Greetings fellow pals of the Primordial Annihilator! It's been a hot minute since any of the glorious sons of Lorgar have graced the august pixels of this digital journal. I'd kinda fallen off the Chaos wagon a bit; painting four thousand points of the nutcases will do that. But having finished the first phase of the Kessarine I was getting the urge to evil again... and what better evil than giant metal dinosaurs filled with the animating spirit of daemonkind?
Since minute one of collecting Word Bearers I knew that I wanted absolute stacks of daemonstuff in the army. After all, we're not even "Chaos is a tool for use" types, we're "Chaos is our bestest friend" types. With a Venomcrawler and sort of a Defiler under my belt it was time to tackle some of the bigger beasts. I knew I wanted one of each of the Maulerfiend and Forgefiend so took the perhaps rash decision to paint 'em as a pair. I'm honestly impressed by how different they've managed to get the stance and sillhouette of these two from a kit with so many shared parts. But in the true spirit of the Legion I am a bad dad and have a favourite son of the two, so lets start with photos of the Maulerfiend.
When it comes to painting, it seems that all the demon engines are intimidating slabs of miniature. Tangled cables, fleshy bits in awkward places, the eternal chaos trim, it's always a lot. Mercifully, if you don't glue these guys to their bases it's all pretty accessible so I was able to keep the sub assemblies to a minimum. In this case leaving off the lasher tendrils on the Maulerfiend and the guns on the Forgefiend.
The basic elements proceeded like normal Word Bearers, highly frustrating double basecoat of Gal Vorbak Red and all. Divergence starts when we hit the big flat plates. One of the challenges with Chaos stuff is that the big plates are all edged with trim, so there's nowhere to put much in the way of highlighting, can get a bit... flat? I guess would be the best way to describe it. So instead I decided to stipple the various highlight colours on the big flat plates. That produced some nice texture and visual interest in the larger areas.
I'd previously decided that the cabling on daemon engines was all going to be veins and arteries with wire running through them. So I picked those out in a mix of straight Rakarth Flesh and then some in a blueish mix and some of a reddish mix of the same. Gives them a nice vascular feel. Then we got to the fun part, weathering. I used an enamel oil and fuel stains paint from Ammo and smeared it all over the cables, joints and pistons. Then when it was mostly dry I moistened a cotton bud with odourless turpentine and removed the excess from the outer layers of the cables. Gives it a lovely oily filth look.
Finally it was time for blood. This should always be used sparingly but I felt I could go a bit harder on the Strength 14 pattycake machine that is a Maulerfiend. So I bust out the Blood for the Blood God and did a mixture of thinned stipple passes, thicker streaks and pools with the unthinned and occasional blown dots of it creating some nice randomness. I added some around all of the points where metal leaves flesh too to give it that raw, sore feeling. Really happy with the finished effect, and just lookit his cute widdle face.
While I only wanted one option on the Maulerfiend (I like the look of the tendrils) the Forgefiend was a whole other kettle of fish. While the plasmaface is the only real choice there (especially when it costs you not one additional point to do so, because reasons...) I like both of the gun options and so resolved to do some magnetising in order to be able to swop out the guns for which foe needed them. Thankfully the guns are light enough that all I needed was one beefy magnet and that held with enough friction to keep them aligned. I love the mouths around the ectoplasma cannons. In my headcanon they are constantly in motion like Hector Salamanca in Breaking Bad, metal teeth clattering and gnashing until it's time to shoot, then gaping wide to spit plasma. Deliciously disturbing. While we're talking headcanon, lets get the familiar Word Bearer approach to storyline, have Kairon talk about them:
"Not now, I'm busy. Hmm? Oh they're here! At last, that means the forward elements of the fleet are finally arriving and with them heavier equipment. I need to check over these two after warp transportation, they're particularly prone to binding wear. Hmm? Well that is simple, it is all to do with the manner of their making. We only intended to make one divine engine in that rotation of the Eye, it takes considerable resources after all and the omens are difficult to divine. Well, we constructed the physical form of Bolgolgoth, hmm? The one with the tendrils, don't look at it too long, it'll... stimulate him. Where was I? Ah yes, we made Bolgolgoth's physical form, placed the daemon seed within it fresh from it's birthing, and invited in the chosen neverborn to reside within the divine engine. All went well, of course, for it was by my design. But immediately the divine engine came under attack, something part translated within our reality and was slashing at the fabric of the engine. It quickly became apparent that Bolgolgoth was making no effort to defend itself. We determined that something was trying to free Bolgoloth's essence. Some ally from the warp.
"Well, we could have sacrificed the resources, chosen a new essence and begun again, but an opportunity had presented itself. Hastily we constructed a new chassis, named it Kesharc and bid the angry spirit reside within it. To our delight, the neverborn complied and Kesharc roared it's birthing pangs. We don't know what relationship the two neverborn had on the other side. But all they wanted was to reside in the same plane. And who can say no to that? When it also gives us a concrete advantage that is... Now then, speaking of advantage, you stand here in it's eyeline, you'll keep it distracted while I slip in and reinforce those containment runes..."
And that's the lot for me today! There's more Word Bearer loveliness coming down the pike including a very intimidating helldrake in many, many subassemblies... but until then, lovely people,
TTFN
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