The beastmen were old before the Empire was born. When the first men of the Old World raised their crude palisades, the horned ones were already watching from the treeline: creatures wearing the shapes of man and beast fused into a single blasphemy, spawned wherever the touch of Chaos seeps into the wild places of the world. Scholars in Altdorf argue over where they came from; the beastmen themselves do not care. They know only that the forests were theirs first, and that everything men have built since is a theft waiting to be avenged.
Hatred of civilization is not something a beastman learns: it is carved into its soul before birth. A straight road, a ploughed field, a chapel bell: each is an agony to the children of Chaos, proof of a world being tamed line by line. Beastmen build nothing and want nothing built. Their whole existence bends toward unmaking: toward the day the walls come down, the fields go back to briar, and the last cities burn low enough for the trees to take them back.
At the heart of every herd's territory stands a herdstone, a rough monolith raised in some lightless clearing and blackened by generations of sacrifice. Around these stones the herds hold their braying convocations, drinking, brawling, and offering captives to the Dark Gods, and from them the warbands pour forth when Morrslieb, the Chaos moon, rides full. A brayherd raid arrives without warning at midnight and is gone by dawn, leaving burned steadings, emptied cradles, and hoofprints that lead back into trees no soldier wants to follow.
The Empire has burned the forests back a hundred times, and a hundred times the herds have returned, for the beastmen are an enemy that can never be rooted out. They hold no capital to sack and no throne to topple; kill a beastlord and the herds scatter, breed, and gather again behind bigger horns. They are the shadow the Old World casts, the reminder that civilization is a clearing in a forest without edges, and every peasant who bars the door at dusk knows, without being told, that the children of Chaos are still out there in the dark, waiting to take it all back.
Units
BestigorsElite · InfantryThe horn-proudest elite of the brayherds: hulking despoilers in looted plate whose great axes are made for splitting shieldwalls.
CentigorsCavalry · CavalryHalf beastman, half galloping beast: drunken raiders of the forest roads who arrive on a thunder of hooves and leave nothing worth saving.
CygorMonster · MonsterA one-eyed giant of the herd that senses the magic of its foes and hurls boulders to crush the wizards and witches it hungers to devour.
GhorgonMonster · MonsterA titanic, ravenous horror of the deep herd (all mouths and cleaving blades of bone) that devours the slain even as it kills the living.
GorsBattleline · InfantryThe braying heart of every warherd: horned warriors of muscle and spite who fight in howling masses beneath crude totems.
HarpiesCavalry · FlyersShrieking, winged she-creatures that wheel above the herd and fall upon war-machine crews and stragglers with raking talons.
JabberslytheMonster · MonsterA flying horror of the deep woods so wrong to look upon that minds shatter. Even the herds drive it before them rather than march beside it.
MinotaursElite · Monstrous InfantryBull-headed mountains of muscle and hunger whose charge caves in battle-lines, and whose feeding afterward empties them.
Razorgor HerdMonster · Monstrous BeastEnormous, half-mad chaos boars of the deep wood, near-impossible to control and eager to gore anything that moves.
Tuskgor ChariotCavalry · ChariotA rough-hewn chariot of lashed wood and bone drawn by furious tuskgors, crewed by bestigors who ride it howling into the foe.
Ungor RaidersBattleline · InfantryFurtive, small-horned ungors who skulk at the herd's edges with short bows, harrying prey from the shadows before the greater beasts close in.
UngorsBattleline · InfantryThe stunted lesser kin of the herds: spiteful spear-carriers and skirmishers, whipped to the front and hating every rank above them.
Characters
Gorthor the BeastlordThe BeastlordThe greatest Beastlord in the history of the herds: a warlord and prophet who briefly united the scattered brayherds into a single devastating tide.
Khazrak the One-EyeThe One-EyeThe most cunning beastlord in the Old World: the one-eyed master of the Drakwald whose blood-feud with Elector Count Boris Todbringer is paid in eyes.
Malagor the Dark OmenThe Dark OmenThe winged prophet of the herds: the Crowfather, whose passing shadow makes crops fail, priests stammer, and every herd within a hundred leagues gather for war.
Taurox the Brass BullThe Brass BullA monstrous minotaur bound in living brass, driven by a rage so total that he has forgotten everything but the joy of killing.
Ungrol Four-HornFour-HornA twisted, four-horned ungor who turned the herd's cruel hierarchy upside down, ruling a warherd of outcasts through cunning, spite, and dark prophecy.
Subfactions
Centigor WildherdsSwift-running herds of centigors that range far beyond the deep woods, overrunning waystations, toll bridges, and merchant caravans on the old forest roads. They strike drunk, fast, and laughing, and are gone before the dust settles. Where slower herds besiege, the wildherds simply arrive, ruin, and ride on.
Gor HerdsThe great mass of the brayherds: warbands of gors and ungors ruled by whichever chieftain carries the biggest horns and the bloodiest reputation. They are the herds that shadow the Empire's roads and forest villages, striking at dusk and melting away before the militia can muster. Every other terror of the dark woods gathers around their braying core.
Minotaur WarherdsHerds dominated by minotaurs, where doombulls rule through raw terror and the pecking order is settled in blood. A warherd on the march follows the smell of slaughter the way other armies follow banners. Even allied herds keep their distance once the bull-horned ones begin to feed.
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