(Excerpts from "The Grey-Steel Compendium," a restricted text for Great Knights and High Priests of the Aegis Sanctum)
Let the acolyte first understand the fundamental difference between our divine power and the enemy's.
Our Faith is a "bottom-up" power. It is the righteous belief of the masses, drawn from the well of humanity, which we, through will and discipline, refine into a weapon for the divine. It is the power of order and creation.
The Tainted is the antithesis. It is a "top-down" power, a fragment of the alien will of the "Great Ones" that seeps into our world. This power, which we shall call Corruption, is not learned; it is festered. Its fuel is Malice—the material echo of agony, grief, and its own alien hunger. It does not build; it consumes.
To know thy enemy, you must know its path. The "rank" of a Tainted creature is determined by its sentience and its density. It "evolves" by consuming enough energy—psychic, spiritual, or physical—to stabilize its form and awaken its core Tainted Spirit.
What follows is the Church's official classification of this unholy progression.
Rank 0: The Whisper (The Seed)
* Form: Non-physical.
* Threat: Negligible (Direct), Catastrophic (Potential).
* Description: This is the raw "seed" of Corruption. It is the "Whisper" of a Great One, a fragment of alien will, leaking into our reality. It is drawn to places where the "World's Will" is thin, such as the Grieving Coast, or where the veil is torn by great trauma—battlefields, plague-pits, and sites of famine. It has no body, only a proto-instinct to find one and begin its lifecycle.
Rank 1: The Echo (The Puppet)
* Form: Animated Vessel (corpses, animals).
* Threat: Low (Individually), High (In Hordes).
* Example: Grave-kin, Tainted Hounds.
* Description: This is the weakest and most common Tainted. The Whisper finds a vessel—typically a dead body or a beast saturated with agony—and animates it. It is a mindless puppet, a tool of pure instinct.
* Abilities:
* Puppet Body: The vessel feels no pain and will fight until utterly destroyed.
* Primal Hunger: It is driven by a single, base instinct: consume and spread the Taint.
* Passive Corruption: Its claws and teeth are Tainted, carrying the seed of Corruption. Wounds from an Echo are notoriously difficult to heal, often festering unless treated with Holy Water or a Priest's blessing.
* Strategic Weakness: An Echo has no will of its own. Its body is weak, and its spiritual core is fragile. A single blessed weapon or a disciplined Holy Knight can destroy it with ease.
Rank 2: The Formed (The Beast)
* Form: Bestial, self-constructed body.
* Threat: Moderate to High.
* Example: Greater Husks, Carapace Crawlers.
* Description: When an "Echo" consumes enough life, Malice, or psychic energy, its core Tainted Spirit awakens a basic, bestial sentience. It is no longer just a puppet; it is an animal. It sheds its weak vessel and uses its accumulated power to "form" a new, more powerful body for itself from ambient Corruption, Malice, and the physical matter of its victims. This results in the 12-foot-tall, "cancerous" abominations of black-plated bone and muscle seen on the Grieving Coast.
* Abilities:
* Corrupted Carapace: Its body is made of "condensed" Malice, forming a black, bone-like plate that is highly resistant to non-Faith-enhanced weapons.
* Instinctive Defense: It can instinctively channel its Malice to harden its body or empower its strikes, but it does so as an animal, reacting on instinct, not thinking with strategy.
* Strategic Weakness: It is a powerful beast, but it is still a beast. A "liquid-state" Knight can defeat it with technique and patience. A "solid-state" warrior, such as a Great Knight, can shatter its physical and spiritual form.
Rank 3: The Conscious (The Mind)
* Form: Stable, unique, and sapient.
* Threat: Extreme. This is a true enemy.
* Example: The "Listeners," the "Bone-Knights."
* Description: This is the most terrifying leap. A "Formed" Tainted consumes enough power to achieve sapience. It is no longer an animal; it is an individual entity with a mind, a will, and a purpose. It is a "general" of the horde, a true monster.
* Abilities:
* Wielded Corruption: A "Conscious" Tainted can wield its power, just as a Knight wields Faith. It can refine and specialize its abilities, often becoming a dark mirror of our own Holy Paths.
* Specialization: At this rank, we observe distinct "classes" of Tainted:
* The Listener (The Priest): A specialist in psychic Corruption. It "listens" to the Great Ones' Whisper and channels it. It is the source of the "Lament" storms, projecting waves of pure grief and despair to break a warrior's mind before the battle is ever joined. They are the insidious "whispers" that infest a man's grief and hollow him out.
* The Bone-Knight (The Knight): A specialist in physical Corruption. It has learned to condense its Malice just as a Great Knight condenses Faith into a solid state. It can form devastating weapons from its own bone and will, or unleash its power as a pure, concussive force capable of shattering a knight's guard and breaking his bones.
Rank 4: The Ascendant (The Apex)
* Form: Unknown. (Heretical texts suggest a "perfected" form, sometimes humanoid).
* Threat: World-Ending.
* Example: The "Whispering Dukes," (per the banned Tome of Containers).
* Description: This is the Tainted equivalent of a Holy Sword or an Arch Priest. An "Ascendant" is a "Conscious" Tainted that has achieved such a density of power that it begins to truly "imprint" itself on reality. The Grieving Coast itself is suspected to be the "nest" of such an entity.
* Abilities:
* Domain: It can warp the "World's Will" around it, creating a vast area where the Taint is supreme, the air is sour, and our Faith is dampened.
* True "Conscious" Power: Its abilities are assumed to be as potent and reality-bending as our own highest miracles, but with the opposite intent: to unmake, corrupt, and consume on a fundamental level.
Conclusion:
Know this, Knight: the mindless Echoes are but the claws of the beast. The true enemy is the mind that guides them. It is intelligent, it is ancient, and it is learning. Do not falter. Let your Faith be the "absolute zero" that freezes their Corruption. Let your Will be the blade that shatters their mind.