Hecklefang Hyenard Gallery and Lore (Patreon)

Every month Battle Yak Miniatures will release a new Battle Pack, featuring 3D printable miniature files! The September Battle Pack is the Hecklefang Hyenard, cunning beast-folk scavengers that employ craftiness, monstrous beasts, and frightening mystical powers of decay!

Become a Patron now and gain access to the Hecklefang Hyenard release!

Enjoy this gallery of Hecklefang Hyenard miniatures and a glimpse into the lore behind the faction!

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The metal skin krog, we not like to fight. Too many hard metal, all over. Let them fight other things first, like horse-people or cat-people. Wait until they tired-sleep. Then take their metal skin. We use, very good!

Sticky eld-kind, tricky fighting. Very good at magic, very good at arrow. Have shaman talk to the dead, the dead fight first. Get in close, break their bones very easy, like birds! Skinny, but they many times have good magic for shaman. Keep shaman happy is good, or they take your bones.

Yoomans, always different. Can be hard fight, can be easy fight. Sometimes metal skin, and loud fire magic that throws sharp metal. Hard fight, run away is good. Sometimes easy fighting, and big wagons full of stuff. Very good stuff to have! Humans fat and easy to put claws into their eyes and throat.

-Tactics of the Hecklefang

They bide their time. They wait. Never attacking openly, but bleeding the foe one death at a time, striking and fading away. Until the enemy is crippled from loss, exhausted from the chase, suffering from a dozen wounds. When the prey is at their weakest, then they show their strength. Leaving nothing behind but blood on the earth. Not even bare, gnawed bones. This is how the Hecklefang Hyenard fight. How they hunt. How they live.

The hyenard make the wasteland realm of Rakai their home, dwelling in tribes that infest its arid plains and desert badlands. Long ago, the grand civilization that once flourished there conducted experiments in life-shaping magic, creating entire races by moulding simple beasts into intelligent species. The civilization fell into ruin and was swallowed by the scouring deserts, but their magical legacy endures, sunk deep into the land itself, birthing new monstrous races from the indigenous widlife. The hyenard are one such beast-born race, known and feared throughout the land for their vicious cunning and merciless cruelty.

The hyenard make use of every resource they can claim, and often raid other beast-folk tribes or range afar to other lands, marauding for plunder. A hyenard is considered worthy to fight and raid when they can assemble their own armor and weapons from the cast-off loots and leavings of more experienced warriors. By the time these Scrappers have assembled a full assortment of battle gear, they have become highly skilled at turning anything and everything they can lay their claws on.

Hyenard have no industry of their own, and so prize metal armor and weapons that they take from other races. Metal being a rarity in Rakai, such plunder is highly sought after. A warrior fierce enough to claim armor and weapons of metal for herself can earn the reknown of being an Iron-Collar, a hyenard warrior clad in scratch-built metal plate.

The hyenard's relation to the native hyenas of Rakai is obvious, with their own ancestors having been such creatures before being twisted and shaped into the hyenard by the land's lingering life-shaping magic. The hyenard maintain an affinity for their unshaped beast-cousins, and tribes frequently unite with hyena packs for mutual survival. Beastcackle Raiders have managed to build enough of a rapport with them to ride them into battle as mounts.

On rare occasions, the hyenard welcome especially monstrous members into  their tribe, with the life-shaping magic that formed them from ordinary beasts mutating in especially frightening new ways. With their animal attributes monstrously magnified, the Beastcackle Hyenataur charge gleefully into battle, keeping pace alongside their hyena companions on their four lower legs.

The Hecklefang tribe enjoying making their lairs in regions choked with animal graveyards and  bubbling tar pits, concentrations of elemental death and decay that their primitive shamans draw upon to work wicked and depraved necromantic sorcery. These necro-shaman can raise creatures of animate tar out of the bubbling pits, sending them sloughing into battle as monstrous shock troopers. Possessed of a primitive but cruel intellect, Tar Pit Elementals enjoy drowning the enemy in black bubbling pitch and stealing their bones to add to their ever-growing mass.

The deadly croticores are some of the most vicious predators in Rakai. Born of life-shaping magic that has grown especially tainted and foul, they bear attributes of desert felid, scorpion, and quillhog, making them radically effective killers. Some amongst their kind that rise to alpha-status among their kind undergo a frightening metamorphosis, sweating a foul ooze from their hide that envelops them in a disgusting cocoon. The specimen that emerges is many times larger and more intelligent than their smaller kin, sprouting great webbed wings that can carry them through the desert air on the hunt for prey.

Such apex croticores cannot be tamed or truly controlled, but certain hyenard tribes have mastered the tactic of luring such beasts to the locations of would-be prey, charging into battle alongside the horror and taking advantage of their fearsome power. Once the battle is done, the hyeanard leave the great beast to claim its fill before picking over whatever remains. Many a hyenard tribe has enjoyed success by keeping a croticore close-by, though such bestial alliances are always a hair's breadth from disaster.

Hyenard females typically grow larger and stronger than males, which leads to the Servile males taking on a subservient role to a powerful female warrior. By such traditions are their status and safety maintained. A male hyenard may also, uncommonly, feel the draw of magic and develop sorcerous powers, stepping away from fellowship with the rest of their kind to become one of the solitary shaman, respected by the tribe but also regarded with warriness. For some, the opportunity to step out of the shadow of the overbearing matriarchs of the tribe is worth the cost.

The origins of the life-shaping magic that birthed the hyenard and the other beast-races of Rakai lie with the eldarch race. Eons ago their civilization dominated the world, and their mastery of magic enabled them to create numerous marvels. When their golden age ended, fragments of their magic were left behind to pollute realms across the world. A particularly strong concentration of such ancient magic lies in Rakai, the source of the many beast-folk species that have emerged there. For this reason Rakai is also known as the Realm of Beasts.

The eldarch of the modern age are much reduced from their ancient greatness, but they know that fragments of their legacy lie beneath the wastes of Rakai, where one of their ancient citadels was swallowed by the sands. The eldarch see the presence of the beast races as a defilement of their heritage, their very existence an embarrassing example of their power's misuse. Time and again expeditions are sent to purge the beast-races and reclaim the lost power, but such efforts drastically underestimate the cunning and resourcefulness of the hyenard, and only serve to fuel their strength and refine their cunning. The hyenard shaman have even begun to piece together scraps of knowledge gleaned from eldarch captives that are leading them to a greater understanding of their own magical powers, strengthening their bond with the land and the magic that it holds.

The Hecklefang Hyenard are not a foe to be taken lightly. They'll laugh over the corpses of their enemies, and leave behind not even a scrap for the vultures.

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