Now that you’re familiar with the background, heroes, rules, and encounters of Warhammer Quest: Darkwater, we’re taking a breather to drink in some of the details on the miniatures that come in the box. The heroes and villains are the main focus, as they’re a characterful bunch covered with cool details, and make perfect self-contained painting projects.
The adventuring heroes in Darkwater bring together a bunch of varied archetypes, with a heavy dose of Warhammer flair. They’re each festooned with gear and doodads that ground them in the Mortal Realms, bringing some of that Age of Sigmar narrative into Darkwater. Each has an icon associated with them, which will represent them on the initiative tracker, and we showed these off in our article introducing the miniatures. Perhaps you can spot them all in the images below?
A warrior through and through, Edmark Valoran is ready for action, and wades into battle against the followers of Nurgle with a brutal axe. A pouch, totem, and back-up sword hanging from his belt show he’s prepared.
Drolf Ironhead on the other hand is a duardin ranger able to bypass all sorts of obstacles and traps thanks to his overflowing pack of adventurer’s equipment. The rune of his clan is emblazoned on his equipment, and you can even see his stowed crossbow – the primary weapon on Drolf’s regular hero card.
Wading into the fray with a broken nose and ramshackle armour, Bren Tylis is a hard-bitten, roving sellsword with an unlikely ancestor – Saint Yondara, sworn guardian of the Everspring. She’s loaded with all sorts of gear, including a flask of fresh water, a lantern, a shattered spear, and even a skull that she uses to communicate with Yondara.
The flipside to this rough and ready rogue is Inara Sion, a resplendent questing maiden who is centuries old thanks to regular sips of Aqua Ghyranis. Vine motifs on the miniature link her to Ghyran, and intricately painted water caustics on the sword reveal its true nature as a conjured blade.
Just like Inara, Jacobus Vyne has his bare feet firmly planted on the ground to show his link to nature. His Vineroot Staff can be seen knitting itself to the fauna he’s perched on, and carries the same motifs as his locus spirit, Wisper. We’re particularly big fans of the spite-owl on his shoulder.
Drasher Vorn is the strangest of the bunch, a shapeshifter from Ghur who can be seen adorned with various pendants that feature the Arrow of the Hunt – the symbol of Ghur – while the Ebon Claw artefact of his tribe hangs from his belt.
As the biggest of all the heroes, Kelthannor is covered in intricate details. As a prince, he’s adorned with fine clothing, and even has a lip ring. He’s also carrying a huge bow with equally large arrows, and a horn hangs from his belt – which he uses to embolden his allies. His base is also decorated with a little statue of a forest nymph cradling a jar of Aqua Ghyranis.
At first glance, Belga the Cystwitch appears to be a single vile creature with a grub-like body, but closer inspection shows that two of her sisters have melded into her body, making her a living coven – delightful. Nurgle loves the number three almost as much as seven, so you’ll see tri-lobe motifs pop up everywhere in Darkwater. She conducts vile rituals with her cauldron, an act that Shaman Foulhoof also practices, though his more primal proclivities see him dripping tainted blood onto the land from a sacrificial heart.
All the villains share the same spiral imagery, a symbol of Pust’s insurrection, but only Mulgoth the Cleaver is branded with it so prominently. Check out his gnarly daemonic axe, and the way his armour has crumbled and fallen away as his arm has swollen to gargantuan proportions.
The primary antagonist of Darkwater is the swollen daemon prince Gelgus Pust. The centrepiece of the box, he’s a fearsome miniature absolutely stuffed with details. While we’ve lavished much attention on his beautiful rictus grin, the miniature is a proper “party in the back” situation, as he hides nascent wings gifted to him by Nurgle, which hang like a cloak, and thick hair like you’d find on the thorax of a fly. He’s a carnival of rot and boils, and there are a few nods to his supremacy over the Sylvaneth – defenders of the Realm of Life – like the faces trapped in his sword, which mirror those of Spite-Revenants.
You can find out loads more about the design of the Warhammer Quest: Darkwater miniatures in issue 519 of White Dwarf, which is coming out soon. It contains a full designer’s notes feature from the Warhammer Studio, more rules commentary, a full playthrough, and a guide on how to approach painting your heroes. We’ll have a full reveal of the rest of White Dwarf 519’s content next week.
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