Zurvan Imperium Gallery and Lore (Patreon)

Every month Battle Yak Miniatures releases a new Battle Pack, featuring 3D printable miniature files of a different themed faction! The August Battle Pack is the Zurvan Imperium, a faction of fearsome armored warriors empowered by a mysterious dark power!

Become a Patron now and gain access to the Zurvan Imperium release!

Enjoy this gallery of Zurvan Imperium miniatures and a glimpse into the lore behind the faction!

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Van. Sibling to My Radiant Self. Thou art anathema to me.
Thy nature, unruly and abyssal, loathed mirror of My godhead.
But Thy potential is eternal. Thy cold black blood denies all forces of the bright realm of My inheritence.
With the white hot fire of My crown, I wound Thy flesh, and Thy abundance pours forth.
With words of restriction, I bind it into vessels of My will.
Thus is Thy potency caged, harnessed to radiant vision.
Van. Thus do I place shackles upon Thee. And upon Thy head... all My hopes.

-Zurvantes, Imperator Deus Radians

From the mist-shrouded lands of the far east, the armies of the Zurvan Imperium march forth. For centuries this kingdom has remained reclusive and mysterious, shunning contact with the outside world. Their age of isolationism has come to an end, and the Imperium now reveals its terrible might to the world of Jerra. The legions of the Imperium stretch across the horizon, its soldiers tall and clad in immaculate white plate, shaking the earth itself with their tread. These warriors march without exhaustion, fight with peerless skill, and most frightfully of all, speak not the barest whisper.

For these warriors are neither living nor dead. They were not born, but built. Created. Cast. By the hand of the Radiant Emperor Zurvantes, ruler of the Zurvan Imperium, who has decreed that his dominion shall now extend to every distant corner of the world.

The hynd people, called humans by many races, are the only known race to populate the Zurvan Imperium, which dominates the far east of Jerra. Most other races are looked upon with contempt as abominations or indifference as lesser beings, save a wary respect for the eldarch race and their great wisdom and magical knowledge, though they are nevertheless regarded as a people whose time has passed. For centuries, these people have sheltered behind the impassable barriers of their realm, both natural and constructed - jagged chasms, foreboding mountains, and horizon-spanning great walls. But while it is known that humans populate the Imperium, the great armored legions that now march forth from opened gates are anything but.

Beneath the armored plate of the legions are not bodies of muscle and blood, but an eldritch substance of living darkness. The silent soldiers are like statues of polished obsidian, like figures drenched head to foot in ink, moving with fluid grace and in complete silence. The armor that clads them is like flawless porcelain or polished ivory, contrasting the darkness within. Should their defenses be pierced and the black flesh beneath wounded, there is no spray of blood, but only liquid oily blackness that burns with absolute coldness. These beings of living darkness, clad in white plate, have been brought into existence by the ruler of the Zurvan Imperium, and exist to carry out his will.

The core of the Imperium's armies are the Yaddai Legionnors. The weapons they wield bear the same unearthly hallmark of construction as the legionnors themselves, immaculate white metal components set over a core of inky darkness. These weapons are like extensions of the legionnors, like parts of their own body, and even when not employed in battle these inplements seem to seethe and shiver of their own accord, as if the white fragments that comprised them were adrift over some rippling liquid surface.

If it were not already apparent that the soldiers of the Imperium were composed of inhuman beings, the mighty Yuggol Praetorians leave no doubt whatsoever. Towering over the Yaddai legions, these colossi wield their great weapons in their four limbs, wading unstoppably into battle and shattering entire regiments in seconds. The unsettling quietness that marks the other soldiers is horribly amplified by the Praetorians, such that they not only make virtually no sound of their own as they move, but they seem to drink in ambient noise around them - the shouts of the enemy, the clatter of their war gear, the screams of the wounded, all is swallowed by the deafening silence of the Yuggol. A foe might feel their armor buckle from a massive blow, their bones broken to splinters, their very last breath spill from their lungs, all in terrible soul-shivering silence.

The darkness that empowers the armies of the Imperium is a baleful force, capable of far more than giving animation to hollow legions of warriors. Wielded by a cabal of beings known the Carcossi, it is a form of magic that rivals any other brand of sorcery practiced by the other nations and races of the world. While most magics tap into the power known as Vril, the secret fire that underlies all things, this darkness is another form of power altogether. As Vril is the essence of reality and creation, a force that brings substance into being and grants it order and existence, this darkness is the opposing principle - the essence of possibility, of potentiality. Pure discordant unreality.

Vril is the power of that which exists. It's counterforce is Void - the power of that which does not exist, but could. The stuff of chaos, of raw possibility, of dreams and nightmares unfettered by constraints of order, law, or sanity.

Natural manifestations of Void in the world are vanishingly rare compared with Vril, far more difficult to harness and manipulate, and hideously dangerous to mind, body, and soul. How the Zurvan Imperium obtained such vast quantities is a mystery, let alone how it was formed into constructs for waging war. Those few learned beings outside the Imperium who have discerned with horror the true nature of the Imperium's army dread the Void's power being employed, and it is beyond the belief of any that it can truly be controlled forever.

Worse, now that it has been given form and focus akin to living beings, what devastation might the Void inflict were it to ever be unleashed?

The Imperium takes its name from the very continent whose eastern reaches it dominates. In ancient times, before the founding of the Imperium, the human populations that lived in this realm commonly associated with the aloof eldarch race, and the eldarch taught the comparatively primitive humans of their own beliefs. In time many humans took up the worship of eldarch deities, foremost among them Zurvan, God of Eternity and Overseer of all Cycles, the turning of day into night, of life into death, He who orders the living stars above. Even as the eldarch withdrew from human lands to follow their own destiny, the worship they seeded continue to grow and evolve, and the human societies it influenced along with it, until the eastern continent bore the name of the eldarch god. The holy city of Zurvantes arose as the most sacred city of the east, said to have been founded at the site where the eldarch invoked a miracle of Zurvan to throngs of human worshippers, the manifestation of a crown of white fire. Ever-after, the rulers of the city would take the white crown as a symbol of their divinely ordained rule, and the name of the city as their own.

Over the millennia, the human nations of the east weathered many hardships - the ever-present danger of marauding krog, raiding by beastkin from the dark wooded valleys and deep caves, and endless infighting and holy wars amongst themselves. The greatest crisis came when a mysterious plague swept through the eastern nations, rendering entire kingdoms extinct, and twisting the survivors into unspeakable monsters. The great evil at the heart of the plague was ultimately destroyed by the ruler of the holy city of Zurvantes, Auron Zurvantes the XLVth, who went on to bring many of the shattered nations of the east under his banner. In the following years, when the resurgent krog war-hordes threatened the east with destruction, the last of the holdout nations fully united under Auron, and the Zurvan Imperium was born, with Auron declared emperor. Over a century later, having aged not a day since he took up the mantle of emperor, Auron declared himself to be a divine being, a god-king who represented Zurvan in the flesh, the Radiant Emperor Zurvantes.

Centuries more have passed since then. In that time, the Imperium adopted its isolationist practices, armoring its lands in sprawling walls and fortresses, restricting and regulating passage within the Imperium and cutting off virtually all travel beyond its borders. Threatening violence and war at any encroachment of their territory, its neighbors left them to their own devices, content to ignore a people who seemed determined to forget a world beyond their walls even existed. This reclusive peace was destined to be shattered, for reasons the people of the world may never understand.

At the Imperium's heart, deep within his great shining palace, the Radiant Emperor Zurvantes labored over the creation of his armies. Through unknowable means he drew forth the Void in abundence, the black blood of the cosmos that contrasted the white fires of the Vril. Pouring the Void into innumerable armored vessels, binding it into the form of warriors, the emperor created the first of what would be a vast army. Fearless and unstoppable, no mind to know fear, no voice to defy him, no will but his own. Mighty enough to conquer the world.

And in conquering it, save it. No matter the cost.

The armies of the Zurvan Imperium come, darkness bound at their heart, bound to serve a greater will. May that will never falter, lest the darkness truly be unleashed.

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