User:Minionman/Scourge military

Unlike most groups on Azeroth, the scourge have little society outside of fighting. The scourge have a variety of fighters, mostly undead, but with a few creatures from elsewhere around Northrend.

Zombies
Zombies are the weakest form of undead controlled by the scourge. They are created from corpses dug from the ground, from plague victims that the undead are incapable of converting into ghouls, or from corpses exposed to too much death related magic that the scourge take control of. Zombies require 1-2 days to create, the scourge must raise the corpse (taking a few hours), than use certain techniques to fully control the zombies and train them in simple combat skills. Several zombies can be taken through this process at the same time. Scourge necromancers have, in the past, been able to raise zombies with their minds more or less intact, but the resulting zombies make little better fighters than mindless ones, and such a strategy for raising undead is only used for skilled fighters, mages, or others who can offer special skills to the scourge.

At the beginning of the Lordaeran invasion, the scourge used zombies as basic attackers, saving its other fighters for particularly dangerous targets, or to attack form the sides. At first, zombies were effective fighters, demoralizing and frightening enemies, but after a few fights the scourge's enemies learned how easy zombies were to defeat, and the zombies became useless as fighters. Zombies became expendable meat shields, only created from corpses that were useless for anything else, and ghouls took over most of the fighting for the scourge.

While the zombie raising process is no longer used by the scourge, most necromancers retained knowledge of how to raise them, and the forsaken make use of this knowledge to build up their population. unlike the scourge, they raise zombies with as much o their minds intact as possible.

Ghouls
Ghouls are the main fighters of the scourge. Ghouls were originally used as shock troops, with zombies being the main fighters, but zombies quickly proved too weak to be effective in combat. Most ghouls have been created from humans, whether in Northrend or Lordaeran, though other creatures are used as well if available,such as trolls and furbolgs in Northrend. Ghouls are mindless, and have an intelligence similar to a moderately skilled predatory animal. They are quite physically strong, tough, and do not tire. Often, they are used for manual labor when not fighting.

Ghouls are created from recently dead corpses, living beings, or zombies, in a process that takes around 1 month to complete. Recently dead corpses are raised to make zombies before being turned into ghouls. In the scourge crypts, the living beings and zombies are locked inside a "plague room", a mostly airtight room that is saturated with plague vapors, with plagued food and water allowed into the chamber. The living beings and zombies are tightly tied in positions where they are incapable of killing each other before the transformation is complete. After about 3-4 days, living beings transform directly into undead version of themselves, without going through a corpse stage, and zombies begin to grow back decayed flesh. After about 5 days, a new plague vapor is introduced, that warps and mutates the bodies of the undead, causing claws, fangs, bony clubs, and other such appendages to grow, as well as giving the ghouls a more aggressive and violent personality, and making them physically stronger. As the ghouls become harder to restrain, the scourge necromancers and acolytes perform rituals that put the ghouls under control of the Lich King. The ghouls are kept in the plague room for about 3 weeks after the second plague vapor is introduced. Ghouls are than allowed outside for a few days, to get used to moving around, and be taught some basic fighting moves.

The plague vapors cannot be used effectively outside of crypts, as they quickly interact with plants and soil and are made harmless. The must When concentrated inside a plague room, they are corrosive, and plague rooms must be cleaned and maintained constantly to keep them effective.

During the invasion of Lordaeran, ghouls were known as dangerous fighters, quickly throwing numerous powerful blows at alliance soldiers, while being almost impossible to kill. In longer battles, while alliance soldiers tired, ghouls would continue fighting ferociously for hours on end. Militia were easily defeated by ghoul armies, and more powerful alliance soldiers could just stand toe to toe with ghouls. As the invasion continued, alliance soldiers developed technigues, such as shield walls, that could defend effectively against ghouls, but the scourge developed their own weapons and tactics to fight effectively against these alliance tactics.

During the various rebellions in the eastern Kingdoms, and during the Kalimdor invasion, however, living enemies learned how to fight ghouls effectively, and the ghouls became mush less threatening. Human, dwarf, and elven fighters learned to use shield to block ghoul attacks, while destroying the ghouls bey hacking them apart bit by bit rather than going for single powerful attacks. Scourge enemies also learned that penetrating a ghouls skull and damaging its brain would kill the ghoul, a technique that archers and orc grunts used regularly. Over the past few years, scourge ghouls have, fighter for fighter, generally proven weaker than most combatants of other races, though they are still dangerous fighters when in large numbers, when supported effectively by other undead fighters, and/or when used in surprise attacks, attacks from the side, or other such tactics.

Because of the ghoul's unique fighting style, people who fight the scourge often (mainly the argent dawn, Blood elves, forsaken, and Scarlet crusade) tend to develop their own fighting style. Such people tend to fight in a more defensive, focused way, with few battle cries or other such noise, and tend to conserve their energy rather than going for a quick kill. They also tend to develop great physical stamina, can fight for long periods of time without tiring, and are not easily scared by large numbers of enemies.

Abominations
Individual abominations are the strongest ground fighters of the scourge. Unlike most other scourge undead, abominations are created from a number of parts, rather than being raised from a single whole corpse. Abominations are quite corpulent and slow moving, but extremely strong. they are about as intelligent as a smarter dog, and can use weapons.

Abominations are created form bits and pieces of dead flesh, usually equivalent to about 4-5 humans, and take about 4-5 months to create from the raw material. Abominations can be created from just about any type of animal or other flesh, but all flesh in a single abominations must come from the same type of creature, or the abomination will be unable to function as a single creature. Mixed abominations will have legs walking differentdirections, arms getting in each others way, and other lack of coordination. When creating an abomination, the raw flesh is treated with a mixture that prevents decay and keeps the flesh from drying out. Skins are thickened, muscles are stretched and rearranged to lay flat. Abominations are than carefully crafted by abomination craters, who slowly build up the creature by sewing or gluing different pieces of flesh together, and leaving the flesh in a treatment room for several days while the different pieces merge together. The process is repeated over and over, using larger and large flesh conglomerations, until the full abomination body is built, usually after 2.5-3 months. The next month or two is spent animating the abomination, and giving it enough intelligence to fight effectively, and use weapons.

Abominations in battle mostly carry a large cleaver, as well as having several hooks attached directly to their bodies. Abominations are very difficult to destroy in battle, taking dozens of small weapon attacks to destroy, and often taking 2-3 hits from a lance or large sword before they stop fighting. Abominations are also physically strong, their cleavers will break through shields, bones, and armor with just about every hit. Abominations can also push enemies out of the way, and often are allowed to decay enough to create a noxious, poisonous cloud around themselves. On the other hand, abomination's great bulk means they move slowly, and can be defeated by being knocked down and cut to pieces when helpless on the ground.

Because of the difficulty and large numbers of resources needed to produce abominations, they are not used nearly as much as ghouls, although abominations have proven more useful in combat. the slow movement of abominations means they are mainly used in large armies to fight large battles, rarely are they used in corpse raids or smaller battles. in sieges, abominations are used to break doors and lead undead into cities and fortresses, protecting the other scourge coming behind. In open battle,s abominations are mainly used as "linebreakers", to breaks apart shield walls and allow ghouls to get past the wall.

Abominations require special strategies to defeat, the most common method is to use mages to slow down the abomination, and destroy it before it can reach an enemie's own soldiers. Horde forces will also use orcs or tauren with large spears or long pole weapons to knock down, or at least hold back abominations, and rip them apart before they can get close. Stronger or more skilled Tauren and Draenei fighters can often fight abominations one on one when equipped with good shields. Otherwise, cavalry are used that can quickly charge and damagethe slow abominations while avoiding return attacks.

Crypt Fiend
Crypt fiends are undead nerubians, raised from the dead to serve the Lich King. Crypt fiends have a number of special abilities that make the more valuable to the scourge than most raised land creatures. "Crypt fiend" is the name given to these creatures by Lordaeran militia who first saw these creatures emerging from the undead crypts. Other races give other names to these creatures, the crypt fiends themselves often call each other "berubian", and the blood elves and forsaken have taken this name for the creatures. Night elves recognized the creatures as somewhat similar to the Silithid, and call them "silithoids". The orcs call them "spider fiends", Dwarves call them "bugs" or "spiders", after their appearance.

Crypt fiends have two abilities that make them quite useful scourge fighters. Some can attack at range, using small, fast moving spiderlings that crawl to enemies, sting and bite the enemies, than travel back to the crypt fiend to heal. The scourge have no other ranged attackers (Apart from difficult to train necromancers and a few other mages), so the crypt fiends fill an important hole in the scourge's ground forces.

The second important ability is the crypt fiend's ability to spit webbing. The webbing itself can be used as a ranged weapon, though a relatively ineffective one. It is also used to trap enemies in place for other undead to attack. Crypt fiend webbing is especially useful for trapping or slowing down cavalry and flyers, who are far easier for the other scourge to defeat. In sieges, such as the First Undercity Siege, nerubians will spit webbing onto walls, allowing the lighter undead (Ghouls, skeletons, and zombies mainly) to climb up the walls to attack enemies on the inside. When enemies retreat, nerubians will try to ensnare leaders, important or very skilled enemy fighters, and other important people in whoever they are facing. Webbing can be thrown off relatively quickly, but nerubians can replace the webbing just as quickly unless they are killed.

Nerubians themselves can be fought in a similar manner to ghouls, and by themselves are not usually particularly threatening compared to other scourge fighters, except to cavalry and flyers. When combined with other scourge, however, nerubians can be quite dangerous. In the first undercity siege, nerubian webbing was the only thing that allowed the scourge to even reach the forsaken. Enemies that have many flyers and cavalry will either avoid scourge armies with berubians, or kill them as quickly as possible, as will enemies who appear to be loosing a battle or are using hit and run attacks and wish to retreat.

Necromancers
Necromancers are mostly former human mages who joined the scourge, usually to study forbidden magic or gain power, though some join simply to avoid becoming plague victims. Some non-mages have been trained to be necromancers, though usually with the same motivations as mages. However they join the scourge, necromancers are soon taken over fully by the Lich king, and are forced ot perform their duties whether they agree to the duties or not. Necromancers serve several important functions within the scourge. In battle, they act as commanders, and use spells to attack and interfere with enemies, as well as improve allies. Necromancers can also raise skeletons to help fight enemies, an ability used commonly during the scourge invasion and Illidan's attack on Northrend.

Outside of battle, necromancers are placed in charge of undead crypts, slaughterhouses, and other scourge production of undead fighters. Necromancers also experiment with new ways of creating undead, to create stronger, faster, cheaper, or otherwise better fighters. As one of the most common members of the scourge with their minds still intact, necromancers are highly valued by the scourge, and are protected as much as possible by the scourge.

Despite this protection, the number of necromancers, and fraction of necromancers in the scourge, has decreased over time. Forsaken assasinations are by far the main source of this loss, though when possible forsaken will try to capture and free necromancers, who are occasionally happy to leave the scourge. With their minds intact, necromancers are also more prone than other undead to free themselves somewhat from the scourge, they usually attempt to seek the forsaken or argent dawn, who have the skills to fully free them from the scourge.

Gargoyles
Gargoyles are violent northrend creatures, usually believed to be nerubian creations, who have join the scourge. Gargoyles are flying predators, who fly quickly and rip aprt enemies in midair with their claws. When injured, gargoyles will dive to the ground, and harden themselves into a tough stone statue while they recover their health. The scourge have given gargoyles the ability to fling magical attacks at enemies on the ground, though gargoyles prefer to attack ground enemies by diving and attacking with claws.

Scourge armies mainly use gargoyles to attack other flyers, a task for which they are very effective. When not fighting flyers, gargoyles are used to attack fast moving or important enemies, or act as scouts. Gargoyles are at their most dangerous in open spaces, where they can see the whole battlefield and have room to attack any point on the the ground.

Unfortunately for the scourge in the plaguelands, most of the land is forested, except for narrow paths that are difficult for gargoyles to access. Though still useful as scouts, or picking off small groups of enemies on paths, in most battles gargoyles are of little use in combat. Enemies can defeat gargoyles by shooting at them with spells or other ranged weapons, though both methods are usually inaccurate, requiring many, many spells, shots, or throws to hit one gargoyle. Spells are preferred; if spells miss, they will dissipate in the air rather than come down to the ground and hit allied soldiers.

Creatures
In addition to their usual fighters, the scourge make use of rarer creatures and devices. These devices and creatures are rarely seen in scourge armies, but do bring unique and powerful abilities to the scourge when used.

Frost Wyrms
These creatures are the remains of dead dragons, raised from bones in the Dragonblight. They retain the ability to fly, and are given the ability to breathe cold air onto their enemies, cold enough to freeze enemy soldiers and structures solid for a short time. The frost wyrms are difficult to produce, a set of bones belonging to just one dragon must be found and assembled, than transported to a suitably magical site, where about 10-15 necromancers raise the skeleton. After being raised, the necromancers must use further spells to give the wyrm the power of flight, and give back the power to breathe magical breaths. The cold air of Northrend, the typoe of spells used by the necromancers, and the fact that most dragons were blue dragons in life, gives the frost wyrms their icy breath.

In battle, frost wyrms are quite difficult to destroy, and deadly to unprepared enemies. Like gargoyles, they are best fought with spells, for frost wyrms, fire spells with most effectively, though others apart from frost work well also. Many mages are needed to match up against a frost wyrm, though.

Banshees
The original banshee was Sylvanas Windrunner, but the scourge soon took control of other High elf souls (And when the burning legion attacked Kalimdor with undead, Night elf souls). Banshees have a number of abilities in battle to interfere with enemies and protect allies, and their directed screams can sometimes kill on their own. The most feared banshee ability, however, was their ability to take over another creature. The scourge used this ability against powerful opponents, though never used banshees ot their full potential against enemy leaders. The fear of being possessed, though, was useful for the scourge, as on seeing an approaching banshee, enemies would often ignore other scourge, and sometimes break formation, to try to kill the banshee a quickly as possible.

the number of banshees, though, was always limited, and when Sylvanas was freed from scourge control, most of its plaguelands banshees joined her in leaving the scourge. Sylvaas used the banshees to possess independent leaders and enemy soldiers in her fight against the dreadlords, these uses were significant in her victories, but also quickly used up the available banshees in the plaguelands, the few who remain now mostly serve as mages for the forsaken, or simply as ghosts wandering the plaguelands, who are killed quickly when spotted.

Obsidian Statues
Obsidian statues are nerubian technology captured and put to use by the scourge. While the scourge have difficulty in producing obsidian statues (most scourge statues are captured nerubian ones), and have not come close to using the full potential of these statues, the scourge have learned enough about the statues from crypt lords, and their own experinments, to make use of them.

Obsidian statues are, at the core, magical energy storage devices. The statues can channel the energy in different ways depending on the wishes of the statue's owner. In the scourge's case, the statues are used to store dark and death related energies. The dark energy can be used to attack enemies, though ineffectively, but can also be used to heal undead alliaes, an ability highly prized within the scourge. Obsidian statues can also channel magical energy into allies, providing energy to other scourge spellcasters, another valued ability. Scourge necromancers and nerubians have experimented with different types of magic, especially frost, to see what unique abilities the obsidian statues will produce. So far, the experimentation has not produced useful abilities, though many nerubians have seen the statues while alive and know that such abilities are possible.

Destroyers
No one except the nerubians who created them is entirely sure what type of creature destroyers are. They are created from obsidian statues, but have qualities of living beings, golems, undead, and machinery. Destoyers are well known to scarlet crusaders and blood elves who attacked northrend, but are rarely seen outside of northrend.

All obsidian statues have the capability to become destroyers. When the command is given, the sphynx-like creature on the statue disconnects from its base, comes to life, and lanches itself into the air. Destroyers are highly magical beings, they retain an ability to store magic from their statue form, and can still channel the energy in unusual ways, but they loose much of the ability to produce magic themselves. This combination makes destroyers voracious consumers of magical energy in all forms, they can even consume completely otherwise extremely harmful spells that would kill others, and gives them a powerful attack, enhanced heavily by the magic they consume.

Destroyers were used heavily in the battle against Illidan at Icecrown, and against the scarlet crusade attack on icecrown a few years later. The scourge's enemies in these battles found that spellcasters were incapable of killing these creatures, and needed physical ranged attackers to kill them effectively.

Scourge Leaders
Liches, Death Knights, Crypt lords, Necromancer leaders, and others are found commanding the most powerful scourge armies, and are often given command of large regions under scourge control. These are the most powerful spellcasters and warriors the scourge bring to a fight, apart from the Lich King himself. Most Death knights are former paladins, or other military figures, and they are commonly placed in charge of scourge armies during battles, to use this experience effectively. Crypt Lords are in a similar way, but are more common in Northrend, and far less common in the Plaguelands, than Death Knights. Crypt lords are also used to explore nerubian ruins, to find equipment, magic, or technology that can be used by the scourge. Liches help necromancers develop new types of scourge magic and undead warriors, and are often used to command armies defending an area. Their spellcasting abilities are valuable in battle, Liches are among the more powerful spellcasters on Azeroth.