Nighthaunt – Warscrolls

Each Knight of Shrouds is a traitor-commander who chose to betray their people rather than face the inevitability of death. Breaking their oaths and damning their souls forever, they abandoned their people to Nagash’s justice – only to fall into the Great Necromancer’s clutches themselves. Nagash, for his part, interpreted their betrayal not as cowardice but as wisdom, seeing value in commanders who understood that to resist his will was madness. Seized upon death and remade into cloaked wraiths, the shroud-knights now lead the hosts of the Nighthaunt into battle, compounding the weakness in their soul with every mortal army they send to the grave. Many a Knight of Shrouds takes to the battlefield atop an ethereal steed, favouring the speed and killing power of such a being. They cut a fearsome sight as they order their screeching soldiery forward in a gushing tide of ectoplasm, spurring them on to take their vengeance against the living. When the outcome of the fighting seems determined, the Knight of Shrouds will join the slaughter, their Sword of Stolen Hours stealing the life from their foes while their mount lashes out with hooves and a raking bite.

The scythe-wielding wraith known as Reikenor was once a mortal monarch adept in the ways of Shyishan magic, whose attempts to achieve immortality drew the ire of the Great Necromancer. King Reikenor hoped to banish the curse of death, freeing his people to live forever. Nagash himself punished Reikenor for his hubris, tearing out his soul. Displaying his usual talent for ironic cruelty, Nagash remade the sorcerer-king’s spirit into the dread form of the Grimhailer – the leering, spectral fiend who would become his prime executioner. Reikenor now hunts mortals who seek to defy death’s cold embrace, persecuting those who commit the very crimes for which he was sentenced to oblivion. Soaring through the night atop his cadaverous winged steed Kyllaron, the Grimhailer tracks down these blasphemers. He is the reaper of souls, but his necrotically empowered scythe is not his deadliest weapon: with a pinch of his bony fingers, Reikenor snuffs out a candle atop his steed, instantly extinguishing the animus of one who displeased the Great Necromancer so that their corpse falls lifeless to the ground.

The hunched and shrouded shape of the Cairn Wraith is known and feared in all the realms, the subject of hundreds of scare-tales and morality stories. It is an icon of death, a reaper known and feared by every people in every land, for amongst all the greater spirits of the Nighthaunt processions, the Cairn Wraith is the most widespread. It takes no scholar of the dead to know that the bite of its scythe can cut a man’s soul from his body to leave a cooling corpse behind, reaping the living in great swinging arcs should they gather en masse. Likewise, even the merest street urchin knows this creature’s cruel hand can pass through flesh and bone alike, reaching in to still the heart of its prey. As to their origin, some believe the Cairn Wraiths were once mass murderers or delvers into ancient lore who made pacts to extend their lifespans that went horribly wrong. The truth is that each has its own history of fell deeds and that they seek only to extend their sagas of slaughter. Solitary creatures, they can be bound to the service of a greater undead only through painstaking ritual – though given the bow wave of terror they can inspire in the living, such rites of binding are invariably time well spent.

Should a traveller stray into a graveyard or mausoleum in the dead of night, they may see an unwholesome fire burning in the gloom. This is no will-o’-the-wisp or magical illusion but the lantern of a sorcerous Guardian of Souls. These drifting creatures are nexuses of undead energy, and they form the focal point of many a Nighthaunt host. They are guardians only in that they preserve the lesser gheists from banishment back to Shyish, for Nagash still has need of their hatred in the other realms. As mortals, these so-called guardians each dabbled in the dark arts of undeath, but after realising they trod a perilous downward spiral, they stepped away – a weakness of morality that the Great Necromancer neither forgot nor forgave. Upon their deaths, Nagash remade these former magic users as unliving conduits for the necromantic energy they once spurned. The ornate lanterns they carry invigorate the dead and gheists are drawn to them as a starving peasant is drawn to the window of a feast hall. These lesser undead are given new animus, bound into a host of ravening spirits ready to annihilate the living in the name of the Great Necromancer.

Each Knight of Shrouds is a traitor-commander who chose to betray their people rather than face the inevitability of death. Breaking their oaths and damning their souls forever, they abandoned their people to Nagash’s justice – only to fall into the Great Necromancer’s clutches themselves. Nagash, for his part, interpreted their betrayal not as cowardice but as wisdom, seeing value in commanders who understood that to resist his will was madness. Seized upon death and remade into cloaked wraiths, the shroud-knights now lead the hosts of the Nighthaunt into battle, compounding the weakness in their soul with every mortal army they send to the grave. Traitors they might be, but a Knight of Shrouds still possesses a savvy understanding of military matters and a formidable talent for single combat. With the Sword of Stolen Hours that marks their rank, a Knight of Shrouds cuts down those heroes they once considered their peers and adds their siphoned vitality to their own. These wraith generals are consumed by self-hatred, of course, but when turned outwards, dark emotion can be a powerful motivator – a fact Nagash knows better than any other being in the realms.

The best course of action upon seeing a Krulghast is to run and never look back. These hideous, ethereal horrors are nightmarish even amongst the ranks of the undead, and their malice is distilled to an almost elemental sadism. They carry the torture racks that finally broke them upon their bent backs, for each Cruciator died during horrific bodily punishment and is keen to visit the same fate upon their foes. Yet they will not stop there. The art of the Cruciator is to torment the soul as much as the body, and as scholars of pain and suffering, they are highly adept at it. So skilled in the art of soul-torture are these horrors that those who fall into their clutches are kept between life and death for years, sometimes decades, in a state of permanent agony. While they prefer slowly peeling their prey apart, Cruciators wield various flensing knives and other razor-sharp implements that can swiftly eviscerate anyone foolish enough to challenge them in single combat. These fearsome gheists can even draw arcane power from the suffering of those around them, channelling this trauma into a beacon of death magic that strengthens nearby Nighthaunt, rendering them almost impossible to banish.

The Craven King sits upon a grand throne and wears an imposing crown of dark iron, but these are nothing more than worthless trinkets; Kurdoss Valentian will never know a moment of true glory, for his reign is nothing more than a farce and his gestured commands can be disobeyed without consequence. The twin heralds who hover at their monarch’s side – the souls of two brothers Valentian had murdered in his pursuit of power – do not regale him with tales of his triumphs but instead mock and denigrate him eternally. Endlessly tormented by their words yet unable to lash out because of the sorceries that bind him, Kurdoss seeks an outlet for his immortal anguish in battle. In the press of combat, Valentian swings his enormous mace with skull-crushing force, finding some catharsis in every slain champion or butchered monster. Yet even this is tainted by the knowledge that he is little more than a crude implement to be wielded by his liege, Lady Olynder. He is unable even to speak without her permission, and nothing but grave-dust spills from his mouth when he tries to bellow an order or curse a foe. So powerful is Valentian’s aura of bitter silence that even enemy leaders find their commands dying on their lips. For if the Craven King cannot rule, then no mortal king may do so in his stead.

The Mortarch of Grief is an avatar of misery and tragic fate, the dreadful result of Nagash’s experiments to see how much sorrow he could pour into a single soul. Once, she was a cruel mortal queen of the city-state Dolorum, disguising her murderous ambition behind a veil of false tears. Taken by Nagash and remade as a spectral monarch, she now feels everything she professed to and more. Sheer, entropic sorrow radiates from her like a crushing wave, causing plants to wither and warriors to collapse in paroxysms of horror. Unhurried, Lady Olynder drifts towards them, reaching for her funerary veil with pallid fingers. When she reveals her true face, all who look upon it perish in an instant of paralysing terror. Lady Olynder is accompanied at all times by a retinue of ghostly handmaidens, whose banshee screams combine with the Mortarch’s own malign presence to stop the hearts of the weak-willed. These attendants carry with them a cursed hourglass – a symbol of the fate that awaits all mortals. When shattered, this relic is able to stop the flow of time entirely, freezing Lady Olynder’s victims on the spot in a state of utmost horror.

Bearing the headsman’s axe of their former trade, a Lord Executioner is a macabre killer. Sent to claim the lives of those who have escaped the cold justice of Shyish, the spirits of the wrongfully executed drift around them, crying out their anguish into the night even as they intercept blows meant to harm their slayer. Unusually amongst the ranks of the Nighthaunt, the Lord Executioner was once a deliverer of justice rather than a criminal who defied it. These figures were held in fear in life, for their calling was that of the headsman, their duty to decapitate or hang those who flouted the law. Theirs was a task attended to with diligent dedication, even relish. Some such executioners become enamoured with their craft. Towards the end of their tenures, they did not look too closely at the circumstances surrounding each kill, though they told themselves they were always acting in the name of civil stricture and order. Nagash has stripped away that pretence, and now they take head from neck without such mortal qualms. To look upon them is to know that one’s crimes have been judged by a pitiless arbiter, and all that awaits is the bitter embrace of the grave.

Where once they pledged to record only truth, now the Scriptors Mortis are cursed to extol the glory of the necrotopia. Endlessly they rewrite the scurrilous ‘lies’ of Sigmar’s glory – his liberation of Nagash in the Age of Myth foremost amongst them – and instead chronicle the victories of the Great Necromancer’s armies, penning a tableau of events far more to his liking. Yet Nagash has empowered the Scriptors to do more than observe. They are not only his propagandists but the arbiters of his grim truths, bidden to terminally censor any who would defy their place in his vision. Should they learn the true name of a troublesome mortal, these scribes will note it down, assigning their soul to an underworld judged a fitting punishment. Boisterous warriors expecting to feast alongside their ancestors are left stranded amidst endless tundra, while crusaders against the undead stand forever immobile amongst hellscapes filled with shuffling, stinking cadavers. By carrying out esoteric rites and snuffing out an enchanted candle, the Scriptors can bring such a marked mortal’s existence to a sudden close. Enemies may strive to banish a Scriptor before their sentence is carried out, but given the presence of the other Nighthaunt drawn to and empowered by their flickering wychlight candles, this is easier said than done.

The deeply unsettling creatures known as Spirit Torments are Nagash’s spectral gaolers. Lords of the Great Oubliette, a continent-sized underworld said to be honeycombed with freezing dungeons and pitch-black cells, their most distinctive features are the great shacklegheist chains they drag behind them. Spirit Torments swing these malefic weapons with incredible might, chuckling darkly as the hefty iron padlocks that cap each chain strike their enemies with the force of a cannonball. Yet the true horror of a Spirit Torment lies in their ability to trammel the life force of the slain into those same enchanted padlocks. Escape from these eldritch prisons is all but impossible – it is said they are even able to capture the discorporating energies of Stormcast Eternals before they can return to the heavens. All Spirit Torments get a dark satisfaction from peering into the depths of their arcane prisons and observing the miseries of those trapped within. In consuming their captives’ last vestiges of hope, each Torment becomes a locus of dread, empowering their fellow Nighthaunt even as mortals are assailed by waves of disconsolate terror.

The scream of the banshee can burst eardrums, freeze the blood and age metal to rust. Those who hear the cry at close quarters turn white as alabaster, their spiritual essence ripped from their body by the intensity of that deathly howl. Only the bravest can shrug off its effects before it is too late. Even then, they are marked by it for evermore, hearing the echo of that chilling shriek whenever the nights are darkest. Banshees are created from the souls of those who faced the greatest betrayal in life. They find no release upon their deaths, for at the hand of Nagash, their torment is magnified a hundredfold until they can do nothing but give vent to it in the form of their signature scream. Their faces are distorted in a corpse’s rictus grimace, their hands are wiry-strong and their daggers can pass through steel breastplates to slash at the internal organs of those they catch. The strongest of their number gather baneful choirs of fellow banshees to their side, such as the Burning Scream of Aqshy, whose howls ignite the air itself. With their hellish voices joined as one, their aural onslaught can kill entire ranks of veteran soldiery.

All living beings dread the name of Nagash, the God of Undeath. Cruel and tyrannical, the overlord of Shyish intends to conquer the Mortal Realms and transform them into a lifeless Necrotopia, in which not a speck of dust moves unless it is by his will. Wielding Alakanash, the Staff of Power, the cursed blade Zefet-nebtar, and surrounded by the Nine Books of Nagash, the Great Necromancer commands the full, terrible power of Shyishan magic. With a contemptuous gesture, he tears the souls from the living, their last moments of agonising horror providing the fuel for his next arcane onslaught. When the Great Necromancer accompanies the Nighthaunt processions to war, the terror they bring to mortal lands is beyond comprehension. Gheists sweep forth in boiling tides, stirred to a frenzy of bitter rage by the presence of their master, while Nagash fills the skies with surging, crackling storms of amethyst arcana. Rare indeed are the mortals who would not flee in mindless panic at such a sight, throwing down their weapons and abandoning their vows – but this does not save their lives, for the living can never outrun death.

A chorus of pitiful, gurgling cries heralds the coming of Awlrach the Drowner, a murderous wraith borne across the lands on a funeral barque. This spectral vessel trails the tormented spirits of those Awlrach betrayed and killed as a mortal, sending them to a briny death in the guise of a friendly boatman. Such cruel and needless murder was pleasing to Nagash, who remade Awlrach as a hunched and towering gheist. He ordered his new servant to row forever across the Mortal Realms, slaying mortals and delivering their souls to the underworlds. The Drowner is unusual amongst the Nighthaunt hordes, for he truly relishes his eternal duty. To look upon this faceless murderer is to gaze into a black abyss of evil – an entity that commits atrocity not because he is driven to by compulsion but simply because he enjoys it. Awlrach’s work is never done. Always there is more living prey to drown in deathly energy; always there are more spirits desperate to climb from the corpse-strewn soil onto his barque rather than dwindle to nothingness in the boiling ectoplasm of his wake.

There, glimpsed in the mist – a pale rider, shrouded and hunched. A sword glints in the darkness, the rider’s skeletal steed trailing blue-green flame. A clatter of bone breaks the silence, and it has reappeared behind the lines, riding hard towards some unseen target. In a swirl of dark energy, it is gone. There is a piercing scream as it reappears, charging at the observer and levelling its sword so it bursts right through their chest. As its victim slumps, dying, to the bloodsoaked ground, the Dreadblade Harrow discorporates with an eerie laugh. Once, these phantasmal entities were noble cavaliers in the service of an officer who would later become a Knight of Shrouds. Champions all, they stood by whilst their masters betrayed their office, their people, even life itself. By their silence they were damned, for to do nothing in the face of evil is a sin unto itself. Not a trace of honour can be found amongst them; if they find any gratification, it is in the most heinous and unchivalrous of deeds. Outriders and bodyguards for the monarchy of the dead, they have become the Knights of Regret, riding incorporeal on the winds of Shyish to slay, discorporate and slay again without the slightest remorse.

Hexwraiths are phantasmal cavalrymen, able to pound through the air as easily as they traverse solid ground. They cross misty rivers and lakes of lava with daunting speed to fall upon those who thought themselves safe. Swathed in ragged shrouds alight with the deathly amethyst energy they cut from their foes, they swing enchanted scythes as they pass by. These weapons – wreathed in baleflame – sever the metaphysical cords that binds soul to body, leaving only senseless corpses slumping in the Hexwraiths’ wake. Hexwraiths were gifted horsemen in life. Their only crime was to delight in mounted battle above all else and fail to pay proper homage to the Great Necromancer. Their reward in death is for that love to be turned into an unstoppable weapon; they find themselves trapped atop a grotesque echo of their favoured steed for evermore. The Hexwraith can never rest, for the ride is eternal, and Nagash ensures that every moment in which they fail to please him with offerings of slain mortals is spent in burning agony.

To be trapped in the jaws of death is to find a spasming, animalistic strength. It is a frantic energy born of primal fear, usually accompanied by tight-throated screaming that seeks to deny oblivion with every iota of the sufferer’s soul. The beings known as Bladegheist Revenants are born of that terminal state; indeed, they are trapped in it, unable to leave the panic of those final moments. It is that panic that Nagash has turned into a weapon. These ill-fated spirits’ crime was nothing more than meeting especially tormenting fates. Some of their number died imprisoned inside spike-laden iron maidens; others were sealed into coffins and sank beneath the waves or walled up alive where none could find them. The thrashing desperation that overcame them in those last moments, the animal urge to cling onto life, needled Nagash’s petty temper. Working his fell magics, the Great Necromancer has eternally trapped the Bladegheists in their final moments of frenetic strength, lashing out in vain to save themselves without any conception of the damage they are wreaking. In truth, they swing razored greatswords back and forth, lopping off limbs and heads as they whirl like drunken dervishes in a futile attempt to escape their doom.

Chainghasts are the servants and enforcers of the Great Oubliette. They are wrought from the soul-stuff of those who beseeched the gods to free them from imprisonment, whether it was justified or otherwise, but did not include Nagash in their entreaties. Their punishment is to retain a dim sliver of awareness, just enough to desire their liberty, yet be bound to obey and assist more powerful gheists such as Spirit Torments in the capturing of mortal souls. All Chainghasts are masked in iron and bound in an endless state of misery at their personal incarceration. They are clad in heavy chains of cursed blackiron, these fetters alloyed with the most despairing of emotions. Known to the sepulchre-keepers and deathseers of Shyish as ghastflails, these dread weapons are the means by which the Chainghasts reap more souls for their masters. When whirled with sufficient force, these flails build up a charge of purest misery – an amethyst aura that is then unleashed to fly outwards as spectral bolts of flame. These are no normal fires, for they can burn the target’s very soul. Even those who survive are left catatonic and broken, easy prey for the Nighthaunt to overwhelm.

On they come in the dark of night, a tide of moaning, rattling curse-gheists each with a history as black as a rotten tooth. The greater portion of Nagash’s spectral legions, Chainrasps are the twisted spirits of criminal souls who, towards the ends of their lives, believed that death would at least be a respite. Some lived out their last months locked in stocks or bound by chain and padlock; others had cruel metal masks nailed to their skulls or heavy weights tied to their limbs. Regardless, they all went to their deaths sure of a longed-for change – only to find the ruler of Shyish would alter only their form and not their curse. Remade as gheists, these unfortunate souls were bound eternally to the trappings of their disgrace. Now Chainrasps have only their hatred and envy of the living to call their own, for all hope is denied to them. In times of war, they swarm in great ectoplasmic hosts; they can drag down even the hardiest soldiers in sufficient numbers. With claws and spectral blades, they hack and tear at their prey, finding the briefest flicker of respite in every mortal being they send screaming into the afterlife.

Beneath banners fluttering in an ethereal wind, the Craventhrone Guard rain down killing bolts. In life as in death, these murderous spirits served at the behest of Kurdoss Valentian. Their ranks were filled with those low-born peasants possessing a keen eye and finely tuned lack of morals. Many times did King Kurdoss bid them stalk worthy foes in the night, slaying their targets in hails of crossbow bolts or hacking their heads off to place before his throne. But as Valentian was cursed, so were his favoured killers. The Craventhrone Guard are potent sharpshooters, their projectiles agonisingly drawn from their own essence. Their bolts always seem to find their targets, manifesting in flashes of spectral energy to strike down unsuspecting enemies. This is often to the disadvantage of their master who, denied the chance to rule, takes satisfaction only from combat. Though they loathe him for dragging them into a nightmare, they are forced to obey Valentian in every other respect. Because of this, the Craventhrone Guard take a mocking satisfaction in striking down their targets mere seconds before the Craven King can crush them beneath his heavy mace.

In every nation, there are those kind and empathic givers of life who labour to save the injured, to give alms to the starving and to salve those whose minds are no longer sound. The act of healing the wounded is oft born of nothing more than compassion. Nagash sees it as an unforgivable crime, for in nursing the fallen back to health, the healer robs the Great Necromancer of his due, denying him a soul he considers rightfully his. Upon their deaths, those altruistic souls who fall into Nagash’s clutches find themselves trapped in gheist-forms hideously changed, their healing hands turned into wicked scythes and razored sickles that lacerate and maim the mortal flesh that they once carefully stitched and soothed. Crowds of these Dreadscythe Harridans thrash and scream as they fall upon the living. Outwardly, they are the most unsettling of killers; though they wear roses in their hair and trail once-fine robes behind them, their skull-like faces are locked in a rictus of deathly glee as they slash and stab, welters of blood bursting out from each blow. Inwardly, these creatures are still gentle and kind, but Nagash has ensured they are trapped and forced to witness the rampage of their new incarnation with mounting despair.

No creature embodies the slow, inevitable terror of death better than the Glaivewraith Stalker. Its long blade is drawn towards the beating heart of its intended victim, just as the needle of an arcane compass is drawn to the highest concentration of magic. Once Nagash or one of his commanders selects a Glaivewraith’s quarry, it is inevitable that the entity’s glaive will one day pierce the chest of its prey. These creatures need not move too swiftly, for to them, time is all but immaterial. They were once hunters of men, joyful and magnificent upon their swift steeds, relishing the heart pounding thrill of the chase. The fact that their quarry was often innocent of any crime was of no import to them. When the killers met their final ends, they found themselves given a new hunt to partake in. Now they drift steadily in packs, pursuing their given prey to the heartbeat thump of a drum made from human skin. No glory do they take in this morbid hunt, for their sense of enjoyment or predatory glee is replaced by a cold and steady surety. Once it has its target, a Glaivewraith Stalker will never relent until it slides its blade through its luckless victim’s chest.

Arch-plotters and cautious schemers in life, Grimghast Reapers are cursed in undeath to kill indiscriminately. Whether those foolish enough to stand before a Grimghast Reaper do so out of bravery, stupidity or petrifying fear matters little – they are all hacked apart into chunks of meat. Unlike their Cairn Wraith cousins, Grimghast Reapers do not kill purposefully and deliberately but scythe down those before them with unnatural vigour. As mortals, they sought to eliminate both rivals and friends without getting a drop of blood on their hands. As wraiths, they spend eternity spilling torrents of gore, little more than ethereal weapons doing the Great Necromancer’s butcher-work. Grimghast Reapers are blindfolded or bound so that even the pale witchsight of the undead is denied to them. Their cogent thought is shattered by the peals of the bell rung by the pack’s Extoller, one who spoke against Nagash in life and is condemned to sing his praises in death. Driven into a murderous fugue state by Nagash’s will, the reapers are set loose upon those they once called kin – for the Great Necromancer reasons that if they so enjoy killing their allies, they should be given the chance to do so on a far wider scale.

In life, the Myrmourn Banshees sought arcane power for their own ends, failing to pay proper respect to the Great Necromancer. In death, they are cursed to consume magic with a horrible hunger, yet they can never use it themselves nor ever be sated. Wherever such energy blooms, the Myrmourn Banshees are drawn in like carrion feasters. Each of these spirits is burdened with a fiendish appetite for the arcane; they devour mystical energies as a starving mortal does a platter of fresh meat, but it is never enough for them. Blind to all but the glow of aetheric power, flights of Myrmourn Banshees hurtle through the skies while shrieking their bitter torment. They are all but immune to arrows, bolts and sword blows, but when an enemy commander eventually uses magical energy to deal with them, they laugh in hideous glee and stretch their jaws wide to devour it. Upon doing so, a Myrmourn Banshee’s attacks become more frenzied and violent, fuelled by the tantalising power of the spell they consumed. Such exhilaration burns out quickly, driving them onward to seek out their next feast.

Pyregheists are malevolent spectres obsessed with committing mortal prey to the flames. They represent Nagash’s spite at its most cruel and twisted, for each of these wraiths was in life an embalmer or crematorium-priest who sought to preserve the flesh or souls of mortals against the Great Necromancer’s judgement. There can be no greater crime in Nagash’s eyes, and thus he transformed these holy men into pyromaniac nightmares, forcing them to burn eternally alongside graverobbers and corpse-stealers while kindling soul-devouring infernos of balefire to engulf the lands of mortals. Through inflicting such suffering, they can, for the briefest of moments, forget the horror of their own existence. The leader of a Pyregheist coterie is known as a Deacon of Flames, a fallen priest clad in a mockery of the panoply they wore in life, now dedicated to delivering as many souls to the unholy flames as possible. These dread figures are protected by the flame-wreathed weapons of the cloaked horrors known as Balefire Guard, while Flamewraiths and Torchwraiths surge forth to ignite enemies and the environment alike, slashing wildly with daggers and swinging scorching brands to overwhelm their burning, screaming prey.

Since even before the Necroquake’s fell curse cascaded across the cosmos, hosts of unquiet spirits have haunted the lands. They have but wisps of sentience, a spectral mass grave rising mist-like from the ground. They gather thick around locations or individuals redolent with Shyishan energy much as starvelings gather at a feast, for they feed on the stuff of death and will do anything to propagate it. It should come as no surprise that Spirit Hosts are commonly seen drifting alongside the Nighthaunt processions, for wherever the ethereal hosts roam, death and suffering is certain to follow. These are the spirits of the damned, stripped of form and individuality to roil as a mass of ethereal energy. Despite their crude nature, however, only the foolish would dismiss the threat of Spirit Hosts. These are dangerous entities indeed. Amidst their swooping forms are fanged jaws, grasping talons and rusting iron blades that can pass through physical armour to strike at the very core of their enemy’s being.

Condemned by Nagash to wield the dread sword Terminus, the Wielder of the Blade seeks out those mortals that the Great Necromancer has determined to be guilty. No matter their crime, the sentence is always the same – a swift and brutal death. These pitiless gheists accompany the bearer of the sentient blade Terminus on their quest to punish those who have wronged Nagash. There are always three: one to sharpen the sword’s edge, one to bear the headsman’s block and a scriptor to sentence the condemned.

The Briar Queen was once incarcerated in the vaults of the Shyishan city of Shadespire, locked away for crimes too horrendous to mention. Since the coming of the Necroquake, she has been set loose upon the living, her remit to bring madness and terror to all who would evade Nagash’s punishments. The forsaken entities that trail in the Briar Queen’s wake have become infamous in Shadespire and beyond. Amongst them are the eldritch jailer known as Varclav the Cruel, the noose-throttled Ever-hanged and a ragtag group of evil-hearted Chainrasps.

Thundering through the darkening gloom, a Black Coach goes where its wraithlike steersman wills it, the team of undead horses at the fore galloping at uncanny speed but never tiring. The coach can cross chasms and battle lines alike, for it is held aloft as often by the spirit energy surrounding it as it is by metal-bound wheels. At will, its driver can shift the carriage’s form from the ectoplasmic to the physical; when the coach slams into the enemy, it hurls them broken to the ground, the sheer impact of its hurtling mass enough to kill even before the spirit host bound to it claws and stabs at the survivors. A Black Coach is a hearse of sorts, yet it is far more than a conveyance for the cursed entity entombed within. The coach is a lodestone for unnatural magic, and the coffin inside is bathed in Shyishan energy wherever it roams. The more people it kills, the more these ending magics intensify. The energies that thrum through the coach’s chassis have a powerful debilitating effect on the living and are focused like light through a prism until the sarcophagus inside is awash with baleful magic. The artefacts precious to the creature within are borne alongside it by spectral relic bearers, ghostly forms awaiting that fateful night when their master rises to claim them once more.

The hourglass is a symbol of utmost importance to the people of Shyish, for it symbolises the impermanence of mortality and the ultimate fate that awaits all living beings. It should be no surprise that the Nighthaunt take spiteful satisfaction in turning this icon from a sombre reminder into an image of looming dread. The Mortalis Terminexus is a gigantic hourglass of fate that is conjured into being ahead of a Nighthaunt procession, announcing their coming and distorting the passage of time. The shimmering form of a Mortalis Terminexus can hasten death or restore energy to the Nighthaunt legions, depending upon which side it is turned. Its mere presence can quicken the pace of Death’s armies, allowing this conjuration to absorb slivers of energy from those recently deceased left in the Nighthaunt’s wake. Conversely, the Terminexus can invert with a grinding creak at the whim of its spectral caster, reversing the flow of time and undoing any damage nearby gheists may have sustained.

The soul-hungering Shyish Reaper is the ultimate manifestation of finality and death. This is no lingering premonition of far-off doom but a screaming scytheblade that arcs towards its victims with terrifying speed, hewing through their physical form and spirit alike. Summoned into being by Nighthaunt spellcasters to harvest their living prey in the swiftest and most brutal manner, Shyish Reapers possess a malignant sentience and a hunger for soul-matter that sees them swing straight for the greatest concentrations of mortalkind. When they strike home, the results are horrendous to behold. Armour counts for naught in the face of such a weapon, which is shaped from the purest energies of death. Moreover, a Shyish Reaper can strike from any angle at any time, sometimes emerging beneath a targeted formation of warriors to slice upwards through them. As the bisected bodies of its victims collapse, their souls are torn loose and sent screaming into the underworlds, there to be judged and punished at the Great Necromancer’s leisure.

Countless souls are harvested by the Nighthaunt processions every day, feeding the Great Necromancer’s bottomless appetite for raw spirit-matter with which to fuel his conquests. Often, the gheists kill so freely and often that the air is filled with streaming tides of souls, none of which must be allowed to escape the draw of the underworlds. Thus, Nighthaunt hex-mages have mastered the conjuring of an arcane chest known as a Vault of Souls – a repository into which those disembodied spirits are drawn and trapped, so that they might be remade into the cursed forms of Nighthaunt. Sometimes, however, the sheer quantity of captured spirits is too vast even for those incantations to hold. Glutting itself too greedily, the Vault of Souls will begin to tremble and crack, the animate matter within attempting to break free in desperation. If this should occur, the results are devastating, as a lethal implosion of soul energy bursts from the Vault, blasting the life from any mortals nearby. Nighthaunt spellcasters have even learnt to trigger this detonation intentionally, to the horror of their enemies.

Of all of Behemat’s spawn, Gatebreakers are the most sinister, filled with the need to destroy. More specifically, these gargants harbour considerable ill will towards the metropolises raised by Sigmar’s folk. The sight of a glorious city, with its proud spires and resolute walls, awakens a bitter fury within these creatures. With a bellow of hate, a Gatebreaker advances on an enemy settlement without fear, shrugging off panicked arrows and cannon fire with little more than a malicious chuckle. Across the Prime Innerlands of Shyish, the name Big Drogg Fort-kicka is dreaded. Admittedly, this is as much for the Gatebreaker’s grievous halitosis – a side effect of eating decomposing corpses – as his skill at destroying cities. Drogg is known to many undead tyrants, who willingly offer him a portion of their servants to consume in return for his aid. Yet Drogg’s true goal has always been to get close enough to Nagash to clobber him in a show of strength. The Great Necromancer’s shattering at the hands of the Lumineth has set this plan back. Taking this as a personal insult, Drogg has vowed revenge. He eagerly hires his services out to any undead wishing to fight the aelves – and he has no shortage of clients.

As the Queen of Nulahmia and first of the vampires, Neferata can call on many servants to do her sinister work. Yet there are times when the Mortarch must personally attend to a battle in order to ensure some delicate manipulation reaches its desired outcome. She is accompanied by skeletal warriors bearing the livery of her city, a manifest display of Nulahmian might

Mannfred von Carstein is an often unlooked-for and unwelcome presence amongst his fellow undead, for his self-serving nature is infamous. Yet the Mortarch of Night can tip the balance of an engagement, both through personal might and by leading bloodthirsty Fell Bats and the wights of his own Castle Sternieste in devious ambushes. The only question is what ulterior motive Mannfred serves by offering aid...

Many undead rue the coming of the mad Summerking and his jubilant, devoted throngs. Yet those who dismiss Ushoran as merely a beast often find themselves swept up into his delusion – and their lands falling into the Mortarch’s growing domain.

Crypt-keepers dread the coming of Veremord. This student of necromancy is a master at breaking wards set around tombs and corpse-pits, pilfering the bodies within for his growing horde. Key to Veremord’s success is the arcane smoke that billows from his Corpse Cart, vapours that eat through magical defences.

The noble Sir Jerrion and his followers believe themselves to be following commandments from the Summerking, travelling the realms and rallying the peasantry against evil. In truth, the Marrowscroll Herald spreads the curse of his liege’s madness, and does so with fanatical abandon.