Scourges

The Scourges are the winged mercenaries of Commorragh, wealthy and reckless Drukhari who have paid a Haemonculus dearly to remake them for the sky. Under the flesh-crafter's blades their bones are hollowed, great wings are grafted to their frames, and bands of new muscle and adrenaline-glands are woven into their torsos until they are capable of true, unaided flight. To earn the name, an aspirant must fly the terrible vertical gauntlet of the upper spires, fighting through the Hellions and Reavers who rule that airspace; only those who survive the ascent may call themselves Scourges.

Flight remakes them in more than body. The longer a Scourge lives aloft, the further it drifts from what it once was, until many sprout quills and feathers and their skulls sharpen into the aspect of some vast xenos bird of prey. The most transformed lead their fellows as Solarites, a rank whose name recalls the priesthood of the long-destroyed Solar Cults, reckoned the most veteran and most estranged from any trace of their origins.

In war the Scourges are a storm of concentrated firepower whose loyalty is for sale to the highest bidder. Their armaments range from shardcarbines and blasters to heat lances, splinter cannons, and the dreaded haywire blaster, which looses the caged fury of Commorragh's captive suns in a burst that stops the heart of any machine. Flocks of them sweep down out of the sun to shred a chosen target and climb away long before the survivors can bring a single gun to bear.