Skeleton LegionReport
English：Skeleton Legion · Factions
The Second Empire's skeletal army, still marching patrols across the Ashlands and the Sonorous Dark. Its bulk is headless thralls made by the Emperor's mass-enthralling — and it may now be the force keeping that same Emperor in exile.
The Skeleton Legion is a faction of Skeletons found in the Sonorous Dark and the Ashlands.
Origins
The Legion's origin is the Second Empire.
Little is certain about this shadowy faction, but they are presumed to be the remnants of the Second Empire's skeletal military. Much of the Legion is made up of thralls — likely victims of the Emperor's crazed mass-enthrallings.
They still work with the rest of the Second Empire's remnants: the guards around the Head of Agriculture in Ashland Dome I are Legion thralls.
Heads and no heads
This faction's hierarchy is written in whether or not a unit has a head:
| Unit | Enthralled | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Legion | No | Skeleton Log-Head MKII; Ancient Samurai Armour and a Polearm; leads patrols of 18–35 thralls |
| Legion Scout | No | In pairs, alone or attached to a force of seven Legions; Short-Cleaver and Oldworld Bows |
| Legion Thrall | Yes | Skeleton No-Head MkII; the most numerous unit and the bulk of the group |
The arrangement says everything: the ones giving orders still have heads. The ones carrying them out do not.
One unsettling detail: Legion Thralls have no head, yet carry an Old CPU Unit in inventory. Either CPU units are not stored in a skeleton's head (at least not for this model), or it is a developer oversight. Either way, that unit drops when the thrall goes down — it is the Legion Thrall's death item.
What are they actually doing now
Their Emperor, Cat-Lon, is now in exile, and the Legion holds no especial love or hatred for him.
One reading is that the Legion is enforcing that exile — possibly to stop him from enthralling all of what is left of the Second Empire.
If the player defeats and kills the Emperor, however, the army apparently goes berserk: Legion patrols grow in size after Cat-Lon's death. Legion Scouts normally attach to a force of seven Legions; after Cat-Lon dies that becomes a dozen.
It is the game's strongest hint about who was really guarding whom. Remove the constraint and what remains starts expanding.
Members
| Character | Strength | Combat | Other | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legion | 40 | 50 | Unarmed 10 | Leads the big patrols |
| Legion Scout | 40 | 50 | Stealth 60, Ranged 60 | Carries Oldworld Bows |
| Legion Thrall | 40 | 45 | Unarmed 10 | Drops Old CPU Unit ×1 |
| Screamer Unit | 50 | 60 | Unarmed 10 | Second Empire originally; also patrols the Ashlands as Legion |
| Upgraded Watchbot | — | 45 | Ranged 90, Stealth 5 | The gunners in both towers |
| Iron Spider | — | — | — | Mechanical unit |
Two towers
The Legion holds two structures. Neither is a town. Both are roadblocks.
Barrier Tower (Sonorous Dark) Its walls sit exactly across the easy route that skirts the side of the Sonorous Dark into the Ashlands. Upgraded Watchbots man Mk2 Harpoon Turrets on top. Getting past means swimming acid water and passing under the tower.
Sniper Tower (The Pits) Watchbots on Mk2 harpoons again — and every one of them faces north, for the same purpose: keeping players from using the Pits as a shortcut into the Ashlands.
The payoff for clearing them: none of the beds in either tower are marked private (the middle one in Barrier Tower is blocked by a table, but you can still click it while standing on the stairs above), and Sniper Tower's third floor has beds with the usual 8× healing multiplier for organics. On the edge of the Ashlands, a bed you can sleep in is itself a scarce resource.
Relations
- Old Machines +50 (coexistence) — the two mechanical powers leave each other alone.
- Second Empire, Skeletons, Second Empire Exile: 0, coexistence.
- Permanently hostile to the player, and the faction does not appear on the factions list — you cannot check it, negotiate with it, or repair the relationship.
Related entries
Second Empire, Cat-Lon, Ashlands, Skeletons, Head of Agriculture, Factions