Satyxis! Part One

Cryx is  an interesting faction. On one hand you have shambling hordes of undead, liches encased in steam powered armor, and elvish vampires out to kill more gods than the old Avatar trilogy in the Forgotten Realms. On the other hand, you get the satyxis. First off, they aren't dead. This is quite a departure from all other Cryx units (with the exception of the Black Ogrun, Bloodgorgers, and Darth Rhage) and has been the focus of my painting for these lovely ladies.

For anyone who isn't familiar with the fluff on the girls, they are essentially an amazon like tribe of islanders who were always warriors, pirates, and raiders in a strongly matriarchal society. A few hundred years ago, Toruk and another dragon got into a bit of a tussle overtop of the satyxis island and gave each other a pretty good whumpin'. As the draconic blood fell on the satyxis homelands our good friend blight set in and made all the men wimpy and weak, while twisting the women in mind and body to make them into sadistic, murderous killing machines. Now the satyxis serve Toruk by raiding the shores throughout Immoren under the command of one Skarre Ravenmane.

Planning and Painting the Satyxis: I tend to plan out an army before I started painting it. I like to have a pretty solid idea how each piece is going to look prior to ever setting a brush to pewter. When I was first planning out my Cryx army, I started off by setting my two base colors, Cryx Bane base and Purple. I liked the contrast between the two and really wanted to try my hand at a purple based army. (as long as it wasn't red... after all the Khornate berserkers and Vostroyans, red is my leats favorite color to paint!) From there it was all about accents. I wanted the metals to look aged and tarnished, but any gold was going to have a red shade to it with the nercotite green used for spell effects and other interesting points.

This was all great til I started to look at the satyxis models. First, these were the models that drew me to the army. I was tired of painting only male models and wanted a stab at all the awesome female sculpts PP was putting out. I knew I didn't like the studio scheme. The grey/ green/ pale look on the satyxis in the books just doesn't do it for me. They look too close to the undead prancing around the neighboring pages. I decided early on to counter this by going for a rich healthy skin tone, however I was still using purple for a base coat and a purple wash for shading to still give the illusion of coolness. The horns would be bone, but I decided that occasionally a satyxis would have different color horns to mix things up. I went with a blank pupil that I shaded with a necrotite green wash for the eyes to still give the satyxis a feeling of "unrealness" and to tie them back into some of the other units in the army. The end result is something a bit warmer and less brooding than the official scheme but I'm happy with it. 

Satyxis Raiders Skin Tones: 

 1: Prime black

2: Base coat with leviathan Purple Citadel Foundation paint

3: Light coat of midlund flesh with a drop of mixing medium

4: wash with hormugaunt purple Citadel Wash

5: Highlight with striaght midlund flesh.

6: second highlight with midlund flesh mised with Ryn Flesh

7; Final Highlight with ryn flesh

8: Trace the lower lip with Citadel Dark Flesh and the top lip with citadel Terracotta

9: The eyes get a quick hit of morrow white

10: water down necrotite green and givve the eyes a quick wash to make them "glow" \