Keepers of the Red Relics

 making my necropolis warband

 When I put my name down to take part in Peter (@owlshield) necropolis event, The Argent Host, I was so excited to get started on a gathering for it. When writing my list, I didn't really have an idea of aesthetic or theme bar ONE specific guy. An abberant husk that was going to be "grafted" meaning in game he can use an extra attack once per game. I wanted him to be a fleshy blob with legs and lots of arms, so that's who I started with.

The base of this model is a warhammer fantasy marauder, there wasn't much reasoning here beyond the fact that I have an absolute ton of them and they are vaguely human shaped, with lots of arm options. I attached some arms using superglue and greenstuff to get a more dynamic pose, and managed to squeeze in the the third arm on to the new shoulder blob.

I covered the body, arms and thighs with texture paste, as I wanted it to be a fleshy mess - much like some of unwantedlegs pieces on instagram. I didn't go for a head because I thought it would be creepier to have it on the front somewhere, and reduce how human the whole thing looked.

I had kept the third arm open (it was originally a shield arm because the marauders only have one left handed weapon) and I tried this mace type piece as the weapon for that hand. I really didn't like the shape, it obscured too much of the model and made the silhouette much heavier on one side.

I cut just the spike from another weapon and glued this to the handle as a little knife blade. This looked way better to me, and much more balanced!

In the interest of making everything a bit more textured for the prime, I coated all the weapons and non texture pasted bits with typhus corrosion, the little bits of stuff make for a more interesting surface after a prime.

I needed to start on the other 4 members of the gathering too! One of them is a corpse husk with a bow. I wanted to go for red bloody skeletons for the rest of the band, so this is an oath mark skeleton built as intended. I really like the pose (don't say anything about the arrow being on the wrong side of the bow) but the heads are slightly out of scale so I was going to replace it with a GW skull.

I did a little paint test here - this is literally just GW blood paint over a white prime. The texture is what makes it interesting. I used the GW stuff because it's what I had, however I have heard that the cheaper option is just to mix gloss medium with red and grey ink.

I added the GW skull and some texture to the first husk, I tried to get some specifically into where his guts might be, for the red later on.

I sliced a GW skull in half vertically and glued to the front of this many armed fellow. I love the shape and I think the face on the front really makes it work.

Here is all the guys done so far! I've got the aberrant that you've seen already, the husk you've seen already, a little creepy familiar sculpted by Andrew May and cast in metal, and then a Reaper bog skeleton for my revenant. I don't like him for a revenant really as he's a bit small, but with the time constraints I had (3 days before the event) he had to do.

I tried a new basing method with these guys and I really liked how it came out. The bases are washers, which I've been doing for a while, because I like the weight it gives a model, even if made of plastic. On top of that is a squashed disk of foil, then cork. The foil will get covered in texture paste so it ends up simulating rock on top of dirt.

This is all the bases corked up - there were some interesting challenges with puddle bases and metal tabs, but I just built up material around everything and it all looked ok in the end. The fifth member is here as well, a necromantic remnant. The idea here was a couple of weak semi formed skeletons rising out of a blood pool.

Jumping ahead a little (because im terrible at remembering to take pictures) all the models have had a zenithal prime, and a coat of blood. The blood works really well over a zenithal because the dark shadows remain visible.

This is the final gathering, the blood is exactly the same - but all weapons were painted with a base of typhus corrosion, edge highlighted with a dark metal and then stippled with nialach(spelling??) oxide for a nice contrast to the red. I also glued down some dried moss pieces that I collected from a walk locally.

I'm really pleased with how they came out in the end, and I think they looked really good on the boards I played on.