Stalfos (Conquest)

The Stalfos are a playable faction in Hyrule: Total War. They must be unlocked by beating a Short Campaign as the Moblins or a Long Campaign as any faction.

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
All Stalfos are the animate corpses of former living creatures, usually intelligent beings, in advanced stages of necrosis. Stalfos are not beings bound by natural laws, having no explainable form of locomotion or cognition animating their skeletal forms, but can be destroyed by sufficiently damaging their physical form. The few intelligent Stalfos are souls that have, through means of Necromancy, managed to avoid moving on to Termina and linger in Hyrule, animating their former mortal bodies.

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 are one of the other factions that play differently from the standard empire builders. Much like the River Zora, the Stalfos are not too keen on building their own cities: rather they capture and convert their targets for their own use. This focus on conversion is most evident in the way the Stalfos create new units: They raise the corpses of enemies they defeated in battle.

Recruitment of new Stalfos units revolves around Necromancers (as their name so obviously implies): powerful units capable of converting the rotting flesh of the deceased into animated soldiers. They are extremely powerful and very rare, and you'll rarely have more than one out on the field at a time.

Whenever you are victorious in battle, the soldiers that were slain in battle are immediately shipped to the Necromancer, who can spend anywhere from a turn to several turns animating them. The success rate of the animation is not always 100%, but you'll generally get a majority of your kills to join the ranks of your armies.

Obviously this means the Necromancer is your key priority and you'll want keep him around doing his business. If a Necromancer goes down, you'll not be able to increase your numbers for a long period of time until another Necromancer rises to take his place.

The reanimated units are always Stalkin and an additional unit depending on who were on the receiving end of your scythes: There will also be additional Stalfos units that can be obtained under certain conditions, such as Stalhounds.
 * Kingdom of Hyrule: Stalfos Eurdi
 * Gerudo: Stalfos Gerudo
 * Zora Dominion, Lanayru Province, River Zora: Stalfos Zarko
 * Kokiri: Fallen Skull Kids
 * Ordona Province, Labrynna Regime: Staltroops
 * Moblins: Parutamu
 * The Deku Tribes: Rotting Scrubs
 * Darknut Legion: Dark Stalfos
 * Lizalfos: Stalfos Lizal
 * Fairies of Tarm: Bubbles
 * Sheikah Cadre: ReDeads
 * Order of the Wizzrobe: Scythe Lords
 * Gorons, Gohma, Kingdom of Ikana, Forces of Twilight, NPC factions, Rebels: N/A

Standard

 * Staltroops
 * Stalfos Eurdi
 * Stalfos Gerudo
 * Stalfos Zarko
 * Stalkin
 * Fallen Skull Kids
 * Stalfos Lizal
 * Parutamu
 * Dark Stalfos
 * Rotting Scrubs
 * Bubbles
 * ReDeads
 * Scythe Lords
 * Staldra

Command

 * Dead Hand
 * Reaper General
 * Necromancer

Heroes

 * Lord Akazoo
 * Malmord
 * General Onox
 * Stallord

Historia only

 * Dethl
 * ReDead Horror
 * Deadhand
 * Deadhand's Arms
 * Stalhounds

Tech Tree
The only building the Stalfos can build is the Graveyard, which serves as their secondary means of unit production.

Cut Content

 * The Stalfos was originally planned to raise corpses directly from defeated enemies on the battlefield, however because of the engine this method could easily result in glitches and become broken to the point where the player could not receive any new soldiers. Naturally this meant things had to be reworked and thus the Necromancer was made.
 * To help with early recruitment problems found in the orginal and Necromancer versions of the faction the graveyard was added.
 * To help with early recruitment problems found in the orginal and Necromancer versions of the faction the graveyard was added.

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. This issue has yet to be resolved.

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.