Skin Wolves

Skin Wolves are Werecreatures of Chaos that transform under the right circumstances into savage lycanthropes. Many are Norscans who serve with the armies of their Chaos Marauders.

Role[]

Many are the foul Chaos Cults and many are the dark horrors of twisted flesh and nightmares made real that the Ruinous Powers have visited upon the mortal world. Few, though, are as strange as the Skin Wolves of legend. In the far north, among those who dwell in the shadow of Chaos, be they Norscan, Kurgan or Hung, as well as the shunned corners of the world where degenerates root and fester such as the Bone Hills of Estalia or the dire fens south of the Badlands, myths and bloody tales speak of the Skin Wolves. Witch-cursed or Chaos-tainted, these men and women, half feral and subject to savage appetites, carry within them a taint in the blood, a mutation that shows not readily as stigmata on their flesh, but slumbers within, a beast waiting to be unleashed by blood and unspeakable ritual.^[1a]

Skin Wolves Total War Warhammer Render — A Skin Wolf as rendered for *Total War: Warhammer*.

When this horror is released, no mere transformation of man into beast is effected. Instead the humanoid wolf-thing, lean and half-insane with insatiable hunger, rips its way fully-formed from the body of the man, which is left little more than shredded flaps of skin and chunks of bloody gristle by the freeing monster. It is the clinging shrouds of skin that give the beasts their common name.^[1a]

The frenzied creatures, whose packs are formed by kinship ties of blood and slaughter, care not what they kill in their bloodlust and bear no loyalty to any master, save the Dark Gods themselves. As such, only the most unscrupulous wizard would seek to bind them to their will by Kadon's magic, and some that have done so have had cause to lament their choice of ally.^[1a]

Only once battle is spent and a Skin Wolf has glutted itself on the raw and dripping gore of its enemies will the terrible transformation be reversed and the bubbling and overworked flesh of the Skin Wolf collapse, then like a newborn the Human within must tear its way out of the monster it once was. All Skin Wolves have the ability to regenerate their horrid forms and they may carry the favour of one of the Chaos Gods.^[1a]