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jflaxman β Warg Rider
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Published: 2019-03-06 09:26:56 +0000 UTC; Views: 16476; Favourites: 530; Downloads: 87
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Description
UR-1200 motorbikes were originally built for Collective scouts and despatch riders. Bartered, scavenged, stolen or reverse-engineered examples are common among the outlaw clans and death cults of the Wasteland Alliance. Dubbed βwargsβ for the growl of their engines as well as their brutish appearance, they provide their users with a cheap and reliable means of fast transport. In the fast-paced battles fought for Federation territory, warg riders lack the firepower and resilience of armoured forces, but excel at scouting, ambushing and hunting down lost and demoralised foes.
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Comments: 42
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I will be honest. Your SE stuff is brilliant!
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U make the best postapocalyptic art on the web man! I'm hooked
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You're being way too kind, but thanks! I've just replied to your notes.
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Very reminiscent of Mad Max, I think this is great!Β
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I owe a lot to Mad Max!
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I can tell your work is heavily inspired! Continue to rock at your artwork!
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It rocks
*Plays a psychobilly song while watching this drawing*
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Amazing piece! That smile on the guy's face is also really cool and funny.
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Definitely something youβd see in a βMad Maxβ movie
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"OH WHAT A DAY! WHAT A LOVELY DAY!"
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A great line from a great flick!
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Very cool. Do you think you can draw more post apocalyptic art, like what life's like in the settlements?
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That's something I'll have to cover soon.
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Great, can't wait.
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Love the details.
Especially like that sinister smile.
Stellar Work!Β Β Β
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My body is chrome! My blood is gasoline! π€£
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I live! I die! I live again!
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"Witness me Bloodbank! WITNESS!"
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I really love your worldbuilding. Especially how old remnant nations states still exist and new ones have formed after your resource war and more conservativeΒ apocalypse/collapse. Keep up the setting and expanding on it.Β
I had a question though. What do people use as fuel? I know you've mentioned shale in the past, but are any biofuels used?
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Thanks for your interest. I'd like to do a lot more in this style.
Fuel's going to vary depending on region. Shale oil, biofuels and hydrogen are used as normal oil substitutes depending on local availability and/or technological expertise.
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Are there any regions or enclaves that are still relatively normal when compared to prewar like say the core territories of the Federal Remnant and the CMIC? Is the CMIC invading from a nation that didn't get completely obliterated in the apocalyptic war now trying to conquer it's broken neighbors, or is it an organization similar to the Enclave?Β
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They called him Bolt; for his lightning-like speed on his bike, and the tattoos on his dome. Dumb-looking to me, but from the legends I'd heard about the guy, I knew he was someone you didn't want to have chasing you down out in the wastes. Bolt was one of the Spinesnappers, a psychotic warg rider outlaw clan infamous for slicing their victims' lumbars and throwing their paralyzed husks into canyons and out of skyscrapers-- just for fun. Freakshows, all of them. Bolt was a particularly vicious one. They said that if you were witness to his crooked, toothy smile, your death by his hand was imminent. May take hours, make take days, even months-- but one way or another, he'd either be sending a blade to your back, a bullet to your brain, or, if you were particularly unlucky-- his warg's tires over your neck.
His main stomping grounds was Icarus Flats, a mass graveyard of crashed planes. And not just the ones that crashed during The Great Breakdown-- there are some that crashed from the decades beforehand. No one knows why all those planes crashed there, but some of the older settlers call the place "New Bermuda" because of it. Must be some kind of tongue-in-cheek joke I wouldn't understand, whatever. In any case, the Flats are highly dangerous considering the place is Spinesnapper turf, but some of the more daring (or stupid) scavengers head down there anyway, hoping to salvage whatever they can from the "pre-pre-Breakdown" planes that remain mostly untouched. You don't have to be an expert scavver to know how many credits airplane batteries can go for, especially among members of the Crankshafts-- those guys have a major hard-on for engine parts and the like. Still, it's said that anyone that goes to the Icarus Flats never comes back. At least, not in one piece.
Yet, for some reason, I decided to push my luck and headed out there to look for my next payday.
The only stuff I had on me was my regular gear; scavving fatigues, fishing vest for carrying stuff like ammo, food, and meds, military surplus duffle bag for carrying loot, a toolkit, my bayonet, my kukri, and my ever-reliable .357 magnum. Double action, 2-inch barrel, 7 rounds, matte stainless finish-- this revolver has never let me down. It's like my old man used to say, "If you can't rely on a revolver, you can't rely on anything." Thankfully, however, I had the luck to not have to use it today. As I made my way down a south-facing rock slope, I saw it. A Strix Model GGO94. One of the finest caravan turboprop planes on the pre-Breakdown market (however limited that may have been). Veteran scavvers claim the parts in those things are very valuable because of their immense durability. So you can imagine how big my smile was when I got a good look under the hood and found damn near everything to be spotless. It was almost too good to be true... That's when I heard him.
"Well! Look at what we have here! Another rat for the stink pits!" I turned around to find that Bolt had me in his sights, sitting on his bike from atop a particularly dusty cliff face. As Bolt started to ride towards me with his gun in hand, I quickly ran behind a plane wreck in between the two of us to take cover from his submachine gun fire. He had me too suppressed for me to take a potshot, I had to find a way to fight back. I spot a length of pipe among the wreckage and grip it with dear life, hoping I get close enough for a single, well-placed swing. I could hear Bolt getting closer. I could almost feel the speedometer on his bike rising as he sped towards me. Closer and closer and closer... I take the chance... I remember I stared out onto to the horizon for a solid minute, breathing heavily at the fear that I might somehow still be dead. Then I look down to see Bolt's twitching corpse below me, the bridge of his nose and his goggles smashed in by my pipe. Then I spot his bike roughly 40 feet behind me. Then it hits me. I just killed Bolt and survived Icarus Flats. I'm still reeling from it. The next hour is spent looting the most valuable parts from the plane wrecks. I walked into the Flats with nothing, I rode out with a shit-ton of plane parts, a submachine gun, and Bolt's motorcycle.
As I return to Peregrine, I retell the story to the locals, awestruck at the idea that someone other than Bolt was on his bike. Soon after I park the bike in the community motorpool and sell the plane parts to the Crankshafts for a king's ransom in credits, the mayor, Kurtis Pierce, and his security detail approaches me. "The townies are talking about how you killed Bolt. Is this true?" I pointed to the bike and tell him, "Well, unless that's someone else's warg..." Pierce chuckles, looks among his men, then looks back at me. "Come to my office tomorrow," he tells me, "I've got an opportunity for you, if you're interested." As he walks away, I hear him say, "Maybe we should start calling you Storm-Killer! Ha-ha!"
Something tells me tomorrow's going to be interesting.
-Craig "Storm-Killer" Whitaker, June 26, 2033.
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Now that's one hell of a write-up! It's great to see one image inspire such a detailed, rich and believable world.
Your Bolt's everything I'd imagined and more. All your names are evocative - the Spinesnappers, Icarus Flats, the Crankshafts, and the reference to "New Bermuda" hardly anyone still gets. I also really liked your story's pacing. I'm up for more like this any time!
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Thanks! I'm pretty I've said it before on your page, but I'm a big fan of your Scorched Earth stuff, so I've always wanted to try and create a story for the different pieces you create. I just took one look at the Warg Rider's face and decided to take a chance and write a story about them. Though it did feel weird telling the story through the perspective of a scavenger's diary entry, rather than the rider itself (I guess my bias for scavenger archetypes in post apocalyptic stuff played a hand in that).
Still, thank you very much; let me know if there's some other piece you'd like me to write something for. I'm not a professional writer by any stretch of the imagination, but I, ironically, do consider myself to be very imaginative.
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Was always a sucker for your Scorched Earth pieces! That setting had no shortage of fascinating character and vehicle concepts!
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I've definitely got to do more in this style!
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Vroom! Despite hardships this guy is clearly enjoying life!
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oh HECCIN yeah i love the style you use
Is it me or does it have a similar style to the BMW R-75 motorcycle used by the Germans?Β The fuel tank and style of handlebars are very similar!
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You've got a good eye for these things! There's a bit of BMW R-75 in this beast. I also took some inspiration from the Honda CB750. I'm pretty sure the IMZ-Ural (a Russian copy of the BMW R-71) is still in production, which says a lot for the old German designs.
This pic's also a personal thank you for your write-up on my Wasteland Scavenger pic, which I've mentioned in a journal post. A return to this series was long overdue.
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Well, I'm seeing more of an in-line 4 than a boxermotor in the engine. And yes the Ural is still in production.
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Thanks for the info! You're right on both counts.
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