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Bloodborn Eldarch II: The Beast Hunters Gallery and Lore
🕑 Added 2022-05-02 15:02:00 +0000 UTCEvery month Battle Yak Miniatures will release a new Battle Pack, featuring 3D printable miniature files! The May Battle Pack is Bloodborn Eldarch II: The Beast Hunters, a second wave release of the original Bloodborn Eldarch set!
Become a Patron now and gain access to the Beast Hunters here!
Enjoy this gallery of Bloodborn Eldarch II: Beast Hunters miniatures and a glimpse into the lore behind the faction!
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It is with a shameful heart and in the spirit of great humility and regret that I hereby withdraw the statements I have previously made in regards to the nature and origins of the wretched beasts that infest our sacred lands. It is clear to me now that my analysis was obviously flawed, my conclusions erroneous and ill-founded. It is with certainty that I can declare that the beasts are wholly unrelated to our own august and noble race, and are instead of a strain of mutant and debased Samani bloodline, poisoned through their own desecration of our ancient treasures, as the magi of the Order Encarmine have long concluded.
In penance for my egregious errors, I withdraw my own position in the Order Encarmine effective immediately, and enter voluntary penal servitude within the ranks of the Sanguine Censure. As part of the great undertaking to reclaim our sacred past, I hope to alleviate my crimes. I make these statements without coercion, of my own free will.
-Statement by Cederin Baothyr, Magus of the Order Encarmine (Former)
The Bloodborn Eldarch are a society devoted to power and knowledge, and driven by the belief that these qualities are inextricably bound. In an antediluvian age their ancestors ruled the world and wielded fantastic magic, and their great unifying goal is to recapture that ancient mastery. The Bloodborn wield enchanted weaponry and martial combat sorceries to venture into the dark and hidden corners of the world, exploring the ancient ruins and lost cities where their ancestors once reigned. In the depths these eldarch battle monstrous abominations and hideous beasts born of corrupted magic to unlock the knowledge of a lost age.
The Bloodborn will not rest until all the secrets of their past have been revealed, no matter the cost.
The prime architects of the Bloodborn's great undertaking to reclaim their lost glory is the Order Encarmine, an organization of the Bloodborn's finest minds and most skilled sorcerers. Scholars, magi, archaeologists, historians, and other learned eldarch make up its numbers, pouring over every recovered relic, tome, and sorcery for more knowledge and power. The Order also commands the paramilitary organization known as the Sanguine Censure. The warrior-eldarch that form its ranks are the path-finding and dungeon-delving heroes that venture into the long lost ruins of ancient glory, braving countless dangers to clear the way for their more scholarly brethren.
The capitol of Bloodborn society is the great citadel of Scarletmoon, whose very foundations are an ancient city of the eldarch golden age, buried deep beneath the surface and representing a vastly greater area than the sprawling city above. Even after centuries, the Bloodborn have yet to explore the full extent of this vast undercity, and secrets beyond imagining still lie in the depths, kept from the delving eldarch by incredible dangers.
Pockets of stagnant magic that cause madness and mutation, ancient malfunctioning traps and mystically-powered mechanisms, and dreadful beasts that prey upon those who trespass in their polluted lairs... To brave these dangers and slay these beasts is the very purpose of the Sanguine Censure.
Sanguine Indictors are the deft blade and swiftly striking arrow in the arsenal of the Censure. While the more heavily armed and armored Judicators clash openly in the ruins and tunnels, Indictors are meant to operate as scouts and path-finders, discovering routes of relative safety to avoid more fatal and impassable dangers. Combat is unavoidable during expeditions to the deeps, and the Indictors do not shy away from battle when the time comes, striking with blinding quickness before leaping away from the vicious attacks of their bestial foes.
Of the beasts that infest the deep places where eldarch glory lies, the Bargheld are perhaps the most numerous. Humanoid in general form but brutish and unintelligent, these rangy wretches scrabble through the ruins in the darkness, lurking in regions where magical pollution is most concentrated. The bargheld actually seem to derive strength and fortitude from even the most stagnant and tainted magic, with growths of crystallized magical energy crawling across their wretched forms, lending them greater strength and ferocity.
Feared by even the most skilled and experienced hunters of the Censure are the dreadful Barghasts. Many times larger and stronger than any eldarch, the barghast appear as monstrously overgrown bargheld, and often sport even more terrible mutations. Some barghasts dwell in solitude or small packs of their own kind, but can also amass large numbers of lesser bargheld, who almost seem to take direction from their larger cousins when they make their attacks upon the unwary. Like their brethren, the barghasts seem to feed on the polluted magic of the depths, causing their flesh to twist and mutate into even more hideous and unnatural shapes.
Some magisters of the Order Encarmine that have studied the beasts extensively have uncovered bizarre commonalities in the more extreme mutations, and a troubling pattern is emerging that indicates some of these mutations may not be random, but deliberately induced and guided. The beasts of the depths are slowly transforming into something greater and more terrible, and the process appears to be accelerating...
While magic is practiced throughout the world, no society in the modern age approaches the mastery that the ancient eldarch wielded in their golden age. But the Bloodborn have pieced together numerous fragments of what was lost, and their understanding grows as the years pass. The ancient eldarch learned that all reality is formed by an underlying primal essence they called the Vril - an energy that was the true quintessence of everything, more foundational than elementary particles, more profound than the breath of gods.
The ancients saw vril and magic in terms akin to music - the world of vril that exists was a living song of vast and wondrous beauty, and the art of magic was changing the notes of that song, re-writing the song of reality to play one's own desired tune. Magic was how vril energy was manipulated in order to change the reality that vril energy constituted. For such is the nature of magic regardless of how it is practiced or what traditions define it - to change objective reality to reflect subjective desire.
Not all vril energy can be freely manipulated, but vril exists in as many varieties as there are substances and energies in the cosmos, and some can be commanded more readily than others. The ancient eldarch catalogued and codified many different schools of magic, each one dealing in the manipulation of different varieties of vril - whether to command primal elements such as earth, fire, air, and water, to summon arcane force that can transmute matter and slow the flow of time, or to weave the energies of life itself, healing wounds, curing disease, and creating entirely new forms of life. The ancients commanded all these powers, and many more.
So much was lost when the ancient golden age came to an end, in an apocalyptic era known to the eldarch as the Age of Hunger. The exact nature of this armageddon is still a mystery, and the few fragments of knowledge about it are forbidden to all but the highest ranking magisters of the Order Encarmine. To protect this mystery they take oaths of secrecy and silence, bound by magical compulsions and lethal spells that slay those who even dare to think of revealing such secrets to the public at large. For it is known that the Age of Hunger was not some natural event or unguided disaster, but a deliberate apocalypse unleashed upon the world by a terrible enemy, an enemy who has left its mark like a poison in the world, a remnant presence that still lurks in the darkest depths of the eldarch's lost glory...
The Bloodborn Eldarch hunt the depths, ever-seeking the return of a lost age. It can only be a matter of time before old wounds are re-opened, and secrets best left buried are uncovered at last...
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Comments
Battle Yak
I'm no rules-man-guy, but I would love to put together a set of minis that had that kind of conflict set-up, with two teams pitted against each other.
Dusk
With the background, this set just needs a few dungeon tiles to make a great game similar to Dark Crusade or Nemesis
