In an age of ruin, carve out a kingdom of your own

Deserters. They once guarded this border, but after three months without supplies, the banner fell and they turned to banditry. Still in their old uniforms, they know how to raid a village better than anyone.

Wolves fattened on the battlefield. They've gnawed on too many unburied dead; their eyes glow red and they grow bigger every year. They fear neither fire nor people — they've seen too many people die. They're always first to arrive, and when fiercer things come, they slink back into the hills.

Those who died in the flames, their grudges too strong to scatter, rising again from the ashes. Half a talisman still clings to their brow from the night they burned, and wherever they walk, they set it alight.

Merchants and refugees who froze to death on the snowy ridges. They no longer remember who they were — only the cold. So wherever they go, they share that cold with whoever's near.

The few bandits who once served as archers. They don't push to the front; they hide behind their comrades and loose arrows from cover. By night 12, oil-soaked rags are wrapped around their arrowheads — hit a person, and the person burns; hit a house, and the house burns.

A stockade guardian built by mountain folk. The people are long dead, but the mechanism still moves. Sinew has grown in its bamboo joints and its crossbow cocks itself — it guards a stockade empty for years, treating every living thing that approaches as an enemy.

Heavy infantry buried in a mass grave. The armor was too thick — the man rotted, the armor didn't, and so the armor stood him back up. It doesn't recognize you. It only knows "there's someone alive ahead."

The old plow ox from the village gate. After its master died it refused to leave the empty fields, and over the years it gained a spirit — and a grudge. The elders used to shout "Niu lai le! — the bull's coming!" until the cry became its name.

The year the mountain collapsed, it buried an entire crew of laborers. Their resentment seeped into the rock, and the rock got a temper. It moves slowly, but it has learned only one thing in its life: smash whatever stands in the way.

Battlefield crows that ate too well and flew too long — so long they forgot how to land. From the clouds they watch the scorched earth and dive wherever there's firelight. To them, a city wall is just a line scratched in the dirt.

An old ape of the deep mountains that loves to mimic people. It learned to climb walls, learned to smash doors — and learned to call at your gate at night in a human voice.

A beast that has always tunneled through the earth's veins. Since the war the ground has turned sour, and it has started burrowing toward wherever people live. Your walls only stop the half of the world above ground.

The oldest of the Niulai, its horns once sheathed in gold. Legend says it rammed open a real city gate for an army — and afterward, no one dared lead it again.

The army's powder-keeper. The night the camp blew up, he didn't run — he stood there clutching the last keg. He's clutching it still, and the moment he sees a wall, he hugs it.

A priest who gathered the dead after the battles, chanting over them until he learned the chants he never should have. He never strikes anyone himself. He simply calls the fallen back to their feet.

A whole company of shieldmen who fell together. They still remember their final order: hold formation, no retreat. You'll never push them from the front — only by flanking do you discover they've long been hollow.

The war drum that never stopped beating the night the city fell. Its hide came alive, and when it booms, everything nearby runs faster and hits harder.

Crow Demons soaked too long in corpse miasma. Their feathers are rotting, and wherever the falling down settles, machinery slows.

Heavy armor of black iron, once issued only to the most elite battalion. The whole battalion died at the pass without losing a single suit. Now they're marching back in ranks.

The biggest of the Stone Demons. It no longer charges in itself — it squats at the back and hurls whole chunks of mountain into your city.

Hard to say whether it's human or demon. It ambles behind the lines with a medicine chest on its back, and any fallen demon it touches gets back up. It never strikes anyone.

In life he took seven cities. What he regretted most in death was the eighth that held. Now he leads an army that never tires, attacking again and again and again.

Every Crow Demon answers to it. It circles in the clouds and only descends once it spots a gap. The moment it comes down, the sky goes dark a second time.

The source of it all. Some say it was the man who died most bitterly in the great war; some say it was never a man at all. Clad in black armor no one has ever pierced, it waits for you on the final night.