Among the dread implements of Nagash is the Corpsemaw, a scythe whose curved blade is lined not with an edge but with a maw of black, grinding teeth. It does not cut so much as consume; where it passes, the slain are not merely killed but unmade, their souls torn loose and swallowed whole to swell the immeasurable hoard the Great Necromancer keeps against the day of his final reaping.
The Ossiarch Bonereapers carry lesser echoes of it into their bone-tithes, harvesting the living as a farmer harvests grain, but the true Corpsemaw answers to Nagash alone. When he takes the field, the scythe drinks so deeply that whole battle-lines wither into husks, and the harvested dead rise again in the same breath to march beneath his standards.
The Soulblight Gravelords, who chafe under the Undying King's dominion, speak of the Corpsemaw with a fear they hide poorly, for they know that in the end it makes no distinction between the god's enemies and his servants. Every soul is a debt owed to Nagash, and the scythe is the collector he sends when the debt at last comes due — patient, tireless, and utterly without mercy.
The reliquary continues
