Beastmen

"I looked up into the sky and there I saw my doom, lithesome yet dread. What creatures were these? How many tortures would I endure before peace was mine? A thousand wretched forms united only by a hatred that never ends. Malign and savage to the last, they brim with bitterness for the works of Man."

- Bestiarie Malificent



The Beastmen, sometimes known as the Cloven Ones, the Horned Ones or the Children of Chaos are a race of savage mutant humanoids that bear various traits of bestial appearance, such as cloven hooves, muscular human bodies, horned bestial heads and a malign primitive intelligence. Ignorantly proud of their race, it is said that they are the descendants of ancient humans corrupted and twisted by the influence of Chaos at the dawn of Chaos's coming into the world.

From deep within the twisted forested woodlands of the Old World and beyond, the Beastmen are a violent, war-driven race that seeks only to plague and destroy the civilizations of Mankind. They prey on the weak and defenseless, striking at lonely settlements without warning in a rampage of destruction before disappearing into the protective darkness of their dark wilderness.

They are a bitter, savage race that have become so blinded by their bloodlust that they are disillusioned by the hardship and suffering of their very own existence. They are so filled with such unjustified hatred that they see Humanity as the cause for their suffering, for Mankind to the Beastmen is simply a reminder of a life that these creature would never have a chance of living. As such, these unruly, course and foul creatures would go to war with savage intent, slaughtering the civilized races like cattle, burning down and shattering their homes, and stomping on the remains with their cloven hooves until there is nothing left but devastation and ruin.

History
The origins of the Beastmen is tied closely with the origins of Mankind itself. Indeed, long before the collapse of the Northern and Southern poles, there was no such thing as a Beastmen living within the world of that ancient age. By this time, Mankind was still a fledgling and unknown race, still confined to lands far from the reaches of the ancient civilizations of the Dwarfs and Elves. The Old Ones, ancient beings of incredible power had watched like a guardian upon this fledgling world, staving off the undesirable races and seeding the world with the first true forms of life. However, a catastrophic event had occured in an unknown point in time that has since cursed the World to its inevitable damnation.

The Origins of Chaos
A great calamity befell. Something glorious, wonderful, and powerful died, and when it did, the Great Polar Warp Gates, once a marvel of technology, had collapse, and with it, the raw stuff of Chaos flowed like a river upon the harsh lifeless lands of the northern and southern waste. Boiling out from the wound within reality itself were the Daemons and their warping powers of magic. The effects of the gate’s destruction created all manner of abominations, and from these abominations came the first Incursion of Chaos and the first of the Beastmen.

As the fragic of reality was torn asunder, from the skies came pulsing comets of wyrdling stone, contrails of unlight flaring in their wake as they plummeted toward the untamed forests. The lands were pounded and punished as if by the fists of the gods themselves. Huge chunks of solidified Chaos energy, thrown from the collapsing dimensional gates, set aflame the skies. They crashed into the world like meteors, felling endless tracts of forest and burying themselves inside massive craters of scorched earth.

With each impact, the land was infected further by the raw stuff of Chaos. Its insidious taint worked outward into the fertile soil, suckled upon by the roots of ancient trees and seeping into the air breathed by the nomads and the beasts that populated the lands. As Chaos infected the lands like a malign cancer, the ancient forest of the world began to stir, writhing with corrupted energies. The primitives of the land and the beast of the forest had merged into beings of both man and beast. In time, the offspring of these creatures spread throughout the wilderness of the world, gathering in the dark places before unleashing their wars upon humanity.

The Rise of Mankind
For thousands of years the Beastmen and their nightbred kin ruled the forests, preying upon the scattered bands of men as wolves upon sheep. Then a man came bearing a golden hammer that was the bane of all enemies, and united the human tribes, challenging the Beastmen for dominance of the lands. This warrior elevated Mankind from a collection of loosely organised tribesmen into the massive empire it is today.

The time before the rise of Mankind is regarded by the Beastmen both as a part-remembered dream and as a legend. The Beastmen's rituals are full of references to a time when they ruled the lands unchallenged, and a time when they shall rule again. To the Cloven Ones, the War of the Hammer heralded an age of bitterness and strife in which Mankind rose to undeserved and stolen power, with the God-King Sigmar unifiying the human tribes into what would soon become the Empire of Man.

With their power forever broken, the Beastmen of today hate Mankind with a deep loathing born of uncounted centuries of battle and righteous persecution. They seek a return to that primeval age when Man was little more than prey to be hunted and devoured, where the Beastmen were considered the true masters of the world.

For Mankind's part, the Beastmen soon became creatures of horror and superstition, embodying and confirming their deepest fears of what might lurk in the forests of the Old World. It is said in the legends of Bretonnia that the Beastmen looked out from under the forest eaves, spying upon Man and in so doing knew their own impurity, while some scholars of the Empire hold that the beasts are jealous and resentful of Man's ingenuity and cleanness of limb. Whatever the case, all men know that the Beastmen harbour a bitter hatred for humanity. This enmity goes far beyond jealousy or spite. It is not just Man that the Beastmen despise so, but his civilisation, his works and his gods.

As the society of Man grow more refined, and his advancements increasingly wondrous, so too does the jealously and bitterness of the Beastmen increase. To the citizens of the Empire, Bretonnia and the other nations of the Old World, the Beastmen have come to represent creatures from a half-remembered age of nightmare. Men deceive themselves that the danger has passed; that they are safe in their walled towns, that their steel and gunpowder, wizards' arts and engineers' creations will hold at bay the lowly beast-things that haunt the woodlands. Men tell themselves that the creatures of the forest are disorganised and incapable of fielding armies that can threaten their crenellated, high-walled cities.

They are quite wrong. To underestimate the Beastmen is a fatal mistake. The Cloven Ones are creatures of violence and conflict, and they are far more cunning than the Empire believes. Worse still, the more noble and haughty the foe, the more the Beastmen are driven to prove their own supremacy by casting him down from his lofty pedestal and trampling his body beneath blood-encrusted, filthy hooves.

Biology
"When the world was very young, a group of nomads drifted north into the icy steppes where they tamed wild dogs to help herd wild boar, long-horned cattle, and goats, which they raised for food and clothing. When the Gate of Heaven collapsed, Chaos was released into our world, saturating the people of the north. The loosed energy of Chaos melded these poor simple folk with their herds and other animals, warping them into the Beastmen we recognise today"

- Dwarf Myth

In their most primal core, the Beastmen are indeed a fusion of Man and Beast, a transformation that came about from the perversion of Nature corrupted from the influence of Chaos. The term "Beastmen", is often used to describe a whole spectrum of different animal-like beings of varying appearance and distinction. To an extent, a Beastmen is also classified as a Mutant. Unfortunately, no scholar can truly say with certainty where a Mutant ends and a Beastman begins. There is no absolute dividing line between Human and Mutant, or between Mutant and Beastman, or between Beastman and Daemon; rather, there is simply a spectrum of taint.

Nevertheless, all Beastmen are seen to be spiteful and mean spirited creatures that revel in bloodshed and chaos and loathe order and the very concept of civilization in all its forms. Beastmen are not believed to be creatures of nature for there is nothing natural about their existence. The Herdstones and rituals of the Beastmen corrupt the very essence of nature itself: it is for this reason Beastmen are especially loathed by the Wood Elves of Athel Loren, with whom the Beastmen have been fighting a gruelling secret war for centuries.

Physiology
"Under the pallid moon his skull cracked and his eyes rolled. Hair sprouted and jaw gnashed, legs swelled, snapping and grinding and gristle-cracking loud enough to wake a corpse. New joints and muscles buckled and stung, blood-slick horns forced from black-thatched crown, toes gammed and hardened into flesh-ridged hooves. A long braying laugh tore its way from Heinrich's wattled throat as his hairy face lengthened into a biting maw, thick with teeth to grind and pieces."

- The Transformation of Heinrich Oncemann



A typical Beastmen generally has a certain appearance that is consistent with most other Beastmen breeds. A Beastmen are known as having the head and legs of various animals, the most common are usually the heads of cattle or goats, though some have been seen with traits of other animals as well. Their overall body, however, is noticeably Humanoid, with the chest and arms resembling that of a Man. They are capable of walking in an upright posture, but some have been known to walk on all fours. Their matted hair is encrusted with blood and dung, a haven for fat ticks and colonies of fleas that keep the Beastmen in a constant state of agitation. Due to their harsh living, a Beastmen is also naturally strong and well muscled.

The robust constitution of the Cloven Ones allows them to live upon the most meagre or unpleasant of diets. They prefer great chunks of meat above all but, unlike their larger Minotaur brethren, they do not care if it is fresh or if it is infested and maggot-ridden. Beastmen are cannibals who gorge themselves upon the corpses of their own kind without hesitation, entrails, hair, horns, hooves and all, and believe that to do so is to inherit the strength of the victim. This diet of dead meat is supplemented with grubs, hairy-legged spiders, poisonous centipedes, plump blowflies, and other vermin, as well as the occasional lost child or lone woodsman. Human flesh is a highly sought after delicacy to the Beastmen, and rivals have been known to fight to the death over a single human arm or leg.

As a product of Chaos mutation, Beastmen are typical born in one of three ways. The first way are generally by simple reproduction between a male Beastmen and the more docile and least numerous female variants. The second way is typically the most well known. In this case, a child of two Human parents might be born with obvious signs of mutation. Unable to cure their child, the parents are forced by law to give up their child to a local Priest or Witch Hunter to be properly extinquished before the child grows to become a Beastmen proper. However, most parents are incapable of doing such a thing, and so to both exponge the child from their lives as well as the parents sin, they would leave the child alone in the forest to die by the elements.

By doing so, the parents consider themselves clean from their actions, and allow the Gods to do what they wish with the child. However, such events almost never kills the child, for within hours of being left in this lonely state, the crying of the child will signal other Beastmen to its location. By then, the Beastmen would take the child as their own, and in doing so, swell the numbers of the tribes ever further.

The third way is when a Human is transformed into a Beastmen at some point later in their life. Such a situation is a painful process which results in the Human gaining many bestial traits. Neither fully Human or fully Beastmen, these creatures, known as Turnskins, are never truly accepted to either Human or Beastmen societies.

Psychology
All Beastmen are surly and mean-spirited, for they know they are destined to live a short, brutal life of squalor, suffering and pain. When their blood is up and foul-smelling breath snorts from their gorestained snouts, the Beastmen become belligerent and bellicose in the extreme, every gesture or glance brimming with hostility. The atavistic fury that each Beastman harbours within his soul is always but a moment away from the surface, and it is this rage that gives the Beastmen much of their unholy strength on the field of battle. Bitterness and spite simmers in the heart of every Beastman; it takes little more than a few well-chosen words to spur a Gor into a frenzy of unrestrained rage.

The sounds of distant battle will cause a Beastman to prick up his tufted ears in an instant; a fight or duel upon a woodland path will invariably bring dozens of Beastmen from all about in a very short space of time. Above all, though, it is the trappings of progress and civilisation that fan the embers of hatred burning within each Beastman's breast. A mere glimpse of bright colours, especially the colour red, will often be enough to get a Beastman's pulse racing with bloodlust. The sight of a proud flag or coat of arms, a pristine uniform or a magnificent statue elicits a powerful reaction in the Beastmen, for the things of order are anathema to the Children of Chaos. All caution is put aside in a desperate attempt to tear down and befoul the offending article, to stomp it into the mud, smear it with dung or rip it to pieces and chew on the remains.

Breeds
Although the vast majority of Beastmen all resemble mutants of bestial appearance, those that have fought and observe the Beastmen have found that there are not just one, but many different types of beastmen that all bear features that stand out amongst the rest of their kind. Differentiation between these breeds are often consistent and is measured on how much a single Beastmen has in terms of Bestial features. This can range from Beastmen with distinctly more human appearance to others that bear the greatest amount of bestial mutation. Typically, those Beastmen that bear the least amount of mutation yet still possess the heads and legs of a Beastmen are known as Truegors, a term to describe the purest individuals within a Beast tribe.
 * Gors - are the most common type, distinguished by the fact they possess horns. Gors are a broad class comprising more specific types. Below the Gors are the lowly breeds which look to them for leadership.
 * Caprigors - are the most common breed of Gor, recognizable by their goat or sheep-like heads and legs, along with, more importantly, their curling or straight goat horns. A Caprigor with these mutations and no others is called a Truegor, and are stronger, braver and more intelligent than other Caprigors.
 * Bovigors - are bull- or ox-headed beasts with cattle horns. Bovigors are also bullheaded in their nature, being very competitive and prizing brute power over any form of subtlety. Bovigors which are free of any mutation besides a bull's head and legs are considered Truegors. What seperates these Beastmen from the minotaurs is their much smaller stature.
 * Ungors - are much more variable in appearance. They possess some form of horns, but the Ungors themselves are not recognisable as either Caprigors or Bovigors. The most favoured Ungors might possess a spectacular array of horns, or a single, fine horn, but most have only small or misshapen versions, which other Beastmen find contemptible. They also bear the most humanoid appearance.
 * Brays - are a lowly breed of Beastmen. Their name refers to the braying cacophony they make when they feast or fight together. Brays can appear in any form, and are mainly distinguished by the fact they lack any kind of horns.
 * Turnskins - are humans who at a later stage of life began to develop mutations. Ostracised and despised by their former peers, they have no escape other than to flee human society. Many of them become renegades and some manage to join a beastmen tribe who will accept them as slaves.
 * Gaves - are Beastmen born to normal human parents. Some parents attempt to hide their child's deformities while others will kill it, but many mutant babies are abandoned near a forest, or set afloat in a river on a raft of reeds, to die of hunger and exposure. These creatures rarely die however, as the ears of Beastmen are always alert to the cries of their own kind. These foundlings are adopted and raised by Beastmen, who consider such a child a gift of their own fell gods.
 * Bray-Shamans - are the intermediaries between the tribe and the Gods. The majority are not powerful enough to challenge the tribal leader, but some ambitious ones are more than willing and able to fulfil both positions. Shamans are marked apart from other Beastmen by their heterochromic eyes, with one eye typically being a different color then the other. The specific colours are believed to signify the favour in which the Shaman is held by a particular Power. A Shaman might repeat the colours of his eyes in his robes, so that he might display the favoured colours of the Chaos Gods.
 * Beastwomen - are female and, compared to the beastmen, are shy and gentle.
 * Minotaurs - are massive beastmen with the head of a bull.

Hierarchy
"In many respects, the society and hierarchy of Beastmen are almost as sophisticated as those of Humans. Its structure is rigid, so that every member of a tribe knows his or her place, is completely aware of which other Beastfolk are higher and which are lower in the hierarchy; very un-Chaotic, you might think! Yet movement within that hierarchy is always possible. Any member can challenge the leader or any other member at almost any time, whether formally or informally"

- Heinrich Malz, High Priest of Verena



The Beastmen live by the base laws of nature, twisted beyond recognition by the corrupting influence that is Chaos. Though they may walk upright and speak, the Beastmen are as close to animals as they are to men, and so the strongest prevail while the weak perish. Violence simmers beneath the surface of every exchange, each Beastman seeking every opportunity to enforce his superiority. Domination is enforced with bloody violence, and every Beastman quickly learns his place under the heel of the warherd's chieftain. Should any one of their numbers show weakness, the victim will suffer for it, and his position within the warherd will be diminished.

In more simpler words, Beastmen hierarchy is typically dominated by the concept of strength and how favored the Beastmen is in the eyes of their gods. Those who have one or both of these traits occupy the higher epsilon of their tribes. Hence, each warherd is led by the strongest amongst them, whom are known collectively as Beastlords.

These tribal chieftain's occupy the apex of tribal authority. It is his absolute right to rule as he pleases provided that he has the strength to back it up. The chieftain is the master of his pack, but his supremacy is far from uncontested. To maintain his position, he has to continually fight off challenges from powerhungry Gors and Bestigors. He makes a totem from the pelts of those he has defeated to prove his right to rule, so that his standard becomes a gory record of his conquests. One day, though, a challenger will come who is stronger, younger and far more vigorous than the current incumbent, and then the chieftain's own hide will hang bleeding in the wind from the challenger's totem.

Tribal Hierarchy
Status within a Beast tribe is typically regulated by the strongest individuals within the group. Those wishing to obtain a higher position simply has to challenge an opponent of higher status in a brutal and often fatal duel. The only exception is the Ungors and Brays, those Beastmen or other mutants who are not graced with the horns that are the most distinctive feature of this race. No Gor, or horned Beastman, would consent to being ruled by an Ungor or Bray, no matter how skilled or powerful the lesser Beastman might be. In any case, such a situation never occurs in practice; Ungors and Brays are simply weaker and less physically imposing than Gors.

The occasional spirited Ungor who might step out of line is quickly torn to shreds by the Gors of the tribe. Mutants who do not have at least one animalistic feature, even if it is so minor as enlarged, fang-like teeth, are rarely accepted into Beastmen bands even as Ungors, but sometimes form their own tribes, sometimes led by outcast Gors or other powerful Chaos creatures. Above the ordinary Gors are the Bestigors, large and powerful beastmen that occupy the highest position within their tribe just below the Beastlord himself.

Some powerful Gors have too much ambition to be willing to serve as a Bestigor, and force their way up the hierarchy still further. At this point, these Gor leaders are known by many names such as Beastlords, Foe-Renders, Gouge-Horns, Wargors, Banebeasts, and Banegors. From here, the hierarchy becomes more complex; these different names are not merely local affectations, but precise statements of rank. These various Gor leaders will work together, each with their own smaller warband, banding together under one supreme leader of each horde. Fortunately, such co-operation is relatively rare, and the typical traveller would be most unlucky to be attacked by a Beastman herd that is lead not by one, but multiple leaders.

Language
Like the Skaven, the Beastmen have a difficult time forming the words of the Dark Tongue with their malformed bestial maws. As a result, they use a crude mixture of Dark Tongue, body movements, grunts, clicks, and pops, collectively called the Beast Tongue. This language sounds more like noise than a sophisticated language, being not much more than an indescribable array of muttering, growls and grumbling. Added to this are the shrieks, howls, and bleats that Beastmen use to punctuate and emphasise their phrases. Many scholars often haven considerable debate whether Beastmen speak a language at all. But regardless of prevailing opinions, Beastmen are an fairly intelligent race, and despite their brutish aspect, and the fact that some of their kind cannot speak at all, they use their Tongue effectively, conveying a wide range of subjects and concepts.

The Beast Tongue is beyond Mankind's ability to speak. In the rare instances when Beastmen deign to talk with Humans, they use a mix of basic Dark Tongue, body language, and gestures, only descending to Beast Tongue when frustrated. For their written language, the Beastmen use a simplified form of the phonetic runes used in Dark Tongue to mark Herdstones or to leave messages for other members of their herd. These are always crude for Beastmen lack the precision needed to write clearly. Most Beastmen use their bodily wastes instead, finding the experience far more rewarding than taking the time to scribble something on a rock.

Society
"They’re in the woods, you know. Always there. Any time you go in the woods, chances are you’re no more than a few leagues from a Beastman camp. Mostly ’ey just takes foresters and charcoal burners, but every so often a band of ’em will come out of the trees and take a village or a town, burning and killing and looting. They’s not so thorough as t’ Ratmen, you’ll usually find one or two folk o’ the village—either hid, or fled an’ come back, or sometimes left by t’ Beastmen to tell t’ tale to t’ other villages."

- Old Hob, Peasant Farmer

The Beastmen build no cities, for order and construction are anathema to them. They roam far and wide, following the scent of fresh meat and hunting down whatever wanders into the ancient hunting grounds that the Beastmen patrol. All the lands of the Old World are regarded as these very same hunting-grounds. It has always been so, since the coming of Chaos in a distant and legendary age. The Beastmen are tough and strong, for they must compete with the unimaginable horrors that haunt the woods.

Beneath the dark forest canopy, the Beastmen are often the prey of yet more disturbing creatures. Though the Beastmen dwell within the forests, they rarely stay in one location for long. Instead, they move from place to place along ancient paths within the territory of each warherd, occasionally encroaching upon the domains of other tribes or making new paths through the civilized lands of Man. Though no sane man can make sense of it, there is sometimes a pattern to these movements — sudden changes in direction, or an uncanny coordination between disparate warbands, that hint at a far grander plan.

When a halt is called, the Beastmen establish temporary sites from which to launch their merciless invasions of the surrounding territory. After these violent events, the Beastmen would then return to their sites and celebrate their victories in overt displays of feasting and brawling. Being highly nomadic, the tribe usually stay in the one place only for a short period of time before moving on to find another suitable site in their hunting grounds. Beastmen warbands will often roam for hundreds of miles before setting up camp again, frequently battling other Beastmen for the choicest spots.

Blood-Grounds
The lands that the Beastmen use to hunt their prey are known collectively as Blood-Grounds. Every single creature within the Beastmen's bloodgrounds is prey, whether it flees as do the Goblins, evades as do the Wood Elves, or fights back as do the Men. Even the act of marching to war is akin to the hunt, of tracking or stalking the prey. Battle itself is like unto the act of a predator running down its prey, or the clash of rivals fighting to the last to determine the right to leadership and territorial dominance.

The Beastmen that lurk within the Forest of Shadows, for example, are constantly at war with others who would shelter in its darkness. Every new day, the warherds clash with Forest Goblins, human bandits and the shambling hordes of rotten corpses raised by reclusive Necromancers who hide from prying eyes in the woods. Because of this, the warherds of the Forest of Shadows, though fewer in number, are amongst the strongest and most belligerent in the entire Old World.

When their strength waxes and they dominate their rivals within the Forest of Shadows, they make war upon foes outside of it. It is then that the lands of Men truly know the raw strength of the Beastmen. Occasionally, the warherds of the Forest of Shadows have fought such successful wars against the others that dwell there that their enemies have been driven out of the forest to plague the lands all about. Such was the case when the warherd of Ul-Ruk the Redhom launched a genocidal war against the Forest Goblins of the Bitter-Eye Tribe. The war lasted three entire seasons, culminating in the remains of the Forest Goblin horde being driven from the woods straight

The Beast-Paths
The vast forests of the Old World are crossed by a spider's web of paths only the Beastmen know. Where  these paths cross, there is to be found a site that is in some way significant to the Cloven Ones. These Beastpaths are located deep in the forests, far from the towns and highways of Man, yet they are far from hidden. Though native to the deep woods, the Beastmen are not naturally creatures of concealment and guile. When passing through the dense woodlands they simply barge their way through the foliage and trample flat the undergrowth. Over millennia of use, the beast-paths have become deep ruts in the ground, strewn with the bones of the enemy and other detritus.

So dense is the undergrowth that grows on the embankments that the chances are that no human tracker or huntsman seeking a beast-path would find one another than by pure coincidence. Any huntsman who have managed to stumble upon a beast-path would be extremely wise to turn and flee, for a warherd might be travelling the path and his own bones may soon be added to those discarded upon it.

Occasionally, two Beastmen warherds will run into one another whilst travelling in opposite directions along a beast-path. In such cases, the chieftains of each tribe will barge their way to the fore and meet in the center of the pathway to decide which tribe will stand aside and allow the other to pass. Amidst much bravado and exaggerated strutting, the chieftains will engage in vulgar displays of power until one either stands aside or, far more likely, the two come to blows. The ensuing combat will consist of the two chieftains clashing horns and headbutting each other until one is knocked unconscious and the winner determined. The winner's tribe will then pass along the beast-path, the grinning Gors only pausing to relieve themselves upon the prostrate form of the defeated chieftain.

Military
"Chaos strong. Gors strong. Humans, Elves, Dwarf -- weak, weak weak. We win. We fight, we kill, one day we win. One day soon. You -- if you lucky, we eat you, make you into part of us, make you better than you, stronger than any of you, stronger than all of you. Once this arm weak, like you. I eat many of your kind, now strong, strong, strong."

- Karzog, Beastigor Charioteer, Member of Gorthor's Herd