The Scourged

The Scourged began, as all such warbands do, chasing the fading thrill of sensation. But they pursued it further than most, along a path of deliberate suffering that has warped them into something barely recognizable. Their nerves have been surgically remade so that wounds bring rapture, and they court injury as eagerly as others avoid it, believing that only through extremity can they still feel truly alive.

Their bodies are canvases of self-inflicted alteration: grafted spines, ritual scarification, flesh reworked into agonizing new configurations. They regard mortal notions of comfort and preservation with contempt, and they inflict their philosophy upon captives with meticulous cruelty, remaking prisoners into shrieking sculptures dedicated to the Dark Prince.

In combat the Scourged are terrifying precisely because they cannot be deterred by pain. They advance heedless of wounds that would fell any ordinary warrior, laughing as they are struck, their ravaged senses set alight by every blow. To defeat them is to endure their delight even in death, for the Scourged embrace their own destruction as the ultimate sensation.