Light of Justice, Seeker of the True and Eradicator of the Unholy; Lord-Veritant Radenholt Banestalker



It matters not how strong a warrior is, how inviolable their flesh, if their spirit cannot remain constant. That too must be armoured - not in sigmarite, but in faith. In surety. In conviction.

-Vynolis the Seer*

This is quite a special post in the development of this project. Not only am I showing the first character in the army, I'm also showing what is to a large extent the most important character in the army, at least in terms of the army's narrative. When I was doing the planning for this project, I took a long time deciding what characters I wanted to make; a Lord-Celestant was clearly an automatic inclusion as the leader, but from there the choices were more interesting and nuanced (especially since the Stormcast Eternals have such a long list of hero models). But two really stood out: the Knight-Azyros, which I'll talk about later in its own post; and the Lord-Veritant. The idea of the lanterns is a brilliantly characterful trope--the oxymoron of 'destructive light' contains so much interesting tension. The Lord-Veritant in particular, though, really pushes that trope to the extreme, which suited the aim of my project perfectly (to reiterate, capturing, condensing, and representing the basic essence of the Stormcast, unadulterated by unnecessary changes). Lord-Veritants are described, on page 64 of the 2018 Battletome, as taking their antipathy towards Chaos, their faith in Sigmar, and their role as destroyers of corruption to the degree of a dangerous obsession. So, for me, the Lord-Veritant encapsulates the grim fate of the Stormcast Eternals' descension into darkness during the fight against darkness, and my Lord-Veritant here, Radenholt Banestalker, therefore really sets the tone for the army. Finally, the fact that Lord-Veritants work closely with Judicators was just the icing on the cake, since I already knew I wanted to include a couple of units of archers.

With that, I needed to make a few decisions while creating Radenholt. I severely dislike the running pose of the official Lord-Veritant model; it kind of (almost) works for the Lord-Castellant, but the Veritant just looks like he's running to catch a bus, which is hardly very menacing. So I spent a lot of time playing around with different legs, different arm/hand positions, and different heads to create the right sense of radiating power and maniacal zeal. Of course, I continued to use a lot of shades, sparse highlights, and muted, limited colours during the painting process, especially on his face to give that bleak complexion, which I figured out earlier on the Judicators. Radenholt's Gryph-hound, who is named Atraxia, was also an important component character here, since they come as a pair--the vicious Chaos-hunter and his equally vicious, loyal companion. For her, I used one of the more dynamic Gryph-hound base models and simply changed the head to one with an open beak, which better represented that aggression.

I leave some more photos, including some group shots to give a small taste of what the final army might look like (although I think they also look rather good as a small warband).

-Jamie













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*Quote taken from page 10 of the 2018 Battletome.

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