The Slashrim Grommuk and Zrillak Minifigs
LEGO by: Justin R. "Saber-Scorpion" Stebbins

The Mahlok are a mysterious, ancient, and extremely powerful people. For centuries now they have fought to spread their empire across the stars. But despite the great power of the Mahlok, they can still be killed, and their numbers, due to their strange and painfully slow manner of breeding, remain few. So the true instrument in the spread of the Empire of Helexith has not been the Mahlok themselves... but their soldiers and slaves, the barbaric and monstrous species known as...

The Slashrim! One of the first planets conquered by the Mahlok was the nearby swampy planet in their own home system, which they called Slasheth. On this planet existed another species with the ability to think and communicate... though not as extensively as the Mahlok. The Mahlok, of course, simply had to take advantage of this. Since the Mahlok conquest of Slasheth, the Slashrim have been little more than slaves to the whim of the Mahlok people.

The Slashrim are a unique species. When they first hatch from their tough, leathery egg, warming itself in the bubbling Slasheth mud pits, they are immediately ready to fight. Newborn Slashrim are vicious and skittery, standing about three to four feet tall. As they grow older, they eventually gain a height of about six feet, begin standing more upright, and start communicating and thinking more easily. At this point they become known as the Grommuk (shown above). The Grommuk are the most numerous and primary soldiers of the Helexith army. Some are field commanders with the intelligence of the average human...

...while others are merely grunts, just smart enough to use mechanical devices and follow orders. And unless they are given orders, they will usually find some excuse to tear one another apart. Slashrim come in a wide variety of dull colors, including green, red, brown, black, beige, grey, and orange. Their eyes also range between these same colors. They are able to use most any type of weapon, but they usually end up using whatever they can find. This means they often salvage armor and weapons from their foes on the battlefield. The Mahlok see nothing wrong with this.

Sometimes Humans make the mistake of thinking of the Slashrim as "lizards," which gives the impression that they would be cold-blooded, scaly, and slow. But the Slashrim are indeed quite the opposite. They are warm-blooded, have leathery skin, and are extremely fast. Because of this, some of them become what humans call "berserkers" (shown above). These warriors fly into an even more uncontrollable bloodthirsty rage than most Slashrim do when in battle. They usually rush in headlong with melee weapons, ignoring wounds and pain as they destroy their enemies. Sometimes they can be fatally wounded but continue fighting anyway, only giving in to death after their enemy has fallen as well.

When the Slashrim reach adulthood, they grow longer snouts, necks, tails, horns, and... well, longer everything. This stage is known as the Zrillak. The Zrillak are the most intelligent Slashrim, the leaders of the army. They are the adults, the ones with the ability to mate and produce offspring. Thus, they are respected above all other Slashrim. The greatest and most loyal Zrillak are even considered on the same rank level as some Mahlok in the Helexith Coalition.

But how did the Mahlok manage to enslave such a powerful and numerous people? The answer is with superior intelligence, superior technology... and the persuasive power of religion. The Mahlok are not themselves a truly religious species, but they know the uses of religion. So when they learned of the Slashrim worship of the sun god Helexith, they began twisting it to serve their own uses. They turned themselves into holy men, almost gods, and the Slashrim bowed down and worshipped them. To fight for the Mahlok, the Slashrim believe, is to fight for the god of light, warmth, goodness, hope, and life... Helexith.

And the Slashrim continue to believe this, even as the Mahlok prove more and more that they are malevolent. Upon observing the strangely unstable biology of the Slashrim, the Mahlok began breeding them... mixing deformities and mutants to produce "better" and more "advanced" Slashrim... larger, stronger, faster, smarter... with multiple extra eyes, heads, arms, or even legs. These Mutates usually turn out as grotesque and mentally unstable... but often times their mutations do have their uses.

One of the most respected Slashrim war leaders is Vasha Valgerogk, a black Zrillak with red eyes. He is a Mutate, with two small arms below his primary large ones. He is one of the Mahlok's few smashing success mutations. Not only is he strong and loyal and intelligent, but he also has relatively accurate control over his extra arms, which is useful for carrying two extra weapons. Another mostly successful Mutate is Zur-Snag, a two-headed, tan-skinned Slashrim. Though his two heads are independent and often bicker with one another, only one of them, the more intelligent left head (Zur), has control over the legs. The other, stupider one (Snag) only has control over his single arm. This gives Zur-Snag the ability to move about with ease and wield two weapons at once with stunning and deadly accuracy.

But despite the fact that some Humans continue to think so, not all Slashrim are loyal to the Mahlok and their twisted religion. The greatest rebellious Slashrim is the great old green Zrillak known as Vasha Greeshakk, Leader of the Free Slashrim. Greeshakk believes himself to be living proof of the natural evolution of the Slashrim into wiser and more peaceful people. Even as the Mahlok hunt for him and his band of rebels, Greeshakk attracts more followers, including the skilled red-skinned warrior known as Lashnar, who now serves as Greeshakk's right-hand man and field commander.

Greeshakk believes in both the evolution of the Slashrim and in the purity of their ancient ways. Even as he moves to change their society to a more peaceful one, he also is trying to restore their ancient religion to its purest form, untainted by the Mahlok, so that he may find the fundamental truths that he is sure lie at the heart of the worship of Helexith. Currently, Vasha Greeshakk is hiding in the jungles of northern Womloch on Terra Nova. He has even purchased help at times from Grimm's Mercenary Army there. And Humans would do well to help him, for he may be their only hope of living peacefully with the Slashrim.

Okay, some people want to know how I built my Slashrim Zrillak lizard-men... so I have made some photographic instructions. First of all, thanks to Mandalore (Danny C.) for the basic design behind the Slashrim legs and central torso. I got the ideas from his Covenant Elite. However, some people are now telling me that the leg design was not originally Mandalore's. Well, if someone else came up with it first, my hat's off to him. Thanks, buddy! That said, let's move on with the instructions...

Here's how we get the basic lizard-like leg shape. This was the main thing I wanted to achieve with my Slashrim, but I never could figure out a satisfactory way to do it until I saw Mandalore's Elite.

The trickiest part to the legs is how to attach them to the torso and still get that nice splayed-out positioning that makes them look so much more natural and organic. For this we, use minifig antenna or lever pieces removed from their bases, as seen above.

Simply insert the antennas across one another through the middle part of a brick with a Technic pin hole in it.

Then link them together like so. Some people have told me that the result is highly unstable and floppy for them. Well, so far most of mine have worked out fine, so maybe you should try using different parts. It could be that your pieces are just looser or more worn. Still, not all of mine stand up that well either. In fact, Lashnar here is one of the worst. I usually support him with his halberd, as you can see in my photos.

In my version of Mandalore's design, the 1x1 brick with the Technic hole is turned upside-down so that a tail can be inserted. This helps a bit with balance as well that lizard look we're going for.

The head is attached like so. The part of the head covered by the decal is simply a stack of two 1x2 plates under one side of the hinge. This method for attaching the head gives the minifig its hunch-backed shape, which I thought Mandalore's Elite was lacking. The face decals, of course, can be purchased in my website's decal shop.

Now attach some accessories onto the torso. You can go crazy here with your own ideas and mix up the construction some, like I did with many of mine. For example, Vasha Greeshakk's head is actually attached to the front of the torso, not the back, and the plates for the head are stacked on top of the hinge instead of on the bottom.

For Lashnar's extra weapons I stuck some hooks on either side of his torso before attaching his arms. This also helps to make his shoulders look wider.

My Slashrim arms are considerably bigger than the arms on Mandalore's Elite. They begin by attaching a battle droid body on a hook onto either side of the torso...

Then another pair of hooks are attached to the droid bodies, with small Technic pins in the end of each hook. I went through several arm designs before I got this... I wanted to make sure I had all the joints, including rotating wrists.

Now just stick a pair of Dr. Octopus hooks into the Techinic pins, and then throw on some weapons and accessories, and you're done!

And as you can see, they can stand up quite well and are very pose-able (blast it, I'm still not sure how you spell that word... or if it's even a word!). By the way, notice that I cut the very back lower corners off of the face decal, since they kept hitting the armor disks on his body. You might want to keep that in mind.

Finally, for those of you who are wondering, here's how I did the two-headed guy. If you still can't figure it out after seeing this picture, sorry.

The LEGO Slashrim life cycle continues with the Slashrim Wogrok!