June Battle Pack Release | Primal Heart Eldarch Gallery and Lore (Patreon)

Every month BattleYak Miniatures will release a new Battle Pack, featuring 3D printable miniature files! The Battle Pack for June is the Primal Heart Eldarch, an ancient race that has not only embraced the power of nature, but twisted it into a frightful weapon melded with their very being! June's pack also includes modular weapons, modular head options, and tons of digital files allowing for a huge variety of customization.  It also includes a set of themed sculpted bases!

Become a Patron now and get access to the June Battle Pack here!

Now please enjoy this gallery of the Primal Heart Eldarch miniatures and a glimpse into the lore behind the faction!

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"In the great garden that is the world, there are many predators. Many rivals. And all are becoming stronger and more ruthless. In the end only one may stand as the apex predator, their strength so complete that it eclipses everything else and makes the world into prey. One must walk this path, or become the prey of those who do. This is the shape of fate, the only path to true endurance. It is our path. For we will never be prey again."

Strain-Matriarch Golani, Xala'Thustra Grove

 The eldarch of the Primal Heart are the very incarnations of nature's fury, utterly dedicated to their own survival at the expense of all other civilizations and races. Erupting from their jungle-hives they sweep upon their enemy in a great tide like a swarm of insects, each eldarch warrior a monstrosity bearing traits of both animal and plant blended together. This devotion to survival and dominance over life is their defining cultural philosphy, a way of life which the eldarch term the 'Primal Heart.' 

 Capable of shaping living matter into lethal and monstrous forms, the eldarch clad their soldiers in carapaces of living armor, bonded to the very flesh and bone and nerve of their bodies to enhance their speed and strength. Even their weapons are living creatures, bred and sculpted by the flesh-shaping art of the eldarch into innumerable lethal forms. As their armor and weapon organisms mature, they bond more fully with the eldarch, slowly evolving them into even stronger and deadlier forms. 

 The most common of the eldarch biomorphs that have reached battle-ready maturity are the Phyllarc Imago. Having pupated from their previous larval forms, the imago are encased in highly evolved symbiont-armor, augmenting strength and speed and granting them improved protection and regenerative capabilities. Their symbiont-weapons are selected and bonded with their nervous systems, becoming an inextricable part of their bodies and giving them unparalleled mastery over their usage. 

 Should imago distinguish themselves in service, they will draw the attentions of the superior eldarch bioforms who embody the will of the Primal Heart. These beings may choose to bless singular imago who show great potential, causing them to undergo a metamorphosis into a new, deadlier stage of life. Emerging from the blessed transformative chrysalis, the imago will have become a lethal Phyllarc Predator. Their symbiont-carapace has merged completely with their bodies and evolved into a more advanced form, making them larger, stronger, faster, and enabling them to wield fearsome new living weaponry. 

 The realms where the Primal Heart dwell reflect the eldarch's blending of natural forms, and the great jungle-hives where the eldarch live show the same sign of blending plant and animal traits. Vast expanses of hybrid matter flow out from the hives, overtaking the land, devouring the existing environment in squirming tendrils, chitinous stalks, and fleshy growth. The slow encroachment of this rapacious ecosystem inevitably spreads into surrounding realms and nations of other races, prompting attempts to stem the alien growth by natives. Their efforts only serve to invite the wrath of the eldarch, who descend without mercy upon anything that threatens the growth of their hive. 

How the eldarch came to exist in this state is a mystery to all but a few. In ancient times, the eldarch race ruled the world unopposed, their empire stretching across not only all lands, but even deep under the sea and high into the sky, the eldarch dwelling in grand citadels, underwater garden-palaces, and floating cities. Their unparalleled mastery of sorcery and artifice allowed them to bend all the forces of the world to their will, and they even developed the means to create life itself, shaping entire races of living creatures for the sheer artistic joy of it. 

The golden age of the eldarch ended in utter ruin, with a time of calamity known in forbidden historical archives as the Age of Hunger. Some catastrophe of unknown nature swept the world, laying low the great cities of the eldarch and decimating their people, with all of their power and knowledge unable to save them. One population of eldarch, desperate and panicked, fled into the wild jungles of the southlands, an inhospitable region that even the eldarch at their height had never been able to tame. They huddled in misery in the jungles, dying in droves to hostile predators and disease and deprivation, all while the distant horizon blazed with the eldritch light and poisonous energies unleashed by the calamity devouring their once great civilization.

Somehow, deep in the heart of that dark and hostile jungle, the eldarch survivors discovered a great power sleeping in the earth, the very source of the land's rapacious natural energy. The eldarch sought to tap into that slumbering primal energy in desperation to improve their lot, and were forever changed by the effort. Whether eldarch was consumed by that mysterious energy, or they in turn twisted and distorted it with their influence, the eldarch and the primal power of the land became one, two elements blended together into an inextricable whole. The eldarch, infused with the primal energy, learned to twist the matter of living creatures into new forms, blending attributes of beast and plant, animal and vegetation, together in a seamless union. This was the first step on the path they would come to call the Primal Heart.

Millennia have passed since then, and the eldarch have greatly changed, altered by generations of guided evolution and eugenic life-sculpting. Aspects of reptile, amphibian, insect, plant, and fungus have been bred into their being. No longer born, they are spawned in vast birthing pools, emerging in pale wriggling masses like insect larvae to pupate and become bonded with symbiotic carapaces, so they might take up their assigned station in life. Their very homes have been transformed as they have, the jungles and forests mutated and evolved into teeming hives of writhing growth that is as much flesh as vegetation. All of this is guided by the will of specially evolved royal castes of greater intellect, Strain-Tyrants and Garden-Queens, who are at one with the Primal Heart and guide its ever-expanding growth.

The eldarch believe that the Primal Heart demands from them nothing less than the subjugation of all other life, less they themselves should become subject to a greater power. All life strives to grow, and conflict is inevitable. One form of life must therefore rise to dominate utterly, lest it be dominated in turn. Only the life that changes and learns and grows faster than any other can hope to overcome and ultimately rule, and thus does the Primal Heart forever seek to grow, to improve itself, to match itself against enemies and evolve to overcome them. The eldarch remember when the Age of Hunger nearly devoured them, and will never allow themselves to be threatened with extinction again. They seek to become mighty enough to conquer anything, and so they are driven to conquer everything. 

The Primal Heart Eldarch will continue to evolve and expand. It is their very reason for being. The final shape of existence, the only path to survival. This is the will of the Primal Heart.