Cruorian War Beast (Painted)

Cruorian War Beast (Xenos Minoris)Standing on four long legs, each ending in thick claws, and with fur as red as fresh-spilled blood, a Cruorian war beast presents a frightening aspect. Short spikes protect the head, neck, and spine, although from what one can only hazard a guess. The forefeet have opposable thumbs, and it’s possible the Cruorians are slightly more intelligent than most think – they’ve been witnessed using crude melee weapons for example. War beasts tend to open their hunts (or a battle) with a chorus of nerve-wracking howls, eventually reaching a crescendo right before they charge. Theye are utterly merciless, and take no prisoners. In fact, some go so far as to eat the slain even before the fighting is over.


Background



Brand and his warbeast rushing to battle. Brand is pictured
here wearing rags collected in the gladiator pit since losing
his more noble attire and force staff.

Brand had previously learned the basics of wrangling on a feral world where transport required the riding of dust dogs. Although not an expert Brand quickly caught on and understood the principles easily enough.

Later, after escaping from the gladiator pits of some unknown world Brand calmed and befriended a rampant grox-like animal. With this new found confidence Brand unleashed the caged 'prizes' on their unsuspecting captors. One of the caged animals was a Cruorian Warbeast. After slaying 2 of its captors the beast turned on Brand who quickly dodged and soothed the animal.

"I will name him Spike" Brand said calmly to his cohorts as the Warbeast looked at him in appreciation, a glint of intelligence apparent in its eyes. Spike quickly followed them to the elevator out of the dungeon.

Painting

To paint him up I really wanted to capture the 'fur the colour of freshly spilled blood' as described in the Dark Heresy manual.  I started by painting the entire thing chaos black and then dry brushed on scab red.  The mane was more heavily done of course.  I then brushed on blood red everywhere before washing with badab black.  I then went over the mane with scab red and blood red followed by devlan mud then blood red twice more.  It looks a bit more orange in the photos than real life but it still conveys the look.  The food/meat/trophy left in his mouth is super glue that I gobbed and let string before painting further.  You can't really see it on his eyeball (which is straight blood red, wash blood red) but it does have a pupil I needed to use a magnetfying glass for.  I couldn't resist :)