Necromancers are widely regarded as twisted and corrupt individuals who are obsessed with death and the avoidance of it at all costs. They are used (for they are rarely their own master) by Vampires to animate the broken corpses of their servants and return them to battle.

Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead is the father of necromancy. Resurrected by dark ritual, the immortal Lord of Death is an awe-inspiring centerpiece miniature.

Marrowscroll Heralds are senior delegates of their vampiric masters, sent to deliver entreaties – in the form of bloodied offerings and infectious madness – to the leaders of other nations and enlist their aid in the name of a "noble" cause. To lend legitimacy and ceremony, they often march at the head of a coterie of loyal warriors – or rather, a pack of slavering ghouls.

The Cryptguard are ghouls of uncommon tenacity and worth, elevated to an elite station by performing some great feat of endurance in the sight of their vampiric liege. Charged with protecting their unholy masters, these faithful mordants wield weapons gifted from the royal armoury – rusted, gore-caked blades, soaked in decades of maddening energies and infectious filth.

The Craventhrone Guard serve Kurdoss Valentian and any who share his aims. Bitter and spiteful even compared to other Nighthaunt, these spectral sharpshooters relish lining up enemy champions in their sights, sending them to an early grave without fanfare or mercy. Though they enforced Valentian's will in life, the Craventhrone Guard are now are cursed to torment him, shooting down his prey before he can truly claim the glory of the kill.

Moving like a ghostly cyclone, the creatures known as Bladegheist Revenants spin in a frenetic fashion. They are souls taken from those who met particularly tormenting ends – those sealed in spike-riddled encasements, choked beneath water or buried alive. Their last living thoughts were a frenzy of desperation, a last flurry of defiance in an attempt to break free. Thanks to Nagash’s terrible curse, that horrible ending moment has been preserved forever in the Bladegheist Revenants.

Little is known of the mysterious First of the Vyrkos. When she and her lupine packs hunt, the enemy is overcome by a storm of savage claws and slavering fangs, their champions hideously transfigured by the cruel and ancient matriarch.

The Soublight Gravelords are blood-sucking rulers of the night, who command undead hordes to crash upon the living. These vampires are undead of singular power and ambition, lords of the night who serve as Nagash’s generals even as they chafe against his will. Every Soulblight dynasty has its own ambitions for the realms, and they are eager to achieve them through any means, no matter how dark. Leading armies of shambling corpses, necromantic entities and horrors from the deepest graves, the vampires expand their fiefdoms and grind mortals beneath their heels.

The Ossiarch Bonereapers are masters of war, disciplined legions of bone-constructs who slaughter the living with clinical efficiency. Created to serve as the foremost warriors of Nagash, tyrannical god of the dead, they are creatures of magically sculpted bone and cruelly spliced souls, constructed from the harvested remains of the mortals they kill. Their empire has spread far, all in service to the Mortarch and military genius Orpheon Katakros. Detached and merciless, the Ossiarch Bonereapers grind down their enemies with tactical supremacy before seizing their bones to craft new legions of conquest.

From Shyish, the Realm of Death, come the ethereal Nighthaunt – terrifying spectres driven to murder by their bitter hatred for the living. These undead are the terror weapon of the Great Necromancer, united under the cruelest and most tortured rulers ever to die. Their cold grasp reaches across the Mortal Realms, spreading a paralysis of fear amongst the living souls they once called kin, a howling host that will leave only an endless landscape of corpses and wailing spirits remains.

The creatures of the Flesh-eater Courts are touched by a curse that distorts their very perception of reality. While they believe themselves to be valiant knights and honest soldiers, they are in truth wretched fiends who hunger for the flesh of their enemies. In the ruins of war-toppled civilisations, ghoulish beings lurk on the border between life and death. Ruled by bestial vampires, these mordants are trapped in an arcane delusion; they see their foul lairs as majestic castles, and themselves as pious warriors. With the return of their beloved Carrion King, Ushoran, they have launched a crusade that sees their contagious insanity spread across the realms like never before.

Battletome: Flesh-eater Courts is the comprehensive guide to collecting and fielding the cannibalistic monstrosities of the Flesh-eater Courts. In thrall to a deep delusion, these unwitting servants of Death believe themselves to be noble knights and warriors – instead, they are savage, degenerate killers.