Every highborn house of Shyish knows the tale of the emerald gheist: a figure of cold green flame at a dying noble's bedside, whose coming foretells not one death but the ruin of the whole line. For generations it was dismissed as a nursemaid's warning against pride, until the marked dynasties noticed it always came true. The Emerald Host is that folktale gathered into an army, appearing first as an omen and returning, in time, as the reckoning.
Its coming may be prepared against but never bargained away. Great families have emptied their vaults on warding-charms and consecrated their tombs, and the Host treats each defence as a courtesy paid before the inevitable. When it drifts down at last beneath emerald banners, the spirits swelling its ranks are the very ancestors those wards were meant to honour: grandsires, founders, and crypt-kept dead risen to escort their heirs into the same dark.
To be marked by the Nighthaunt is to learn that a bloodline is not a fortress but a debt. Nagash savours the Host, for it answers the sin he most despises: the belief that title or long lineage might purchase exemption from the grave. The green-lit column makes the same reply to a pauper's ditch and an emperor's mausoleum, and to whole dynasties at once.
Order of battle
The The Emerald Host field the units of the Nighthaunt, a detachment from the roster:
Other Nighthaunt formations
Reikenor's CondemnedThe personal procession of Reikenor the Grimhailer, sworn to hunt those who use magic to cheat the grave: the necromancer hoarding stolen years, the soul-trader, the king who buys forbidden time. The Condemned drag such offenders to the judgment they postponed, and many of its gheists were once exactly such people. That, of course, is the point.
The Grieving LegionA funeral cortège that has never once reached the grave, the Grieving Legion drifts to war beneath rotted mourning banners in numbers beyond counting. Its spirits enfold the enemy the way family crowds a coffin, pressing close in a suffocating ring of sorrow. Those caught within discover that the Legion does not permit mourners to leave before the service is done.
The Scarlet DoomWhere other processions drift, the Scarlet Doom strikes: a shrieking spearhead of Bladegheist Revenants that hits a battleline like a scythe through standing wheat. Its name comes from what remains when the whirling blades move on. The spirits of this procession died panicked, violent deaths, and they are compelled to share that ending with everyone they find.
Discussion
- No comments yet. Be the first to reply.