User blog:Ilniaj/The Armies of Hashut

Long ago there was a schism among the dwarves caused by the great and terrible Dragon named Hashut, who has set herself up as a dark and terrible god among them. Like all dragons of the previous age, she is closely related to tyranny, greed, fire and hatred, qualities that have infected and twisted the dwarves that she claims dominion over. In times past, the dwarves of the northern realms suffered greatly under the age of a previous demon lord, abandoned by both the gods and their people from the south. While most dragons would have seen this as an opportunity to sack and loot the riches of the dwarves, Hashut had far more visionary and malignant intentions in mind. She was the god that answered the dwarves prayers for salvation, saving and subjugating their holds one by one. Over the millennium, in exchange for homage, devotion and servitude, Hashut has gifted the Dwarves she rules with malign sorcery and powerful secrets. Because of her, the Dwarves of Hashut have pursued several foul industries that they would have never contemplated earlier, cruel sorceries involving the manipulation of souls and the use of dark magic without the safety and stability of runes.

With the influence and power of the Dwarves of Hashut (and by relation hers) growing slowly but steadily, she seeks to take the position of the Demon Lord and overthrow the gods of the world. Hashut was one of the many rivals that Lilith had to face in order to ascend to and maintain her position as Demon Lord. Despite Lilith succeeding at gaining the position and cementing her power, Hashut has rejected the changes that Lilith made to monsters, never taking her humanoid form and even figuring out how to cut herself off from it completely. She does see merit in the eventual end goal of Lilith uniting humans and monsters as that means that Lilith would have dominion over both but does not understand why Lilith has made all monsters take on a human-like form which in many cases has made them far weaker than the form they had in ages past. Ironically, despite subjugating themselves to a monster, the Dwarves of Hashut have the most independence from monsters in the current age, their southern counterparts having nearly entirely turned themselves into a strain of Succubus.

The armies of the Dwarves of Hashut are implacable on the march, with rank upon rank of heavily armored warriors accompanied by cackling goblins and hissing steam engines, often bound with aethyric entities. They are brutish, grotesque figures plated in black or burnished armor of heavy plate and jagged scales, crowned with tall helms mounted with flame tongue spiked coronas or sharpened horns. Their livery is bright and bloody, and their distorted faces, if they are seen at all, are bestial and filled with malice. Their presence is intended to inspire fear in their foes, and they have lost none of the toughness or skill-at-arms of their southern Dwarf kin. To them there are few greater pleasures than the bloody sundering of a foe be it by crushing ax blow or the flesh-shredding volley of blunderbuss fire.

Second only to Hashut, the Sorcerer-Prophets rule with iron-fisted malice as lords and masters of all they survey. Their lore is terrible and ancient, and involves the study of machines, the mastery of forge-craft, weapon making and terrible dark magic taught to them by Hashut. Combined, these create terrifying weapons and arcane devices of power and destruction. Their works of sorcery and engineering are legendary, from the great obsidian and basalt towers and ziggurats drawn forth from the earth, and the dark iron towers raised up throughout the Dark Lands, to the steam-hissing engines that crush rock in slave mines and the baroque armor which adorns their warriors. All are their dark knowledge made manifest. In the Temple of Hashut, the Sorcerer-Prophets and Hashut meet in a great conclave of evil to make their plans of domination. There is no leader nor formal hierarchy among them, but the strength of ones voice depends on ones age and power, for Dwarves of Hashut respect age and knowledge just as much as other Dwarfs. Unlike other Dwarfs, the Sorcerer-Prophets have embraced the art of sorcery. With but a word or mere gesture, the Sorcerer-Prophets smite their enemies and cause great, fiery ruin around them. They wield either the lore of fire, metal, death or a unique dark lore developed by Hashut and named after her. However, Dwarfs are not suited to magic and so they pay a terrible price for their power. All of them suffer from the Curse of Stone, for each time the magic they command slips from their grasp, their bones and flesh slowly petrify into unfeeling, blackened stone, beginning with their feet and slowly spreading to the rest of their body until they are trapped screaming silently within a prison of their own immobile body. These relics are placed on the road leading to the black heart of thier lands, serving as warnings to those who dare enter their domains.

Before becoming a Sorcer-Prophet, a Dwarf must start as a Daemonsmith, master craftsmen and engineer able to forge weapons and machines of war that are second to none. Toiling in the great foundry cities, these individuals bend rock and metal to their evil vision. Only their southern kin and Gremlins rival them in precision engineering and weapon-making, while those kind use natural resources and their own skill within their foundries and armories, the sinister Daemonsmiths forge their instruments through arcane rituals, enslaving souls and aethyric entities and evil sorcery. In battle, Daemonsmiths are terrifying and unpredictable opponents, their dark magics able to draw upon the fires of old earth, transmute the air to Ash and choking smoke and fan the flames of hatred in the hearts of their followers. They are also master artisans of war and may lend their skills to war machine crews or themselves bear savage and potent examples of their craft such as black powder weapons, mighty armor, flasks of burning alchemical oil and magical weapons. Each however must display great caution when they wield their occult power, for each spell they wield could also be their last.

The Sorcerer-Prophets and Hashut aren't the only rulers. Rather, various fortresses and city-areas are ruled over by Overlords, who employ their soldiers, the Infernal Guard, to keep order. They have proven themselves to be brutally effective in battle and have fought in many campaigns, giving many hundreds of years' worth of tactical experience. Along with the Council of Hashut, Overlords control the Dwarf Empire with an iron fist. These wanton tyrants are the face of the Dwarves of Hashut's leadership. They are the generals of dark legions of Chaos Dwarfs and where they tread, death and destruction follows. Whether born into a noble family or a veteran and trusted soldier, Despots are those Dwarfs with enough authority to lead and command other Dwarfs in the defense of their Empire, or to act as a second-in-command to an Overlord. They are directly responsible for overseeing the heinous labor camps known as Hell Pits, where Goblin thralls toil and die for the glory of the Dwarves empire, and to whom the Chieftains report directly. They are rightly feared and respected by both other Dwarfs and their treacherous goblin underlings. Both the Overlords and Despots are gifted with artifacts of terrifying power and ancient provenance by their masters – often bound with spirits enslaved to their will – they are extremely dangerous foes in battle and always lead from the front, seeking to capture the attention of their Sorcerer Lord so they can rise in his estimation and become more powerful still.

There are relatively few Dwarves in Hashut's thrall, the vast number of slaves who toil for them outnumber them many times over. The backbone of these Dwarves armies are the Infernal Guard, broad, strong and resilient as only Dwarves can be. Few of the armies of the world can equip any of their troops with Full Plate Armor and even then, it is reserved for their elite. This is not so for the Dwarves of Hashut, who equip every member of the core of their army in Blackshard Armor, specially forged to provide not only the protection of full plate but increased resistance to flaming attacks. Infernal Guard have been sighted equipped with a large variety of equipment. The least among them simply wield hand axes and shields - forming nearly impenetrable shield walls - but they have also been witnessed wielding great axes as an alternative melee weapon. For ranged firepower, they wield blunderbusses, crossbows or even strange hybrids between halberd and firearm called Fireglaives. The Infernal Guard are drilled ceaselessly by their cruel Despots, and barracked in the burning deeps beneath Black Fortresses.

Infernal Guard units are sometimes supported by weapon teams of two dwarves equipped with Inferno Guns and Bazukas. The Inferno Gun is a light, portable cannon. Unlike heavier cannons that fire a solid ball, the Inferno Gun fires blasts of shrapnel. The secret of the Inferno Gun is its breech-loading mechanism; the gun has an ingenious breech block which can be detached from the rest of the barrel and loaded with a charge of gunpowder and a variety of shrapnel. Lead shot, pebbles, nails, rusty iron scrap, chains, broken bottles and even coins can be stuffed into the breech block. Each gun comes with two breech blocks so that a spare charge can be loaded while the first shot is aimed and discharged. The breech block is simply inserted into the rest of the barrel and wedged tight before firing. The Inferno Gun's effect is devastating. The shrapnel inflicts hits on enemy troops within a broad arc of fire. This wide arc of fire, and the weapon's mobility in the hands of experienced operators, make the Inferno Gun an excellent weapon for providing close artillery support. The Bazuka is a simple-seeming tube like weapon that fires a rocket with an explosive charge. Its main advantage, apart from the ease of manufacture, is that it is light and relatively simple to use. It dispenses with the need for a cumbersome chassis and can be carried about with a crew of two - one to carry the rockets, one to carry the gun.

The greatest among the Infernal Guard are selected to join the Infernal Ironsworn - the personal enforcers of the Sorcerer-Prophets. Infernal Ironsworn function almost identically to Infernal Guard but their veterancy makes them more skilled and stronger fighters. Infernal Ironsworn can be equipped with blunderbusses and crossbows just like Infernal Guard but in melee combat they only ever wield a hand weapon and shield but this is all they need. The industriousness of the Dwarves means they can equip their elite regiments with ensorcelled hand weapons which the Infernal Ironsworn wield in combination with their shields.

Clad in Granite armor that exchanges the flame resistance of Blackshard Armor for increased resistance to magic, the Immortals keep vigilance over the ruling Sorcerers and all other prominent leaders in Hashut's empire, not to protect them but to watch them. Immortals are judge, jury and executioner. They investigate all political intrigue, all suspicion of deception and misconduct, nothing escapes their notice within their vile domain and no Dwarf is beyond their scrutiny. It is the sole duty of the Immortals to preserve the empire of Hashut by destroying threats to it from both within and without. No matter how powerful or influential a particular Overlord or Sorcerer-Prophet might be, they cannot escape the swift justice of the Immortals if they are deemed treasonous or merely believed to be a danger to their Empire. In times of war, the Immortals accompany the Sorcerer-Prophets and Overlords into battle, defending them to the death but just as easily turning their blades upon their charge if mere conjecture arises. The only one above the reproach of the Immortals is Hashut herself and even then, there was a time when she was held under suspicion for fear that the Demon Lord Lilith might manage to subvert her until Hashut asserted her true independence. In terms of equipment, Immortals are equipped solely with melee weapons, either wielding a Great Weapon or axe and shield.

Among the warrior castes of the Chaos Dwarfs, there are those who revel in direct brutality far more than others. Zealot Berzerkers usually brand their skin with white hot irons in the shapes and symbols of Hashut to show their fealty to her. This is extremely painful, and screaming is a sign of weakness – anyone who does so will keep being branded until he get used to the pain, or die from his injuries. The brandings aren't just symbolic, they are embued with powerful magic, allowing them to shrug off arrow and bolts while racing for the enemy lines to commence their grisly worshiping. The brandings also grant these devout followers the gift of immunity against fire. Zealot Berzerkers will wade through any firestorm and emerge on the other side unscathed, be it a dragon’s breath or alchemical flames from the flamethrowers of their hated cousins. On the battlefield, Zealot Berzerkers are veritable whirlwinds of destruction, swinging their double axes in wide arcs with no regard for their own safety. To fall in battle is the only death thinkable for a Zealot Berzerker, and their only goal is to bring as many foes with them as possible.

One of the more horrid creatures in the service of the Dwarves of Hashut are the Bull Centaurs. Bull Centaurs resemble a Centaur, except they are far larger and with the upper body of a dwarf growing out of where the head of a bull would be. Bull Centaurs are a bit slower than Centaurs, but far larger, stronger and tougher, and with scaly skin making them even more resilient, allowing them to easily guard a flank of an army, and crush the flanks of the enemy. What makes them even more dangerous is the fact that they are as intelligent as the Dwarves they were formed from, giving them a significant amount of independence and tactical capabilities. Normally, creatures of equivalent size would have to be ridden by a more fragile rider or risk the creature fleeing as soon as a fight turns against them. Among them are the even more dangerous Ruks and Taur-Ruks, enormous champions of the Chaos Dwarf armies with only a single purpose, slay the enemy champions and break entire units.

The Whirlwind is a two-wheeled cart pushed by a Bull Centaur, with spikes fixed to the front and scythes protruding from the wheels. Three rotating flails and three rotating scythes are mounted on the front, and are driven by means of cogs and gears linked to the axle. The flails and scythes therefore only rotate while the cart is being pushed. The Whirlwind is principally a device for breaking up and smashing through solid formations of troops. Should the device succeed, it may proceed to engage other targets beyond. Several of these devices may form up in a unit to create a combined attack. The Tenderizer is a variant of the Whirlwind. Its axle is linked by gears to three enormous concussive implements. As the device is pushed forward these implements batter and crush foes in its path. It operates in a similar way to the Whirlwind except that the nature of the damage inflicted is different.

While Infernal Guard provide the backbone of the Chaos Dwarf armies, goblins provide the bulk. These goblins are not the endearingly childlike creatures of the current age, but ugly, vicious and cowardly monsters. When Hashut developed the ritual that cut her off from the Demon Lords influence and allowed her to maintain her preferred form forever, she taught the ritual to her subordinate Sorcerer-Prophets. The Dwarves made effective use of the rituals, preferring to use it on monsters who were non-sapient in the previous age, or individually weak. The Goblins of the previous age are an example of the latter, easily overpowered by any dwarf and rejected by others as a visible symbol of the previous age. While poor warriors, goblins make excellent cannon fodder for the dwarven army, every arrow, axe swing, bullet or similar that is directed at a goblin is not directed at a dwarf. Despite their status as fodder, goblins under a Chaos Dwarf army are at least decently equipped, lightly armored and shielded at all times and possess short bow or spear depending on their role.

Goblins by necessity have to discover underhanded advantages and are always searching for an underhanded trick, be it a sneak attack or ganging up on a weakened enemy. Some goblins excel at darting forward and stabbing at weak points before slinking away. It is almost magical the way they seem to pop out of nowhere - striking from out of the shadows. Such devious goblins are known as Nasty Skulkers. Nobody skulks like a goblin and the Nasty Skulkers are the skulkiest. Armed with razor sharp daggers, great cleavers or heavy polearms that are often poisoned, they sneak deep into the field before a battle and lie in wait. When the time is right, they leap out and strike before scurrying away under a confounding cloud of smoke. It's all to easy to dismiss the average Goblin but when a Nasty Skulker springs from nowhere to lands on your shoulders, it is enough to challenge that assumption.

Some armies will employ bodies of giant wolf mounted goblins as scouts and light cavalry in battle. These raiders, all bandits and robbers by disposition, are if anything, even less reliable than their footslogging kin - their mounts allowing them to flee with much greater speed when the need arises. This tendency is however outweighed somewhat by their usefulness as skirmishers and foragers, particularly to slave-raiding expeditions who must travel far and wide often into unfamiliar and hostile lands. Using the swiftness of their wolf mounts, the goblins target weak or isolated enemies to prey upon and surround their enemies while firing volleys of barbed arrows. After a victory, the Goblin Wolf Riders give chase to their defeated adversaries, harrying them while shouting insults and flailing their weapons as their foes retreat.

Occasionally, a particularly successful and feared killer among the goblins will rise to prominence, styling themselves a "Khan" after the goblin tribes of the eastern lands. These skulking killers can prove useful for marshaling their kin in battle, but should they prove too successful and are seen as even the remotest threat to their master's dominance, they will most likely end up impaled over their lord's gatepost as a reminder to others of the rewards of getting ideas above their station.

Sometimes, the goblins are allowed construct and use Bolt Throwers - a giant, lever-operated bow that fires huge bolts capable of penetrating deep into ranked formations of troops, skewering masses of soldiers at once or even dispatching a large beast in a single deadly shot. Although crude and primitive compared to the arsenals of the Chaos Dwarfs, Goblin Bolt Throwers can provide effective ranged support...that is, if they ever actually hit...

The desires of the Sorcerers and Daemonsmiths are for power and domination, and for weapons and soldiers that will make them invincible — and it is from this desire that the K'daai Fireborn — the scions of fire, were born. While most aethyric entities and souls that the dwarven wizards capture or summon are bound into armor, weapons, war machines and constructs to enslave them and give them form, the K'daai are meant to be something more, beings of half-daemon stuff and half-raging fire drawn from the magma of the deep earth and birthed in boiling blood, given form and contained within an armored framework of articulated iron and rune-stamped bronze. The K'daai are devastating shock troops, but fractious and difficult to control, and as the destructive energies contained within them slowly exhaust themselves, they burn through the binding rituals placed upon the entity within, slowly bringing about their destruction. As such their use is confined, and between battles they slumber as cold frameworks of barbed iron, awaiting the rituals of blood and fire that awaken them to slaughter.

Far larger than the K'daai Fireborn fashioned as shock troops, K'daai Destroyers are massive constructs created in the form of mighty warriors or iron beasts, such as gargantuan monstrous bulls and other nightmarish creatures, awakened by mass blood sacrifice and let loose upon the enemy. The Sorcerer-Prophets have succeeded almost too well in the creation of the K’daai Destroyers, for they are near-mindless, elemental forces of destruction, and need to be laid to rest as cold and silent metal until they are required in battle, where they burn bright and terrible, but briefly. The process to forge these monsters of metal and flame is costly and arduous in the extreme. This limits their number, making them almost the stuff of legend. The dark imaginings and limits of deadly craftsmanship are the only end to the terrible forms a K'daai Destroyer can be fashioned and shaped into. Accordingly although all are large and bestial, some may be created in the image of a great bull, another a Rhino or even a dragon or some other twisted creature conjured from the dark imagination of its creator. All however are beasts of blackened and jagged metal suffused with glowing runes of binding and alive with hellish flame.

Woe to any giant or cyclops that are captured by the Dwarves of Hashut for their fate is to be turned into a Siege Giant, a mutilated, half-insane creature whose body has been armored against attack by layer upon layer of heavy iron and bronze plates. These are firmly secured to the unwilling Giant by heat-fusing, riveting and nailing them deep into the Giant's flesh, and in some cases in bolting them directly into its massive skeleton. The end result is a towering, iron-clad monster, even more clumsy and unwieldy than before, but now all but impervious to arrows and shot thanks to its armored shroud. Likewise suitable weapons such as immense hooked blades, steel pick-axes the size of carts and even massive weighted chain-flails are lashed or implanted directly to the Giant's arms to enable it to scale or tear down fortifications and slaughter the largest monsters. Some even are further fitted with scaling hooks and chains, enabling the creature's dead carcass to be used as a scaling platform should it fall, while the most unfortunate have the burning runes of Hashut branded into their armor and flesh, driving them to ever greater heights of savagery at their master's command. Not all such 'improvements' prove survivable for the creature forced to undergo them and so Siege Giants are scarce and highly prized commodities.

Another monster that was non-sapient in the previous age that is now used by the Dwarves of Hashut in its original form is the Chimera. The Chimera is a composite being, composed of a serpent, lion, eagle, and goat. About fifteen feet long, its body resembles that of a large feline with the hindquarters of a goat. The tail is usually that of a lion, but terminates in a spiked or clubbed end, or barbed with a venomous sting. The creature’s wings are those of some enormous eagle. Its hulking body is powerful and quick and its claws are long and sharp. The heads of some Chimera breathe fire in the manner of Dragons, whilst other heads sprout razor-sharp fangs or jaws that drip with a poisonous slime. Most Chimera possess a fiendish tail that ends in a snapping maw possessed of an intelligence and hunger of its own. Others are covered in scales as hard as iron or skin that is an ever shifting pattern of bright colors and hues, turning translucent one moment before running like molten wax to cover and heal the rips and gashes in its tainted flesh the next. Regardless of their exact form, all Chimera share a savage and unpredictable nature, and wherever their tri-throated roars are heard, death and carnage are surely not far behind.

Slaves are the lifblood of the Dwarves of Hashut for without them, their infrastructure would collapse. Yet, there are more uses for slaves than work for the aethryic rituals done by the Daemonsmiths and Sorcerer-Prophets require many sacrifices. After ensorceling machines, the dwarves sacrifice captives to fuel their magic by throwing them into cauldrons of molten iron or tossing them into roaring furnaces. Smaller sacrificial machines are sometimes brought into battle by a Daemonsmith or Sorcerer-Prophet, where they are used to enhance the strength of their lesser spells by offering living sacrifices. Though this is not without its own risk, as failure to properly harness the power can result in the souls wreaking revenge against their killers.

The supreme terrors of the crags and craters of ash and tire, some claim the Great Taurus is less a beast than a manifestation of the rage and deathly savagery of the Dark Lands themselves. In form no two Taurus are ever quite alike, and the mightiest of them are truly massive beasts that never die except by violence, named as Bale Taurus in dark legend. All bear the overall semblance of a huge, winged, daemonic bull whose flesh burns with the intensity of a living furnace sufficient to wreath it in smoke and spark the ground afire beneath its hooves and against which arrow and blade alike perishes to cinders and ruin. To many who would consider themselves wise in such things, the burning wrath of the Great Taurus is little more than a myth, for sustained by the fires of the Dark Lands, these unnatural creatures seldom stray far from their lairs. But those who inhabit the Dark Lands know better. They fear the ash-trailing shadows that might circle the sky, and the plummet of the Great Taurus like a red-wreathed comet to its prey — an onslaught no mere mortal creature can withstand. Powerful Sorcerer-Prophets or Overlords ride Great Tauruses into battle, the creature burns with a terrific intensity, so that its whole body is wreathed in fire and smoke. When it moves across the ground sparks fly from its hooves and lightning plays about its feet. It breathes fire in great snorting bursts and black smoke curls from its gaping maw.

The Lammasu has the body of a gigantic bull, a powerful mace-tipped tail, borne on vast leathery wings, lion-like claws instead of hooves and the face of a huge Dwarf, cloaked in smoke and shadow. It is a creature with magical properties. It breathes not ordinary air but the power of magic itself, drawing into itself the power of the winds of magic. As it exhales the creature breathes out whirling clouds of black sorcery which wreathe themselves around the Lammasu, enwrapping it with protective power that deflects magic and befouls magic items, rendering them innert and mundane. Many of the Overlords and Sorcerer-Prophets ride Lammasu into battle, where the great beasts aid their companions in the ways of magic and rip the enemies of Hashut asunder with their massive talons. The Lammasu is not a natural creature, it was born centuries ago, when Hashut transformed the most favored of the dwarf elders, providing her followers with demi-gods to guide and protect her underlings. The Lammasu also possesses a minor but potent spellcasting ability, commanding fire, death or shadows.

Manticores are another monster sought after by the Dwarves of Hashut, who force her to return to her form from the previous age to serve as a war mount for Sorcerer-Prophets and Despots. Manticores have the body of a gigantic lion, larger than any of the predators of the mountains. They fly upon wings like those of a huge bat and have whip-like tails. A single strike of this poisoned spur can fell even the toughest warrior. They are adept and devastating fighters, attacking with raking claws and their long sharp teeth. Some have barbed tails like a scorpion's that bear bitter poison. Others are armoured in scales and covered in thorny projections that bleed ceaselessly. Manticores are cunning fighters. They are swift to retreat to the relative safety of the air when a battle goes against them. Manticores are the fiercest, most aggressive creature in the world, and will attack anything that they perceive as food or a threat. Because of their battle prowess and ferocity, Manticores are highly prized as mounts but even the most iron-willed of Dwarves cannot enforce his will upon a Manticore forever.

Dwarves have a large variety of powerful war machines available to them. Sometimes, they will bind creatures of the aether and the souls of living being to them, making their warmachine Hellbound as they call it. Such a binding makes the War Machine far more frightening to be in close proximity to than an inanimate object has any right to be, makes the machine tougher and gives all of its attacks a touch of magic. This comes with a cost as the souls within will take every opportunity to rebel against their binding, attempting to kill the crew tormenting them. Another thing that is done is mount their war machine on a Steam Carriage. The heavy Steam Carriage needs an Iron Daemon Engine to be moved but will grant mobile defensive fortifications for the war machine and its crew, making it harder to remove from the battlefield.

To retrieve mineral wealth from their mines, the Dwarves of Hashut construct small self-powered steam engines and traction carriages to haul ore in lieu of beasts of burden such as horses or oxen which soon perish in the treacherous conditions, and in places where slave labor is impractical or inefficient. The Dwarfs of Hashut prefer to place their trust in iron, brass, fire and steam rather than muscle and bone so it was not long before these engines were also deployed due to their obvious merits for hauling cannons, rockets, mortars and other destructive weapons to the battlefield rather than ore or iron ingots. The driving power behind these engines comes from coal, which the Dwarfs mine in great quantities from beneath the Plain of Zharr and then infuse in arcane rites so that it burns hotter and far more constantly than naturally possible. Their furnaces will however willingly devour wood or other base materials if they happen to be the only available source of fuel with a temporarily acceptable loss in performance. Among their slaves, rumors abound of engines that run on blood, ground bones and screaming spirits, and such ingenuity is certainly not beyond the devious and inventive servants of Hashut. One of the latest designs to see widespread service within their empire is the Iron Daemon, a compact, armored steam-driven traction engine. The steam boilers that provide these machines with motive power, to haul heavy armaments and munitions to the battlefield are cunningly designed so that they can also be used to work pressure-fed weapons such as cannonades and wall-breakers. This means that every Iron Daemon is also a powerful war machine in its own right – a fully mobile artillery piece or murderous killing engine able to smash through fortifications and hack down ranks of living soldiers with equal ease.

The Magma Cannon has seen long use and been the subject of considerable modification and experimentation by Daemonsmith engineers and no two are quite the same, but rather the product of an individual’s malign creativity. Some use pressurized steam-boilers to jet gouts of burning sulfur, caustic tar or pyretic acids, while others incorporate sorcerously bound volcanic glass shells in which molten lava drawn from the deep earth slumbers until its shell is shattered. Regarded as one of the true works of a Daemonsmith's craft, neophyte Sorcerer-engineers vie with each other to produce the most deadly Magma Cannons of their own design. Many have perished as a result of such experimentation — either overcome by choking fumes, dissolved by acrid vapours, or blown to shreds when their volatile mixtures have exploded unexpectedly. To their overlords, this is only right and proper; as such failure is not tolerated in their service. The Magma Cannon is a relatively short-ranged but potentially devastating weapon, able to incinerate packed bodies of enemy troops or burn clear defended positions in close assaults.

The Dwarves of Hashut utilize a number of different types of gunpowder-driven rocket weapons and the Deathshrieker Rocket Launcher is one of the more diabolic examples of these weapons, as bound up within its munitions are howling, spirits harvested from the cinders of slave's burnt alive, and it is the hellish shrieking of these spirits when loosed that gives the weapon its name. A Deathshrieker Rocket is about seven or eight feet long and is packed full of propellant. It contains a small explosive charge at its tip and is stabilized in flight by means of fins at the rear. The packed multiple warheads of the Deathshrieker Rocket detonate in the air above the battlefield in a storm of fire – fire which has its own terrible hunger for life upon which to visit its touch. Screaming, fanged tendrils of flame plunge downwards from the blast and expend their strength actively seeking out victims. The tormented spirits are far from discerning though as to whose flesh they burn, and the Dwarves must be cautious lest their own suffer from this wrathful weapon. In addition to the hellish Deathshrieker rockets, the launchers they use are also able to fire more conventional demolition rockets if need be. These use densely packed explosive rocket heads with delayed fuses in a strengthened iron tube to channel the blast against a single point. The rocket mounts a crown of spikes that drive the rocket into a vertical wall and hold it there whilst it explodes. In this fashion the rocket can punch through even very dense stone and can make a terrible mess of any large creature that gets in its way too.

The Dreadquake Mortar is a massive weapon of destruction and one of the most deadly weapons in the arsenal of the Dwarves of Hashut. It fires a heavy shell full of powerful explosive. When the shell lands it smashes into the ground, burying itself deeply before it explodes, creating devastating shock waves. As well as blowing its target apart, the shockwaves of the explosion are so strong that those nearby are knocked to the ground. Troops close to the blast will be far too shocked by the impact to fight, or even to move. All they can do is lie on the ground, dazed and confused, until they recover their senses. The Dreadquake’s deadly projectiles are fired by steam pressure that is generated by a boiler and contained within a pressure vessel – conventional gunpowder being far too dangerous given the volatility of the Dreadquake’s unique and powerful shells. As a consequence it takes quite a while for the machine to generate enough steam to fire a single shot – limiting its potential in battle. But even on the open field it is a supremely dangerous weapon against large and static targets and if successfully fired against enemy infantry, it can wreak carnage as more than one Orc tribe of the Worlds Edge Mountains has found to their cost. The Dreadquake's shells are of a secret construction whose arcana is the sole preserve of the Sorcerer-Prophets and Daemonsmiths. When fired from the Dreadquake they burst into a roaring; blood-red light, and when they strike they explode, shattering buildings apart and smashing into the ground like a hammer-blow from the gods, bleeding crimson energy from the wounded earth. These shells take the form of metal spheres and are so heavy and unwieldy that a captured Ogre returned to her form from the previous age commonly forms part of the machine's crew in order to speed up the loading.

Part daemon or spirit, part warmachine, the Hellcannon of is a massive construct of iron and brass that growls and shakes with anger at its enslavement. In battle, these arcane engines heave great blasts of magical energy arcing through the air toward their targets, incandescent explosions liquefying anything they touch and sending the survivors screaming in all directions. These hell-forged beasts are guided rather than crewed by their teams of corrupt and twisted Dwarfs. It is their duty to restrain the Hellcannon in the fires of battle, for the entities bound within each war-construct are driven mad and/or evil by their imprisonment. The Dawi Zharr load their charge by shoveling corpses into the dire-furnace at the Hellcannon's rear. Flesh runs like wax, dribbling onto the earth under the crew's feet in thick, hissing gobs as the daemonic fires strip away and feed upon the flesh. These are perverted into wailing bolts of pure energy, and vomited toward the Hellcannon's target in powerful spasms. A Hellcannon, towering above the Dwarfs, is virtually indestructible. Such is the strength and bloodlust of the machine that it must be chained to the ground to prevent it from rampaging. Even these precautions prove inadequate should the enemy draw too close; it is whispered that there is nothing that can truly stay a Hellcannon's insatiable lust for destruction. A single Hellcannon is quite capable of blasting apart the walls of even the most stalwart fortress.

One of the largest and most frightening engines of war in the entire arsenal is the dreaded Juggernaut. The Juggernaut is a massive siege tower internally powered by a horde of aethyric entities and souls that have been bound and trapped inside the gigantic machine. It is armed with two cannons, crewed by five Infernal Guard equipped with Fireglaives and pushed by a mighty Bull Centaur. The Juggernaut is a terrifying sight in battle, spikes sticking out all over the place and a carved face of a demon from the previous age at the front, twin cannons sticking out of its eyes, and with a manic grin. The mere sight of such a blasphemous construct causes the weak-willed to flee as the Juggernaut slowly lurches forward powered by the shear will of the evil entities bound within. Those that stand before the monstrous engine are ground and torn apart, as they are caught underneath huge, bone- crunching wheels and ultimately swallowed within a central gaping Daemonic maw of the Juggernaut itself. The Juggernaut is very effective in battle, being crewed by highly skilled gunners. It is more maneuverable than an average siege tower, being smaller and pushed by a Bull Centaur which is a fast and strong creature. The Juggernauts are a rarity on the battlefield as wood is scarce in the Dark Lands. They are usually saved for important battles so as not to waste them and risk damaging them or the Bull Centaur.

Vaguely humanoid in shape, the Kollossi are frightening machines. Powered by arcane machinery, the Kollossus lurches forward in a hideous parody of nature, hissing steam pouring from the joints and exhaust pipes, causing cacophonic and terrifying noise. The heads of Kollossi are ornately decorated, shaped to resemble either a Chaos Dwarf, Great Taurus or the visage of Hashut, the Mother of Darkness. Kollossi are solidly built from molten bronze and iron, and even a direct hit from a cannon is not likely to destroy it. Kollossi have no mind, save the will of their masters. Thus they can be sent to perform missions that any living creature would dread to undertake. They are ideal for breaking the enemy battle line, taking on large monsters, War Machines, Chariots and dislodging stubborn fighters from defended positions. The Kollossi are used extensively in sieges, where they can crush the gates of the fortresses in mere moments and the enemy arrows can do little to damage the Kollossus. Kollossi were built to break the backs of armies and thus far have never failed. Over the years, many new improvements have been made to the original design such as Lava Throwers, enormous hammers, magic-absorbing crystals, high-powered engines, enchanted furnaces, additional armor plating or the ability to make a crushing attack.