Render

At a glance: Chitin Warhost elite · melee charger, no ranged attack · straight-line charge, no flanking · enrages at half health (speed + ferocity spike) · appears in Scourge-Survivors / Deadlane.

A Render is what the Scourge makes when it finds a soldier. The Chitin Warhost were a shell-world warrior race once — big, plated, built to fight — and the parasite kept all of that and threw away the parts that hesitate. It cracked the carapace, threaded itself through the gaps, and pointed the result at the nearest thing worth breaking.

A Warden gunner gets one clean look before it reaches the wall: low, wide, moving faster than that much shell has any right to, green light bleeding from the seams of a carapace that used to belong to something with a name. Nobody calls it in by that name. On the line they just call it the part of the wave that gets there first.

Behaviour

• Charges the nearest fortified position or high-value target in a straight line — no flanking, no hesitation.
• Armored leading carapace absorbs the opening volley; breach nodes beneath the seams glow as a health cue.
• At half health the parasite purges restraint organelles: speed and ferocity spike hard (enrage). Nodes burst open, exposing raw tissue.
• No ranged attack. Pure melee pressure. Forces repositioning in any lane or breach room where standing still means dying.

Gameplay Read

• Wide, hunched silhouette — lower than expected, which makes it hard to pick out of a crowd.
• Toxic-green breach nodes visible at carapace seams; rupture signals enrage.
• Enrage: nodes split open, exposed tissue shifts blood-hot red; charge speed increases visibly.

Visual Motifs

• Thick alien carapace, black and iridescent, cracked by parasite growth seeping through the seams.
• Blade-claw forelimbs — elongated, bone-pale, serrated at the inner edge.
• Parasite tissue bulging through shoulder joints and beneath the faceplate.
• No visible eyes — sensory organs replaced by parasite nodes; the breach drives it.

Sprite Brief

• Views: front, side, back.
• Silhouette must read as “armored but low” — not upright; hunched and wide.
• Enrage variant: open-seam version with ruptured nodes and blood-hot exposed tissue.
• Must stay readable in Deadlane’s lane-top camera and Scourge-Survivors’s close-range FPS framing.

Art Master

• Status: v02 candidate master attached for review. Strong low/wide armored charger read; still needs enrage/open-seam variant and strict runtime views.
• Art master index: Scourge Foe Art Masters

Prompt Seed

Scourge elite charger, chitin warhost, cracked alien carapace, black iridescent shell, blade-claw forelimbs, toxic-green parasite nodes bursting at seams, hunched low-profile charge silhouette, enrage variant with open rupture wounds and blood-hot red exposed tissue, DOOM-like gore, no neon.

Appears In

• Scourge-Survivors — elite encounter mid-run; forces repositioning in breach rooms; appears alone or paired ahead of a swarm surge.
• Deadlane — armored siege breacher; towers slow it but rarely stop it alone; requires focused fire to drop before it reaches the wall.
• Redline — a charging roadblock flung across the courier’s lane; too armored to fight at speed, it has to be juked or out-paced before it connects.