The Haemonculi are the Lords of Pain, the flesh-sculptors and master torturers who dwell in the deepest strata of Commorragh and have done so for so many mortal centuries that none of them can any longer recall the face of their own youth. A Haemonculus pursues a cold and terrible art: the reshaping of living matter into whatever grotesque perfection his diseased imagination demands. To take a dull and ordinary form and remake it as a masterpiece of screaming ingenuity is, to such a creature, proof that its genius surpasses the blind fumbling of nature itself.
Spindle-limbed and hunched, borne aloft on hissing suspensor fields and trailing scalpels, censers and grafted implements, a Haemonculus is a walking cabinet of atrocities. From his coven flow the Grotesques, the Wracks and the shrieking engines of pain that lumber alongside the raiders. He may drench his foes in a liquifier gun's caustic spray, pick apart distant targets with a hexrifle, or simply take them to pieces at leisure. Most precious of his talents is the power to knit a slain Drukhari back into life, provided enough of the corpse remains to work upon, so that even death becomes another canvas.
Above all a Haemonculus is sustained by suffering. His unnatural longevity must be renewed through daily rites of torment, and the pain of others is to him both nourishment and delight. Every Haemonculus reckons himself something close to a god, surrounded by fawning and freakish acolytes who obey his slightest gesture, and treats the whole of creation as raw material yet to be improved by the knife.
Order of battle
