I’ve got a couple of commissions on at the moment but I found time to finish off my third page of SF Rat-Men ideas, specifically the bloated leader and a SF version of a Grey Seer.

Continuing the theme of a space hulk with warp-mutated rats on board: (See posts http://www.willbeck.com/artblog?p=1597 and http://www.willbeck.com/artblog?p=1111) The largest mutant rat-man has taken hydraulic shears and attached them to his deformed arm to make a crude combat weapon.

The Rat-man psyker inhales warp-tainted fuel pods (from areas of the space hulk exposed to the warp) to enhance his psychic powers (similar to how Skaven Grey Seers eat warpstone).

The ‘warp-rats’ are rats that have been fed the warp-tainted fuel and are herded into battle causing localised distortions in reality.

GW are souping up the Skaven for the End Times business the new Boneripper and especially the Stormfiends are quite futuristic looking.

The ‘Stormfiends’ appear to have little large-brained rats attached to their backs – I think someone at GW had been playing Planescape:Torment with its Cranium Rats and their Wererat servants – here’s a link if you’re interested: http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/Torment/Walkthrough/act3-underground/underground-warrens-of-thought.php).

As always these are purely for fun and not intended to breach Games Workshop’s copyright.

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A brief diversion back to my ideas for how to get a relatively sensibly explained version of Games Workshop’s Skaven into the Warhammer 40,000 setting. http://www.willbeck.com/artblog?p=1111 These are mutant rat-men leaders and a psycho-rat-man with a couple of alternative heads. Like all the space rat-men they live a life of vicious in-fighting on drifitng space-hulks with the biggest or sneakiest getting to the top of the pile.

I’ve still to colour in my space psychic rat-man and also some special characters which I shall post here when I’ve done ’em.

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Earlier this year I heard about an abandoned Russian cruise ship drifting around the Atlantic Ocean and inhabited by rats ( http://phys.org/news/2013-02-abandoned-russian-ship-km-ireland.html ) I had always wondered how you’d make sense of having rat-men in Warhammer 40,000 and this led me to think wouldn’t there be rats in the holds of space freighters? What might happen to those rats aboard vessels lost in the warp?

I imagine Space Hulks ( http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Hulk )
aren’t just inhabited by Genestealers, Orks or Chaos Renegades. Sometimes the rats on board would have mutated having been exposed to the warp (and perhaps having eaten warp-tainted cargo and human corpses). Some might have mutated into rat-men! Their equipment would reflect the technological environment they live in; not much wood, tools you might find on a space craft, scavenged and improvised weapons and armour.

I’ve a couple more pages of these to colour in, including my version of how a Skaven Grey Seer could be done.

Skaven, Grey Seer and that sort of thing is copyright Games Workshop; this is fan art not intended to infringe GW’s copyright.

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