Band of BonesReport

English：Band of Bones　·　Factions

The name says bones, but every member is alive — a band of dehorned, defeated Shek who refused to surrender the blade, led by Tora the Fearless across the southern half of the map.

You! You stare at my horns! You have the gall to gawk at a Shek Warrior's horns, you must have the fight to back it up! — a Band of Bones member

The Band of Bones is a Shek bandit faction led by Tora the Fearless. They camp southwest of Squin, they are few in number and poorly equipped, and they are one of the most commonly encountered roadblocks across the southern half of the map.

First, they are not Skeletons

Four proper names on this site all begin with bone imagery and point at entirely different things:

Where the dehorned go

The Shek Kingdom's honour system manufactures failures. A warrior who fights, is knocked out, and then survives is dehorned and demoted to second-class citizenship; by the rules, they must give up the blade.

The Band of Bones is what happens when they refuse. The wiki's description is blunt: members are mostly hornless and malnourished Shek who lost their battles, and who would rather die by the sword as bandits than put it down.

Tora is the extreme case of that path. Stripped of honour and of her horns, she chose self-exile and fled into the Stenn sands to live as a bandit. The bounty poster the Shek Kingdom issued does not call her the Fearless:

WANTED: Tora the Gutless Dishonoured shek retainer who has broken warrior law by refusing to give up the blade, instead resorting to lowly crimes of banditry in the Stenn sands.

Ghost, the other famous Shek renegade leader, has a near-symmetrical backstory. The difference is that Ghost commanded respect before his fall; Tora most likely never did.

What happens when you meet them

In the field: roaming patrols can decide at random to attack your squad — not always, but often.

At the camp: approach the Exile Camp and speak to anyone, and every member who can see you attacks immediately. The camp itself holds only Camp Beds, Tents and MKIII Training Dummies, so there is nothing much to take.

Their combat skills sit in the 20s and 30s, which is feeble by Shek standards — worse than the weakest Hundred Guardian. But Shek standards are not new-character standards: a single Band of Bones member wiping an eleven-person squad is a documented outcome.

Every member carries an Ancient-grade Combat Cleaver. That is their real value to an early game: hacker-class weapons are rarely stocked by shops, and the Band of Bones is a supply line that walks up to you.

Range

Patrols can spawn in Bonefields, High Bonefields, Shem, Shun, Spider Plains, The Hook and The Swamp.

The only location they control is the Exile Camp, southwest of Squin and directly south of the Stenn Desert Waystation, in the Stenn Desert biome. Tora is stationed there.

At odds with everyone

The faction's default relation is 0, but it stands at -100 toward all of the following, which effectively means the entire civilised world:

• The Shek Kingdom, the home they came from
• The Holy Nation, the United Cities, the Traders Guild
• Bloodraiders, Holy Nation Outlaws, Slave Traders
• The Old Machines and town police

In practice you will never see them allied with anyone on the road — only being beaten by someone. Standing aside while that happens and then collecting the food and weapons afterwards is one of the lowest-risk resupply methods in the early game.

World State: taking Grayflayer Village

An easily missed chain: if both Big Gray and Big Grim are killed or imprisoned while Tora remains alive and free, Grayflayer Village falls to the Band of Bones. The location type changes to an outpost, and Tora herself may relocate there and make it her new headquarters.

A pack of Shek exiles moving from a desert camp into a village deep in the swamp is one of the few World States in the game that lets a minor faction genuinely move up.

See also

Tora the Fearless, Shek Kingdom, Shek, Grayflayer Village, Skeleton Bandits