The Word Spreads - Muller Cult Reinforcements

Here are a few extra cultists for my Muller Cult. I needed this trio to round out my 10-strong Cult crew for a game of Stargrave I'll be playing at Bring Out Your Lead 2025 in a couple of weeks time.

Ever-more corrupt cult followers emerge, showing degenerate attributes and mishapen forms.

The Insidious Word - Muller Cult Demagogue (and Friends)

I know I've mentioned this before, but I really enjoy theming a group of miniatures around the work of a specific sculptor. My current 40k chaos cult project is built around the late 1990s cultists by Paul Muller, and this next group throws the net a little wider again to include some more of his non-GW work. And if I say so myself, I think they're starting to look pretty cool together!

Hulking & Bloated - Muller Cult Brutes

It's no secret that I really enjoy adding in different-sized figures into a warband. A sneaky little fella rubbing shoulders with a big brute to contrast with the bulk of the 'normal-sized' crew. I wanted to repeat this with my Paul Muller cultists and settled on a pair of big brutes to add some real menace!

Corruption Within - Paul Muller 40k Cultists

I've always liked the insidious and subtle encroachment of chaos. That corruption of the weak-willed & marginalised. It seems a lot more interesting than the big bombastic version of chaos that you see associated with chaos space marines.

And so I'm having another look at chaos cultists. Unlike my previous cult of weirdos and oddballs, this one is going to be comprised of Paul Muller sculpts. The bulk of the cult will be made up of his lovely mid-1990s 40k cultists, supplemented with a few other nice figures from other manufacturers where they fit aesthetically. 

My first group of 5 figures are primarily drawn from the 40k set:

WarFactory Ventolin Pirates Squad 2

Hot on the heels of the first set of Ventolin Pirates by WarFactory are yet more Ventolin Pirates! A further six sculpts, comprising 3 troopers, 1 missile launcher, 1 sergeant and 1 leader. As a reminder, the STLs are being made available as part of a fundraiser for Ukraine. Check out the details over at: WarFactory.

Well-equipped pirates enter the canyon.

WarFactory Ventolin Pirates

The classic Rogue Trader adventurers range is full of iconic miniatures. Most are individual characters, but there are a couple that are crying out for some companions. The Ventolin Pirate is a great example, and Aidan Boustred over at WarFactory has digitally sculpted some fantastic homage figures - the STLs are being made available as part of a fundraiser for Ukraine. Check out the details over at: WarFactory

5-man squad of Ventolin Pirates.

It's a Long-Shot (Cultists Get Snipers Too)!

I'm really getting a kick out of my dregs and mutie cult for Necromunda, in spite of the fact that they are ranked 8th out of thirteen gangs in our campaign with a 50-50 win-loss ratio. There's something about pathetic low-lifes that really does appeal to me!

Not content with having two snipers already, I decided I wanted a third. This time I've elected to arm Sant, my new cultist, with a long-las instead of a long rifle. It lacks the range and stopping power of a long rifle, but in trade off it's a much more reliable weapon and more accurate at mid-ranges.

Missiles and Extra Eyes - More Mutie Cultists!

I think I'm pretty much on the home straight with my mutie cultists. I probably won't make any more for a little while, unless of course I earn lots of Necromunda campaign creds and need to add new recruits!

I've made two more cultists anticipating being able to buy more fighters and gear - another combat cultist, and a disciple armed with a missile launcher.

One Shot, One Kill - Long Ranged Cult Disciple

When I originally planned my Necromunda chaos cult, I knew I wanted a disciple (champion) with a heavy stubber. It was later suggested to me that a disciple with a long rifle would be fun. A high quality ranged shooter in Necromunda is always a useful thing, and a long rifle has pretty fun stats - S4 like a boltgun, positive to hit modifiers at long range (and the maximum range is long - 48"!). Not to mention the knockback ability which can hurl targets into other models, walls, or even off gantries.

It just so happened that back in 2015 when I was making some completely unrelated chaos cultists in pink, I had criminally decapitated a Jes Goodwin skaven champion with a jezail. He had sat unpainted in a pile for over three years, so I took the opportunity to look at him a second time.

Face to Face with the Cult

One thing lacking from the Benevolent Brothers was any form of close-quarters fighters. I decided to rectify that with three new additions - Maddox, Snyke and Frenk.

All three are armed exclusively with melee weapons and pistols to take things up close and personal! I am still working out whether Maddox (the lady with the big chainsword) will be a champion with a chainglaive or a ganger with a chainsword. I'm settled on Snyke with his hand flamer and Frenk though.

Arming the Brothers - Chaos Cult Shooters

Members of the Benevolent Brotherhood keep a wary watch as Demagogue Jakob carries out doorstep conversions.

With my new Necromunda campaign kicking off next week, I am busily finishing off the last few fighters I need to complete my starting roster. I've made the decision to sacrifice reliability in favour of bodies, so my cultists are by and large going to be unarmoured and equipped with unreliable reclaimed auto-weapons - pretty fitting for underhive muties I think.

Speaker of The Word - Chaos Cult Demagogue

Every Necromundan Chaos Cult is led by a Demogogue - that forceful and charismatic (or possibly underhand and scheming) personality that persuades, coerces or tricks people into following them. The Benevolent Brothers are no different, being led by the monk-like Jakob, brother to Wilhelm the witch.

Jakob walks the mutie slums barefoot, dispensing food to the hungry and blessings to those with bruised souls. The Cult of the Benevolent Brothers supports the oppressed mutie population, and in turn muties offer the Brothers their loyalty, their ferocity and their lives in pursuit of mutant rights.

I built Jakob many months ago from a selection of parts which resulted in a pretty unusual figure with a look of a holy man. I knew that in game terms I wanted him to carry a grenade launcher, but I didn't want to ruin the simple look of the figure, so I decided to give Jakob a servant (Wretch) to carry his equipment for him (possibly there is some irony that a cult leader dedicated to mutant rights is happy to have a slave-like figure attending him).

Insidious Growth - More Chaos Cultists

The trouble with a cult is that it can grow. A charismatic leader and an attractive offering brings the desperate, vulnerable and weak-willed. I've recruited some more cultists to the Benevolent Brothers - this time a pair with autoguns and my first disciple, Grund.

The Benevolent Brothers door to door preaching.

The Benevolent Brothers - A Cult for Mutants and their Supporters

Necromunda is home to all kinds of cults, Imperial devotees, sinister xenos bands and spire-based secret societies. Chaos cults are not unknown - there are those who seek (or are found by) dangerous and unpredictable powers. There are also those cults who provide havens for the unwanted, the lonely and the dispossessed. The origin of the Benevolent Brothers is rumoured to have been a soup kitchen run by a pair of missionary brothers, seeking to bring the light of the Emperor to the mutant slums of Borscht's Crack. No-one knows for certain what happened to the brothers, but the rise of the Benevolent Brothers, a cult of mutants and their human hangers-on, is led by a charismatic and eloquent pair of mutie brothers...

Chaos cultists stalk the streets of the underhive.

Errol Phlegm, Mutie Scum

The team over at Old School Miniatures are currently running a nice little Kickstarter for a chaotic, pustulent set of travelling players, known as the Circus of Corruption. Do go and check it out.

They've been good enough to send a set of pre-release resin masters to the contributors of the Scale Creep blog, including myself. You'll see the full set jointly painted up by all of the 'Creepers' over the course of the next week, but in the meantime, here's my contribution - a charming little chap named Errol Phlegm.

Fisk's Christmas Present

Christmas now seems an age away, but myself and a few mates decided to run a little Secret Santa and secretly send each other something fun to paint. We dutifully promised to paint up whatever we were sent by the end of January. I'm late, and I've only painted 50% of what I was sent - I'm barely coping with the excessive guilt!

Nonetheless, 50% of my Secret Santa gift has been painted - although it wasn't so much a gift for me, as it was for Silwon Fisk. I even received instructions to the fact:

"Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling"

The village had no name, or perhaps it had been forgotten. It lay deep in the chaos wastes and had few visitors bar chaos hordes tramping south, or the occasional Carnival of Nurgle. Each and every villager bore the taint of chaos - the woodsman with axes in place of arms, the porcine butcher, the snake-skinned apothecary. Even the cattle had 6-legs and the sheep had fleshless skulls. Yet village life continued. The young and the strong strode off with bows and their father's swords. Left behind were the old, the lame, the mothers and the children, tending thorned corn, tanning cockatrice leather, building houses from giant bones.

Back at the start of the year, I began the 2016 Legacy Project on the Oldhammer forums. If you're not familiar with the concept, participants make, paint and donate a model to a pre-agreed theme. One of the participants then wins all of the models donated at the end of the project. We agreed that the theme for 2016 would be to create an imaginary classic Citadel range - C49 Chaos Villagers. We're nearing the end of the project, and I decided as organiser, it was high time I painted up my entry - the village piper.

I actually converted my figure back in January. He's based on the above piper from the Citadel Militia range, but his pipes are now somewhat more sinister being made from a child's corpse and bones (or a sleeping chaos baby if you prefer). I replaced his head with a squig and the right foot with one from a beastman. The resulting figure looked both sinister and a little bit comedic:

 

"That alien looks so naked!"

I was lucky enough to be offered a free figure through the 'Free Mini Friday' initiative over at the Oldhammer Facebook group. The principle is pretty straightforward - someone gives a figure to the first person to ask for it. That person then commits to paint it within a week, and to offer up another figure to someone else on the following Friday.

 

The figure kindly given to me was a rather terrifying vintage Grenadier Demon from the Fantasy Lords Demon set (thanks Matthew!):

 

Mxomycetes
Duke of the Mire

Mahzun Cenk, Cultist

Mahzun Cenk is an avid adherent to the gospel of pleasure as preached by the Cult of the Silken Veil. Formerly a bosun on a spice freighter, Cenk was drawn into the Cult during shore leave. His bloated neck and face are sure signs of participation in pleasure sessions at the Cult temple. 

Wyrm Emerges

But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes! -it writhes! -with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

 



- The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allen Poe