Kaliglav the Scarlet Priest

After my rather bloody Dryads, it's time for a bit livelier example of flesh horror in my collection - Kaliglav the Scarlet Priest.

As I mentioned in the WIP post, this guy is an answer to High Council of the Radiant Wheel - while they are worshipping the withered god of the wights and undead, Kaliglav is following the Fair Lady of the Bog - with all her horrific blessings. The conversion is based on Taddeus the Purifier, the priest from Blackstone Fortress and inspired by THIS artwork by Bogdan Rezunenko - to create a human that isn't bound anymore by his fleshy form.

When it came to painting, I wanted to make him worthy of his title, to make him red almost all over, forgoing notions of complementary colors and contrasts. HERE is the image that I had in mind when working on this project. Besides that, I was trying to illustrate how I imagine Karcists from the SCP universe, also leaders of the cults devoted to dark powers with Lovecraftian powers. I went a little special with the basing - he's standing on a rock, above a little, murky bog - but unfortunately, it's barely visible/recognizable in real life and even less on the photos. Leason learned: those kinds of things need much more space and shouldn't be covered like this! All in all, he was an enjoyable project - so I will gladly expand this "scarlet cult" of his a little more in the future.

Eager to gain control over Varsavia, Daremnych is trying to expand his new cult of the Radiant Wheel, fighting hard to convince the people to his cause. Meanwhile, deep in the Black Bog, there are settlements and villages, isolated and hard-to-reach, where the cult of the Fair Lady of the Bog is the law and has been for centuries. People live here mostly unaware of the outside world, without the knowledge of Kislev and Chaos, where they continue with their lives day after day without change, safe under their Mistress’ protection. Scarlet priests are the leaders of such communities and the most active one is Kaliglav. Blessed by the Lady, he is not bound by the human form anymore and is seen as a powerful demigod by his followers. After all the centuries of his service, he has become an arrogant and detached creature. There is nothing and no one he won’t sacrifice in the service of his Lady - and those cursed, ancient undead with their impotent god will learn it the hard way if they’ll try to challenge his Mistress once again.