The Soulless Escort, Retribution weapon attachment.

Google can't find stock art of the Soulless. So this is the next best thing.

All jokes aside.

It's too easy to make jokes about gingers, prostitutes, Julia Roberts or Keanu Reeves, emos and everything else that a soulless escort could be. 

The truth is the soulless are one of the coolest and most interesting things about the entire Iron Kingdoms universe and especially the elves.

They are it is conjectured, the greatest threat to Elven society since... well probably since ever. I mean the rivening was pretty awesome and terrible but that was a once off. Then there was that whole dragon business, dragons on the scale of things are pretty terrible. But at least you can see a dragon, you can fight it. 

Having your population slowly being born souless and euthanized,  you slowly start to look like modern Japan.

Soulless are like a horrible genetic disease. It's like... downs syndrome for nazi elves.

Maybe I'm just feeling particularly nice today but I still don't want to make fun of window lickers.  Retards are usually pretty nice people and having personally known quite a few they are generally not as bad as the people who I would openly call retards.

 Complicating things further.

As much as it is too easy to make fun of Soulless escorts, it's just as hard to explain them effectively in application.

A particular rule they possess or a couple of them make them, an oddity not only in fiction but in reality.

It is said that Iosan units generally disdain the presence of a Souless attachment, like most people generally disdain gingers who shave themselves to hide the fact they are ginger... (oh dammit let that slip)

Tag along: This guy does not gain the abilities of the unit to which he is attached.

But the presence of one in a unit has the certain benefit of mysteriously being able to absorb or inhibit the ambitions or motivations of others much like any other emo teenager. . .

What I mean to say is they inhibit the abilities of others around them to effect them magically. In the same way Julia Roberts magically inhibits the ability of romantic movies to be romantic...  or what I mean is much like an escort gifted to young men inhibits their ability to have a magical romantic experience later in life... wait no.  

Mage static: Enemy magic attacks targeting the group this guy is escorting have reduced range.
Thanks to her pimp summoning powers she can keep other whores out of effective range.
Disbinding: When this guy does Disbinding enemy up keeps on this guy's group expire.
Just when you hope you will get what you paid for, extra charges are incurred. 

Thankfully they not only bring this gaping mystical yaw of apathy but also in the same way as Keanu Reeves, they possess great ability in martial prowess without actually being able to express any emotion at all.

Flank: This guy is good at fighting alongside people he is in a group with.
Look at him go.

They have the special oddity to be able to take orders or advance deploy or even be effected by mini feats, yet can't perform simple tasks the rest of the unit could.

This kind of autism leads them into strange situations where, for example: they could receive the shield wall order and go into shield wall, yet won't reform. However they will get the teamwork bonus from the mini feat yet still won't be able to have beers with the squad after training. 

Tag along: This guy gets to hang out with other groups, he does what he's told but can never really be one of the guys.
Character soulless unit concept art.

Also when Souless die no one much cares, except for those people who make a habit of collecting souls. Generally what they find are collections of dark angst poetry, piles of black clothes and Smashing Pumpkin albums.

What can be said about a Souless Escort unit attachment is this

• Much like japanese school girls they will come in groups of up to but not exceeding 3.
• They will attach themselves to any Retribution unit.
• They have magical swords. When your own species has the habit of killing you on sight at childbirth and no other species is particularly fond of you, it's in your best interest to have a magical sword.

Because of this it raises an interesting point about the future of Retribution war caster releases. If the Retribution gets a War caster unit, you could possibly attach Soulless to it.

However Souless can amusingly be attached to these things:

• Battle Mages.  Having defense 15 to shooting and immunity to blast isn't enough, why not give them pseudo anti magic stealth too.
• Halberdiers, because when they mini feat they turn into mat 9 p+s 11 weapon masters. 
• Heavy rifle teams. Because it's funny.
• Every other Retribution unit, because you are net decking against your opponents magic heavy list.

The Bottom line.

A soulless is one point, a magical weapon and some handy defense tech. More specifically a Souless is one point, so if you're full up on Arcanists might as well grab a Souless. 

This is because there are basically no 3 point solos in Retribution that you would upgrade a 2 point solo to become. There is however one 2 point solo you should downgrade to be 2 Soulless. 

They are not always directly useful for their passive ability. Their *action is almost a joke, if someone goes to the length of putting an upkeep on the unit in the first place it's probably the kind that stops you from using abilities, or your opponent is a moron.

That aside they are still good little solos for what they do, if you already have the other essentials like Artificers, Arcanists, Magister then you could consider putting in a Soulless Escort.