The Legion of the Infernal Skull: Death Eternal

As long as I've been playing Warhammer, I've been creating backstories for my characters and updating the lore as significant events happen in games I've played or in the evolution of the rules.

It has been eight years since my previous army showcase: A Legacy of Death. During that time, I have added several new units and characters, and the Legion's story has progressed through the Age of Sigmar. Now, we have come full circle back to The Old World. The benefit of Vampire Counts is that the undead characters can essentially live forever, so the necromancer Nieman Kimmel and the von Koss vampires would have been around during the year 2276. In fact, as you will read below, my vampires had their origins during Walach's reign at Blood Keep in 1887!

This post is a collection of all the lore I've presented in the past, with updates to incorporate new units and characters, and carry their narrative beyond the End Times into the Age of Sigmar. 

 

The Legion of the Infernal Skull, A Legacy of Death

As long as I've been playing Warhammer, I've been writing backstories for my characters and updating the lore as significant events happen in games I've played or in the evolution of the rules. I've collected many of them in this blog over the past years. This post is a compilation of everything so far, with a few updates to reflect the current status of the army and to fill in some of the blanks and flesh out the remaining characters.

 

  

Marduk the Ghoul King and Wolkhar the Terrorgheist

"I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with me."

–Rorschach, Watchmen

When we last saw Marduk, he had gotten himself into quite a pickle. In the battle report with Steve's Empire (you can read about that here) a spell miscast resulted in a dimensional cascade, and Marduk was pulled into the Realm of Chaos...

As the magical energies swirled around him, Marduk felt as though a dark force reached into his chest and seized his lifeless heart. The world before him was rent open and a black void consumed his vision. Daemonic hands pulled him forward and his world became chaos.

Marduk was frozen for a moment as unimaginable horrors reeled before him like some perverse stage play. He could feel the flesh beginning to tear from his body as gibbering daemons with claws like fish hooks grabbed him. Then he felt the headsman's axe still firmly in his grip; Marduk was never without it.

Marduk Von Koss, Marduk the Wolf, Marduk the Ghoul King knew only slaughter. And pain. And hatred. This was not chaos, this was paradise. He would show these creatures the true meaning of terror, for eternity.

***

A voice echoed through Marduk's mind, beckoning him. Was it Nieman Kimmel? Would that narcissistic necromancer awaken the Ghoul King from the joyous bliss of his never ending murder-dream? No, it was something far more powerful, a presence not felt in the Old World for an age.

Marduk awoke in a field. He suspected it was the battlefield from which he had been taken. But where a city had once stood, now ruins decorated the landscape. On the horizon he could see jagged mountain peaks rising as others crumbled. The sky was awash with lightning. What had become of the world he had left behind?

Another voice, different from the one that had summoned him, sang out in the night. Marduk followed the shrill cry to its source atop a craggy peak. From the gloom of a cave, piercing red eyes glowed and a creature lunged out of the darkness. Marduk grappled with the fell beast and plunged his fangs into its neck, drinking what little blood the dessicated monster had to offer. He climbed atop the Terrorgheist, now bound to the Ghoul king's will. Wolkhar, the Night Bringer he called it. It's leathery wings bore them aloft, and where they went, death followed. 

 

 

The Terrorgheist model was pretty intimidating to paint, mainly because every space is alternating, flesh, bone, and muscle, requiring a lot of precision. I was able to paint the flesh with a mix of drybrushing and washes. The middle step was the most time-consuming because I needed to paint all of the bones without messing up the flesh. With all of that out of the way, the muscle and blood went the quickest. I could afford to be a little messy with the bloody areas, also I was in the home stretch and having fun with the splattering technique.

It's been a long ride to get this model finished, so I present the Terrorgheist Wolkhar!

 

As I discussed in the magnetizing tutorial (linked below), the wings come off for transportation. The tail is magnetized as well, removable so it doesn't protrude up higher then the monster's back.

 

 

The entire beast fits in a 7" x 7" square, about three inches high. I still need to cut the foam for his tray.

 

 

Since the Terrorgheist has the option of being fielded as a separate monster or as a mount for a character, I had added a cutout on the corner of his base. I built Marduk the Ghoul King to be fielded on foot, and the slot in the base allows him to "ride" the Terrorgheist into battle by swapping out the tombstone.

 

 

If you want a look at how I magnetized the wings and modeled the base, check out these previous blog entries below:

'Til next time! 

 

Transporting the Untransportable– A tutorial on how to magnetize the Terrorgheist's wings.

Modeling the Terrorgheist's Base– A step by step journal of how I built the model's scenic base.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Marduk the Ghoul King

I've been working on this guy on and off for the past few weeks, but at long last, the newest version Marduk is finished. 

I plan to field this model as a 'Strigoi Ghoul King' even though the Strigoi and Blood Dragon are separate vampiric bloodlines. Marduk's ferocity and feral nature has completely overtaken the martial discipline of his Blood Dragon order, and he is more at home with the creatures of the night– ghouls, dire wolves, bats.

Here's a little insight into the modeling process:

I wanted Marduk standing atop a shredded corpse, drenched in blood releasing a primal scream. The body on the base is clipped from the charnel pile on the Corpse Cart. I modeled the ground texture with Brown Stuff modeling putty, and added a few metal skulls to prop up the torso and add some detail.

The entrails and torn flesh were then sculpted. In this image, the sculpting is finished and the base has been sprayed with black primer. The base and figure were painted separately so I could get at all of the details.

Marduk himself is built from the Ghoul King that comes with the Terrorgheist kit. I removed the "dog legs" and replaced them with metal feet from a classic GW ghoul. The legs are pinned in place and the shins, sculpted with putty.

In this shot you can see the model closest to its original state, the dog legs, arms with long taloned fingers, the metal ghoul that marduk's feet came from, and the corpse pile.

In this pose, he's rearing up; perfect for the primal scream.

Unfortunately, the heaping wolf cloak I was planning to add wouldn't sit on his back with him leaning that far back. I cut the model at the chest and angled him forward. Marduk also needed to carry his trademark headsman's axe, so I had to swap out his hands for ones that looked like they could actually hold a weapon. These came from the Crypt Ghast in the plastic ghoul kit. All the detail at the joins was resculpted, as was the axe handle. The axe head was cut from Grimgore Ironhide's axe, heavily trimmed and reshaped.

That plastic end cap on the axe handle came from the handle of a plastic skeleton mace.

The final sculpting step was to add the cloak. With the exception of the wolf feet, which came from the old Space Wolves accessory sprue, it's all putty. To accommodate the cloak, those spines on the back of Marduk's arms had to go as well.

I'll close out with a couple of detail shots. My only regret was not photographing the painted base before I glued Marduk to it. But, hey, I was on a roll!

'Til next time!

Vampire Counts

My plan for February was mostly successful. I finished some models for both of my Warmachine armies. I didn't get to the Varghulf, but he's on my workstation ready to go, and I still need to paint the Wight Kings.

I've recently taken on some commission work, so finishing that is going to take my focus for the next couple of weeks. In the mean time, I've added a few more images to the Vampire Counts gallery, and this week I'll discuss my vampire conversions:

The Von Koss Vampires

These days the Vampire Counts rules are more relaxed, allowing players to mix and match their vampires' special abilities, but when the army was initially released, vampires were required to adhere to one of several bloodline themes, and their in-game rules reflected the traits of that particular order, be it martial prowess, magical affinity, courtly guile, or bestial fury.

Blood Dragon vampires excel in combat, and for a while they were the only vampires that had access to generic armor. In an army where the death of the general spells certain doom, survivability is key. (They also had some of the better looking models in the range!)

One of the things I love about Warhammer is the richness of the world. Yet while its history is so storied, things are left open allowing one to build their own castles in GW's sandbox. When creating my army's story, I drew on the established lore: In the lands of the Empire, the vampire Walach von Harken overthrew the Knightly Order of the Blood Dragons. These once noble Imperial knights were transformed into vampires and wights, and Walach reigned secretly over the undead Order for decades, which is where my story begins.

Seth Von Koss

Seth von Koss was a man of the empire, a knight of the Order of the Blood Dragon. Once transformed into a servant of darkness, he fought at Walach's side for years. When the horrible truth about the Blood Dragons was discovered and the Empire's Templar Knights finally razed the Blood Keep, Seth was among the many to escape into the surrounding countryside. Although the Order had fallen, it was not extinguished, and Seth remains one of many surviving vampires who still fight to this day in the name of the Blood Dragon.

Seth's model uses Archaon, Lord of the End Times as its core. The mounted version was the first one I had assembled and the zombie dragon mount  (see it in the gallery)  and foot version came later.

The spiky bits and chaos star were removed from the steed and I used putty to achieve the fiery mane and tail. Seth's head is from the old Blood Dragon on Winged Nightmare, and his sword is modeled from Mephiston's force sword (40K, Blood Angels) with the bat-crossguard of Manfred von Carstein's weapon. The shield is a Chaos Knight's shield with the iconography filed away, decorated with a skeleton shield icon and Warmaster bat wings. Due to the size of the massive steed and all that cape, I had to mount him atop a scenic base to get him to fit in a unit of black knights.

For the zombie dragon mount I cut the legs away from Archaeon's horse and combined them with Malekith's saddle and a bit of sculpting to fit him atop the dragon.

The foot version of Seth von Koss uses the 2004 Games Day exclusive Archaeon. The only real challenge there was fitting him on a 20mm base. I had to cut away the stones and resculpt the feet. I've also made two attendant skeletons to use as placeholders for the models I need to remove when fitting him in a unit.

Dimitri Von Koss

When Seth von Koss fled the ruins of Blood Keep, he sought out his younger brother Dimitri. The two had not seen each other in decades, and truth be told, Dimitri believed his brother to be long dead, killed in service to the Empire. So when Seth showed up at Dimitri's door it was at first a joyous reunion. But Seth could not hide what he was for long and, although horrified, Dimitri could not turn his brother away. This was his undoing, and eventually Seth cursed his brother with vampirism.

To build Dimitri I used the bat-winged vampire as the core model. The legs, basing and weapon are all stock. The armored breastplate is from the new plastic skeleton regiment with its damaged parts resculpted and more putty work to hide the joins. The head came from an old Blood Dragon Vampire and the wings on the helmet belonged to the bat-wing vampire's familiar. The upper portion of Dimitri's raised arm is metal, and the hand was taken from a Corpse Cart zombie with extra armor sculpted on top.

Here's a look at my original version of Dimitri. The figure includes parts from the old Krell model and the Red Duke.

Marduk "The Wolf" Von Koss

Marduk is the cousin of Dimitri and Seth von Koss. Whereas Seth gained his vampirism directly from the blood of Harkon, Marduk was turned by Dimitri. Being so many generations removed from the source bloodline, the vampirism has had a maddening effect. Marduk has become a brutal, nearly feral killer, barely able to be controlled by his brothers.

Marduk's core model is an ancient metal skeleton (Skeleton Warrior with Axe #6, to be precise). His head is from a metal ghoul, and the wolf pelt was created using parts cut from the Space Wolf accessory sprue and modeling putty to fill out the fur.

My first version of Marduk was mounted, and I would commonly run him in a unit of dire wolves, hence his name. This old model uses a plastic skeleton steed with Empire horse barding fit overtop. The rider is based on the Red Duke, equipped with a double-handed axe and shield.

Von Koss and The Legion of the Infernal Skull

Seth worked to restore his former knightly regiments, and among the Hellfire Knights are some of the original wights that had served him during the days of Walach's reign. Under Seth's tutelage, Dimitri's fighting prowess was honed, and the two brought slaughter upon the lands of the Empire.

As their army grew they were drawn to the necromancer Nieman Kimmel and his legion of undeath. They found themselves slaves to Kimmel's power and served him for years in the Legion of the Infernal Skull. But the necromancer's dark magic eventually failed, allowing Seth the opportunity to wrest control for himself, and now the von Koss vampires lead the mighty undead warhost.

These characters form the core persona of my army, and I rarely use any of the printed special characters, favoring my own creations over the pre-made ones.

Dimitri and Marduk's older models have been retired from the game table. Seth is the first character to get multiple models allowing me to field him with different options, but I also have mounted versions of one of my necromancers and the wight king battle standard bearer in the works. I'll talk about those once they're finished, but for now it's back to my workstation.

'Til next time!