August Battle Pack | Skumgrot Skyraiders Gallery and Lore (Patreon)

 Every month BattleYak Miniatures will release a new Battle Pack, featuring 3D printable miniature files! The Battle Pack for August is the Skumgrot Skyraiders, a band of manical sky-pirate goblinoids! August's pack also includes modular weapons, variant sculpts, bonus figures, and more!  It also includes a set of themed sculpted bases!

Become a Patron now and gain access to the Skumgrot Skyraiders here!

Now please enjoy this gallery of the Skumgrot Skyraiders miniatures and a glimpse into the lore behind the faction!

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"Right, youse boys hit da cargo decks and swipe everythin' dat ain't bolted down! Den gets some wrenches and swipe da bolts too! Da rest of youse, sweep da gun decks for 'splosives and such! Meanwhile, I'm gonna teach da cap'n of dese wimps a thing or two about what happens to joiks who trespass in my skies..."

Zakka Nasty-Sky, Kaptain of da Iron Vulcha

Bursting out of the clouds in roaring sky-ships belching flames and black smoke, the pirate crews of the Skumgrot Skyraiders fall upon their helpless prey. Once rocket-launchers and scrap-cannons have softened up their target, hordes of cackling skumgrots descend upon the mark to snatch up loot, scrap, salvage, and anything and everything that might catch their bulging eyes. Once the enemy have been picked clean, the skumgrots swarm back onto their ramshackle vessels with whoops and hollers. As they soar back into the clouds, their ships let fly one last volley of rocket-fire to blast their ravaged victims into utter oblivion. The skumgrots use their stolen spoils to rearm and refuel before sailing off to find some other target so they can do it all over again.

The Skumgrot Skyraiders prowl the air-shipping lanes at random in their ramshackle flying machines, striking any air-vessel they happen to stumble across in their erratic flights. Once a targeted sky-ship has been crippled by their scrap-built weapons, the Skyraiders move in and encircle their victims, and gangs of Skumgrot Lootahs will descend on ropes and chains, or even hurl themselves from the decks of their ships and towards the enemy vessel. Overly enthusiastic skumgrots will sometimes misjudge the distance and fall short of the enemy ship's deck, flailing and screeching as they plummet towards the surface far below. Their surviving fellows simply shrug and snicker - as they say, it's not a mistake any skumgrot makes twice.

Such are their numbers that more than enough of the lootahs will successfully land on the enemy's deck, swiftly spreading out to engage any surviving enemy crew with their crude weapons. Once the enemy has been subdued, the lootahs swarm through the guts of the ship for loot, taking cargo, ammunition, and food supplies first, then ripping apart the ship's internal machinery, taking sky-engine levitation cells and spare parts, even dismantling bulkheads for scrap metal. Corpses and prisoners are stripped of gold, jewels, heirlooms, even belts, boots, and fancy hats. Lootahs will even grab-up bits of wreckage and broken glass that are shiny or interesting looking. Once the enemy ship begins to list and drop out of the sky, even the dimmest lootah knows its time to go, and the skumgrots will swarm back to their own flying ships laden with plunder.

A few skumgrots take a different approach to boarding the enemy. Inspired by the sight of scrap-rockets slamming into enemy ships at high speed, some skumgrots imagine how quickly they could get aboard the target if they could somehow attach themselves to these projectiles. They'd get to the enemy before all their shipmates, and grab all the best loot for themselves! After paying a small bribe to the ship's engineers, these ambitious skumgrots are permitted to lash themselves to various rockets and booster jets, which are subsequently launched towards the enemy vessel with the attached skumgrot shrieking in glee. The lootahs waiting up on deck hoot and cheer these Rokkitgitz, jeering and laughing when they get so caught up in the thrill of speed they forget to detach themselves before their make-shift jetpacks impact and are immolated in the ensuing detonation. The few that survive and drop successfully onto the deck of the enemy ship indeed enjoy first pick of plunder, which they pay to the engineers for bigger, better, and faster rockets to strap themselves to on the next raid.

Lording over the mangy crews of skyraider ships are a breed of skumgrot apart from their fellows. While skumgrots as a whole possess a low cunning, most are dimwitted and easily confused, and only a rare few rise to develop the truly fiendish intelligence that elevates them as rulers over their people. Clever, ambitious, and just plain meaner than anyone else, among the skyraiders these skumgrots are marked out as blessed by the winds and skies, elements that skumgrots honor as powerful and cruel. These Nasty-Sky skumgrots become the captains of air-ships, and even commanders of entire pirate flotillas, seeming to have an almost supernatural instinct for where to find the best loot and the easiest targets, while avoiding dangerous storms and other airborne disasters. If asked how they accomplish these deeds, the Nasty-Sky just say they can hear it in the wind... and then usually bash in the brains of whoever's asking for bothering them with stupid questions when they have important wind-listening to do.

While most skumgrot are not especially inclined to intelligent thought, the race does have a propensity for tool-building, able to assemble crude weapons from just about anything they can get their claws on. A few skumgrot stand out as experts when it comes to crafting, possessing an innate talent for slapping scrap-metal and spare parts together to form functional, if unstable machinery. These engineers are the true driving force behind the skyraiders, for they construct and maintain the ramshackle flying machines of the skumgrots. Named Greasers for their perpetually oil-smeared states, these skumgrot eschew taking part in the chaotic ruck of typically raiding. Instead, they direct teams of lootahs to strip out any parts of the victim's engines the greasers wants, hauling it back to the skyraiders' engine rooms. They are usually the last to leave a stricken vessel, as they inevitably tear out some vital component that causes the hapless ship to begin falling out of the sky.

Skumgrots are regarded as worse than vermin by many of the other races of the world. Notorious scavengers, they live on the outskirts of other civilizations, salvaging and stealing to survive. Highly adaptable, skumgrots can and do live anywhere, and are drawn to places where their disregard for rule of law is tolerated, even appreciated. Countless lawless sky-ports act as havens for the skumgrots, where they are employed as labour and muscle by crime-lords, underworld figures, and pirate kings. Occasionally, skumgrots gangs will amass enough resources to go into business for themselves, assembling some crude flying machines out of junk and salvaged airships and taking off to menace nearby sky-shipping lanes.

While many such initiatives end with the ramshackle vessels blasted out of the sky (or simply falling apart mid-air), occasionally the right elements come together and a skumgrot air-pirate fleet of fearsome capability is born. Such it is with the Skumgrot Skyraiders, the most notorious band of air-pirates to menace the air lanes of the Twenty Skies. Even the most heavily escorted merchant fleet knows to dread the sight of the great flagship of the Skyraiders, the Iron Vulcha, erupting from the clouds flanked by dozens of lesser smoke-belching skumgrot ships. 

Inevitably these raids leave nothing in their wake but the hulks of burning sky-ships, stripped down to their hulls and plummeting earthwards, while the Skumgrot Skyraiders sail on to greater plunder.