A man wakes up in the grimdark galaxy as the Great Other, Lord of Darkness, Soul of Ice, and God of Night and Terror. Unfortunately, he doesn't know anything about ASOIAF or Warhammer.
A Cold God is an ongoing crossover fanfiction started in 2024 by denheim, being a crossover Self-Insert Fic between A Song of Ice and Fire and Warhammer 40,000 set just prior to the Emperor's Great Crusade. It is revolves around "the Icewalker," a version of the Great Other from A Song of Ice and Fire who now retains the mind of an ordinary man from "reality" that is suddenly stuck on a random backwater world in the galaxy of Warhammer 40,000 and is now trying to come to terms with his new lot in life while having absolutely no prior knowledge of either setting.
Can be found in SpaceBattles.com (here
) and FanFiction.Net (here).
A Cold God contains examples of:
- All for Nothing: Malathax's efforts to take out the Icewalker ends up bringing the Long Night he feared so much after Arthas decides to go scorched earth on the Chaos corruption lingering on Westeros, freezing the planet in eternal winter in order to purge it of Chaos influence.
- An Ice Person: The Icewalker is the living embodiment of freezing cold due to being the Great Other, with his Astartes inheriting their gene-father's cryogenic abilities.
- Angst? What Angst?: Repeatedly lampshaded In-Universe, with the Icewalker noting multiple times that they're relieved that whatever process delivered them into this form prevented them from going insane or suffering psychotic breaks from their sheer loneliness and alien perspective of time.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: The Icewalker's "true self" as the Great Other is one for the concepts of entropy and stasis themselves.
- Anti-Magic: In a somewhat similar manner to Blanks, he's immune to the Warp, such as being able to see the Emperor in his true form and being capable of hurting one of the four Chaos Gods by leeching their Warp energies away for the Icewalker's use.
- Ascended Extra: The main protagonist of the fanfic - the Icewalker - takes over the dying body of the Eleventh Primarch, making that character (who was previously Unpersoned in canon) into a major player. The Great Other himself, who main character is self inserted into, is ambiguous if he is indeed real in canon with being possible that that may just be superstition.
- Benevolent Abomination: Due to their formerly human nature, the Icewalker relates and feels protective of humanity.
- Beyond the Impossible:
- The Icewalker manages to achieve two feats unprecedented in 40K so far - managing to wound Tzeentch, and purging his homeworld of Chaos taint.
- True Ice manages to surpass just about every other coolant because its entropic properties allow it to absorb heat indefinitely, making it highly valuable for technological development since it allows existing power sources to run at far higher outputs without the fear of overheating.
- Big Damn Heroes: The Icewalker manages to establish trust between himself and his planet's human inhabitants after saving a tribe from an Ork ambush.
- Creepy Good: The Icewalker is an eldritch and often terrifying individual to those who don't know him. That being said, he's one of the nicer people around in the Crapsack World of 40K.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- The Orks don't even stand a chance against the Icewalker and his Wights the moment he decides to use his power to its fullest extent, being wiped out in short order.
- At some time in the future, Kotharis Mul's detachment obliterate the Tyranids occupying Tholmar with ease.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Despite being a variant of the Great Other and thus representing entropy and stasis in it's cold majesty, the Icewalker is unambiguously heroic.
- Deconstruction Fic: Can be broadly seen as one for the Self-Insert Fic, as the protagonist is placed into an new setting with incredible power and great ability to change said setting in almost inconceivable ways... but they know nothing about their abilities or setting in the first place, meaning that instead of the story being a simple wish fulfillment story where a Mary Sue effortlessly fixes every problem in the setting, the fanfic is more of a moody character piece focused around deep introspection as the Icewalker is forced to start from the ground up in terms of figuring out both how their abilities work and how their entire new world works.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: The Icewalker's earlier goal is to find a new purpose in this world after he finally gets a body again.
- The Dreaded: Arthas quickly establishes himself as a Person of Mass Destruction no one wants to mess with due to his cryokinetic abilities allowing him to freeze entire planets in eternal winter.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Icewalker is still as incomprehensible as their original counterpart is even if he's not a bad person.
- Elective Mute: Before learning how to speak with out killing people, the Icewalker simply decided to reanimate corpses as his mouthpieces and use the sign language taught to him by the Wildling tribe he saved in order to communicate.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Malathax believes that the Icewalker cannot be controlled through any means due to his nature as an embodiment of entropy and stasis even after his fellow Chaos Sorcerers brush off his warnings.
- Godzilla Threshold: The sheer level of Chaos corruption suffusing the Icewalker's home world is so pervasive that he finds no choice but to enact a Long Night in order to purge Chaos' malefic influence before the planet is put through a Fate Worse than Death, something that he finds no joy in doing due to his existing fears towards the apocalyptic nature of his abilities.
- Hive Mind: The Icewalker shares a psychic connection with the Others, anything he reanimates, and the Astartes carrying his gene-seed, which has resulted in the 11th Legion's Space Marines becoming something more than simple Super Soldiers.
- Horrifying the Horror:
- Malathax, a Tzeentch-aligned Chaos Sorcerer, reacts to the Icewalker's presence with dread and horror due to his nature as the living embodiement of entropy and stasis, both of which can potentially destroy the Chaos Gods, if not the entire universe, for good.
- Keireth the Mutator reacts the same way when Malathax informs the daemon about the Icewalker, screeching in horror at his mere presence.
- Humanoid Abomination:
- Not like the Primarchs didn't qualify for this to an extent, but the Icewalker is a profoundly incomprehensible entity at heart despite appearing human at first glance.
- The 11th Legion Astartes are becoming something more than human thanks to the connection they share with the Icewalker's gene-seed, even more so with the Space Marines raised from Arthas' White Walkers.
- I Did What I Had to Do: The Icewalker views his extermination of the Orks as a grim but necessary duty he must carry out if he is to ensure his homeworld's continued safety.
- Invincible Hero: Downplayed with the Icewalker; while they seem to be physically impervious to injury (as anything that physically touches their skin that isn't made of the True Ice the Icewalker himself crafted seems to shatter into pieces thanks to the astronomically low temperatures), the story's drama and tension is less gained from the Icewalker getting into fights and more exploring how they interact with the world around them without destroying things on accident.
- Locked Out of the Loop: A large part of the fanfic's story revolves around the Icewalker exploring the world around them and slowly figuring out how both they and their greater world even work, all while having absolutely no pre-existing knowledge of either setting in the story.
- Necromancer: The Icewalker has the ability to reanimate the dead as Wights due to his nature as an Other.
- Outside-Context Problem: The Icewalker is an enemy Chaos has never seen before considering how shocking it was for one of them to realize he was hurt by the main character.
- Mythology Gag: Members of House Stark and Thane show up alongside the Dawn Empire, complete with Lightbringer dragons. In 'A Song of Ice and Fire'', both House Stark and House Thane play major roles in the events of the books, while the Great Empire of Dawn is mentioned in the series' backstory, with Lightbringer being the supposed blade of Azor Ahai, the hero who was responsible for defeating the Great Other in canon.
- Reasonable Authority Figure:
- The Icewalker proves to be a benevolent ruler to the Wildlings, providing them with security and prosperity through his cryogenic and necromantic powers.
- Queen Lysara proves herself amenable to the Icewalker and the Wildlings under his rule and later invites them into the alliance against the Dawn Empire.
- The Emperor of Mankind demonstrates a reasonable side to him, what with the Emperor maintaining a cordial relationship with the Icewalker.
- Removed Achilles' Heel: After starting the Long Night, the Icewalker learns to get his speech-based powers under control while waiting for the Imperium's arrival.
- Shout-Out: The Icewalker christens himself Arthas upon meeting the Imperium’s envoys.
- The Stoic: Being a living embodiment of deathly cold has left the Icewalker with rather muted emotions.
- Walking Wasteland: Much to the Icewalker's horror, he finds out his very existence is slowly killing the planet he's living on due to him being the embodiment of entropy, and if doesn't want the world he's on to die, he needs to leave the planet as soon as possible. It only ends after he learns to properly contain his immense power.
- Words Can Break My Bones: The Icewalker is capable of causing great destruction just by speaking and is unable to control it until later on in the story.