January, month of all hopes and promesses!
For this first month, I decided to go simple, initially. But why keep a safe path when you can venture in the wild and treacherous fields of miniature hobbying!? The plan was sample, start with a first unit of 8 bloodletters to confirm my base color scheme for my new daemonic legion, and paint a first spidery spawn to break the monotony of repeat painting. So right after new years eve, I was franticly unpainting and cleaning old lead… and assembling flesh hounds… and jumped to stripping all chosen warriors and monsters in the project… and remembered I had an offering to produce and ship… and ended up with 2 weeks left like a real planification champion!
8 Bloodletters unit - 600pts
1 Chaos spawn - 100pts
As for the spawns... I began with the one that sparked the idea of this regiment of spidery creatures, straight out from a single line of stats in the random list of Tzeetch champions of the Realm of Chaos - Lost and the Damned;
Tzeentch_095 --- Beastman --- Tentacles - all arms, rotting flesh, crossbreed with giant spider, manic fighter, evil eye, FP4
Sculpting this guy was so much fun! I let you guess the origin of the 4 kits involved 😉
Obviously, I will play him as en unaligned chaos creature, whether a champion or a simple spawn, which really drove my color choice in avoiding blue and pink, the 2 main colors of my Tzeentch deamons... Yet the shape of his horns reveal his true nature 😈
Here is the tale of this creature, as described by its former Lord many years ago;
''The thing
was called Garan’hga and whatever that creature once was, troops now call it “The Tamer”. As my battalion progressed
through badlands and dead forests, I gave order to seize any creature of form
or size startling enough to break any of the soft southlanders. Three herds
were formed over a month of progression. I could already foresee the handlers
releasing a wave of flesh, fur, claws and teeth in front of my men. Breaking
and disrupting ranks of shiny halberdier, those expendable beasts leaving the
enemy disorganised and weak for my warriors to crush.
The Hand of
the general visited my camps two days before the final march to reach the front
line. Some fortified city was causing the complete army to stop progression. We
could see columns of smoke from our position, hear the sound of their artillery
and the flashes of magic bolts. My men were immersed in delirious toughs of
the massacres and glories to come. I gave order to form the ranks to focus the
troops and show The Hand the quality of the fighters under my command. It is
only then that I first felt the presence of Garan’hga. His only eye was looking
straight throught me, filled with sheer anger and hatred, and for a split second I
could see this eye right in front of me.
What began
as a distant clamor within the ranks rapidly became the distinct cheers of my
men watching Garan’hga freeing himself of its chains and attacking its handlers. What they thought a clumsy mindless beast proved to be swift, deadly
and particularly wise. It leaped several yards to reach the closest man, the
one who had used the whip too many times. The spidery legs pierced through his
body in several places under the impact and even before the body hit the
ground, Garan’hga had jumped sideways to the other beast master. Nailing him to
the ground, it plunged its dart through the armor of the petrified warrior,
releasing a magical plague into his body.
As we all watched the warrior convulse, violently morph and inflate into a hideous spawn, Garan’hga looked back at me. He made me see through its yellow eye its place as the leader of the beasts, “the tamer” of any creature who would not follow my command. Although what he did not show me, was his renown to come, and my place by his side as favoured pet since he gave me a taste of his venom.''
...And before I forget, I present to you my tribute to this year Overlords, the emissary of my Khorne deamonic legion, a grotesque metamorph deamon, cursing aggressively at people and collecting bribes from the ones that think they can bargain with Khorne!