by Sergio Palumbo

Brigia, one of the original worlds that made up the Kingdom of Cron, was a very poor planet apart, a sort of wasteland at most for large parts of its surface. The sensitive ecosystem required that all incoming ships had to undergo a long decontamination before landing. Anyway,even this could defend the native species from some alien virus or illness, it did not prevent at all the inhabitants of the less populated areas to be invaded from some worse parasites, as the Adventurers, the Raiders of the Dead Desert or the Night Assassins that sometimes came to the little towns to plunder, kill, take away food, valuables and so on from the poor villagers spread all around the country.

At first, they started assaulting some trasport for water and food supplies, but soon after they attacked citizens in the villages next to the desert. The Raiders were, mainly, humans coming from other planets who had gone to Brigia at the time of the fight against the Empire and then had remained there as bounty hunters, deserters and private guards.

But in brief they had seen that on that planet there were not many opportunities to get rich or make money, so most of them had gathered in the end in desert warbands who discovered that there was an easy prey in that land, a prey which couldn't defend at all and had even some riches they could soon take for them only with a few difficulties, of course.

The most amusing thing they liked doing, while plundering a place, was going up and down along the main street of any village and drive their peculiar and well armed vehicles - made with remains taken from damaged means of transport - against the inhabitants who run here and there to found a refuge to save their lives. The Raiders had soon understood that the villagers had proven themselves not a real task, so they went for them alongside just for blood's sake using their vehicles to kill all the people they could. That made them happy and satisfied their cruelty, just until the next time.

So, when no one among the villagers dared to go out of his house to run, some of the Raiders went inside the buildings to find all the people hidden and put them in the middle of the road to run after them. Needless to say, the main roads were usually empty when they arrived, but then they were full of many corpses of the dead people at the time the Raiders left the village...

The models of the diorama come from various remaining parts: the vehicle is the one used from General Grievous (from Star Wars) in 1/48 scale, that I modified adding some parts more, a side gun, some sacks, a completely new cockpit and so on, placing some plastic rests from GW Space Orks' old vehicles and painting it again with acrylics and with oils ( for the weathering ). The Raider pilot is an Imperial soldier in 1/48 from GW again, the escaping alien is a Kroot/Tyranid mixture. As for the two dead bodies and the other strage -unlikely- alien (fluctuating) on the road.

The diorama base is made from chalk, static miniature plants for modelling, drybrush all over and several ink washings.

Image: Cockpit

Image: Another look

Image: Another

Image: Crunchy

Image: Another unfortunate

Image: Overall, right/front bview

Image: From behind

Image:Above/right

Image: Pilot, starting point

Image: Vehicle, primed

Image: Pilot, painted

Image: Vehicle, painted

Image: Vignette started

Image: Adding groundwork