The Hellforged Leviathan Walks!

I've been working on this scary fellow on and off for the past week or so, and I think I'm finally ready to call him done!

Lord Ghôrax Skullborn here is a Hellforged Leviathan built mostly from the Redemptor Dreadnought kit. I think he's possibly a little bigger than a proper Leviathan but when you're calling something a 'Leviathan' being too big shouldn't be a major issue.

Here he is without the Green Stuff and a few of the last few parts. The most significant areas of conversion were the body and the Grav-Bombard. The body is basically made from cut-up parts of the Redemptor's own sarcophagus- the sawn-off cap of an old permanent marker makes the barrel that the head (from the Skulls box) sits in. The Leviathan's larger shoulder blocks were made using the carapace plates from a Warlord (I had these spare since I built mine Loyalist)

The Grav-Bombard was made by removing the barrel from the Redemptor's plasma cannon and adding basically all the wheels from the Cauldron of Blood (I've now bought two of that kit just for bits). After this shot was taken I trialled several possible centre-pieces including the emitter from a Tellyporta Blasta and the end of a Dark Talon's Rift Cannon, but settled on the end of a Leman Russ searchlight. The gribbly teeth were horns cut from Chaos Marine helms.

Over on the other arm, I simply used an assortment of Ork Kan Klaws, as well as the later addition of a Meganobz chainclaw, to make a suitably evil-looking weapon.

Here he is with most of the Green Stuff on. A lot of extra details were added too, including chains mostly taken from the old Marauder Horsemen kit, a couple of Chaos Knight shields, the ends of two Immolator flamers and an icon pole made with a combination of a Bloodletter banner and the old Khorne CSM icon. This slots into a hole in the top of the hull for transport. On the subject, the Redemptor kit has an odd overlarge slot in the bottom of the torso to meet the peg on the legs, which is presumably for posing but means it won't hold together unglued. I filled the slot with Green Stuff, wet the surfaces, and shoved the peg into place in the right pose before removing it, making a much more snug socket so he can come apart for storage.

Probably the most interesting aspect of the Green Stuff work is the various skulls, icons of Khorne, and twisted face-things, including the rather fun Daemon face representing the Hellfire Reactor. These were made by blatant cheating. I have some moulds made up, taken from the AoS Chaos Bastion floor, which allow me to press masses of twisted skulls into Green Stuff. Since the mould is bendy I can do this around curves, but not all the skulls will come out clean, making it ideal for a Chaotic look. (I used waste Green Stuff to add more skulls to the base with the same cast) The little runes of Khorne are similarly made by 'branding' the model with a small icon cut from the CSM Khorne command helm, and the reactor Daemon is cast from the backpack on the same sprue.

Here's another fun little cheat. The World Eaters icon here is just an Ogre belly-plate with a little Earth sculpted into the middle of it.

Meanwhile a look on the other side shows the true ludicrousity of the Grav-Bombard, as well as the little hanging Khorne icons pinched from a Khorgorath after I converted five of them to make them all unique some time ago.

I did a fairly standard paint job after all that. After a black spray undercoat, dry-brushed up with Leadbelcher and Administratum Grey, I had to immediately splodge loads of Blood For The Blood God into the depths of the bombard to coat all the little spoke-things of the six wheels that make up the barrel. I also added some water-effect acrylic gel for bulk. Once that horrible mess had dried, the rest of the process was quite simple. Towards the end, I noted that the eye-sockets were too deep to paint a glow effect in, so after basing them with blue I filled them and the power-plant chimneys with more water effect before painting over the top with thinned-down paints. It doesn't really add any special effect, but does get the colour where it needs to be.

Anyway, think that might be my most detailed WIP post in a long time! Now let's hope he can actually make some 4++ saves and live for more than one turn...

New beginnings..

So, today is an exciting day for me! Not so much for you. Unless of course your day has been very exciting, in which case great!*

Anyway, the point is that I've launched a new website, which will be specifically for the books of the Thelenic Curriculum and my writing in general. I'll add a link to there on the Landing Page, which will gradually become redundant.

What does that mean for this site? Almost nothing! I'll still do my usual hobby-based posts on here (look out for a tasty new Khornate Leviathan this weekend) but I'll also still do writing-related stuff on here. Mostly, it just means people going to the www.thetcbooks.co.uk link will now be redirected to the new site rather than here, so won't have to put up with me ranting about the Assault Phase when they're looking for my books. The new site is also much more mobile-friendly, so if you've been meaning to read the short stories but couldn't find them on your phone due to Google Blogs being a bit janky, head on over to the new site.

Going forward I'm even going to be buying some ads! Anyway, if you're curious, head on over and take a look and maybe buy a book or two. Or even review one you've read, if you're a true superhero to authors everywhere.





*Unless it's 'being shot at' or 'being chased by a lunatic with an axe' exciting, in which case I hope you survived.

New Keeper, new paints, and some thoughts.

I finally got my new Keeper of Secrets finished! There are so many gems on this thing that looking on the box you can see where GW's official painter lost the will to live and just did some as metal bumps. I did more than they did, but on the other hand my gems suck.

When the new Keeper came out I was presented with a bit of a problem. Since I already have not one, but two models that I use as Keepers (and which are finally about the right size!) there didn't seem a lot of point making another stock one. On the other hand the variant Keeper, Shalaxi Hellbane, didn't appeal to me visually (though 'it' has nice rules. More on 'it' in a moment.)

The solution, I decided, was to go full-on with magnets, allowing the regular Keeper to have Shalaxi's weapon options. This also allows me to field a Keeper with options like the Ritual Knife and Shimmering Aegis which I don't have on the older models.

More gems than an animated pop-group with an inexplicable movie

The Mammarian Heresy
Now, there was one area in which the new Keeper was, to my eyes, a bit deficient. For reasons known only to them, GW persist in making Slaanesh models with only one breast. Not only that, they've doubled down recently by referring to Keepers and Heralds as 'it', rather than 'she'. I find this a bit irritating, since the other Greater Daemons are all still unambiguously male. Not only that, but only Arnold J. Rimmer is ever going to be pleased with having just one of the things and that's not an example I want my legions of excess following.

As an aside, I entirely take the point that as physical manifestations of warp entities Daemons don't really have a gender at all, but again, all the 'male' daemons apparently do. I personally think that Slaanesh daemons manifest as whatever those watching find most alluring- basically a glamour- so for me that means two dumplings on the plate. I do plan to make some oiled-up Chippendale-style Noise Marines in future, but I'm hoping we'll see a new Emperor's Children book and Noise Marine models soon.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I ended up sculpting in her left (as she would view it) breast, as well as the corset-thing that goes over it. I made it with Green Stuff, and as usual with this sort of project I did it in two stages, the first being the 'structural' stage where I got the basic shape about right, and then, once this had set, the 'detail' stage where I smoothed it out and added the clothing. Trying to do the whole thing in one go tends to lead to pushing the thing out of shape whilst trying to detail it.

Other than that, the only real modelling work that needed doing was adding magnets to the wrists and hands for swapping the weapons, which I did by drilling out a small recess for the magnets and then filling the gaps. As always, there's a thin layer of Green Stuff preventing the magnets making direct contact, which makes the options much easier to remove and lessens the chance of the magnets ripping free. In the end, I left the head and cloak off for painting as well as leaving the Shining Aegis in two parts (hand/ shield) for ease of access.

Someone needs to do one with Daemonette train-bearers

Which cloak to use was a matter of some debate. The cloak for Shalaxi represents 'its' (named character so I've got to) Cloak of Constriction, but I preferred the way the other cloak looked and hung off the wrists. Those hands which are meant to be used with it have a little hole for the cloak but test-fitting showed it didn't cause any serious issues. Likewise the arms are different for Shalaxi but I found the default Keeper arms worked fine and didn't cause a problem with the spear- in fact I prefer it levelled at it is here, rather than point-up as it is on Shalaxi.

Adventures in Contrast
Painting was a bit of an adventure since I waited until the release of the new Contrast paints to do it. The model was undercoated with Wraithbone (the brighter Contrast undercoat) and then painted with Apothecary white for the flesh, Skeleton Horde for the horns, and Volupus Pink, Magos Purple and Shyish Purple for the claws and robes/ clothes. I forgot to get a Black Templar for the black, but a couple of coats of Vallejo Air black did the deed. The metals were painted with conventional metals, over the air black on the claws and weapons, since painting them over Wraithbone really doesn't look good.

It's fair to say I had the odd.. issue with the Contrasts. On the flesh, the Apothecary white was great, giving a bluish-grey tint just as I like for my Slaanesh Daemons. On the larger, sweeping areas like the cloaks, though, I ran in to a lot of pooling issues and had some bother finding the right highlights. Nevertheless, the model responded well to my usual Nuln Oil Gloss wash and we got there in the end!

The other worry with Contrast is durability. I think Wraithbone is designed to allow the paints to 'slide off' a bit, to give the effect of making raised areas lighter in colour. However, it seems that makes the paint itself more vulnerable to chipping. I've transported this model once so far and whilst the model itself was chip-free, the Caliban Green around the base came off in a couple of places. I think the oil wash and the highlights have made the paint on the model resilient enough to cope with handling, but since the base edge got neither of those it might need a coat of Stormshield or similar.