WH40k: Rain Kryze

"I believe I fight for a good cause. Sure, it may have changed a bit over the years, but it still feels pretty good to fight for."
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While this isn't something I planned to upload lately, I'm sliding into a 40k mood, and I felt like drawing a tricorne, because tricornes are awesome. So, now felt like a good enough time to redraw Rain Kryze, one of my most important OCs, and the Dictator of the Outcastes. I did this for a few reasons – the most important being to see how this 2013 redesign of Kryze compares with my past versions of him, and even though this didn't come out as dynamic as I first intended, I feel like this is a huge improvement compared to how I drew him last year, or heck, even three months ago in my valentines day drawing. But, I didn't draw a tricorne in that one, so unfortunately that drawing was fail. This one is, of course, pure win.

But I digress. Rain Kryze is a human male born into the Imperium of Man on the world of Scipio in the Ibur System of the Hspan Sector of the Segmentum Pacificus in 968.M41. He was an orphan at age 4, and at 15, he was convicted for murder and sentenced to live out his days on the Scipioan prison continent of Penitentiary. Equal parts violent rebel and devout worshipper of the Emperor, Kryze fit in perfectly in the Penal Legions when an Ork horde invaded Scipio in 983.M41. He served with valor and distinction that many of his fellow prisoners lacked, and his efforts in halting the Ork invasion earned him a pardon, and a free pass into the newly-forming Scipioan 1st imperial Guard regiment. Kryze quickly rose through the ranks of the Scipio Liberators, surviving numerous battles against Feral Orks left behind from the invasion, a Tyranid incursion on Ardost, and he played a key role in the destruction of Warboss Dragslotta. On Ardost, he helped to rescue numerous civilians from the Tyranid menace, including Nora Valnette, a Scipioan noblewoman. The two married, an affair partially arranged by the Valnette family, which lay at the heart of a Genestealer conspiracy on Scipio, but Nora was found to be infertile, and the two were never able to sire children in between Kryze's battles against the hordes of xenos that threatened the Hspan Sector. Behind the scenes, the Inquisition played a deadly game with another ancient conspiracy in the sector – Chaos, which sought to corrupt Scipio along with numerous other worlds in the Segmentum Pacificus in what would become the Night of a Thousand Rebellions. Nora fell to Chaos, along with many other noble families that secretly assisted in the corruption of Scipio, which led to the Scipio Civil War in 997.M41. Nora would die along with numerous other heretics when the Imperium invaded Scipio to disable the rebellion – burned alive by the Sisters of Battle. Kryze's connection with one of the leaders of the heretics resulted in him being taken away by the Inquisition and incarcerated for several months. When the war on Scipio grew too great for the Imperium to hold the world, Kryze managed to break free of the abandoned Inquisitorial base and regroup with other survivors who had been drawn in by the genestealers as a third party in the war, hoping to keep control away from Chaos or the Imperium, to little effect. After another few months of fighting, the Imperium knew that Scipio was lost, and prepared to Exterminatus the planet to keep it from falling to Chaos. While not originally a cultist, Kryze and many of his fellow Scipio Liberators joined the Chaos cultists in retreating into the Warp while Scipio burned around them, successfully evading death.

Kryze would spend a year in the Warp, wandering around with what few stragglers he could find while everyone either went mad, or was devoured by vicious hordes of daemons. To him, it felt more like a thousand years, but admits that it's difficult to tell while you're trapped in the Immaterium. After managing to maintain a small group of survivors (many of which are named characters that I will try to draw in the future), Kryze earned the attention of Tzeentch, the Chaos God of sorcery and change, who sent his envoy, the Strygian, to speak with the mortals. Kryze made a deal with the Lord of Change, and journeyed through the mad tides of the warp, collecting marks of Chaos from each of the gods, Slaanesh, Khorne, Nurgle, and even the Eldar goddess Isha, becoming a champion of Chaos Undivided. The Strygian gave Kryze the opportunity to return with his followers back to the Materium, where the survivors reformed the Scipio Liberators into the Damned of Scipio. Over the following years, Kryze quickly went about assembling useful men and women from the Segmentum Pacificus, as the Thousand Rebellions began to wind down, at the turn of the 42nd Millennium. After accumulating a number of influential people and impressive weapons, the Damned of Scipio raided the shrine world of Kobrethens, on a mission by the Strygian to locate a vault of pre-Imperium archeotech. The mission turned into a complete success, with the Damned making off with the first of many powerful weapons left behind by the ancient Pendulum Corporation, and an important prisoner, Canoness Winry Covenn. Kryze converted Winry to his cause through some fancy stockholm syndrome while the Damned travelled the Galaxy in search of a permanent base of operations. After pirating Tau space for some very useful technology, the Outcastes befriended the Perennial Brood of the Harzod Sector, and Kryze discovered the Gilranth Sector of the Ultima Segmentum, perfectly situated between exhausted Ork hordes and weakened Imperial defenses. Kryze was quickly able to gather a number of disenfranchised and ambitious cults, Chaos forces, daemons, and traitor Space Marine warbands into a Gilranth Chaos Coalition, before invading Ratius Station, at the time already being raided by Dark Eldar, and conquered the space station, liberating the human populace and capturing enough Dark Eldar to sacrifice along with the other sacrifices of the Coalition to open up the Gilranth Tunnel, a small, but stable Warp Portal just beyond the Marthelus-Onius System. This would directly lead to the invasion of the Gilranth Sector by the Coalition forces, the conquest of Gilranth from the Orks, the settlement of Serrasal by the Damned of Scipio and the Serrasal Civil War, and a still-ongoing three-way war between the Coalition, the Orks of Warboss Cutlusk, and the Imperial counter-offensive for control of the Gilranth Sector. Over the past 12 years, the Damned of Scipio have been completely reorganized by Kryze into the Outcastes, which I will continue to detail here on DA.

Sorry, that was a lot more backstory than I felt was necessary, but I don't want to delete any of it, so i at least hope you find it interesting. Rain Kryze is basically my Mary Sue self-insert character for 40k, but I like to think he's evolved past that. Despite being of Admiral Thrawn levels of intelligence, and being a powerful enough combatant and Chaos champion to easily go toe-to-toe with Space Marines, Kryze is far from invincible, and I try to play him off as very guile and lucky, rather than just an extreme badass or anything. Don't get me wrong, he is by far the best fighter in all of the Outcastes, but it comes from the accumulation of a lot of different factors. He's a master manipulator, and is very good at getting the right people in the right places, which is a major factor in why the Outcastes thrive as they have. He's not the most technical person in the cult, but he's definitely an idea guy, and is apt at giving the many scientists and engineers a vision to pursue in the Outcastes' many experiments and projects over the years. Kryze has a lot of ambition, but doesn't exactly have a direction to put it towards, often second-guessing his objectives and going back on his own schemes. The only constant goal of his since taking over Outcaster has been the advancement and progress of those loyal to him, but otherwise, he's never entirely sure whether he wants to work towards destroying the Imperium, or taking it over and rebuilding it for Chaos. While not very zealous for the Chaos faith, and seen as a heretic even among his peers for founding the Outcaste Orthodox faith, Kryze is an extremely philosophical sort who often theorizes and wonders on the nature of Chaos, the Warp, life, death, souls, and metaphysics etcetera. he can be considered the foremost human mind when it comes to Chaos philosophies, but few ever come to him to speak on such things. His allies in the Coalition look upon him with dread or spite, his fellow Outcastes constantly put him on a pedestal, such that very few in his cult can be informal with him, and he has almost the entirety of the Gilranth Imperium fooled into thinking he's a bumbling puppet ruler of the Outcastes. Again, he's a master of propaganda and deception. Aside from being a brilliant tactician, Kryze is also a master of disguise and espionage, and commonly runs covert missions into the Imperium on his own.

Relationship-wise, Kryze has only been married to Nora, which was more of an arranged affair than a loving relationship. Many Outcastes incorrectly believe that he is married to Winry, despite that she's more his political prisoner than anything else. The two have an extremely complex love-hate relationship, but they are very close nonetheless. Otherwise, Kryze is beloved by his Outcastes, mostly because he spends a lot of time walking around Outcaster and Serrasal and hanging out with his people, partially because the Outcastes lack a noble high-society of any kind. He is a father to his men, and cares greatly for anyone who is willing to throw their lot in with his. THis has caused a lot of conflict between him and the other members of the Coalition who don't care much for their cultists. Kryze is officially the leader of the Warp Caste, one of the five castes of the Outcastes, which mostly deals with the transportation, mysticism, religion, and economy of the Outcastes. It's the cult part of the organization. Despite not instantly accepting a throne over the Outcastes, he was elected by the castes in a landslide to be the Dictator. He's the head of state of the Outcastes, but his powers mostly just involve assessing the Outcastes' resources and directing them where they are needed. He still fights with the Outcaste Militia on the frontlines from time to time. Oh, as depicted, Kryze often wears his coat as if it were a cape, rarely sticking his arms in his sleeves. I felt it was a good design choice this time around. Just felt I should mention that since you can't see his arms here.

I guess that's about it. Sorry if I droned on for too long. He's an interesting character to me, and one of my most developed, so there's a lot of information I've come up for him. Comment or whatever. Oh, one last thing. Why aren't tricornes in style anymore? Someone needs to bring them back.

Below are all the other Outcaste redesigns and concepts that I've done so far:


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