It is the legend of the First Bloodline. Among the oral tradition of the Council of Crones, it is believed these three sisters combined their genetics to create the bloodline from which all Escher are descended.
With millennia stretching out before them, they knew that their method of prolonging their existence could not continue forever, their clone vaults too vulnerable to fault or sabotage, or the efforts of a dedicated foe intent on all-out war. So they combined their uniqueness into 12 children — five boys and seven girls. From these children the Escher bloodline was born, and all true children of the clan can trace their ancestry back to the Twelve. Even as the sisters lived out their final lives, destroying their clone stores so they might find true death at last, their House prospered.
Blessed by the pure genetic strength of the sisters, its men and women were clean limbed and clear headed, standing out among the rad-cursed and tox-riddled citizens of the hives. Time, however, would not be kind to the House of Blades. Those members of the House who had grown used to the decadence and privilege of their position in the spire resented those who sought to further the Ulandari name through great deeds and reckless pursuits.
This latter group included much of the youth of the House, reared on tales of their ancestors and the founding mothers. Gathered under the Patriarch Lord Athoros, the Athenos, as they became known, left the spire in the Pilgrimage of a Thousand Steps, a mass migration into the depths of the hive. The Pashas of Ulanti were said to have bid these upstarts good riddance, and returned to their gene-salons and xenos menageries, content that Athoros and his followers would be dead within a generation.
Of course, this was not to be the case. In time, the bloodline of Ulandari would be diluted within the Ulanti as the Noble House intermarried with other Noble Houses or introduced off-world bloodlines. By contrast, becoming a Clan House only strengthened the blood of Athenos, Athoros Rex personally fathering sons and daughters to carry on his line.
Over the following centuries, the descendants of Athoros continued to prosper, their dominance spreading out among the hives of Necromunda. In this lost age the men and women of Athenos were especially renowned for their strength and genetic purity, in a time when many of the other Houses were suffering from polluted genepools and increased numbers of mutant births.
Gormund the True, Avalos of Trazior and the Blade King all ruled the House during this time, their exploits still told to this day. The blood of Ulandari was almost spent within the halls of the Ulanti, and only a handful of women could trace their lineage back to the Blades, while the patriarchal Athenos were crippled by internal conflicts between its hive kings.
The catalyst for change and the salvation of the House of Blades came during the Two-faced War, when House Helmawr was divided. Ulanti used this time to strengthen their position in Hive Primus, pledging their allegiance to the Lady Cinderak Helmawr, and benefiting from her successes. By contrast, the Athenos were divided, more than half the clan having sided with her brother, Gothrul. This shadow war also brought to light a secret cult within Ulanti — the Eschaki.
These were women who could still trace their ancestry back to the Blades and kept the ideals of the founding mothers alive. When the bloody conflicts of the Two-faced War were done, and Lady Cinderak had emerged victorious, House Ulanti had once again secured its position in the spire, though it bore little resemblance to the House that had once split from Ulandari. Clan Athenos was gutted and in decline, almost all its hive kings having been slain or exiled.
The Eschaki, disillusioned with how removed the Ulanti had become from their origins, chose self-imposed exile from the spire. Swiftly, and with little conflict, they absorbed the remnants of Athenos, House Eschaki taking its place among the Clan Houses.
Unlike the Goliath of the 41st Millennium, these Goliaths were not vat-born gene-workers, but rather hardened natural-born men and women of the forge. They were bolstered by exiles from the former House Athenos, hive kings who sought revenge upon the Eschaki. A war raged on and off between the two Houses for years, the conflict finally culminating in the Great Poisoning during the Mynerva Famine.
Despite thousands of their fighters having been killed by Eschaki treachery, House Goliath met the Eschaki in battle with hordes of slave Ogryns, spudjacker-armed worker battalions and muscle-bound gang lords. Against the massive numbers of Goliath, the House of Blades employed waves of combat drug-fuelled murder squads, ash-dancer assassins and genhanced berserkers.
Entire domes were drowned in blood during these night-cycle conflicts. The war ended with House Goliath all but annihilated, their survivors chased into the wastes or driven into the deepest regions of the underhive. The Eschaki revelled in their victory, all the while unknowingly having sown the seeds of their own demise.
The greatest rival to the Eschaki was the newly-formed House Goliath. Some whispered that the plague had been started by the Escher themselves, with the goal of destroying the Noble House of Aranthus, only it turned back upon them, devastating their House. For its part, House Escher did little to dispute the rumour; even though the Escher knew it to be a lie.
Nonetheless, it is a lie that has persisted and taken root over the centuries, so that most now believe it to be true. The Escher often use it to their advantage when it comes to intimidating representatives from the Noble Houses, such as holding inter-House convocations in rooms subtly decorated in the colours of House Aranthus, or offering noble guests wine served in Aranthian-style goblets.
The price of a few genetic abominations or stimm-induced deaths was a small one compared to the dark reputation the Eschaki had earned. For 1, years, the influence of the Eschaki spread. Such meddling in the genetics of the clan would have terrible consequences. At first little credence was given to the malformed offspring that were being born in ever-increasing numbers. Necromunda has long been a toxic world, and few humans born upon it are free from some form of physical corruption.
This led to some disastrous results, like the massacre that ensued when a force of Eschaki chemwarriors was sent to liberate Cog Town.
After murdering the outlaw helots holding the town, the Eschaki were overcome by a chem-induced madness, turning upon the hivers they had just saved and slaughtering them. So reliant was Adamus on combat stimms, his body was encased in drug canisters and tubes, constantly pumping chems into his veins. In his drug-thirst Adamus would often drink the blood of fallen chem-warriors to get his fix if his own reserves were running low. When hab-mothers speak of the perils of the Age of Eschaki to young Eschers, it is often to the tale of Adamus they point.
Eloch Twice-born, the last man to rule the Eschaki, was a withered thing. The enemies of the House who had long been observing its decline now moved in for the kill. In Hive Mortis and Hive Ceres, agents working on behalf of House Ran Lo engineered a mass exile of Eschaki workers, diverting their factorum transports out into the wastes, and shipping in their own helots to take over.
When the Eschaki tried to retaliate, gangs of hired guns were ready and waiting. They might have vanished for good, had it not been for one woman. Vhoadycia was a hab-mother who had risen to prominence during the Goreside Dome wars of Hive Primus, when a coalition of clans tried to kill off the Eschaki presence in Vat City.
When she marched into the Elder Eschaki Council to confront Eloch and demand action from the clan, she discovered that Eloch was long dead, along with all the male Elders. Instead an allwomen council remained, divided between those who clung to the old ways of the Eschaki and those who, like Vhoadycia, wanted change. This was to be the turning point. Under the rule of Vhoadycia, who took the mantle of Matriarch Primus, the clan was reborn as House Escher. Over the following centuries Escher would rise to reclaim its place among the Clan Houses.
Though its menfolk would never recover from the Flesh Curse, the women of the clan would take over their part in defending it, a tradition that endures to this day. Among those to make their mark upon this time are the warrior women known as the Blades, hive queens whose will and genetic strength will one day become the foundation of House Escher.
By the time they pass into history, their deeds are already legends traded among the tribes and clans of the ashen world. The embodiment of the Blades, she is the first to bear the title of the Ancient and the Young and wear the three-faced crown. Despite her young age and relative inexperience, her reign is marked by massive expansions for the Ulandari and the extermination of dozens of their rivals.
She will go on to be immortalised in countless statues, paintings and holo-sculptures that endure to this day within the Sirens of Hive Primus. The history of House Athenos will be troubled, though in its people the blood of the Blades will endure. This highway circumnavigates the planet but has not been usable for centuries due to rogue hive lords and ash waste tribes claiming sections of it for themselves.
Started when the Patriarch Primus accidentally mispronounces Saint Valdor as Saint Valdon, it quickly escalates into open conflict between the Valdorians and Valdonians. The conflict is only settled when a fight in the Temple of the Emperor Deified draws the attention of the Order of the Argent Shroud — the Adepta Sororitas taking a tithe of , penitents from House Athenos as atonement for their transgression.
Over centuries of upheaval, the House will enjoy both triumphs and suffer defeats, spreading their influence across the toxic world even as a poison grows within its heart that will one day bring it to the edge of extinction.
So begins a time of ascendance for the House of Blades, its people enjoying wealth and privilege unlike anything seen before in the cramped domes of Hive City. Soon they have won the greater measure of the drudging classes of Hive Primus to their banner, and their production rates soar as a result.
Over the following decades Raebeca builds a wasteland empire, maintaining that her bloodline is the true bloodline of the Blades. Without realising the danger, they awaken a number of the clones who, in their insanity, lead a bloody murder spree throughout the hive before vanishing into the wastes.
Not even one in a thousand Eschaki men are born true, the women of the clan soon outnumbering them many times over. Due to interference by House Van Saar, and the unruly nature of the subjects themselves, the project is abandoned. The Matriarchs rise to this challenge, the women of the clan taking the roles once dominated by their menfolk, while new heroes are made by those Escher who dream once more of greatness.
On the Great Ash Road, House Orlock launches a series of raids against the Escher-owned settlement of Ashtown, expecting little resistance. They are quickly disabused of this notion when 20 Escher Wyld Runners drive off three Orlock road gangs in a firefight that lasts three entire days. Thinking to best the Clan House upstart, Gormach calls on a massive Goliath pitfighter to be his champion.
Deliaan takes great pleasure in killing the Goliath in front of Gormach, making sure the lord knows every cut is meant for him. As justice for the fallen, the hive Alpha poisons tonnes of corpse-starch bound for the Escher, so they might perish in the same manner as the Goliaths of old. Unfortunately for the Goliaths, the Eschers of Mynerva see through their feeble ruse, repackaging the poisoned foodstuffs and selling them back to the Goliaths via the Guild of Coin.
While the two sides debate, the chem-warriors flee into the wastes, choosing to live free rather than under the rule of the Matriarch Primus. Zoerina says she is a survivor of the fall and claims to have damning information regarding what really brought the hive down.
With murderous efficiency, the young Cyndella carves out territory in the Spider Points, breeding dust-stalkers and growing rich off raiding Orlock road trains. When, at the age of 18, she is killed in a shootout with no less than a dozen hive assassins, her name becomes known from one end of the Palatine Cluster to the other. After a welltimed insult, violence erupts between the House Masters.
Duke Cornelius the IX of Van Saar only escapes her blades by using a displacer field to flee the chamber. Dressed in extravagant ball gowns and with outlandish hairstyles, they spread blood and carnage with some of the finest weapons their Great House can afford, starting a tradition that continues to this day. Ten minutes later, Lacy walks out of the Twice-shy reloading her guns, before sending one of her juves to go fetch the local Corpse Guilder.
Upon seeing his compound surrounded by armed-to-the-teeth gangers, Van Zep declares it was all a misunderstanding and returns Symone to her comrades. Ostensibly, the clan is divided into three major factions: the Maidens, the Mothers and the Matriarchs. These are ruled over by the Council of Crones — the wisest and most powerful members of the House, who in turn serve at the pleasure of the Matriarch Primus — Queen of all Escher on Necromunda.
In reality, each faction is a vast collection of smaller factions, such as the hundreds of Clanchymist Cults or the family combines of the Shivver Cults. The Council of Crones is equally divided, its members forming and breaking alliances on an almost daily basis, while the court of the Matriarch Primus often holds power in name only.
Somehow, though, the system works. It functions despite the internal politics of the clan and in spite of the layers of rituals and rites that occlude its hierarchy. This is because there is a bond between all Escher that seems lacking in many other organisations on Necromunda, a bond far stronger than gang colours or clan oaths. Eschers are, at their most basic level, a sisterhood united by their gender, in a way a Goliath or Van Saar ganger, or Cawdor or Orlock worker could never understand.
Variously this role has been a lord or lady, or king or queen, sometimes gaining the position through hereditary rite of succession, other times through popular support or even treachery. During the age of the Eschaki, the tradition came to be either a Matriarch or Patriarch — a person who filled the symbolic role of mother or father to the clan.
When the excesses of the Eschaki gave birth to the Flesh Curse the line of Patriarchs was spent, and so Matriarchs became the sole rulers of House Escher. The Matriarch Primus is the culmination of this practice, and House Escher has been ruled by one for the last 1, years at least. These affluent individuals embody the high fashions and graces of the clan, and many can trace their lineage back to the last days of the Eschaki or beyond. The twin bloodlines of Vestia and Sabine have dominated the position of Matriarch Primus in recent centuries.
Over the centuries, however, the mantle of Matriarch Primus has been held by a wide range of powerful women, some more suited to the position than others. Over its long history, numerous powerful families have controlled the Clan House, contributing members to its rulers. The noble court of the clan in which these rulers gather is known as the Council of Crones.
Despite the name, the councillors are not all elders, nor are they drawn solely from those traditionally academic arms of the clan like the Shivvers or the Clan Chymists — the term is used to denote wisdom and authority rather than age.
The only two requirements to sit on the council are that a woman must have done some great service for the clan and that a majority of councillors approve her appointment.
Meanwhile Alyce Sabine suggested a new colour scheme for the Court of Blades to earn the same honour. Distinctive in their long purple robes and white surgical-veils, they demand respect from all within the House; hab-workers, factorum-sisters and even outlander gangers all making way for them as they stride through Hive City.
Over the course of her life, an Escher will rely greatly upon the Clan Chymists. They are present at her birth, when she comes of age, at the birth of her own children, and, should she live a full span of years, in the end at her death.
In fact, the continuance of the clan would be impossible without the Chymist Cults, their matrons guardians of the mysteries of keeping the withered male members of the clan alive and producing new Escher children. Alongside these vital services to the clan, the Clan Chymists have another, darker purpose. While much of their produce is benign, these potent chems and poisons are what they are best known for, and it is the strongest of these that House Escher keeps for itself.
For these women two roads present themselves: either they can cast off the mantle of the clan and become outlanders, or they can take their place among the House gangs. Each Clan House deals with its gangs in different ways. Some, such as the Goliaths, see their gangs as an unofficial militia and keep their gangers on a tight chemical leash, while others, such as the Delaque, seem to make little distinction between hive gangs and ordinary members of the clan.
For the Escher, any with the will and courage are offered the chance to run with the hive gangs. Each has their own way of preparing their youth for a place in the crushing social order of Necromunda, whether it is the Goliath data-slug or the Cawdor ritual segregation.
The Escher have the Wyld. The Wyld is a catch-all term for all Escher girls who have reached maturity, but who have yet to find a permanent place among the habs, cults or gangs. Some Wyld girls express themselves through experimentation and excess, living out the extremes of their youth in the tunnels and domes of Hive City before settling into their clan-given lives.
Others expend their youthful energy through violence, either on the streets or in the fighting pits. Then there are those who strike out on their own into the hive wilderness, looking for adventure and trouble.
This latter group are collectively known as Wyld Runners. Runners flee the safety of House and hive to explore the badzones and wastes. In ragtag bands, they rear their own underhive creatures and fashion their own weapons. Living so far from civilisation, they excel at survival and hunting. Many Runners have specially-trained pets for both defence and company.
The favoured hunting animal of most Wyld girls is the Phelynx, sometimes called the Venom Cat. Like the Runners themselves, the Phelynx are barely-tamed predators, eternally seeking out prey. Runners will ally with Escher gangs, while sometimes entire gangs of Runners themselves might be encountered. As can be expected, the life of a Runner is perilous, and many do not survive to return to their clan holdings. Those that do are highly respected by their peers for their experience in the wilds, and many members of the Council of Crones were once Wyld Runners in their youth.
Even so, this level of freedom is not enough for some, who crave true independence from their House. For the most part these women are merely touched by the gifts of the Warp, far below the level of power that would draw the notice of the Adeptus Terra.
To the Escher, however, they form an important faction of wise women and oracles to whom the Matriarchs have turned for centuries for advice and counsel. When counted against the hab-matriarchs, factorum sisters, Clan Chymists and gangers, Shivvers are only a tiny minority of all Escher on Necromunda. Within this minor splinter group, only an even smaller number have any measure of psychic talent.
For this reason, the clan goes to great lengths to protect the Shivvers, their enclaves and seeing-temples hidden beneath teeming settlements or out in the remote reaches of the outlands — often protected by unknowing Escher gangs. This also means that, when an Escher wishes to consult the Shivvers, she must often make a hazardous journey to where they live, working their way down into the tangled hidden places of Hive City or the underhive.
During that time of genetic manipulation and experimentation, the Clan Chymists discovered they could not only restore unconscious or wounded fighters to fighting fitness, but potentially bring them back from the dead with their chemical concoctions. Through a painful and complex process, the freshly deceased are pumped full of an exotic cocktail of chems, its potency forcing dead organs and torn flesh back to life.
The process only works on those who have recently died, and only if their body is mostly intact, but when it does work, the results are impressive. The newly-risen Death-maiden retains much of her muscle memory, her reflexes undiminished, her body now largely immune to pain. Perhaps the most terrible aspect of the Death-maidens is their blood. As literal dead women walking, the Death-maidens have an almost mythical place within the society of House Escher.
A Death-maiden owes no allegiance but to the House and answers only to the Council of Crones and the Matriarch Primus the council serves. Other Escher view Death-maidens with a mixture of fear and awe, not least because the Moraegan often wear veils, face paint or masks, to inspire terror in their foes, but also to hide the scars of their death.
The chems required to keep them alive eat their body away from within, while new traumas do not heal in the way living flesh would. Usually by this time, however, the Death-maiden has visited her revenge upon her killer and heaped the underhive high with the enemies of House Escher. To expedite this process, the clan works closely with the Water Guild, for many of their industries are linked together. In addition to chems, House Escher has its hand in numerous secondary and often related industries, including light weapon manufacturing and the genecrafting of exotic creatures.
Recently, the clan has become well known for the quality and quantity of its las-weaponry output, and millions of Necromunda pattern lasguns are turned out by House Escher every production cycle. In these sacred spaces, the purple-robed figures of the Clan Chymists move among domes filled with bubbling vats and hissing pumps, their forms constantly wreathed in lurid fumes.
Those not inured to the caustic output of the Chymist Cults, unlike the matrons themselves, find their skin blistering, their senses overwhelmed and their head spinning, such is the density of the chems saturating the air. Such is the importance of the Chymist Cults, however, the Clan Chymists willingly give up their health, and sometimes even their sanity, to create their concoctions.
When an elixir has been perfected within the cults, it will be transported to the chem-factoria for replication. Under heavy guard the sample is taken into the fabrication crucible of the manufactorum, matrons overseeing its insertion into the ancient workings of the machinery.
From there the chems can be turned out in huge quantities by lesser-skilled bonded workers. Even given the stagnant nature of Imperium technology and the limitations put upon development by the Adeptus Mechanicus, not to mention the stymied creativity of most humans on Necromunda, incredible sciences still exist upon the ancient world. One of these is the art of gene-alchemy. In the upper reaches of the hive, such technologies are used to extend the lives of those within the Noble Houses through rejuve treatments or bio-mechanical augmentation, though it has found equal use in the creation of new kinds of life.
House Escher rediscovered a great deal about gene-alchemy during the age of the Eschaki when it was used to create the chem-warriors. This knowledge was retained by the organisations that would, in time, become the Chymist Cults. It was used in the creation of the Goliath, and the Van Saar use it to keep themselves alive beyond adolescence.
While other Clan Houses have a limited understanding of it, the Escher remain its masters on Necromunda, and to one degree or another, the other Houses must use Escher gene-clinics and Clan Chymists if they want the best treatment available.
The humble lasgun, basic weapon of countless Imperial troops and militia is one of the most common of these, and the Necromunda pattern lasgun is recognised across the Imperium. Every Clan House produces lasguns to some degree, though none are as prolific as House Escher. A good number also remain on Necromunda, and it is these local variants that have the greatest number of makes — the Escher crafting their lasguns often with their own users in mind.
These clan-pattern las weapons tend to be graceful works of art made for the female warriors of the House, their form and function set to a much higher standard than most. As the oldest of the Clan Houses, there are domes, settlements and outposts that have been controlled by the House of Blades for thousands of years.
Many of their domes and levels lie just below the Wall that divides the spire from the rest of the hive, and many of the gates between the two regions are controlled by the House of Blades in alliance with the Guild of Coin. While it competes with House Van Saar for the regions around the Primus Spaceport that rings the highest levels of Hive City, House Escher has held this ground in the name of the Matriarch Primus for hundreds of years.
Its numerous towers rise out of the hive just below the barbed crown of defences that mark the outer edges of the Wall between Hive City and the spire. Among this cluster of towers are three that rise higher than any other: the Maiden Spire, Mother Spire and Matriarch Spire, each home to a different faction within the clan.
This hardback book is available separately, but you can instead pick up the limited Slipcase Edition that includes both the Necromunda Rulebook and Necromunda Gangs of the Underhive.
However, if you seek to cast aside your allegiance to the Clan Houses, you can even throw in your lot with a Genestealer or Chaos Cult — free downloadable PDFs for which can be found here:. Do you have a favourite gang or cult , such as the agents of House Delaque who are also available to pre-order this weekend? Thank you so much! Gentlemen, as the Yaktribe rules transcript got updated with Cawdor cards, expect an update of card set with Cawdors and a sheet of cardbacks soon.
As requested before, Cawdor set is marked with the little flame logo. From now on new sets will be modified as such. Have fun. Reactions: Kairae. Ml2sjw Gang Hero. Nov 25, 1, 1, United kingdom.
Ok i am clearly being a fool, but I can't see the Cawdor cards in the version I downloaded it stops at van saar. Gentlemen, the external link Dropbox seems to be working fine. Enjoy your new Cawdor cards. Can I ask a moderator to tidy up the thread here? I seem to be unable to delete the update posts from 15 to 18, could someone do it? Reactions: Ml2sjw. Summoning Malo Could you help and tidy up in here? Many failed versions made quite a mess Malo YakTribe Mechanicum Staff member.
Yak Founder. Azrael New Member. Jan 29, 6 8 18 united kingdom. Lucifugem New Member. Apr 17, 2 2 3 Tampere, Finland. Excellent cards, Emperor's blessings to you! It features all of the rules you need to start your gang and fight brutal battles for control of Necromunda. All of the extra pieces that you need to play the game — from tactics and fighter cards for both gangs to dice and a range ruler. Build you own little dark corner of the underhive to fight over. Included is some Zone Mortalis scenery and a set of barricades and walls, giving you a huge variety of potential layouts, and plenty of options to choose from in how you customise your tabletop.
Necromunda was founded some 15, years ago as a mining and manufacturing colony. In the millennia since, mountains have been reduced to rubble for the ore they contained and seas have been turned into oceans of chemical sludge. Across the plains, huges city structures known as hives pierce the skies. In the lower levels of these cities, billions live, work, fight and die without ever seeing the light of day.
Delve deeper into the darkness of the underhive with the Warhammer Community website. It includes articles on Necromunda tactics, along with features on how to convert and paint your models.
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