Battle Yak Sketchbook | Satynath Wyldhunt (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. This sketchbook post will show off more units related to the release for December, the Satynath Wyldhunt! Enjoy this preview of even more monstrous beast-warriors, coming one day!

Kernnath Wyldreavers

A monstrous off-shoot of an already monstrous race, the wyldyr of the Kernnath breed run down their prey with unmatched speed and butcher them without mercy. Possessing the mutated lower bodies of beasts resembling huge goats or cervines, the Wyldreavers are even more savage and debased than their two-legged kin. Though recognized as touched by the Black Goat, the dark forest deity that all wyldyr honor, the Kernnath are looked upon with hatred by other wyldyr as misshaped abominations punished by the goddess, while the Kernnath themselves arrogantly claim to be her favored children and per-eminent among their kind in her regard.

While clashes between tribes of the different breeds have been frequent and bloody, in recent times the encroachment of outside races has led to alliances being grudgingly struck, and sightings of the Wyldreavers hunting alongside their two-legged cousins are increasing.

Bakkhos Nightmask

Solitary wanderers not bound to any particular tribe, Nightmasks are peerless archers who have been called to their lonely path by the Black Goat herself. It is a fate that can befall any of the wyldyr - while gazing up at the night sky that is the hunting grounds of the dark deity, and contemplating the star-beasts that are her prey, the wyldyr feels something in the darkness looking back. They take themselves away from their tribe off into the wilds, carving a mask from wood and marking it with strange signs of power that they have read in the stars. Laying it over their eyes, the mask sprouts tendrils of wood that entwine their own horns, sealing the mask over their faces forever. Never again will they see with mortal eyes, or speak the guttural tongue of their race. They have became a Nightmask, a blind and silent archer of the Wyldhunt, whose covered eyes nevertheless pierce the darkest gloom to strike their prey with lethal accuracy. While Nightmasks may congregate in small packs during truly great hunts, inevitably they will return to their lone wanderings in the dark wilds, to contemplate the will of the Black Goat in silence.

Nergali Wealdshaper

Whatever their breed, wyldyr in their early life wear the slender, immature form of a wyldling. When they are of an age and prove themselves in the hunt, they mature into a more ferocious and full-grown state and take their place as adults of their tribe. Those who fail to reach this state by excelling in the hunt sicken and die before long, crawling off into the woods to perish if they are not slain outright by their contemptuous tribe-mates - this process is said to be the will of the Black Goat made manifest, gifting strength to the worthy and culling the weak.

But sometimes a wyldling that fails to prove themselves will not die. Though weak in body, their bitter, spiteful heart roils with malice and thwarted desire, and so draws the attention of the Black Goat not through feats of flesh but by the bleak might of their spirit. They survive the sickening that takes the others with lesser wills, and emerge twisted and changed, stooped and crooked in body but with the dark power of the Black Goat pumping through their veins like cold fire. Their horns turn to branches, and crooked wooden growths punch through their wretched flesh, lending them strength and support. They hear the voice of the Black Goat in the creaking woods and the whispering wind. The Goat teaches them to speak to the woods, and the woods answer and obey...

Madcoil Khymera

The Wyldhunt worships the Black Goat as their primary deity, and conduct hideous and profane rituals to honor her at the heart of their territory, at the foot of great stone idols marked with her image. The oldest of these idols thrum with malefic power and ancient magic, relics from a time long before the wyldyr even existed, and in fact are the very source of the wyldyr race itself, having twisted creatures of the forest into the sapient beings that now revel and make sacrifices in their shadow. Many of the eldarch race claim that such magic is a legacy of their ancient civilization, and see the beast-born races like the wyldyr as loathsome errors born of their ancestor's misdeeds that need to be wiped from the world.

Faced with incursions into their most sacred lands by the eldarch, the wyldyr have been driven into a frenzy of fanatical outrage by the sacrilege. Guided by their savage clergy, the children of the Black Goat carry out new and terrible rituals, heaping the flesh and blood of sacrifices into deep pits dug and filled with the most ferocious of forest beasts that the Wyldhunt has been able to trap. The power of the Black Goat is invoked, and the captured beasts are magically malformed and welded together to create hideous, unnatural amalgamations - the Khymera.

Such composite creatures can vary greatly in size and capability, from hunting-hound fiends made of wolf and goat, to fusions of insect and bat and scuttling things that grow larger than a man. But by far the most hideous expressions of the Khymera are born in the wildernesses of Uhmber, where fierce hunting cats, hulking mountain bovids, and enormous cave serpents are magically hybridized into the nightmarish Madcoil Khymera. The Wyldhunt is birthing the Khymera breeds in ever greater numbers, building up an army of mutants for the greatest hunt in the memory of the race - one that will carry them to the walled cities of the civilized races, and see them brought low and made the hunting grounds of beasts terrible beyond imagining.

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These are just a few of the concepts related to the Satynath Wyldhunt waiting to be developed! The Satynath Wyldhunt current release is available now to Patrons, and will be available for sale at the Battle Yak Miniatures online store in January 2022.

Check out the Battle Yak Miniatures online store for all previous Battle Pack releases, and become a Patron for new miniature releases every month!

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