Tzarina Katarin

Lore & Background

During the end of winter in Kislev, the Bear-God Ursun failed to break the cold with his roar for seven consecutive years. To remedy this, Katarin dispatched the Barkov brothers on an expedition north. When Yuri heard Ursun's voice claiming imprisonment in the Howling Citadel within the Chaos Wastes, he marched into the wastes but was corrupted by Chaos. In a ruthless culmination, Yuri murdered his brother Gerik and offered his skull to a Greater Daemon of Khorne to build a bridge of skulls. After defeating a chaos-corrupted Boyar, Yuri entered a portal to the Realm of Chaos. There, Be'lakor, the first Daemon Prince voiced by Richard Armitage, revealed he had mimicked Ursun's voice. Be'lakor manipulated Yuri into killing the imprisoned god with a Chaos-imbued bullet. The resulting backlash hurled a gravely injured Yuri back to the material plane, where he was ascended as a Daemon Prince.

In Their Own Story

After the prologue events, the Advisor, enslaved by the Tome of Fates and bearing a curse from Tzeentch, sought allies to free himself using a single drop of Ursun's blood. He approached Katarin, whose faction wished to free their god and end the eternal winter. The conflict was complicated by internal strife between Katarin's Ice Court and Kostaltyn's Great Orthodoxy. Controlling the three main Kislevite cities—Kislev, Praag, and Erengrad—allowed either faction to rescue Boris Ursus, the Red Tzar and High Priest of Ursun, from his icy slumber in the Frozen Falls. This action unlocked Boris and the Ursun Revivalists as a playable faction for future campaigns. In the canonical ending, after Be'lakor was slain and his ascension prevented, Katarin's forces mourned the loss of Ursun until their devotion revived him, ending Kislev's endless winter.

Reader's Guide

Players controlling Tzarina Katarin must navigate the political tensions between the Ice Court and the Great Orthodoxy while managing the expedition to the Realms of Chaos. The campaign involves traveling from the Lands of the East to the daemon-infested Realms of Chaos, invading the domains of the four Chaos Gods (Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle, and Slaanesh), and capturing the souls of Daemon Princes bound to them. The map for this journey is twice the size of the Eye of the Vortex campaign from Total War: Warhammer II. If players capture all four Daemon Prince souls, Ursun dies, allowing Be'lakor to attempt ascension as the Chaos God of Shadows. However, using the captured souls, the player can build a bridge to the Forge of Souls to battle and slay Be'lakor. Achieving this victory results in Katarin's canonical ending where Ursun is revived by devotion, ending the winter.

Did You Know?

• Tzarina Katarin is the leader of the Ice Court, a secret society of Ice Witches.
• Supreme Patriarch Kostaltyn leads the Great Orthodoxy and believes Katarin is too focused on magic instead of devotion.
• In the canonical ending, Katarin's devotion to Ursun revives him and ends the seven-year winter.