Reavers

The Reavers are those Drukhari who have surrendered themselves utterly to the ecstasy of speed and the perfect, obscene thrill of the kill delivered at velocity. Mounted upon Aeldari jetbikes stripped to their barest and most lethal essence, they first acquired their addiction on the slave-raids out of the webway, where running down fleeing prey became a hunger no ordinary murder could satisfy. To a Reaver the summit of experience is the maximum-impact kill, a blow struck at the very edge of control, and every raid is another chance to chase that spike of rapture.

When not abroad in realspace they hone their craft in the toroid racing arenas that girdle the loftiest spires of the Dark City. Night after night the Reavers hurl their machines through howling death-races in which no quarter is given and to finish last is quite literally to die. The champions obsess over their craft, reshaping vanes and blast-engines, boring their fairings so the shriek of their passage rings at a signature pitch, and wearing second-skin suits to defeat the resistance of the air.

It is in the killing pass that all this artistry is spent. Reavers pilot with such precision that they can shear off a head or open a throat with a single sweep of the razored keels and bladevanes that fringe their machines. A favoured stratagem is to fall from the high dark in a tight corkscrew, the whirling edges carving apart all caught in the descent, before the rider climbs once more into the clouds, already hunting the next perfect death.