Leader of the Wardens of Burden, Lord-Celestant Tcimmera Skybrow leads her Extremis Chamber against the enemies of Sigmar with zeal and quick strategic wit.
Like many Knights Excelsior, the centuries of war and toll of Reforgings have left her with little mercy for those she deems as corrupt. However, unlike many of her brethren she recognises this as a failing, and strives to keep the heroism of her warriors intact, no matter how seductive the urge to abandon empathy might be.
Tcimmera Skybrow had begun life as one of many survivors during the Age of Chaos. Her tribe of horse-riding nomads, the Vhyrta, had managed to escape the worse predations of the Khorne in Aqshy by fleeing the Singing Plains, their ancestral homeland. Aside from the occasional skirmish, they dared not turn and fight their pursuers, nor give aid to the other survivors they outran. The pleas of those they abandoned fell on guilty hearts, but Tcimmera’s people tried to deafen their ears and continued to run.
All the while, the Khornates that had forced their displacement only grew from strength to strength. A warlord called Desraki Khrodes rose to power on the back of Gorewrought mercenaries, founding the Desrakian Dominion and a dynasty that would last through the entire Age of Chaos and into the present day. His forces would continually expand outward to conquer lands and subjugate their peoples, forcing the Vhyrta to keep running from them. It was a nightmare that never ended, a perpetual race to stay a step ahead of oblivion.
This is the life Tcimmera was born into. As she came of age she began to contest their constant running. It rankled her that her people only focused on their own survival to the exclusion of others. As she became more skilled with bow and lance, and grew mighty of limb, she would begin to poke their pursuers, delaying her retreat to loose arrows or run down an overeager Redcloak. In time other warriors tired of running began to flock to her, eager to exact vengeance upon the enemy and penance for themselves. This warband Tcimmera wielded deftly against her enemies, pressing them hard with rapid cavalry assaults and retreating just as quickly. For the first time the legions of the Desrakian Dominion stumbled in their relentless march. For the first time, they were made to bleed.
Ultimately, this following grew large enough to convince the rest of the Vhyrta to turn around and fight. Even if this would be their last plunge into the dark, then at least they would die with clean consciences.
The initial counterattack proved successful beyond their wildest imaginations, defeating a few Redcloak armies thanks to Tcimmera’s strategic acumen. Though they knew their luck would run out against the Dominion, they pressed on anyway, determined to make the worshippers of the Blood God bleed for every mile of conquest they had made, for every day of oppression they had inflicted upon the Singing Plains. Their resistance eventually attracted the personal attention of Desraki Khrodes, and he would lead his personal host to destroy them. Using slaves as bait, the Gorewrought as an unbreakable anvil and his Redcloaks as a far-ranging pincer, Khrodes managed to pin down the Vhyrta and force them into an unwinnable battle.
Tcimmera was among the last to fall, cut down by Gorewrought in a last desperate charge on Brasslord Desraki Khrodes. Her bravery and unwillingness to ignore Chaos’ evil attracted Sigmar’s eye, and he took her soul up to Azyr to be Reforged as a Stormcast Eternal.
As a Stormcast Eternal Tcimmera quickly excelled, even passing the Trial of Starwalking and earning the favour of the Stardrake Ahvria, who she would become fast friends with. She would be put in command of the Extremis Chamber, the Wardens of Burden, and began relentlessly fashioning them into a weapon on the battlefields of Azyr and the Gladitorium. During this time she would find an ally in the Blackhammers’ Lord-Celestant, Phionan the Scintillating Lance. They whiled away many a night crafting battle plans or debating strategy when they would be unleashed, then practiced the theories they formulated in the Gladitorium. Though neither were much given to great displays of affection, it became readily evident that both trusted few others better than each other.
Tcimmera would get her chance at vengeance when the Age of Sigmar dawned. Her Chamber was assigned to secure Realmgates that linked Kha’ihvan Plain and the Singing Plains as a first step to secure the Blackhammers’ gains in the latter, and open up the former to invasion by the Wardens of Burden. The glorious release of being unleashed was marred for Tcimmera when she first entered the Singing Plains and found silence. She wept openly as she realised that the Desrakian Dominion had wiped out even the wind aelementors, renaming the land to the Windless Plains to mark their victory. She knew that she would never again hear the winds’ songs of her childhood. Tcimmera crossed the Realmgate back into Kha’ihva Plains, swearing vengeance against the Dominion, no matter the cost to her body or soul.
After decades of engagements across the Realms and skirmishes with the dominion, the fury this birthed within Tcimmera found catharsis on the Second Battle of Kha’ihvan Plains. The Desrakian Dominion arrogantly believed that the Stormcast were no true threat to them and preemptively launched an invasion of Kha’ihva to destroy them. This arrogance proved their undoing, as they were baited into an ambush by the Star-Beckoners into the Blackhammers, and subjected to a furious assault by the Wardens of Burden so shocking that for the first time in centuries a Desrakian Brasslord tried to flee the field, only to be dragged into Khorne’s Realm by his Gorewrought bodyguard for his cowardice. Tcimmera had long ago proven that they could bleed. Now, she proved that they could fear.
This solidified the victory on the battlefield into great strategic gains, as Tcimmera personally led the counter-invasion into the Desrakian Dominion and further broke it. Great swathes of territory were liberated from the Khornates, their freed peoples hailing Tcimmera as a hero. It seemed that with just one last effort, the Dominion could be forever wiped from the face of the Realms.
Unfortunately, this last effort never came. Tensions rose between Tcimmera and Phionan over the former’s merciless treatment of prisoners and those she deemed too corrupted by Chaos. This boiled over into a full argument and sundering of their friendship, and saw the derailment of the invasion into the Dominion. Sigmar recalled Tcimmera to other battlefields, and for years she could only watch on in frustration as the Dominion licked its wounds and returned to strength under its new Brasslord, Desraki Rickad.
Her heart hardened further as reports of Rickad’s exploits in the Windless Plains reached her, sending her down a path of callousness. She insulted the Soulbound Cathallar Aengellania Tearworn for her empathy towards Sigmar’s enemies, which earned her a broken jaw given by the Errant-Questor Améline the Anvil. Enemies she met in the field were mercilessly hounded when they broke, not given a chance to surrender or relief from pursuit, more often that not purposefully encircled to aid in destroying them utterly. At times Ahvria had to restrain her worse impulses, even refusing to unleash their destructive breath when they felt Tcimmera’s orders were excessive in their violence. Then Tcimmera would dismount and wade into the enemy on foot, carving through them until her white armour was buried under blood. Where once no personal effort was beyond her, now no punishment she could inflict upon the enemy was too severe.
In time this heartlessness became noticeable even to herself. She saw how the citizens of Excelsis feared her fellow Knights Excelsior, and how she attracted similarly terrified glances whenever her Wardens of Burden returned from the battlefield, gore dripping from blades and claws. This troubled her after her recent heroics in the Windless Plains and subsequent falling out with Phionan. A quiet voice within Tcimmera asked her a question that did more to frighten her than any other enemy had managed; What is the dividing line between her righteous fury and the wanton bloodlust she so hated?
There was only one man she felt could help her answer that.
She left Excelsis on her own and headed straight for Kha’ihva City. There she met with Phionan, who reluctantly admitted her into his private quarters. The two talked long into the night, sometimes shouting, other times speaking in hushed whispers. What exactly passed between them is unknown, but evidently it involved reconciliation and a renewal of old bonds. Phionan embraced Tcimmera before she left, promised to resume her correspondance with her again, and offered her a tour of Kha’ihva City when they could both make the time. Tcimmera for her part returned the embrace just as warmly, and thanked Phionan with a cracked voice. Knight-Azyros Bartheliman Clear-Eyed of the Blackhammers attached himself to the Wardens of Burden soon after, and he would help guide the Chamber away from the brutality that was so seductive to them.
This rekindled friendship didn’t last. This time however, its end came about when the Blackhammers were deployed in the disastrous campaign in the Eightpoints, and were lost in their entirety. Only Bartheliman is known to have survived, having been with the Wardens of Burden at the time.
The entirety of the Wardens of Burden have become swept up in a barely-contained rage at the loss of close allies, but none are more furious than Tcimmera Skybrow. She daily petitioned Sigmar to let her lead her Chamber into the Eightpoints to save the Blackhammers. So far He has refused those requests, instead choosing to send her to Rondhol to aid the city of Khardihr. This duty she has accepted with great reluctance, and a little secret fear.
Khardihr will test her, she senses. Hero or butcher, it will reveal to all who she really is.
