Hey everybody! This work is pretty special, a bit more that a year ago form this art I started my collaboration with Iron Butchers warband: https://www.instagram.com/enter.the.butcher/ Back then I did the first version of this art: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2qn9qg Since then I’ve painted a lot of great art for the Iron Butchers. I learned a lot and improved. Now I thought the time has come to revamp the art. I hope you like the new version of Vhorrax, Iron Warriors Warsmith. Plus, enjoy the lore behind this picture:
The Warsmith stepped on the carcass of the Night Lord Dreadnought. A sizzling mixture of blood, amniotic fluid, and oil sputtered from the open wound in the sarcophagus where the sawblades of Corpse Grinder had shredded the metallic hull of the war machine, allowing Vhorrax to flood the Dreadnought bowels with a rain of promethium of his heavy flamer, burning the Dreadnought pilot alive.
The Night Lord outpost was minutes away from being conquered, but the VIIIth Legion has put such a hard fight that he had to step into the battlefield in first person.
While their fearmongering doctrine was ineffective against the Astartes, they had plagued the Iron Butchers for a week with fast strikes and retreats, causing the Khornates significant losses. Finally, Vhorrax had pinpointed their location and led the final, direct onslaught. In that, the Iron Butchers were second to none, as the Night Lords have experienced.
On his right, a World Eaters Terminator was starting harvesting the skulls of the enemies, finally free to enjoy the pure flesh-tearing ecstasy without any thought about discipline and orders.
Inside his brain, he started feeling the urge to join his subordinate in a feast of skulls and blood to honor the Blood Father, but he had to resist. Vhorrax kept referring to the thing inside his head as “his brain”, but he wasn’t sure about that anymore. Only the Gods knew what kind of organ existed inside him after Khorne has turned his whole body into a mechanical nightmare, forever flesh-fused with the Cataphrachtii armour.
The Warsmith breathed burning air from his mouth grille. The Blood Father’s influence was growing stronger, asking him to indulge in the pleasure of the blood, shredding the survivors with his chainhammer and taking their skulls for the skull throne. But he resisted, he knew he had to listen to the IVth Legion’s rational nature, or they were lost: the battle was won but more has to be done. They had to choose between fortifying the conquered settlement and staying in to drain the area from all the resources, or flee with just what they have plundered, leaving precious resources behind but limiting the risk of being found by other enemies. The Warsmith decision process wasn’t based on warp-trickery as other Warbands did. They had not any sorcerer or prophet, cause the Warsmith trusted only cold logic.
All the available data regarding the outpost, the battle, and the resources have to be scanned and registered by the data-servitor of the Mechanicum, then elaborated to find all the possible correlations to determine the best course of action to continue the Endless War.
Only keeping the Iron Within, he could keep the blood flowing throughout in an endless stream for the Blood God.
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