The beating of hooves and braying of horns grows louder across the Mortal Realms, as the Beasts of Chaos storm forth from their lairs with renewed vigour. The Gorfather’s lost children revel in desecration and bloodshed, and the Era of the Beast has empowered them to savage new heights.
As the power of Ghur swells, a supernatural malady of mutation and devolution is sweeping the realms. Known as the Turnskin Plague, this unnatural flux is carried on campfire tales and spread through dark rituals, causing unfortunate victims to start braying, mewling, and making themselves at home in styes and stables.
Many of those afflicted begin to mutate into gor-kin themselves, and are driven out into the wilds by their fearful neighbours – until a rampaging Brayherd sweeps them up, anyway. Life isn’t great for these half-beasts – the true beastmen name them “gaves” and “turnskins”, tormenting any who can’t prove their strength.
Whether born or made, this swell of bodies empowers the Beasts of Chaos all the same. The influx of numbers has seen many herds reshape their primal hierarchies through vicious infighting.* Plenty of new Beastlords have emerged from this bloodbath, with some claiming to be descended from the primordial Sire of Ruin himself.
All beastmen wish to reduce the realms to a primeval hunting ground, but few have stumbled across as effective a method as Ghorraghan Khai. This grizzled Bray-shaman is a zealous worshipper of Morghur, the Bringer of Mutation, and he has discovered that enslaving the incarnates of Ghur will help accelerate the breakdown of the Realm of Beasts into a primordial wasteland.
Even the slow-witted and frenzied Ghorgons and Cygors have banded together under the banner of the crimson-skinned Cygor known as Uzkhad Shatterhoof. Their great Quakefray now rampages up and down the Coast of Tusk, growing in numbers by the day.
These splintered happenings may seem like outbursts of savage energy, united by no greater plan or purpose – but they all further the agenda of ruin that beats at the chaotic heart of the Greatfrays.
It won’t be long until the brutal power of these embittered creatures conjures Battletome: Beasts of Chaos into existence. Sign up to the Warhammer Community newsletter to avoid missing a single glimpse of the coming ambush.
* Brayherds are a true meritocracy – even turnskins can ascend to the level of Beastlord through acts of acute aggression.