Warhammer Fantasy Fluff: The Sword of Infection: The Tong

                “We are the Sword of Infection, the blade that spreads Chaos. Those who stand against us will stand no longer. Kneel or die.” Is a translation from Daemonic of the standard announcement that the Tong have taken the field. The Tong were long the most feared of all the Peoples of Chaos. Where they came from and why was unknown to scholars in the Old World, but not to those who knew of the Old Ones. They were survivors of the original northern Gate staff and the Creations that lived in the original capital, some of the first to be turned when Chaos arrived to ravage the world. Some even took up the sword willingly to face their former masters and gain a measure of revenge in service to the Beast; the original fervor of the Tong was created in part because they had seen the great processing machines. Many of them worked to service them and keep them doing their dark work, extracting the Red Oil from those whose lives had come to fruition.

                That was ten thousand years ago. Modern Tong did not see the machines, they only received the stories from those who came before. And the blessings of Chaos. They were favored troops and champions, compared to the other Peoples of Chaos, with the forces of the North conspiring to ensure they had food and relative luxury next to the wandering warbands of Kurgan and later Hung. The Farms grow in their land and their needs are met by daemonic attendants and vassals of other Peoples, to ensure that every single Tong may pursue a profession of war. Their pact with Chaos does not allow them to pursue any profession but that it be useful in some way to the waging of war; a Tong may be a blacksmith or a musician, but they will be forging arms or singing songs to organize their fellows in battle. Anything else they need is provided by others.

                Unusually for Chaos forces and reflecting their nature as a collection of turned Creations and workers, there are elves among the Tong. Most never realize this, as the Tong go to war in cloaks and concealing steel helms modeled after the helmets of Security Creations with 10,000 years of design drift. It is custom for a warrior never to show their face to the enemy and to present ranks of faceless, seemingly undying soldiers to terrify their foes in shock combat and emulate the Chaos Warriors every Tong Soldier (they did not call themselves Marauders, nor did they use the Marauder Career for their basic troops) aspired to be. For much of their history, Tong warfare was based on ‘calculated frightfulness’, as they preferred to force a foe’s surrender and conversion. To that end, they also perfected drugs that robbed a warrior of their sense of pain while keeping their other senses sharp, unlike conventional anesthetic. Taking these before battle became its own ceremony, and the effect of seemingly relentless warriors surging past the spear impaling them to kill the person holding it terrified their enemies enough to make up for the increased deaths and casualties from people ignoring their wounds.

                The Tong did not form warbands outside of organized scouting parties. In fact, this was one of the keys of their success as an army: Freed from needing to wander and scrap for food and basic supplies, they could devote themselves to training for organized, large-unit combat. Ironically, without such things being a survival skill for a Tong Soldier they were left to rely on Chaos troops of other peoples for guides and foragers in the field when Chaos could not provide them everything they needed, but their reputation was such that they were generally able to secure those services. It was more than made up for by being a drilled, organized army with subcommanders who weren’t all trying to kill one another to advance the way normal Aspiring Champions and Champions were. The Tong marched in order, watched one another’s backs, and fought in organized ranks. Foes used to vicious but disorganized disparate Warbands pulled together by a powerful Champion often struggled to adjust and accounts of fighting the Tong speak of them seeming an endless tide (even when foes were even or outnumbered them!).

                They are the force that initially dragged the Hung into Chaos. They are also the force trusted to assault the eastern Dwarfs during the collapse of the dwarven empire, the war that created the Chaos Dwarfs. Whenever Chaos needed to win, it called upon the Sword of Infection and they marched. A Tong army was defeated by Morkar the Uniter on his march north to learn of the powers that lay beyond the Gate, and that marked the moment he became a legend to the Peoples of Chaos. Since then, at least a token Tong forces has marched with every single Everchosen, save one: The Tong refused to serve Archaon. Amusingly, this is canon, at least as far as Tome of Corruption! Much of my construction of the Tong is based on their description there, modified to fit our Chaos and our Old One story. They sent no battalions, no soldiers, to die in his war: Those who knew of them knew this was an incredible insult to the southern Champion. Their last great deployment had been alongside Asuvar Kul, where they sent two entire armies to sweep and scourge the world alongside the great champion, and they had suffered greatly for the losses done to those forces. In part, they were snubbing an Everchosen they did not believe worthy, but in part, the Tong were far more brittle than their reputation suggested. Soldiers like theirs take time to train. They needed to maintain a proper reserve of older, surviving veterans to serve as officers and train the young people. They avoided his war in part because they feared the losses after committing hard to assisting Kul.

                A standard Tong Soldier is in the Soldier Career, not Marauder. They know how to Dodge. They have Strike Mighty Blow and 2 attacks. They employ ranged weapons (though not guns) in dedicated formations. They even know basic battlefield medicine. Tong Soldiers are elite mortal forces, backed up by their elders who have made it into Chaos Warrior and earned their armor. More importantly, Tong are armored: A Tong Soldier is wearing full Reinforced Light Armor and a full Chain Coif and Helmet on their head for AV 2, 5 Head. If they have taken their drugs before battle, they ignore any penalties based on pain, but also take +1 to the critical value of any wound they take since they can’t quite tell how badly injured they are and often make their injuries worse. Warriors use the same drugs before battle if they have time.

                The problem for the Tong was simple: When things went wrong, things like the deadening drug ensured they went very wrong. Even in victory, Tong would die of wounds that should have disabled them and kept them out of the fighting until they could be treated. The faceless masks and the terrifying singing and discipline were designed to conceal these losses from their enemies, but the losses still existed. When they marched in force on Lustria in the 2540s, their style of warfare proved to be poorly adapted to the jungles and rainforests and they faced determined, professional opponents on a long supply line. Amazons and Lizardmen inflicted terrible losses on the forces that had come alongside the Champion of the Great Beast Alakriza (A story for another day) and prevented their withdrawal. In the Industrial Period, the Tong are devastated by those losses and still slowly rebuilding themselves in the north. It will be centuries before they are ready to field another grand army; their appearance of invincibility worked against many foes, but it had no effect on the Lizardmen or the Amazons and they suffered for it.

                The fact that the other Peoples have not come to tear apart the weakened remnants of the Tong is testament to their most powerful weapon, that reputation. It did nothing to those who knew little of them and had no idea how frightened they were supposed to be (not to mention had a jungle that made fighting in their style near impossible), but the Kurgan, Hung, and other disparate Peoples still shudder when they hear the terrible songs and proclamations of a Tong force approaching. They do not trust that the Sword of Infection could ever be dulled, which is exactly what the Tong hope for.