Maulerfiend

The Maulerfiend is the Forgefiend's savage counterpart, a Daemon Engine built not to kill from afar but to close and destroy. Like its kin it is a bound daemon caged within a shell of hell-forged metal, but its makers shaped it for the brutal work of the charge. It gallops toward the foe on powerful limbs, driven by an unquenchable hunger to grapple, crush, and tear, and it favours the strongest points of an enemy line, throwing itself against bastions and armour that lesser engines would shun.

Its primary limbs end in enormous prehensile power fists, claws mighty enough to rip an Astartes Dreadnought apart or to reduce a squad of warriors to paste with a single flexing grip. Should the foe close in to bring it down, the Maulerfiend answers with the lasher tendrils that whip from its thorax, segmented appendages that crush and ensnare all who would slow its advance. These tendrils gorge themselves upon the flesh of the fallen, dripping with gore in a grim parody of feeding, though the daemon within can take no true sustenance from mortal meat.

The Maulerfiend is prized above all for the breaking of fortifications, and the Iron Warriors in particular field them in great numbers, unleashing them against gate and wall in their endless sieges. A Warpsmith's will alone keeps the raging spirit fixed upon its target, for the engine knows nothing but the desire to smash and to rend. Once set loose it cannot be called back, only pointed at the enemy and trusted to leave nothing standing in its path.