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Bloodborn Eldarch Gallery and Lore
🕑 Added 2020-11-02 16:01:02 +0000 UTCEvery month BattleYak Miniatures will release a new Battle Pack, featuring 3D printable miniature files! The November Battle Pack is the Bloodborn Eldarch, an order of elite eldarch warriors who live to hunt monstrous magical beasts! November's pack includes modular weapons, tons of customization options, bonus figures, and more!
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Enjoy this gallery of the Bloodborn Eldarch miniatures and a glimpse into the story behind the faction!
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To the good citizens of Syndra'Lumyr,
It is in the spirit of reassurance that I make this declaration. The recent incursion of unwholesome beasts within the confines of our proud city has been brought to a swift and efficient end by the brave and devoted public servants of the Sanguine Censure.
I am pleased to further declare that no citizens were harmed in this latest execution of the Censure's sacred duty to protect the public trust. There is no truth whatsoever to the rumors that the increase in sightings of the beasts within city limits is in any way related to the operations of the Order Encarmine and their tireless campaign of reclaiming our noble heritage.
Further, the spurious accusations that the Sanguine Censure has taken any unwarranted action in debriefing the witnesses to bestial incursions are vile and baseless slander spread by agitators and alarmists, and no right-thinking citizen of the Bloodborn should seek to have any business with such malcontents. Such thoughtless reactionary dissension shall only serve to impede the glorious undertaking of the Order Encarmine, and these anarchists should be reported to agents of the Sanguine Censure as soon as possible. For the purposes of informed correction, of course.
I remain, as ever, the devoted and humble servant of the common good,
-Arch-Magus Zephon Sarothyr, the Order Encarmine
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 people ruled the world and wielded god-like magic, and their great unifying goal is to recapture that ancient mastery. Eldarch warriors wield enchanted weaponry and martial combat sorceries to venture into the dark and hidden corners of their kingdom, exploring the ancient ruins and forgotten catacombs where their ancestors once ruled. In the depths these eldarch battle monstrous abominations and hideous beasts born of corrupted magic to unlock the knowledge of a lost age.
The most noteworthy institution in Bloodborn society is the Order Encarmine, a scholarly organization and the greatest driving force in the grand effort to unlock the secrets of the past. Made up of archaeologists, magisters, historians, and other learned eldarch, the Order is utterly devoted to reclaiming the former glory of the eldarch's ancient civilization and propelling their race to supremacy, primarily through excavating and exploring long-lost ruins and fallen cities in order to reclaim relics and knowledge. The current capitol of the Bloodborn, the city of Scarletmoon, was itself built upon the foundations of one such older lost city, the largest the Bloodborn have ever discovered, and a significant amount of the Order's resources are devoted to recovering treasures from the sprawling ruins that still remain unexplored far below, even after centuries of occupation.
Such lost regions from eldarch history are often infested with all manner of dangers, from pockets of stagnant magical energy that induce madness and plague, to ancient malfunctioning traps, to hideously malformed beast and monsters that prowl the broken ruins and prey upon the unwary. In order to protect the more scholarly members of the Order, the paramilitary organization known as the Sanguine Censure was founded.
Made up of eldarch warriors with a talent for combat magic, the forces of the Sanguine Censure are specially trained to hunt down and neutralize creatures born of magical corruption, and these warriors venture into ancient haunted ruins in small but highly capable groups to clear them of monstrous infestations. Among the ranks of the Censure, those who excel in magical combat and beast-slaying tactics earn the rank of Judicator. These warriors wield weapons and armor laced thick with magical enhancements and intricate spell-work designed to enhance their combat prowess to an unparalleled degree. Judicators are trained to operate as a unit, fighting and slaying their bestial prey with ruthless efficiency. The Censure is the sword and shield of the Order Encarmine, enforcing their will in their quest to unlock the power of the ancients with an almost cultish zeal.
Haunting the ancient ruins of the lost age are all manner of monstrous creatures born of tainted magic, and one of the most frequent and hideous such fiends that the Sanguine Censure is forced to contend with are called Barghasts. Hideous humanoid monsters many times larger and stronger than any eldarch, barghasts prowl the ruins of the golden age, seeking out the unwary to prey upon. Barghasts are often solitary, but have also been known to form loose packs of many of their debased kind. Even the most skilled warriors of the Sanguine Censure must exercise extreme caution in battle against even one of these monstrous beasts.
The precise origin of these creatures, what manner of beings they were before being malformed by tainted magic, is a matter of great controversy among the scholars of the Order who study their remains. Many a bold dissector of beasts has pronounced the unthinkable, that such abominations may in fact be related to the eldarch, and been resoundingly condemned by Order officials for their efforts. Such eldarch are forced to recant their odious declarations, or be sent as part of the next expedition into the most dangerous and beast-infested regions of the depths, that they may examine specimens firsthand to correct their clearly erroneous observations.
Barghasts ravenously consume flesh and blood, and they readily make prey of any eldarch that stray into their territory in search of relics and lore. But devouring unwary eldarch is not the only desire such beasts have. Barghasts instinctively seek out regions tainted by concentrations of corrupted magic, seeming to thrive when exposed to such poisonous energies. A wounded barghast can recover at an astonishing rate by absorbing these energies into itself, knitting torn flesh and broken bone, even regenerating lost limbs and organs. A barghast who absorbs sufficient quantities of magic will change, becoming even more monstrous and distorted, sprouting crystalline growths that are the telltale sign of polluted magic, as well as other grotesque deformations.
This appetite for magic will entice barghasts to actively seek out and attack eldarch even if it means straying far from their chosen territories, and the Sanguine Censure has been known to deploy forces to slay barghasts that emerge from the ruins beneath Scarletmoon to attack the city proper. In recent times, the number of missing citizens and reported attacks by magical beasts within the boundaries of the city have begun to increase, even though every known passageway into the depths below is constantly and rigorously guarded by forces of the Censure.
Over time as the Order Encarmine grew in power and began to recover more ancient lore, specialized branches devoted to specific avenues of research and inquiry were established, called lyceums or schools. One lyceum in particular was committed to the resurrection of the lost eldarch art of life-shaping, a magical discipline that allowed the user to create life itself. Known as the Syn'darchei Lyceum, the School of Blood Weaving, its magisters are trained in the use of life-shaping magic as Bloodweavers, learning to transform living creatures from their natural state into wildly different forms, create fantastic creatures from ordinary animals.
The Order Encarmine has declared strict regulations on the practice of blood weaving magic, rigorously persecuting those who are perceived as misusing the art - at least publicly. In secret, the Order has devoted considerable resources to exploring the full range of possibilities presented to the eldarch people by the use of blood magic. For certain ancient fragments of lore recovered from the lost age hint that such arts could be used to greatly augment the potential of the eldarch themselves, granting enhanced physical capability, keener mental insight, perhaps even eternal life. Experiments conducted in the utmost secret have yielded a range of results from enticing to horrifying.
The merest hint that such forbidden practices may be sanctioned by the Order has been known to bring down the wrath of the Sanguine Censure on all such malicious rumor-mongers and spreaders of discontent.
The history of the eldarch race is one stepped in glory, hubris, and disaster, encompassing millennial spans of time. Before most other races even existed, the eldarch reigned supreme, their thriving civilization spanning the world. Masters of all arts material and magical, they crafted glorious citadels of ivory and gold that melded seamlessly with the natural world, towering above verdant forests, sprawling across abyssal plains deep beneath the surface of the sea, or floating aloft high above the clouds. Their mastery of magic was such that the eldarch even unlocked the power of life-shaping, allowing them to create entirely new forms of life as a sculptor shapes clay into a work of art. Many fantastic mystical beasts and even entire races that inhabit the world today owe their origins to the life-shaping magic of the ancient eldarch.
The eldarch enjoyed the heights of their golden age for untold millennia, until it ended suddenly and terribly in a time of calamity that has come to be known as the Age of Hunger. It is unclear even to the eldarch of today exactly what precipitated the terrible fall of their ancestors - whether some dreadful enemy launched an attack from unknown quarters, an unthinkable civil war broke out, or unforeseeable natural disasters erupted, but in short order the eldarch civilization was utterly destroyed. Their ancient cities were burned by poisonous mystical fires, swallowed by the earth as chasms suddenly yawned wide, or simply vanished completely overnight as if they had never existed at all. A world-spanning population of innumerable multitudes was reduced to a few scattered pockets of survivors, many of whom were forced to embraced desperate means to avoid extinction.
The history of the Bloodborn begins during this ancient era of disaster. One eldarch citadel, said to have drifted through the air on rays of harnessed sunlight, plummeted from the sky, but its ruling magisters preserved the city from total destruction through their art. Folding time and space so that their city came to earth slowly without collapsing utterly, they spared many of its citizenry from instant death. The magisters continued to shield their people from the ravages of the Age of Hunger, as horrific magical storms scoured the world and brought death, destruction, and vile transformation to everything they touched. The strain of maintaining the mystical shields over the ruined citadel were great, and one by one even the most powerful and skilled magic-users perished. When the ruinous storms finally abated and the worst of the disasters unleashed upon the world had run their course, only a bare handful of the magically skilled remained, and they were weakened and withered by their trials for the rest of their days.
The surviving eldarch were soon forced to venture from their lost home out into the devastated new world they now dwelt in. Their history records the endurance of dreadful trials and woeful hardships, centuries of adversity as they fought to survive with what little power remained of their ancient heights. But over the course of many centuries of nomadic wandering, the eldarch people grew hardy and resourceful, developing new talents for surviving in a fallen world, and their long decline slowed, then began to reverse. New generations arose who carved out new kingdoms, gradually asserting mastery over their world once again. Mystical arts were revived, sharpened, refined, and altered in new ways, informed by scraps of ancient knowledge that had survived or were rediscovered. In time the eldarch seized a broken city from the lost age and built a new citadel upon its foundations that would become the capital of their civilization, the city Syndra'Lumyr, the Scarletmoon.
Scarred by their trials, they had been bloodied, but not broken. Reborn through the crucible of the Age of Hunger and the hardships they had endured, the eldarch declared themselves Syn'Sanglothyr - Born out of Blood.
As the city of Scarletmoon grew and began incorporating more of its golden age foundations, the institutions of the Order Encarmine and the Sanguine Censure were founded. With the trained warriors of the Censure as its strong right hand, the Order took their place at the forefront of Bloodborn society, monopolizing the recovery and study of resources from the ruins beneath Scarletmoon and aboard in other lands.
As the Order's pool of knowledge grows from the influx of recovered lore, and the magic-wielding eldarch refine and expand their practice of the mystic arts, the presence of magical beasts and profane mutations within the boundaries of Scarletmoon has been occurring with increasing frequency. Government officials have begun instituting curfews and quarantines on the ordinary citizenry by decree of the Order, alleging that new populations of monstrous creatures had been unearthed in the ruins below the city. The Sanguine Censure has begun operating in Scarletmoon itself with increasing frequency in order to curtail the spread of this plague of mystical beasts. Some even whisper that agents of the Censure have begun to make examples of the common citizenry who object to their presence too strongly, or who spread rumors about the true origins of the monstrous beasts they hunt...
The Bloodborn Eldarch will not stop until all the secrets of their past have been revealed. No matter the cost.
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