Table of Contents
This is an old revision of the document!
Horror Mark
Horror marks can be applied to both units and commanders by various effects, and will cause horrors to have a random chance to attack the unit in an assassination setting at the beginning of every turn. In addition, horror marked targets are preferred targets for any horrors spawned in normal battles. A unit that is horror marked will have the icon displayed alongside its other abilities.
Horror marks stack: that is to say that a unit which is marked multiple times has a more severe mark, though besides the frequency and strength of horror attacks, there is no way to tell how badly horror marked any given unit is. There is no way to remove a horror mark entirely, though for units that may return once slain, horror marks are reduced every turn spent dead.
Sources of Horror Marks
- Guaranteed when casting Hell Power, when affected by Horror Mark (1) or the primary effect Astral Geyser (2)
- Chance per turn when holding a tainted magic item (1)
- Chance per turn when in a province with certain magic sites
- 1 or 2 when empowering in Blood: 7.5% per level of blood prior to empowerment, or 25% if the commander had no blood levels1).
- Chance when casting certain spells such as Send Horror
- Certain global events, such as that caused by the Vale of Infinite Horror being discovered (a certain percentage of units must make a MR check vs 16, -1 per two astral levels, or gain one mark)
Mechanics
When hosting a turn, there are three different destinctions used by the game when deciding to send a horror assassination to a marked commander. First, the game considers "normal" horror assassinations. After this, there are then additional separate chances to send Umor - Eater of Gods to marked pretenders and Rarku - Hunter of Heroes to creatures in the hall of fame.
Based on large scale analysis without Astral Corruption or the Cataclysm active2), the regular assassinations occur at 0.5% per turn per mark on a unit regardless of scales, to a maximum of a 50% attack chance at 100 marks. The chances of the different classifications of horrors varies with the number of marks, approximately as follows:
The chance of a doom horror attack in this phase is theorised to be approximately 0.15%.
Additionally, as with the Send Lesser Horror spell, multiple horrors can be present in the assassination, though in slightly different numbers to the spell. The cases where more than one horror can exist are as follows (these die rolls are NOT open ended):
| Horror Type | Number |
|---|---|
| Horror Mantis | 1d3+1 |
| Float Cat Horror | 1d3 |
| Soultorn | 2d6 |
| Spine Membrane Horror | 1d3 |
| Belly Maw Horror | 2d3 |
| Brass Claw Horror | 2d3 |
Testing for the Eater of Gods on pretenders suggests that the attack rate may be roughly constant irrespective of the number of marks. This attack rate appears to be (1% + 0.2% per mark) to a maximum of 5% when Astral Corruption and the Cataclysm are both inactive3). Pretenders are subject to this in addition to the normal mark attacks.
The chance for the Hunter of Heroes to attack eligible commanders is calculated exactly the same way, but is doubled at the end.
Mark reduction for dead commanders is by 10% of their mark count per turn, rounding down. The mark count will be reduced by a minimum of 1 mark per turn with the only exception that it cannot reduce a unit's marks to 0.