The Headsman

None can say for sure exactly where Lord Eiterfex got the towering, ghoulish entity which he jovially refers to as 'the Headsman'. The creature has been seen in proximity with the Synod of Suffering's lord for many centuries, which discounts the possibility of the thing being made by Eiterfex's new disciple Belisarius Cawl. In general shape, the creature vaguely resembles a blasphemous hybrid of an Astartes dreadnought and a rangy humanoid creature. Certainly there are biological and metallic components, but the creature seems to have at least some daemonic qualities: for one thing, stale blood continually seeps from the nightmare's sutured body in quantities totally unsustainable in a biological form. For another thing, there are seven credible reports of the creature's apparent destruction, only for it to reappear elsewhere. Whatever the nature of the thing, Lord Eiterfex makes brutally effective use of it as a linebreaker... and as a gristly butcher of screaming captives when the battle is over...

One of the many great things about Nurgle is that you can use bits and bobs to make horribly effective nightmare creatures. I had all kinds of bits laying around from other conversions/sprue spares. So I decided that I would make a... thing. 

The trunk of the body is a Dark Vengeance Helbrute which I got in a job lot a while back. The model is... fine. But I'd already painted one. So I sheared off the arms and legs. I wanted to give him a bit more height, so I used a par of spare Forgefiend legs. The feet looked a bit daft, so I replaced them with spare Maggoth hooves. I had to do a lot of pinning and filling toget the feet, legs and torso to work together!

Now, I had the idea of him being similar to the monstrous executioner from the film 300. I had a vision of long, powerful arms with sutured blades at the end. Maulerfiend arms would serve: I sawed the hands off and replaced them with daggers from the Great Unclean One. With a bit of filling, these were pretty easy to pin onto the torso. 

I sketched a few ideas involving eyes, all of which looked absurd. So I decided it would be blind, possibly with the bundles of cables high up being remains of where the eyes once were. Still, it needed a little something else, so I inserted a Maulerfiend tentacle into the maw to serve as a hellish, rusted tongue.

When I'd finished, I looked at my latest creation and wondered if I should make a diorama of a Constable landscape. Or some nice clouds.