Entry III. - Forest Lord: The Leshy (Part One)

"Wander not in yonder dark woods, lest ye upset th' Olde Mann"
- warning written on a sign outside the village of Ulfsvelt

~~~

Panic. Mad, blind panic. The raw pain in Gunter’s legs was searing as he gasped and wheezed, his lungs pushed to their limit. 

He burst through the thick undergrowth into a small clearing, not daring to look back at his black-armoured pursuers. The screams of his dying comrades echoing in his ears urged him onwards in spite of sheer exhaustion. But he was wounded, and his frantic running on tired legs caused him to stumble. He tripped and fell, landing heavily in the tall grass.

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Whether he had closed his eyes for a second or for many hours, he did not know. But as Gunter became alarmingly aware that he was regaining consciousness from a sleep he could ill afford, he noticed that the sky began to grow darker. 

However long he’d been out, his enemies had not yet caught up with him. Surely, it could not have been that long.

Looking up, he heard the cawing of crows, as first a trickle, then a flock, then a great stream of the black-feathered birds fluttered frantically overhead. Suddenly, he felt that he was not alone. 

Glancing to his right, Gunter jumped as a huge and terrible figure with the skeletal head of a stag emerged almost silently from the woods beside him.

He screamed in horror, raising his arm to shield his face, believing he was now to be struck down by this cruel servant of the Dark Gods.

Mere moments passed. Moments that felt like an eternity. And yet no evil deed was carried out. No grim fate befell Gunter at the claws of this fell beast.

Shuddering and whimpering, he opened his eyes, lowered his hands, and peered cautiously at the creature before him. It stared back. Calmly regarding and examining the Free Guild soldier cowering within arm’s reach.

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The being was the height of a troll. Lithe yet sinewy, with great thick hands and long, clawed fingers; it clearly possessed great physical strength. Its body was covered in shaggy and matted grey hair resembling the bark of an ancient white ash tree, and about its shoulders was a mass of leaves, twigs, and moss.

At that moment, the creature reached up and pulled down a piece of this mossy mantle to reveal its true face, smeared with mud and hidden beneath the great-antlered deer skull worn atop its head. 

A cunning ruse perhaps? To make the beast appear bigger and more imposing? 

Certainly it had worked on Gunter.

The creature’s true face had an almost human appearance, though much hairier and with a heavy brow, thick nose and wide jaw. It almost resembled the savage Ogors of the mountain steppes, though not quite as bestial. 

Gunter could see in its eyes an intelligence far greater than even the most cunning chieftain of those tribes. Indeed, he sensed that this being surpassed the capacity of his own mind by some margin. He was reminded of the haughty, yet wise and powerful Wizards he’d encountered back in the cities.

Lifting its huge arm, the figure pointed a  clawed, gnarled finger, first at a nearby plant, then at Gunter himself. It then made a gesture as if rubbing something on its arm.

Around the clearing Gunter heard heavy rustling noises, the sounds of large, four-legged figures moving past at speed. They came from the direction the beast had arrived and were heading towards the massacre the soldier had fled. 

The forest was pierced by the mournful howl of a wolf...then another...then another…

Many more joined in the chorus. The pack was clearly huge.

The beast slowly and silently turned away and began to follow the unseen wolf-pack, but not before a massive bear shuffled out of the woods and came grunting to his side. 

As the creature and its bear companion disappeared from the clearing, the wolf howls were joined by new screams....notably more guttural than before, but no less terrified.

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So, this is my first model for AoS28, aka Dark Age Of Sigmar; a Leshy, a mystical forest guardian. I might as well come straight out and say it; yes, this was inspired by the Witcher 3 video game (where the creature is called a Leshen).

But with that said, I was already reasonably well-versed in Slavic mythology before that game came to my attention, and the Leshy is a being that's fascinated me for some time.

This post is just going to be a showcase of the model. I have a lot to say about the background of the creature and my thought process in creating him in model form, but I'll put this in an additional post so that only the curious, and those prepared to read  a wall of text, may opt in if they wish! If so, click through to "The Leshy (Part Two)".

Thanks for stopping by!

If  you're interested you may find me on Instagram.

Entry II. - Hive Spire Nobles: The First Knight

Here I present the second member of my Noble House warband.

The wily and ruthless Syr Zanthamel von Ymir; Knight in service to House Corbulio, by way of the ancient Tithe system.

While he may have a Knight's title, like his liege lord he is little more than a ruthless and depraved cutthroat.

His family has sworn loyalty to the Corbulio dynasty for several generations and rules over a smallholding inside the House's Hab-Sector.

Zanthamel has the Ymir family crest on his badge; a golden field charged with a crimson "Pall" Heraldric Ordinary stylised as "Y" (for Ymir).

Like his master, he carries copies of his official family documentation, alongside his antiquated but no-less deadly Meltyr Gonne.

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In terms of the design of this model, I chose a Free Company head that reminded me of Heihachi Mishima from Tekken. I wanted him to look like quite an untrustworthy character.

I also added a stripe of black warpaint down the side of his face with the non-bionic eye. This was inspired by the recent Macbeth film with Michael Fassbender. I'm thinking I might do this on several models as I just think it's really cool and scary looking, and also reminds me of the War Boys from Mad Max: Fury Road.

The rest of the paint scheme simply follows in the same pallet as Titus. 

+ The Meltyr Gonne +

This was a pretty simple kitbash; it's an Ad Mech Radium Carbine (from the Skitarii kit) with a small piece of plasticard tube as the muzzle. 

I scored the tube twice around with my tube cutter for some visual interest and to give the look of cooling ribs or vents. The back end is from an Empire/Freeguild crossbow; I added a little rectangle of plasticard with a plasticard rivet detail on top to cover the join as a kind of charging handle.

I painted the weapon to look like it's made from a mixture of mystery future metals and has Verdegris and patina throughout. 

+ Heraldry +

Of all the historical periods I'm interested in, the Medieval era is probably the one I enjoy the most, and within that I love the armour and weapons of the time, but also the heraldry, which is something I get quite nerdy about.

For Zanthamel von Ymir I opted for a different route from Titus, who himself had a fairly straightforward heraldic style. 

To my knowledge it's not something that occurred very often, but I thought it would be interesting if Zanthamel's heraldry communicated something about his family name. 

The only other time I've seen this in historic records is the family Parteneck, which featured an image of an axe head as its "charge" - the charge is the image a shield is "charged" with over its background colour or division of colours (the "field"). 

The archetypal charge is something like an animal or an object; a wolf or a bear, for example, or as with Parteneck, an axe head.

However, some charges were very simple geometric shapes, these were called "Ordinaries", and one such Ordinary is referred to as "Pall"; this is essentially a coloured field with a "Y"-shape over it in a different colour. 

To me this communicated "Ymir" almost perfectly, but to give it a bit more visual interest I decided to add a cross-bar to the Y, which reminded me of the cross symbol used in the medieval badge of the Kingdom of Hungary.

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Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed! If  you're interested you may find me on Instagram.

Entry I. - Hive Spire Nobles: The Visconte

Welcome to the very first entry of my blog!

For my debut, I'm showcasing the leader of my Inquisimunda/Inq28 Noble House warband...

Visconte Titus Di Corbulio - Hereditary Hab-Sector Ruler

Most of his equipment is made up of ancient family heirlooms, including an Archotech plasma pistol and an encrusted face mask which is far more robust than its layers of patina would suggest.

His cane is a symbol of his authority and doubles as a deadly weapon (counts as either a power sword [sword-cane] or shock maul).

He wears a suit of tailor-made power armour emblazoned with a badge depicting the Corbulio coat of arms; three white daggers on a crimson field.

On his back is an official Writ of Marque, the seal of approval from a long-dead Magistrate, acting in the Emperor's name, granting a great-ancestor of the House the rights to rule over the district that Titus still commands by blood.

Perhaps at one time the Tithe system involved benevolent and noble souls, but today such Lords are little more than robber barons, trumped-up thugs with the wealth and clout to back up their bluster. True, they can be hard to live under for the Hive dwellers, but they're often a preferable option to the alternatives.

The Writ is, of course, a copy of the original, which is kept safely inside a sealed vault deep within the Corbulio compound.

However, the copy is still a valid document under Imperial Law which officially grants Titus all his inherited privileges.

What's more, it is digitally linked to the original, carries an array of trackers and sensors, is DNA-locked to Titus himself, and, in the event that it is stolen and he can't intercept it, he's able to remotely detonate it with the force of a cluster of grenades.

Titus also carries a curious piece of artwork on his cloak. No-one knows quite what it's for, or where it's from, though some in the Hive say it's a totem carrying a protective and vengeful Corbulio ancestor spirit to watch his back. Others whisper that it has a darker origin...

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I really wanted to go with the whole decadent and corrupt noble angle, but still recognisably part of the Imperium of Man and its institutions. Not so much evil characters, but definitely driven by self interest.

It's also interesting to me, having been used to ten-man Necromunda gangs, to explore a smaller warband made up of a handful of very powerful and well-equipped individuals.

This model has some very deliberate homages to Picta Mortis' incredible Imperial Bounty Hunter, which inspired me to go in this direction with the Dark Eldar Archon as a base model for my Noble House leader. In particular, the skull on a spike on the base, the upwards pose of the gun hand, and the placement of the purity seal on the cloak are all nods to his work.

You might notice the head moves from one picture to another - it's actually magnetised to the model; something I've started doing more with special characters or models where I have multiple heads I like for them, or multiple roles they could fill in different warbands.

+ Painting +

For the colour scheme I drew inspiration from this piece of Dark Souls 3 concept art, with the purplish-grey cloth topped by a crimson mantle. I'm afraid I don't know the name of the artist, I found it on Pinterest.

I tried to go for a painterly, somewhat graphic novel style which I've kept deliberately fairly monochrome with a limited pallet and spot colours, and have tried to focus attention in highlights and details on particular areas like the face, while allowing the less significant parts of the model to be darker and to fade into the background.

The mask was a tricky one, as I wasn't sure how to colour it until very late in the paintjob. I had originally thought pure white or gold, but did dabble with the idea of red, black, or a very dark midnight blue. In the end I went with white, but then after Googling for masks online I saw some old bronze ones covered in Verdigris, so some quick washes with watered down Thunderhawk Blue brought it all together nicely.

I also experimented with using metallic paint on the armour together with non-metallic highlights, I was trying to achieve a look similar to the sort of bone-like armour seen on these amazing models by Gabe Hearnshaw, who also contributed in inspiring me to go for this paint style I've adopted.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed! If  you're interested you may find me on Instagram.