# Making my own alien race



## Dohouse (May 3, 2009)

*The Tarrassi*

So to get the ball rolling here is the main trooper for the race, a Tarrassi Shrine Warrior. The idea is that they were in a fairly remote region of space on the edge of the southern galactic rim and whilst not capable of warp travel they had mastered interstellar travel having spread to several planets in systems neighbouring their home world.
Their home world of Dra'varn was covered almost entirely with water with the amphibious Tarrassi living in vast under water cities that stretched around the sea beds of the great oceans.
When the fleet of the Imperial Talons chapter arrived on the edge of the system the Tarrassi despatched an envoy vessel to greet them only to witness it's destruction. With no real war fleet to protect them the smaller trade vessels proved to be easy targets for the Imperial warships and put up little defence.
Upon making orbit the fleet began to reign destruction down on the major population centres to little effect, eventually deploying modified boarding torpedoes to transport assault squads directly into the heart of the cities whilst terminators made their way across the sea beds protected by their Land Raider transports to attack the thermal generators that drew power from the mantle of the planet for the limited defences of the Tarrassi.
Having never faced such a ferocious and xenophobic race as the Astartes the Tarrissi put up a valiant yet futile defence of their cities. The Shrine Warriors chose to stand their ground in order to allow the transport vessels to evacuate the civilian population, a gesture that was to prove futile as the strike cruisers hunted and destroyed the escaping vessels with ease. 

With in the space of a month with their defences shattered and their thermal reactors going critical the bottom of the oceans began to splinter and and crack as the planet began to tear itself apart. As the Astartes withdrew their forces to a safe distance the planet atmosphere erupted into fire scorching what little land existed clean of life and boiling the oceans in a matter of days. Had it not been for the colonies then the the race would have been extinguished there and then, it was on this day that the Tarrassi learned to both fear and despise the forces of the Imperium.

*Tarrassi Shrine Warrior*



















This first model is basically something that I have been putting together out of left over bits from other sculpts that I have been working on and hasn't really had much planning to be honest. I still need to add some detailing and shaping to his main halberd weapon which will also function as a ranged weapon. 
I'm thinking maybe have it as a heavy 1 strength six or seven weapon weapon with a wrist mounted pistol type weapon for short ranged attacks with something along the lines of an Ogryn profile. Might increase the leadership and give him a 4+ save but I'll worry about that later.
The rough idea initially is to have Shrine Warriors as all rounders with the force lacking in the areas of specialist troops. What I may do is put together a small confederation of lesser races that have come together for mutual protection or just have them supported by robots or machines designed to strengthen their weaknesses as I want to avoid these guys becoming too Tau like. I may make the head separate so that I can make a bare head that I can swap with the helmet.


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## shaantitus (Aug 3, 2009)

nice sculpt, I like it and the fluff. Impressive work so far.


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## Viscount Vash (Jan 3, 2007)

Nice intro fluff.

The sculpt is nice as well,
but the Halberd looks out of place. The shaft of the weapon looks far too thick and out of balance with the rest of him imo.

Apart from that it very cool and I look forward to seeing more stuff appear in this thread.


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## couger-w (Oct 4, 2009)

Looks awesome, and the fluff sounds great, very well done


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## Dohouse (May 3, 2009)

Cheers guys.

Yeah the halberd needs some work. I want to have a bash at casting these at some point so want to avoid making it too thin, it does need trimming and shaping though.

Been playing around a bit more with background stuff and at the moment the rough idea will be to make their development in terms of 40k background as painless as possible with very few hardships so when they are introduced to the grim dark races of the 40k universe they have absolutely no idea what has hit them, barely surviving their first encounter with one of the races.
Up until that point they have had no contact with alien races and have remained isolated. So there probably was a certain amount of excitement when the Imperials were first spotted with much pomp and ceremony involved, basically a massive event in their history which they embraced enthusiastically only to be swept aside like a troublesome insect.
So without any real wars amongst themselves they have only really had to deal with natural death world type predators that lurk in the depths of their oceans and the idea of fighting another sentient race purely because they are different was an alien concept.
Had it been someone less hostile like perhaps the Tau or Eldar then things may have gone differently. The Tau would have probably convinced them to join the greater good and subjugated their world via political means or the Eldar would have limited their contact depending on what the future held for their race. As it was they met one of the bad boys on the block and are extremely distrustful of aliens as a result.

I've been playing around with vehicle ideas and have dug out an old concept that I made a few years ago that might be a nice starting point for the basis of a light tank.










What I'm thinking is either modify this design just slightly or go whole hog and add crew mounted on the outside in side pintle mounts. The idea behind it is an attack vehicle used to fend off armoured predators that crawl along their sea beds so mabye give it missile launchers along the sides rather than rely on energy weapons that might dissipate in water.
So basically it can drive along the sea bed and straight up onto land with maybe some sort of energy prow to part the water as it moves.


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## axiom (Apr 14, 2010)

Great sculpt - really nice and crisp, nice pose, nice details - it all works. What do they look like underneath all the armour?

Do you have plans to cast them, or will each figure be a new sculpt?


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## Dohouse (May 3, 2009)

Cheers mate. 

Yeah definitely casting them. I've tried to leave this guy fairly open in terms of the pose so that I can chop them up and reposition them to make them a little more individual. Once I've got a few made I'll add extra details to each as well to take this further.
I'm thinking maybe six to nine man units so a minimum of about twenty four would be a cool starting point.


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## Chaosftw (Oct 20, 2008)

I like the sculpt great idea, but I like some of the others think that weapon is not to the proper scale. I also think that the warrior looks far to advanced in technology to be using a rifle with a knife on the end. 

+rep for a great sculpt and I love the light tank concept vehicle.

cheers,
Chaosftw


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## Baron Spikey (Mar 26, 2008)

I clicked on this thread with cyncism, thinking "oh it's going to be one of these shitty ideas". So very glad your awesome sculpt and background has made me think otherwise, whilst I too think the weapon is a little too thick I disagree that the blade shouldn't be there, as a Shrine Warrior it sounds almost like they're ceremonial troops and a blade like that would obviously be useful for defence against larger predators- maybe that's why they still have it on their weapons, similar reason to why Ethereals have Honour Blades.


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## Scathainn (Feb 21, 2010)

Wait, this is Doghouse from B&C right?

If so, welcome to Heresy! I'm sure all your truescale shenanigans will fit in well here


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## Dohouse (May 3, 2009)

Cheers guys. 

*Chaosftw*: Yeah I really wish I'd planned this guy in advance in regards to the weapon. I think that I'll need to trim it down a little and give it some shape.
The combination of blade and weapon is more of my way of trying to get the fantasy/sci-fi combo that 40k has it's roots set in. The feel I want is that they have a fairly reasonable level of technology but there is still a sort of tribal or mystical influence in their culture.
To be honest I have absolutely no idea what a shrine warrior is or how they fit into their culture but thought it sounded cool and figured I fit it in later. 

*Baron Spikey*: Brilliant stuff, I thought I might get shot down in flames initially but people are responding to them well which is great. I figured if I make them a minor almost insignificant race it'd go down better than the all conquering alien overlords route. 
I agree the blade and title gives them an almost ceremonial feel which is something I can work into the material later once I have a clearer of idea where this is all heading. My first thought was to make it a power weapon but that might be taking it a little too far.

*Scathainn*: Yeah that's me, just don't tell the Inquisition I'm dabbling with Xenos or I'll have some explaining to do.


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## Dohouse (May 3, 2009)

Bit of an update.

Got a bit more done. I removed the loin cloth and got a little more work done on the model. 










I still need to clean the legs up a bit and and add loads of detailing but he's getting there. Once he's done I'll make some more in different positions.


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## Chaosftw (Oct 20, 2008)

Looking good! What happened to that vehicle you had concept art for? anything happen with it?

Cheers,
Chaosftw


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## Otep (Mar 18, 2008)

i really dig the concept of these guys and its a bad ass model to boot! what the hell is he made of besides a metric fuck ton of green stuff? 

the shrine warrior idea i dig... and the idea behind them could be similar to the movie ants! at birth the leader/shaman decides if they become workers warriors etc...

so a shrine warrior could be a normal position; or an elite choice because you shouldn't trust a sacred shrine to just anyone! i sort of am partial to the idea of elites... how ever, they could of proven themselves in battle time and time again so now they protect their most sacred shrine/artifact/random mystic item...


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## Dohouse (May 3, 2009)

Cheers guys! 

Chaosftw: Not as yet once this guy is out of the way I'll be starting on the tank/wheel and a walker to accompany it.

Otep: Yeah totally agree with you there mate. I'm not too sure what I'll come up with for the shrine warrior explanation just but it will be something along the lines of what you've suggested I'd imagine.
The model is based on a plastic rod framework with loads of spare bits of GS bulking him out. Literally just made him up as I went along with left overs.

Update...

For the big alien I've removed the helmet, drilled out the torso and added a head. Nothing set in stone as yet and I may alter it but for the time being it serves my purposes.
I've also hollowed out the helmet so that I can fit it over the head rather than have a hollowed out neck area with a separate head and helmet.


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## Dohouse (May 3, 2009)

Bit of a an update.

Tried the cthulu face idea to see if it works.


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## WarRaven (Oct 23, 2009)

really liking the Cthulu head.


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## Chaosftw (Oct 20, 2008)

I second the Cthulu head!


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## wombat_tree (Nov 30, 2008)

Dohouse said:


>


Great, now Cthulhu has armour and a bayonet...what the f*** are we supposed to do now! 

Seriously nice sculpting.


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## Master of Sanctity (Nov 11, 2010)

Absolutely fantastic to see, great scratch building and awesome intro. I will certainly be keeping an eye on this to see how it evolves!


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## Dohouse (May 3, 2009)

Cheers guys. 

All I have to do now is model a little eric cartman model to sit on his shoulder!


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## revilo44 (Sep 17, 2010)

nice i do not like the head of alien


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## troybuckle (Nov 24, 2010)

Hey
This Concept is awesome the model looks bad ass, sorry but I have to bombard you with a few questions:
Do you have this model completed yet and are you going to cast a bunch of them? 
To make them in different poses would it be easier to cast a few - then hack them up and put them back together with GS instead of a scratch build? 
Any ideas on how you would paint him?
Sorry lol. Awesome work looking forward to updates.


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## Scathainn (Feb 21, 2010)

The Cthulhu head is definitely a lot better, the other one looks too Tau-esque.

Also, tentacles!


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## imm0rtal reaper (Jul 15, 2008)

Love it. Looking forward to seeing more and some painted.


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## Grins1878 (May 10, 2010)

Awesome mate! First proper thread I've seen since I got back from my hols (read 5 days freezing my ass in a cottage off 10 miles from Barrow-in-Furness), and I'm impressed 

Keep it up fella! and have a dose of Repititis!


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## Mike3D6 (Jul 25, 2008)

Brilliant concept, I vote for the second head too, I think the intro fluff and the look of the concept mini are very nice, and appropiate for a new 40k race , waiting for more, and of course, +rep to that


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## Doelago (Nov 29, 2009)

Awesome... Have some rep


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