"Back when the world was young they was our brothers. They ain't much to look at now, too cold by 'alf and no fun at a feast. But they're fast, and they ain't forgotten how to kill!"
A frost-encrusted Yhetee assailing the lowlands.[1a]
The Yhetee are a race of large, bipedal, humanoid ice-beasts that inhabit the highest slopes of many mountain ranges of the world of Mallus, particularly the Mountains of Mourn and the Ancient Giant Lands. High on the roof of the world, Yhetees survive by preying on the beast herds that dwell alongside them.[1a]
Yhetees are powerful, and can sprint as fast as an armoured horse. Because of this they are often employed by an Ogre Tyrant in the armies of the Ogre Kingdoms in much the same way cavalry is used by other armies, to deliver swift attacks on weak points in the enemy line, and to help pursue a defeated opponent from the battlefield. With their sheer brute strength and ferocious nature, Yhetees can smash a hole in any enemy battle line or maul any opponent that dares to stand up to them.[1a]
The Yhetees share a lot of characteristics with the Ymir, a race of large, bipedal ice-beasts that inhabit Norsca.
History[]
It is not uncommon for an Ogre tribe to include some Yhetees amongst its ranks. How or why the Yhetees are convinced to fight alongside the Ogres is a subject of much speculation. Some scholars suspect that Yhetees are a remote offshoot of the Ogre species dating back to the Big Migration.[1a]
Others theorise that the Yhetees owe the Ogres a great debt from somewhere in their distant past, even before they evolved into creatures of ice and snow, and hence their habitual reply to the Ogres' summons to war is one of ancestral honour rather than any kind of learned response.[1a]
Role[]
"The worst thing about a snowstorm is that Yhetees can be upon you before you know it - its like the storm itself grows claws!..."
A Yhetee wielding a shard of pure ice.
Yhetees are creatures of ice and frost. The pale pelts of the Yhetees make them hard to spot in the snowy landscape, and only when their shaggy hair is overly matted and blood-speckled are they easy to pick out.[1a]
There is a strange and almost supernatural connection between the Yhetees and the high altitude mountains themselves. Indeed, the Yhetees exude an aura of cold so powerful that those attacked by them will find their limbs stiffened and joints frozen, making them easy prey for these fierce and feral predators. A large scale attack by a whole pack of Yhetees is inevitably heralded by an avalanche, which the creatures trigger deliberately in order to trap their prey before loping down the side of the mountain to claw out and devour their half-frozen victims.[1a]
Yhetees have developed long, fused claws that are the natural equivalent of climbing pitons, with dewclaws on the back hinge, allowing them to climb landscape features other races could not negotiate. A blow from a Yhetee's iron-hard claws will rip off limbs and heads with ease and they are also ideal for quickly digging out half-frozen victims buried by snow and ice.[1a]
A Yhetee is a savage foe.
Even with their deadly claws, a vestige of Ogre-like behaviour remains in the Yhetees' ancestry to ensure that they still use clubs of a sort, fashioning weapons made from ice by the simple expedient method of snapping a bough from a tree and breathing pure cold onto it until it resembles a massive, ice-encrusted club. Dominant Yhetees sometimes use pairs of these, smashing apart everything in their path.[1a]
Yheteess that spend too much time in the lowlands (to them, anything not above the cloud-line) become lethargic, sickly and will begin to wither beneath a hot sun. For these reasons, once their obligation to the Ogres is complete, Yhetees will return to the mountainous lairs.[1a]
Warfare[]
A Yhetee emerging from his cave for the hunt as depicted in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.
Whatever the truth of the matter behind the connection between Ogres and the Yhetee, an Ogre Tyrant is able to summon Yhetees to war by a blast on the Great Horn, a huge curling tusk taken from the largest Ice Mammoth killed by his tribe. The acoustic qualities of this horn, twinned with the mighty lungs of the Ogre sounding it, send the blast echoing to the peaks of the mountain range. Riding great avalanches of snow, the Yhetees will enter the Ogre Kingdoms, ready for the great hunt that is open war.[1a]
Those who travel the mountain passes know the threat posed by the savage packs of creatures known as the Yhetee. Living far above the treeline, Yhetees always possess a ravenous hunger for flesh.[3a]
With their pale fur and penchant for lurking buried in the snowdrifts that cap the highest mountains, Yhetees stalk unseen while keeping a wary watch over the highland paths. When their quarry is spotted -- perhaps armed convoys daring passage over the high passes, or herds of creatures such as Rhinoxen or Ice Mammoths -- then the Yhetees surround the prey and trigger an avalanche. Tons of snow plunges down the mountainside, closely followed by the loping Yhetees, who can scale sheer cliff faces and negotiate steep drops at speed. With their foes crushed by rocks and snow, the Yhetees dig out their half-frozen victims using long, iron-hard talons to lop off limbs and heads, soaking the snows with blood.[3a]
Some Yhetees use crude clubs heavily encrusted with pure blocks of ice -- these are the perfect instruments with which to batter foes to a pulp. The few victims that survive such attacks claim that the Yhetees themselves exude an aura of unnatural frost, causing limbs to stiffen and making breathing laborious in such icy chill.[3a]
Miniatures[]
Trivia[]
The "Yhetees" are inspired by the Yeti, an ape-like creature of Himalayan folklore.