Oil and Blood, Tor Megiddo - part 4

The Stranger

The Slipgibbets' heavy truck. This beast of a transport was cobbled-together from about half a dozen other vehicles. Its two engines spewed black smoke as it thundered across the rust-coloured deserts of Tor Megiddo with the Slipgibbets riding in the open-topped flatbed, hiding behind heavy steel armour plates.

Flood tried, for a third time that morning, to clear the dust from the inside of his goggles but he only made it worse. Clouds of rust-orange desert dust swirled around the truck as it roared over the sands. Flood put his goggles back on and stood up again, hanging on to the armour plates as the Stranger bounced and rattled along.

On the horizon he could just make out the shape of the promethium refinery they were heading toward, Station 534, the shanty town around it known as False Hope was still invisible at this distance. Much easier to see was the column of black smoke that billowed from the refineries' towers.

The rest of the gang were hunched down in the back, doing their best to hold on and keep out if the wind and the flying sand. Atlas was asleep somehow. Flood was tempted to kick the brute but the thought was interrupted by a loud bang - a bullet hit the side of the truck! He ducked down and shouted at the others. They scrambled to grab weapons and get themselves into position. A second bullet hit the armour and more zipped overhead.

Flood checked his shotgun again and looked around. The gang were just about ready.

"Now!"

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The Stranger will mostly get used as narrative scenery, in the gang's deployment zone, but we might come up with other uses, such as the Convoy mission.

Painting: after painting a few semi-random splatters of Typhus Corrosion for a bit of gritty texture, I masked the wheels and chassis before spraying as the cannibalised Ork Trukk was already painted and I didn't need to repaint the underside. I black spray undercoated the whole thing, spot-coloured with Mournfang Brown spray and then zenithal basecoated it with Mechanicus Standard Grey spray.

When that was dry I dry-brushed everything Ushabti Bone. I free-hand painted the "stenciled" number 8 that can just be made out on both sides.  Washed with Agrax Earthshade all over. Then sponged-on some Mechanicus Standard Grey over the stenciled eights, to get a chipped-paint effect.

The weathering was a wash, on all the lower areas and a few random bits further up, with 1:10 Mournfang Brown :: water. The I washed it again, going over about 3/4 of the Mournfang'd areas with 1:10 Trollslayer Orange :: water.

The spotlight is painted white then washed with slightly watered-down Nihilakh Oxide. The "lens" next to the cab's front view port was painted Khorne Red and washed with Carroburg Crimson.