I've been toying with the idea of making a female troll slayer and I was trying to find out if anyone had any knowledge of official information concerning this and/or any ideas on what might cause her to take the Slayer oath.

Some ideas I had were:

A) her children died and she was unable to protect them

B) she is unable to have children

C) her mate had an affair or she did (what little I know of dwarf culture would indicate to me that this sort of thing would never happen becasue of honor and duty but if it did for some reason then taking the oath would seem reasonable.)

D) she refused to marry (again I know little of dwarf culture but I think I read somewhere that they do have arranged marriages)

Depending on how true to dwarven lore for warhammer you want to stay.

IIRC, there are not that many dwarven females, meaning that they could possibly have multiple mates/husbands. So the affair thing I would rule out. They are seen as more valuable to a clan than males, and therefore don't get out that much, as per clan custom.

It would really have to be some very undwarven behaviour that both gets her put outside of the clan, and still makes her want to "return" if only through death.

Maybe she foolishly let herself be cornered into swearing two mutually exclusive oaths, without realizing it. In that case, she could be victim of some diplomatic manoevring of a rival female dwarf - hoping to steal her spot.

Forgot this:

refused to marry--> meaning she'd be simply kicked out of the clan. But refusal to marry means: refusal to obey the clan elder.
I don't see why she would then still want to return the the clan, so no need to take the slayer oath.

I think all of those would be legitimate causes for taking the Slayer Oath. The only one I'm not entirely sure about would be the case of being unable to bear children. I suppose it would depend most upon the particular Dwarf's upbringing and life outlook. Just like human women, some are much more deeply impacted by the concept of being barren than others.

Adultery, while perhaps exceptionally *rare* in Dwarf society, would certainly not be impossible. As Dwarfs are very bound up in the notion of "heritage and honor", I imagine that more than a few Dwarf marriages would be of the sort that were "arranged" in efforts to bolster a clan's honor and respect amongst their peers and any time you have marriage for reasons other than love, you invite the prospect of infidelity. Dwarfs are people too and they have emotional needs.

But also, Dwarf women can be subject to many of the same reasons for taking the Oath as Dwarf men. Acts of cowardice, disregard for one's heritage or place in Dwarf society, a sense of responsibility for the death or grievous misfortune of family members or friends, etc.

It would be interesting to see a female Dwarf Slayer and hear the story she has to tell...

Thanks guys you've given me things to consider.

Bloody Sun Boy said:

I agree very much with this. Although Warhammer clearly has many paralels with elements of real world history (most of which were pretty sexist), the setting does in many places give women a much more important role than they have had in real life. Throughout the game's history there have been women judges, warriors, priests, guild leaders, etc. One obvious reason for this is that the writers don't want to alientate female gamers, but it does mean that you don't have to fall into the 'Hollywood' trap of typecasting female characters. Female characters don't have to be the love interest, and stories that involve them don't have to be about marital issues or children. They can be - but they can be about those stories for male characters too.

There have also been lots of examples of dwarven characters who are poor, drunk, dishonourable, stupid, incompetent, etc. So again, don't feel constrained by the stereotypes.

It can be hard to overcome our prejudices - which can be based on real world issues as well as what we're used to seeing in a game. For example, if you were to ask players to write a character background for an Emperor who might take over when Karl Franz dies and I bet many/most wouldn't think of writing a female character. But there have been female emperors before, so it's not impossible.

I think the lack of female dwarf characters in written supplements (I'm sure there have been a few) is mainly due to this prejudice on the part of writers over the years. I don't mean that they've been deliberatly excluding female dwarfs, but that we're so used to seeing dwarfs with beards, that it really does become difficult to imagine what a female dwarf character/NPC would look like or act like. In most cases - especially when the writer is telling a story about something other than dwarf culture and history - they need to get on with the story and don't have the space (or the authority) to go into great detail about the place of women in dwarf culture - and so it's jus easier to say that the 'forge-master they're buying a hammer from' has a beard and is male, rather than female, and move on.

A female trollslayer character sounds interesting. It would be interesting to know what you finally come up with!