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smiling Assassin wrote:Thanks massively to both of you guys!

Well, this counts a negative update, but I get home and my girlfriend (all hail and bless her holy name) has packed up ALL OF MY MODELLING STUFF. I would take a photo of the table, but it would be empty. This is sad times.

So, regretably this blog must go on hold for a couple of days, she's having her parents over and then a dinner party beforehand.

Well, peace and love and stay safe, as per usual.

sA

Mine tried this once. I passed her the old "Wrong! I'll decide!". She tried to argue. Went something like this: "But they're everywh-" "Wrong." "Yes they ar-" "Wrong." "It's such a mess down he-" "Wrong." "You never let me finish my senta-" "Wrong." "It's just for the company we're having ov-" "I'll decide." So she gave up trying after a few minutes of this and never touched them since XD

Though it could be because she's reading BL now and is starting to understand (and enjoy) the hobby herself. Nonetheless, never underestimate the power of the Wrong.

The driving rain was the least of Kenst's worries. As he sheltered his head underneath the hood and concealed Navy Helmet, he again regarded the towering dome of the Operetta, just aside from the twisting spires of the Upper Habs, their eerie heights penetrating the dark fleshed clouds as stilettos. He jumped over a rainbow flecked puddle of oil, dodging a newspaper vender with a contemptuous glare. The street was emptying, the lower orders disappearing into the taverns or into the squalor of the lower decks; he liked it with fewer people. It gave him time to think, to breathe. His shockingly turquoise eyes darted around the cracked and decrepit boulevard, the dead trees fluttering uncaringly in the storm winds.

As he rounded the corner, a gaggle of men caught his eager sight. The thing that grabbed his attention was the Hochland Lasrifle clutched in the air above the tallest man’s head. He heard them gabble in staccato Saxon, he understood, being native. He didn’t like the sound of it, steering across to the other side of the street, huddling closer under his swathe of black cloak. Like he had hoped and willed against, they caught sight of him.

“Samel, look, a twist!” one guffawed in throaty laughter. He was drunk. Samel looked.

“I think you’re right, Marko.”

Unfortunately for Haas, Samel was the one with the rifle. Slinging it over his shoulder, he pushed aside some of his less interested companions. He was a bounty hunter, one of those born-again Imperials who wanted to skin a few twists for kudos and a free Ale. Scum, fething scum: If they got in his way, he would have to resort to desperate measures.

Don’t come over. Don’t fething come over – they were coming over. Haas twisted away from the great man’s lolling gait, darting up the steps, head bowed, breath coming fast. He heard a shout but didn’t look back. They were spoiling for it now. The next thing was a crack in the air as the ionised shot from the las rifle combusted, flashing past his ear and shattering an already broken street lamp above him. feth, this could go nuclear. Haas huddled closer, the satchel he held under one arm seeming to throb. The Operetta loomed above him, its mullioned windows huge and majestic, holding out the slashing rain and the lower orders. An Aquila glared down at him from the head of every one of the columns at the front. Darting behind the column, he heard the curses and wild hoots of the men following him. This was bad. He needed to deliver the package. He did not need these men. Closing his eyes and muttering a final curse, he turned out from the pillar, expelling the leather package from his cloak and in the same movement leaping behind the next column.

The world dissolved into fire, fire, the sound of crashing masonry and glass, screams, and blackness.
“Opera’s closed” he muttered, before falling into the usurping unconsciousness clawing at his mind.

I haven't decided if this is going to be for a gang that I desperately want to do for the aftermath of the 24th, or before.

Hmmm.

sA

Agh, you ended it! I wanted to read more

infilTRAITOR wrote:

Agh, you ended it! I wanted to read more

Seconded!

Thanks chaps.

On the bus today I wrote out a large bit of prose on my phone, N97 QWERTY for the win. I'll try and get it up here, just as a show that something's going on in that head of mine.

As soon as possible. Peace and love, no firing until you can see the whites of their eyes.

sA

Nice job

Loving the blog, sA. It's transcended P&M and bloomed into a Hobby blog. The details and the backgrounds really complement the (excellently done) miniatures.

Good work, fella!

Thanks chaps

Now a bit more fiction. It isn't over yet for poor old Kenst, not by a long shot. The more eagle eyed among you will notice this a bit based on Rorke's Drift, but is set earlier in terms of uniform and styling for the Guardsmen. I have a huge chunk more to add, maybe later. Oh, and a little bit of inspiration from Vitae Lampada, my favourite poem of all time, perhaps.

He focussed all the pain in his body into one infinitely miniature point, letting the electric ebb and flow of sickening pain subside as it was crushed relentlessly by his mind. It was how he had been taught, when he stood with the Redcoats upon Suladan, or at Crecy Ridge. The battle honours swam behind his sleep-stuck eyes, a trillion points of light waltzing as he shook his head drunkenly. He was on steel, or adamantium; the cold burning his aching skin, strangely soothing. His eyes flicked upon, unseeing, and suddenly something was pressed mechanically into his arm, and in less than a second he had sunken back into the ruminative dream state he had inhabited for Gods know how long.

He lay on sand now, the frigid void of the hall gone, the smell of smoke and burnt air, the cracks of desperate Las shots, assaulting his ears.
‘Wake up lad!’ a sudden slap on his cheek, and the rush of the burning sun and the heat of the congealed blood from his temple and broken nose. That gravely voice, the blurred outline of the Sergeant shaking him awake upon those violated sands. The shouts and the cries swam back to him too, the nightmare of screaming shells and the bangs of their comeuppance. He prised his eyes open, the world around him hazy and bright. The sun glared down upon the vista through the dazzling azure above, obscured partially by the pall of dust and smoke and the airbusts of the crumping Thudd guns in the distance.

He was pulled painfully to his feet by hitherto unknown hands; with the same pair a dust caked rifle was pressed into his own. He swung groggily, then his prenatural instincts kicked in. The scene around him was so familiar, a battle upon the blood soaked sands of a far flung moon. The Gorks where rushing in the distance, their fierce cries transforming the horizon into a screaming green tide. A new wave was charging, galloping, and now the men were readying their bayonets and cocking their rifles; old, smoking magazines littering the ground, along with spent stubber cartridges and here and there a faceless redcoated corpse.

‘Up men, up!’ the Colonel hoarsely screamed into the void as the hardened faces of the 56th Grenadier Guard were set in a grim recognition of what was expected of them, and the roaring surge of certain green death hurtling indefatigably toward them. Nothing was sacred to the Gorks, and for what must have been the last time Kenst kissed the brass Aquila suspended from a chain beneath his sweat-starched shirt. He muttered a grim prayer as he bent on one knee next to his kinsman, zeroing his eyesight along the iron of the rifle, pointing into the shapeless mass trampling in the distance, drawing ever closer. He heard the Colonel’s words as if from down a mile of tunnel.

‘We are the last. Endless Glory, or a cold wooden casket for every man: For The Emperor!’

With the last syllable a cry went up from the 162 remaining standing or walking wounded in the sandbagged redoubt, and the blasts of the Thudds echoed the sentiment by ripping into the advancing lines of green.
This redoubt was the last standing before the abandoned Nitrate Exchange and Spaceport upon the infertile and mineral-drained moon. The others were withdrawing, what was left of the 56th had to buy them enough time for the last shuttle to escape to the Indefatigable Sentinel stationed high in orbit above. They were abandoned with a prayer from the chaplain and the meaningless cheers and wordless thanks from their compatriots. Ruddy bs, they were going to die there on those lonely sands. Soon the comforting Thudd guns would be silenced as well, and they would be left to their dark fate, alone.

And now it was two hundred, a hundred yards from the wall – the stubber jammed and the Colonel long dead by a thrown spear. Kenst fired, indiscriminately, until the mag overloaded and charred his bandaged and already scorched hand. Now he could see the faces, green, demented, mouths agape, yellow spittle and herb stained gums and ravenously sharpened teeth. Blue warpaint, limbs muscled beyond even improbability, and crudely fashioned knives held aloft with bloodthirsty greed in their staring eyes. He could see the whites of them now, wide open at him, numberless in that chasm of green. He rose, in a reverie, the shouts and cries and screams and cracks utterly meaningless like the scudding clouds over an argon gas giant. feth it all, this was it, he though: he knew, as he raised his bayonet to shoulder height and screamed for the last time.

Drowned out by the newly roaring engines of the Lightning fighter-bombers overhead. A wall of fire, pressure crushing – smashing him, a million tonnes of force, unconsciousness as now everything suddenly meant nothing again, as he sank under the blackest boughs and into the bottomless trails of the blackest forest, his darkling mind. Then even more nothing, the cold steel table and the interminable pressure in the crook of his arm, where the hypodermic needle stuck deep.

More to come.

Remember, no firing until you can see the whites of their eyes.

sA

Pretty good fluff and the models look VERY nice. GJ!

Thanks mate

He convulsed up from the table and cried savagely, for a moment that greenskinned monster loomed so close in the hall that its foul spittle almost brushed his nose, mouth agape in an endless scream.

But it wasn’t real, and Kenst had survived, so long ago – ten, twelve years? gak, he thought, feeling the rutted scars that remained from that titanic blast. A handful had survived, him included. The gorks had been blasted bad, Admiral Udetsk had seen to that. A flyboy told him when he was still in the clinic, stiff with bandage, that they still would dig up mork bones from the Thudd outpost for years. Then he had received a Violet Heart from Udetsk, smiles – a pat on the back. It had been pict-captured, he saw on a newsreel in a muddy bar in Sveltaur docks, had hidden his face from the curious barman, but not the smile-girl in the corner: ready to ride a hero any day, she had said. He had fled, the faces of the men buried beneath the rubble and cartridges staring at him, eternally without rest, awake.

Terra was a long, long way away. Honour was just a word.

The medal should have been 100 creds at the lowest bidder, petty gak, he figured, but now he still fingered it in his pocket, along with the bent and bruised brass Aquila.
They had given that to him at 17, Beric Kenst, Private First Class, 56th Grenadier Guards, along with the serial number tattooed on his neck, a shiny redcoat and a shiny mahogany rifle with a shiny muzzle. So proud – the ceremonial Mitre cap and the white piping. Now he was 27, face pitted like the unlucky side of Lunar at Terra, and his heart heavy.

Not sure what to make of this yet. A new soldier for the 24th? It seems like an awful lot of fluff just for one guy. Maybe something fresher. Thoughts?

sA

If he's survived that long, and consdering the effort you put into his story, consider promoting him?

Good idea. I'm still caught up in some sort of Redcoat Idea. Yes I know it's silly and such, but I would love a small contingent, maybe a squad, or Grenadiers for my army. Bedecked as British Redcoats.



As a favour from the loving public, could anyone be a doll and get a comparison picture of these chaps next to a GW mini? Just so I can size up dimensions? I would ideally like to base a conversion, some conversions around them, primarily their torsos. If anyone could oblige, for my extra-extra-pickyness and post a picture next to a Cadian? Maybe? With ketchup?

If you don't know, they're Wargames Factory models from the Zulu range. Gorgeous models.

Stay safe.

sA

I can do one of their Zulus next to an ork and a marine if that will help. I've also got a set of scale comparison shots with the Celts and GW models in my gallery. Bear in mind their true scale not heroic the arms, hands and weapons are much smaller than with GW models. To be honest I can see the Redcoats used as Veterans or an allied regiment I'd go with it its always nice to paint a variety of stuff.

Stuff is looking great and the fluff is coming along nicely , I have been trying my hand at some fiction fluff as well Iam not as grammatically neat but I am getting there lol .

Cant wait to see some more painted stuff .

Oh I do some commission work so I get to have a painting table in the living room ( also have a new york city apartment so space is limited ) as long as I keep it neat she seams ok with it , she is also ok with the leather couch a commission paid for lol .

Cheers guys.

Well, this is a temporary goodbye, for about 2 weeks, if I'm (un)lucky. I'm off to Berlin to stay with friends. Thanks for all the hope and encouragement you've given me, I'm drooling to pick up this project again, but as circumstances dictate that may be very hard, for a month or two.

Peace, love, safety, and remember no firing until you see the whites of their eyes



That's all folks.

sA

This link might be of interest to you:

http://www.wargamesfactory.com/AnnouncementRetrieve.aspx?ID=25558

As you can see from the size of the servitor and the converted sergeant, the Wargames Factory models are a little smaller than GW ones but not terribly out of scale.

"Sir the Zulu's are here."

"They are ORC's loo cleaner." Said the Lt.

This stuff is great, the fluff is really great to read and the models have such great realism, i'm SO subscribing!!

The models have this effect that i really want to capture in my guard...

Keep it up, oh, and you stay safe. Don't want to loose this blog now do we?

Imp. Monkey

Thanks for more writing, enjoying reading it very much

Subbed

Awesome stuff. Keep it up.