Category Archives: The Chapel

A return to the Albino Forest

27 Saturday May 2017

Posted by in AoS Undead, The Chapel

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Greetings fellows! Well… it is done. My final dissertation got submitted on Tuesday, and for the first time in 5 years, I am completely free of any study obligations. Woohoo! Ok, so there is the 2 month wait to see how I did, but, (as I keep reminding myself), that is out of my hands, so I’m just enjoying the peace that comes with wrapping up something that has been a big chunk of my life for so long :-)

Of course, like any good hobbyist I had to celebrate my new-found liberty with a spot of painting, and given that I will be out of circulation for the next three weeks, I thought it best to tie up a few loose ends rather than start anything new, (I hate loose ends anyway, so this makes me happy). Some of this you have seen before, but other items are things that have been languishing in their undercoats, and that you won’t have seen.

Firstly, I went back and tidied up some of the undead I had speed painted for last weekend, and added in some detail where needed. This batch got some highlighting on the bone & I added a spot of OSL:

I also finally got around to adding some detail to this guy’s banner:

 

The Cursed Company got some highlighted to the bone, I did the banner, and painted in some gems on Krueger and the standard bearer:

The bottom scrolls are supposed to say ‘Mors Omnia Aequalia’ (roughly ‘all equal in death’ – seemed appropriate for this unit in particular!):

 

Next up I revisited The Chapel project and finished a few pieces for the Albino Forest, starting with a big tree stump kindly donated by Mark at Heresyofus (than you Mark!!!):

 

Next a Malifaux ‘hanging tree’:

 

You have probably noticed that all of my hollow trees have a collection of heads in the top – sacrifices to appease the forest spirits of the old world, but I really pushed the concept with this next piece. A monster of my own devising – the Charnel Oak was a sacrificial tree like many others, but over the years, the life force of the many victims imbued the oak with a malignant sentience. It became a creeping horror that slowly roams the forest, looking for victims that have fallen into a spoor-induced dream state, are too injured to run escape, or those that have been staked out as a sacrifice. The Charnel Oak drags these unfortunates into its bloated body, slowly digesting the poor victims until naught but their bones remain:

 

Pity those who remain conscious of their fate:

 

Finally, I thought it would be worth posting a high shot of everything I have completed for the Albino Forest to date:

It still looks a bit sparse but I have much more to add in the coming months, which works out very nicely for The Chapel project, and also for a spot of AoS as well:

 

So that’s it for now dudes – I’ll be off the hobby for the next 3 weeks with various travel and work commitments, but I am really looking forward to getting right back into it later in June, when The Chapel project will be my main focus – no doubt with a small side salad of Undead.  Yum! :-)

Lindethiel Gladesinger

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in The Chapel

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Hi guys, what an exciting day! I’ve finished my first warband member, who just happens to be the leader. It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to Lindethiel Gladesinger:

 

I am particularly pleased with my attempts to turn the male Spiritseer into a female – one thing I really wanted to do in my warband was to take advantage of the lack of gender bias in Eldar lore and have some really strong female characters. I’m chuffed with my attempt to sculpt breasts – hopefully they are realistic and not in any way crass.

I stuck with a very restricted palette of whites, greens, gold and bone for Lindethiel – a scheme that I intend to carry throughout the warband. I really like the interplay of this scheme – the bone suggests death while the green speaks of life, and the gold and gems suggest a grandeur that is offset by the faded and tired looking white of the silver birch. It is far more of a fantasy palette than a sci-fi one really – perfect for Exodites, and I think the crow really adds something in that regard as well.

The actual painting was a challenge… I’m not very well practiced in hard armour plates, so the arms, head and back vane were a slog. Also gems…. Lots of gems…. They ain’t the best I have ever painted – I think I misjudged the colour choice here, and I still have a lot to learn about painting in green, (figuring out what shades worked well together and so on). That said, the robes came out well, and I think the gems look effective en masse. The bit that gave me the most grief was actually the gold on the blade… it’s a big area to cover, and a funny shape to highlight. I’m still pleased with the result though – the palette really helps to distract the eye from some of the dodgier bits I hope :-)

Conceptually, she is a Spiritseer for my Exodites – a group that use psychically responsive wood in place of Wraithbone. I hope that this is a not-too-difficult leap for people, as I think it ties in rather nicely with the Albino Forest, which in turn forms an important part of the story arc for The Chapel project. I like that it gives me options in terms of coming up with a reason for my warband to be there – always a good start for any narrative-driven game :-)

With that in mind, here’s some fluff for you:

 

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Lindethiel Gladesinger slept deeply, her thoughts slowing as they weaved through the vastness of the wraith-realm, lulled by the quiet insistence with which it called to her. Her dreams carried her far and wide, deep and high, as she tasted the rivers of sap ebbing and flowing through the forests, heard the echo of crystal caves that no mortal eyes would ever see, swam deep in underground lakes of icy vastness, listened to the scurry and struggle of life in all its forms… Beneath all of this pulsed the fiery molten ocean at the heart of the world – a steady throb of life force that resonated throughout the planet. The harmonies were beguiling, rising and falling with each languorous turn of her awareness, the soothing melodies running counterpoint to the primordial undertone. The wraith-realm sang its sweet song to Lindethiel, calling on her to merge her consciousness with the spiritual gestalt that included the very soul of this world, as well as those of her ancestors. Her life had been one of long service to her people, and she was now ready for peace. Deeper and deeper she drifted, her thoughts slowed and were gradually subsumed further into the world spirit, just as her body was slowly absorbed into the sacred forest grove of her people.

Day? Weeks? Months later? It didn’t matter anymore. Her drifting had taken on a timeless quality, and Lindethiel was barely aware of herself as her merging approached completion. Suddenly, a discordant note plucked at her fading consciousness – a single tone that rang false in the greater soundscape of the world, arresting her descent into oblivion. A sense of wrongness bled into the spirit realm, changing the serene beauty to something sinister and fearful. Lindethiel felt her individuality increasing as the world spirit began convulsing, pushing her back towards consciousness and the world of the living. She gathered her identity with a sense of resignation as she rose through layers of her own awareness, sending strands of consciousness out into the world, seeking out the source of the discord… She soon found it – a stream of psychic defilement that emanated from the hidden webway that connected her world to the wider Eldar diaspora. It spread like a bruise, corrupted like an infection, and it defied all of Lindethiel’s attempts to comprehend. At first she feared it might be the taint of chaos, but this was unlike any daemonic incursion that she had ever experienced… this felt older, and it didn’t have the distinctive emotional drives of the great powers… no hunger, no lust, no malice or rage, no urge to corrupt or enslave… the only emotion that she could perceive was one of utter despair, and an overwhelming sense of nihilistic futility… Lindethiel could only conceptualise the incursion with one word – ‘Ending’, and she knew that her world and her people were in dire peril. Reluctantly, she forced her consciousness back towards her body.

Lindethiel awoke. It took her a few moments to adjust to her return to consciousness. She would have fallen, but her body was already in an advanced state of petrification, and she remained rooted to the ground. Just like her ancestors before her, she had come to the sacred grove to pass from the world of the living. The process saw the physical body transform into Wychwood, while the soul travelled through the psychically conductive medium to join the world spirit. In many ways, Wychwood served her people in the same way as the Wraithbone of her Craftworld kin, indeed, this natural repository for the souls of the dead was probably one of the reasons why her ancestors had chosen this planet to be their Exodite home so many generations ago. Now, drawn back to physical life and torn from a deeper spiritual existence, she stood in the dappled shade of the sacred grove, the majority of her body already turned to psychically responsive wood. Lindethiel was unconcerned by her altered state. She had trained and mastered the way of the Shaper throughout her long life, and was able to mould the material to her will with the merest thought. In emergencies, she could even use the wood to create body-constructs capable of being inhabited by the spirits of the dead, so it was no effort to animate the parts of her body that had become petrified.

She glanced down and considered her physical form. Her legs and left arm and torso had already transformed into iron-hard Wychwood, smooth-barked and pale in the beams of soft sunlight, while her head and right side remained flesh. With a though, she began pushing her will deep into the tissues of the wood, and felt it grow supple and obedient to her bidding. Lindethiel began to feel sensation from her new body, and it began to flex and sway as she strengthened her control of the Wychwood. After some time, she felt she had sufficient mastery to withdraw the roots that anchored her to the ground, and to begin walking – haltingly at first, but gathering speed as she gained control of her new body. By the time she reached the edge of the clearing, Lindethiel was moving with all of the grace and fluidity that characterised her race. She began to run soundlessly through the forest, ducking low branches and leaping fallen logs and streams. The untiring Wychwood of her body pushing her faster and further than would be possible for any creature of pure flesh, blood and bone. She knew that she needed to get back to her clan settlement, and that she needed to convince the royal court to sanction an expedition to investigate the source of the sickness that was polluting their world. It would mean a dangerous hunt through the webway to an unknown destination to face an alien threat. The risks were high, but then so were the stakes, for Lindethiel knew that whoever joined the hunt would carry the fate of their world in their hands… 

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So there we have it, my first warband member, and as far as I know the world’s first and only Eldar/Dryad Exodite! I hope you like her as much as I do :-)

Ready for painting and splitting hares

19 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Side projects, The Chapel

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Hello chaps, I’ve managed a little progress on my Exodite warband this last week – all of the Wraithwood constructs are now finalised, based and primed, so the whole warband is ready to paint… exciting times! But before I go in to that, I just want to share a bit of fun with you all. I was visiting my parents over Easter, and had a request to do some painting for my Mum. She had picked up a couple of bargain hare sculptures – resin, but badly painted to look like bronze (i.e. they had a patchy matt brown coat of paint, with bits of pink resin showing through). A couple of hours with some Waplock Bronze, Agrax Earthshade and Nihilakh Oxide, followed by a drybrush up through bronze to Runelord Brass, and this is what we end up with:

I wish I had taken a before shot, but you’ll just have to trust me that it is a huge improvement. My mum was delighted, and I really enjoyed the process – it was genuinely nice to do something ‘useful’ with my hobby!

 

Anyway, back to the warband. Here are the Striking Scorpions – they had some re-posing work to get them looking more insectoid and dynamic, and I added a loincloth and refined the helmet shape a bit to look more like Eldar. I also textured the helmet to suggest wood, and they also got some hive type structures sculpted on to the shoulders, both to add bulk and to suggest a tertiary weapon system to represent Scorpion Mandiblasters, (an excellent suggestion from Lasgunpacker!). They still look a bit Xenomorph, (especially in their black basecoats), but I reckon they’ll be fine once painted:

 

Next we have my walker entry, a Wraithwood WarWalker. I think this is my favourite of the constructs so far – the base model is superb and took the Eldar doodabs quite nicely. I’ve added a loincloth and gun-banners, (‘packer’s suggestion again), and tendrils to hold the guns. I also textured the head to blend it all together a bit more closely:

 

I also finished up my Wraithguard, but I forgot to take a photo (duh!). For those that can’t remember, here’s the WiP. Since then, I have fixed the left leg so that he’s striding rather than trotting into battle, and I added a loincloth and textured up the head. I really like this guy – more so that the Scorpions above, so I might include him in the warband instead… He’s big enough to count for two regular Henchmen I think… We’ll see how I feel after painting.

So, that leaves the warband as follows:

  • Leader & psyker – Spiritseer
  • Champion – Dire Avenger Exarch
  • Walker – WarWalker proxy
  • Henchmen – 4x Dire Avengers & either 2x Scorpions or 1x Wraithguard…

That leaves me deliberately short by one member – I’ve had something very specific in mind for my final ‘character’ slot for quite a while, and I’ve been looking forward to introducing you to her! Keeping up the fantasy/40k cross over theme, I’ve added a lone Harlequin Shadowseer to the warband:

 

I don’t know if this conversion has been done before – I haven’t seen one, but then I haven’t been looking either. Regardless, as soon as I saw the superb Silver Tower Mistweaver mini I thought of splicing her with the Shadowseer… she went together like a dream, and I am delighted with the result – it’s a subtle conversion, but very effective in my opinion. She will add some much needed warp-power to my warband, and her psychological shenanigans should bring a unique flavour to the game :-)

Anyway, that’s it for now – it’s time to grab my hairy stick and give them all a bloody good tickle!! Until next time :-)

More test Wraithwood constructs…

11 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Side projects, The Chapel

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Hi guys, sorry it has been a while, I’ve been a bit slow this last week or so… slow, but not completely idle. I have mostly been cranking out yet more trees – pretty standard fare for the most part, although there is one piece that is a wee bit special… I’m pretty sure that you’ll like it, but you’ll have to wait and see until it’s finished ;-)

However, I do have a few more test wips for my warband that I want to share:

These two are henchmen bodyguards for my Spiritseer – they are basically Striking Scorpion proxies, and are intended to represent the spirits of long-dead warriors that are occupying small Wraithwood construct bodies in order to serve in un-life. Hmmm… I’m not really sure how I feel about these two… I’m going to play with the posing a bit, shorten the necks, and refine the head shape to look more like mini-wraithlords and less like daemons or xenomorphs! They may get mandibles, I’m also going to give them loincloths & nodules to bring them back into Eldar territory… I’m not sure if I like them or not at the moment – I think they are ok, but I’m aiming for excellence with this project, and ok isn’t going to cut it… I will reserve judgement until they are finished, but I’d love to hear your thoughts in the meantime.

 

I think I’m on firmer ground with this fella – he will fill my Walker slot, (fnarr), and he is coming along very nicely in my opinion. He’s basically a Warwalker proxy, but piloted by the dead rather than the living. I’m much happier with this build, and I particularly love the pose on this guy – he reminds me of an old ‘eavy metal pic of an Adeptus Titanicus Phantom, which makes me very happy :-)  Again, there is a bit to do – I’m planning a loincloth & nodules again, and the gun-arms will have vines holding them on to the chassis.

So that’s it for the time being – slow progress, but progress nonetheless! Let me know what you think guys – I don’t want to be ‘barking’ up the wrong tree ;-)

Chapel warband update

28 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by in The Chapel

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Hi guys, quick one today – I’ve done a bit of finessing on my existing warband members on and off this last week, and have got them primed and ready to paint. The not-Avengers got their sleeves, their fur, and their fetishes, as did the huntsmaster. I also ditched the heads that the huntsmaster was carrying, (good call Lasgunpacker!), and replaced them with a cool hunting horn. Much more hunty I think ;-)

Here’s a couple of shots, (including some 360 action so Thomas can check out my furry bits):

 

I also got my Spiritseer advanced to the same stage. I took a lot of the good advice offered and gave her some Eldar style nodes/nodules, (thanks Azazel!), some bling, and a loincloth, (‘packer again!). The crow was a late flash of inspiration, and fits beautifully I think:

Finally, I bashed together a rough Wraithguard concept last night… The posing is really bloody difficult with these ultra-engineered kits, so finding two arms that work as independent sword arms was a pain in the buns… I think they’re ok, but could do with some other opinions on the matter. I’m also going to try and drop that left leg so that it’s striding purposefully rather than running – I think that would help a bit. I’m also worried that he’s just too big to be a henchman…  What do you guys think?

Marshalling the dead

24 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by in The Chapel

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Hi guys, there has been so much good stuff coming out about The Chapel this week, so I thought I would finally break cover on what I’m planning for the more eldritch side of my warband. I’ve been diligently learning how to sculpt fur on my Exodite Avengers, but I’ve also had a chance to get the basic build done on the latest warband member – a Spiritseer.

I love the idea of Spiritseers and their role in communing with the Eldar dead, and this seems very appropriate given the ghostly theme running throughout The Chapel project. I love that they are viewed as necromancers among their own people, and that they naturally work well with wraith-type troops. Wraith troops are about the coolest thing about Eldar in my opinion – I just love the concept of towering Wraithbone constructs controlled by the spirits of the dead… I knew I had to have some in my warband, so the Spiritseer became a natural choice.

Thing is, where would Exodites get their hands on Wraithbone? What if they couldn’t? What if they happened to find an alternative material? What if it was some kind of psychically conductive wood? How would that look? Well… this is the kind of thought process that I had, and I began to examine the excellent Sylvaneth range with a view to merging it with the Eldar range. My Spiritseer is my first attempt at this fusion:

The idea is that she is old, even by the standards of the Eldar race, and she is ready to pass from the physical world – a process which involves entering a trance state while the body slowly transforms into Wraithwood so that the spirit can join the planetary gestalt. This process has been interrupted by a psychic disturbance that threatens her homeworld via the Webway… Caught between life and death, she must rise to the defence of her people, travelling the Webway with a small war party of the living and the dead in order to reach the source of the disturbance – the world that the Mon-Keigh call ‘Chapel’. Whether she can succeed remains to be seen…

Obviously there is plenty more work to do on her but I’m happy with the direction this is heading… I can’t wait to get stuck in to some of the bigger Wraith troops! What do you guys think of the concept? Win or bin?