Necrophages

A hive-people that survive by ingesting or converting others as they infect them with their plague, the **Necrophages** are scavengers and survivors. Always hungry and always hostile, they are viewed as a scourge by other people. The Necrophages always seek for Food  to proliferate. To sate their hunger, they can consume enemy units they kill, but also rely on populations coming from villages. They can't negotiate any kind of peace, always acting with aggression towards other living beings.

## Lore

*The Necrophages are a scuttling monstrosity polluting the surface of Auriga; an insectoid menace that should be crushed under one's heel like the mutated cockroaches that they are. Or so the Vaulters, the Wild Walkers, the Broken Lords and every other nation on the planet would have one believe.*

*Naturally, the Necrophages themselves don't share this view - in fact, they hold very few views other than fight, feed and propagate. The Necrophages have found a niche in the environment that suits them very well: They will win by numbers; by elevating the colony over the individual; by constant war-fare. Something between a hive insect and an undead horde, they reproduce by laying eggs in the bodies of fallen enemies.*

*Occasionally the offspring even inherits elements of the host's DNA accelerating their process of change and adaptation. Emotionless, relentless, and driven by their biology, the Necrophages do not waste time with diplomacy and commerce.*

## Unique Technologies

  Focus:  |  Approval

  **Effects:**
Gives the ability to sacrifice 1  from city population:
* +30  on city during a limited time
* Duration depends on  remaining in city and can be cumulated
* +1  per  in city just before sacrifice
* Cannot be used if siege on empire

  Focus:  |  Upkeep

  **Effects:**
-50%  on military upkeep-20%  on hero upkeep

  Focus:  |  Military

  **Effects:**
+30% Attack  on units

## Heroes

Note: *Base Attributes* reflect the unit's attributes before bonuses from equipment or capacities.

All Necrophage heroes are able to wield Battle Axes, Claws, Swords, and Shields as weapons.

### Quest Heroes

#### Ka-Riss

Ka-Riss is received as a reward for completing Chapter 2 of the Necrophages faction quest.

## Faction Quest

*Many species run rampant on Auriga, but only the Necrophages are truly of the planet. The others are thieves and trespassers; the others must die...*

 Unease riddles the nest. I can feel it everywhere: In the hurried footfalls in the tunnels, in the huddling, in the lingering in the fungal gardens. They doubt me. The sifters, the burrowers, the soldiers, even the blasted groomers - get off! They all doubt me, and their doubt seeps into my chitin. I sit in my lair, fret, fret, fret, fretting, while above hind-legs grow bolder, nipping and harrying and slicing at our tracks.
Enough! I must erase those doubts! But how? Doubts bite deeper than any jaws. Full bellies! Yes, full bellies will give them solace. Otherwise they begin to eye one another hungrily, otherwise the weak will be ripped apart by the strong. That can't happen. That mustn’t happen.
 Summary
 He Who Meddles, leader of a breakaway Necrophage hive, must feed his people. To do so, he has chosen to attack minor faction villages.
 Reward

 Unease riddles the nest. I can feel it everywhere. In the hurried footfalls in the tunnels, in the lingering in the fungal gardens. They doubt me. The sifters, the burrowers, the soldiers, even the blasted groomers- get off!- they all doubt me, and their doubt seeps into my chitin. I sit in my lair fret,fret,fret, fretting, while above hindlegs grow bolder, nipping and harrying and slicing at our tracks.
 Summary
 He Who Meddles must destroy minor faction villages and armies that threaten the new Necrophage colony.
 Reward
2. Mad Fairies Droplist, picks 1

 Sweet, sweet, sweet flesh. The nest thrums with fevered dreams, with faith, with belief. The workers scuttle with extra fervor, the groomers with purpose, the soldiers with mandibles high. The tunnels resound with the click and scratch of anticipation. Now's the time to hatch, hatch, hatch more plans. To be a race who can command the surface as we command the dark, we must... evolve.
 Summary
 It is time to accelerate the evolution of the Necrophage. Find the resources needed for Rhiss al-Khali to start his experiments on prisoners and Necrophages.
2. Search the same [Ruins] after gathering X Dust.
 Reward
2. Ka-Riss

 All the captives died. All except Rhiss. Agony wrapped itself around him too, but unlike the others he came out transformed. Patches of chitin cover his soft hind-leg skin, and only his eyes show the thing he once was. He has asked for a new name, and I have granted him his wish. He will be known as Ka-Riss. I never imagined a hind-leg could show such chitin, such single-mindedness. Maybe his experiments mark our path to victory. Menials! Fetch the hind-legs!
 Summary
 Rhiss has been adopted; his name will be Ka-Riss. Driven by some ultimate goal, he speaks of valuable Resources, needed for his experiments, that are held in a secret place by the Vaulters
2. With the Hero Ka-Riss assigned to an army, search the [Ruin] located in the region called [Region].
 Reward
2. Fungal Laboratory

 Peace, peace, peace, can I get any peace? Every burr, every click, every scratch echoes through the hard tunnels, drills deep into my head. I need to think! To think is to see is to plan is to survive. But the noise! The noise distracts me from my task! Menials! Get out! Ah, some peace. But a brittle one. Our acts have not gone unseen by the eyes of the hind-legs. They grow bolder by the day, sending out parties of fighters. They will be killed and feasted upon, but I fear for the day they organize themselves as well as we do. They will overwhelm us unless we have the numbers; our attention must turn to a new chamber. While we build it we will be vulnerable. The hive will need to be protected, the enemy scattered from our lands. Then? Then we can truly start swarming this world "Auriga"...
 Summary
 A new wave of Necrophages is to be hatched. Build the Fungal Laboratory to increase the fecundity of the hive, and protect the region while it is under construction
2. For X turns, make sure there are no enemy armies in [City] and a city garrison of 6 units minimum (not including Militia).
3. Your success protecting the Hive calls wandering units to your empire. Search the [Ruins] in [City] in order to recruit them.
 Reward
2. Mad Fairies Droplist, picks 1
3. Necrophage Army: 4 units

 What can you learn from a dead enemy? That was the question Ka-Riss asked me. A simple question, but a deep one. Answers skittered in the shadows, out of reach, until I finally understood his meaning. Nothing. Nothing can be learnt from a carcass, from a bag of bones wrapped in rotting flesh. Yes, we might feed, but we don't learn. We learn of the enemy by having one of them fighting by our side, or better, letting one of the enemy lead our own numbers. We wait and watch and learn. But how? I demanded. How do we convince a single hind-legs to join us, to reign death upon his own broodmates? You do not know men, he told me. They will betray their people, their land, even their own family for the right incentives. Money, power, pure simple hatred, he said, eyes gleaming as he looked up. He told me there are places --"marketplaces" -- where the hardiest leaders from different races can be bought, traded, sold. They will lead your armies and you will learn how men think, he said.
 Summary
 Learn about the other factions on Auriga -- to better destroy them -- by hiring non-Necrophage Heroes and defeating enemy armies with those Heroes leading your armies.
2. Defeat 2 armies with an army led by a (Wild Walkers/Ardent Mages) Hero and 2 armies with an army led by a (Vaulters/Broken Lords) Hero
 Reward
2. Mad Fairies Droplist, picks 1

 Our plight consumes me. When I rest, instead of the soothing dark that once cloaked me, I am flooded with visions of ruin. Rivers of fire cascading out the depths. Hives crushed into nothingness. Mountains upturned, the land scrubbed of all life, hind-legs and hive-dweller all dead. When Ka-Riss is lucid, a state that escapes him for most of the cycles, he scratches incoherently about a machine --built by the ancients of this planet-- that may be our salvation. He is my most accomplished leader in the field, but his mental regression, his slide into becoming yet another savage killer among thousands, fills me with dread. As my mind soars, his unravels. Maybe civilization will be beyond us. Maybe I am the freak, the monster, an evolutionary dead-end doomed to return to the dust from whence I came.
 Summary
 Rhiss has dreams of glory for the Necrophage - perhaps even greater than yours. Put him at the head of an army and send him out to conquer.
 Reward

 We are doomed. Doomed to be nothing more than unthinking killing machines. I have seen the evidence. The "Endless" made us to be killers, and they made us well. My hope that we might become something more than our nature lies in ruin; Ka-Riss's degeneration into savagery is complete. Nothing occupies his mind other than the next fight, the next feed. We are killers. And I? I have found peace with that. We are what we are. And we will survive.
The eggs that we will scatter to the darkest corners of this land will see to that. Before that though, our numbers must swell so that we can send our swarms far and wide. The eggs must be buried in icy chasms, the hearts of forests, desert caves; every habitat we can reach, for none know which places will heal and which will be forever blighted after the winter has passed. By conquest, by gluttony, or simply through the sheer march of time our numbers will swell to meet the task.
 Summary
 Both Minor and Major Factions must fall before the Necrophages. Assimilate Minor Factions, then grow the city to prepare for the final onslaught.
2. Reach the exact number of 8 population in your City [City].
 Reward
2. Mad Fairies Droplist, picks 1

 We are doomed. Doomed to be nothing more than unthinking killing machines. I have seen the evidence. The “Endless” made us to be killers, and they made us well. My hope that we might become something more than our nature lies in ruin; Ka-Riss's degeneration into savagery is complete. Nothing occupies his mind other than the next fight, the next feed. We are killers. And I? I have found peace with that. We are what we are. And we will survive.
The eggs that we will scatter to the darkest corners of this land will see to that. Before that though, our numbers must fall until only the strongest, the most ferocious, the most tenacious stalk our hives. Only then will we ensure that the gene-line is ready for the challenges that await on the other side of the long winter. Starvation, banishment, the sacrifice of the weak and feeble to feed the strong - the methods don't matter, only the outcome. “Cruel”, the hind-legs might say, but cruel is still better than dead.
 Summary
 Both Minor and Major Factions must fall before the Necrophages. Assimilate Minor Factions, then cull the population so that only the strongest remain for the final onslaught.
2. Reach the exact number of 8 population in your City [City].
 Reward
2. Mad Fairies Droplist, picks 1

 The winters draw ever longer, and I foresee a time when the planet will be scoured of all life. Before that time comes we will swarm the surface, lay waste to all those whose path we cross, and set the seeds of our descendants in the halls of ancient places. There they may find some respite from the coming storm. Whatever happens, we will raise armies without equal, and even if every last mortal dies, at least the stars will witness how the Necrophage swarmed Auriga, sweeping aside all who stood in their way.
We were made to kill, and so we will kill.
 Summary
 The Necrophage hunger consumed Ka-Riss. Alone, you must prepare for the end of times. Gather Givers of Remembrance in one of your cities, reach Era IV in the Research Tree, then seed your eggs across Auriga.
2. Level up Hero Ka-Riss to 9.
3. With the Incubation Orb item equipped on a Necrophage Hero, search the 3 ruins located in the regions called [Region], [Region], and [Region].
 Reward
2. Mad Fairies Droplist, picks 1
3. Mindless Slaughter, Temple of the Earth's Core