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Draugyr Soulreavers Gallery and Lore
🕑 Added 2021-10-02 15:01:03 +0000 UTCEvery month Battle Yak Miniatures will release a new Battle Pack, featuring 3D printable miniature files! The October Battle Pack is the Draugyr Soulreavers, dark warriors imbued with eldritch power!
Become a Patron now and gain access to the Draugyr Soulreavers here!
Enjoy this gallery of the Draugyr Soulreavers miniatures and a glimpse into the story behind the faction!
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It started with the fog, rolling in and swallowing the town, blinding us and choking us with the reek of rotting fish and seaweed. Then there was the sound of crashing waves and shrieking sea-birds, snapping sails and creaking timber, and the crunch of hulls on wet sand.
Then they came, charging out of the mists, roaring and bellowing their heathen oaths, killing anyone they found. No one could fight them. No one could hide; like they knew where you were, like they could smell your fear.
The faces of the dead started appearing in the mist, screaming in terror, like the souls of the tormented dead lingering near their killers. Then... then something else came, hidden by the fog, but you could see it's shape, huge and inhuman, and the savages roared and cheered...
Then they were gone, them and that evil thing and the faces in the mist with them, leaving only a handful of survivors behind. All that was left was the fading echo of waves and the lingering smell of the sea...
I don't understand it.
We're fifty miles from the nearest coastline.
Erupting from the dark depths of the sea, sailing to reave and plunder on eldritch tides, the Draugyr Soulreavers are dread followers of the powers of the abyssal plane. Empowered by alien forces of utter malevolence, the Draugyr steal more than lives and wealth, taking the very souls and sanity of their victims back to their hellish sunken cities, to lay before the altars of their unknowable dark masters.
Once mortal men of savage barbarian tribes dwelling far from civilized lands, the Dreyurg Marauders fell afoul of dark powers on some ocean-going voyage to plunder the wealth of softer folk. Their ships became mired in blood-dark sargassum, trapped in windless seas swallowed by fog. And in the night the darkness between the stars was reflected in the sea, and it crept into their dreams, and then their very flesh. When the winds finally filled their sails again, they journeyed on new campaigns of reaving, and the darkness and the fog and that unnatural sea sailed with them.
When the Draugyr come to raid, the land is shrouded in a dark and dreadful fog that blots out the sun. The region becomes a sodden morass, sea-water unnaturally soaking everything within the eldritch fog's grasp. Cursed sargassum grows impossibly swiftly, creeping along walls and buildings, while the ground underfoot becomes dark, wet sand. Most frightful of all, the sound of roiling, crashing waves can be heard in the distant reaches of the fog, even if the doomed land is located miles from the nearest ocean.
On rotten ships and water-logged hulks seemingly dredged from the ocean floor the Draugyr arrive, their vessels breaching the unnatural ocean surface like mighty rotting whales rising from the depths. Blood-hungry savages are disgorged from the unnatural ships, their corpse-pale flesh sodden and twisted with mutations of aquatic horror. About the haunted standards and corrupted priests of their kind, the souls of the dead gather like twisting smoke, the true plunder that the Soulreavers desire, that which they will take with them back into the darkness beneath the waves for purposes best not speculated on.
Dark power flows through the veins of the Dreyurg, stealing the color from their flesh and leaving it clammy and pale. They breathe water as well as air, never drowning nor choking. Their flesh swells with strength, even as it splits and sloughs and rots and grows anew. They do not live, nor are they truly dead, but something outside the cycle of mortality. In time, their bodies become less mortal and more... divine. Monstrous new forms burst from their bodies, the blessings of the alien powers they now serve.
Some Draugyr have served these dark powers so well that they are no longer remotely recognizable as the men they once were. Bloated with blessings, these creatures are the Byssjr Berserkers, chaotic spawn of the Dwellers in the Deep.
Their limbs have become those of sea creatures, crustacean claws or writhing tentacles. Tainted sea life and toxic coral growths have fused together over their bodies, armoring them with oceanic gristle. Worse is the spark of sapient wickedness that still gleams in whatever eyes they may still possess - on some level they are not just mindless abominations, but hideously aware, intelligent, and utterly reveling in their monstrous state. They approach divinity, purer expressions of the Abyssal Ones that command the Draugyr.
The sorcerous servants of the abyss, the Helbyssen were once witches and priestlings of kinder gods, now fallen into dark servitude. None command a greater share of the magical power that the Abyssal Ones have granted the Draugyr. At their whim, waves part, winds howl, maelstroms yawn, and the veil of reality is rent asunder. Sea-Hags, despite their often monstrous mutations, retain a dark semblance of humanity, often appearing alluring to unwary sea-farers in order to draw them to their doom. A share of the soul-tithe harvested by the Draugyr are pledged to the Sea-Hags in order to work their dark miracles, these poor unfortunates suffering hideous fates as fuel for eldritch sorcery.
As the dark power of the Draugyr takes hold in a region, unnatural changes are wrought upon the land itself. The earth underfoot becomes sodden black sand, seawater rises to flood regardless of a region's distance from the ocean, and thick fog blankets the area. Then, the sunken vessels of the Soulreavers breach the unnatural waters, erupting like sea monsters rising from the depths, even though the eldritch sea may only cover land a few feet deep. As the Draugyr themselves arrive in greater and greater numbers, more extreme and horrific changes take place.
Immense monstrous limbs burst from the eldritch waters, like colossal crab legs festooned with jagged coral growths, writhing armored tentacles with fanged suckers, enormous barnacles that lap with razor-tongues, bloated anemones that ensnare prey with toxic tendrils, hideous mutant starfish, and other corrupted sea-life. Great swathes of black and crimson-streaked sargassum and sea-weed grow unnaturally quickly, smothering all beneath a choking, reeking morass of oceanic growth. More Draugyr emerge from the eldritch sea, clinging to the spires or bursting up from the sargassum growth, with hideous mutant things and other abyssal creatures accompanying them.
Most dreadful of all are the towering horrors that follow in their wake. Never fully glimpsed through the fog, these entities bellow in an ancient language older than the stars, urging the Draugyr Soulreavers on to greater acts of carnage and dark revelry, all in homage to the ever-hungry Lords of the Deep.
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Comments
Dwayne Hinton
plus, change the head and add a gun/chainsword to a hand (like from the sentinels) and you have csm or possessed... AND, put orc heads on them, and you have sea orcs (the sea hag goes nicely with that idea, with no changes to her)
Scott M.
I know I'm running about a week behind... just now getting into this release. I'm loving the modularity to these guys! Huge monster kit, marauders combos x1000, this really is a small army for a release. Thank you!
Dwayne Hinton
i feel like i've seen that sea hag somewhere
