A Mammoth unleashing a volley of cannon fire against draconic enemies
Mammoths are a species of massive size and strength used by the Skorne Empire as gargantuan warbeasts. In addition to raw strength and an ornery temperament, the immense beasts possess natural weaponry capable of goring to death any wild threat making them ideal living siege engines. [1]
Mammoths are found in the valley of Kornash in the Northern Tor of the Skorne Empire is bordered by foreboding mountains to the north and the Blasted Desert to the west. A relatively lush area, it remains largely unexploited by the skorne because of the tremendous and lethal creatures that thrive in its uncharted expanses. Although distant cousins to the smaller titans to the south, mammoths differ from titans in many ways beyond mere size, most obviously the massive armored crests growing from their resilient skulls. Experienced beast handlers have speculated the two species share a common ancestry, but the mammoth’s fiercely aggressive disposition and omnivorous diet indicate its lineage is separate. Small mammoth herds range over territory that overlaps with that of the hydra, and the two species clash brutally where they encounter one another. [1]
However the risks and expense of capturing and housing them have kept them out of reach of all but the most powerful houses. The cost to feed them regularly alone is staggering and further costs are incurred in structural damage they inflict and slain handlers. As they are almost impossible to breed in captivity, they must be seized in the wild and transported across hundreds of miles. In order to restrain them, teams of beast handlers add powerful soporifics to their feed and insert harnesses for pain hooks and controlling blades into the drugged beasts’ hides. If these precautions fail the mammoths may awaken prematurely, inevitably to erupt in a frenzy of motion.[1]
When Vinter Raelthorne IV forbade the skorne from bringing their mammoths with them to the west claiming the strength of the bridges built across Abyss as insufficient to bear the beasts’ weight. After deposing Vinter, Supreme Archdomina Makeda discovered this to be false and authorized the empire’s beast handlers to send mammoths west to join the vanguard of her army. At the direction of Dominar Rasheth, House Telarr has led the way in heeding Makeda’s directive. The house has begun to develop and employ new chymical admixtures and excruciating techniques for this purpose as the great profit and influence to be had by exploiting these beasts for war is well worth the risks and cost of securing them.[1]
While mammoths are perfect platforms to haul their great cannons to war, training mammoths to aim and fire the weapons is much more difficult than with titans. However their size and strength enable them to carry even larger ordnance and under the supreme archdomina’s direction, empire-funded weaponsmiths developed a multi-barreled, self-reloading mechanism that represents an unprecedented level of sophistication in skorne armament. Such weapons possess a rate of fire that exceeds the limits of a mammoth’s natural coordination but when commanded by a skorne warlock, the beasts can lay down an earth-shattering barrage that can annihilate enemy formations and fortifications. However it is capable and prefers to close on the enemy and smash them with its war gauntlets or to gore nearby foes with its tusks and hurl their broken bodies through the air.[1]