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Tau of Sept Ke'lshan are known for their mistrust of aliens. Most credit this to Ke'lshan's suffering at the hands of Eldar machinations, but anger born from an enemy is nothing compared to that spawned from a once-friend.

Although I'm a Chaos Warlord at heart, I felt it was time to take a walk on the wild side. Long departed from the forests, jungles and mountains of Pech, I bring you the Nodarg Kindred!

These two are my test-Kroot, a couple of beaten up, pre-assembled miniatures that came with a secondhand sprue - critique on the colours would be well appreciated! If you look closely, you can probably spot the seams where limbs and gunbarrels snapped. Still, the latter was useful inspiration - the Kroot Rifle is a quite long weapon, and I took the opportunity to shorten it a few millimetres. This army's going to be whole-hog Kroot Mercenaries, which means I'll be including models equipped with the Kroot Longrifle - and lengthening the default Kroot Rifle longer would look ridiculous!

You can see that this fellow's brought a snack into battle - just a bit of finger-food! Little details like this, the hip armour and his mate's glove were created to conceal some damage to the models, but they do add some fun bits of personality to them - I'm certainly looking forward to whipping up models with looted weapons and intense mutations!

By the way, if any DakkaDakka veterans could give me a pointer on how to disable the mouseover text on the "Ke" of Ke'lshan, I'd really appreciate it!

I like the battle paint on them.

Vulturekin are named for their wings, Green Kroot for their Orkoid bodies and K’Nole for their mountainous dwellings. Blue, or Gray, Kroot, however, are dreaded for the history betrayed by their skin.

This batch took a bit longer than expected - that's life. The first Carnivore Kindred's done, sans Shaper and other tag-alongs. I've brightened the skin and muted the blue cloth, bringing it closer to the Ke'lshan Sept's colours. Bases are lighter and flocked, and I've made a few tweaks to my photo setup.


First of the curiosities, we have this muzzled fellow. I imagine it to be punishment, or penance - perhaps this Kroot ate something off limits. Looking at this picture, I'm thinking of muting the colour of the ropes and fiber in the next batch.


This Kroot's an attempt to introduce some skin tone variance to the Kindred, with blue/grey flesh and black/blue keratin (besides the quills, of course). I'm more fond of the blue on the skin than the beak/belly, but I don't think I'll be abandoning the latter concept just yet.

Yikes, that really isn't a flattering view of the bone; still playing with my recipe for those bits.


This Kroot's seen better days. The Kroot struck me as a good opportunity to model a prosthetic beyond the "functionally identical bionic limb" seen throughout 40k. This Kroot (and the leftmost one below) have had their and shoulders extended by a millimetre or so - I might be using this as a sex indicator, as some Kroot fluff describes them as vomiting their infants, necessitating a bit more space in the thorax! (Xenology describes them as having standard humanoid junk tucked away in their groin-plates - one of the few times the Xenology version is less interesting than preexisting fluff!)


Final three of this batch. The Kroot kit's mighty fun to work with, holds up quite well. The only change I'd make would be to taper in the lower jaw a smidge, but that's a fairly minor point. Center and right Kroot have lengthened tails, although only the tips are visible in this shot.

As for this armies future - I'll be working through two more Kindreds of 8, and a Shaper for each, while working out how I'll be handling Krootox and Hounds. The official models are okay, but in my eye, they don't hold up to the Kroot themselves or their artwork in the latest Codex;


After I have three solid Carnivore Kindreds kicking around, that's when I'll start getting crazy.

 Ratius wrote:
I like the battle paint on them.

Thanks - it's a fun way of adding little spots of contrast, or hiding mistakes!

Looks good! They remind me off Oddworld characters.

Sweet! One look at my profile would tell you I'm a kroot fan, so seeing this brought a smile to my face. Keep up the good work and I like the bits if personality you gave them as well.