Rogue Quest Level 4: Xenos Psionic/Thief

Well hello.. won't you come on in, take a load off, and meet A'Rhea LI, Xenos Psionic Thief and the fourth instalment of my take on the Rogue Quest project.

You can find out more about the concept behind Rogue Quest by checking out my first three party members here, here, and here, but as always I implore you to check out these guys and the three Rogue Quest projects that inspired me to give it a go myself:

LeadPlague
Magpie and Old Lead
Leadballoony

So, A'Rhea LI, whats her story?

In terms of her role within the party, I've found myself tending towards the same preference I have in online RPGs and am choosing Characters/Classes all of whom have some 'spell casting' type ability in D&D terms, even if this only kicks in at later level in some cases. As a DM and a player I'm a big fan of the potential that a combination of Rogue and Spell Caster presents. The classic example of this is the Illusionist/Thief in D&D and I see A'Rhea LI in that vein. The other great thing about Rogues is all the skill points, so A'Rhea LI has some decent tech savvy to boot. The small 'communicator device' on her wrist boasts some custom electromagnetronics to help her gain entry where others would keep her out.

The hand in the pouch is really evocative of the Thief class, reminding me of the old AD&D 2 rule that Rogues had to try and keep one hand free as much as possible, preventing them from using most two handed weapons, but allowing them to pilfer items at random!

The paint job is not my finest, and these photos don't show up the contrast between the light blue-grey (which ties her shoulder and knee pads in with the webbing worn by some of the other party members) and/or the dark blue of her jacket and the green of her skin, so she looks a bit drab here. I'm annoyed with myself for taking the skin shade too dark. I should have thinned down the last wash of green ink and I've lost a lot of the classic 'Grey' Xenos look she had earlier in the process. It was a learning experience however.

Limitations aside, she does tie in really well with the rest of the group whilst still having her own identity by making much bolder use of the red spot colour. I deliberately voided any purple this time, as I don't want that to become too much of a theme colour for the Xenos elements within the unit. Her equipment was painted up in standard issue cammo green and brown leather to suggest that it has been picked up in a PDF Surplus store somewhere.

I like the relatively low-tech but still obviously Sci-Fi elements, that ties it in nicely to the RT universe in my eyes

The mini is from CP models Sci-Fi 'Hired Guns' range. They are supplied with alternate Human and Xenos heads (which reminds me, I must find where I put the human female head I didn't use... that sounds really bad when you read it back to yourself). I loved the classic look of the Xenos head, but wanted to bring her more into the Rogue Trader universe, so upgraded her pistol to an over sized Laspistol from an early GW weapons sprue.

The original pistol was carefully removed and has already found it's way on to another model that needed a bit of TLC.

The hand in the pouch is a brilliant touch and what absolutely sold me on this sculpt. For me it is an important tie in to the classic D&D/Warhammer Quest Thief class she is portraying, but would serve to emphasise her more 'special ops' role in any force.

I also really appreciate the femininity of the sculpt which has been achieved without losing a sense of functionality about the equipment. I played this up by giving her a little red dress in the Unit spot colour. With the role that I see her playing as both an infiltrator and a spy, the bright red might at first seem incongruous, but I want her to be a bit of a femme fatale, with a hint of Gangster's moll about her past, so she gets to keep her red cocktail dress and uses her psionic abilities to make up for any loss of camouflage.

"Don't mind me boys, just passing through on my way to steal all your stuffs!"

"My name is A'Rhea LI... please... I..." the words appeared in his mind as his harsh demand had appeared in hers.

"WHY DO YOU STEAL FROM US!?" The words came like a psychic assault, battering through her well practised defences, painfully extracting the truth forcing her mind voice to say the words.

"I... I need to raise funds to get off world. Fast. Last job went bad. They're on to me..." She fought to keep from blacking out under the strain.

"How did you get through the perimeter without triggering the lasers? The words were not as painful this time, though the voice still held a tone of command that A'Rhea could not resist.

"My bracelet, some security counter measures of my own design, and a simple planting of a noise in the Eldar's brain, exploiting the fact he had sensed something amiss to send him off in the wrong direction..." Her mind voice was cut off. She could feel the other mind probing deeper. Even her breathing seemed like it was being controlled. She'd never felt psychic power like this before and didn't care to again.

"Impressive. Most impressive. You say you need to get off world. What if I gave you that opportunity, and an offer of employment to boot?"

"I... I'd say I was interested, but..."

"Yes?"

"But I have a debt to pay first. A friend who helped me, who will suffer if they are caught by those who follow me. I need to get them out of town first." There was a long silence, followed by a sense of release of pressure in her mind, her lungs, her muscles...

"Very well. If you can rejoin me here in 3 hours time, you shall have you passage off this world and gainful employment that will suit your specialist talents. Although, you should bear in mind that we will of course be improving security with immediate effect. It appears we've had an unfortunate breach you see..."

2.68 standard Terran hours later A'Rhea LI stood at a porthole watching the rapidly disappearing speck that was Nate's Point as the Unit made it's way off planet and on to the next job.

A'Rhea LI's Mag-lock decoder bracelet does the business for a second time

Sven is left scratching his beard after the laser fence posts are disabled again, even after he remodulated the control algorithms from the default factory setting!

Bonus Laser Fence Posts!!!

I'm really chuffed with the laser fence posts/sc-fi objective markers. I wonder if anyone recognises what they are? The release of the latest film in a certain franchise might give you a clue.

That's right! They are made out of the front end of Corellian Corvette Blockade Runners out of StarWars Kinder Surprise eggs stolen from recovered after being discarded by my children. I've rescued a few potentially useful bits from the ships that came with these weird over sized plastic heads sticking out of the top of them. Luckily both C3-PO and Princess Leia giant heads came with Corvettes, so I have plenty of them, but it was actually the engine pieces that originally caught my attention - they look like multi-launchers for vehicles, or maybe sentry guns? More on them another time possibly.

The Kinder-Corvettes have annoying wholes where the giant heads connect the two halves, so they got a slap of milliput to fill them in, which then also got flocked to make it seem like the posts are a bit more embedded in the ground.

Anyway, they got such a simple treatment with the paints that it's not worth repeating in detail, because there is no detail, but they do the job admirably I think. It's precisely because of how simple they were to make that I like them.

The MDF bases are actually 27mm off cuts from Dave the Scenery Savant, no good for basing models (or objectives for that matter) for gaming purists, but handy enough for this.

I kept thinking about the sonic towers from Lost whilst I was making them. I wonder if Sven the Squat Tech-Bard might be able to hook these babies up with sonic emitters and program them with the Brown Note?

I also like them because I definitely wouldn't have got round to making them so quickly after having the idea if I hadn't been doing the Rogue Quest project, so it's another case of being spurred to more productivity by Oldhammer projects and blogging.

The next level of Rogue Quest has also spurred a spin off project! A villain no less, not the Big Bad, you understand, but definitely a... Bad? But that will all have to wait for the New Year (well sort of) as I'm going to be working on finishing off my entry for Deadcember 2016: The Quick and the Dead between now and the end of the year. That and the drinking. Let's not forget the drinking.

Stay tuned folks :)