Dire Avengers progress; DnD Dark Sun Warlock

Ulthwe Dire Avengers WIP - highlighted!

Well, I did get some progress done on the Dire Avengers today, but not as much as I had hoped. I'm not really pushing it -- I want to be able to make it to my Dungeons and Dragons session on time for once. We're playing 4th edition Dark Sun, and I wanted to use the other half of my Battle Wizards box for my character.

My Warlock "Lucan"

Dark Sun is a rough world. Slavery, starvation, heatstroke, exhaustion, cannibalism... all exist here, in gratuitous quantity. Using magic in this world steals the life force from the world around you -- plants, animals, and your party members. That is, unless you figure out how to use 'preservation' magic, albeit at less power. The world was destroyed when the Sorcerer Kings went to war and "defiled" (as the destructive magic is called) the entire world in order to channel awesome spells to blow eachother up. A lot of sorcerer-kings are still around though.

Front View

This guy actually turned out pretty well for not planning him at all. Dark Sun is mostly desert, so this was my first time making a desert base. I followed GW's "Khemri" pattern, which is Snakebite Leather, drybrushed with Bubonic Brown, and then drybrushed again with Bleached Bone. I'm not sure if I attribute it to how much it matches the mini, but I really love this color of base.

Speaking of bases, I've done a few so far, and between this and the current basing on my Dire Avengers... Chaos Black bordering seems to win my heart every time. It's pretty economical (only having to clean up a few drybrush spills or whatnot,) and looks better than what is usually caked-on Graveyard Earth. The classic brown bases don't do it for me anymore, although they would blend in better with dioramas (if I ever did any.) It's also kills pots of Graveyard Earth faster than anything else I've done so far.

The other side of the cloak

I threw my original color choices completely out of the window shortly after I began on this guy. I completely forgot that Dark Sun doesn't predominately have metal lying around, and I originally intended to have a gold staff with a turquoise oxidization effect. So, the staff is made out of bone. I also had to figure out how to do this vial effect on my own. You may see the same effect on some of the Skaven posion grenade guys. The base of all the greens is Orkhide Shade. It's brought up on the fume skull with Snot Green, Goblin Green, and then Scorpion Green. The vial only goes up to Goblin Green; the final highlight was a very watered down Skull White. Then I washed the vial several times over with Thraka Green the colors together.

The cloth is all done with Iyanden Darksun and Devlan Mud, with Iyanden Darksun highlights to clean up the edges. Flesh is Dark Flesh with Tallarn Flesh over top, then washed with Ogryn Flesh. Whew. That's a lot of weirdly named colors.