There is a second moon in the skies of the Mortal Realms, and it is wrong. The Bad Moon careens across the heavens with no orbit and no warning, a leering face of loonstone that answers to no god and keeps no schedule. Where its sickly light falls, fungus erupts through flagstones, sane minds curdle, and every cave, cellar and sewer begins to giggle. For the light carries the Gloomspite, a seed of purest malicious glee, and it takes root in the heads of grots. To the Gloomspite Gitz the Bad Moon is god, prophet and battle-plan in one, and wherever it wanders they follow in their cackling millions, utterly certain that this time everything beneath it belongs to them.
The Moon's congregation is a carnival of everything the deep places breed. Moonclan grots swarm up from their lightless fungus-farms in hooded thousands, herding squigs: bounding spheres of fang and appetite that are less livestock than weather. Troggoths lumber through the Moon's gloom like boulders that have learned to migrate, dim and regenerating and impossible to argue with. And in the web-strangled corners of the realms the Spiderfang stir, venom-blessed devotees of the Spider God who join the procession on eight legs. It is not an army so much as a pilgrimage, with a Loonshrine at its heart and lunacy for a liturgy.
It is easy to laugh at them, and that is precisely how cities die. One grot is a coward with a sharp stick; a hundred thousand are a flood that does not much mind how many of itself drowns. The Gitz do not besiege so much as infest: the gloom arrives first, then the mushrooms, then the giggling in the cellars, and by the time the garrison stops joking about it the streets are a forest of toadstools and the gates are open from the inside. Survivors of a Gloomspite invasion rarely describe battles. They describe waking to find the sky the wrong colour and the world already lost.
Beneath the squabbling and the squig-bites lies a faith of genuinely apocalyptic ambition. The Gitz believe a day is coming when the Bad Moon will swallow every sky at once, the realms will become one endless damp cavern lit by its grin, and everything that ever walked in daylight will learn what the bottom of the food chain feels like. The Moon itself promises nothing. It crushes its faithful beneath falling loonstone as cheerfully as it crushes their enemies, and the grots adore it anyway, for spite shared is spite doubled, and the Gloomspite Gitz have enough to bury the world.
Units
Arachnarok SpiderBehemoth · MonsterA living temple of the Spider God: a spider the size of a keep, venom-fanged and howdah-crowned, beneath which whole tribes of Spiderfang march chanting.
Boingrot BounderzCavalry · Squig CavalryThe Moonclan's answer to knighthood: grots in iron caps couching pokin' lances atop war-squigs, arriving at the enemy in a series of devastating arcs.
Dankhold TroggothBehemoth · MonsterA giant of the deep caves whose fungus-crusted hide shrugs off magic and blade alike, awakened from ages of slumber to crush the foe with a stone club.
Fellwater TroggothsElite · Monstrous InfantryReeking swamp-dwelling troggoths whose noxious vomit dissolves armour and whose overpowering stench alone can fell a warrior at close quarters.
Loonsmasha FanaticsAmbusher · InfantryDeranged grots hidden within the mob, unleashed to whirl into the enemy with monstrous ball-and-chain weapons in a blur of lethal, indiscriminate carnage.
Mangler SquigsBehemoth · MonsterA monstrous knot of chained cave squigs driven into a berserk rampage, dragging shrieking grot handlers behind them as they smash all in their path.
Rockgut TroggothsElite · Monstrous InfantryStone-skinned troggoths of the deep places whose hides shrug off swords and sorcery alike, and whose thrown boulders arrive like arguments no wall can win.
ShootasBattleline · InfantrySkulking mobs of Moonclan grots who loose clouds of crude arrows from the shadows, brave only so long as the Bad Moon glares overhead.
Sneaky SnufflersSupport · InfantryFungus-harvesters with trained snufflesquigs whose moon-touched crops whip nearby mobs into a frothing, cackling frenzy.
Squig HerdBattleline · BeastsBounding spheres of fang and appetite driven loosely toward the enemy by herders whose job security is measured in fingers.
Squig HoppersCavalry · Squig CavalryWhooping grots lashed atop half-tamed squigs that bound wildly across the battlefield in enormous, uncontrollable leaps of tooth and terror.
StabbasBattleline · InfantryThe endless spear-mobs of the Moonclan: hooded grots with pokin' spears and moon shields, dangerous in exact proportion to how many of them there are.
Characters
Loonboss on Mangler SquigsThe Squig-riderA grot warlord clinging atop a rampaging knot of chained squigs, leading the charge by sheer momentum as his monstrous mount smashes all before it.
SkragrottThe LoonkingThe self-crowned king of every Moonclan and prophet of the Bad Moon itself: the cleverest, most treacherous grot ever to squint at a sky and see a throne in it.
TruggThe Troggoth KingThe colossal, half-dreaming king of the troggoths, crowned by instinct, trailed by the greatest troggherd of the age, and wreathed in the wild magic leaking from the broken engine fused to his back.
ZarbagThe Madcap ProphetA twitching, fungus-addled grot shaman who reads omens in drifting spores and blights the foe with clouds of choking, hallucinogenic rot.
Subfactions
Jaws of MorkA gittish horde devoted utterly to the squig in all its bouncing, biting glory, convinced the beasts are the Bad Moon's own children and Mork's favourite joke. The Jaws of Mork fight as a stampede of Boingrot Bounderz and loose-herded cave squigs that hits fortress gates like red weather. Their leaders are whoever has survived riding the biggest squig the longest.
Moonclan GrotsThe hooded heart of the Gloomspite: fungus-farming cave grots beyond counting, armed with pokin' spears, moon-faced shields and a bottomless supply of spite. Individually they are cowards of legendary calibre; together, drunk on fungus-brew and prophecy, they are a tide that has drowned whole cities. Every Moonclan warren is certain the Bad Moon watches it especially.
Spiderfang GrotsGrots who crawled into the webs and came back changed, the Spiderfang worship the Spider God and ride its skittering children to war. Their shamans drink venoms that would drop a gargant and call the resulting visions scripture. Where an Arachnarok walks, the Spiderfang follow in its shadow, chittering prayers.
TroggherdsLumbering congregations of troggoths (stony Rockguts, reeking Fellwaters and cavernous Dankholds) that drift after the Bad Moon's gloom by pure instinct. A troggherd fears nothing, remembers nothing, and regrows anything cut off it. The grots trailing behind consider themselves its clergy; the troggoths have not noticed them.
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