The Blight's Warriors - Blighted Knights

When the first soldiers were sent into Limlight ahead of the quarantine being established, the intention was containment. They were experienced men, disciplined, and the reports coming out of the village had not yet conveyed the full scale of what Phrenic Concordia was capable of. Within a day, half of them had been infected. Within three, those who had turned were unrecognisable as the men who had marched in. The disease does something different to those who carry weapons and wear armour, as though it can read the purpose of a body and choose to amplify it. Where a civilian host becomes aggressive and directionless, a soldier host becomes something closer to a siege weapon. The flesh that pushes through gaps in their armour has hardened into dense, dark growth that reinforces the steel from beneath, and the masses that bloom from their sword arms have formed into crude but effective bludgeoning weights that the disease swings with more force than the original limb ever could have managed. They still hold their weapons. That is the detail that unsettles survivors most, more than the flesh, more than the smell. The muscle memory of trained soldiers persists inside the corruption, and the Blighted Knights do not flail or stumble the way newly turned hosts do. They advance in something resembling formation. They respond to each other in ways that suggest the Consciousness is coordinating them, using whatever martial knowledge remained in their minds at the moment of turning and putting it to work with a patience and economy that no mindless plague beast should be capable of. Fighting them as though they are monsters is a mistake. They have to be fought as though they are soldiers, which is precisely what Phrenic Concordia intended.