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"Wretched things enter my Court! Defilers of memories, thieves of thought! Vile automata that wear the faces of those whom Mighty Nagash has already claimed! Heresy!" - King Hargen Soulshield, Monarch of the Kingdom of Osuasium of Shyish.
"Inferior," - Unnamed Ossiarch.
"They're unnerving is what they is. It has his face, walks like he does, talks and even replies just like he does I'll give you that, but that thing isn't Thargrim. No sir. Idiots and fools like to say the Gholemkin aren't alive, but when you line 'em up next to these? Well… it just don't sit right." - Enlak Durginsson, Ironweld Cogsmith.
"There is no soul to them, they are but unthinking things that act based upon the whims and decisions of whatever magic animates them; little more than overly complex constructs. Some would compare them to Vampires, but those foul things at least HAD souls at one point" - Dalerys Mornhaven, Sister of the Watch.
"I'm telling you I know what I saw! There was something there! A flicker of something I cannot even begin to describe!" -
Drunken Collegiate Wizard.
"We still haven't found out what was added to the Archive my Thane only that it grew, we aren't due a Drawing for another sennight and yet the truth is undeniable." - Thungnaz Silvertongue, Silverborne Runekeeper.
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History
The legions of Klausson are endless, this is known. A limitless tide of unyielding and ceaseless Silver that grinds down even the most fearsome fortress and withstands the most ruinous of assaults. And yet despite this, the wretched Slaves of the Darkness are saved from a death borne from this eternal host by an immutable facet of Klausson's automata.
They are will-less, soul-less things, elemental existences that do not act beyond the most rudimentary of functions without the guiding will of a higher power.
In the earliest days, when Klausson was yet fragmented, it was these shards of Will that gave purpose to earliest individual automata, driving them to act and to seek out the remaining pieces of their master. And when Klausson woke fully, it was His own consciousness that wielded His silver Throng as deftly and skillfully as an Aelven Swordmaster wields their Runeblade. Yet while He can control far more constructs than any of His disciples could ever hope to achieve, even an Ancestor God is not without limit. As His Throng grew Klausson needed to divide more and more of His attention to control them in their totality, moving on from wielding individual warriors to bands of them, and from that larger and larger groups of automata until he was controlling His legion by the company. A powerful weapon to be sure, but one without finesse or control and that could easily be outmaneuvered by the champions and lieutenants of the Dark powers.
And so Klausson bent His Will to the task of devising a solution to that problem, and so the very first of the Statuary Kings came into being.
Description
The name Statuary King was not given by Klausson Himself, but rather by those mortals who witnessed these constructs and learned of their inspiration. For the very first of these mighty wardens were but elemental constructs built in the likeness of the Duardin Kings of the World that Was. Their names are long forgotten, even by the Silver Ancestor who instead gave each one titles and epithets like
The Ironbeard,
The Grudgebearer, The Starbreaker, and so on. References to mighty deeds committed by their progenitors no doubt, but whose true accounting is lost to the tumult of history save for what fragments remained in the Ancestor's memory. Yet in truth these mighty effigies of heroes long gone held not an ounce of true will, of true sapience, they were but conduits, automata linked to Klausson's mind and able to draw on His vast wealth of knowledge like a human may read a book.
With their deployment, the Silver Throng became all the more effective. For a Statuary King is a mighty war golem, who with shining axe, thundering hammer and whatever other more esoteric means of destruction the Ancestor could conjure is able to destroy swathes of lesser foes, and contest even the most blessed lords of Archaon's Varanguard. But this martial might is, ultimately, a secondary benefit, for their true value lay in how their existence alleviates part of the awesome burden placed upon Klausson's back in controlling the Silver Throngs. For a Statuary King is a specialized type of Silver Automata, one who is connected to first Klausson and later on one or more of many of the Gnolgrongol, the Great Archives deep in the heart of each of the SkyHolds, and from these repositories of knowledge they may draw upon the combined wisdom of a thousand on thousand lifetimes to better wage their eternal War against the Great Enemy.
Every Statuary King is a unique existence, each a Masterwork whose construction is only even possible the greatest Smith Kings and Master Runeshapers of the Silverborne, and no two are exactly alike but commonalities do exist. There are those who remain on foot, mighty titans who stand twice as tall as the average Azril Warrior and serve as the mind behind each formation's actions. Mounted Kings are rarer, for their creators must too create a mount befitting their rider's existence, but they are even deadlier than their foot-bound kindred. Leading from atop mighty Griffons of living metal, to Silverine Mammoths whose great bulk and mighty tusks spell the end of any defense, and the Argentine Wyrms, whose molten breath burns with the fury of a sun and whose titanic wings darken the world with their shadow. Yet in the end, each Ruler is built from the same template, an elemental being crafted to transform the memories of the Ancestor or the Gnolgrongol into workable stratagems.
Each King's mind is an alien thing, capable of sorting through hundreds, thousands of memories in the blink of an eye to develop the optimal response to its current combat conditions, hampered only by the data available to them. While the magical bonds that tie these Silver Rulers are capable of great distances, they are not infinite, at least practically speaking. There comes a point where the distance between a Statuary King and its nearest source of Memories causes an unacceptably long delay between their construct minds' requesting information and for that information to finally arrive, and so they are never too far from a SkyHold in most circumstances. In Ages past, when the wars of the SIlverborne were executed solely within the confines of the former Khazalid Empire, a Statuary King had access to dozens of Holds worth of Memories from which to divine a proper response. But now that the Silverborne find themselves fighting not only across the breadth of Chamon, but in entirely different realms, such a state is a rare thing indeed. Most often, a Statuary King can only reliably find themselves near a singular SkyHold, and so are limited by whatever Memories that Hold contains.
For instance, it is known that due to their protracted wars against the forces of the Plaguefather alongside the Ironbark and Rootkings, Skarak Gandur's Memories are filled to brim with foot-bound heroes and titanic Sylvaneth Treekin. Such that their forges produce a higher proportion of infantry and gigantic automata. Similarly, Skarak Brynzon has traditionally waged her wars at the roof of Chamon, allying with Kharadron and Stormcast in recent times to fight back against the Nighthaunt and monstrous hordes of the Changer, and consequently their Statuary Kings lead the SkyHold's great flocks of fliers with far more finesse than they would a regiment of ground-bound warriors. Such circumstances undoubtedly lead to a positive feedback loop of sorts, continued conflict with one kind of enemy or strategy leads to the Memories gained being related to such circumstances. There may be something said of potential errors that can arise when Statuary Kings are forced to with such specialized data in circumstances that do not at all match what they have access to, and indeed there have been stories of Statuary Kings committing utterly bizarre and nonsensical actions because of such disparities. But the truth is that no one Hold has been so consumed by one kind of conflict as to be hopelessly hyper-specialized, and more importantly, there are ways to circumvent such instances. There are of course the living Silverborne who can take up the slack of leadership in the immediate moment, and, in the longer term, the practice of the Skarakthing, a meeting between SkyHolds where each Hold barters and trades their stores of Memories with the other.
These are all, ultimately, stopgap measures to the ultimate issue. For the Statuary Kings were never meant to rely on the knowledge of just one SkyHold, or at least not since the earliest days of Klausson's war, instead they are meant to work under the aegis of several Holds. It is under such a state, where their construct minds have access to the sum knowledge of multiple SkyHolds and Klausson Himself, working in concert with their fellows to lead entire armies with an inhuman level of coordination and skill. A silver tide that can react to whatever the forces of their enemy attempt, shifting companies, reforming lines and reinforcing allies at the drop of a coin. While the breadth of the war front has prevented gatherings of such a scale, the Silverborne whisper that when the final war of their people comes, when the mortal races drive Chaos from the Realms forever more, that the combined might of the SkyHolds together shall empower the magical links that connect the Statuary Kings and in so doing raise them to heights never before witnessed.
Creation
Taketh the Flesh of the Ancestor, and from it shall we, His children, make Wonders - Excerpt from the Chant of Forging
For anyone who was not the Ancestor Himself, the creation of a Statuary King was a long and involved process. There are altogether three situations in which a Statuary King is made, all of which are culturally significant events in the eyes of the Silverborne. The first is the Remembrance, a ceremony done in emulation of the Ancestor where a fallen hero is immortalized in shining silver forever. The second is the Ascension, where the finest of a Hold's Runekeepers and Forge Princes undertake the trial to prove themselves worthy of ascending to the rank of Master Runeshaper and Smith King and respectively. The last, and most common of the three, is the Forging, where a Hold finds its Construct Throng large enough, or their situation such that a new Statuary King needs to be made. Regardless, the process is ultimately the same, a Master of the Rite is appointed, and they shall in turn take with them a Master Runeshaper and group of the Hold's finest Runekeepers into the center of the Hold where it's Silvershard Heart lay.
In that sacred chamber, from that ever-regenerating piece of Kraka Drakk that is found within every SkyHold, the Master of the Rite shall select a fitting piece of the silvery metal from which the future Statuary King shall be born from. Over the course of seven years they, the Runeshaper and their juniors shall painstakingly carve from the virgin metal the shape of the war construct-to-be. At the half turn of the seventh year the Master Runeshaper shall take on the most difficult process, the shaping of the Statuary King's magical matrix to be able to latch onto and commune with the Gnolankor, the arcane construct that houses the Memories of every SkyHold. Here, in this ritual, does the most danger lay, and where the Master of the Rite and the attendant Runekeepers play their most important role. For while the Runeshaper shapes the construct's essence, they draw upon enough of the Winds of Magic that they could become petrified. It is the role of the Master and the Runekeepers to prevent such a fate, serving as an overflow outlet for much of that awesome power, taking on some of the burden the Runeshaper carries onto their own metaphorical backs. The ruling Council of a SkyHold has entered the chamber to find an entirely petrified group more than they would like to admit, and their stone bodies adorn the hallway leading into the chamber where the Silvershard Heart rests, both as a reminder of the danger, and of the sacrifice every Silverborne must risk to end the threat of Chaos forevermore. Should they be successful, the crafters shall be forced back from the Statuary King, as the last drops of the storm of magic bear down onto the statue in a pillar of blinding energy. Afterwards, they shall come face to face with the fully built Statuary King, their body shimmering argent and their gimlet eyes alight with otherworldly power.
In the case of the Remembrance, the new construct is a perfect replica of the fallen, from the armour they wore or did not wear, the weapons they wielded, and all the way down to the finest hairs on their skin. Indeed not every Remembrance need be for a Silverborne, let alone Duardin. Human, Aelf, Ogor, technically a Statuary King could be in the form of any of the mortal races, while in reality there are very obvious exceptions. Skarak Gandur for instance has made a handful of Sylvaneth Statuary Kings, while more than one likeness of a Stormcast was made before the Silverborne realized the demigods of Sigmar actually came back.
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Insinuations that the Statuary Kings are alive
as Dwarfs, Aelfs and Men are, that being in possession of a soul are the realm of rumour and nonsense. The spellcraft that controls their actions is such that they rely on the Memories to react to all
stimuli, not just warfare. It is simply more likely that they use it for the latter than anything else. Now, any questions? Why are those Statuary Kings made in the likeness of the dead largely match the reactions and stratagems of those they were made in the image of? Simple coincidence. Why, if a Hold chose to remember a Duardin who fell in battle, what are the chances they knew of that Duardin because they fought the same foe? Highly likely! So it stands to reason that the Statuary King acts similarly in combat because they are still fighting the same foe do you understand? There is also the nature of the mortal mind to play tricks on itself, to see patterns and similarities where there is only random happenstance. Yes you, Burloksson? Hmmph. We are an institute of learning Burloksson, I should hope you keep rumour and hearsay such as that* out of your thesis!
*Rumours about the behaviour of the oldest Statuary Kings remain unverified.
AN: Patreon snippet winner, Snorri in AOS, Statuary Kings! I hope you guys like the idea, it was interesting coming up with the idea behind them, while also tangentially thinking about how it would fit on a Tabletop. The Khazalid here is largely for fancy, I wasn't as scrupulous as I am for actual quest updates so take em with a grain of salt. Sounding good was more important than actual grammar even if they turned out to be okay in both respects. Working on the actual Doot now, this was because I missed August's poll and snippet. September's will be after the doot just FYI. :^)
