Cantor

At a glance: Chitin Warhost mobile Choir-repeater · carries a Choir node on its back so a roaming pack stays one mind · cowardly runner that flees and dies its pack feral · appears in Deadlane / Scourge-Survivors.

A mobile Choir-repeater — the second named relay class after the rooted Chorister. Where a Chorister is planted astride a breach and never willingly moves, a Cantor runs with the swarm: a low, fast Chitin Warhost grown around a single Choir node it carries on its back, so a roaming pack stays connected to the Choir (CANON §5–6) far past the reach of any fixed relay. The Scourge cannot mass densely enough to think across the open lanes on its own; a Chorister extends the signal’s radius, but a Cantor extends its range of motion. It is how the horde keeps one set of eyes while it pushes deep into ground a stationary node could never hold.

Kill the Cantor and you sever just its pack — a smaller, sharper, more frequent version of the Chorister’s severance. The swarm it was carrying drops to feral (CANON §6): still lethal, but blind, dumb, instinct-only. You do not blind a whole front the way you do by breaking a Chorister; you blind the squad in front of you, right now.

Behaviour

• Mobile, not rooted. Keeps pace just behind the leading Rippers, threading through the pack so the bodies it empowers are also the bodies that screen it. It never leads a charge and never holds ground — it follows the swarm’s center of mass and flees danger.
• While it lives, every Scourge in its (smaller) radius is connected: the pack flanks, focus-fires, and pre-empts movement as one mind, exactly like a Chorister’s horde — but the bubble travels with the Cantor, so the coordination chases you through a lane instead of sitting on a fixed breach.
• Barely attacks. Its only direct threat is a short scuttling lunge and a close-range resonance snap that briefly scrambles attacker targeting — enough to buy a half-second to bolt back into the pack.
• On death its pack is severed. Every connected Scourge in its travelling radius drops to feral (CANON §6): tracking goes loose, flanking collapses, the squad scatters. Smaller and more local than a Chorister break, and it re-forms the moment the next Cantor arrives.
• Self-preserving to the point of cowardice — the only Scourge unit that reliably retreats. The hive spends Rippers to keep a Cantor alive and moving, because losing one blinds a spearhead mid-push, but it will pull a Cantor out of a fight a Chorister would die rooted in.
• Killing a Cantor does not kill the Scourge (CANON §2). The Choir persists; another Cantor peels off the nearest Chorister’s node-cluster and runs the signal forward again.

Gameplay Read

• A mobile priority target — the moving-objective counterpart to the Chorister’s fixed one. The skill check is catching it: it hides in the crowd it coordinates and bolts when exposed.
• Telegraph: a tight toxic-green resonance pulse beats out from the Cantor’s back-node, and the units around it flinch and snap in sync with each beat — the same “these are connected” grammar as the Chorister, but on a bubble you have to track through the fight.
• The instant it dies, the pack it was carrying visibly goes loose — the readable severance, no UI needed — then re-tightens if another Cantor reaches the same ground.
• Rewards aggression and target ID over patience: the correct play is to push into the coordinated pack to reach the runner, not to wait it out, because waiting just lets it carry the Choir deeper down the lane.

Visual Motifs

• A low, fast multi-legged chitin host — scuttling, hunched, built to keep up, never upright or rooted. Reads as a courier, not a fighter.
• A single oversized Choir node fused into a humped carapace on its back — the brightest toxic-green point on the body, the obvious “where do I shoot” answer, raised and exposed by the carrying posture.
• Resonator membranes packed along the flanks beneath the hump, wet and pulsing in time with the broadcast — the Chorister’s singing throat-sacs, shrunk and made portable.
• Short tendrils trailing from the node, snapping out to lash into nearby host bodies as it runs — the network you can see, made mobile.
• Cracked alien carapace rebuilt by parasite tissue, black chitin and rupture seams; the legs are the most intact part, the back the most consumed — built around protecting and carrying the node.

Sprite Brief

• Views: front, side, back.
• Silhouette must read as low and fast with a raised back-node — instantly distinct from the tall, rooted, mast-like Chorister and from a plain charger like the Render.
• The back-node hump is the focal point: bright Choir node, the shoot-here answer, visible even when the body is screened by the pack.
• Pulse state: an emitting variant with the back-node and flank membranes flared blood-hot-to-toxic and trailing tendrils taut.
• Flee state: a scuttling-away variant — legs splayed for speed, node clamped low, reading clearly as “it’s running.”
• Must stay readable in both Deadlane’s lane-top camera and Scourge-Survivors’s close FPS framing, even mid-pack.

Prompt Seed

Scourge mobile Choir-repeater, low fast multi-legged chitin warhost built to run with the swarm, single oversized toxic-green Choir node fused into a humped carapace on its back, wet resonator membranes pulsing along the flanks, short tendrils lashing out into nearby host bodies as it scuttles, cracked alien carapace rebuilt by parasite tissue, black chitin and rupture seams, legs intact and back consumed, broadcasting a tight resonance pulse, blood and rust and gunmetal, DOOM-like heavy shadows, no neon.

Appears In

• Deadlane — runs the Choir down a contested lane so the wave attacks as a coordinated push deep past the breach; a Warden must catch and break it mid-lane, not wait at the wall, or the coordination reaches the line. The mobile counterpart to a planted Chorister objective.
• Scourge-Survivors — the relay that keeps a breach-room pack (Perdition) thinking as one while it hunts the lone Pyre Purger; sever it and the room goes feral, buying the window to push on.
• The-Listeners — easier to take alive than a fanatically-defended Chorister: a Cantor that flees can be cut off and cornered with its node intact, making it the heresy’s likeliest captured ear on the Choir (CANON §8).