Mechanithrall and Scrap Thrall
GUTS & GEARS — THE BEASTS AND MACHINES OF THE IRON KINGDOMS
The undead legions of Cryx are a menagerie of shambling abominations. These mockeries of humanity have their necrotized flesh bolstered by science and arcane art that grants them the power to deliver bone-crushing, pneumatic death. Driven by the necromantic potency of thrall runes, the most ancient of their ilk are insanely powerful, The Skarlock is an undead servitor imbued with an unnatural cunning, potent sorcerous powers, and a will to do all life harm. The bane thrall and the Bane Knight possess a cool and eager malevolence and a darkness that nestles within their husks. With their keen axes and halberds they relish ending life, snuffing out hope, and crushing the enemies of the Blighted Isle.
The power of greater thralls cannot be squandered, so their lesser kin are committed to battle to gnaw at the enemy before the more powerful undead terrors can rip into the living. Lurching corpses infested with pistons, steam engines mounted crudely on their backs, arrays of pipe coiled about their limbs, and clockwork hearts pumping black ichor through the tubing that serves as their veins make up the vast ranks of the Dragonfather’s armies. Thralls are feared both as tenacious combatants and because any soldier that falls at their hands stands a good chance of becoming material for another repugnant servant to the will of Toruk’s Lich Lords. No pious man of Morrow or Menoth wishes to be clay for a necrosurgeons craft.
Cryx has always had thrall armies. But the current trend toward mechanikally enhanced thrall soldiers started after the destruction of Drer Drakkerung circa 201 AR. Thrall rites are arcane, and the more powerful rites required time and resources that the Dragonfather’s armies did not have at the time. The vast casualties during the battle with the Orgoth depleted almost all of the Cryxian supply of war ready thralls. This Cryx to adapt a method of rapidly supplying their ranks with sturdy war worthy undead creations.
The undead inhabitants of Cryx have created necro-technological horrors for nearly two millennia. Amongst the most powerful of these are the Lich Lords, created near the inception of the Nightmare Empire through methods obscured by ritual and mystery. The necro-technology used in the production of modern thralls is but a mere shade of that occult art. The true technological development represented by the modern thrall is the amalgamation of simple thrall runes with integrated mechanikal weapon systems and augmentations.
Creating thralls through sheer necromancy — thrall runes — can craft incredibly powerful undead creatures. Undead horrors incorporating mechanikal prosthesis as weapons require only simple thrall runes for animation. This means the production for mechanikal thralls is comparatively fast and relatively simple, and thus perfect for a standing war effort.
Necrotechs and surgeons began to mechanikally enhance thralls to cut production times.
Necrotechs happily reinforce dead flesh and bone with metal plates and rods. Mechanikal augmentations might include a boiler power a piston fist, skulls and spines anchored to pneumatics, and conduits that provide the fluids to keep the flesh supple and able to move. The runes required to perform these tasks require much more time to ensorcell upon the putrefying flesh of any thrall worthy corpse. The metal parts, sinew, and mechanikal improvements can hold a corpse together efficiently. Runes typically used to forge dead flesh into a mighty engine of hatred are not necessary for these crude creations.
Necrotechs provide the necessary technology to create more of these unnatural creatures. Necrosurgeons, skilled beyond measure in the arts of suture and stitch, can assemble any monstrosity. Together they have constructed a mind-boggling array of corpse-soldiers that read like the inventory of some twisted menagerie. The most commonly seen of these are mechanithralls.
The mechanithralls are a blend of mechanika and desiccated flesh marked with the thrall runes necessary to “breathe” the fire of unlife into the leathery corpus. A powerful boiler and a clockwork heart pumping a pungent slurry of fluids through its carcass further augment the creature’s anatomy. Flexible piping made from copper and sinew link the boiler the creature’s durable metallic arms and provide pneumatic pressure to serve as rams to pummel and tear through armor plating and flesh effortlessly. Far too many sons of Cygnar and Khador have become one of these unutterable servants of the Dragonfather’s will.
Since Cryx took its first decisive steps onto Cygnar’s shores the myriad variety of thralls appearing has become a daunting indication of the industrious nature of the necrotechs and the flesh crafting mastery of the nercosurgeons. While the mechanithrall serves as the vicious foot soldier of Cryxian armies, the Brute Thrall has become much more prevalent in recent battles. When striding into combat beside its lesser mechanithrall brethren this creation has become another hallmark of Cryxian necro-technology and flesh craft.
The Brute Thrall has an immense body manufactured from the remains of a trollkin or ogrun that supports a powerful anatomy of necro-technological improvements. The creature is fused with a necrotite boiler and imbued with astonishing strength capable of wrenching a warjack’s arms free from its chassis. Brute Thralls can withstand incredible amounts of damage, and are true success for the necrosurgeons.
Both the bloat and bile thrall are more specialized creations of necro-technology. Arcane craft provide their motive energy and focused malevolence, yet their weapon systems are a unique mixture of mechanikal systems and undead reflex. Skilled necrosurgeons craft their bodies, but the installation of their weaponry falls entirely in the realm of the necrotechs. The living loathe them and fear them more than most of the Cryxian thralls simply for the devastation their self-destruction can trigger.
The necrotech’s ability to maintain and quickly repair Cryxian forces proved too useful to keep them away from the battlefield. These creatures are undead beings of immense intelligence and cunning with bodies mechanikally altered to aid them in their work and ensure their survival amongst the ecology of cruelty that is Cryxian society. The cabals of necrotechs serving to repair helljacks and bonejacks in the battlefield created a stopgap servitor to aid them in combat. Lacking skill with blade or blunderbuss the necrotechs wisely decided to develop an undead creature that would willingly sacrifice itself. Out of the ruins of warjacks and the scoured bones of the dead was born the scrap thrall.
Scrap thralls are composed of ittle more than spare parts and bones driven by a simple necrotite chamber that holds a pressurized mixture of necrotite and naphtha. This makes scrap thralls incredibly unstable bombs guided by a seething hatred for the living. Even the slightest damage will detonate one of these clumsy, shambling wrecks, and the resulting boiler detonation is devastating. Necrotechs often rapidly assemble these “demi-thralls” from the ruins of warjacks and troops on the battlefield and send them off hurley-burley into the fray to explode upon contact with anything that might potentially find the necrotech’s path.
The necrosurgeons are subtler creatures and favor the use of the diminutive stitch-thrall to bring corpses to them in the heat of battle. Necrosurgeons craft stitch thralls to act as fetching dogs, assistants, and occasionally spare parts. These agile and diminutive thralls are more flesh than mechanika and sinew and arcane craft hold them together. When forced onto the battlefield a necrosurgeon will often bring an entourage of these creatures. Each of them heaves a sack filled with arms, pipes, parts, and the materials necessary to stitch some gruesome creation together from its gory constituents.
Soulhunters rank among the most versatile of the mechanika bolstered Cryxian thralls. These morbid, centaur-like creatures are a triumph of the necrotech craft. Thrall runes imbue them with a preternatural cunning and a perverse desire to shred the life from any creature that draws breath. Pistons and coils grant them an almost supernatural strength. They possess an improbable grace for such dire creations. Soulhunters are the equal of many of the most powerful thralls, and a true testament to the power and fear a creature of undeath can command when augmented by the dark arts of Cryxian engineers.
Combat: Scrap thralls are little more than spare parts from a fallen ‘jack slapped together and animated as a shambling delivery vehicle for necrotite powered bombs. These ramshackle undead are just as likely to detonate when a wayward bullet or arrow strikes them as when they accomplish their final mission. Their only true goal is to clutch an opponent long enough to explode in a shower of bone, metal, and bloody flesh.
Fonte: No Quarter 9
