The latest Warmachine news introduces a completely new face to Cryx’s rapidly expanding Dread Armada.
Captain Eydis Malroan brings piracy, gunfighting, betrayal, and undeath together rather neatly. Unlike returning Cryx favorites, Malroan has never appeared on the tabletop before. However, her history makes her feel perfectly at home among the Nightmare Empire’s worst monsters.
Captain Malroan Brings an Old Pirate’s Grudge Back From the Grave
Eydis Malroan began as a mercenary warcaster operating from Five Fingers, where morality rarely improves anyone’s earning potential. She commanded her own ship and happily worked for merchants, smugglers, foreign powers, or even agents of Cryx. Her contracts ranged from escort work and weapons trafficking to sinking merchant vessels and attacking forts. However, the peace following the Infernal War proved disastrous for someone who made her living from conflict. Work disappeared, drinking took over, and Malroan increasingly survived by dueling for money or settling drunken arguments with pistols. During one memorable fight, she killed an aging gun mage and claimed his magelock pistols.
Those weapons increased her reputation, but they also attracted increasingly dangerous opponents. Eventually, Malroan accepted a challenge from the teenage son of a wealthy Cygnaran baron. She killed him almost immediately, which understandably produced a substantial bounty rather than applause. Unable to trust her fellow criminals, Malroan fled Five Fingers with her crew and disappeared among the Broken Coast islands. Bounty hunters searched for months, yet eventually even the grieving baron abandoned the hunt.
Then, five years later, Malroan’s ship returned under the banner of Cryx’s Pirate Fleet. Malroan herself had become a wraith, barely recognizable except for those stolen magelock pistols. Naturally, death had not improved her temperament. Her first known act was visiting the baron who had driven her into exile. Days later, servants found him drowned inside his own home, several leagues from the coast. Since then, Malroan has appeared during raids against coastal settlements and military outposts. Even stranger, she sometimes returns to Five Fingers when fog covers the Broken Coast. There, the undead captain revisits old fighting pits and challenges fresh opponents to lethal duels. It is wonderfully old-school Cryx storytelling, mixing petty grudges with supernatural horror. The Dread Armada launches October 15 as printable STL files, with its rules available through the free Warmachine app.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Malroan feels like exactly the character Dread Armada needs. She is not another grand lich lord plotting across centuries. Instead, she is a vicious pirate who carried her grudges straight through death. For longtime Cryx players, that smaller and nastier personality gives the new army plenty of flavor.
