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Nighthaunt · Formation

The Emerald Host

Shyishan folklore tells of the emerald gheist — a green-lit spirit that appears at a highborn deathbed as a curse upon the whole bloodline. The Emerald Host is the folktale made true: a procession that manifests as an omen before the fall of great houses, then arrives in force to collect. Entire dynasties have beggared themselves on wards and blessings against it, and every one of them now marches in its ranks.

Contents

Every highborn house of Shyish knows the tale of the emerald gheist: a figure of cold green flame at a dying noble's bedside, whose coming foretells not one death but the ruin of the whole line. For generations it was dismissed as a nursemaid's warning against pride — until the marked dynasties noticed it always came true. The Emerald Host is that folktale gathered into an army, appearing first as an omen and returning, in time, as the reckoning.

Its coming may be prepared against but never bargained away. Great families have emptied their vaults on warding-charms and consecrated their tombs, and the Host treats each defence as a courtesy paid before the inevitable. When it drifts down at last beneath emerald banners, the spirits swelling its ranks are the very ancestors those wards were meant to honour — grandsires, founders, and crypt-kept dead risen to escort their heirs into the same dark.

To be marked by the Nighthaunt is to learn that a bloodline is not a fortress but a debt. Nagash savours the Host, for it answers the sin he most despises: the belief that title or long lineage might purchase exemption from the grave. The green-lit column makes the same reply to a pauper's ditch and an emperor's mausoleum — and to whole dynasties at once.

Nighthaunt

Order of battle

The The Emerald Host field the units of the Nighthaunt — a detachment from the roster:

Kindred formations

Other Nighthaunt formations