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 beastial humanoids that bear various traits of both Man and Beast, such as cloven hooves, muscular human bodies, horned beastial heads and a malign primitive intelligence. Ignorantly proud of their race, it is said that they are the proud 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 bitter, savage 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 are 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 a still 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 and the corrupting energies 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 is generally shown 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 the heads of Bears and Wolves amongst other. Their overall body, however, is noticeably Humanoid, with the chest and arms resembling that of a burly muscular 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.

They are also seen as universally carnivorous, as shown by their fondness of flesh, particularly those of Humans, as well as shown with their distinctly sharp, wolf-like teeth. Most Beastmen, especially those with cattle or goat heads are particularly known for their curving horns. Within their society, horns are the ultimate signs of rank and power, and their leaders always have the largest and most spectacular horns, which they often paint with blood, dung, or dyes to strike fear in the hearts of their enemies.

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 female variants. The second way is typically the most common and 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 in some point later in their life. Such a situation results in the Human gaining many beastial traits. Neither fully Human or fully Beastmen, these creatures, known as Turnskins, are never truly accepted to either Human or Beastmen societies.

Minotaurs
Minotaurs are bull-like humanoids twice the height and girth of a man and renowned for their enormous strength. Within the Warhammer setting they are known for pausing during battle to eat the bodies of their slain enemies (such is their blood greed). The most powerful among them are known as "Gorebulls" and "Doombulls" which act as leaders of the minotaurs. In earlier versions of the game the phrase "Minotaur Lord" was used. Also, with the 7th edition rule book, new minotaur-like creatures have been included in the book such as the Ghorgon and Cygor.

The Ghorgon are mutated four armed Minotaurs as tall as giants with swords of bones sprouting from two of the Ghorgons mutated arms, overcome and driven only by an overpowering desire to feed on and tear the flesh of the enemy. The Ghorgon is one of the most powerful monsters in the Warhammer world.

There is also the Cygor, a one eyed gigantic minotaur that can only see the world in the winds of magic, and feeds upon the souls of its victims. The souls of wizards and magic users are a delicacy to these beasts. The Cygors are also used by the Beastmen horde to hurl massive boulders into the enemy ranks.

Monsters
Beastmen use a variety of animals and monsters, either trained or broken into service that follow the warherds into battle, including Tuskgor which are very large boar-like creatures that the Beastmen use to pull Tuskgor Chariots. There are also the Tuskgors' larger cousins, the Razorgors: monstrously oversized boar-like monsters which Beastmen use to either pull stronger, larger chariots or to charge the enemy battleline in herds. Flocks of savage Harpies, packs of feral mutated warhounds, gibbering Chaos Spawn (Beastmen twisted beyond recognition into terrible new forms by the will of the Chaos Gods) and roaming Giants also follow the Beastmen horde.

Recently, Beastmen have learned to summon the Jabberslythes, abominations against nature that are a fusion of toad, slime wyrm, and insectoid. Their massive bodies are borne aloft on ragged wings, and they secrete vile poison, their blood is acidic, their mouths house long chameleon-like tongues to ensnare their prey and their very appearance can break the enemy's sanity.