Waning and scattered they are, the sundered fragments of an empire that drowned in its own perversity and decadence. Yet woe betide those who think them weak. They are as shrewd as they are fickle, as disciplined as they are capricious. They read the skeins of fate as if they are letters on a page. They handle the blade as if they were born to do nothing else. They fight for their survival and see all other species as irrevocably inferior, or even as vermin. To underestimate them means death.

Artist: Paul Dainton