💀 The Byzantium Crones (Escher)

Formerly: Byzantium Butterfly 

Now: Byzantium Crones 

Front Leader: Duchess Candyflip (a glitter‑soaked puppet) 

True Power: The Triune Death Maidens (including Madame Yolanda Rain, risen from death)

🦋 Fall from Glory

•  The Byzantium Butterfly were once infamous for their flamboyant raids, perfumed poisons, and narcotic‑fuelled revels.

•  Their downfall came when their supply of Spook and Slaught was cut off by Ash Waste raids, leaving them twitching wrecks in the middle of a turf war.

•  Madame Yolanda Rain overdosed on Ghast during a duel, only to be resurrected as a Death Maiden—her beauty now a rotting mask, her laughter a toxin.

•  The Butterfly name became a joke in the underhive: “pretty wings clipped by bad chems.”

🕯️ Rise of the Byzantium Crones

•  The gang re‑emerged as the Byzantium Crones, a bitter parody of their former selves.

•  Their motto: “We’ve seen the hive rot. Now we’ll help it along.”

•  Duchess Candyflip plays the role of leader, all neon wigs and glitter dust, while the Death Maidens pull the strings from the shadows.

•  Their rituals revolve around chems:

  ⁠◦  Spook‑soaked visions before battle.

  ⁠◦  Slaught injections mid‑fight, turning them into shrieking berserkers.

  ⁠◦  Ghast communion—a rite where they inhale fumes from broken archeotech, claiming it lets them “speak with the hive’s bones.”

🧩 Hatred for the Other Gangs

•  Conspicuously Bald Dudes: “Toupee freaks. Baldness isn’t a cult, it’s a cry for help.”

•  Miracle on 483rd Street (Cawdor): “Sweep your shrines all you want, broom‑lickers. We’ll just dust them with Spook ash.”

•  Raiders of the Lost Archeotech (Spyrers): “Rich kids in murder pyjamas. We’ll sell their monocles for stim money.”

•  Ferrous Phalanx (Orlocks): “Marching tin cans. Ever seen iron rust after a Ghast bath?”

•  The Malignants: “Snake freaks. We’ll skin their queen and make boots.”

•  WhooWaaYaa Reservation: “Ash‑sled clowns. We’ll lace their masks with Slaught and watch them eat each other.”

🕸 Campaign Function

The Byzantium Crones are the late‑campaign chaos agents:

•  They despise everyone, mock every superstition, and lace every encounter with drug‑fuelled nihilism.

•  Their arrival destabilizes alliances—no one can work with them, but no one can ignore them.

•  They embody grimdark humour: bitter old butterflies, wings rotted, now cackling crones who poison everything they touch.

💀 Byzantium Crones – Death Maiden Triune

•  Madame Yolanda Rain – The revenant matriarch, once the Butterfly queen, now a Death Maiden whose laugh is a Spook‑soaked rasp.

•  Duchess Candyflip – Puppet leader, glitter‑drenched, permanently buzzing on rainbow dust and stim cocktails.

•  Countess Spookshow – Death Maiden, eyes wide and haunted from endless Spook trips. She claims the hive whispers secrets during her “visions,” though most of it is incoherent shrieking.

•  Baroness Dustneedle – Death Maiden, notorious for jamming stim‑sticks straight into her veins. Her berserk rages are legend, and she keeps broken injector rigs as trophies.