Undercover Nurglings

Klaxons blared. 

"Sector Five containment down--"

"Security breach in Third Quadrant--"

"Core cogitator shutting down, someone's rewired the--"

"Explosions in barracks Alpha--"

Magos Trismegistus span around, breath rasping from his augmentic lungs. +++How is this possible?+++ he demanded. The officers and skitarii around his looked panicked. +++This is supposed to be a secure installation!+++

The Magos span back to try and get a handle on the constant flow of catastrophic data from all areas. For a moment he paused - one of the skitarii had been shaking. Was it... laughing? He shook his head and tried to focus on the hellscape his life had suddenly become. 

This is one of those idle thoughts prompted by having some leftover bits. What would happen if....? In this case, what would happen if some nurglings found a way to pilot a skitarii round like a suit? The answer: something magical.

From a construction point of view, the coat had to be split open and be widened. I did this with plastic putty. I then had to trim off some the bits of the nurglings to make sure they fit - and end of a horn here, a pointy elbow there. Then a pole for them to operate the gun and we were all set.

I painted them the same as my existing Skitarii to allow for maximum infiltration fun. I imagine I can play these as a poxwalker in a nurgle kill team or as a skitarii in an admech kill team just for fun.

Kill Team Morbis

"They'd sealed off Orbital Sector Regulus a couple of months ago to try and stop the spread of the outbreak. Hansen's Pox was pretty virulent, and it was felt that the loss a couple of thousand souls was better than risking it engulfing the whole Starport or - worse - it spreading to Hive Karhonnen. 

"They listened to the cries for help and the banging on the pressure doors fade. After a few weeks, it seemed the infection had run its course. But then the banging started again. And where the those massive doors were struck, they bulged.

"It was on the sixth week that the doors were breached and the Sepsis burst through. Spraying bile and inchor with hideously grinning faces they lurched into the Sector Primus. The air was thick with miasma and screams. But worst of all was what thundered out of the smoke; massive figures clad in supperating armour, like space marines who had succumbed to the Pox, five monsters strode forth to bring their gift of disease to all."

-from The Fall of the Orbital Usher, M41.256

I've been having a serious loss of hobby mojo for reasons I couldn't really place, so I needed a quick palette cleanser. Luckily, Kill Team always provides an excuse to knocks something fun up. These are a simple build up of the miniatures that came with the Conquest magazine and a couple of Death Guard bits from the bits box at work.

The only conversion on these was this one plague marine where I build a new hand using some Dryad bits and some greenstuff tendrils. Everything else was built as is for speed.

Painting was my usual Nurgle recipe: slightly rotten flesh tones and then a variety of different coloured washes for tone. Here I added some bright green for that really pustulent look.

Very happy with these for a couple of days work, and feeling recharged and ready to paint some more stuff. Best of all, if all things go according to plan, Kill Team Morbis will be meeting the Church of the Devoured in a game next week!

Raiders of the Nightvault

In the far north of the Realm of Shadows, winds carry mists and flurries of snow through long ruined cities. The wind teases a mournful tune from the shattered remnants of a lost civilisation; but there are more than ruins here. There are relics of great power for those that have the will to use them.

The warriors of this ancient place wore armour which somehow bound itself to them; it granted strength and protection but allowed the wearer to move lightly, swift of foot. None alive today know how to craft these suits, nor even how the original wearers bonded with the metal. But the Drune Lords found a way.

The lowest of their tribes forswear their identities as only the strongest are allowed to claim a name. Until then they are known by the trophies of their enemies, skulls and bones and teeth driven into their own flesh, trophies bound to themselves with chains and hooks. Many an unwary traveller's final sight has been the blank unfeeling helm staring down upon them as their skin is flayed from their flesh....

The lowest of them are known as The Faceless.  

The strongest of the Faceless, the ones who have fed the Bone Orchards well with the remains of their enemies, are granted the chance to undetake the Ordeal of Iron. They are led to darkest groves where the Drune Lord strip them of their trophies and their clothes; and then they are presented with the armour. The armour has been in the fire for three days and glows a sooty red. It is placed onto the new warrior and, as the red hot armour sears and strips the flesh from his frame, they are both doused in water. When the hissing steam is gone, swallowed by the eternal mists, most of the warriors are dead. But some live, sealed screaming into the armour, bound to it, a steel sarcophagus seared into their flesh.

They are the Skald. And the Faceless and the Skald march to war.

They march to Shadespire.

Our local Warhammer store is having another painting contest for a small warband and I thought - well, why not? I took a selection of my AOS28 figures who were already part of a similar milieu and set about creating a base for them. I used the trick about photo frames I learnt while doing the T-34 and built it up with foam and polyfilla. I added some slate to match the bases of the miniatures.

And then I started to play.

I'd already played with the LIT pigment before but this seemed to be a perfect opportunity to use it subtly to underline the idea of shadeglass and to feed into the grungy high fantasy aestherticm I'm looking for in AOS28.

I'll keep you posted on the results, but it would be nice for some more AOS28 stuff to win, wouldn't it?

UPDATE: I WON!

Boo!

In the endless flat of the Grimnir Fens, travellers must be wary of the Deadlights. Ever keen to draw people off into the endless shadows of the depths, the Shades of those who drowned in the service of the Harrowed King glow with an unearthly light. 

This was another one painted for my son; the easy to build banshees are great little miniatures and he saw something I'd done with the glow in the dark pigment which led him to ask if I could make him a ghost that glowed. 

I could. 

It's relatively simple to use; you mix the pigment with a little bit of water and then add some matt medium to make your actual glow in the dark paint. I'm still experimenting with getting the consistency right; hence why the finish here is slightly gritty. To be fair, that grittiness works quite well when you're looking at the model in the dark. The nice thing is that the paint is pretty much unnoticeable in normal light, leaving the glow as a nice little surprise.

The Lost Foundry of Sycorax

The ill-fated expedition to Sycroax set off late in 841. It was expected that transit would take 58 days sidereal. Locating the lost Foundry was estimated to take another 15 days, effecting entry 2. Exploration and mapping 11 days and bringing the astropathic transmitters back on line a further 5 days. Contact was therefore expected within 90-100 days. 

After 120 days with no contact an emergency committee was convened.

After 150 days a servitor probe was dispatched to attempt to make contact with the Explorator Vessel Agamemnon.  

After 200 days the expedition was recorded as lost. 

****     ****

No, I'm not dead. I have been very busy with work so it was largely a choice between painting or keeping the blog up to date. So I do have a few bits and pieces to share. Here's the big one, though - I finished my Adeptus Mechanicus force. This is the first army I've ever completed for any Warhammer game so I'm quite pleased.

The last unit that needed finishing was my second unit of Skitarii. For the purposes of identification on the battlefield I gave them blue as an accent colour as opposed to the red of the other Unit. 

So what's up next? Well, I've entered my first ever painting competition. What was originally a very simple idea has become something much more complex - yes, I'm building another vignette. Two, as it happens. If you want to get an idea of what I have in mind for one of them have a look at a photograph I took a few years ago:

The Church of the Twice Born

Since the day you were born, your lives have not been your own. You have been used, and abused, and cast down amongst the filth by those above. You are not a person. You are a cog in the machine. You are production output. You are a target. You are nothing. Your hopes. Your dreams. Your lives. They are as dust.

But it does not have to be that way. You can rise up, on the wings of angels; rise up, born aloft by the love of the Allfather, the True Emperor. The God King who cares for you, who will cherish you and who will empower you. And when there are enough of us, we shall rise from the ashes and dirt and rust and bring vengance upon those who have despised us. Rise up, my brothers! Rise up, my sisters! Let your old lives end and be born anew into glory!

-Pater Dol, preaching in the Underhive

Since the old days I've always loved the idea of Genestealer cults. Necromunda is just the perfect excuse to make some. I've had the box of miniatures for ages as parts have been used for all my conversions over the last year, so the total cost of this little gang was £0.

In terms of painting, I wanted to capture the oily blue grey of the Harkonnen from Lynch's Dune as seen here modeled by Sting:

Creating this colour was a relatively complex process: a grey green base with a transparent blue wash; edge highlighting of sea grey and then a blue glaze over the whole before a black wash to filter everything back down to the darker end of the tonal scale.

I think the hassle was worth it, though, as the Sons of the Twice Born look pretty much exactly how I'd always imagined them.