Friday 4 March 2016

Elders of the Blotfjord

If you didn't notice, I prefer my troops to be a menagerie of characters as opposed to a mass of cookie-cutter soldiers.  A circus, if you like, a side-show attraction of-- of creatures both interesting and game-legal (where I feel like it), and the characters are no exception by a long shot.
So slowly, between fixing a dreadnought, making a "jetbike", painting a stormtalon and a host of Angels Encarmine I have been returning on occasion to the elites of the Sagodjur Fjorlag 3rd company.  Not much has been finished yet but I have a bit of fluff to go with what I DO have, to flesh out the post if nothing else.


"... No, you DON'T understand, mortal.  I see behind the eyes of the very devils, I taste their blood before you so much as know of them; I fought them in the warp on the edge of ecstasy and beneath the sewers of the underhives they fell before my touch.  What do you think you hope to understand, and what does it matter now?  You are already dead.  I know you will die this morrow."
Lexicanum Snerra predicting the first recorded genestealer
infestation of hive Acapella, 2,000 years before it occurred.


Across the five centuries he has lived, he has earned many titles across the worlds he has fought; Suffocator, Pestilence and Choking wind being some of the more polite; so named for his unique power to still atmosphere and drain the very air of life.
While his brothers are always fallen in broken misery the lexicanum appears to revel in it; his dark mood appearing almost amnesic.  Some have thought Snerra to be from the time the Sagodjur Fjorlag were based upon a planet, and that a rogue gate of infinity carried him into the future, thus explaining away his temperament. 


For a librarian to wear the templar badge is seen as heretical by the other children of the VIIth but nobody else.



Snerra is one of the first characters I came up with when my chapter was first conceived back in 2013, and I didn't really feel confident enough to try and capture his essence in a miniature.  I had a go a few years back (the image is on the left) but it felt too... athletic, too pompous and 1st legion.  Must have been the manner of hood I used, plus the fact the pose was accidentally a carbon copy of Turmiel.  This new pose is far more slow and purposeful, I feel it gives off a darker air, too.
A daring move I made which I have never tried before was to give him a broken sword.  I have never really liked the idea in general (who does?) but you see broken weapons in classic artwork all over the place.  Also, I had a FW legion praetor's sword break on me as I was trying to straighten it out, so there we are.



"...Death's plutonian shore awaits your passage, you have only to accept it.  Give up, give up give up!"
Chaplain Strandvaskere to a failed neophyte


Chaplain Strandvaskere is Master of Recruits, overseeing the work enacted by the apothecarion on the new blood harvested from the Nastrond's hive cities and ensuring spiritual purity amongst the ranks of those children surviving the mad initiation process.  He wears the pyramid mask his office demands as he has done for what feels like ever; perhaps the mask is empty now, empty but for a few destitute scraps of brain held together with wire and the Emperor's will. 
A few have said they have seen him communicating with the Lords of the Sump, the eight who live in the utter depths of the space hulk the chapter call home.  Could it be that he unifies these unconquerable machines, he leads them out into the bitter light to wage the Emperor's war?


The chains for his chain-axe Holy Deciever are made from weapons found across battlefields of old; if there is one major point of an otherwise featureless personality, it's the nigh-obsessive hoarding of archeotech, which often gets Strandvaskere on the wrong side of the children of the Cog-- 'specially when he refuses to hand over some bit of scrap he found before they.


I have some random metal skull icons sitting about.  I didn't believe it when I found they fitted on the jump pack so neatly.

I had a WoC chariot driver body to start with, and its pose had an arm raised with a whip.  To put the axe in that hand might have worked but it would have looked too savage, too "BLOOD FOR THE-" etc, but what could I do?  The muscle was sculpted towards the raised arm and I couldn't just have him waving autistically.  Then I had the idea of lowering the axe and his hand raised in blessing; you see him and realise that this is not a monster-- this is an Imperial priest, as concerned for your spiritual purity as any other of the cloister.

And that's that.  Once again, very happy with the way these two chaps turned out-- no doubt in six months the paintwork will embarrass me, but oh well.

D

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