"Plagued by visions, Cygors are cursed to see the Winds of Chaos. Naturally, this makes them mad and extremely dangerous."
- —Description of Cygors in Total War: Warhammer.[3]
A Cygor is a massive, one-eyed Beastman and a distant cousin of the Minotaurs, but because they hail from the most tainted of all the realms of the Old World, they have diverged greatly from their kin. Cygors roam the forests of the Old World, smashing through trees they cannot see and laying waste to anything in their path.[1a]
Their single eye allows them to see the material plane poorly, as they are only able to truly discern the flow of the Winds of Magic across the mortal world. They crave only one thing that soothes their unquenachable hunger -- the souls of wizards and other spellcasters.[1a]
Role
A Cygor faces off against the forces of the Empire.
Occasionally, deep in the forests of the Old World, a tracker will come across a mysterious corridor of devastation smashed through the woodland. It is a path of uprooted trees and trampled undergrowth that is remarkable in two ways -- it would take a creature of enormous strength to push through such dense terrain, and even more surprisingly, the trail seems as if it was chosen by a blind man, unable to avoid obstacles, but forced to plough straight through them. And so it is, for these are the tracks left by a Cygor that hunts the arboreal heartlands.[2a]
A Cygor as rendered in Total War: Warhammer.
Cygors are huge, hideously malformed giants, similar in form to Minotaurs, yet each possessed of but a single eye that barely sees the world in the centre of its forehead. Through this eye, the Cygor is cursed to see not the material realm that mortals perceive, but the ever-shifting Winds of Magic, seeing perfectly the spectrum of arcane power as the Winds blow through and around the indistinct, ghostly shapes of the mortal world that populate their vision. Assailed by such visions since birth, Cygors are all quite mad.[1a]
Concept art of a Cygor for Total War: Warhammer.
Thus, a Cygor will blunder indiscriminately through the material world, unable to catch the prey it so insatiably wants to devour.[2a] They hunger constantly, for they can scarcely perceive the prey other Minotaurs might hunt down and devour. While a Cygor will devour his prey with as much, if not more, greed than a Minotaur, the victim's body is merely a vessel for that which the Cygor truly craves -- the soul.[1a]
Conversely, a Cygor can detect those possessed of magical powers from leagues away, for the souls of these individuals blaze with searing light in their tainted sight.[1a] Those who wield magical powers are seen as shining beacons and the Cygor desires to consume such sweetmeats above all others.[2a]
A Cygor is a potent addition to the armies of their fellow Beastmen.
These gigantic, eldritch predators constantly hunt wizards, warlocks, and witches, desperate to consume their flesh and thereby ingest the bright soul within.[1a] When the Storms of Magic roll across the lands, a wizard might dare to bind a Cygor, bidding the creature to stride the battlefield seeking to pluck out the foe's spellcasters and devour them.[2a]
Cygors are drawn to war by the twisted will of the Dark Gods, taunted by half-seen visions of light planted by the Chaos Gods or by the most powerful of the Beastmen's Bray-Shamans. They unwittingly do the will of the Dark Gods even though they are cursed by them to an eternity of pain, bitterness and insanity.[1a]
On the field of battle, Cygors will seek out those wielding the powers of magic as a shark drawn to blood. They carry with them the rune-etched remnants of shattered waystones, temples and monoliths, for this is the only unliving material they can truly perceive. These boulder-sized missiles they hurl into the ranks of the foe so they can close with their prey unhindered.[1a]
The sheer size and ferocity of a Cygor is terrifying enough to mortals, but those who know of their terrible hunger for magic fear them above all.[1a] The mere presence of a Cygor is often enough to cause enemy wizards to foul the casting of their spells.[2a]
To the wizard a Cygor is unutterably fearsome, for they know that of all the warriors on the field of battle it is they alone that the Cygor wants to catch up in its gnarled and calloused hands, and lift them upwards to that hungry maw, their flesh it wants to tear apart, and their soul it must devour to slake its unending thirst.[1a][2a]
Notable Cygors
- The Eye of Morrslieb - The Eye of Morrslieb was a warpstone-mutated Cygor that had especially vivid visions and a terrifying eye that could freeze its enemies in place.[3]
Notable Regiments
- Salzenmund Soul-eaters[3] - Perhaps the scariest of all giant humanoid monster species, Cygors are some of the angriest creatures to roam the Old World. The Salzenmund Soul-eaters are a pair of Cygors even bigger and stronger than others of their kind, making them among the most difficult monsters to hunt. Their cycloptic eye sees not only the Winds of Magic, but also dampen their use for most spellcasters in their presence.
Miniatures
Videos
Sources
- 1: Warhammer Armies: Beastmen (7th Edition)
- 1a: pg. 49
- 2: Storm of Magic (8th Edition)
- 2a: pg. 108
- 3: Total War: Warhammer (PC Game)
Gallery
