I use canon characters all the time, but questions about this one person in particular have come up more than once by virtue of her not being one of the BIG elf characters a la Tyrion/Teclis/etc. She is canon, however, by way of the Vermintide Games. An Asrai of the High Realm of Talsyn within Athel Loren. She is part of the Vermintide Cast of heroes, of which there are five. So I'll just repost that here, so you get the context of her + those she associates with during the Vermintide games i.e. End Times.
Okay! So, here we go:
The Ubersreik Five (Or Four, It Doesn't Matter) is a group of what could be considered a quintessential band of ragtag heroes who star in the Left 4 Dead -esque Warhammer Fantasy game series known as The End Times: Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide II. The general gist is that, hey, it's basically the End Times (it is the End Times, but they don't know that) and stuff is going crazy. So crazy, in fact, that it just so happens that at the Reikland city known as Ubersreik, all five of them end up converging there out of happenstance and fate and end up fighting together. Who are they fighting? Why, the skaven. A vast skaven horde, in fact, that are attempting to burrow up through Ubersreik and basically wreak utter havoc in the southlands of one of the most prominent provinces that the Empire has.
These are the skaven of Clan Fester, who were once one of the Council of Thirteen, but eventually screwed up and were forced into a subordinate position under Clan Pestilens as a part of the Pestilent Brotherhood. But why are they invading Reikland? Because they got hit with a super plague called the 'Brood Blight' which made their breeders all infertile. Which is essentially the one thing that allows skaven to, you know, keep being skaven with all the treachery and Black Hunger and what not. And Pestilens, THE plagueist of Plague people in all Skavendom couldn't cure it, and Fester got further alienated from Skaven Society. Which was when this really ambitious Grey Seer named Rasknitt convinced them he could cure them, if only they followed his every order...
Which first involved destroying Ubersreik.
So! Back to our Ubersreik Five (Or Four). All of them, as I said, ended up in Ubersreik right around the time that the skaven begin their assault on the city. It's a quiet thing, at first, but all of the U5 get involved in trying to push the skaven back. This took the place of trying to warn everyone by blowing the Horn of Magnus, a massive creation which could wake the whole city, gathering supplies to keep people from starving to death, and so on. They sabotaged skaven war machines, blew up their works, and committed absolute slaughter of the skaven. Literally. Kill counts at the end of each mission in Vermintide can involve each of the U5 killing literal hundreds of skaven. And not just skavenslaves, but clan rats, stormvermin, rat ogres, elite gutter runners, and so on.
But who are they?
Each were basically veterans of their specific paths on life.
Victor Saltzypre is a Witch Hunter who is also super hateful of skaven since they destroyed a town that he was trying to save. He's become so good at hunting them down that the skaven actually sort of fear him in general. He was born in Middenland, shoved into the Order of the Silver Hammer at very young, and is generally a scary dude. However, he is not as stupidly fanatical as some of his order, despite all his zealotry. Specifically, because of who he's dragging with him into Ubersreik at the time of the first game, Sienna Fuegonosis.
Sienna is a Bright Wizard who was cast out of her family, and ended up having to kill her sister who was IIRC also gifted with magic but went evil. And had a tutor, who she killed for some presumably good reason. When she was at the College, she was repeatedly reprimanded for pushing her magic WAY too far. Ended up leaving, wandering, doing lots of magic and destruction and eventually became a fugitive on way to a murder trial, being dragged by Victor. This is, however, a good thing. Because a lot of Witch Hunters would have gone 'aha, she's a witch, she did magic, people are yelling, kill her immediately'. Victor said 'No, we are going to have a trial to make there be definitive proof of her guilt OR her innocence.' However, she and Victor did not travel alone!
Markus Kruber is a Ubersreik born soldier, a former soldier, who initially began in the militia in Grunburg, another town in Reikland, until a foolish superior had an issue with him (and vice versa) and he got reassigned way up in Ostland. Because, you know, being assigned from the richest province to one of the poorest and most war-striken provinces is a punishment. But Kruber took it as an opportunity, and ended up leading the 8th Ostland Swordsmen Regiment, and polished them to a perfect unit, basically. Inspired loyalty and confidence through not just prowess but genuine wit and charisma. Lots and lots of battles, all won successfully. Unfortunately, a necromancer ended up killing them all with what is not named but is basically a Purple Sun. Kruber was pushed to safety by one of his loyal men, and they all died. Lone survivor, he applied for leave and wanted to quit military life outright, but was refused. Until Victor rocked up and said hey, I need help for a mission, I'll take you. Come help me with this prisoner I'm escorting.
Which is how those three ended up in Ubersreik, and while staying at the Red Moon Inn, they found a dwarf and an elf in the same place.
The dwarf was Bardin Goreksson, the elf gave her name only as Kerillian.
Bardin Goreksson is a former Ironbreaker of Karak Norn. He was a real good one too, but eventually took to being a Ranger instead. A real good one, too! Well-humored, loves to sing, wander, drink, etc. A weirdly happy dwarf, at least for canon Warhammer and the End Times. He's main thing is that, while wandering as a ranger, he found a map supposedly leading to the legendary Karak Zorn. And he's been wandering around trying to find it. His wandering took him to Ubersreik around the time Clan Fester attacked, as he'd heard that there was a dwarf book there that could be a further clue for his search. He was on his way there when he encountered a Wood Elf Waywatcher, and the two were just about ready to kill each other after an argument, until a skaven advance war party found them. Bardin got captured, but Kerillian butchered the skaven and rescued him, but ordered him to tell no one. And then they found out they were both headed to Ubersreik, which pissed her off and made him laugh.
Now then...Kerillian. Kerillian is an odd duck. Including for Wood Elves in general. One of the main lines about her is: 'she was born with an insatiable curiosity about everyone, everything, and everywhere, which all too often overrode her more cautious instincts'. She was a loner, as well, even amongst her own kind, but showed really good aptitude. For an elf! Amongst her own kind. She's been a Waywatcher for centuries, occasionally ranging out and hitting other targets as part of Asrai bands, but for the most part remaining in Athel Loren, but by the 2510s, she'd gotten so bad in terms of curiosity and stealth bothering people and embarassing others that she was tapped for being straight up sent out of Athel Loren for, like, patrol and exploratory missions. Definitely. And not because people wanted her to leave. Anyway, she ended up getting full on exiled - supposedly - from Athel Loren just before the End Times, and the dryads told her that Ubersreik would be important to the waning of the elves, so that's where she headed and met Bardin.
So the Ubersreik Five were born! Defending the city from the skaven, foiling their plots, and going after the Grey Seer Rasknitt. And they even won! Temporarily. The second game follows the first pretty much immediately with them captured, to be tortured and killed, and the reveal that Rasknitt has made an alliance with a Nurgle-aligned Norscan Tribe and built something called the Skittergate, a HUMONGOUS portal of warpstone techno-sorcery which provides a direct link from Norsca into Reikland.
The Second Game involves them escaping, dealing with that, and basically running around being big heroes throughout the End Times. Based at Taal's Horn Keep, also in Reikland, near Helmgart. They fight hordes of skaven, Norscans, minotaurs, Chaos Warriors, a Chaos Lord, skaven warlords, chaos spawn, stormfiends, etc. etc. and end up visiting Norsca, Helmgart, a lost Elven Waystone nexus in the Reikland woods, caves, mines, Castle Drachenfels, and a few other places as well. Including the Chaos Wastes!
Of course, all of the Five have their dark secrets...except Kruber, who is a pretty even-keeled sort.
Bardin feels he failed as a ranger long ago, because he was nearly killed along with a group and so were unable to prevent a deadly skaven attack on Ziflin. Sienna blew up a town at one point, killed a lot of people in magically corrupted pyromania. Saltzypre tortured a lady to death, thought she was a vampire, wasn't. Failed that one town too. But Kerillian, unfortunately, has it the worst of them all. The Dryads said that Ubersreik would be critical to the Waning of the Elves. So when she saw a huge military convoy heading there, immediately thought 'they're going to attack Athel Loren' and killed them all. So Ubersreik fell, because it had no reinforcements. So she's directly responsible for that, and feels SUPER guilty, so sticks around trying to kill as as many skaven, beastmen, and norscans she can to make up for it.
By the second game, you got special careers too. Which basically are extensions of who they might become as a result of the horrors they experienced as the Ubersreik Five. Bardin becomes either a Veteran Ranger, or falls back to his gleaming and shining past as an Ironbreaker, or just breaks down mentally entirely and becomes a Slayer, or follows his old Uncle's designs and becomes a Radical Outcast Engineer. Saltzpyre becomes a Witch Hunter Captain, because the Order has lost so many people in the End Times that they cannot deny him any longer, gives up on the Order entirely and becomes a Bounty Hunter to fund his personal crusade against the skaven, or shatters outright and becomes a raving Zealot Flagellant, effectively. Or, finds his faith becoming so great he goes on to become a full Warrior Priest of Sigmar. Sienna either finally gets a handle on her pyromania and remembers her old training to become a Battle Wizard, admits she's a bit crazy but keeps some of a bit of control to become a Pyromancer, or is so broken by her experiences that she becomes an Unchained Wizard, which is...pretty wild to look
at. Kruber either becomes a Mercenary now that he is no longer Vermintide I's Empire Soldier, or fully firms up his life, his cause, his skills, and is notable enough to Knighted, or gives up on all that stuff and retreats to the Wilds and reconnects with Taal to become a Huntsman. And then, well, it kinda gets a bit wild, but apparently he's bloodline related to a Grail Knight, and ends up as one of those. Maybe. Each of these potential paths are 'possible' for them to have gone down, but there is also the idea that the 'final' careers - Sister of the Thorn, Warrior Priest of Sigmar, Outcast Engineer, Grail Knight, and Necromancer for Sienna are their 'true' final paths. But that's a result of the End Times, and Vermintide Circumstances. So don't just rely on that knowledge for certainty on who they might be. Or, I guess given only two are alive right now - how Bardin or Kerillian might end up.
Kerillian, for her part, goes from Waywatcher to Waystalker if she commits to those old Athel Loren roots. Or she finds a sort of defiant hope against the End Times and rededicates herself to being a Handmaiden of Isha (not of the Everqueen, but of Isha the Goddess proper). Or she breaks down, starts muttering to Khaine, and goes Shade. Finally, she retreats from it all and ends up REALLY reconnecting to her Athel Loren roots. Emphasis on Roots, as in she becomes a Sister of the Thorn. And the reason she was allowed to do that is it turns out that maybe she wasn't as exiled as she led everyone to believe, or maybe she snuck in. Either way.
Basically, the Ubersreik Five (Or Four) <- and here I'll explain the joke. You can only take 4 people on a mission in the Vermintide Games, so never have all 5 with you. And now moving on -> Ended up doing a hell of a lot of stuff. Even got added to the WHRP proper in one of the latest editions.
HOWEVER, all of that said: This is not the Kerillian of Vermintide. That's in 2522, not 2344. She is still just a Waywatcher not an elite Waystalker like in V2, and hasn't yet become so terrifyingly stealth competent that she is freaking out so many more important Asrai that they've booted her out. At the same time, she again had the very formative experience of seeing Frederick come screaming out of the World Roots, carve up beastmen while naked, fighting alongside one of the Asur out of nowhere, and ended up doing, again, the Orion thing. I cannot stress the Orion thing, the Drycha thing, and the Ariel thing enough. Some Asrai are genuinely thankful that the corrupted Orion were put down, some are angry that a human dared to do anything in the forest at all, some are just flat out confused that a human was capable of a fraction of it all.
She was not named, but is the elf in the Laurelorn interludes that, as mentioned in the update, Eldyra finally blows up on because the Elf was poking at them for names, and then tried to play it off when asked in turn. A reference to Vermintide dialogue where it is suggested that she 'has many names, but Kerillian functions for this circumstance', but later mocking from either the spirit of Constant Drachenfels or Bel'akor himself in-game identifiers her as Kerillian proper. She is prickly, she is prideful (immensely) in her skills, but has repeatedly shown a weird amount of empathy and kindness, it's just wrapped up in her being acerbic in the extreme. It's also noted that she was gloomy and vaguely derogatory in the first game, but by the second when she's actually come to see the rest of the U5 as friends, she's a lot more prickly, insulting, etc. but it's basically just very sharp edged banter. Not that she explains that part. This was referenced in the update when Frederick fired back at her, and she instantly relaxed a bit.
Anyway, her curiosity compelled her out of Athel Loren a century or two early in this timeline before she was pseudo and then proper (somewhat) exiled. She's still quite skilled however, as in noted repeatedly to be skilled and have incredible eyesight and general senses
when compared to the other elves of Athel Loren. And, again, has been a Waywatcher for
centuries, not to mention the extra time warpy nature of Athel Loren. But yeah, she decided to go look at what these Empire humans were capable of.
Because again. It's really not every day that you see a human do what Frederick did to Orion and the Avatar of Anath Raema, or, well, any of it.
