Book of Bone and Ebony

EXALTED • BOOK OF BONE AND EBONY
NECRO-DRONES
These are hardly war engines at all but, more often,
devices used in strike or reconnaissance teams. They are
often a means for necromancers to get rid of the spare parts
(including random bone and metal components) remaining
after larger necrosurgical works. Drones are nearly
always size class 1 and never larger than size class 2. They
typically require only one or two successes on a necrosurgery
roll to create and never more than five. Since raising a
single drone at a time is a waste of good necromancy, they
are generally built in interconnected batches and cut apart
after animation. Walking War Machine can animate up to
10 drones at a time, although Spurring the Beast of War
and Incomparable Destruction Engine can animate increasingly
larger swarms of necro-drones (20 and 40 at a
time, respectively).
Alternatively, nemissaries can pilot the drones, but if
this is the case, the drones won’t get the advantages of the
more advanced necromancy (as represented by the higher
Attributes, Abilities and health levels).
Necro-drones can be deployed from any manner of
troop carrier, and a bone spider lotus (see below) can carry
twice as many of them as it carries zombies.
Deathknights have been known to use necro-drones,
the lowest and least capable of them, as creeping, scuttling
guards and cleaning devices in their citadels.
Under some circumstances, necro-drones may be extras.
BONE SPIDER LOTUS
Looking somewhat like a black spider with long white
legs, a bone spider lotus is a form of armored personnel
carrier for the troops of the dead. The main platform is a
very crude soulsteel disk to which eight large bones (eight
feet in length or longer) have been attached using
necrosurgery. Some necromancers break with tradition
and build segmented legs from smaller bones and sinew,
but enormous ribs are the norm.
Running on its rib-legs, a bone spider lotus can reach
speeds of up to 70 miles per hour and maintain such speed
for up to two weeks before requiring maintenance.
Suspended like a corpulent black underbelly beneath
the disk is an enormous mass of thick, black
110
necrotic jelly that hangs there like a glossy toxic fruit.
This jelly acts as armor and confers protection to the
things inside it (4L/10B, in addition to the “passengers”
own soak). Once the bone spider lotus has reached its
destination, it flips over, putting its bone legs in the air.
The skin of the repulsive fruit quickly dehisces, and black
jelly runs off. The bone legs spread like the petals of a
lotus revealing the undead soldiers within, now freed
from their necrotic broth.
A bone spider lotus can carry 20 zombies or nemissary
war bodies curled into fetal position, or half that, if the
passengers are standing.
Bone spider lotuses can also carry weapons and serve
as mobile weapon mounts or strike platforms, in which
case they can only carry five passengers. They may be
outfitted with First Age or necromantic weapons. If more
than one necromantic weapon is on a single strike platform,
or if several platforms are near one another, the
effects of the necromantic weaponry stack (see the “Necromantic
Weaponry” sidebar, p. 109).
Standard bone spider lotuses are simple to make,
requiring only that the necromancer attach the bone legs
to the soulsteel disk platform with joints of gristle. They
require five successes on a necrosurgery roll. Walking War
Machine is enough to animate a bone spider lotus.
AIRSHIPS
Dead wings don’t fly well. Nemissary Arcanoi can
slow, prevent or heal the rot of wings, and while that makes
winged creatures fit for reconnaissance missions, it still
doesn’t allow for feasible combat.
Below are two examples of airships currently in use by
the Deathlords and a third that remains incomplete,
which could prove to be a decisive weapon in the campaign
against the living.
SKY EATER
A flying abomination stemming from the mix of
soulforging, Moliation and necrosurgery, sky eaters are
the high-mobility transporters of the First and Forsaken
Lion’s army. Most are squat, sinewy affairs looking vaguely
like large thickened shuriken when they’re not in flight.
SAMPLE NECRO-DRONES
• An animated dog’s corpse with iron jaws (attack)
• A child’s corpse with extra metal limbs sticking out of its back (attack)
• A head on a metal spider’s body, animated by dead limbs (recon)
• A head with three sets of wings sutured to it (recon)
• Blade burrowers, headless torsos augmented with extra flesh and metal limbs that burrow into the ground
and leap out to attack when a living being approaches (attack)
• Two forearms fused together to create manacles (restraint)