"I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with me."
–Rorschach, Watchmen
When we last saw Marduk, he had gotten himself into quite a pickle. In the battle report with Steve's Empire (you can read about that here) a spell miscast resulted in a dimensional cascade, and Marduk was pulled into the Realm of Chaos...
As the magical energies swirled around him, Marduk felt as though a dark force reached into his chest and seized his lifeless heart. The world before him was rent open and a black void consumed his vision. Daemonic hands pulled him forward and his world became chaos.
Marduk was frozen for a moment as unimaginable horrors reeled before him like some perverse stage play. He could feel the flesh beginning to tear from his body as gibbering daemons with claws like fish hooks grabbed him. Then he felt the headsman's axe still firmly in his grip; Marduk was never without it.
Marduk Von Koss, Marduk the Wolf, Marduk the Ghoul King King knew only slaughter. And pain. And hatred. This was not chaos, this was paradise. He would show these creatures the true meaning of terror, for eternity.
***
A voice echoed through Marduk's mind, beckoning him. Was it Nieman Kimmel? Would that narcissistic necromancer awaken the Ghoul King from the joyous bliss of his never ending murder-dream? No, it was something far more powerful, a presence not felt in the Old World for an age.
Marduk awoke in a field. He recognized it as the battlefield from which he had been taken. But where a city had once stood, now ruins decorated the landscape. On the horizon he could see jagged mountain peaks rising as others crumbled. The sky was awash with lightning. This was not the world he had left behind. This world, he thought, was ending.
Another voice, different from the one that had summoned him, sang out in the night. Marduk followed the shrill cry to its source atop a craggy peak. From the gloom of a cave, piercing red eyes glowed and a creature lunged out of the darkness. Marduk grappled with the fell beast and plunged his fangs into its neck, drinking what little blood the dessicated monster had to offer. He climbed atop the Terrorgheist, now bound to the Ghoul king's will. Wolkhar, the Night Bringer he called it. It's leathery wings bore them aloft, and where they went, death followed.
The Terrorgheist model was pretty intimidating to paint, mainly because every space is alternating, flesh, bone, and muscle, requiring a lot of precision. I was able to paint the flesh with a mix of drybrushing and washes. The middle step was the most time-consuming because I needed to paint all of the bones without messing up the flesh. With all of that out of the way, the muscle and blood went the quickest. I could afford to be a little messy with the bloody areas, also I was in the home stretch and having fun with the splattering technique.
It's been a long ride to get this model finished, so I present the Terrorgheist Wolkhar!
As I discussed in the magnetizing tutorial (linked below), the wings come off for transportation. The tail is magnetized as well, removable so it doesn't protrude up higher then the monster's back.
The entire beast fits in a 7" x 7" square, about three inches high. I still need to cut the foam for his tray.
Since the Terrorgheist has the option of being fielded as a separate monster or as a mount for a character, I had added a cutout on the corner of his base. I built Marduk the Ghoul King to be fielded on foot, and the slot in the base allows him to "ride" the Terrorgheist into battle by swapping out the tombstone.
If you want a look at how I magnetized the wings and modeled the base, check out these previous blog entries below:
'Til next time!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3