Chaos Marines Casting Dark Energy in the Snow — Print & Oil Painting

Almost every battle scene in this part of the collection is dark. This one inverts the rule: the ground is snow, the sky a pale washed blue, the mountains behind nearly white, and the figures have to be read as dark shapes against a bright field. The effect is cold in both senses of the word.

Three warriors in turquoise plate come down towards the viewer. The armour is covered in a fine scale pattern with gold edging, the livery associated with the Alpha Legion, and each of them trails ribbed cables that loop through the air like tentacles, one or two ending in claws. Horned helms, black cloaks, small skulls hung at the belt.

Two magenta events break the blue. At the lower right a staff head opens into a burst of violet energy crowned with black spikes; higher up a smaller pink flare sits beside a floating orange creature with too many limbs. They are the only warm colours on the canvas and both belong to something unnatural, which is precisely the point.

Snow falls in fine flecks over all of it, and the artist lets it soften the two rear figures until their outlines start to break up. Whatever is being performed here is happening in weather that does not care either way. From our Warhammer 40.000 collection, in company with the Chaos Marine dragging a corpse through the mist.