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2022/09/13 14:46:47
Subject: The Bringers of Wonder (currently Peace Through Superior Firepower)
Daia T'Nara wrote: when I got the two metal Obliterators my plan was to go all-metal on the armour of this one, and then go all-flesh on the gen 1, with the 'armour' completely made out of mutated bone and flesh just to get as far as possible away from the 'made out of scrap girders' look the sculpt has.
Finally finished painting her, a little over 21 years since sneaking her into the backstory for Eidolon, Sylelle in person (but behind a spoiler, because - and I acknowledge this is becoming a bit of a running theme with this army, but it's Slaanesh after all - boobies):
Spoiler:
Actually the miniature's supposed to be a dryad, but I'm pretending all that stuff which I assume was originally supposed to be bark-type tree decoration is just magic swirling around her - she's tall already (a marine comes up to about sternum height - she's a daemon princess, but also a raging narcissist, so her daemonic form is just her human form, but larger) but since she's the leader I decided to build up the base a bit and stuck on various fallen foes (or just people who were in her way when she was in a mood) - there's bits of some daemonettes (maybe belonging to other warbands, maybe hers, who knows), part of a banner pole, one of the arms I replaced with claws from the Lelith Hesperax mini (painted as the Kabal of the Black Heart, because I never liked them anyway), and hidden behind that, Abaddon's head, since he's clearly not using it (I mean who takes thirteen attempts to actually get a crusade past the first hurdle? Seriously).
So who is she, apart from friendly with Eidolon (I feel like the Inquisition's reading too much into that, it was more just a fling until she got bored of him and tore him to pieces for fun - but he's fine, he can never die)? Well she started out heiress to the hereditary governorship of Helsvault, a fairly typical hiveworld, and aside from the usual disregard for the working classes you get from aristocracy didn't really tend towards evil, but she did like to disappear for hours on end into the family's library, which was a disorganised mess of literature taken as trophies from other noble houses back when her ancestors were rising to power centuries ago and promptly shelved without anyone bothering to read them, which is presumably why nobody noticed some treatises on chaos worship had snuck in there. Which probably would've wound up causing some kind of minor scandal of her sneaking out after dark to some seedy club or other, except that fate (or possibly Tzeentch, who's been known to do Slaanesh a favour from time to time) intervened, in the form of a would-be summoner kidnapping her because he needed someone of noble birth to sacrifice to the dark gods himself. That went... kind of sideways for him, in that after summoning an actual daemon, Syl's mind snapped - as you do when you're just a regular mortal coming face to face with a daemon without any kind of psychic training - but due to her proclivities, her insanity took the form of suicidal enthusiasm, and the daemon decided she was much more fun that the loser who actually summoned it, who all in all was just some nonentity driven by petty spite. She played the victim long enough to be 'rescued' by her father and the household guard, murdered him, made it look like he'd been killed by her kidnapper, took advantage of the 'sympathy' of rival houses who actually wanted to adopt her just to secure their claim to the governorship, did some more murders, then decided she was thinking too small-scale, and sabotaged the air filters in the planet's hives to produce a cocktail of stimulants, hallucinogens, and aphrodisiacs that caused a few hundred billion people to slaughter each other. She got bored of that after about fifteen minutes, rounded up some likely followers from anyone who looked like they were enjoying themselves more than just because the drugs were forcing them to, stole a ship, and sailed off into the Eye of Terror to see what happened, and after various atrocities she thought of as 'adventures' wound up ruling Daemonworld Eden, which is basically what you'd get if you opened the Lament Configuration inside Disneyland. She's devoted to Slaanesh, but is the kind of true believer who'll argue she knows the will of Slaanesh best even when the person she's arguing with is Slaanesh - or at least, she's convinced she's talking to Slaanesh, and it's not healthy to contradict her. Regardless, one can only assume Slaanesh approves - or at least, is entertained - since she's an apparently bottomless font of chaos sorcery, and at some point became a daemon princess, although she's vague on exactly when that happened since she never considered herself bound by the limitations of her mortal body anyway and just trusted the ruinous powers to see her through whatever suicidal excesses she was throwing herself into this week. If she'd ever stay focused she'd be a serious threat, but her plans invariably only last as long as it takes for her to get distracted by the next shiny thing she notices, and she attacks other chaos warbands as much as Imperial worlds - she doesn't really draw a distinction between forces of chaos and enemies of chaos, since she doesn't really grasp that other people don't think like she does, and therefore may not want her to horrifically slaughter them, if they're lucky enough to actually be allowed to die at some point - the closest she comes to reality in that sense is noticing that some of her victims occasionally beg for the sweet release of death, but she puts that down to them 'being contrary', and actually considers it one of her nobler qualities that she's too benevolent to be mad at them for trying to interrupt her fun.
I didn't really have a plan when I got the Magus, I just picked her up because I figured I'd think of something to do with a haughty lady doing a power walk, but then I remembered chaos 'stealers are a thing, right? or used to be at one stage anyway, and I'm totally going to 'canon is whatever I hazily remember it being', so here we are. As usual, the lore turned up on its own while I was painting (and doing a little filing to remove the material creases on the middle section of her dress, because when you sign up with Slaanesh there are fashion rules to follow) - so what happened was even Tyranid genetics aren't perfect, so while Kariad here was born with the usual absolute loyalty to the cult, it didn't actually connect to the rest of her psyche, and while the Patriarch and other Magus's telepathic senses told them she was as committed to the cause as she should've been, she was developing a shrewd idea of what was on the horizon for their planet and decided a world about to be eaten by Tyranids wasn't anywhere she needed to hang around. She's nominally aligned with Sylelle just because it's a fair bet the hive isn't going anywhere near the Eye of Terror for the moment, and whereas most other chaos warlords would have an issue with her starting a brood of her own within their warbands, Syl thinks it's adorable, and has been coaching her so she can use sorcery to forcibly impregnate victims with horrific monster embryos just like a purestrain, but doing it for fun rather than genetic imperative. This isn't wonderful for anyone else in the warband, but they already have to put up with so many capricious threats to their lives and sanity, what's one more? That's her father's skull she carries around, just because you're abandoning your family and brood to save your own skin doesn't mean you don't miss them - although it'd be a reach to assume he wasn't still using his skull when she decided to take it with her, so I wouldn't necessarily call her sentimental in the conventional sense.
For completeness's sake, the Bringers' entry in this month's painting contest, the Edenborn (spoilered because, well, you know the deal by now, right?):
Spoiler:
Like I said in the contest thread, far from my neatest work - they're small (they'd be just regular humans) and I'm not a very good painter, but these ones specifically are meant to be kind of messy and feral, so I'm not that fussed; to the eye rather than a zoomed in photo, I think they're fine. In other news my old habit of getting distracted by lore is starting to crop up again, so I'll turn it over to Scrivener Cotton to describe what these gals actually are (although again in a spoiler tag, because I don't want to clutter up a gallery thread with text).
Spoiler:
= Vox Log Commences =
Report by Scrivener Cotton concerning the testimony of heretic Sister (excommunicated) Innocentia, entry twenty-seven, directed to the attention of authorised superiors among your Lordships et cetera et cetera...
As if this wretched madwoman’s rantings would ever yield anything of strategic value, save for squandering the labour of an honest scribe being punished for pointing out the factual errors in Inquisitor Gilt’s address to-
Vox, pause. Delete previous sentence.
= Previous sentence obscured from viewer and flagged for review by Purity Assessor =
Resume.
Our guest was something approaching lucid for moments during today’s session, in between the usual incoherent babblings and... lewd suggestions she seems unable to open her blasphemous mouth without uttering. Setting these useless ramblings aside, she spoke of a particular faction, or perhaps ‘tribe’ would be the better word, in her mistress’s retinue known as the Edenborn - that is to say, the benighted issue of the fornications her followers engage in whenever they return to the thrice-damned daemonworld they make their home. As I’m sure our Ordo Malleus colleagues would be unsurprised to learn, these infants are born irretrievably damned and insane, with apparently only the limits of their newborn frames preventing them from immediately slaughtering the mothers that carried them. Monstrous of thought beyond any measure of their parents to care for them, should they even think to try, the children are gathered up by the lesser daemons that infest Eden and taken to clans of their kind who dwell in the wilderness regions, where some form of vile entities our guest would name only as ‘Mothers’ see to their survival and imprint some form of stability on their murderous psyches. Thus cared for until they can stand and hunt, they roam the wilds in search of prey, whether it be the warped beasts that dwell on such worlds, or the lesser mortal servants of Eden’s mistress should they wander too close to their territories. Our guest even alluded to lesser daemons of the so-called ‘daemonette’ breed willingly calling down the Edenborn’s hunts upon themselves, in effect sacrificing themselves to these vile tribes, who wear their skin and bones as trophies.
Pointless as this account may be save for troubling the sleep of lesser men, it may perhaps clear up one point of curiosity noted by those who have studied the fallen of Eden’s warbands in the wake of their periodic forays into Imperial space. Your Lordships will recall autopsies noting certain cultists seeming to have been eviscerated in addition to whatever wounds felled them; these, it seems, maybe be those Edenborn who survive to maturity, if any stock is to be put in our guest’s account. When a warband is massing, it would seem, those members of the tribe grown to adulthood leave their hunting-grounds and present themselves to the carnivals described in my earlier report where raids against the Imperium are launched. Despite being savage in appearance and behaviour beyond even the vile heretics who comprise Eden’s military might, the Edenborn are evidently regarded with something akin to mystic awe, and afforded places among the warband as it journeys to the worlds of men. Prior to engaging in battle they engage in rituals the account of which, I confess, churned even my stomach to hear, but which I must record as our guest has witnessed them first-hand. Singing their devotion to the ruinous powers amid the orgiastic excesses typical to their kind, they cut themselves open and tear out their vitals, in what appears to be an effort to purge themselves of the last withered traces of their humanity, committing their lives to the Prince of Chaos to sustain should it please her. While many die during these black ceremonies, a handful - those our guest describes as the ‘purest’ - are indeed animated by foul sorcery, and charge into battle amid the rabble of cultists, to be cut down by the righteous fury of the servants of the Emperor.
Saints only know what the point of this witchcraft-fuelled barbarism may be; the more I listen to our guest’s testimony, in those moments when she deigns to offer words of any meaning at all, the more convinced I am of the futility of this exercise. Nonetheless, in the hope that my penance may be found sufficient, I submit this report to your Lordships, along with the usual request for termination of the heretic.
I recently realised I'd forgotten to apply the cheap iridescent medium I got from Officeworks to the last few miniatures I finished - I'm always doing that - and since it meant getting them back on the table I snapped off a group photo while they were convenient:
From left to right, we start with a Possessed, made weirder by Genestealer hands for feet, and a Steed neck left over from that one I turned into a daemonette centaur - I tried using a purple ink wash instead of blue as the base for the armour, to carry through the pink/purple hue of the skin and make it look like the armour was itself becoming flesh, but turns out the drybrushing I do after the ink covers purple a lot better than blue, so all it wound up doing was make his armour look a lot cleaner white than the smoky white the others have for armour; never mind. Next up, a Sister with a bit of a naughty tentacle thing, since I realised it's really easy to make tentacles with milliput - not so easy to attach them, one of them fell off while I was painting. In the centre, Sister Josefa, this month's contest entry - I didn't bother taking new contest photos, there's not much armour showing anyway, the shine's not a huge difference, and it's the coat that's the big deal. Behind her, just a bog-standard monopose from, I think, 4th edition, around about then? Just more of my effort to have something from every era of chaos. And on the far left, the marine from Warhammer Imperium issue one, I finally did something with him - I can assure you that's a cultist chained to his shield, she's genuinely thrilled to be there, so don't worry (I've got this vague idea that it'd count as a magic item, and be invulnerable so long as she remains sufficiently 'happy', and doesn't panic at the incoming fire and lose her mojo) - incidentally it's important that you know how sorely I was tempted to paint her black with white hair a la Halle Berry in X-Men so it'd be a literal Storm Shield (I didn't mainly because I'm not very good at darker skin tones yet, and also I feel like puns are more a Nurgle thing with their jolly outlook). I couldn't think of a way to get rid of the wings on his chest that'd look good, so I decided to roll with it and paint it as if it's his original Emperor's Children chestplate, which he still wears in mockery of the Imperium (which doesn't make sense since he wouldn't have been wearing Primaris armour back in the Heresy, but whatever). Probably going to paint something on that little chest shield, but I haven't thought of what yet, and didn't want to start painting without a solid idea, so I'm just leaving it alone for now.
Daia T'Nara wrote: I recently realised I'd forgotten to apply the cheap iridescent medium I got from Officeworks to the last few miniatures I finished - I'm always doing that - and since it meant getting them back on the table I snapped off a group photo while they were convenient:
From left to right, we start with a Possessed, made weirder by Genestealer hands for feet, and a Steed neck left over from that one I turned into a daemonette centaur - I tried using a purple ink wash instead of blue as the base for the armour, to carry through the pink/purple hue of the skin and make it look like the armour was itself becoming flesh, but turns out the drybrushing I do after the ink covers purple a lot better than blue, so all it wound up doing was make his armour look a lot cleaner white than the smoky white the others have for armour; never mind. Next up, a Sister with a bit of a naughty tentacle thing, since I realised it's really easy to make tentacles with milliput - not so easy to attach them, one of them fell off while I was painting. In the centre, Sister Josefa, this month's contest entry - I didn't bother taking new contest photos, there's not much armour showing anyway, the shine's not a huge difference, and it's the coat that's the big deal. Behind her, just a bog-standard monopose from, I think, 4th edition, around about then? Just more of my effort to have something from every era of chaos. And on the far left, the marine from Warhammer Imperium issue one, I finally did something with him - I can assure you that's a cultist chained to his shield, she's genuinely thrilled to be there, so don't worry (I've got this vague idea that it'd count as a magic item, and be invulnerable so long as she remains sufficiently 'happy', and doesn't panic at the incoming fire and lose her mojo) - incidentally it's important that you know how sorely I was tempted to paint her black with white hair a la Halle Berry in X-Men so it'd be a literal Storm Shield (I didn't mainly because I'm not very good at darker skin tones yet, and also I feel like puns are more a Nurgle thing with their jolly outlook). I couldn't think of a way to get rid of the wings on his chest that'd look good, so I decided to roll with it and paint it as if it's his original Emperor's Children chestplate, which he still wears in mockery of the Imperium (which doesn't make sense since he wouldn't have been wearing Primaris armour back in the Heresy, but whatever). Probably going to paint something on that little chest shield, but I haven't thought of what yet, and didn't want to start painting without a solid idea, so I'm just leaving it alone for now.
fantastic
was censored by the ministry of truth
2022/12/19 02:20:37
Subject: Re:The Bringers of Wonder (currently Doomrider)
This month's contest entry, a conversion I've had in mind for a while (and had a box of bikers on the pile waiting for), and the 'Open' category seemed as good a time as any (although now I bet 'Speed' will come up as a theme next year), Doomrider:
I never got the original - never had a chaos warband back then - but I remember him being announced in White Dwarf and, well, he's not GW's best work... But nostalgia's a powerful thing, so here we are. The parts list is the basic chaos bike (slightly surprised to look up pics of the old guy and realise the bike hasn't changed in all that time) and I had it in mind to use a bunch of parts from the Venomcrawler that I'll never build, but ended up favouring the long scythe things from the Sigmar Slaanesh chariot for the front wheel, then the spiky wheel itself, and ended up just using chariot parts (and heads and arms from its crew) all over, which I'm pretty happy with - while the crawler parts would've matched the existing bike with all the chaos spiky panel trim, the chariot parts make it look properly daemonic, which I feel is a much more characterful outcome. Despite that I tried to stick to the idea of the original if not the look, so there's the twin meltaguns (donated by the Sororitas box) with the armour tilted almost flat and two blades either side of them, and a skull with a big tongue on it (the tongue's one of the only Venomcrawlers part I ended up using), and the holster for the plasma pistol stuck under the handlebars on the left, although he's wielding the pistol now instead of the sword (the sword's stowed on the right side - made from a Possessed arm grafted to a leftover horn as the handle, much more daemonsword-looking than the mundane original was), plus there's a chaos bolt pistol also stowed on the right, because he was supposed to have one according to his wargear list.
Doomy himself is mainly Possessed parts - the horned head matched the horns he originally had, although he doesn't have his tongue out, but that's too small a detail for me to be confident converting. The hair is from one of the chariot's daemonettes, with the head cut into at the back to make room for it to mount there - that daemonette had her head and hair as separate parts, and the head I filed down the back and stuck on his right shoulder pad as decoration, since I didn't have anything that'd approximate the flame motif on the original's right shoulder anyway; the left shoulder's a collection of skulls, which is close to what he used to have. The legs are from a Raptor, with the right hip cut to give him the pose of leaning out of his seat to fire his pistol (which is from the Warhammer Imperium issue 1 marine, I wanted a really chunky pistol for him - meaning it's way thicker than the holster, but aren't they always on marine miniatures), and with the backpack I cut off the bottom of it to look like the original's. Pretty happy with how the paint turned out on his armour - I don't know how they got the original effect, but on this he's started with volupous pink contrast paint, then a drybrush of blue, then a purple ink wash, then pink highlight, and a final light blue highlight - more colourful than the old Doomrider, but I feel like Slaaneshis should be colourful, and it echoes the original colour scheme. The gold's the same I use for my regular troops - I figure maybe when you summon a daemon it winds up imprinted with some of your style - and his daemonette biker gal (also something I wanted to do for the conversion from the start) is the purple contrast/gold armour colour scheme I always use, to help him fit into the army overall. She's got Escher arms, the claw hand from one of those deathmaiden things - no real reason, I just like mixing the daemonettes up with human parts.
I did intend to do a more elaborate base (and had it roughly constructed) with an Ork wartrakk (from my old Gorkamorka mob) that'd smashed headlong onto one of those tilted girder tank barricades, and Doomy would've been riding up the barricade over top of it (to fit with his 'leaping' ability) but that seemed like a whole separate miniature's worth of work, so in the end I put it aside. The existing base is from the Venomcrawler, one of the ruin parts that one of the legs plugs into - I cut off the end of the matching leg and filed it flat, then drilled a hole into the bike's back wheel, so it's pegged in place at both ends and seems reasonably stable, despite the whole miniature resting on that one little contact point. Thank the dark gods these aren't metal anymore. It seemed a bit sparse though, so I cut a few spikes off Terminator trophy racks, including the marine helmet, which is supposed to be a White Scar (not that you can really tell, since it's not one of the ones with extra decoration on his face) - I decided he managed to escape from the White Scars, despite just being a disembodied head, by managing to knock one of his own teeth out, then chewing it into the rough shape of a D6, which he used to roll a 1 and vanish.
Wasn't sure initially what to do with the screen on the handlebars, since what does a daemon need with a monitor, but then the idea popped into my head at random to have him watching porn mid-battle, so that's my effort at the pornhub start-of-video logo.
This is still the original volupous pink contrast coat on the pistol - I was going to paint it after drybrushing on the white and pale green for the plasma light, but that drybrushing actually did a decent (I think) effect at a glow, so I left the front of the gun as-is with just a few metallic details; perfectly normal for a Slaaneshi to have a hot pink gun after all.
You don't get to be a daemon prince of Slaanesh if that's not a priority
Some more odds and ends - no specific theme, just minis I've got finished in between contest entries, I've replaced my old desk lamp with a couple of LED lights and I'm playing with my photo settings, so figured I may as well get a group shot of anyone who hasn't been here before.
Starting from the left, and coincidentally the most recent finished (I worked on him any time I'd just put a colour on Doomrider and wanted to let it settle in, but was still in a painting mood), another of Kariad's little brood - a v1 plastic Goliath (same one who donated his arm to the stress relief servitor, I think), with a plastic genestealer claw arm (I sliced the hand arm off, I wanted his mutation to be fairly minor, so no whole extra arm). Since he's just a minor cultist, and part-timing with Kari as well as Slaanesh, I went with some dark colours on his pants and harness, rather than pastels - still a pink codpiece though, there are rules to fashion after all. Next, a recreation of an old metal chaos renegade on steed I used to have way back in the day - the poor steed's struggling a bit under the scaled-up size of today's chaos marines, but I'm sure they let steeds into the massage parlours on Daemonworld Eden, he'll be fine. No matter how much filing I did to the insides of the legs and the original saddle there was no way he was going to fully fit, so I used the backplate of one of the chaos backpacks with separate backs painted brown to look like the front of a saddle to fake looking like the saddle's actually designed for him. The shoulder pad icon and kneepad flag together mean 'genderqueer pansexual', which I feel goes without saying for Slaaneshi troops but that's no reason not to be proud of it. In the centre, not quite what most folks mean by 'Slaaneshi catgirl' but someone'll be into it anyway, just a basic marine with a tiger head, from a really cheap animal toy - the expression on the tiger face was really bland to the point of looking almost meek, so I splashed some Fleshtearer red all over her front to suggest she's been snacking on downed enemies mid-battle, to give her a bit of character. As usual I went leafing through books from the dawn of 40k to pick a chapter for the trophy helmet, in this case the Sons of Medusa - they seem to all have white helmets nowadays, but back then it was green with a white vee down the centre. Next up, one of those Escher dog herders or whatever they are - the pose holding up a leash or whatever it is reminded me of the Predator flourishing somebody's skull, and since I still had the Necron boss from Warhammer Imperium issue one lying around, he got torn open and decapitated; I still don't like painting Necrons but I was happy to get in the blue and gold Egyptian look on the chestpiece, and have some fun using metallics and washes to create a different hue of metal to the ones I use for the warband. Kind of an impulse decision to use an Escher dog head for her, but it matches the Predator 'yell at the sky' moment. And lastly, the rest of that toy tiger, which was made from really crappy plastic that was a real pain to undercoat - damn stuff ate contrast paint - so what I'd intended to be a drybrushed purple coat ended up being near black as I just slathered on dark purples to get it fully covered; on top of that I ended up realising that the static pose of the tiger body doesn't match the whip curling around as if she's in motion, and I considered just abandoning this mini, but decided it wouldn't hurt to have her in the back of the 'cavalry' squad making up the numbers, so I put her to one side and put a colour on now and then whenever I was working on something else until she was done.
Do you remember perhaps, where exactly these miniatures are from? Asking for a friend
They're designed by a group called Bestiarum - I got them from an etsy seller called OuroborosPrinting, who I mainly chose because they wouldn't be shipping overseas to get to me, but they did great work with the 3d printing or however you make these things, no cleanup or washing or anything needed, just unpacked, primed, and got straight to work.
I figured now was as good a time as any to take stock of the Bringers of Wonder to date - it was last January, before work restarted, that I wandered into the local GW store out of nostalgia, got a couple of codices for my favourite armies just to see what they were up to nowadays and that's all the justification I need to fill up bookshelves, and while leafing through them thought, y'know it's weird that I gave Fulgrim his backstory without ever actually having a chaos army, so...
And now here we are. I'd say it's been a productive year, except none of these are ever going to be used on a tabletop (some of them can't be, like I'm pretty sure there haven't been rules for Doomrider since the early 2000s, and how do you even explain a Terminator with jump packs), so it's more accurate (and more in the spirit of 2022) to just say it's been a year. But it's been fun, and that's all She Who Thirsts cares about.
So what with this month's contest entry winding up with a pink skirt - because I've been using green for the corrupted sisters, but putting green on top of the heavy use of pink for the wings seemed like it'd be garish (and not in a fun Noise Marine way) - I've reconsidered my 'all gold' colour scheme for basic daemonettes, because originally the idea was it'd make the Bestiarum 3d printed elite daemonettes stand out since they'd have another colour compared to the rank and file, but since then the warband's predictably become just a mass of weirdos all doing their own thing, including half a dozen different kinds of daemonette anyway, so I figured what the hell, get the basic b*tches back on the table and paint their loincloths for them. And take a photo, since I've been playing with my camera settings lately (had to, it's still auto-flashing now I've got led lights over my painting corner, so I've had to find a pdf of the manual and learn how exposure settings work):
That's not all the daemonettes, just all the ones with cloth on them - there's a bunch with Escher bodies or whatever that didn't need repainting. I also took the opportunity to clean up some of the rough edges of the gold painting (and a couple of bits I'd missed entirely) since I've got better lighting now and can actually see what I'm doing; also gave them a quick drybrush of pale yellow, since that looked pretty decent on the daemonette on the back of Doomrider's bike.
I finally stumbled across your P&M thread, and all I can say is "Wow!" I've been a Chaos guy off and on since I started the hobby, but I have rarely liked anything Slaaneshi. It's all either strandard Chaos Warriors but pink, or else sexy cheesecake models. You really lean into the disturbing part of "disturbingly alluring." I really love your pale, not-quite-fleshy pastel palette.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/01/19 04:01:25
JoshInJapan wrote: I finally stumbled across your P&M thread, and all I can say is "Wow!" I've been a Chaos guy off and on since I started the hobby, but I have rarely liked anything Slaaneshi. It's all either strandard Chaos Warriors but pink, or else sexy cheesecake models. You really lean into the disturbing part of "disturbingly alluring." I really love your pale, not-quite-fleshy pastel palette.
Thanks! Yeah I did want to get that 'not sure if you want to run away or take a closer look' mood - I'm a big Hellraiser fan, and the idea of the Cenobites having this beautiful kind of horror was in my mind as inspiration (even if I don't know that any of the movie designs really conveyed it, except for Doug Bradley's gravitas - until the recent reboot anyway, hell yes those new Cenobites have got it).
Having said that, today I finished a couple of sexy cheesecake models - got them off etsy a while back, and while they don't really lean very far out of the centrefold look other than being armed (although one of them does have a bit of barbed wire around her thigh, so that's something), I feel like they've got their place mixed in with the rest of the gals. Also a regular Sister, who I actually started back when 'helpers' was the painting contest theme (where the Fleshsmith was just a random mini I bought with the theme in mind, who ended up getting all my attention that month) - kind of just an excuse to use the daemonette with the giant hairdo, who I think it a bit over the top for just a random daemonette on foot. Remove the feet, though... Did a little (not very careful) sculpting for some entrails - I spent a while wondering what colour the insides of a Slaaneshi daemon would be, thought perhaps sparkly silver for a while, but ended up going with a fairly predictable dark red just so as not to make it confusing what you were looking at - and used up one of the collection of random milliput tentacles I have in a little container, because I always accidentally mix up more than I need so that's what I do with the leftovers. Spoilers, because... you know the routine by this point, right?
I finally finished the Twisted Sisters for this month's painting contest - I originally got them way back last year, when we were having a federal election (in case the result went an undesirable way, so I could think to myself, okay, country's chosen ruin, but I've got a sweet chaotic rock band, yay - which happily wasn't necessary), but I had this idea to do my still-boxed Rhino up for them as a mobile battle concert stage - and put them on techy Necromunda bases that'd fit in with its hull accordingly - but my habitual disinterest in vehicles larger than a bike (maybe a land speeder at most) reared its head, and they just sat around not being painted for months (the Rhino's still in its box). So for the contest I pulled out the round Venomcrawler base (which the Venomcrawler won't need, since I don't really see a way to Slaanesh up a robot spider - at least without much additional sculpting, which I don't do well enough to pull off - so it's slowly being parted out to various other conversions), slapped some milliput on it leaving space for the girls' bases, and put my usual sparkly purple ground texture over the Necro bases to make them all fit in.
I was thinking white armour with gold trim like the rest of the warband to begin with, but while I was painting them I was grappling with what colour to do the various little bits of cloth hanging off them - pink or purple would be obvious, but I wanted their hair to stand out as the colourful bit of them, and didn't want to overshadow the 'angelic' look of their colour scheme by having a big bold purple make the white/gold seem like background - and in the end (kind of inspired by The Young Pope/The New Pope and its reminder that the Catholic Church has zero restraint when they come up with costumes) changed my plan to all-gold armour with white cloth. I was hoping for a more shining white-gold result, but the Auric paint is such a pain in the butt to use I ended up not bothering too much; using Agrax Earthshade for the ink wash, instead of my usual Crimson, I felt like the gold looked suitably distinct from the rank and file of the warband as it was. The instruments were another thing I had a question mark on - again, I didn't want them to overshadow the armour and skin, and in the end it was a combination of having covered the minis with skintone contrast paint (not just the areas that would be skin - I like to either contrast or ink wash the whole mini as a starting point just so I can properly see the sculpted detail) and the organic base on the lead singer got me thinking, hey, living flesh musical instruments, why not?
(And here's the uncensored version, for the glory of Slaanesh and all that.)
Spoiler:
And a shot of them individually. It's a bit messy (as they always are) but I'm quite proud of freehanding the original Emperor's Children banner from Realm of Chaos vol. 1 onto the side of the drum - I was actually planning to leave that white (with the main point of interest being somebody's flayed face stretched over the other side of the drum), but I absent-mindedly didn't put her on her side while the white contrast paint was drying, so it pooled at the bottom and looked dreadful, and I'm no patient enough to do the fifteen thin coats needed to get a nice smooth white surface back. Also, fun story, I had a genuine moral conundrum about whether to use the 'bonus' loincloth on Vyrona (the lead singer, I named them - the drummer is Fleur, the keytar is Jaze, the piano is Hush, bass guitar flashing the horns of the devil is Beatriz, the other guitarist with the shouty guitar is Maxim), because obviously I don't want to be implying that being trans is 'deviant' by association with Slaanesh - but my mindset for this whole warband is old school, and chaos used to have nuance (Khorne representing valour and martial prowess, as well as just smashing people's heads in, and all that), so her being trans is simply reflective of Slaanesh being all about individual expression and embracing your truth, versus the Imperium's monolithic repressive culture, and it's just the cruel irony of the 40k setting that good and evil are represented by the same gods (ask me about the real tragedy of Fulgrim some day), so anyway I let her have her dong. Massively overthinking a miniature, of course, but you watch enough Star Trek and you wind up analysing the morality of everything you do. I think it's a positive.
I may one day field them as Noise Marines - I have joined a gaming group and started actually playing the game (badly, I lose a lot, but it's fun anyway) - in which case since she doesn't have a weapon, we're just going to assume that Vyrona can shout loud enough to count as a blastmaster or something.
I saw Twisted Sisters and clicked this thread expecting to see painted models of Dee Snider. I am so disappoint. Well, at least those Noise Marine ladies look like they wanna rock.
ShadowsAndDust wrote: I saw Twisted Sisters and clicked this thread expecting to see painted models of Dee Snider.
Haha And unlike their namesake, being good Slaaneshi followers, they are gonna take it (probably without bothering to find out what 'it' is in advance, even).
Wooooow, how did I miss so much Slaaneshi goodness ! Congrats on a magnificient collection, love the white armours, definitely gives a pure vs corrupted vibe, especially on the one with a DP head a few posts above.
Great job digging out old odd models too, these chaos genestealers rock.
Keep up the great work !
KernelTerror wrote: Wooooow, how did I miss so much Slaaneshi goodness ! Congrats on a magnificient collection, love the white armours, definitely gives a pure vs corrupted vibe, especially on the one with a DP head a few posts above.
Great job digging out old odd models too, these chaos genestealers rock.
Keep up the great work !
Thanks I'm really glad I held onto enough of my childhood collection to be able to sprinkle in some properly ancient minis along with the new stuff - sometimes they earn their keep too, this past weekend the 1989 Space Hulk Terminator (in the role of Aspiring Champion of the Terminator squad) got within a CP reroll of outright killing a Death Guard Lord of Contagion in a single round of combat.
Thanks If I ever print up a proper codex for these folks, that's going to be the in-universe quote on the back cover: '"Evil, evil, sluts." - Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau'.
Been a little while since I posted an update, because I wanted to present this lot as a group - since I started actually playing games I've realised all those weird conversions have left me a bit short of just plain Legionaries to make up the numbers in the Troops section, so I threw a few together. Couldn't resist messing about with them anyway, of course:
From left to right: 'Bluetongue' (named after the lizards that sun themselves in the backyards here), based on the war trumpet from the Daemonette sprue - her leg is in Word Bearers colours, and there's a little (haphazardly painted) bit of unholy scripture or something on the side, in orange to look like it's glowing, to hint that she was one of the God-Botherers Legion before succumbing to Sylelle's allure. Next up, one who's taking 'incorporating daemons into your chaos marine army' very literally, and also has a former-allegiance piece, with her right thigh coloured for Iron Warriors. Next, someone with a giant crab claw (which kind of defeats the point of these being 'just normal Legionaries', but we can count it as a chainsword, basically), and also a Sigmar murder elf face stuck on the chestplate as decoration, which yeah means there's a spike pointed at her own face but nobody ever said chaos marines were good at workplace safety - to make the running pose look a bit less awkward I dug a bit of base terrain out of the bits box (I forget what it came from, it's just a bit of rock and a girder) to make it look like she's taking a running leap. Next, again the 'normal' bit slipped my mind when I noticed the combiweapon hand in the bits box but we can just call that a regular flamer, and also I stuck a Terminator trophy spike to her groin because, well, Slaanesh - her left shoulder ended up glued on a bit too high, so I decided she's really proud of it and spent a while painting a fairly involved design based on something I googled up. Next one of the monopose (I mean, more than usual) marines from the Start Collecting Chaos box, who I couldn't really think of any elaborate conversions for so I just glued on a giant mutant dong made from a daemonette claw. And finally, Brother Arteros from the blind boxed marines, who I picked up for a conversion I ended up deciding I couldn't be bothered doing (my first idea for 'using the terrain' in last month's Location painting contest was a daemonette with tentacle arms, plunging them into the ground and having them burst out beneath a loyalist marine, but it felt like it was relying way too much on my ability to sculpt milliput to be workable right now), with a genestealer hand and little spike glued to her head; after doing the basic white colour scheme I drybrushed on some blue and added bits of yellow trim, and the red bolter casing, to hark back to the classic brightly coloured 2nd edition Ultramarines. And yes, I've decided all my Emperor's Children (whatever their personal orientation, which would probably be in a fairly haphazard state of flux anyway what with Slaanesh) outwardly identify as female, as their way of honouring their Primarch, based on my pet theory (which I didn't explicitly write into the Index Astartes, but it's Xena-level Blatant Subtext) that Fulgrim's problem wasn't pride, it was unrecognised gender dysphoria.
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That's a cool squad of troops. My favorites are the Blue Tongue and the Daemonette-- they both look like they are squirting out of the neck of the armor, a delightfully gross image.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/03/28 23:29:55
Nice to see the faction! I hadn't seen any links to your post in Homeworlds so I add this topic there. I still can't get over razor sharp grass...sounds like one hellva trip to hang out with this bunch.
Boss Salvage wrote: Dig the daemonette-taur the most, but great squad of weirdos. You know, I just noticed the sparkle in your purple basing, very nice
Also! Twisted Sisters is great, those are some excellent sculpts / conversions, loads of character!
Thanks No converting on the Twisted Sisters, that's them au naturel. The sparkle is just cheap glitter paint, very watery so it really gets slopped onto the base, but the flock drinks up the excess quite well so it dries to a pretty good finish.
JoshInJapan wrote: That's a cool squad of troops. My favorites are the Blue Tongue and the Daemonette-- they both look like they are squirting out of the neck of the armor, a delightfully gross image.
Hadn't thought of that specifically, but I like the idea, might see if I can convert up a couple more legionaries on the theme of 'like that guy from the end of Akira'.
Adeptekon wrote: Nice to see the faction! I hadn't seen any links to your post in Homeworlds so I add this topic there. I still can't get over razor sharp grass...sounds like one hellva trip to hang out with this bunch.
Good idea, thanks. I have to admit I got the grass idea from Aeon Flux.
Anyway, finished off a new squad tonight, simple people of the land, the common clay of the Eye of Terror, y'know, morons:
Mostly just various headswaps - in one case swapping the head from one cultist onto another, so the grenade launcher cultist, plus the redhead aiming her rifle, have female heads on male torsos, but if you're not genderfluid are you really worshipping Slaanesh hard enough? So does the giant flamer gal (head from the Sororitas box), but since the torso is covered it just looks like she's super built, which nobody's complaining about either. The one on the far left, plus the heavy stubber, got a sexy boot and helmet respectively from the Age of Sigmar Dread Pageant set - the boot would've been a simple conversion, since that leg's a separate piece on the cultist mini, but I only thought of it after I'd glued it together, so I had to do some hacking to make everything fit. In the middle, behind the cult leader with the claw arm, I couldn't really see how to do a headswap on that guy given how his rifle's over his shoulder and is all one piece with his head, so I filed off the fabric creases on his trousers and glued on a mutant dong (tip of a daemonette tail) to make it look like he just decided to go into battle pantsless. It's not really the cleverest idea, but you can't question his devotion to Slaanesh. I tried some rudimentary chipping on the bits of their armour they've painted pink, since they're not important enough to get shiny new gear issued from the armoury before every battle, and really slopped the Apothecary White contrast onto their skirts to make them seem grubby.
They (along with some other minis to pad out the numbers) had the debut in battle tonight, where they achieved precisely nothing, but that's to be expected really (on top of everything else, I'm really not very good at playing this game).
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/04/01 14:02:15
I loved the series; can't say I cared for the movie overmuch, apart from a handful of creative flourishes like the grass, and just having Charlize Theron in it at all.
Anyway, here's this month's contest entry (on the theme of 'doomsday', Sister Verity - once again narrated by Scrivener Cotton, who'd probably rather I stop coming up with his miserable life:
Spoiler:
= Vox Log Commences =
Report by Scrivener Cotton concerning the testimony of heretic Sister (excommunicated) Innocentia, entry fifty-one, directed to the attention of authorised superiors among your Lordships... if anyone’s even receiving these reports.
Our guest was in what I would characterise as a puckish mood during today’s session - insofar as the descriptions of a rational mind can be applied to a madwoman, but one detects shifts in her ‘person’, and I use the term loosely, with time. Appearing somewhat lucid she addressed me before I had even begun the day’s interrogation, requesting that I familiarise myself with the records of one Sister Verity, who she claimed I would find illuminating, and refused to elaborate until I had done so no matter the degree of persuasion I had the attending servitor inflict upon her. It seeming unlikely any other route would result in useful information today - as if any of this is ‘useful’ - I retired to my chamber and requested such files as are available to my station, which proved to be a single report that I enclose relevant excerpts from herewith.
First: “The matter of the wayward Aeldari concluded, there is another matter I suppose I ought to put to file, lest it amount to anything. A midshipman recently off a freighter from Cardin’s Dawnline spoke of a preacher appearing in Dawnline’s capital who, he alleged, drove even the most mean-spirited who heard her to the most devout worship of His Imperial Majesty. Sounded like just typical below-decks rumourmongering, albeit lacking the usual salacious extravagances they like to imagine to make the days more tolerable, but Fionne has prevailed upon me to look into the matter, and since our itinerary takes us near Cardin anyway there’s no reason not to indulge her.”
Second: “Referencing the recent filing from back on Heracles about this preacher, there may be something to it. Not expecting anything much I nonetheless put out a line when we reached Roatan, and snagged bait, in the form of a newly-minted missionary tending to the waypoint’s vagrants. Recently a citizen of Cardin’s Dawnline the man confessed to a life of petty crime but claimed to have repented of his sins and devoted himself wholly to the service of the Emperor upon hearing a sermon delivered by a Sister Verity, who records here list as a novice undergoing tuition at Dawnline’s priory of the Order of Pious Toil In His Sight. Verity, it seems, has taken to preaching off her own bat, and according to our informant here speaks as if, and I quote, ‘the Emperor his-divine-self were placing the words in her mouth.’ Now... look I know how this sounds, and Terra knows how many delinquents abruptly claim to have been moved to prayer when they find themselves drawn up in front of authority (I’m posing as a member of the constabulary here), but since Fionne has taken an interest I had Elsbeth go for a dive in his mind, and to what I admit was my considerable surprise it seems every word he spoke was the absolute truth as he knew it. While I’d normally suspect witchcraft Fionne is certain we’ve stumbled across an actual miracle, and as much as it rails against my natural paranoia, there are convincing commonalities with prior instances - see the records of Saint Argent of Cascorsi, for one. Can’t think why the Pious Toil didn’t report this but by all accounts it’s a miniscule priory of half a dozen academics, they’ve probably never encountered anything like this before. It’s far too early to be drawing conclusions but we’re making for Dawnline with all speed. If this Verity is blessed as it seems I must have her for my retinue.”
Third: “-EXPLETIVE- aristocrats! Delayed by a warp storm and, wouldn’t you know it, before we could reach Dawnline the Cardin governor has gone and gotten Sister Verity killed! Himself too, for which he should be grateful, since as harshly as the Emperor will be judging his shrivelled soul it’s nothing compared to what Fionne would do to him if she had the chance - she’s feeling the guilt of the Sister Antonia episode all over again. By the account of the deputy governor - who I had Elsbeth put through the wringer, but the boy seems innocent of any wrongdoing in all this - Governor Vicent, of his own initiative, took Verity into his own command as he set off to put down a cult uprising on Cardin’s Reach, which... I hate to admit it, but by itself isn’t the worst idea, bringing a woman who can preach the Emperor’s Truth such that it cannot be denied to deal with peasants who’ve strayed - would at least make it simpler to execute the lot of them after they’ve stood down - but, Saints of Terra preserve us, Vicent decided that scripture wasn’t good enough, and instructed Verity to preach propaganda of his own writing - glorifying his august person, no doubt. My colleagues will have no trouble imagining the result, I’m sure: no doubt Verity believed what she was told, but the force behind her divine gift wasn’t so easily duped and her oratory failed completely, decimating the morale of her fellows and energising the heretics who swept over them like Astartes through gretchin. Poor girl probably died believing the fault was hers, rather than the bloated windbag who betrayed her to stoke his own ego. Anyway. Spent five days overseeing the scouring of Cardin’s Reach, now en route to Nova Venezia with nothing but disappointment to show for it. Amnestine out.”
= Attachment Ends =
Much of this our guest knew, but thus prompted she shared the rest of her tale. If her testimony is to be believed - and I stress for the record, once again, that the words of a heretic scarcely bear listening to - Sister Verity was taken alive by the blasphemers who infested Cardin’s Reach, and prior to their extermination by Inquisitor Amnestine she was ferried offworld, eventually to arrive on the daemonworld Eden, where its mistress took a special interest in her. Breaking her by a process our guest would describe only as ‘the naked truth’, she pressed Verity into service of the ruinous powers, under which guise we may identify her with the heretic leader catalogued in recent battles as ‘the Preacher of Lies’, whose sorcerous invocations were credited with the mutiny among the 198th Megiddo regiment. According to our guest, however, the nature of Sister Verity’s ‘gift’, perverted as it has become, has not been altered: furnished with a dark tome named Domesday, which purports to know the most shameful secrets of all men, Verity’s recitations of these horrific perversions reaches the ears of her foes with the same force of truth that once powered her proselytising of the Emperor’s light.
But these cannot be but lies themselves, surely. That loyal servants of the Emperor could harbour such heinous desires that their revelation could cause their own troops to tear them limb from limb... no, this is nothing more than another of the heretic’s lies. Truth cannot be the weapon of the enemy. Only the Emperor is true. Of this I am certain.
If your Lordships could see fit to grant this humble servant a reprieve from hearing this misbegotten confession, if even for a short while...
...must be lies.
= Vox Log Concludes =
I actually picked her up for the Helping Hands theme last year, but got distracted painting the Fleshsmith instead. Conversionwise she's pretty straightforward, just grafting the hand/book and backpack from the Dark Apostle onto the Dialogus body (plus a Terminator trophy of a Guardsman head onto her staff), and while normally I like to pretend that just painting them pink makes all the Ministorum symbols heretical so I don't have to convert them, the necklace seemed a bit blatant, so that got filed down and replaced with the chaos star from one of the Apostle's helpers, which ended up looking like a giant Flava Flav clock, but nobody ever accused chaos of being restrained. Painting the scarf (or whatever it actually is) as if it's skin (it's probably literally skin) was just a hail mary since I didn't have any better ideas, but I think it turned out well, and I'll probably use more of that where I can. The hot pink on her robes, same as on Sister Angelica, is something I think I'm going to adopt for the entire Order of the Honeyed Abyss - which means repainting a bunch of them who have green skirts. Sure hot pink isn't very creative for Slaanesh, but the classics are classic because they work.
The daemonette (named Scientia) is just the lectern top from the Apostle's other minion, left over from when I turned the actual minion into a missile launcher bearer, with the Dialogus lectern's speaker mounted on her groin, because of course it's on her groin. The little trinkets in place of arms are a star from the cultist leader's chainsword (the whole chainsword arm got replaced by a claw), and the ball is from the other Apostle helper, who having lost all his gear I now have to think of something else to do with.
I'm really glad I held onto enough of my childhood collection to be able to sprinkle in some properly ancient minis along with the new stuff - sometimes they earn their keep too, this past weekend the 1989 Space Hulk Terminator (in the role of Aspiring Champion of the Terminator squad) got within a 
No converting on the Twisted Sisters, that's them au naturel. The sparkle is just cheap glitter paint, very watery so it really gets slopped onto the base, but the flock drinks up the excess quite well so it dries to a pretty good finish.
