Wound-Hound

At a glance: low Chitin Warhost tracker - finds heat, blood, breath, and vibration for nearby packs - not a Choir repeater; it guides feral bodies by scent and sound, not shared sight - kill it and the pack loses the trail, not the signal - appears in Redline / Scourge-Survivors / Deadlane.

The first thing a severed pack does after the Choir goes quiet is stop looking clever.

The second thing it does is listen for the hound.

A Wound-Hound is the Scourge remembering that bodies had senses before they had a hive mind. It is a low, rib-nosed chitin host grown around every crude animal answer to “where is the food”: heat pits, blood taste, breath pressure, footfall through concrete, the salt stink of panic in a sealed mask. While a repeater is singing, the hound is just another node-fed hunter, snapping toward the target the Choir already knows. Cut the repeater and the pack drops feral like CANON says it should - blind, dumb, instinct-only - but the hound keeps working because scent is not strategy. A nose does not need a general.

That is why Wardens hate finding one after a good severance. A broken Cantor should make the lane stupid. A dead Carillon should make the road stop predicting you. Then a Wound-Hound puts its face to the ash, coughs out a wet bark, and twenty blind bodies turn the same way for the oldest reason in the world.

It does not make the Scourge smarter. It makes dumb hunger point in one direction.

Behaviour

• Tracks physical traces. Follows heat, blood, breath, sweat, vibration, and fresh corpse-scent. It cannot see through walls, read plans, or share vision. It follows a trail because the trail is there.
• Marks, then calls. When it finds a target, it spits a sticky parasite musk that glows toxic-green for a few seconds and carries a tearing bark through nearby bodies. Connected Scourge use the mark with perfect timing; feral Scourge simply rush toward the smell and sound.
• Not a repeater. A Wound-Hound carries no Choir node and extends no signal radius. Killing one never severs a pack from the Choir. It only removes the local tracker that was helping bodies converge after severance.
• Gets worse around injury. Wounded operators, bleeding lane crews, fresh corpse piles, ruptured armor seals, and hot weapons all make stronger trails. A clean, cold, quiet route can slip it. A bad route teaches it your name.
• Skittish when exposed. It stays low behind Rippers and cover, darts in to mark, then backs out. Alone it is fragile; screened by a feral pack it is the difference between a scattered mess and a stampede.
• Decoys work. Hot scrap, blood bags, vented steam, corpse burns, and crossed scent trails can pull it wrong. The trick is remembering that fooling a Wound-Hound fools an animal sense, not an intelligence.

Gameplay Read

• A low priority tracker that matters most after severance, in stealth routes, and in courier chases. It is not the thing killing you first; it is the thing that makes the things behind it find you again.
• Telegraph: head low, rib-snout opening like a torn fan, throat sacs fluttering before the bark. The mark lands as a wet toxic splash, then nearby feral units snap toward it with rough, imperfect timing.
• Counter-play is denial rather than burst damage: break line-of-scent with fire, steam, ash dumps, water, sealed doors, cold decoys, or a quick kill on the snout crown before the bark finishes.
• Differentiation: unlike Quaver, Cantor, or Chorister, it does not coordinate the horde. Unlike Swarm-Spitter, its projectile is a marker, not a damage shot. Unlike Sower, it wants the living trail more than the dead host.

Visual Motifs

• A low Chitin Warhost with a long, split rib-snout instead of a face - no eyes, no readable expression, only a sensory organ built into the skull.
• Heat pits and wet scent membranes packed along the muzzle, flaring toxic-green when it marks a target. The glow reads as parasite musk, not a Choir node.
• Hooked forelimbs and splayed claws built for bracing and sudden darts, not for full charger impact.
• Throat sacs under the jaw, torn and pulsing before a bark; the sound-maker is visible and fragile.
• Black chitin over stolen bone, rupture seams around the nose, and trailing whisker-tendrils dragging through ash to taste a route.

Sprite Brief

• Views: front, side, back.
• Silhouette must read as low tracker with an oversized split snout - distinct from the plain rushing Swarm-Ripper, the airborne Quaver, and the low vehicle mass of Rot-Engine.
• Mark state: snout fan open, throat sacs bright, musk glob leaving the mouth.
• Trail state: head down, whisker-tendrils stretched forward, claws braced.
• Death state: snout crown split and dark, throat sacs deflated so the loss of tracking reads clearly.
• Must stay readable in Redline side framing, Scourge-Survivors close FPS framing, and Deadlane high camera.

Comic Book Master

• Atlas: Comic Book Master Atlas v01
• Runtime v01: packages/assets/games/scourge-survivors/enemies/scourge/wound-hound/{front,side,back}.webp
• Status: first playable Scourge Survivors crop from the comic Scourge board; needs a dedicated Wound-Hound front/true-side/back generation pass before final lock.

Prompt Seed

Scourge low tracker creature, chitin warhost hound built low to the ground with a long split rib-snout instead of a face, no eyes, wet toxic-green scent membranes and heat pits packed along the muzzle, black chitin over stolen bone, hooked forelimbs and splayed claws, throat sacs under the jaw pulsing before a tearing bark, whisker-tendrils dragging through ash, spitting sticky parasite musk marker, blood and rust and gunmetal, DOOM-like heavy shadows, no neon.

Appears In

• Redline - the thing that makes a severed road still dangerous after a courier cuts a relay: the Choir stops predicting, but the hound can still pick up blood, breath, and boot-heat unless the runner crosses the trail wrong.
• Scourge-Survivors - a breach-room tracker that flushes a Pyre operator out from cover after a node kill; severance buys chaos, not invisibility.
• Deadlane - a low wave unit that sniffs weak barricade gaps and marked crews after the Wardens break a repeater; killing it keeps the feral remnant scattered long enough for towers to reset.