Home › Units › Drukhari › Mandrakes
1 / 4 · Click to enlargeLore & origins
Mandrakes come from Aelindrach, a region of Commorragh that overlaps with a lightless sub-realm sometimes called the Midnight Dimension. They live apart from other Drukhari and are often wild and cannibalistic. Their shadow-skin makes them almost invisible out of direct light. They seem to exist partly in another reality and can step into the world straight out of a person's shadow.
No one knows how they came to be, not even other Drukhari. Their shadow-skin might be the result of warp exposure. Some say they are shadows given life. Others say they descend from a forbidden cult that passed into shadow to escape the Fall, or from a union between Aeldari and unholy powers in the most decadent days of the old empire. One story credits the first Mandrakes to Haemonculi working for the Wych Cult of Grief. Another claims Mandrakes are older than Commorragh and taught the Drukhari to feed their soul-thirst on the pain of others.
Young Drukhari call them "creepers" and whisper that they slink from one shadow to the next. Even Commorrites fear them. Archons hire them for assassinations, hunts and realspace raids, and sometimes as guards. Slaves are the usual price, but Mandrakes may ask for stranger payments: a treasured memory, a heartbeat, a true and secret name. Few Archons understand what they are really giving up, but they rarely refuse, because Mandrakes wear the skins of those who betray them. Humans and other races have also been known to strike heretical pacts with them.
Appearance & wargear
Mandrakes are lean, sinuous humanoids whose ebony shadow-skin writhes with blasphemous runes, and whose hands end in claws. They carry glimmersteel blades and other hooked weapons designed to cause as much pain as possible. They strike with a strength more often linked to Orks than to Aeldari. Their arrival is often heralded by a whispering that seems to come from everywhere. The temperature drops, dark frost creeps across surfaces, and watchfires, candles and lumen-globes gutter out, leaving more shadows for them to crawl from.
Weapons & Vehicles
A master-crafted blade sheathed in a crackling molecular disruption field that parts ceramite, bone and steel with effortless lethality…
The nerve-shredding neural whips and moisture-vaporising Huskblades of Drukhari Archons and Succubi, turning close combat into an arena…
The cruel crystal-toxin firearms of the Drukhari Kabals, firing storms of venomous shards designed to kill targets in maximum, soul-nou…
Explore all 48 entries in the Weapons & Vehicles armoury.
Battlefield role & tactics
Mandrakes are infiltrators and terror troops. They emerge from shadows deep inside enemy lines, cut down officers and isolated squads, and vanish again. They can turn the pain they harvest into baleful cold fire that roars from their claws and freezes victims in place, ideal for taking captives. In their Kill Team form, they follow an internal hierarchy only they understand. A Nightfiend leads, Abyssals channel the energy of Aelindrach, a Chooser of the Flesh collects limbs for some unknown rite, Dirgemaws haunt foes with faces glimpsed in reflections, and Shadeweavers drown areas in darkness and bore tunnels through reality itself.
Notable battles & users
- The murder of Vect: Mandrakes reached Asdrubael Vect's inner sanctum and butchered him at the dawn of M42. When Vect returned as the Living Muse and punished everyone who had been disloyal, the Mandrakes were spared, perhaps because they were part of his plan, or because even Vect fears them.
- Kheradruakh the Decapitator: a four-armed, hollow-eyed Mandrake who haunts the depths of Commorragh. The walls of his lair are lined with hundreds, if not thousands, of skulls taken on battlefields across the galaxy.
- Kill Team: Nightmare (2024): a Mandrake kill team plagues realspace, and survivors' tales spread as folklore among underhive communities and in leaked after-action reports.
Related
Characters (1)
Asdrubael Vect · Supreme Overlord of Commorragh
