The tenacious and vicious nature of the cyclops brutes makes them singularly responsive to training, and the skorne rely on them to hold the flanks of formations or stand vigil over tyrants. Armed with towering shields and massive polearms, brutes constitute a virtually insurmountable threat on the battlefield. Their unique vision focuses on evading blows, and they can extend this power to those they protect.
Each witch doctor is a powerful mystic who lives and breathes the foul necromantic arts that are his birthright. Life and death are two edges of the same bloody knife to the witch doctor, who often sees his allies as nothing more than tools of battle to be moved between those two states as required. Amid the morass of combat he gathers the vile totems required to power his spells, tearing the fleshy trophies from the carcasses of vanquished foes. Raising his sacral blade aloft, the witch doctor utters sibilant incantations that impel the huge beasts he control in a wave of scaled death.
Griffons are predators that combine the sinewy grace of great hunting cats with the ferocity of birds of prey. Druids of the Circle Orboros have long tended griffon fledglings far from civilization and picked out those best suited to their needs. In the Scarsfell griffon they have found a hunter with a remarkable aptitude for stealth and ambush, one able to dive from great heights to surprise even well-camouflaged prey far below.
The savage winter argus stalk the dark, frozen hinterlands of the Scarsfell Forest and Blackroot Wood, prowling under cover of great northern storms. Gouts of gelid breath freeze the argus’ victims in place until the pack closes in for the feast. Though feared by many, the creatures are prized by northern druids for their savagery and the supernatural cold they can manifest to cripple the enemies of the Circle Orboros.
Products of generations of Everblight’s manipulations, succubi are fonts of blighted arcane power. To create each one, a specially selected Nyss is brought to the spawning pools and ritually bathed in the blood of a warlock. It emerges as something no longer wholly Nyss, attuned to the warlock whose blood actualized its second birth. This ritual empowers each succubus as an amplifier of its warlock’s own gifts. With their every thought and action these creatures carry out the will of their masters and the dragon itself.
Lumbering inexorably across the battlefield, animantaraxes are living siege engines. The ornate houdaas atop their backs bristle with veteran crews of Praetorians wielding spears and Venators manning double-combed reiver guns. Incoming fire serves only to enrage these giant beasts, and their handlers gladly indulge their anger and watch with grim satisfaction as the behemoths smash through their foes and deliver death to everything within reach.
The ranks of the legionnaires are a weapon wielded by one hand—that of Farilor, Bladeguard of the Prophet. He directs their every strike for the glory of Thagrosh, and the obedient legionnaires follow with unflinching discipline. So great is their devotion to Captain Farilor, legionnaires can ignore the most grievous wounds and punishing blows in order to hold the line beneath the Legion’s standard.
The mighty road hogs hurl themselves into the fray with supercharged fury, unleashing gouts of flame and mechanikally enhanced brutality upon enemies of the farrow. Their lower limbs replaced by prosthetic legs, they are capable of surprising swiftness at the cost of agonizing pain to the beasts themselves—a small price to pay for the brutal carnage the road hogs can inflict upon their foes.
Once a proud Tharn king, Ghetorix was bested in combat and captured by Kromac for defying Morvahna the Autumnblade. As penance for his defiance, Morvahna forced the warpwolf elixir upon the defeated king, transforming him into one of the fiercest warpwolves the Circle has ever known.
Favored warbeasts of the skorne, the versatile titans can be conditioned and equipped for a variety of battlefield roles. The titan gladiator is armed with massive spiked war gauntlets and uses its weapons and its armored body to pulverize enemy troops and warbeasts. The titan cannoneer is a mobile siege engine, blasting apart enemy formations with its gargantuan siege cannon. Finally, the titan sentry is a living wall, immovable and nearly impervious to enemy attacks behind its heavy shield and thick armor.