Stalfos (Conquest)

The Stalfos are a playable faction in Hyrule: Total War.

Description
The fear of death is shared among all mortal beings and those that are fearful enough have, in the past, become entangled in many dark and unnatural means of preserving their lives. The Stalfos, also the ancient Hylian word for "of bones" are remnants of these long-lost endeavors to achieve long-lasting life. Little more than animated skeletons, Stalfos are completely mindless and, without guidance, will simply rot as any dead being would. In recent times, however, the Stalfos have slowly been assembling into an army under the guidance of unseen masters. The Kingdom of Hyrule and many other races have done their best to utterly destroy all remnants of these undead, yet periodically they show up time and again. The fear of an all out Stalfos army looms in the hearts of many, and without a doubt that fear is becoming more true every day. The dead corpses and remnants of the long deceased are rising from their graves all the more and gathering in all the hidden corners of Hyrule. Being an army of mindless drones, the Stalfos have the advantage of being completely immune to all psychological effects such as fear. It is impossible for a Stalfos army to flee, and they will fight until every bone in their carcases are smashed beyond repair. Despite this huge advantage, the Stalfos lack muscles and their only means of movement is artificial: Stalfos move slowly and awkwardly and are relatively easy to destroy with a well placed hammer to the rib cage. Even though they may be frail in combat, most people would only dare to stand against the march of a Stalfos army coming to collect the corpses of the dead.

Physiology
Stalfos are cobbled together from the bones of their slain enemies, assembled into grotesque mockeries. The few intelligent Stalfos are souls that have, through means of Necromancy, managed to avoid moving on to Termina and linger in Hyrule- the rest are mindless constructs of necromancy that exist only to serve their masters.

Language
Most Stalfos, as mindless undead, are incapable of speech. The few that retain their intelligence, such as Scythe Lords, speak Hylian Dialect.

Strengths, Weaknesses and Abilities

 * Mindless Undead: Most Stalfos soldiers are little more than mindless automata and as such are immune to fear, pain, and tiring.
 * Unwilling Recruits: The Stalfos have a chance to gain more soldiers from those they slay in a campaign battle.
 * Skeletal Menace: Stalfos are little more than bones held together by twisted magic, as such they are extremely frail and can be destroyed easily.
 * Ultimate Recyclers: Stalfos are able to use any structure of any empire in the campaign and raise the dead of those races.

Freeform Campaign
The Stalfos start at war with all other factions if they are not selected by a human player; otherwise they are neutral with all factions except the rebels.
 * Faction Leader: Lord Akazoo
 * Settlements: 0
 * Goals:
 * Short Campaign: hold 30 regions
 * Long Campaign: hold 40 regions

Gameplay
The Stalfos do not 'recruit' their troops in a conventional manner. Instead, they have to collect bones and assemble whatever forms they need to get the job done, so they'll need to kill enemy armies to fuel their production. An exception is the ReDeads, which need a Graveyard to be recruited.

Standard

 * Staltroops
 * Stalkin
 * Bubbles
 * Stalhounds
 * Lost Souls
 * ReDeads
 * Battleforged
 * Staldra
 * Scythe Lords
 * Stalmasters

Siege Weaponry

 * Bone Catapult
 * Corpse Tosser

Command

 * ReDead Knight
 * Necromancer

Heroes

 * Lord Akazoo
 * Azrily
 * General Onox
 * Stallord

Historia only

 * Dethl
 * The Devoured
 * ReDead Horror
 * Deadhand
 * Deadhand's Arms

Tech Tree
The only buildings the Stalfos can build are Graveyard and farms.

Cut Content

 * The Stalfos were originally the undead versions of other races, and were planned to play in a vastly different way from other factions, being unable to build units. Instead, they have to fight enemies and then raise their corpses to be their units. However, due to bugs and engine limitations, they have been reworked from reanimated skeletons to bone constructs, and their gameplay was changed to become more like a conventional faction.

Bugs and Glitches
Similarly to the "Turn 15 Crash" the large amount of spawning Stalfos units on turn 126 can cause a crash to desktop for many players. But, from the version 4.0 of the game, this problem has been solved by giving a starting region to the River Zoras and the Stalfos, avoiding that crash.

Trivia

 * The Stalfos faction symbol is a reference to the hidden state of the boss Margomill from the Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.