A long commissioning journey exploring an alternate timeline of HellcrossH's OC characters Fleer and Benjamin.

The current "canon" Warhammer story for these two is that Fleer was rescued by Benjamin while she was being transported to become a broodmother. She ended up being nursed back to health, whereafter they both lived out the rest of their days as secret lovers on his farmstead in Bretonnia. It's a simple premise, but one I've always been quite fond of, since it tells the tale of unlikely love reigning in the strangest of circumstances. A story of two souls finding comfort in one another, despite both their worlds telling them that they should be enemies.

This alternate interpretation of them was inspired by a requested image on HellcrossH's Patreon. At the time of writing, HellcrossH makes monthly request polls on their Patreon where are allowed to vote for characters to be illustrated; and around Autumn in 2025, the winner ended up becoming "Clan Mors Fleer". The original artwork featuring this version of Fleer included dialogue which implied that she had taken Benjamin captive, and as soon as I read that, it instantly fired up my imagination. What a brilliant idea that was, I thought, to take their established relationship and twist it into such a dark circumstance.

I absolutely fell in love with the idea of Fleer being a chieftain of Clan Mors, so much so that I ended up personally commissioning HellcrossH with various situations of this concept once every month for over half a year. I had never commissioned an artist before this project was started, but I am so incredibly happy that I took the plunge. Not only did it deeply improve my appreciation of art as a story-telling device, but the story of Clan Mors Fleer ended up becoming a strong inspiration for my penchant for romance.

I know that the story I came up with certainly isn't perfect, and that it likely won't resonate with a lot of people seeing as it dabbles in some pretty grim subject matters. I don't think the romance angle would've really worked, had their roles been swapped, for example. I also know that it doesn't exactly follow the rules established by the setting. A female Skaven rising to a position of Chieftain is already quite reaching, but on top of that, the Great Horned One would've likely exploded her head long before she reached the conclusion of this saga for not acting Skaven enough. It is also fair to say that my personal interpretation of this story may take some rather large leaps of faith in of character motivation, and intentionally omits some rather important questions. (I sure hope Fleer's position in the Clan afforded her some good food for Benjamin!) All of that aside, however, I ultimately believe that I discovered something quite special with this concept. If you loosen the rules a little bit, it turns out that a story about a Skaven Chieftain falling in love with a captured peasant has a surprising amount of nuance to it.

If you're still reading this, all I can say is: thank you for giving me time of day; and do make sure to HellcrossH on any of their given platforms, if you'd be so inclined! They gave me explicit permission to share these commissions publicly in their full resolutions, so if you got anything out of this saga, then my only wish is that you consider ing the one who made it all possible.