A Cygor as he is about to feast on the soul of a Wizard.
A Cygor is a massive, one-eyed Beastman and a distant cousin of the Minotaurs, but because they hail from the most tainted of all the realms of the Old World, they have diverged greatly from their kin. Cygors roam the forests of the Old World, smashing through trees they cannot see and laying waste to anything in their path.[1a]
Role
A Cygor faces off against the forces of the Empire.
Occasionally, deep in the forests of the Old World, a tracker will come across a mysterious corridor of devastation smashed through the woodland. It is a path of uprooted trees and trampled undergrowth that is remarkable in two ways - it would take a creature of enormous strength to push through such dense terrain, and even more surprisingly, the trail seems as if it was chosen by a blind man, unable to avoid obstacles, but forced to plough straight through them. And so it is, for these are the tracks left by a Cygor that hunts the arboreal heartlands.[2a]
A Cygor as rendered in Total War: Warhammer.
Cygors are huge, hideously malformed giants, similar in form to Minotaurs, yet each possessed of but a single eye that barely sees the world in the centre of its forehead. Through this eye, the Cygor is cursed to see not the material realm that mortals perceive, but the ever-shifting Winds of Magic, seeing perfectly the spectrum of arcane power as they blow through and around the indistinct, ghostly shapes that populate their world. Assailed by such visions since birth, Cygors are all quite mad.[1a]
Concept art of a Cygor for Total War: Warhammer.
Thus, a Cygor will blunder indiscriminately through the material world, unable to catch the prey it so insatiably wants to devour.[2a] They hunger constantly, for they can scarcely perceive the prey other Minotaurs might hunt down and devour. While a Cygor will devour his prey with as much, if not more, greed than a Minotaur, the victim's body is merely a vessel for that which the Cygor truly craves -- the soul.[1a]
Conversely, a Cygor can detect those possessed of magical powers from leagues away, for the souls of these individuals blaze with searing light.[1a] Those who wield magical powers are seen as shining beacons and the Cygor desires to consume such sweetmeats above all others.[2a] These gigantic, eldritch predators constantly hunt mages, warlocks, and witches, desperate to consume their flesh and thereby ingest the bright soul within.[1a] When the gales of Chaos rage, a wizard might dare to bind a Cygor, bidding the creature to stride the battlefield seeking to pluck out the foe's sorcerers and devour them.[2a]
A Cygor is a potent addition to the armies of their fellow Beastmen.
Cygors are drawn to war by the twisted will of the Dark Gods, taunted by half-seen visions of light planted by the Chaos Gods or by the most powerful of the Bray-Shamans. They unwittingly do the will of the Dark Gods even though they are cursed by them to an eternity of pain, bitterness and insanity. On the field of battle, they will seek out those wielding the powers of magic as a shark drawn to blood. They carry with them the rune-etched remnants of shattered waystones, temples and monoliths, for this is the only unliving material they can truly perceive. These boulder-sized missiles they hurl into the ranks of the foe so they can close with their prey unhindered.[1a]
The sheer size and ferocity of a Cygor is terrifying enough to mortal men, but those who know of their terrible hunger fear them above all.[1a] The mere presence of a Cygor is often enough to cause enemy wizards to foul the casting of their spells.[2a] To the mage a Cygor is unutterably fearsome, for he knows that of all the warriors on the field of battle it is him alone that the Cygor wants to catch up in its gnarled and calloused hands, and lift him upwards to that hungry maw, his flesh it wants to tear apart, and his soul it must devour to slake its unending thirst.[1a][2a]
Notable Cygors
- The Eye of Morrslieb - The Eye of Morrslieb was a warpstone-mutated Cygor that had especially vivid visions and a terrifying eye that could freeze its enemies in place.[3]
Notable Regiments
- The Salzenmund Soul-Eaters[3]
Miniatures
