Persistent, relentless, skilled.
The Executioners were born from a desperate need during the Ascendancy era. As the war escalated, complications with consumption began to rise. Increasingly, consumption mutated its victims into horrific, twisted horrors, turning them into not only violent creatures devoid of all reason but powerful and aggressive beasts with the deranged willingness to act on their violent urges. Consumption turned them against their allies and chaos flooded through Vanguard and Pantheon ranks.
While the Vanguard did their best to limit the violence, primarily through segregation and quarantine of infested victims, the Pantheon chose to answer violence with violence, and created the Executioners.
The Executioners stalked reality, hunting Pantheon infected with consumption, either those threatening to devolve into mindless creatures or those already surrendered to their fate. Their talents developed quickly; studying and tracking their targets, learning their habits, analysing the growing rot of consumption and how it had manifested, then delivering their execution with brutal, violent grace. Before long their talents had become infamous and they were respected and feared across both Vanguard and Pantheon armies. The former Pantheon Ardghul Sia Dagastin once said, “We fear the cure almost as much as the sickness.”
The ability to adapt to their targets was renowned; consumption manifests in wildly varying degrees and in unpredictably violent forms, and all Executioners were required to be changeable, adaptable, well-prepared, to study their targets with unerring analytical precision before making their move. They learned quickly that failure lay in unpreparedness.
Over time, their skills at hunting, tracking and executing made them formidable assassins, and the Pantheon began deploying them against the Vanguard as well as their own consumption-addled troops.
They have been known to clear out entire strongholds of Vanguard without once being detected. In one famous instance, the Executioner Dral-Faed infiltrated a heavily defended Free Legion outpost and slaughtered all inside without firing a single shot or raising a single alarm. The Free Legion leader at the time, Laukus, was one of those killed during the meticulous slaughter, and her death collapsed that branch of the force into chaos.
Unlike the Shynoi, the Executioners have no concerns over utilising an unlimited range of weaponry or ability and they will use whatever it takes to gain an advantage. The current head of the Executioners is Andras, a veteran of the Conflict who has stalked reality as an Executioner for nearly two thousand years. His skills at hunting are widely feared, and the Vanguard have noted his cruel taste for toying with his victims.
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