Battle Yak Sketchbook | Cankerfen Boggrots (Patreon)

Whenever I develop a Battle Pack theme, I always have many more ideas  than I could possibly produce in a single month, and so I hold back some  designs with the intent of having them be a part of future releases. That's true of the latest release, the Cankerfen Boggrots, which has many more units waiting to take shape in the future! Here are some sketches of those designs, coming one day. Enjoy!

Cankergit Lurkshot

Most boggrots are a rambunctious lot when in battle, shrieking and yelling and rushing through the swamp to attack any who trespass into their territory. The Lurkshot is a breed apart from their noisy brethren however. When the time comes to attack, the Lurkshots take up their cankerwood bows, a quiver-full of arrows smeared with fentoad poison, and don their leather lurkcloaks, specially woven with bogmoss, swampgrass, and fentail growths to grant them the perfect camouflage when moving through the wilderness of the Cankerfen.

With uncanny and thoroughly un-boggrot-like patience, they move slowly and quietly into position, lining up the perfect shot, and letting lose with lethal precision. The lucky among their targets die instantly, while the less fortunate writhe in agony as the fentoad poison slowly and painfully shuts down their vital organs. While their fellows hoop and holler and tackle one-another in celebration of victory, the Lurkshots only give slow and satisfied nods of appreciation to themselves for a shot well fired.

Murkmire Batfink

Boggrots have an uncanny ability to not be instantly devoured by the huge menagerie of monstrous wildlife that inhabits their swamp home. Knowledge about how to avoid winding up as prey for the hungry beasts of the Cankerfen seems to be built into the tiny creatures. This affinity even allows them to make use of them as war-beasts and mounts, in at least a half-hazard fashion that sometimes is just barely worth the trouble and loss of life.

The blood-hungry Batfinks of the Murkmire, the deepest and most dangerous regions of the Cankerfen, seem particularly alluring for aspiring boggrot beast-riders. With a special potion brewed up by their tribal witch-doctors, brave and fool-hardy boggrots creep into the lairs of the batfinks and seek to pour the brew down the gullet of a sufficiently large specimen. This potion causes the batfink to go wild and take to the air, with the boggrot clinging desperately to its furry hide. After several minutes of berserk flight, the batfink calms down and the effects of the potion cause them to imprint on the boggrot as their parent, permitting them to ride the batfink through the air. In battle, Batfink Riders hurl spears and rocks and other dangerous objects onto their enemy, before having their mounts swoop down and sink their long fangs into their chosen prey.

Wyrdquag Gloomwitch

Long ago, the boggrots came to regard the Cankerfen, their home and protector, their source of life and death, as a primitive deity. Those who have trespassed into the dangerous swampland and escaped to tell the story easily understand why, for there is a kind of malicious presence to the region, as if the entire Cankerfen were a great predatory beast, old and vast and slow, with claws and fangs made up of all the creatures and deadly terrain it encompasses. The boggrots call this presence by many names, such as Old Mother Canker or Grandmama. Some boggrots, known as the Wyrdquag, even claim that this presence speaks to them, telling them all manner of secrets...

Wyrdquag Gloomwitches feel Mama Canker's power, rising up from deep in the swamp, they feel it all around them in the breath of the trees, in the dark rippling water, in the rolling fog that creeps quietly across the marsh. They know that Grandmama swallows up the souls of every living thing that dies in her grasp, but sometimes she'll share a flicker of her power with her Wyrdquag children, letting them work shadowy magicks to trick and trap intruders. Their skull-lanterns ablaze with borrowed soulfire, Gloomwitches can weave enchantment and illusions over their enemies, blinding them with fog and darkness, drowning them in despair, even seemingly making the twisted and tangled cankerwood trees themselves move and attack.

Actually, that might not be an illusion...

Murkmire Bog-Gygas

The entirety of the Cankerfen is a dangerous place to be, and the closer one draws to the heart of the sprawling swamplands, the more dangerous it becomes. This dark heart is known as the Murkmire, a dread morass that even the boggrots fear to wander. Here the biggest, most ferocious creatures dwell, and they rarely get bigger or more ferocious than the Bog-Gygas.

Strong enough to uproot cankerwood trees and wrestle mighty fengators, bog-gygas' also possess a frightening degree of intelligence, one molded by their environment and deeply attuned to the Cankerfen and its unknowable ruling presence. The boggrots see them as the elder children of the Grandmama, and every tribe desires to form a bond with one of the solitary brutes, bringing offerings and prey in the hopes of tempting them into an alliance. More often than not, the boggrots wind up filling the bog-gygas' belly instead, but just occasionally one lucky tribe will manage to recruit one as a particularly lethal living siege-weapon. Taciturn and unpredictable as they are though, one can never be certain just what a bog-gygas will do, and they are all but unstoppable when their anger is roused.

Even a bog-gygas that has lived peaceably with a boggrot tribe will, one day, heave itself to its feet and stomp off into the darkest depths of the Murkmire, following some impulse understood by them alone...

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These are just a few designs waiting to be made into printable 3D files! In future I'll share more designs like the Cankergit Murkwisp-Trapper, the Fengator Leatherhead, and the terrifying monstrosity known as Old Mother Cankermaw!

But for now, I hope you've enjoyed this sneak peek at the future of the Cankerfen Boggrots. The Boggrots current release is available now to Patrons, and will be available for sale at the Battle Yak Miniatures online store this October, along with all previous releases.

Currently, the Blightergast Reanimators are on sale for 50% off as a new sale until September 15th! Use the discount code BLIGHTED to take advantage of the sale!

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