Rangers of Shadow Deep - Captain Fletcher

And with a shield added we have a man at arms.
Captain Fletcher’s First Mate, Marcus Cicatrix.

Again he has a scar that is born from a piece of flash I wasn’t confident i would move well enough and just made it a feature.

The addition of the shield actually suits the model well I think. I found the shield in a bits box, primed but abandoned for some reason. The shield is most likely from the Barbarian NorthStar plastics box set sprue.

I chose to use the same simple blue and white stripe motif over leather that I have used as militia colours on a shield and clothing amongst my pool of Rangers of Shadow Deep characters.

I liked the idea that when the king gave these old seadogs access to the armoury this old veteran chose a gnarled leather covered shield. Then on the march to the dark wood, worrying that if he dies on this escapade he may be mistaken for some lily livered land lubber, (his words not mine) he takes time to paint a crude white wash anchor on his shield. At least then there’s an outside slimmest of chances that if they find him dead that they’ll bury him at sea with full honours, as he’d always thought would be a fitting way to end his days.

He got a slight spruce up on the paint job but nothing major. Zandri Dust is the main tan colour for all the minis in the group and I used the Flesh Eater Red Contrast Paint on most of the group too.

The name Cicatrix is actually a word meaning the scar of a healed wound. I was going to double down on the wound reference and call him ‘Mark’ but didn’t feel that really rang true with his surname. Adapted to Marcus seemed to work better.

Marcus has been through horrors and bloodshed aplenty in his time on the highseas, but is finally feeling his age. He doesn’t complain, but his friend and Captain Eusebius can see the aches of old war wounds are getting to him. The news of the Shadow Deep encroaching on their borders filled the whole nation with dread, but as loyal servants of the crown they answered the call to return to the mainland for fresh orders. The threat of attack from the sea seemed diminished now that some of their long-standing political enemies had sadly succumbed to the dark clouds. Raids on shipping from their coast had stopped suspiciously and abruptly. Eerily abruptly at the best time of year for such privateering.

Cicatrix is in the last winters of his life, but still a man to be reckoned with. If anything, the twinges, of what he can only assume will become arthritis one day, have just made him more economical and precise with his blade swings. He is always the first to chorus his captain’s orders and challenge decent, but when he said he would follow his captain into the very depths of hell… he had always expected it to be figuratively, not as literally as it felt right now.