The Beast of Preytov

Today I bring you yet another miniature from my backlog - a Forge World Preyton bought a long time ago. When I started pushing the forest theme in my army I noticed that this particular creature would fit pretty well in my collection, but sadly, at that point, Forge World stopped selling those miniatures. Many months later I managed to catch one on eBay - probably a recast, though - wings were really thin, there were some difficult mold lines, etc. But well, it had to work for me somehow, better this than nothing.

My concept when painting was to create an impression of a mismatched, chaotic beast, so there are many different patterns and hues used (while keeping everything comfortably dark and dirty of course). When I was painting it I was rather unsatisfied with my work, but in the end, it turned out not that bad - especially the wings, the part which I normally dislike to paint, even if it took quite a bit of glazes to get the shade just right.

Living in the Varsavian village of Preytov has many advantages - there’s a small river there, the soil is fertile, there’s plenty of game in the nearby forest and the bandit raids are practically nonexistent. It would be actually perfect - if not for the Beast that made this area it’s hunting grounds. Never looking the same, the creature has some polymorphic abilities, changing into many different animals, though the transitions are never clean - the forms are always mixed and distorted in unnatural ways. Most often it lures potential victims looking and crying like a prey animal and then turning into a large predatory monster to run the unfortunate being down, sometimes growing wings, horns or other additional limbs if necessary. To make it all worse, the Beast is actively malevolent, killing its victims slowly, painfully and messily, without any care for its own injuries. Some brave warriors have tried to kill it - and many even succeeded - but it always comes back somehow. Nevertheless, a small number of people living there have accepted their fate, thinking that losing people to the Beast from time to time while profiting from the otherwise safe and fertile land is preferable to trying their luck in the dangerous, lawless lands of the rest of Varsavia. Because of that, some people believe that the Beast is a violent, but protective god of Preytov - and their blood is the price they pay for their fortune - but the truth is, naturally, unknown.

Great Basilisk

And I'm finally back to the basilisk. Like I said in the WIP post already, here I am going with monsters that are in no way usable in my army, but they fit the theme. Perhaps I will find some use for them later! Here I am starting with a basilisk - a GW cockatrice converted a bit to resemble a rooster a bit more.

When it came to painting, I also decided to reference roosters - the idea was to make it really just a giant snake-chicken with crazy eyes. That's how I chose the colors for the feathers, beak, face and the mane. The snake parts were then painted to resemble a viper commonly found in Poland, with a characteristic zigzaging pattern. When it came to wings and skin I had to think of something - so I referenced the colors I already used and made an organic pattern to make it a tad more interesting.

It was nice to paint a well-sized monster like this, not too small and not too big - but damn I don't like painting wings!

If asked about a basilisk, most Varsavians will tell you that it’s a snake-rooster about the size of a housecat, whose famous petrifying gaze will cause only slight numbness at worst. It’s a rather common pest. Only an unfortunate minority will tell you about a giant monster capable of easily tearing an armored man to pieces and easily petrifying anyone for long enough to be hauled back to the nest to be devoured. That is the Great Basilisk, a scourge that has been terrorizing Varsavia for many, many years. Wise men tried to deduce how it came to life - some say a beast like that is born once every 100 years from an egg laid by a rooster, while others say it’s just a chaotic mutation of a normal basilisk. No matter what’s its origin, this basilisk just appears from time to time to wreak havoc around the countryside, attracting foolish heroes to die while trying to kill it. Even those trying to turn its own gaze against it with mirrors discovered that the beast is simply immune to its own powers and can still use its beak and claws to tear and rend. Until someone manages to kill it once and for all, both villagers and armies marching through Varsavia have to factor in the possibility of a great basilisk attack.

Great Basilisk - WIP

And now something different - a Chaos monster! I bought him kinda like I did with my Boyar earlier - not because I intended to use it somehow on the tabletop, but because it would fit in my Slavic-themed collection. While a cockatrice isn't a particularly Slavic beast, a basilisk certainly is! It was probably the second mythical monster I heard about as a child - after the dragon from Krakow of course.

While it's a good base, I didn't find the GW Cockatrice to be 'basilisk enough', the rooster aspect of it wasn't as pronounced as I would like - and the most important feature of the beast, its eyes, were also way too small. So I made new eyes out of greenstuff and built all the fleshy parts around them to make it resemble a rooster a little bit more. I also didn't like the weird claw the original sculpt had on the end of the tail, so I just cut it off and sculpted a normal, scaly tail. I bent the wings a bit too, they were unnaturally straight and flat - thankfully it's very easy to do such changes in resin with just some warm water.

EDIT: The finished model can be seen HERE.