Steel your mind and prepare your best psychic defenses, because the Dark Operations of the Cephalyx never end so long as grey matter and flesh remain in the Iron Kingdoms.

Lock away your loved ones. The hives are bringing more sinister psychic terrors to the table.

Fear the thought butcher of Thornwood.

Emerging to scour the surface for the juciest information playing on the minds of mortal men in northern Cygnar territory is the Cephalyx warcaster Cognifex Cyphon.

Known as the thought-butcher of Thornwood hive, Cyphon roams the land whilst encased in an eerie levitating black sarcophagus of his own making, with insectoid limbs tipped with surgical blades and manipulators, useful for investigations and defense.

The Cognifex conducts inquisitorial interrogations whilst commanding forces made principally of monstrosities. Cyphon’s strong psychic command allows safe travel on the surface, providing his monstrous bodyguards with mentally provoked adrenaline rushes to increase their speed, ferocity, and pain thresholds should a threat arise.

Casting aside all subtlety, a cognifex flays back a subject’s thoughts and memories, layer by layer. This is not a painless practice. In the midst of battle, Cyphon can wipe the minds of unsuspecting victims, immobilizing them and assuming full control, turning foes against one another in the blink of an eye.

Subjects forced to endure Cyphon's ministrations are typically reduced to hollow-eyed shells, their minds ruined by unrelenting waves of suffering.

Sling spells, explode cells.

Drudge Conduits are disposable channels for psychic force: abductees carved down to the bare minimum, then rebuilt with crude cephalomek so a Cephalyx can hurl power through them like a living focus.

They exist for a grim purpose: get into melee range, tear away at enemies, and explode with a devastating psychic burst on a Mind Bender’s command.

Their fate is as grim as it is efficient. Once the attack is unleashed, the conduit’s mind is burned away, leaving behind an empty shell of flesh and bone — still technically alive, but no more aware of death than a machine.

Subordinate co-ordinator

Among the shadowed tunnels of a hive, Agitators do the unglamorous work: feeding, corralling, and maintaining control of monstrosities. They’re aides and subordinate surgeons, low status by Cephalyx standards, but utterly essential when a hive’s ‘tools’ need pointing at the enemy.

Agitators are all about pushing your monstrosities over the edge. They can telepathically ‘instigate’ nearby monstrosities into hitting harder, lash out with a psychic assault that ignores line of sight, and even seize a moment of control, forcing an enemy warrior to turn their weapon on their own side — a truly terrifying ordeal.

Expand the hive

Ready to add these horrors to your Dark Operations force? Cognifex Cyphon, Drudge Conduits, and Agitators are emerging from a hive near you.

Conscript yours today, and get ready to flay the minds and flesh of surface dwellers when they arrive on March 31.