Dreghood Shadowguild Gallery and Lore (Patreon)

Every month Battle Yak Miniatures will release a new Battle Pack, featuring 3D printable miniature files! The November Battle Pack is the Dreghood Shadowguild, a band of thieves and cut-throat criminals ready to throw down on the mean streets!

Become a Patron now and gain access to the Dreghood Shadowguild release!

Enjoy this gallery of Dreghood Shadowguild miniatures and a glimpse into the lore behind the faction!

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"Hey there, friend. You'll be a newcomer to our fair city, I recognize that look in your eye. Feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the sights? Perfectly normal, perfectly normal. I imagine you've come looking for opporunity? Excitement? Some affordable lodgings, food, a friendly place to get a drink, win a few hands of cards, maybe some companionship? You can find it all here, provided you've got plenty of money...?

Oh you do, brilliant. That's brilliant.

Well, consider my friends and I your humble guides. We can help you find everything you'd like. In fact, we know a short-cut, right down this alley. Stick with us and you'll be fine. There's some unsavory types in these streets that'll take advantage of a body if they aren't careful, you know. No sense of civic pride, that's their problem. Us, we like meeting people."

-The Welcoming Commitee

Amidst the underbelly of society, where organized crime thrives and criminals and assassins ply their dark trade, there's a saying - when you want a crime done quickly, quietly, and professionally, with no witnesses and no questions asked, you go to the best.

When you can't afford the best, you settle for the Dreghood.

The Dreghood Shadowguild operates on the outskirts of the criminal underworld, where the more refined lawbreakers are afraid to tread. Embracing crime as a way of life, there is no deed too dirty for the guild.

The majority of Shadowguild members are from the dreggum race. Native to rugged mountaintops and high-hills, dreggum clans have feuded with one-another for generations, resulting in a culture of cut-throat rivalry and long-held resentment, and with little room for empathy. To a dreggum, you can only trust yourself, and maybe a few of your fellows, as long as you keep them where you can see them. This mindset made them ideally suited to life on the ragged edge of more developed civilizations, where inter-clan rivalries were set aside for the opportunity to rival entire other species.

The Shadowguild, comprised of some of the more enterprising clan-leaders, have taken to the sprawling cities and settlements of other races to carve out an existence within their darker, more unsavory corners. The Guild walks a fine line - never causing enough trouble to bring serious attention from the authorities, always making themselves useful enough to more influential cartels that need cover for their own operations, always ready to offer their services to those too hard-up to afford better. 

They have a certain reputation, one that is not highly regarded, but carefully cultivated and maintained. A propensity for nursing a grudge down the generations has taught them the value of patience.

The most common member of the Guild is the lowly Dreggum Goon. By day they shift cargo through back alleys, sewer lines, unused waterways, and many other unfrequented routes, the circulatory system (or perhaps the bowels) of the underworld. By night they prowl the streets, burgling and mugging at whim, or act as hired muscle and bodyguards for higher ranking guildmembers. Never too ambitious, but always careful to maintain their reputation as people you don't want to cross, lest you find yourself dumped in an alley mysteriously full of knife wounds.

The Guild maintains contracts with a number of unsavory characters skilled in back-alley sorcery and bootleg alchemy, and numerous illicit experiments have yielded the means to turn typical dreggum into the towering brutes known as biggrugs. Growing much larger and stronger than ordinary dreggum, the process has deleterious effects on their intellect, rendering them dull-witted, naive, and generally dumber than a sack of hammers. Since intellect is not generally prized among the lower ranks of the Guild, this is not regarded as much of a drawback by the Guild leadership.

Employed as hard-hitting muscle by the Guild, Biggrug Bruisers are eager to please their smaller, smarter brethren. Too dumb to be disloyal and too simple-minded to feel resentment, they readily take direction provided it's not too complicated. Dreghood bosses on the job also need to be careful to watch their slang when Bruisers are being employed - a command to 'knock over the joint' could be taken literally, with entire buildings being up-ended by the over-eager biggrugs.

The Dreghood is not a subtle organization. Or at least, that is the impression they give. Goons are an obvious and disruptive presence in any establishment, but sometimes that's the point. A loud, abrassive distraction can cover the movements of the more clandestine agents of the Shadowguild, a group known as the Grimeshade. While general violence is the preferred tactic of the Dreghood, sometimes a more subtle touch is called for, and that is what the Grimeshade specializes in. Spies, assassins, practitioners in subterfuge, they move in the darkest shadows and strike when least expected.

Experts with long blades and fast-acting poisons, the Grimeshade Inhumers are the pointed messengers of the Shadowguild. They poke out the eyes of those who look too keenly at Guild affairs, cut tongues that wag once too often, and root out those who think they can hide. Shadows offer no safety, for the Grimeshade already lurk in every one.

The Shadowguild makes little discrimination between the sexes, recognizing that dreggum females are just as capable as males when it comes to low-life conniving and inventive violence. Dreggum females can even serve in certain additional capacities in venues of society that cater to the exotic. For targets lurking in more public locales, thinking to hide in plain sight, Grimeshade 'Entertaiment' is employed. Posing as some subservient menial, the 'Entertainment' lulls the target into a false sense of security, before slipping a blade into a ribcage or poison into a drink, retreating before anyone realizes the dirty deed has even been done.

The bulk of the Shadowguild operates in the sprawling city-state of Guildenstern, the largest city in the world and the mercentile heart of the eastern continent. The leaders of the city will tolerate virtually any vice and practice provided that it enriches the city, making it one of the most cosmopolitan settlements in the world. It's sprawling subterranean districts are known as the Underblight, city unto itself hidden from the light of day, rife with crime and corruption, and the Shadowguild has made itself right at home.

The Shadowguild has bided its time well, steadily spreading its influence across ever-growing territory, unregarded as a genuine threat by larger and more powerful organizations who see them as mere resources. But those old, established gangs underestimate the Dreghood - the organized criminal element of Guildenstern has reached a kind of equilibrium with the rest of society. Everything is nice and balanced and peaceful.  The gang lords have become society lords. They've become domesticated.

They've gone soft.

The balance is ripe to be up-ended, the social order torn down, and the city set ablaze. And when chaos fills the streets, the Shadowguild will be ready to carve out their own piece of the action. A big piece.

Intimidation, extortion, larceny, murder... For the Dreghood Shadowguild, no deed is too dirty to be done, and their prices are dirt cheap. Of course, you get what you pay for, and if you aren't completely satisfied with their service you'll get no money back and they'll probably take any extra you happen to have on you because what are you gonna do, complain to the law? Now make yourself scarce before you lose more than just your money...

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