Undead Steed

UNDEAD STEED

This weeks monster is a zombified stallion. The concept mainly arose by thinking of many games, novels or movies where a character rides a notable mount. A necromancer style character came to mind. I thought to myself about different steeds a necromancer could use. In all honesty, a flesh weaver of sorts could stitch any parts together to make any mount he wanted. At first this made me think a horse was a lame choice but I thought through it. Perhaps there is more professionalism in riding an equine breed rather than...lets say... a rhino half stitched to an elephant with a hint of giraffe. A flying mount crossed my mind but lets be honest, without a parachute or safety features flying mounts can take a very long time to master. There will be a time and place, probably for a spectre style piece instead, where there isn't much of a physical body to worry about being dropped from high in the air.

So I settled on a horse. I went zombie because every horse that is evil tends to just have red eyes or is skeletal. One could argue horses are too "pretty" or "elegant" to be a zombie. Well.. too bad. The image in my head was a winner, disgusting as it was. My thinking process started with antlers and more hoofed animal accessories. It just wasn't working so I changed to horns, believable and balanced rather than obnoxious and heavy (Yes zombies have strange capabilities of strength, but no need to weigh down a horse!). As I detailed the rest of it, I stuck with a theme of random growing horns, plenty of rot, and some stitching. Oh, and the occasional boils. The saddle was sort of inspired by an old horse drawn coach, of the 1800's. I wanted something more antique looking and less cowboy.

A few fun details to note on this piece. For pure irony I broke this horse front leg, which is held together by wrappings. For those who don't know, once a horse leg is broken it's a goner. This necromancer took a very healthy horse because it just happened to have a fatal accident. I also hide my symbol of my initials in every piece, a "k" and "g" that are combined together to form one letter of sorts. (this one is easy to find). And the face on the rump was a last minute and unexpected touch.

That is it for the week! I'll have another one coming soon!