Soulblight Gravelords – Warscrolls

The folklore that surrounds Belladamma Volga, ancient matriarch of the Vyrkos, could fill a library. Her brood claim that it was she who inherited their unique curse from Hrunspuul – the undead godbeast revered by all Vyrkos. Some believe that Volga impressed the Hound of the Cairns with her feral resolve, others that she stole his immortality through trickery, and others still that she somehow brought the creature to heel and thereby earned the favour of Nagash. Whatever the truth – and Volga herself delights in keeping that a mystery – she is a being of tremendous power, wise in the ways of magic and might. When the moons wax fat, Volga rides at the head of a Dire Wolf pack hundreds strong. Her lycanthropic magic sees mortals bulge and stoop, their flesh turning to fur and cries of terror degenerating into bloodthirsty howls. Her brood knows better than to seek her out; if the Wolf Mother desires their company, she will find them. She has fought alongside many Vyrkos vampires to overwhelm Sigmarite outposts, though she lingers only for the victory feast. Volga’s secrets are hers to keep, and woe betide any who meddle in her business.

Wight Kings were once lords of humanity, driven by ambitions of endless conquest yet constrained by the meagre span of their mortal lives. Before they perished, each sought the counsel of Necromancers or vampires to ensure their reign of terror would endure beyond the span of their mortal life. Now they are deathless tyrants, ruling over barrow-empires populated entirely by skeletal thralls. The majority of Wight Kings hail from ancient dynasties with proud legacies of martial skill and horsemanship. In undeath, they maintain those traditions, and it is common to see one of these tyrants going into battle mounted on a fleshless steed. Clad in heavy barding and chain, these skeletal mounts are well protected against spear thrusts and arrows, and they know nothing of fatigue or fear. They carry their master into the thick of the fighting, smashing a gaping hole in the enemy’s formation while the Wight King strikes out with their lance to impale the most imposing foes. In the presence of such martial grandeur, the Wight King’s minions fight with particular vigour, the bonds of service that tie them to their monarch unbreakable even after centuries of unlife.

Outcast. Rebel. Monster. Traitor. All of these epithets and more have been levelled against the vampire Cado Ezechiar, the Hollow King. He is a creature most unlike his Soulblight kin, a wandering vagabond seeking both redemption and a chance for vengeance. Once, Ezechiar was a noble Shyishan monarch, beloved by his people. Yet his kingdom collapsed like so many others during the Age of Chaos, destroyed from within by the Arcanite cult of the Burning Hand and its mysterious leader, the Flame of Countless Light. Ezechiar was struck down in that uprising and lay near death. There he was found by the Mortarch Neferata and offered a choice: oblivion or unlife and the chance for revenge. Cado Ezechiar chose the latter. Yet he found himself repulsed by the casual cruelty of Neferata and her ilk towards mortalkind. Fleeing her court, he has taken up the life of a roving hunter, feeding only upon the champions of Chaos whom he despises so much. Clad in the tattered heirloom armour of his fallen kingdom and wielding an ancient greatsword, Ezechiar carves through his foes with lightning-swift skill. Yet his greatest treasures are the iron rings he wears; these contain the bound souls of his former mentors, who emerge in ethereal form to guide him on his never-ending quest for atonement.

The gaunt and towering creature known as Gorslav once tended the crypts and charnel pits of the Ulfenkarn corpse-gardens, feeding these cursed places with fresh souls by the hundred in order to satiate their malevolent sentience. Silently, the Gravekeeper toiled away in his unhallowed domain, ignoring the screaming terror of his victims as he buried them alive beneath mounds of cold grave-soil. Few know the true origin of this macabre entity. Some say that he was once a mortal – a giant of a man who spent so many long years walking the death-permeated grounds of Ulfenkarn that he himself became a monster. Others swear that Gorslav is not one being but that there are in fact dozens of Gravekeepers, all part of some gruesome order of necrotheurges. Certainly, he possesses some necromantic power, as he calls upon the winds of death to bring shambling hordes of Deadwalkers to unlife or to stitch up gaping wounds in his rotten, pockmarked flesh. Whatever he once was, Gorslav now seems to possess no emotions or passions; he exists only to serve Radukar and his Vyrkos kin. This he does with relentless brutality, wielding his gravekeeper’s spade with unnatural strength to hack his victims apart.

An outcast amongst a dynasty renowned for the strength of its blood ties, Ivya Volga has spent centuries roaming across the deadliest wilds of Shyish and beyond, hacking down its most ferocious denizens with her woodcutter’s axe and drinking from their opened veins. Rebellious and unpredictable, Ivya shows little reverence for the wolf – the traditional symbol of the Vyrkos – and instead surrounds herself with a needle-fanged swarm of bats. These creatures will sacrifice themselves without hesitation to protect their mistress, descending in a shrieking flock and sinking their teeth into eyes, throats and soft flesh. Despite her rejection of Vyrkos traditions, Ivya has grand plans to expand the reach of her dynasty and ultimately aims to found a haven of death from which they can launch invasions across the realms. Though still scorned by many of her peers, it may well be Ivya who leads her kin to a new promised land, and though she has little interest in fighting mere mortals, she will not hesitate to cleave her way through the defenders of a Sigmarite outpost so that the undead might claim the nexus point beneath.

Even in life, the aristocratic Kritza was often compared to Ulfenkarn’s many rodents – and not solely for his pinched features. He spent exorbitant amounts on rich Nulahmian fragrances, and no luxury was sweeter than that acquired by wheedling into another’s confidence before betraying them for personal gain. When the Wolf took power, Kritza thought to play the double agent, currying favour with Radukar while acquiring information with which to ingratiate himself to his would-be liberators. Radukar was not fooled and savaged Kritza to the brink of oblivion. Kritza fled to the sewers, supping the brackish blood of rodents in order to survive. He soon discovered to his horror that the Vyrkos curse had been imparted unto him in distinctly verminous fashion. The Rat Prince was born. For years, Kritza dwelt in Ulfenkarn’s sewers, emerging only when he was sure that Radukar would not finish him off. Hiding his sewer stench behind a thick cloud of equally nauseating perfume, Kritza preys upon mortals without restraint. His victims are overrun by rats or sliced to ribbons by the Rat Prince’s vicious gnawblade, and whenever Kritza feels outmatched, he will simply transform into a swarm of vermin and slip away through cracks in the walls.

Even amongst vampire-kin, Lady Annika’s thirst for blood was terrifying to behold. In life, the former socialite and mistress of ceremonies was infamous for her many vices, and in undeath, she found this taste for excess exacerbated a hundredfold. Granted the blood kiss by Radukar the Wolf, Lady Annika became part of the Vyrkos lord’s trusted court, tasked with escalating the consumption of the city’s mortal chattel and organising the infamous red feasts that took place within the city’s Ebon Citadel. Such is her ravenous nature that many Vyrkos courtiers believed that she ingested philtres of chamonite – the energising liquid realmstone heightening her reactions and the speed at which she could feed. Annika certainly fights as though suffused by some arcane swiftness, for she is faster and more agile than any of her Vyrkos blood-kin. She wields the Blade Proboscian, slicing open the veins of her prey and letting the enchanted weapon drain their blood dry in moments. Yet for every foe exsanguinated in this manner, Annika gains only fleeting succour. Whether caused by her consumption of exotic substances or simply an unfortunate side-effect of the Soulblight Curse, her unique, haemovoric mania can never be satisfied.

At first glance, one might number a Necromancer amongst the dead. In truth, these shrivelled mages occupy a more liminal state. Though their faces are sallow and their limbs wizened, a vestige of life still glints in their eyes – though it is all but smothered by morbid arcana. Even as they are corrupted by these energies, a Necromancer wields them to bolster the legions of Nagash. With a muttered invocation, they bring slain warriors lurching to their feet, unliving bodies reknitted with strands of amethyst sorcery. With a wave of their gnarled staff, a Necromancer can place an enervating curse on a foe, sapping them of vitality with the hunger of the Shyish Nadir. In the presence of these scholars of undeath, a throng of skeletons and zombies attack with unnatural, jerking speed, catching completely off guard those who assume the rank-and-file of the risen dead to be sluggish, clumsy things. To destroy a Necromancer can stymie an undead advance, but they are often surrounded by resurrected minions ready to catch blades and musket balls on their behalf. To a Necromancer, survival is everything; only by enduring will they be granted the morsels of mystic lore promised to them by their vampiric overlords – fuel for their deranged ambitions to conquer death itself.

Broad-shouldered and swollen with the animalistic powers of the Vyrkos bloodline, Radukar the Wolf overwhelms his prey with sheer ferocity, swinging a blade seized from the tomb of the vampiric emperor Morkan. Not for him the role of martial strategist, positioned behind a mass of rotting footsoldiers: Radukar delights in the rush and crunch of battle, where he fights surrounded by a retinue of undead ogors known as the Kosargi. Eschewing foolish notions of nobility, the Wolf rips and tears at the enemy in a wild frenzy, laughing with the pure thrill of slaughter. Radukar’s name was synonymous with butchery and pillage even before he received the blood kiss and was transformed into a vampire. In death, his reputation has only grown more terrible. Ferocious, relentless and possessed of a predator’s cruel cunning, Radukar has carved a bloody path across Shyish, eventually conquering a proud stronghold of mortals and transforming it into a place of nightmarish suffering – the cursed city of Ulfenkarn. For years, this would be his lair and feeding ground, until a band of unlikely mortal heroes cast him down. Yet there are rumours that Radukar lingers there still, half-mad and shifting between his humanoid form and that of a gigantic, frenzied beast.

Sekhar is one of the most lethally skilled agents of the Mortarch Neferata and the most prominent member of the elite order known as the Fangs of Nulahmia. She is a master manipulator and spy whose honeyed whispers have seen more kingdoms crumble to dust than she can recall. Sekhar travels the realms at the behest of her mistress, advancing the cause of the Nulahmian elite and ensuring – through subterfuge, trickery or outright slaughter – that Neferata’s enemies are bled white. Her powers of hypnosis are renowned even amongst the rarified ranks of Neferata’s chosen, and she is accompanied by the dreadful Ouboroth the Time-Swallower, the ravenous husk of a fallen serpentine death-god. Should blood need to be spilled, Sekhar is only too glad to do so. Her Nulahmian warglaive slices back and forth so fast that her enemies do not notice their doom until their innards spill to the ground, while the vampire’s arcane suggestions cause nearby foes to stumble in confusion, staggered by subconscious doubt. Should a foe prove particularly defiant, Sekhar will unleash the fury of Ouboroth, the death-serpent’s maw yawning wide to devour the souls and flesh of its screaming victims.

A former member of the scholarly brotherhood of sepulchrists known as the Pact Mortalis, Torgillius turned his back on that august company in order to join the Wolf’s court in the cursed city of Ulfenkarn – bringing with him the Pact’s research into necrotically charged soul repositories. Radukar soon saw the value in the old man’s work and granted him the tools and resources to continue his studies in perpetuity. Flushed with the unnatural power of the City on the Edge of Death, Torgillius became one of the Wolf’s most trusted lieutenants, developing grave-sand repositories that allowed the lords of Ulfenkarn to return from destruction. Torgillius is infamous for his ability to control undead beasts and vermin. This allows him to spy upon his enemies and anyone foolish enough to dare trespass into Radukar’s domain. Though he prefers to dispatch lesser beings to carry out his will, when necessity demands it, the Chamberlain will unleash the full, withering might of his magic. Enemies are dispatched by bolts of enervating darkness or overcome by swarms of reanimated vermin, their flesh and souls fodder for the Chamberlain’s experiments.

The eldest and most powerful of vampires are granted fearsome powers by the Soulblight Curse: unnatural speed, resilience and strength enough to dismember foes with their bare hands. These Vampire Lords are beings of towering ego, each convinced of their innate right to dominate the living. They command vast hordes of undead chattel, sending them forth to ravage and absorb new lands into their twilight domain. Peerless duellists and cunning strategists all, they affect an aura of nobility even as their innermost impulses urge them to glut themselves on warm, fresh blood. Vampire Lords live for the thrill of combat, moving with a quicksilver grace that allows them to dodge arrows in flight or lazily avoid half a dozen spear thrusts. They sate their hunger even amidst the thick of battle, slicing throats with ornate rapiers or smashing open ribcages with flanged maces to devour the crimson rain that sprays forth. Each mouthful seems to imbue the vampire with even greater vitality, causing wounds in their waxy flesh to reseal and further bolstering their already formidable powers of dark sorcery.

During the purge of the Cursed City of Ulfenkarn, the traitorous Watch Captain Oleksandr Halgrim was swift to swear himself and his warriors to the cause of its vampire conquerors, rounding up many of the noble scions of the city in the Mournhold dungeons. In return, the amoral soldier sought the ‘gift’ of the Soulblight Curse, for he had long admired the strength and power of the vampire-kin. Unfortunately for Halgrim, several of his fellow officers were outraged by his betrayal of their ancient oaths to protect the city. They bound Halgrim hand and foot and hurled him into a sewer pit to be eaten alive by swarming corpse rats. Though all that remained of Halgrim was a picked-clean skeleton, Radukar had his Necromancers seek out the Watch Captain and raise him as a Deathrattle officer to lead his Ulfenwatch. Halgrim returned to his post and slew with his keen halberd those who had deposed him, though he found no peace in the act. Reduced to little more than a rotting automaton, Halgrim no longer feels anything at all, aside from a powerful imperative to hack Radukar’s enemies apart with his rusty and pockmarked sabre.

Wight Kings were once lords of humanity, driven by ambitions of endless conquest yet constrained by the meagre span of their mortal lives. Before they perished, each sought the counsel of Necromancers or vampires to ensure their reign of terror would endure beyond the span of their mortal life. Now they are deathless tyrants, ruling over barrow-empires populated entirely by skeletal thralls. A Wight King’s resolve and spiritual preservation grants them greater individualism than most undead, but with the warmth of life snuffed out, all that remains is the urge to rule. Every ounce of their imperious will is now given to murderous conquest. In battle, this intensity animates their legions with a ferocious, if passionless, drive. Fighting at the head of unliving retinues or lances of skeletal knights, a Wight King draws upon tactical expertise honed over centuries to overwhelm the foe before leveraging their own warrior prowess at a critical moment. So potent is a Wight King’s self-possession that only the mightiest vampires can magically bind their will to them. Others who challenge the Wight King’s supremacy are soon hacked to pieces by the monarch’s cursed blade, a weapon capable of snuffing out a soul with a single scratch.

Lauka Vai is known as the Mother of Nightmares, and those who witness her terrifying, centauroid form would attest to the accuracy of that title. Yet Vai is no mere monster. She is the matriarch of the maligned and beast-like vampires of the Avengorii dynasty, a leader trying to guide her flock even as her curse threatens to reduce her to a mindless beast. It is a testament to her formidable willpower that she has retained a grip upon her sanity, despite the changes wrought upon her flesh by exposure to raw and unchecked magic. Once, Lauka Vai was a member of the Askurga Renkai, an order of Ghurish vampires famed for feeding solely upon beast blood in an attempt to quell the monster lurking within. Vai retains elements of their honour code to this day, seeing mere mortals such as humans or duardin as unworthy prey and preferring instead to hunt the mightiest monsters of the realms, impaling them upon the tip of her rapier. Yet Vai holds no great love for the living, and those who offend her are soon torn apart piecemeal for their insolence, their bloody corpses tossed to her bestial ‘children’ to feed upon.

A cunning military mastermind and a skilled wielder of the darkest magic, Mannfred von Carstein is one of the most feared and reviled vampires in existence. He holds the rank of Mortarch of Night and rules over an entire underworld – the gloomy province of Carstinia. Yet even this is not enough to satisfy his lust for power. Von Carstein’s ego knows no limits, and every day he spends in thrall to Nagash is another splinter lodged in his black heart. In his wake lie the corpses of untold thousands, slaughtered because they stood in the path of his vaulting ambition. The Mortarch of Night wields his undead hordes like a psychological bludgeon against his foes, taking great delight in raising the recently slain and setting them against their former comrades. While these charnel legions mire the enemy in blood and corpse-flesh, Von Carstein himself leads ruthless charges into their flanks, riding atop the dread abyssal Ashigaroth and carving a bloody path through the melee with lightning slashes of Gheistvor, the Sword of Unholy Power. Any foes able to fend off this deadly assault are subjected to a withering storm of amethyst sorcery, their bodies turned to ash and their souls sent screaming into Nagash’s grasp.

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. Suspicious of the cunning and rebellious nature of vampirekind, Nagash will on occasion oversee things personally to ensure that his decrees are fulfilled. Even the Mortarchs bend the knee at such decisive moments, knowing that to challenge the Lord of Undeath is to invite permanent annihilation – or a punishment far worse. As Nagash summons necrotic soul-storms and whirlwinds of death to lay low the living, his Soulblight armies sweep forth to strike the final blow, desperate to please their pitiless master.

Queen Neferata is a dark and regal monarch who rules over the grandiose kingdom of Nulahmia. Ancient beyond mortal comprehension, Neferata was the first mortal to succumb to the Soulblight Curse. All other vampires ultimately descend from her tainted bloodline – a fact that she is swift to remind her rivals of. Though many tales are spun of her stupefying presence and the opulence of her palatial court, Neferata’s greatest asset is her intellect. Her webs of intrigue span the realms, and she is never more content than when she is ensnaring another witless pawn – mortal or undead – in her schemes. Of course, not all wars can be won with a honeyed whisper or a grand deception. There are times when the Mortarch of Blood must take a more direct approach. On such occasions, she rides the dread abyssal Nagadron, accompanied by pristine hosts of vampiric warriors eager to earn their queen’s favour. Concealing her army’s movements behind a shroud of penumbral gloom, Neferata effortlessly outmanoeuvres her enemies, delighting in their rising panic. Should she deem it worth her while, she will enter the fray herself, eviscerating foes with the infernal dagger Akmet-har and the bladed staff Aken-seth.

Wielding the thrice-cursed Bloodlance and sat astride his fearsome draconic mount Shordemaire, the legendary Prince Vhordrai is the epitome of vampiric martial might. He has honed his fighting skills to perfection during centuries of unlife, and countless warriors – both living and dead – have fallen to the one they call the Saint of Slaughter. Yet Vhordrai is prisoner as much as conqueror. Once before, the vampire lord sought to destroy Nagash and usurp his power. For his hubris, he was confined forever to the eldritch fortress known as the Crimson Keep and cursed to suffer an excruciating demise were he to leave its confines for more than a night. Half-mad after countless years of torture at the hands of a vengeful Nagash, Vhordrai takes out his fury on the living. The Crimson Keep follows a deranged passage across the realms, manifesting in the ruins of shattered citadels and age-old strongholds. Wherever it appears, bloodshed and horror soon follow. Vhordrai emerges upon Shordemaire, accompanied by retinues of loyal Kastelai warrior-vampires eager for gory battle. For one night, the captive Prince indulges his appetite for monstrous cruelty, driving his lance through hearts and lungs and leaving behind a battlefield draped with blood-drained corpses.

The infamous vampire warlord Radukar the Wolf sought to exterminate the city of Ulfenkarn and its populace, sacrificing countless lives in order to gain the favour of Nagash and swell his own power beyond that of any other vampire in existence. But before his plans could come to fruition, he was defeated by a band of unlikely heroes and grievously wounded. The Wolf was not so easily undone, however. As he fled through the streets of Ulfenkarn, his seemingly last moments condensed into a single, terrible imperative to endure, and the full power of his curse manifested. Radukar transformed into a towering berserker-beast, the injuries that threatened to end him eclipsed by his new, monstrous physique. This altered Radukar is a hulking creature with dagger-length claws, capable of moving with a swiftness that seems impossible for his size. Though abominable in aspect, the transformed tyrant retains much of his vampiric cunning. Calling upon the power of his cursed blood, he weaves necromantic energy around himself like invisible armour, further enhancing his already formidable resilience. His ferocious howls ring through the night as he slashes his doomed prey to ribbons and gorges himself upon their gushing blood.

The eldest and most powerful of vampires are granted fearsome powers by the Soulblight Curse: unnatural speed, resilience and strength enough to dismember foes with their bare hands. These Vampire Lords are beings of towering ego, each convinced of their innate right to dominate the living. They command vast hordes of undead chattel, sending them forth to ravage and absorb new lands into their twilight domain. Peerless duellists and cunning strategists all, they affect an aura of nobility even as their innermost impulses urge them to glut themselves on warm, fresh blood. Many vampires revere the dragon as a symbol of power, believing that it reflects their own status as an alpha predator. The proudest undead lords take to battle astride a reanimated drake, a cadaverous echo of draconic grandeur that can lay waste to an entire army with its raking claws and rotting, corrosive breath. Those who do not flee before the creature’s dreadful majesty are soon ripped to pieces and devoured. As the undead beast runs rampant, its rider adds their own deadly strikes to the onslaught with a necrotic lance or relic sword, while particularly troublesome foes are exsanguinated by blasts of amethyst magic.

Terror and revulsion overwhelm those who look upon the twisted form of a Vengorian Lord, paralysing them long enough for the monstrous vampire to seize them and pull them apart piece by piece in a gory frenzy. These hideous beings are the result of the strange effects that exposure to primal magic has upon the Soulblight Curse. Their bodies are twisted into bizarre amalgamations of bat, drake and undead fiend, a transformation that warps the vampire’s sanity as completely as it does their flesh. Deranged and unpredictable, Vengorian Lords cling to a fantasy of their own lost nobility even as they feast like starving beasts on the corpses of their latest victims. Deformed they might be, Vengorian Lords still possess the awesome power of a vampire, their strength magnified along with their size. Moreover, they are cloaked in a strange veil that sees enchanted weapons and hallowed relics alike crumble and patinate in their presence, as if nothing beautiful or ornate can stand to look upon them. Such is the aura of self-loathing and fury that surrounds a Vengorian Lord that lesser undead in their presence are transformed into rabid fiends, channelling a portion of the vampire’s curse.

As with mortals, vampires have their cliques and cults. Amongst the most infamous are the Sanguinarchs. For these discerning vampires, blood is not something to be guzzled like a crass beast; it is a princely substance to be treated as a master vintner would their wine. Sanguinarchs often serve their dynasties as agents within mortal cities. Immortalised in bardic songs as Bloodmothers, Red Spiders or Pale Doyennes, they adopt the persona of the courtly matchmaker to manipulate liaisons between nobles and produce the most sumptuous blends of blood within their progeny – all for the vampires to feast on, in due time. Some Sanguinarchs, however, maintain that only the pulse-pounding emotions of the battlefield can properly spice their creations. Riding atop stately Bloodseeker Palanquins carried by screeching gheists, these vampires hunt down champions whose blood they judge to be of particularly high quality before extracting it using gruesome exsanguinating sorceries. They excel in distilling the aetheric resonations of violent death into their concoctions of hero’s gore, and though even other vampires may consider the Sanguinarch’s obsession with crafting the perfect vintage indulgent, they cannot deny the power that infuses them as they sup upon the macabre artiste’s work.

For the most regal vampires, trudging across the battlefield like some lowly Deadwalker would simply never do. Instead, they lounge upon imposing conveyances of fused sinew and cartilage, held aloft by the tormented souls of those who fell to their beguiling charms. Vampires are well practised in concealing their abominable nature behind magical glamours, but those who ride upon a Coven Throne are especially transfixing; with but a glance, they can rob a proud foe of their will and see them pledge undying loyalty to their new ruler. Those who amuse the vampire may be granted the blood kiss, but most are simply feasted upon and discarded, their souls joining the grim procession beneath the Coven Throne. Vampires who lounge upon a Coven Throne are often accompanied by promising members of their brood, chosen for their powers of foresight through bloodscrying. These undead acolytes collect fresh gore in ritual fonts; then, using crimson rites born in the dread city of Nulahmia, they tap into the power in the lifeblood to penetrate the skeins of fate. Forearmed with knowledge of the future, the vampire commands their minions with prescient ability, driving spikes of hopelessness deeper into the foe with each thwarted stratagem or canny outflank.

When a truly formidable Necromancer is destroyed, their acolytes will reverently collect their remains – still saturated with morbid power – and inter them within rune-marked caskets and reliquaries. These are then mounted atop the arcane constructs known as Mortis Engines, each guided into battle by a Corpsemaster learned in the ways of the amethyst arts. Carried upon a swirling hurricane of bound gheists that once served the great liche, a Mortis Engine acts as both a magnet of and a conductor for necromantic energies. The state of constant torment and horror in which the Engine’s spirits are trapped causes them to wail and screech constantly, a sound so terrible that mortals who hear it often perish from sheer terror. As a Mortis Engine floats across the field, amethyst motes of magic are drawn to them as a ghastly miasma, ripe to be exploited by practitioners of Nagash’s arts. When threatened by advancing enemies, the Corpsemaster custodian can unleash this magic in a surge of unholy power that sweeps over regiments and sees their warriors simply crumble to dust. Those who survive face a fate just as brutal as the Mortis Engine crashes into them, its spectral guardians lashing out with blades and raking talons to deadly effect.

It is not only humanoid mortals that can be reanimated through necromancy. Dire Wolves are the remains of mangy lupine beasts that stalk the bleak forests and tundras surrounding many a vampiric keep, their fur reeking of the grave and their souls filled only with the need to kill. Unlike most undead, Dire Wolves have lost almost none of the swiftness they possessed in life. When they pounce, jaws flashing with mouldering teeth, they are easily capable of ripping out a Gryph-charger’s throat or bearing an armoured warrior to the ground. Relentless and incapable of tiring, they are the perfect hunting hounds for vampires who seek to run their living prey to ground. Plentiful folklore surrounds these beasts, the most enduring example of which is their supposed ability to scent mortal terror upon the wind. There may be some truth to this, for a great many aristocratic vampires dote on Dire Wolves like favoured companions and grant them the honour of being the first loosed into battle; there, they viciously corral the petrified enemy, herding them into position for the Gravelord host to smash them asunder. In the wake of the resulting slaughter, there is always enough carrion to satiate the Dire Wolves’ hunger.

Leather-winged monstrosities bloated on blood and necrotic sorcery, Fell Bats haunt the cursed forests and battlefields of the realms. Each is large enough to pluck a rider from the saddle and carry them off into the skies, and their dagger-length canine teeth are so sharp that they can puncture solid metal. Such is the Fell Bats’ sense of smell that they can sniff out a single drop of gore from leagues away, and once the hunger is upon them, they enter a thirsting rage that can only be appeased by gorging upon fresh blood. This frenzy is so all-consuming that Fell Bats will often fight until their own destruction rather than be denied their feast. Flocks of Fell Bats often circle above vampiric armies, summoned by the promise of corpses and the innate power of a Soulblight lord. They serve well as winged scouts and swift-flying killers, descending from above in a flurry of fangs and raking claws to attack isolated prey. After glutting themselves on drained vital fluids, these chiropteran horrors will retreat back into the skies, circling about in search of their next kill.

Not all of those who were bitten by Radukar the Wolf and his kin were destined to rise anew as true vampires. Some proved unable to control the bestial curse that seeped into their veins, devolving into the blood-hungry beasts known as Vargskyrs. Their flesh split apart, their bones cracked and expanded agonisingly, and thick, wiry fur sprouted along their flanks. Three times the height of a mortal human, the Vargskyrs were corded with lithe strength – the manifestation of the ancient Vyrkos bloodline. The citizens of Ulfenkarn dreaded them above all, for they knew that Vargskyrs liked to toy with their prey. Though most were thought to have perished during the fall of the Cursed City, there have been sightings of Vargskyrs in Shyish and even further abroad, preying upon mortals. They are capable of wrenching a human’s head from their shoulders with a single twist, and when they fall to all fours and pursue their prey, few creatures in all the realms can outrun them. Vargskyrs are also possessed of cunning befitting their predatory nature; they will stalk a victim patiently, sometimes for many hours, before falling upon them in a frenzy of slashing claws and tearing fangs.

Black Knights were once the nobility of the Deathrattle kingdoms, but this did not save them from Nagash’s cold claws. Reanimated as terrible wights, all their arrogance has coalesced into a core of cold pride that can never be appeased. In the times before Sigmar’s civilisation took root, only a monarch and their preferred retainers could afford to keep a warhorse. When these warriors died, their beloved steeds – symbols of their status – were slain, buried with them and bound to the same curse of unlife. Black Knights function as the killing edge of the Deathrattle hosts, cavaliers charged to cull mortals with their dreaded life-stealing lances and blades, yet their deathless state denies them any sense of true satisfaction. They forever demand to be first into battle and refuse to dip their lances to any who have not earned their respect. In their strange, hollow way, Black Knights declare themselves to be the finest riders on either side of the grave. They bear an especially intense hatred for the shining cavaliers of mortalkind – living reminders of their own lost honour, whom they seek to destroy at every opportunity.

Resplendent in gleaming armour, vampiric chevaliers charge into battle, crushing their foes beneath the thundering hooves of their skeletal mounts. These are the Blood Knights, elite warriors of the Soulblight hosts. They claim to follow a code of honour, but in truth, their self-proclaimed chivalry is nothing but a shining veneer that corrodes as soon as the killing starts. In the midst of a brutal melee, they are no more able to hold their fiendish appetite in check than any of their bloodthirsty kin are. Blood Knights have trained for centuries with sword and lance, and their martial discipline is absolute. When combined with a vampire’s innate powers, this makes them almost unstoppable on the charge. Borne upon undead steeds who know neither fear nor doubt, Blood Knights seek out the most challenging foes, forming themselves into unstoppable wedges of steel and smashing into the fray. Couched lances punch through half a dozen enemies in the blink of an eye, while wicked sabres lash back and forth, opening throats with every strike. Splattered head to toe in gore, the Blood Knights howl in bestial delight, their chivalric oaths revealed as nothing more than a wicked farce.

Inheritors of an ancient martial tradition, the ascetic warriors known as Askurgan Trueblades seek to turn the savagery of the Soulblight Curse into a potent weapon in their arsenal. Rather than deny their thirst, the Askurgans harness it by feasting upon the blood of beasts and monsters, using the inherent power of these potent fluids to enhance their already devastating combat skills. Few can stand in the face of an Askurgan Trueblade’s efficient strikes, which come so swiftly and precisely that the foe is often reduced to a ruined corpse before they can even draw a breath. For all the formidable willpower of the Askurgans, the dark truth is that their bestial nature cannot truly be controlled. Should the power of monstrous ichor overwhelm a Trueblade, they will transform into a feral horror known as a Curseblood. Lupine of aspect, these creatures abandon all pretence at martial discipline and simply tear at their prey with claws and fangs. A rare few Askurgans possess the strength to reverse this transformation, though they are forever marked in body and soul by their encounter with the monstrous reality of the Soulblight Curse.

Shambling and groaning, flesh sagging off yellowed bones, a single zombie is a disconcerting sight. A horde of them can unnerve even the most steadfast warriors. Individually, a zombie is a clumsy and slow adversary, though the mindless ferocity with which they attack should not be underestimated. It is in bulk that zombies become a significant threat. Bludgeoning aside enemy defences, they lash out with filthy fingernails and crude improvised weapons, heedless of their losses. Any who fall to a zombie risk being infected by the necrotic energies clinging to them, rising again to assail their former friends and allies. As the remains of the freshly dead, zombies are amongst the easiest forms of cadaver to raise. It is for this reason that they are by far the most commonly utilised chattel troops in Soulblight hosts, hurled at the enemy in vast numbers to bog them down while the vampire elite chooses a vulnerable target to strike. Yet Deadwalkers are not always summoned into being intentionally; there are tales of graveyards, plague pits and corpse-choked marshes so suffused with the aetheric energy of Shyish that they have developed a malign and primitive sentience, and now puppet hordes of zombies lumber across the wilds as extensions of their primitive will.

Clattering forwards in formation, their yellowed skulls devoid of expression, the Deathrattle Skeletons go forth to annihilate the living. These undead automatons have no free will and are imbued only with the imperative to kill as swiftly and efficiently as possible. In many ways, they represent the ultimate ideal of Nagash’s Necrotopia: an army without will or ambition, created solely to conquer the realms in the name of the Great Necromancer. As they advance into combat, foes are forced to stare into the grinning visage of death, a feat that saps courage from all but the bravest. As disposable soldiers, Deathrattle Skeletons are clad in only the most basic equipment, often the same armour they wore during the last moments of their mortal lives. Their weapons, too, are meagre: rusted swords and shields pitted with battle-damage. Yet such things mean little when they march forth en masse, overwhelming superior warriors with their utter lack of fear and their relentless, machine-like motion. Even if a skeletal warrior is smashed to pieces, the horror continues – with the battlefield steeped in necromantic energies, the Deathrattle Skeleton’s bones will lock together once more as it clambers upright, ready to kill again.

Surrounding a Wight King is a coterie of favoured praetorians, champions and housecarls: the Grave Guard. In life, they were the monarch’s closest companions, granted the greatest privileges in exchange for their loyalty. Whether with holy zeal or while deep in their cups, they swore to serve even after death; in those nations where necromancy held sway, these pacts were taken seriously indeed. Upon their demise, the champions were entombed within their lord’s barrow – or, if their monarch perished first, buried alive – after undergoing the rites that saw their souls stained with dark magic. These are the elite footsoldiers of the Deathrattle legions, imbued with memories of loyalties pledged and oaths of eternal service. Grave Guard retain greater flickers of awareness than most skeletal undead, but only enough that they can recall their own lethal skill and entertain their liege with tales of centuries past. In death, the Grave Guard still carry the finest of a kingdom’s wargear. Clad in patinated armour, they endure blows in impassive silence before striking with weapons bound with the same wicked curses as their ruler’s blade. Some favour the traditional sword and shield of a monarch’s bodyguard, while others swing huge two-handed swords to carve foes in twain.