"Only the humans have the wit to see it. We Druchii are too pallid in our blood, touched too greatly with the maladies of spite and melancholia, our palettes too jaded. As for the rest - they are too brutal, too unsubtle, or simply too arrogant and false to admit the truth. Only those delightfully insane, short-lived creatures called Man - born astride a grave compared to us, and yet always so desperately hungry to go on, to exist, whatever the price. The truth is bred in their bones. Only they could work such depraved wonders of tortured corpses and bitter desire, only they truly see the future. One day, soon or late, despite all our sorceries and our hubris, only one king shall reign and I name him Death."
- —Shadra the Unclean, Blood Seer of Karond Kar.[1a]
Necrofex Colossi are giant, reanimated hulks of flesh, rotting wood and any other pieces of debris used for its construction.
Overview[]
The baleful art of necromancy has born many a morbid creation into the world - from the animation of human carcasses into near-mindless zombies to nightmarish and insane creatures, part dead flesh and part automata, brought to unholy life to serve a Necromancer's foul purposes. Of this latter unhallowed form one of the most singular terrifying are the "Necrofexus Incabula Macros", as they are named in the damned Red Book of Van Hel, and more widely in arcane lore Necrofex Colossus.[1a]
These creations are the greater workings of the Necromancer's dark arts, far beyond the abilities of mere backwoods corpse-dancers and the subservient chatelaine wizards of the Vampire bloodlines. Instead only those Necromancers of singular power and (arguably insane) vision such as the greatest scions of the Necrarchs and infamous necromantic masters such as Sorn Ghoulskin and the legendary Van Hel himself are able to fashion them. In the history of the Old World, the creation of Necrofex Colossi has been thankfully rare, but in their terrible wake many dark stories have been spawned.[1a]
Examples of these baleful undead range from the terror of the "Gallows Giant" of Bƶgenhafen to the "Deathwalker" of Sorn Ghoulskin, who fashioned perhaps the largest Necrofex Colossus from the wreckage of the Iron Fetter, a great galleass hulk used as a floating prison, after it sank in a terrible storm he had summoned, and articulated it with the bodies of the drowned. Perhaps the widest-known example of a Necrofex Colossus in recent time belonged to the vengeful Infanta Leanora Navrre, now known to fable as "Darkness Daughter" who, after being outcast and hunted by the nobles of Estalia for her terrible crimes, dared to bind herself within a Necrofex Colossus and ravaged her erstwhile domains for more than a century like a daemon from the night.[1a]
These colossi vary in size and composition, but always hold true to the same basic form - a monstrous humanoid shape, akin to a giant, fashioned upon a frame of timber, iron or bone, onto which the "flesh" and musculature of the dead have been bound and shaped with scores or sometimes hundreds of corpses used in their creation. Their horrific bodies, cadaver-stitched and sealed with human fat, are left headless during the long hours of dark and terrible rites needed to prepare them.[1a]
When the time arrives to breathe unholy life into their forms, into the wound-like necks of the headless monsters living humans are lashed and sewn with profane surgery. Strong must be the soul of these living sacrifices, for only through a single life-force and mind acting as a focus for the necromantic magics of the magnitude needed to animate these abominations can they be controlled. Should the soul of the "head" perish, the whole creation will be torn apart by the hateful undead that make up its fabric in a self-destructive frenzy.[1a]
Should these dark and blasphemous rites prove successful however, the Necromancer will have created a truly terrifying monstrosity, a giant of unliving flesh that fears neither pain nor injury, a walking vortex of deathly energy around which the souls of the damned howl and against which no mortal can stand. With so much unholy power concentrated in their forms, Necrofex Colossi are no mere mindless thrall, but possess deathly wills and dark appetites of their own, and will often outlast their creator or even prove their undoing should their master's control slip even for a moment.[1a]
Abilities[]
- Vortex of Death - A Necrofex Colossus is an abomination against the natural order of the world and a loadstone of dark forces which sustain it and renew the countless cadavers that make up its body with their unholy power. With this, the Colossus can regenerate wounds or amplify the powers of other Necromancers.[1a]
Known Necrofex Colossi[]
- The Gallows Giant
Video[]
Sources[]
- 1: Monstrous Arcanum (8th Edition Supplement)
- 1a: pg. 48
- 2: Total War: Warhammer II (PC Game)