction: Introducing Skulltaker — Total War — totalwar.com
- Omens of Destruction: Introducing Skulltaker — Creative Assembly — community.creative-assembly.com
- Update 9.0 release notes — Total War — totalwar.com
- SEGA Immortal Empires ownership guide — support.sega.com
- Skulltaker – Omens of Destruction on Steam — store.steampowered.com