The Derelict Paragon

I'm glad to finaly be able to talk about this one, because the fact is that this Knight gave me more trouble than all the ones I did before. It wasn't that the conversion was particularly difficult: he's actually the simplest of my Nurgle Knights. The problem is that I started the project half-cocked and without thinking things through properly. I'm happy that despite this I managed to come up with a fairly decent end result.

Following the Rust Hound and the Hanging Tree, I initially had the idea of going in a different direction with this one: I had this notion that it would have no organic mutations and would instead be leaking pollution and filth. This idea came from the head, which my friend generously donated after he had a different idea for his own Knights (the head is from Shapeways). But the trouble was, I couldn't think of a way to execute it well without boring myself.

I made the fatal mistake of starting the project without having fully squared the ideas in my head. Despite a quarter century in this hobby, I somehow thought that starting without a vision of the end piece was a good idea. I started by using spae Gnarlmaw bells to create a raggedy loin cloth. Before I'd really thought about it, I'd started adding mutations to the legs. I stopped and realised in annoyance that I'd just done the very damned thing I said I wouldn't. Irritated at my own absent-mindedness, I put the legs aside and tried to think of a new idea.

The model was an Ebay rescue, so I had to use the Thunderstrike Gauntlet. I had the idea that maybe I could replace the fingers with scythes for the whole 'reaper' aspect of Nurgle. I cut the fingers at the first joint and used spare scythes and Rot Fly claws to create talons. I was pretty happy with it. For the cannon arm, nothing immediate came to mind, so I went rummaging through my bit boxes. The string of skulls hanging from it was a spare part from a Beastmen Ghorgon, and I thought that it would be fun to have a couple of Nurglings riding on it.

A few skulls added in the Nurgle icon sysmbol was enough to make the cannon seem alright to me. I added a bit of UHU in the barrell gave the impression of oil drooling out. After some thought, I added a spiral of model barbed wire. If I recall correctly, it was because I was starting to think of the head as a World War 1 gas mask and so I thought I'd lean to a sort of nightmare trench warfare feel.

Of course, I then got distracted by something else and put the Knight down for a couple of months. When I went back to it, I couldn't quite remember my previous ideas. The fleshy growths on the back of the hull were added because... well, because that's one of my favourite Nurgle gimmicks. I then did something really dumb I'd found some bits from a Chaos Warshrine and added them to the shoulder pads. It looked kind of rubbish, so I decided to fill in the gaps with glue and sand. It looked worse.

I arrayed the sub-assemblies of my Knight... and got bored again. I couldn't figure out its identity. I lost interest again for a while.

A couple of weeks ago, I kind of flipped. This had been sitting about too long, and even if I couldn't figure out what the central theme was, it was getting finished. Then it occurred to me: what if its theme was that it was exactly what I had made it? A derelict, abandoned on a world after a disastrous campaign, rusting slowly away as its machine spirit goes insane for lack of purpose. Eventually, the monster lurches into unwholesome motion, an aimless and wandering monster with no true identity except resentment, until it ultimatey falls in with more of its own kind.

I added a plague spewer in plague of a meltagun. For the carapace, I added various horns and tusks, as well as the brazier from a Lord of Contagion. I finished the body with a Nurgling from Mortarion riding on top.

 For the base, I decided to go with an abandoned goods yard - I imagine the Derelict Paragon lumbering with dragging footsteps through a desolate, empty world of rusting fences and forgotten cargo. As well as the boxes, barrells and crumbling fence, I added a Sludge Grub for a sense that the vermin have taken over this world. The Nurgling sitting on the barrel is from the Space Marines Heroes series.

Ultimately, I'm happy with him because I made so many mistakes and was so ill-dsicplined, but he Looks pretty decent in the end!

The Hanging Tree

Are you, are you, coming to the tree?

I’ve been quiet for a while because I’ve been furiously building my second Nurgle Knight, which I named ‘The Hanging Tree’. Despite the obvious The Hunger Games reference I just made, the inspiration for this was actually an old Warhammer Fantasy piece of background called ‘The Tree of Damned Souls’, part of Marius Hollseher’s surreal odyssey into the Realm of Chaos. This has influenced me before, being part of the inspiration for my Coeddil conversion. But with this Knight, I had the idea of a monstrous gibbet tree from the garden of Nurgle creeping into the mortal universe and possessing a Knight. As with the previous Rust Hound, I think I’ll better explain this a section at a time.

Legs

These were probably the easiest part of the model. I drilled out pockmarks at random, and added a groping hand from a Vampire Counts zombie to the knee of one. The real tricky part here was the shin guards. I had this idea of crucified victims strapped across them. But most human models are bigger than you expect them to be, and it quickly became clear that this would look daft. Instead, I used some of the semi-intact corpses from the Vampires Counts Corpse Cart. One of them I left impaled on the spear he comes on. The other I wrapped in model barbed wire before attaching. I finished the legs by attaching a spare Nightmare Bell from the Great Unclean One. 

Left arm

Not that much change here. You know the funky daemon-skull things from the Great Unclean One’s flail? I cut one of those in half and glued one of them to the back of the reaper chainsword. Moving to the side, I used a random Nurgle icon from the Plague Marines kit and applied it to the side with copious green stuff to obscure the scroll. I drilled a few pockmarks, but something seemed missing. After a moment's thought, I added some Feculent Gnarlmaw bells to add a bit of weight. 

Right arm

Same pockmarking method here, and the spare half-skull from the Great Unclean One's flail again. I really wanted to have this as a flame trailing brazier. Luckily, I had a spare plague censer from the Warhammer Fantasy Skaven Screaming Bell, and pinning this to the cannon arm wasn't difficult. I tidied up with green stuff. As a final touch, I added a Nurgling from the GUO to give a sense of movement. 

Torso and head

I've put these together because they were pretty much intrinsic. I got this Knight second hand, so that carapace was already in place. I had to hack it back a bit to accommodate the head of a Myphitic Blight Hauler. The head was reasonably easy to pin in place and secure with poly cement. There was a fair bit of gap filling to do, but it wasn't that difficult. The head looked a bit off, though. Not imposing enough. So I added some Great Unclean One horns, which did the trick. 

The carapace itself was the most difficult part. Well, the branches at any rate. I used the three main branches from a Feculent Gnarlmaw, which I pinned in place and gap-filled. The victims were a headache. The one on the monster's right is from the Pusgoyle Blightlords kit, which I made the mistake of wrapping in model barbed wire before hanging it. This made it difficult to paint. The other two are Cadians with, respectively, a bare foot from a Haemonculus, a Greatsword head, a zombie arm and heavily repositioned feet. I learned my lesson from the first one and attached the other two before adding the wire. 

You'll notice fleshy roots or tendrils. These are just Woodland Scenics foliage. You have to glue this down very well. 

Base

I decided that there should be a toxic river floating across the base. I built up the banks using spare bits of MDF offcut. The sewerage pipes are just straws (you can get a massive pack of them from Wilko or Poundland). The ooze you can see from one of them is Uhu craft glue.

The broken down ence is wire mesh and a random bit of plastic, and the Nurgling is from the Easy to Build Tainted Cohort. The strange quadrupedal critter is a Plaguebearer's head attached to a Chaos Spawn tentacle and mounted on the body of a Skaven giant rat. The diminutive critter is a spotter gnoblar from the Ogre Kingdoms Bulls kit, his head replaced with a Plaguebearer's. 

And there we have him! The second Rust Hound is complete. 

Think I might paint a goblin or something. 

House Lyoncourdt rides to war!

I so psyched to have finally got some Imperial Knights finished which are... well... Imperial. I've finished Khorne an Nurgle ones before, but finally, two noble machines of House Lyoncourdt are ready!

Has anyone got used to plastic Titans yet? I still haven't. 

Let's forge a narrative part 2

Part 1 of my story was well received, so here's part 2. Will Belisarius Cawl and Master Pustolion be able to carry their diabolical plan, or will Inquisitor Horn be able to foil them?