Mortis Praetorians

The Mortis Praetorians were the first proof that Nagash's new soldiery would work, and they remain its finest example. Assembled beneath the exacting eye of Orpheon Katakros himself, their constructs are poured from the distilled souls of history's ablest soldiers, men whose skill outlived the kingdoms that trained them, blended until nothing survives but discipline, judgement, and the will to hold the line. They are the standard by which the Mortisan orders calibrate every other legion.

Their charge is the heartland itself: the Praetorians garrison the core provinces of the Ossiarch Empire and guard the approaches to Nagashizzar, the black seat of the Great Necromancer, where failure is not a concept the legion entertains. In the field they manoeuvre with a parade-ground perfection unnerving to the living: phalanxes reforming to a single shared will, every gap closing before it opens, every command obeyed at the speed of thought.

Katakros treats the Praetorians as an extension of his own strategic mind, and they repay him with campaigns won as though drawn on a map beforehand. Among the legions of the Ossiarch Bonereapers, to march as a Mortis Praetorian is the nearest a manufactured soul comes to honour. Not that any of them was asked.