Monday, June 23

The Arrival of Terror

+++++0.150.935.M41+++++


The captain's communication immediately ceased, a monotone static was all that came through the vox-caster.  Worried it was his fault, Private Remis, who was assigned to the device, checked the battery before nervously looking back at the commissar. 

"Don't bother," was the stern reply. Commissar Holdt dismissed the worry with a wave, not caring to break his own gaze out of the chimera's vision port. He didn't need to know the captain was advancing as ordered.  Holdt had been with the company for some time and had come to appreciate the autonomy of their officers.

What the commissar said next, Remis didn't hear, the roar of the chimera's engine drowned out the rest.  The armored command vehicle lurched without warning, beginning a rapid descent down the ridge it was previously resting atop.  The sporadic thud of the mounted heavy bolter firing made the commissar smile, as he continued on deaf ears, "That's why I love this outfit - they have initiative!  Can take an opportunity when one presents itself!"  He saw the other chimeras speeding past his own, which was laden with command and communication arrays.

Private Remis smiled stupidly back at the commissar, unsure just how to react to a smiling commissar.  There was a reason he was a vox operator.  Realizing he still wasn't getting a signal, he adjusted a dial, finally getting a weak reply, hearing voices once more.

Only it wasn't the captain. It was his sergeant, the gruff man that had trained half the company, and he was screaming in absolute terror.

Commissar Holdt's face twisted in horror as he saw why his own chimera had began it's maneuvering.  They were fleeing.  A Knight, with no heraldry he could indentify, had cleaved the captain's command vehicle with a chainaxe that dwarfed even the armored personnel carrier.  He saw what must have been the captain splattered across the interior, and heard the screaming over the vox-caster match perfectly with another distant figure falling from the gaping chasis, still clutching a radio.

Remis frowned as his radio went to static, frantically adjusting knobs.

Standing twenty meters tall, daubed in red and adorned in brass, the behemoth had clearly been one of the few households of Knights to turn to Chaos, sworn now to the service of Urläg Blackfang.  Heavy chains circled its legs, spikes protruded from its armor, and gruesome trophies hung everywhere.  A blazing furnace roared within the belly of the monstrosity, engulfing its surroundings with thick black smoke.  Its pair of piercing yellow eyes turned to fixate on the commissar's own, as if through the vision slit itself.

"Drive!"

+++++ END TRANSMISSION +++++

A Big Build

I did it.  I bought two superheavy kits, and combined them.  That's the kind of thing I could only dream about when I first got into the hobby as a kid.  Now that I have a job, with real life money, it's a little more reasonable to do something like this.  Still put a dent in the wallet!  Will be worth it regardless, and well worth the resale price should I decide it needs to go the route of eBay after some time.

I wanted to make a chaos knight, which could also stand in as a walking Lord of Skulls, and maybe as a scout titan (debatable).  I knew I wanted it to light up like my other vehicles, too!

Used the Imperial Knight and Lord of Skulls model.  Legs from former, torso from latter.  Fairly easy to join the two, little kit bashing with a maulerfiend and land raider accessories for additional spikes and stuff.  LED goodness, too, of course (two flickering orange lights inside chest, with hollowed out vents in the chest to show it off.  And a red light in the belly gun!).  The battery is hidden beneath the tire on the rubble pile, magnetized for easy access.  The button is in a crater on the backside of the cathedral ruin.

I pilfered some jewelers chain from Hobby Lobby for a lot of my Chaos stuff.  Perfect size.  I wrapped one of the greaves, and have several trailing behind the monstrosity as if it had broken free form its shackles inside the warship.

Without further ado, here are the pictures. 

What hundreds of dollars of plastic looks like.


LED battery hidden in the rubble.  Green belly LED will be swapped for red.


Making formerly Imperial models chaos-themed is more fun than actually building the model.


A bulk of the Lord of Skulls components.  The rest will be an Imperial Knight.


Pleased with the dragging chains and debris.  I figure the warships chain these monstrosities up in some deep hold when not in use.


Red spray paint is my friend.


The finished piece.  Chest flickering LEDs aren't noticable in the picture, but look great in person.  Might add impaled marines or guardsmen as trophies?

3 comments:

  1. Nice work! Love the led and you've got a good pose from the 2 kit combination, I've seen other combos of knight and lord where the pose was weird. Trophies would be good.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks man! Debating having an impaled guardsman or two on the greaves or shoulders, ooooor have a pile of corpses at his feet. Unsure how to proceed.

      Delete
  2. Would definitely love to see it surrounded by piles of vanquished. Chained or impaled in its spikes and greaves would be good too.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting! Your input helps shape this project.