Wirewolf

A Wirewolf is a type of Chaos Daemon Engine that was encountered by Imperial forces during the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. All of the Wirewolfs encountered were in the service of Magister Anakwanar Sek, the commander of the Chaos militia known as the Sons of Sek. The Wirewolf, like all Daemon Engines, are machines powered by a trapped Daemonic entity, although unlike most Daemon Engines used by the forces of Chaos Wirewolves can take a variety of shapes and forms, all depending on their maker's will. These range in shape from knights in full armour to actual hounds.

Wirewolves were commonly produced and used to police and protect the worlds of the Consanguinity. The rites performed by teams of philia metallurgists and wiresmiths put a Daemon-spirit into a conductor-body of metal, allowing it to walk abroad. This process is long and might take solar months or even standard years to properly machine the metal chassis of a wirewolf to perfection, inscribing it with the most precise runes and sigils in the Dark Tongue.

When they are inactive, Wirewolves hang from specially fashioned "gibbets", where arcane practices made the space between the Materium and the Immaterium thin so the Warp could finger its way through the aether when the correct commands came. The beasts could be summoned by wandering "glyfs", which are sentient Chaos runes, at the slightest hint of disturbances from the area's enslaved population. Once awoken, Wirewolves were known to be nearly uncontrollable, often attacking friends and foes alike.

A downside to the usage of Wirewolves was that they expended their energy quickly (in only 40 to 50 solar minutes), and were required to periodically return to their "gibbets" to recharge, but when they were fully awoken, there was little that could stand before their assault. When a Wirewolf is damaged enough or destroyed, its ruptured metal carcass will be torn open by the escaping Daemonic entity within, unleashing the contained Warp energy in a ferocious explosion that could potentially kill anyone within its blast radius.

History

The twelve members of the Astra Militarum's Tanith 1st Regiment located on the planet Gereon encountered several of these monstrous Daemon Engines. Much to the amazement of the Chaos forces, they managed to defeat the Wirewolves that were summoned against them.

Most notably, Surgeon Ana Curth destroyed one of the Daemonic machines by using a number of flasks containing the blessed water from the Imperial Cult's Balneary Shrine on the world of Herodor. The water contained within was originally manufactured by the Departmento Medicae to counteract the effects of Warp-contact on the Human metabolism.

Sources

• Traitor General (Novel) by Dan Abnett
• Blood Pact (Novel) by Dan Abnett