Wrack

Each Wrack is an abhorrent example of his master’s surgical craftsmanship, an individual cut apart and refashioned into a walking instrument of torture. Masked and modified to better instil fear into those they encounter, they act as the hands of the Haemonculi in the world outside, and upon the field of battle they will defend their creators with their lives.

Every ruler needs obedient servants, and Wracks are literally fashioned for the task. Known in some circles as Haemacolytes, each Wrack’s sole duty is to dutifully serve their master, whetherat the slab or upon the battlefield. To this end they are physically modified to better perform their gory duties. Within the Wrack’s surgically enhanced frame lies a shocking strength, and in combat they lay about themselves with a variety of sickled blades, corrosive whips, stun-rods and silvered hooks.

Because Haemonculi tend towards megalomania or even delusions of godhood, they surround themselves with supplicants and minions to enact their orders. In fact, most Haemonculi prefer not to sully themselves with physical labour of any kind, and consider themselves somehow polluted if they have to exert themselves in any way. Instead, the dirty work of each Haemonculus is performed by his Wracks. Most Wracks hope to one day transcendtheir previous lives entirely -- a Wrack will endure almost any degradation in the hope that they may eventually ascend to the ranks of the Coven lords. A typical scene in the oubliettes and laboratories of the Haemonculi is a single figure looming over a partially dissected victim whilst hunched Wracks scrabble to enact every disturbing command.

Wracks often have heavy metal gauntlets grafted in place of their hands that can inject or withdraw fluids from their subjects with the flex of a wire-taut tendon, or be coated with searing venom when accompanying their master on a raid into realspace. Spinal grafts and rampant bone growth is common in these disturbing composites, often forming baroque exterior racks and hooks from which samples and serums can be suspended so they are readily at hand when their Haemonculus needs them. They will also be further modified to ensure that they can defend their creator in battle, or pillage a community in order to gather fresh specimens for their master’s pleasure. The nails of their fingers and toes are severed and replaced by razor-sharp talons that skitter and scratch on the cold stone floors of their underground needle-lairs, and their faces are covered by inscrutable metal masks, for identity has no place in the Wrack’s existence. Wracks wear only the most rudimentary of clothing in their day-to-day lives, going about their business in stained butcher’s aprons and tabards, twilight glinting from a bewildering variety of torturer’s tools hung from their belts.

Perhaps the most sickening aspect of the Wrack’s strange plight is not their hideous appearance or simmering bloodlust, but the fact that they have chosen this fate for themselves. It is a peculiar trait of the Drukhari psyche that after a few centuries they often request to be modified into a form other than that of their birthright, for such voluntary surgery staves off ennui and gives up a whole new suite of experiences and debaucheries to savour. For this reason a Drukhari who has nothing to lose will give themselves to the Haemonculi, emerging from their foul metamorphosis as something far more frightening than ever before.