The Tale of Axel Tricklebrook – a Champion’s Story

With the 9th Kings of War Champions company, led by Axel Tricklebrook, about to enter the game in September - here's the backstory of one of the most highly-anticipated boxes yet...

A raging storm. Under water. Over mountains. The seas and rivers boiling.

Axel watched and wept. A dream, he thought. A dream, he hoped. Armies he hadn’t seen for generations. Faces he didn’t recall. Creatures he didn’t recognise. Armies marching from the east that froze his blood.

Suddenly a trickle of water formed at his feet. Then a torrent, followed by a tsunami that swept Axel away. The water filled his mouth and dragged him under toward an inky oblivion.

Axel woke up with a start. His face was damp and for a moment he thought he was back in the dream. He resisted the temptation to fight against the currents. Instead, he blinked his eyes and took a moment to view his surroundings.

Darkness. Just like the dream. No, not quite dark - something was glowing. A pulsating blue that gave off a weak, dying light.

While trying to work out what was creating the light, Axel was startled by a cold puddle of water that fell on his chest, then began flowing upwards towards his face. Weak from slumber, Axel could only watch nervously as the water surged. Suddenly, it stopped and the puddle began to form into a small face with eyes and a mouth.

It smiled at Axel and he began to remember.

“Splish?” he gasped, his mouth almost completely dry. Surely it couldn’t be? Water elementals - even tiny ones like Splish - were meant to return to the rivers or oceans once they had been summoned.

In response to his question, Splish spun on the spot before nuzzling his master’s gilled face. The water elemental was ice cold, which sent a chill through Axel.

“How long has it been, dear friend?” asked Axel.

The water mage cast his mind back - although it came to him in broken flashes.

He was in a grand hall underneath the waves, surrounded by other gillkin like him, the frog-like riverguard and their grand steeds, naiads and even thuul. Splish was sitting on his shoulder and watching proceedings with relative indifference.

The War with Winter was raging. The seas were covered in towering icebergs, while freezing winds battered the land.

For the cold-blooded gillkin it was a death sentence. Unlike the hardy riverguard, Axel and his brethren were particularly susceptible to the freezing temperatures. Axel had lost count of the friends he had watched slip away while they shivered and struggled for warmth.

“We can’t continue like this,” said Maraxis, a fellow gillkin mage. His claws were shaking with cold and he almost dropped his staff. “The gillkin are dying. Every day I watch my kind pass into the Great Current.”

“What do you suggest?” spat a large pondwarden. “The gillkin are among our best mages. The riverguard rely on your abilities to protect the waterways.”

“But who will protect us?” replied another gillkin to Axel’s left.

“Cowards!” growled the pondwarden and Axel was shocked to hear others pick up his cry, even those riverguard he considered to be friends. Riverguard he had fought alongside.

“Think what you will, but the fact remains we are a dying race,” said Maraxis. “The cold turns our blood to ice. What use are we on the battlefield when we can’t even hold a blade in shaking claws, or speak an incantation because our lips are quivering? We must preserve the gillkin that are left. Our heritage - your ancestors - must not die.”

Accompanied by shouts and jeers from the gathered crowd, Axel and the other gillkin left the chamber. In the hall outside, Maraxis faced them all.

“We must scatter to the corners of Pannithor. Find whatever warmth you can. If the world is not turned to ice, the gillkin will survive and the time will come when we are needed once more. Now go!”

Finally, Axel remembered where he was. He had travelled north, as close to the Abyss as he dared. Its unnatural fires warmed the lands around it - even in the seemingly ever-lasting winter. And so Axel had hidden, deep inside one of the many caves spread across this blasted landscape.

But now, just as Maraxis had promised, it seemed Axel’s time had come once more.

With stiff limbs he slowly rose, while shooing Splish away, and looked towards the pulsing light. He was delighted to see his coral staff.

He didn’t know how long he had been in the cave. He wasn’t sure whether he would only find a world blasted by ice and snow. What he was sure about though, was that something had called to him and woken him from his slumber.

Grabbing his staff and feeling the comfort of the magical currents returning to him, Axel waited while Splish flowed onto his shoulder.

“Let’s see what awaits us, old friend.”

Written by Rob Burman

Ready to bring one of Pannithor's lost gillkin back to the battlefield? Axel and Splish are yours to command this September in Kings of War: Champions!

Click HERE to pre-order.