Plague-Claw Catapult

"My patient is covered from head to toe in boils, each red and angry and filled with pus. His fever has remained steady, accompanied by violent chills. No remedy seems to relieve his suffering. I have not seen a disease of this kind before, nor do I hope to ever see one again. I recommend that the victim’s body be incinerated once he expires, which, at the present rate, should be soon"

—Francois Martin, Physician.^[2a]

Plageclaw Catapult — A Plague-Claw Catapult unleashing a barrage of pestilence.

A Plague-Claw Catapult is a particularly foul Skaven siege weapon that hurls warpstone-fueled contagions and diseases of all kinds into the ranks of the enemies of the Clan Pestilens.

Role[]

Total War Plague-Claw Catapult Render 2 — A Plague-Claw Catapult as rendered for *Total War: Warhammer II*.

Since their rise to power, Clan Pestilens has been hard at work creating new strains of disease. The bubbling vats filled with carcasses, warpstone and foetid offal are forever brewing vile concoctions. While failing to create the ultimate contagion to rid the world of all surface dwellers, the Plague Monks have discovered their pestilent by-products make worthy weapons on their own. The unbalanced blend of poisons, chanted magics, and disease-soaked corpses makes a liquid that can kill on contact.^[1a]

Over the centuries many have suffered the wrath of the foul creations of Clan Pestilens. Rival clans have been destroyed outright as befilthed waste-water has been pumped in to flood enemy caves and warrens. It was in the Southlands that crude torsion devices first began hurling loathsome substances onto the foe during battle. The Plague Monks learned to deliver their pestilent payloads via catapult, the erupting splatter of deadly contents slaying targets in a toxic storm. Those splashed by the semi-congealed liquid find their skin simultaneously sloughing off in ruin and elsewhere erupting in glistening sores. Armour offers no protection against such loathsome weaponry.^[1a]

After the reconciliation following the second civil war, Clan Pestilens received technical help from the Warlock Engineers of Clan Skryre. Soon the crude war engines built by the Plague Monks were replaced with what are now known as Plagueclaw Catapults. These loathsome war machines are great wheeled scaffold-towers bearing adorned with pennants and runes, mounting torsion-powered arms. Pushed into position by ragged Clan Pestilens acolytes, the claw-like arm of a Plagueclaw Catapult is winched back and unleashed to lob hideous death, a putrid mixture of disease- soaked corpses, semi-congealed poisons and even traces of warpstone. The toxic semi-liquid leaves a glowing streak across the sky as it arcs earthwards.^[1a]

Notable Regiments[]

Virulent Batteries - One of Clan Pestilens’ most devastating assets, the war engines had laid low many an enemy before - destroying dwarf mountain fortresses, fouling lair-dens of rival clans, or battering apart the puny wooden constructs of the greenskins.