Where Have I Been? SPACE!

I have been absent for a week, which is - I think - the longest gap in posting this year. Mostly this has been because of the heat, which has left me barely capable of thinking, let alone painting, but it is also because over the weekend I went to Death Unto Darkness Event 11: HERETEK where I spent a weekend as Sister Superior Humility of the Order of His Sanguine Tears. Many foes of the Emperor were slain, and much fun was had by all. Here are some photos:

 

Here I was having an argument about whether or not criminals were stupid; my position was that as crime is an offence against the God-Emperor, only stupid people would commit crime and thus criminals by definition are stupid

Here I was being exorcised after getting only a little bit possessed

This is a really good portrait of me - many kudos to the photographer!

Right at the start of the event, before I started to melt in the 27 degree heat and 60% humidity and discarded the wimple

 In terms of painting, I have some medieval civilians and an old Wargames Foundry Scrooge model on the way which I hope to get done tomorrow. On Saturday myself and my friends C, D, and H are going to have a day of wargaming - 4th Edition 40K! So expect many photos from that. 

A Man Out Of Space

Sort of, anyway. This is a Thirty Years' War puritan preacher from Warlord Games, repurposed as a preacher of Morr or similar. Some sort of Warhammer Fantasy sort anyway, perfect for games of Mordheim or Guards of Traitors Toll. 

My kingdom for a lightbox. The figure's head is at an odd angle, as he's looking at his book and declaiming from its text, but the quality of photos I can get with my current set up is variable at best...

I like the little golden button on the back of his jacket, and the red hat band. Both signify that despite his attire he isn't quite a puritan from our world... a man out of space, perhaps, if not time

Just the one mini today, and none yesterday, mainly because of the heat and the fact I'm getting ready for Death Unto Darkness event 11: Heretek, which is this weekend. My Sister of Battle, Sister Superior Humility, has had her armour cleaned and the paint touched up, her soft kit has been washed, and she is ready to go and purify the unbelievers with sword and bolt pistol in the name of the Divine Emperor. Much to the dismay of all the other non-Sisters players, I expect. It should be a huge lark and I am extremely looking forwards to it!

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 5
2025: 369

Rally The Horse

I spent a bit of time today working on the English Civil War commission, blocking out the horses and starting on the saddlecloths. I need to finish those, then do the leather, trousers, sashes, and details on the standard bearer and musician before whacking them all with Agrax Earthshade and then picking out the metal. I'm hoping to do this by the end of the weekend and then make headway on the other two units.

In other news, I also dug out the last remaining Necrons - five more Immortals and five Pariahs - undercoated them and started painting their metal basecoat. I need to do a bit of work on the barrels of the heavy gauss blasters carried by the Immortals, but I reckon I can get the Immortals and Pariahs finished up tomorrow.

 Also, not this coming weekend but the one after, I'm going to Death Unto Darkness, the 40K LARP, as my Sister of Battle Superior. A friend of mine, M, gave me a 3D-printed bolt pistol a while ago and I've given it some paint to match my chainsword, and a name, because you have to name your wargear.

I'm looking forwards to pointing this at people and yelling "SANCTIC BOLT" at them like the huge nerd I am.

 

Engage Tortoise Engines

 I'm probably not going to get this unit of Clanrats finished before Thursday, when P and I are going to go to the UK's largest festival LARP, Empire, for the first time (as crew). However I am making forwards progress and the Clan Jade Falcon star (now undercoated) is sitting on my painting desk reminding me that once the rats are done I can make a start on the funky stompy robots...

 

What I've done today is to apply all the gold and basecoat the wood areas, meaning now I "just" need to do fur, skin, and leatherwork (plus perhaps some detail on the champion) before I can Agrax them and begin the process of finishing them off.

Rebadging Continues Apace

Well, the LARP was great fun - it's always a hoot being my Sister of Battle. But now I'm back from SPAAAACE and so it's time to paint some Raptors! Or put the transfers on, and then do some varnishing...

Chaplain

Librarian

Techmarine

Advisors - these Marines are all attached to the 5th Company rather than integrally part of it

Aggressors - I actually like these bulky close assault troopers

Hellblaster squad - note the Mk VII helm on the squad leader

Hellblaster squad

I definitely need a better photography setup at some point reasonably soon.

Also, here's me as Sister Superior Humility, Order of His Sanguine Tears, seconded to Inquisitor Haslinger's retinue (Ordo Malleus), part of the Prosperitas Conclave:

I forgot the pins for my wimple, so it's not completely the full kit but it's most of it! Tomorrow, more Raptors. And who knows, I might even have a Mordheim battle report too!

For The White Horse!

 No minis painted today, for a variety of reasons. Principally I was recovering from a weekend spent running about like a headless chicken (but more organised) as a variety of enemies and non-player characters at the Gritlands LARP event, G3: From Radtown With Love. It took place at HQ Airsoft in Driffield, an amazing ex-MOD site that is now this set of overgrown and abandoned buildings used primarily for airsofting (the ground was covered in probably tens of millions of BBs). The atmospherics were impeccable - just right for the post-apocalypse UK.

As a member of the crew, I was - variously - many Meat Freaks (cannibal mutant), several Kenturions (a professional Roman-inspired military force hailing from Kent who were out to enforce the Pax Kent), various Security Bots, and a hardlight hologram Administrative Asssistant (now 3.4% more administratively efficient).

Here's a photo of me as a Security Bot guarding a MEGA(tm, r) factory and about to unleash LETHAL FORCE upon the player party:

YOU HAVE THREE SECONDS TO COMPLY

The system is completely ridiculous fun, with players forming groups such as the Littlest Chefs, the Pot Noodle Knights, the Neon Nuns, or being characters such as Raleigh (who is a slug mutant who rides a child's bicycle), Ace (a man who wears a suit and top hat decorated with hundreds of playing card aces), Bunny (a fighter wearing a pink and white frilly costume and wielding either a baseball bat with BUNNY written on it or a massive two handed maul), and so on and so forth. The various NPCs also included Viking Ravers:

They untz-untz-untzed all the way to ravehalla

As well as a whole host of other wild and wonderful things. Massive, massive fun all round. The Gritlands. Well worth a look if you like the idea of cross country pantomime / the sort of games you played as a kid but with a bigger budget and a little more organisation.

Birthday!

It's my birthday today! Another orbit around the sun, another year of nonsense ahead. Hopefully mostly good nonsense, that is.

I haven't done any painting or anything today (although I intended to) but I did watch some of the very fascinating lectures from the recent Warhammer Conference which are on YouTube here. I particularly enjoyed this one on medievalism, the Dominican Order, and the Sisters of Battle. 

Anyway, a quiet hobby day and a quiet day in general really - tomorrow I'll be home alone so might get some painting done. I only have five figures from the Frostgrave band to do and a week and a bit to do them in, so I'd best get cracking!

I shall leave you with some a portrait of me as Joanna Quen, my occultist from the LARP A Faint Hope Blossoms:

Art by Kristina Amuan

 (I particularly like the expression on the stuffed toy bunny!)

From Tabletop To Reality (Sort Of)

Some years ago now - in the dim and distant past of something like 2017 - I came across, through Facebook, a Warhammer 40K Live Action Roleplay (LARP) game called DEATH UNTO DARKNESS (DuD). I'd been aware of LARP for a while, and dabbled in a nearby university system a couple of times, but I was a serious novice. This, however, had a lot of hooks that grabbed me and didn't let go - the setting, the idea, and the fact I sort of knew a couple of people involved thanks to a Facebook group or two.

Hold on a minute though - what is LARP? Well, at its heart, it's children's games of make believe, but with a much better budget, more organisation, some rules, and (sometimes) foam swords. In essence, a bunch of people get together in costume at a location and spend a day or a weekend engaged in being someone else. It's like tabletop roleplaying to some degree, but crossed with amateur dramatics, improv theatre, and some running around yelling things like "REND" or "BLAM" at each other.

Anyway, back in 2018, with some thought and some planning, my first proper LARP character was created - Commissar Feliks Flowers! I and my partner P went along to DuD Event 5, I as a player and they as "crew". Crew are the people who provide all the non-player characters, from important plot characters to random mooks and big bad villains. The way DuD works is that typically you play a game and crew the next one, thus enabling the organisers to provide both an opposing force and a player base for everyone. Some people are what is known as perma-crew, and only crew, and some people will only play, and occasionally miss games due to missing out on raffle places (if you crew a game you get a guaranteed player place at the next event, you see).

Feliks Flowers, first iteration (2018)

I had an absolute blast of a time, running around and getting stuck in as best I could. I met some really amazing people and made some good friends and that was it - I was hooked. Flowers existed as a character for a couple of years and I attended a few player-run events as him, but E7, the next mainline event he appeared at, was his last - he was abandoned, near death, on a hostile planet overrun by Chaos forces at the foot of two Black Legion Chaos Space Marines. He survived, but I retired him as a character because by the time this happened it was 2022 and I had started to transition.

Senior Commissar Flowers, final iteration (2022), DuD Event 7

So Flowers passed into the annals of heroism and the surprisingly long list of my roleplaying characters who've died or been retired following various, um, mishaps. But I didn't leave DuD. Oh no. Instead, I got together with a few friends and we created a bunch of Sisters of Battle!

Sister Superior Humility, first iteration (2023), DuD Event 9

And thus was born Sister Superior Humility of the Order of His Sanguine Tears, directly seconded to the Inquisition. She was absolutely not there to do anything subtle, and neither were the others. We burned things we probably shouldn't've, executed people we definitely shouldn't've, and did it all with the total conviction of the faithful zealot. It was GREAT. I should note here that the armour was built for me by Sunrise Propworks and the amazing red robe was made by my friend and fellow Sister of Battle, H, who is an incredible tailor.

Humility is still alive (for now) and I'm looking forwards to taking her to a player event this November where we sit around in a room and take part in, essentially, a series of in-character lectures and briefings as though it was a work meeting. Which it is, except the employer is the Imperial Inquisition and your colleagues are a bunch of killers, murderers, witches, sadists, and computers. They're probably all heretics too, but they have permission from God, so it's ok. 

Just today I put together the base kit for another character in another game that I have been introduced to, GUARDSMEN: Siege of Tarris (no website yet, just a Facebook page). It's having its first run at the end of November, and I'm going to be playing Preacher Katyna Nurhayne, attached to the 404th Cadian Infantry Regiment:

Preacher Nurhayne, base layers (2024)

The base layer is a set of telo mimetico pattern Panzer crew overalls I got almost 20 years ago when I was doing re-enactment, the jackboots are the Finnish ones I picked up for Flowers (and the chainsword has been an intrinsic part of Flowers, Humility, and now Nurhayne), and the preacher's robe is Humility's. I'll be chucking on a load of other bits and pieces as well, of course, and borrowing a set of body armour from the system, so the final look will be much more detailed.

And I've played a variety of other characters and roles over the years since 2018, too, from rebels to spaceship crew and pirate leaders, and even an occultist who made a pact with a demon (this at a now-finished system called A Faint Hope Blossoms, based on the very good horror game Darkest Dungeon).

LARP is a fun and very silly hobby, and it runs the gamut from hideously expensive to under £100 an event (or free or extremely cheap, if you crew) and you will meet all sorts of people - like university lecturers, editors for major publishers, soldiers, artists, zoologists, environmental scientists, crofters, quiz setters, historians, engineers... who all have in common the desire to dress up and make their alter egos extremely unhappy indeed for a weekend.

It's well worth looking into and checking it out, particularly if you like roleplaying games already. I'll leave you with some more photos of me in silly clothes doing silly things throughout the years:

 

Lt Gabriel Rutger-Monforte, Chief of Security, HIMVS Saint Sanguinius - crewing, DuD E6 (2019)

"WARP SUNDERRRRR" - crewing as a warp ghost, DuD Event 6 (2019)

 

Joanna Quen, occultist, A Faint Hope Blossoms (Chislehurst Caves, 2022)

Lady Mildred Stanford, crewing, DuD Event 8 (2023)

A sad ghost servant, doomed to wander around spookily, DuD Event 8 (2023)

Crewing as a Skitarii (front right), DuD Event 10 (2024)

Action shot! Crewing as a Generic Sister Of Battle, DuD Event 10 (2024)

Oh, and finally, a piece of commissioned art of Feliks Flowers and his batman, the abhuman Dust-After-The-Firestorm:

One day I'll get that printed and hung on the wall.