So the last theme round is anti-hero, at first I thought this meant
villain but a quick interweb search revealed that it is in fact "a main character in a story who lacks conventional heroic
qualities such as idealism, courage, and morality." A bit of thinking
and research and I knew who I wanted to paint for my entry.
Burke & Hare made almost loveable by Simon Pegg and Andy Sirkis in their 2010 film.
I
started searching for figure suppliers and found to my pleasant
surprise that I already had the figures from an Empire of the Dead
Kickstarter I had sponsored with West Wind a few years ago. A quick
trawl through my figure boxes, a few splashes of paint and the odd grass
tuft and my entry was complete.
The
Burke and Hare murders were committed in Edinburgh over a period of ten
months in 1828. The killings were attributed to Irish immigrants
William Burke and William Hare who sold the corpses of their 16 victims
to a local doctor as dissection material for his anatomy lectures. The
advances in medical science meant that demand for cadavers far
outstripped supply, a problem that our entrepreneurial duo helped to
solve.
They
were eventually caught, however, the evidence against them was far from
conclusive and in order to secure a conviction Hare was offered the
opportunity "to turn King's evidence", i.e. be granted immunity from
prosecution if he confessed and agreed to testify against Burke. Hare
agreed and walked free whilst Burke was convicted and hanged on 28th
January 1829, he was dissected the following day in the same college
lecture theatre as his victims.
I
really enjoyed painting these two figures, they're the first ones I've
done from the Empire of the Dead range and I'm very impressed with the
sculpting and casting quality. I painted the figures in a weekend and
then completed the basing over three or four days. I'll certainly be
painting more of these over the coming months.
These figures are also my Curtgeld and so they'll soon be winging their way towards their new home in Canada.
Hope you get to use them in a few games Curt.
