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Someone really enjoys the Simply Orange juice! I have a few of those lids myself.

Great stuff in here!

After what feels like Aeons lost in the darkest channels of the Webway, against all odds, the crew of the Argonaut, searching for the lost cruiser Canterbury, have managed to slip past the Great Rift and find themselves... in the Dark Imperium. Who is this new crew, and what drove them to such madness? More on that later, but it all starts with an attack by the Dark Eldar- for which I needed to make some ships of course!

I made these "Hellblade" Frigates thanks to a generous donation- a copy of Gangs of Commorragh, courtesy of our previous Navigator (thank you Mr. Horvath).


Here's the finished result, along with some "Nightgaunt" Raiders:


More tales of adventure and terror coming soon...

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MAgnificient ! These xenos ship already lokk awesome in the first unpainted shot, but the second one with the frigate really describes the scale properly ! Looking forward to reading how the encounter with these eldars will unfold !

Glad to see you back, your stuff have been inspiring for years and never disappoints!

I'd say that cruiser is in deep trouble...

Thank you fellow travelers, good to be back!

A new story arc comes with some new characters and a new location. Meet the crew of the Argonaut, sent through the Jericho Warp Gate into the Jericho Reach to find Rogue Trader John Ramirez and his ship, the Canterbury...


Nite the Assasin, Jeremiah Mortis the preacher, The Navigator with no name, his accompanying Cyber-Crow named KAL, and Delta, a Mechanicus Explorator are hired by the Ramirez dynasty to track down their lost legacy.

Three Xenos explorers also join the group, each in their own way...


Tu'Staque, the Tau fire warrior that served John and his father before him, was separated from the Canterbury after fleeing the Dread Pearl's return to the warp. He is an obvious choice to join the search party, despite his Xenos status.

Iyandriel, an Eldar Corsair originally from Alaitoc Craftworld, sneaks aboard the Argonaut to find out more about the Dread Pearl and try to reclaim some of its precious Waystones taken from the world as loot by the Rogue Traders.

And GargShokka, an Ork Freebooter, whose "Kunnin' Plan" was to ambush a ship in the warp. The unfortunate victim was the Argonaut, and when the Gellar Field collapses and daemons invade the ship, everyone must band together to fend off eternal damnation! Thankfully, Jeremaiah's impressive negotiation convinces Gargshokka that traveling as an ally will yield better hunting grounds for the action-prone Gargshokka...

=I=

GAME 2: The Tantalus Anomaly

The Argonaut's emergency drop out of warp leaves it near a strange stellar anomaly, and an ancient Mechanicus research station in orbit. Tantalus station is run down, littered with heretical tech, and manned only by an insane Mechanicus and his necrotic servitors...



Desperate for a replacement Gellar Field Generator, Delta pulls the part he needs from a bizarre machine meant to turn the anomaly into a permanent warp gate. Although this prevents the creation of a gate into hell, it causes the collapse of the anomaly into a singularity! The Argonaut barely escapes in time...


=i=

Following a lead on the lost Rogue Trader and the Canterbury, the explorers investigate the rumoured location of a treasure known only as "the great Mother". Heading to an asteroid moon in orbit around Acheron 7, they find the wreck of the Daedalus precariously hanging off the edge of the asteroid.




In a nearby shuttle wreck, they find armsmen abandoned there by the Canterbury! They soon discover why- as they search the Daedalus and find other survivors, they are surrounded by Genestealers! They manage to get all the survivors back to their shuttle and leave the storm-wracked, creature-infested rock behind them....

Of course, once away, and while waiting to rendezvous with Charlabelle Armalan and the Amarathian, they are ambushed by Dark Eldar Raider ships!



The Drucharii board using ramming attacks and boarding torpedoes, and those crew who don't escape are captured...


Once aboard the Drucharii vessels, the explorers are forced to fight in the blood pits until they die- or escape...


Meanwhile, in the Drucharii labs, experiments are conducted- until an uninvited subject birthed from one of the captors bursts in!


The distraction allows the Raider explorer to escape with a companion (left), pursued by the Drucharii torturers (right). Note, this was before we had the new model for our Eldar corsair, so I was using old Dark Eldar models as placeholders.


Meanwhile Charlabelle finally shows up and rescues those who escaped the raiders, and manages to find a way into the Webway through an extraordinary connection between the Navigator and Kal, the Cybercrow... After rescuing the captives, the Amarathian barely manages to outrun her pursuers and escape the dark passages of the Webway...

Clap! Clap! Clap!

More! More!

Simply incredible stuff.

What a thread. Really terrific

Wonderful.

Magnificient, that session must have been a blast !

Hey folks, thanks for the kind words, and sorry for the pause there, lots going on these days...

Using the new Primaris models, I made myself some "truescale" Deathwatch models to threaten the players with:



I bothered to edge highlight my blacks this time, so they came out nice. Helps having bigger models to paint!



Here's an action shot


Plus a scale shot with one of the classic Escher juves (most accurately proportioned model in GW, IMO):


When the Amarathian finds itself on the wrong side of the Great Rift, their first stop is an ancient and isolated Imperial Starport known as Morbastion Station.


The Imperial crew look for supplies and information, while the Xenos crew employ stealth to dig into the Librarium and find out more about the fate of the Canterbury.


That is, until a Deathwatch Cruiser docks at the station...


More to come soon.
Stay vigilant, voidfarers!

=I=

Your terrain is fantastic.

My God... so much awesome.

Where did you say you live?

Can you post some shots of the Space Station? Are those two smaller ships Star Wars landing craft with some ink? They look really familiar.

Fantastic work, simply amazing.
The campaign also sounds like a lot of fun as well.

I am so jealous of people who can make such amazing stuff, so quickly.

Fantastic stuff

Thanks again all for the kind words!

@Kid_Kyoto: The space station is from my Starcrashers game, made from Robotix parts. Find it at the bottom of this page, plus some other stuff that might look familiar
http://ironhands.com/starcrashmodels.htm

@fifty: Not _that_ fast at builds mind you, I have years of backlog to draw on / repurpose.

As promised, our campaign continues... Searching the captured reports of the Canterbury from Morbastion Station, the crew discover it has been operating in the Jericho Reach for... Centuries? The logs predate even the original adventures of Captain John Ramirez, who is as mystified as anyone. The next stop on the search for the Canterbury leads to a planet rumored to have Xenos treasure nearby- Falon's Lament, as likely a destination as any for the missing ship.

But when the shuttle tries to land, a beam of unearthly green light blasts it from across the horizon, and the crew barely survive the crash. Searching the surface, they find a world long abandoned by any sentient activity...


The crew soon find treasure aboard the ghost ships, crates full of metal obelisks like the one Jeremiah turned in to the Deathwatch Captain. But they also find something altogether more horrific when a Lictor ambushes from the water!


Another one snatches Gargshokka and pulls him underwater... Only by detonating a Frag Grenade he looted earlier was he able to break free and resurface!


The crew manage to get the ancient ship turret ready to fire, but it must be turned manually to aim it, requiring everyone's strength...


To prevent their rescue shuttle from being shot down, the crew must use the turret to disable a Necron Tower that rises out of the water before it can fire.


It is likely the world of Falon's Lament was targeted for invasion by the Tyranids, but Necron defenses drove them off, allowing only infiltration units onto the surface. Either way, the doom of the inhabitants was sealed, leaving only the strange obelisks behind as treasure...

=i=

As the adventurers are about to (re)discover the lost cruiser Canterbury, it was time to make some more interior terrain pieces. The ship is a Tenebro Maze, which means you literally get lost trying to go anywhere else in the ship. I set about making dozens of industrial and gothic ship sections to capture the random feeling of exploration...

These two pieces started as sections of a printer casing, and have all manner of 40k, model, hardware and toy embellishments added. Perfect for representing the lower mechanical sections of the ship...






I also set to making some gothic style sections to capture the upper sections of the ship, quarters, offices, labs, chapels, etc. I used a mix of the Pegasus Hobby Chapel parts and the new 40k gothic ruins. The ceiling pieces are made from portcullis gates stolen from the WizKids castle terrain.




To make the terrain more modular, I built separate removable desks, workbenches, control panels, and autoshrines.



Next post: painted and ready to go...

=I=

This thread is like a modelling masterclass!

Stunning work, creativity off the scale and some amazing adventures along with it.

Those space ship sections and bits are really, really cool! Looking forward to seeing them finished!

Is there anything better than a new Ironhands scratch build?

No.

No there is not.

Thanks again folks!

As promised, painted ship sections.

Mechanical decks:



They're all the same size, so you can stack and arrange them in different ways easily:



Gothic Accessories:



Here's most of the sections together in one place.


To welcome the crew to the newly rediscovered Canterbury, I made these Necromorphs- corpses of the old crew, reanimated by Necronanites...



Just wait until they find out that those Xenos "treasure" Obelisks they've been hoarding contain Necronanites!

=I=

"Necronanites"

Heh.

Love the name, that's terrible enough for GW to use.

Fantastic Atmospheric stuff, Jealous of your group being able to play in it.

That is incredibly cool. I am very jealous. I really admire boards like that.

Thanks all, yeah we have a large group so it feels worth the effort to put it all together

Here's a few shots of our whole table set up with interior terrain for the Canterbury.

The Hangar:


The Library:




This is just one arrangement of course, the ship is so large we do a different layout every time

=I=


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So shortly after boarding the dark, silent hulk of the Canterbury, the crew witness some kind of eerie Warp Anomaly engulf the Amarathian, removing it from reality!





Now alone on a derelict ghost ship, the crew must get the Canterbury up and running if they hope to survive...

=I=

Wow!

Is it possible to see more of that shuttle? I'd love to know what it was made from.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Wow!
Is it possible to see more of that shuttle? I'd love to know what it was made from.

Yeah,
It's made from two vintage GI Joe vehicles: A HISS tank (body) and a stiletto Starviper (engines), plus other junk.

I originally made it for one of my VOTOMS campaigns, you can see a shot of it at the bottom of this log page:
http://ironhands.com/v2camp13.htm

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