Dark eldar 40k codex pdf

Keep a look out for perhaps the most powerful Necron 8th Edition Rules and Models 40k. Warhammer 40, 9th Edition - 1d4chan. This package contains the following products: Taylor Fundamentals of Nursing, 9e. The primary Eldar force for many editions, some early Codex: Eldar books included rules for many of the non-Dark Eldar sub-factions, such as Harlequins and Exodites, alongside the Craftworld units.

Watch Dogs: Legion - Ultimate Edition. Serious Sam 4: Deluxe Edition. Two of the profile images of the basic soldiers from haemonculus covens and dark eldar. A Codex is a publication of Games Workshop that details the units and models each army in the Warhammer 40, tabletop miniatures game can use when playing a game.

Codices follow the same edition publication history as the Warhammer 40, tabletop game itself. The 1st Edition of the game, published in , is referred to as Rogue Trader. Game designer Rick Priestly created the original rules set based on the contemporary 2nd Edition of Warhammer Fantasy alongside the Warhammer 40, universe.

Eldar do need a bit of help in the anti tank department currently. S6, Missile launchers, bright lances, prisms and fire dragons only go so far in the ever popular 5th edition environment.

Warhammer 40k 8th Ed datacards: Codex Craftworlds. Contained in this workshop are the Warhammer 40, 8th from Codex Eldar Craftworlds. Also contained are some faction specific. War Elevated To Artform. These services always come at a price, of course, yet a successful realspace raid will normally justify the cost of such bargains tenfold. Once a raid is launched, Kabalite forces will work to keep the foe on the back foot at all times, using superior technology and local knowledge torn from the minds of captives to stay one step ahead of the enemy.

Stand-up fights are never entered into voluntarily, for the warriors of the Kabals view concepts such as valour or honour as weaknesses to be exploited. Their raiding parties will strike hard and fast where the foe is at its most vulnerable, aiming to cripple command and control structures, undermine logistics and spread terror and confusion.

Should an organised response coalesce, the Kabalites will simply fade away and attack elsewhere, aiming above all else to avoid being pinned down in a war of attrition.

Ambush, trickery, the turning of foes against one another, and the bloody quest for personal glory — such are the hallmarks of a Kabalite hunt. The highest-ranking Archon of a Kabal is often called its Overlord, and serving beneath them are several subordinate Archons — sometimes called Dracons — who oversee the execution of lesser raids. When the Overlord does take to battle, they carve a gruesome path through the enemy whilst favoured retainers ensure that only the most desired opponents are allowed to reach their master.

For the warriors in the Kabal, the visceral thrill of seeing their Overlord inflict such pain is exhilarating. Particularly influential Archons may even have several clones of themselves created by the Haemonculi. These duplicate bodies can then participate simultaneously in raids on opposite sides of the galaxy, or they may appear together on a single battlefield should the promise of torment prove especially tantalising.

Similarly, some Overlords — ever cautious against the machinations of their rivals — hide their own identities by deploying simulacra of themselves on raids, while others work from the shadows to cultivate champions who believe themselves to be Overlord. Some, such as the spaceborne Kabal of the Severed, boast great wings of attack craft that shatter and scatter the strength of their victims before a single Drukhari foot touches alien soil.

Conversely, a great many Kabals prefer to get in close, fighting where they can feel every hot splash of blood and hear every last death rattle. Kabals such as the Shuddering Blade and the Silver Fang are especially well known for orchestrating such bloodbaths, and competition is fierce to accompany them to the field of battle.

Perhaps the strangest of all are the Kabal of the Thirteenth Whisper, whose members keep their faces shrouded at all times and who are reputed to traffic heavily with the Mandrakes of Aelindrach.

Raids by this Kabal are nightmarish affairs, tides of shadow proceeding their advance while chill-eyed horrors stalk the darkness with blades in hand. As such they vary greatly in terms of organisation and can have as few as a hundred members or as many as millions.

However, the most common structure sees a single Archon ruling over multiple shards and splinters within a Kabal.

They are his military arm, the enforcers of his will, and it is through them that the Supreme Overlord keeps the viscous flow of power circulating throughout the Dark City. The Kabal of the Black Heart is the oldest and greatest of its kind. It is a vast and sprawling organisation, able to support numerous rival Archons within its hierarchical structure.

Each Archon controls a separate faction within the Black Heart, and each vies fiercely with his rivals for the patronage of Supreme Overlord Vect. Even then, they do so with caution, for it is said that Vect knows well the scent of treachery, and reads the minds of lesser mortals like an open book. This union — alongside the impossibly intricate web of spies and informers that Vect has scattered through every stratum of Commorragh, standing compacts with multiple Haemonculus Covens, and secreted agents throughout the wider Aeldari race — means the Kabal of the Black Heart holds more power than several of their largest rivals combined.

This is an exquisite motivator, and leads to vast soul harvests being carried out with flawless precision by the Black Heart.

Their Overlord, Vraesque Malidrach, began his long and dishonourable career as a low-born Reaver in the arena of Khad Mhetrul, where he was known for his signature brand of high-speed violence. Even after murdering his way to mastery over his own Kabal, Vraesque has lost little of the flare he cultivated in the arena, and is known for slaughtering his foes in swift, shocking raids. When faced with a worthwhile champion, the low-born lord may treat his warriors to a display of the savagery for which he gained his fame — decapitating his opponent, then slicing off their face with a single swing while their head arcs through the air.

Not for us a grubbing crawl through the mud and filth of battle. Leave that to lesser races. We shall only set foot upon the soil these vermin call home in order to place our bladed heels upon their throats. Known as the Poisoned Crown, the spire is encrusted with docks and grav-moorings beyond counting, and around them hangs a constantly shifting cloud of Razorwing Jetfighters and Voidraven Bombers.

Those Commorrites who win their way out of the arenas to own such an attack craft are eager to align themselves with the Flayed Skull, for Vraesque is a renowned master of airborne warfare. Furthermore, he is quick to adopt new aerial strategies created in the arenas, so long as they are sufficiently spectacular and violent.

These are often enacted by Reavers and Hellions who clamour to go to war alongside the Flayed Skull, or by flocks of Scourges who have sold their fickle loyalty to Vraesque. They are perhaps the most insidious of the Kabals, yet when their schemes call for it, they are more than capable of flexing their violent might. Few such spies survive long, for Lady Malys has her little ways, and she is invariably several steps ahead of the competition.

They even use failure and mischance as weapons, elegantly scapegoating and framing others to achieve their means. Many an opposing Archon has been torn to shreds by their own Kabalites due to the campaigns of misinformation spread by the Poisoned Tongue. Nobody trusts the honeyed words of this infamously sly Kabal, but seeing as no Drukhari trusts another in any case, this is not much of a handicap.

During their realspace raids, the Poisoned Tongue put their skills of deceit to deadly use. On worlds where the Kabal have trained their eye, inhabitants are often supplied with false signs of an impending attack, as well as fragmented messages and fleeting signatures of Drukhari raiding craft. They position their defences as best they can to repel the impending invasion, but when the Poisoned Tongue finally strikes it is inevitably where their victims least expect.

The Kabal regularly employs infiltration tactics, assassinations and massed poisonings to ravage their enemies before ever meeting them on the field of battle. The result is that the raiding parties of the Poisoned Tongue are able to swiftly run through the disordered ranks of their prey before spiriting back their captives to Commorragh. Led by the intellectual titan Lady Aurelia Malys, the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue enjoys a position right at the forefront of Commorrite society.

However, the truth is that she simply has a mind like a steel trap. So astoundingly complex is her psyche that she was once taken by Asdrubael Vect as one of his consorts, until the Supreme Overlord eventually cast her out.

Outraged, Malys and most of her Kabalite Warriors left Commorragh and struck out into the webway. There it is said she encountered the god of the Harlequins, Cegorach, who banished her followers and challenged her to a duel of wills. Determined to gain enough power to undo Vect, Malys used the blade to cut out her own heart and replaced it with that of Cegorach.

Rather than wait around for the reprisal that the Black Heart had inevitably planned, she took the vast bulk of the Poisoned Tongue and ventured out into the webway, there to await the coming storm. For now, the Poisoned Tongue are content to watch the Dark City from afar. Thus armed, even the lowliest of their Warriors is able to fight like a virtuoso, and their champions stride arrogantly across the battlefield to put their perfectly crafted weapons to use.

Through the inventive genius of their Overlord, Aestra Khromys, they maintain a death grip on the Commorrite arms trade, and when they raid the worlds of realspace, they do so armed with the best equipment in Commorragh. Every weapon, suit of armour and vehicle used by the Kabal is a work of art, finely detailed and honed for maximum lethality. A single one of these tools of war would be a prized artefact to one of the minor Kabals, but to the Obsidian Rose the achievement of perfection is not an elusive ideal — it is the benchmark by which success and failure are measured.

These same exacting standards are applied to every aspect of life in the Kabal. Before launching a raid, the Obsidian Rose practise every step, shot and contingency until each Warrior can perform their part blindfolded.

It is not uncommon for Warriors returning from a raid to be hoisted onto the bladed vanes of their craft next to the screaming captives, simply because they have allowed their weapon to become tarnished with enemy blood. Anything less than immaculate is considered an utter affront. Archon Khromys herself is an impossibly skilled artisan in the field of weapons manufacture, and a blade or pistol bearing her signature mark will sell for a huge price in slaves and souls.

Here she was forced to monotonously assemble the same parts over and over until her days blended together into a recurring nightmare. For the Drukhari, who are by their nature born hedonists, such a fate is far worse than death or torture, for in the relentless mundanity their very souls are starved.

Many so fated go mad — but Khromys developed a plan that would take many years to come to fruition. The results of her prodigious craftsmanship were noticed by the factory overseers, and within a year she was transferred to a graded workshop within High Commorragh.

Eventually, Khromys and the team of master artisans she had trained were purchased wholesale by Archon Vhloriac, who had long since discarded any memory of his past encounter with the disrespectful weaponsmith. For him she produced finer armaments than she had ever Phorsa Quex, Sybarite, Splinter of Darkness Emerging, Shard of the Jade Chrysalis before created, and her master boastfully equipped himself and his bodyguard with her wares.

When Khromys and her team were summoned before their patron they brought gifts with them, seemingly harmless artefacts and trinkets that in reality harboured dozens of concealed weapons. It was an act of treachery that was meticulously crafted, and executed to perfection.

Since that day, Khromys has ruled as Overlord of the Obsidian Rose, and the Kabal has a flawless reputation for its firearms and blades. The Kabalites of the Last Hatred have a morbid interest in the forbidden arts. Though they outwardly seek to master the transition between life and death, their aims are far grander than those of petty necromancers. Some say the Last Hatred seek to transcend mortality entirely, others that they wish to exterminate the Aeldari race and enslave whatever entity is born from the ashes.

Madness this may seem, but any who have looked into their eyes will never truly dismiss their ambition, nor the depths of depravity to which they will go to fulfil their goals. So it is that they prosecute their kin-strife against the Asuryani and Exodites, but above all it is the Ynnari who are shown the full measure of their fury. In recent years, the Kabal have mastered the technique of permanently binding a soul to the cadaver from which it would usually depart at the moment of death.

Yet the carnival of corpses that accompanies them to war is merely a distraction to draw attention from something far more sinister, for down in the pits under their stronghold, the Kabal practises ever more complex rites. Here the Kabalites unpick the tapestry of life, studying the postponement of entropy in gardens hung with wax-skinned undead arranged in artful but unnatural poses.

Should they ever succeed in their quest, the lines between life and death may be irrevocably blurred. Even Asdrubael Vect is viewed amongst the Kabal as a usurper who has elevated himself far beyond his birthright. Those who fight under the symbol of the Dying Sun belong to one of the oldest Kabals, renowned for their overweening pride and disdain for anything that has not endured for millennia.

They prefer to raid at sunset, for their Overlord, Archon Vorl-Xoelanth, is obsessed with the transition from light and hope to darkness and despair. Maiys of Grovenspire, Sybarite, Splinter of Blooded Alabaster, White Shard of Grovenspire The truth is that the Kabal of the Dying Sun possess ancient fragments of forbidden arcana, heirlooms from the days of the Aeldari empire of old. Their stronghold — the Pinnacle of Disdain — is an impenetrable mountain of elegant, buttressed armour and echoing chambers, within which the Kabal hide their darkest secrets.

These timeless artefacts, hidden away in shadowy vaults, possess the power to kill stars, suck the life force from worlds and exterminate whole races of sentient beings. However, they are ill understood and, in many cases, charged with psychic potential. Thus, they are as lethal to their owners as they are to their victims, not least because it would attract the violent displeasure of the Dark City at large should their existence become known.

Few other Kabals can boast as great a navy as the rulers of Pandaimon, and none can match their ability to create these machines of war. Prowling squadrons of Ravagers and sleek-sailed Raiders fill the skies of Pandaimon, sweeping between its spires in great numbers. Long ago, this proud and ancient Kabal were brought to their knees after an ill-fated rebellion against Asdrubael Vect by their then-master, Archon Qu.

However, in the centuries since, they have rebuilt their power through ensuring the Kabal of the Black Heart remains well supplied with Iron Thorn war machines. The Lords of Iron Thorn are highly active in the raids upon realspace.

Every successful attack proves afresh the supremacy of their airborne armada, and also supplies them with the massive force of slaves required to power their ceaseless industry.

They believe in the application of overwhelming firepower, and delight in proving the superiority of their finely crafted gunboats over the lumbering war engines of the lesser races. Perched in the wings of the webway, they wait for the sound of screaming to beckon them to the stage of battle.

Like its namesake, the Kabal is synonymous with discordance. Wherever order and prosperity abound, the Broken Sigil strike with overwhelming force, bringing confusion and despair to the most idyllic planets in the galaxy. True enough, his Kabalites are not above blanket-bombing with hallucinogenic gas or hijacking communications channels to ensure their victims are frightened half to death before the invasion starts in earnest.

Yet the Kabalites of the Broken Sigil maintain that the price they pay in forewarning the enemy is outweighed by the rich feast of fear that awaits them when the onslaught begins. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Broken Sigil are amongst the most feared and infamous of the Kabals, especially upon the worlds of the Imperium.

Entire conclaves of Ordo Xenos Inquisitors seek their demise, and on multiple occasions Lord Xerathis has found himself the personal quarry of Deathwatch Kill Teams. If this concerns the toweringly arrogant fear-monger, he conceals it well.

Commorragh exists in a delicate but well-established balance. Yet for the ruling Archons of Commorragh to allow the natural bloodthirst of their kin to go unchecked would be to invite catastrophic civil war. Each Wych Cult is a thousandsstrong organisation of gladiators that put on frequent displays of the most incredible brutality — not only for the edification of the masses, but also for their literal sustenance.

Such is the scale of the carnage staged by these armies of warrior-athletes that their audiences leave the arena with the glow of well-fed predators. Comparing architectural masterpieces such as the Crucibael or Moedh Stair to the primitive amphitheatres of other civilisations would be much like placing a glittering palace next to a mud hut. Likewise, the Drukhari athletes that perform within them make the most gifted human acrobat look like an uncoordinated ape by comparison.

Each arena has its own deadly charms and challenges, from staples such as spinning blades and ravenous beasts, to gravitywells, kinetic inversion snares or even more esoteric and inventive hazards. Each Wych Cult is constantly in competition to outdo its rivals with the sheer scope and imagination of its gore-soaked games.

Many performances spread into the audience in interesting and deadly ways as the excitement builds to fever pitch. Arterial spurts of blood rain down into the rapt crowd as battle takes place over their heads, or even amidst their stalls. The arenas crackle with tension, the viewers leaning forward in their seats with eyes wide and the leers of hungry predators etched upon their faces. Most of the Hekatarii are female, for amongst the Drukhari it is they who are more often able to attain the pinnacle of poise and grace their craft demands.

This prima Succubus surrounds herself with lesser Succubi, each of whom leads a Circle of twenty to sixty Wyches. Most Wych Cults also boast a large supporting caste, as well as multiple contingents of mercenaries. Certainly the Succubi who rule over the Wych Cults are universally female.

Most Cults contain several Succubi, each leading the Wyches of a particular Circle, but a single Succubus possessed of unmatched power and deadly grace typically reigns over them all.

So it has been since the earliest days of the Dark City, and so shall it always be. More than this, however, the Wych Cults are powerful allies. After all, each is comprised solely of trained killers who enjoy nothing more than to demonstrate their consummate skills in battle. This mutually agreeable arrangement ensures that the Wych Cults never run short of slaves and exotic combat stimulants.

A good patron is always generous, lest his stable of warrior athletes decides to bite the hand that feeds them. Meanwhile, the Archon gains the allegiance of an organisation of exceptionally trained Hekatarii to lend their blades to his raids upon realspace.

The Wych Cults take every chance they can to prove their martial skills superior to those of the lesser races, both within the arena and without. Though they profess nothing but contempt for the warrior castes of realspace, the Wyches get an undeniable thrill out of matching themselves against any suitably impressive opponent. The trophy halls of a successful Succubus will thus boast the heads of Adeptus Astartes champions, conquering Ork Warbosses and Tyranid Hive Tyrants alike.

There is much more to a Wych Cult than its arena. Each Cult keeps an extensive menagerie, re-stocked by its Beastmasters with an endless supply of alien captives and dangerous species. The Bladed Hand, for To the untrained eye, a Wych Cult raid appears like a barbaric orgy of violence in which the Commorrite gladiators tear into their foes with savage abandon. But in truth, each attack upon realspace is meticulously staged, with every Wych playing a crucial role.

A Wych Cult will often stage realspace raids purely at the behest of its Succubus. These raids are not only to gather new fodder for the arenas, but also to provide a chance for the Wyches to test their skills against new opponents.

A Wych Cult raid is considered high art by many Drukhari, who will pay handsomely to fight alongside the massed gladiators, alien beasts and speeding aerial acrobats that each Succubus unleashes upon her prey. Other raids are quite literally performances in their own right. Aboard these craft, wealthy spectators swill intoxicating nectars and offer sneers or applause as each bloody slaughter ebbs and flows, while bets are won or lost on the conduct of favoured combatants.

Such spectacles are especially popular amongst the smirking ranks of the Trueborn, who become steadily more exhilarated and revitalised as they soak up the miasma of agonies that rises from battle below.

Yet for all their foppish hangers-on, Wych Cult raids are veritable blizzards of violence. They are direct and unstoppable strikes that — like the Wyches themselves — scorn the cumbersome protection of armour in favour of the safety that pure speed provides.

Like a perfectly placed knife-thrust to the heart, a raid by a Wych Cult is swift, deadly and precise, capable of felling even the largest and most dangerous foes before they even realise they are under attack.

Amid hurtling squadrons of Reavers and Hellions, swept over by the half-glimpsed shadows of Razorwing Jetfighters and Voidraven Bombers, the Wyches leap and plunge into the midst of their enemies with joyous abandon, fighting amongst the piles of their mangled victims. This Cult has risen to the apex of power not through treacherous politicking, but through mastering the creed of speed over strength, and elevating their blood sports to high art.

Even outside of the Dark City, the Cult of Strife has become synonymous with flawless cruelty. The Wyches of this Cult are master executioners all, dedicated to perfecting the art of the kill in all its forms. If one of the inferior races has devised a new way of killing it shall soon be catalogued by the Cult of Strife, and — if suitably spectacular — may be adopted for use in the arenas.

Nobility from every fractal corner of the Dark City come to observe these performances, and to imbibe the exquisitely crafted suffering the Cult of Strife produces in their victims.

Many Archons pay handsomely to see famous Cult of Strife Wyches fight champions from other Cults, lavishing even more riches on the eventual winner.

This constant inflow of wealth allows the Cult of Strife to maintain an unending supply of the best combat drugs available, which they use to further enhance their talents in the arena. The brutal reputation surrounding the Cult breeds in its constituent Wyches an air of superiority that is pronounced even by the standards of the Drukhari, and they take every opportunity to show that this pride is well deserved. Though the Cult of Strife boasts dozens of the best warrior-athletes in the galaxy, it is their prima Succubus — Lelith Hesperax — who is the flawless diamond at the centre of the crown.

Her allure draws in hundreds of thousands of spectators every night, each of whom is prepared to pay a high price for the privilege of watching her perform.

Night after night, Lelith dances her way through massed ranks of stimm-enhanced Orks, gut-wrenching Grotesques, disgraced Archons and more, the crowd roaring its approval as she gifts each victim the kiss of death with a contemptuous flick of her blades.

Whether this is a bond of reciprocal admiration or the wary respect of natural born killers is immaterial, for the alliance has proven as strong as steel, and strength is hard currency in the Dark City. The alliance between the Kabal of the Black Heart and the Cult of Strife brings constant benefit to both. Even the most impulsive and hot-tempered Succubus must recognise that a challenge to the Cult of Strife is likely to incur the wrath of Asdrubael Vect himself.

This unique symbiosis is magnified a hundredfold on the battlefields of realspace, where the followers of Lelith and Vect fight alongside one another with merciless synchronicity. The pitiless firepower of the Kabalites and the point-blank ferocity of the Wyches mesh to deadly effect.

The gladiatrixes of the Cult of Strife weave sinuously through the covering fire of the Black Heart to fall upon the surviving foes in an orgy of bloodletting. Freed from the customary necessity of watching their supposed allies for signs of treachery, both Commorrite factions are able to fight at their full potential against their luckless prey.

On those rare occasions that the belladonna of the arenas deigns to take to the field in person, the spectacle of this alliance at war is raised to the sublime.

Yet when it does take place, the competition to join the raiding party is so fierce it has, on occasion, triggered fullblown inter-Kabalite war. The planet was a stronghold of the Alpha Legion, a Heretic Astartes faction synonymous with the use of stealth and subterfuge. Vrax, however, eventually overreached himself. Having discovered that the Kabal of the Black Heart planned to raid the Imperial factory world of Melidrantis, he elected to use the Drukhari as pawns in his own schemes.

Needless to say, such an insult could not be allowed to stand. Asdrubael Vect spared no effort in tracking down this mysterious assailant and prepared an attack to make an example of them. This was not to be a slave raid, but a slaughter. As a swirling webway portal tore the skies above the Black Mountains, the Alpha Legionnaires were caught completely by surprise. From the portal flew dozens of attack craft, falling like a rain of knives towards the squat immensity of the Alpha Legion stronghold where it nestled amid the mountain peaks.

By the time the Chaos air defences cycled up and flak batteries began to pound, it was already too late. Through these gaps poured the Kabalites of the Black Heart and the Wyches of the Cult of Strife, leaping straight from the decks of their Raiders into the smoke-shrouded corridors of the fort.

Towering traitors strode to meet them with bolters blazing and blades bared. The surviving Alpha Legionnaires were finally surrounded in their primary arming chamber, massively outnumbered and outgunned. It was here that Hesperax met Vrax in single combat, mockingly offering the Chaos Lord and his followers their freedom should he defeat her. A lethal swordsman with daemonic strength burning in his veins, Vrax set upon his slender foe with his hellforged broadsword.

Hesperax met him with a simple knife in each hand, standing firm with a slight smile pulling at one corner of her perfect lips. Even as the Chaos Lord fell, her followers closed in once more. The Cult of the Cursed Blade has earned its name many times over, so much so that even for a well-protected Archon to invite Wyches from this Cult into his palace is tantamount to cutting his own throat.

Treachery is held as the greatest of all virtues by the Cursed Blade, for by a process of hyperaccelerated natural selection the Wyches of the Cult ensure that only the strongest and most cunning within their ranks survive.

Weapons that deceive and wrong-foot the foe are popular within their warrior cliques. Many a harmless-looking ornament worn by the Wyches contains a hidden snap-sword, poison barb or pair of flick-blades, and it is common to see many razorflails wielded among their ranks. In the arena, a favoured performance of the Cult is to feign an alliance with an unwitting alien combatant — giving the warrior hope that they may survive the brutal ordeal — before cutting down their false ally when all other enemies are dead.

The stronghold of this devious Cult is known as the Nhexus Arena, and is far more deadly than its elegant architecture would suggest. Every curve and line contains sprung monofilament nets, venomous dart-launchers, toxin-loaded syringe-drills and a myriad of other lethal surprises.

Nor is this cornucopia of misfortune confined to the arena floor, for these deadly booby traps are ever-shifting and as likely to spring up amid the audience as to lacerate or impale the performers.

This is merely part of the fun, of course, adding a delicious frisson of very real danger that many Drukhari simply cannot resist. Whilst they have ravenously preyed upon Imperial worlds lying isolated within this nightmarish realm, they have also defended such planets from slavering daemonic hordes and warbands of Chaos Space Marines, each time instilling a dim glimmer of hope in the beleaguered defenders before snuffing out thoughts of salvation with their own merciless cruelty.

Their raiding craft attack with such speed that they are almost impossible to hit, and racks of living bodies hooked under their wings release contrails of blood to mask their manoeuvres. Their raiding forces employ whole flotillas of Raiders that fly in close formation towards the foe, escorted by Reavers, Venoms and Hellions. When the aerial formations close with the enemy, the Wyches bound and spring from Raider to jetbike to skyboard and back again with athletic precision, dismounting and mounting so swiftly that the transports barely have to slow.

Only the Wyches themselves ever deign to touch the ground, and even then only to deliver the killing blow to enemies who are still trying to adjust to the fact that they are under attack.

Even when they have become full-fledged members of the Cult, many within the Red Grief still actively participate in the gang wars that rage through the skies of Commorragh. For most Cults and Kabals, these unending skirmishes are merely a proving ground for new recruits, but the Red Grief view them as an almost meditative practice that they return to after completing a realspace raid. Its galleries are made from transparent crystal, revealing that the audience are suspended only moments from a sickening plunge to their deaths.

The arena proper truly has no floor — just a yawning gulf prowled by drifting antigrav platforms. Such bouts are typically brief, but the promise of seeing limbless, still-living combatants tumbling to their deaths far below draws huge crowds to the Pit night after night.

Though his appearance had been welcomed by only a smattering of applause from patrons trying to maintain a facade of disinterest, now all eyes were firmly fixed on him. Only one combatant could be first to slay the new breed of Space Marine, thought Khresilla — but it had to be done right, with appropriate flair for the occasion. Khresilla jammed her heel on the thrust pedal and her skyboard screamed around the crystalline spar.

Through the translucent facets of the fractal column she could see the Space Marine swing his spent gun at an oncoming Reaver. This was the distraction Khresilla needed.

She rounded the corner of the spar with her target in sight and her hellglaive ready. The Space Marine still had his back turned as she closed the final few yards, but suddenly Khresilla experienced a sharp pain across her midriff followed by total numbness. She felt herself drifting towards her prey, but looking down she saw neither her skyboard nor her legs — only droplets of blood trailing from where her lower half should be.

As the flood of Wyches leap through the opposing battle line, they swipe and slash with practised deftness, leaving a carpet of mutilated bodies that writhe in agony and cry out for death. The legend is synonymous with the end of innocence, a tenet that the Cult of the Seventh Woe embraces wholeheartedly by teaching those born into their ranks to wield a blade before they can talk. Pistols are fired at bone joints, and blade-strikes aim to carve out ligaments and tendons. In this way their enemies are left alive but completely incapacitated, flailing helplessly and in agony as the realisation of their own dark fate crystallises in their minds.

Once the entire enemy force has been thus mutilated, the Wyches leisurely stalk the battleground, savouring the screams of their opponents as they are pinned to the prows of Raiders.

In the arenas, this fighting style is less showy than that of some other Cults — whose beheadings and disembowelments coat the crowds in showers of viscera — but discerning patrons appreciate the delectable suffering that is wrung from the rag-doll victims of the Seventh Woe Wyches.

The Cult deliberately puts itself at a disadvantage against its enemies, taking on superior numbers in heavily armed emplacements with little more than well-sharpened knives, haywire grenades, and the Raiders and Venoms that bear them planetside. When the killing begins, however, the Wyches will improvise, turning the technologies of their foes against them, crippling the largest of enemies with judiciously targeted haywire attacks, and digging out the fleshy bounty inside with the care of an epicure savouring every nuance of his carefully prepared meal.

In fact, stories of planetary defenders falling on their blades and killing their compatriots out of fear when a Drukhari raid appears are often just accounts of the Blade Denied practising their grim art. They are practitioners of the killing trance, and through gruesome meditations they set their minds to the sole task of butchery. The Cult of the Wrath Unbound seek to harness this half-crazed state of mind to better become one with the kill.

Led by the Succubus Hythnamene Veilblood, the Wyches and Beastmasters of this Cult practise long and gory rituals before each performance or battle, gradually letting their intellect slip away and their hungry instincts take over. Slowly but surely they become creatures of pure bloodlust; their eyes roll back in their heads, and ancient litanies to Khaela Mensha Khaine — the Aeldari god of war — spill out of their painted lips.

Whilst the killing trance is upon them, the warriors of the Wrath Unbound are every bit as savage as the packs of Khymerae and Clawed Fiends that run with them on the hunt. As such, their raids gather more and more momentum as the slaughter increases and the Wyches slip further into their trance. An intended assault upon a single city can easily become an orgy of violence that consumes a continent or even an entire world.

In this way, the Cult spreads despair far beyond where its raiding fleets reave. The Pain Eternal are exceptional in that they do not make regular appearances within the arenas of High Commorragh. Instead, they are a spacefaring Cult that dock only once every few years in the Dark City. Unstinting in the service of the Dark Muse Hekatii, Mother of Strife, the Pain Eternal exists to tear down and destroy everything that is holy to the lesser races of the galaxy.

It does mitigate the effects of either bonuses to wound or things that lower your toughness, though, making Prophets a particularly interesting pick into armies like Blood Angels or Death Guard, which rely on the first and second respectively. Diabolical Soothsayer is completely different, letting you choose at the start of the battle to either improve your toughness and wounds or your movement and attacks by 1 each.

Prophets are no longer the only valid choice a lot of the time but still have some decent things going for them and are likely to see a reasonable amount of use. The unique relic is a little less exciting. One day, we will see a pistol relic that competes with other things you could take on the same unit. Spirit-Sting is not that relic.

The warlord trait and strat here are both very swingy, but also both potentially hugely powerful in the right situation. These Butchers of Flesh have a simple, yet powerful, Obsession: all your melee weapons other than Relics improve their AP by 1. Combine this with Blade Artists and your Coven units are suddenly a lot more threatening: pushing their Wrack blades to a base AP-2 gives Wracks enough of a boost to make them a threat your opponent will actually need to consider, and Talos with chainflails will mulch through just about anything fairly easily.

However, keep it in mind for when it counts: being able to score Data Intercept with a Talos or Raider while still shooting could be very useful.

The wounds triggering on failed hits and not being able able to re-roll them mean that this is going to hurt , especially on vehicles, and if you try the old plan of stacking it on Venoms you have a small risk of straight up losing one as soon as you shoot — and their shot count has taken a dive anyway with the change to splinter cannons.

Drukhari Characters: Credit: Wings. As a bonus, if the detachment you chose was a Realspace Raid, you can choose one of each HQ choice to upgrade, though your army can only contain one of each.

Each upgraded model gains a unique ability and also gains access to a Relic and Warlord trait that can help set them apart from their less-powerful peers. Master Archons gain the Splintered Genius ability, which lets them fight a second time at the end of the Fight phase once per battle. Finally, if you choose this Archon as your Warlord, you can make them a Consummate Weaponmaster , adding 1 to the damage of their non-Relic melee weapons — nifty on a venom blade.

Mostly the base ability is the big draw here, as an optional fight twice on a model you can make pretty lethal is very strong. Master Succubi are probably going to be the most commonly seen of the three possible Masters simply on the back of Bloodbrides being complete nightmares, and the base ability is also really good — being able to step out of combat after fighting, or dash onto an objective, is potentially huge.

This is a useful utility effect that should always be in consideration for your lists. All of this is super spicy. Ultimately — all of these are going to see use, as they all have real power to offer you. If you choose to upgrade any of your HQs, you can also upgrade a single troops choice in the same subfaction to become one of the Favored Retinues.

All of these are super good, though, and only serve to make the upgraded unit even better at their intended role. Take a squad of 10 with a pair of blasters and a dark lance, shove them in a Raider, and watch the fireworks. This means that 6s to wound with Hekatarii blades come in at an impressive AP-4, and with 41 attacks from a full squad, anything you charge them into is in serious danger.

Finally, Wracks upgrade into Haemoxytes , who improve both their Save characteristic and invulnerable save by 1 each. On top of all of these bonuses, your chosen squad stays in the Troops slot. This is useful for a couple of reasons: not only can you use them as your compulsory Troops choice in a Patrol or Realspace Raid detachment, they also keep the Objective Secured ability while significantly outperforming similar troops options in their respective roles.

Hekatrix Bloodbrides are the biggest winner, as they take an already scary unit and turn them into nightmare blenders, and you should probably aim to hold 20pts back to upgrade a squad any time you buy a Master Succubus. The other two options are less mandatory but still very strong. Haemoxytes are pretty flexible, being good at fighting for mid-board objectives in a ten model squad, and a five model unit is also a great home objective holder thanks to the wound shrug.

Trueborn are very cool but also the most skippable, though it is worth pointing out that ignoring penalties means they can use a dark lance or splinter cannon with impunity, so a full squad flying around on a Raider can be very nasty, particularly with the Black Heart or Obsidian Rose Obsessions which give them a built-in re-roll to hit or wound respectively.

In combination with the Lords of Commorragh rule this is a fantastic boon to the faction, both in terms of power on the table and also thematic feel, and we look forward to slamming these into lots and lots of lists. In terms of the old stuff, there are returning versions of a lot of strats, with the key ones being:.

Eviscerating Fly-by is also back and needs its own mention, because it got a major buff. Sometimes you just need something dead , and having this help to go the final stretch against a key target is very valuable given how reasonably priced it is. The Drukhari stratagem sheet is fantastic — it gives you tools for pretty much everything you want to do on the table, and is going to keep your models moving fast and reaping souls. Top stuff. Rather than the six choices most books get, Drukhari get three for each subfaction.

While the names of these are the same as they were in 8th, most of them have changed in important ways. For Archons, Hatred Eternal is the most straightforward choice, letting them re-roll hit rolls and wound rolls exceptional with the Djin Blade. Most Succubi will wind up taking the Precision Blows trait, which allows them to deal mortal wounds equal to the damage characteristic of their weapon on an unmodified 6 to hit.

Taken on a Succubus with the Tryptych Whip or some other source of extra attacks, this can quickly spiral out of control and turn your Succubus into an incredibly powerful Character hunter. An incredibly, amazingly dumb ability that you should take a lot. There are three choices here worth talking about. First, the Helm of Spite is back as the sole source of denies in your entire book. As a bonus, anyone you successfully deny automatically suffers perils regardless of their roll.

Now that Archons are legitimate combat threats, this is a great option to make them seriously scary against a wide variety of targets. Finally, the Tryptych Whip is just plain good. The Drukhari definitely bring the power necessary to take advantage of this ability, and the fact that it competes with Engage on All Fronts creates an interesting tension: do you rely on your superior mobility to score an all-but-guaranteed 3 points per round, or lean into your overwhelming offensive ability to try for 4 or even 6?

Take Them Alive! The remaining two objectives are a bit less useful. Potentially extremely worth it against Tyranids, though — and if you see an opponent put down a Hierophant across the table from you, you are a coward for not trying to take it down with a Succubus in melee. First things first — a reminder of general rules — everything in this book except Beasts now has Power from Pain , and the overwhelming majority also have Blade Artists just the planes and part of the Court of the Archon miss out.

We should also talk about CORE — which is ridiculously broad here. What was that? You were expecting another entry on that list? Talos, perhaps? Elf bullshit is back. Drazhar, the Master of Blades. Characters reshuffle a fair bit — Archons and Haemonculi are a bit less deadly on their base rates now though the former can mitigate that a lot with relics while Succubi and Drahzar have been juiced up to the moon. They also come with a power sword by default now, which is weird, though they retain all the old options as well.

The Shadow Field also remains in all its swingy glory, and since a huge percentage of lists will take one of these for a Realspace Raid , look forward to being on either side of its wild variance a lot! In addition, their Archite glaive has lost the penalty to hit, making it a lot more reliable, but is still D1.

The real winner out of their basic options is the shardnet and impaler, which is AP-2 D2. Given they have 6A base, and can take Combat Drugs for a point of S, you can just straight up have 7 S4 AP-2 D2 attacks on this 60pt model before you even start upgrading her, which is vicious.

Taking an extra Wych detachment just to get more of these honestly seems like a plausible play. No Escape has also received what is technically a sidegrade but is basically a net upside. Succubi are absurdly good, pick them! The Haemonculus gets an odd change in the context of the wider book — they lose an attack on their profile, but pick up an extra wound in exchange. Instead, she gets to either charge in a turn when she Fell Back or Advanced, or fight again at the end of any Fight phase in which she kills at least one model.

She also uses your Master Succubus slot for a detachment. Speaking of Drazhar. Holy shit. This guy rules. Finally, Urien Rakarth has been busy in his lab grafting new rules onto his datasheet, keeping everything he had before and adding the new Fleshcraft rule as well as getting the Master Haemonculus ability via Sustained by Dark Science.

Like Lelith, he is a Master, so uses that slot for your detachment. The HQ slot here rules. Meanwhile, Succubi and Drahzar absolutely rip, and the herohammer potential from this book is through the roof. Drukhari Kabalite Warriors. Razorflails now double your attacks but no longer allow you to re-roll hit rolls. The weirdest bit here is the way you get those weapons, though: for every 10 models in the squad, you can take one of each. Wyches absolutely rule — your basic unit of 10 is tossing out 41 attacks, probably at S4, for only pts, and the upgrades are pretty strong.

Expect to see them everywhere. The overall upshot here is that all of these feel valid a real theme for the book , which is great for providing you with a broad array of listbuilding options.