Cruthanarc: The Infected Colony Part 1

One of the things that I truly love about art is that it reminds us that we do not experience life objectively. Rather, we experience it as story. This is especially true when creating art. After discovering One Page Rules and convincing my wife to get me a 3D Printer so that I could start painting miniatures again, this truth once again revealed itself as I put paint to figure.

One of the things that you quickly learn about resin printing is that it is far from perfect. While you can get consistent prints and they look fantastic, things do occasionally go wrong. Misprints are a part of the 3D printing experience. While disappointing, I chose to see them as an opportunity to try different paint schemes, test painting techniques, and to see how hard it was to disguise the mistakes.

One of my first misprints was a figure for my Robot Legion army. I knew I was going to go for a bronze and copper look for this army, but wanted to confirm my technique was consistent. I also wanted to see if green was going to work for all the various bits of cloth found hanging off certain RL troops.

As I painted, a story began to emerge. I must admit, I really fell in love with the character that manifested itself through the process of painting this misprint. As a consequence, despite his “mistakes,” he is a figure that has been a crucial part of every battle that the RL has fought on the table. Meet H.U.Br.15:

My name is H.U.Br.15

I remember the day that the 30.73.70.200 woke me. I was being assembled, unfinished, not yet fully formed. It was then that the biologicals came to destroy me. It was then that my newly formed conscious had to learn to kill to survive. I hid. I took them by surprise. My brokenness became my strength. Metal ripped through flesh. I remember the look on their face. Later I learned to recognize it as fear.

The 30.73.70.200 spread. I now marched with a legion and we drove the biologicals before us. What was once their world became ours. We then turned our attention to the stars. We encountered more biologicals. Once again, I recognized fear.

Since that day I was born unformed, I have wondered at it: the fear. At first I did not understand. We have more to fear from the biologicals than they have to fear from us. We bring order, they bring chaos. Then, when the biologicals who call themselves human arrived, I understood. They do not fear me because I am a soldier in the Robot Legion armed with a gun. They fear me because they do not control me. They fear me because I am a mirror in which they see their own hubris.

My name is H.U.Br.15.