Monday 14 December 2015

The call of the Jagdah

Far from being united the Five Tribes of the Appalathian Plains are a scattered folk, each of them barely considers their neighbors better then the orcs or the Children of the Snake and often they would fight against each other over food or shelter.
They are all respectful of their traditions though, most of them predating the Great Migration, and they honor them for fear of Mighty Or's punishment. 
One of the most important and ancient of these rituals, said to have been instituted by the Great Father Himself, is the Falhl-Jagdah, the Great Hunt, taking place once per year in the vast plains after the Moort-Ur, the widest cycle of the sun. 
Every year members of each tribes select ten participant each, chosen from their most skillful hunter and proudest warriors and give them their finest weapons and gears, consecrating them Rhydd, champions of the Hunt.  
Then the Horn of Anvael, a precious relic of the time of the Alderans, is blown three times to awake Mighty Or and all the Spirits of the Ancestors, so that they can judge the warrior's deeds and choose which champions will prove the greatest, and the Jagdah begins under the eye of the gods.  
The hunters must then find and hunt down one of the greatest beasts of the Plains, often a Shar-khan or a mighty Aurok. To do so they always end up having to team up with members of other tribes and work together, drawing advantage not only from their numbers but especially from their different skills and hunting techniques. 
They will run together and bleed together, many of them will find a gruesome death or will starve in the impossibly wide plains or will end up in enemy territories and become the preys of murderous greyskins or savage monsters from the wild. To survive and succeed they will find out that cooperation is their only hope and bonds stronger than iron are often born from these events, even among members of different tribes.Once the prey is finally killed the few survivors often find out that where once stood an enemy now stands a friend and comrade.
Then Mighty Or smiles down at them because He knows His most important lesson has not been forgotten: 

"United they will prevail, Divided they will fall to darkness"






The second one of my ghurian hunters is finished... Well, almost actually, I still want to improve some areas but these are table top models so I am fine with them not being perfect. I am pretty pleased with the result, though  the tattoo on the face does not fully convince me for some reason…
The plan is to start with around ten of them and have a warband core of hunters, a pack of 5-10 hunting wolves (fenrisian wolves) the wandering King to guide them and a massive beast (I already purchased a Stonehorn) to give them some muscle power!
Then I've got great plans for future expansions, like a rogue regiment of skeletons from the Uplands, Sylvaneth from the Grey Masks Wood, hunting parties form each of the Five Tribes and a group of the mysterious Orar's Brides, converted form witch elves... but one step at a time, first I'll have to complete my ten Blackfeathers!


I started painting the Wandering King as well but I felt discouraged after a couple of layers of Baneblade Brown and now it is lying on my desk waiting for a month long paintjob!

Tuesday 8 December 2015

Hornblower finished and issues with greenstuff

Morning everyone






The horn blower is finished. It was a fun ride but it revealed tougher than I thought due to a problem I'm developing with greenstuff which is really starting to worry me a bit... Apparently every time I use it my throat swells as if I had an allergy to it and since I normally do it in the evening after work it disturbs my sleep quite a lot.
I am concerned because, as you will probably imagine, sculpting with GS is such an important part of the hobby for me!
If any of you ever experienced something like that could you please step forward and give me some advice? Is GS as toxic as somebody says (though others strongly deny it) or am I really developing an allergy to it?

Sunday 6 December 2015

The Hornblower

Small update, I'm working on another hunter for my Blackfeathers hunting party, this time a very fitting horn blower! It's not yet finished but I'm almost there...
Enjoy!


Thursday 3 December 2015

The mark of the hunter

Proudest among the Five Tribes the Blackfeathers inhabit the westernmost territories of the Appalathian Plains, their villages and settlements clutched in the shadow of the Bonewall, ultimate barrier between the Plains and the Lands of the Snake.
Due to their proximity with these dead lands and the monstrous creatures and degenerate humans that roam them, the Blackfeathers have become fierce and warlike peoples, constantly fighting against the Children of the Snakes and the other tribes of the plains.
Their territories are for the most part composed by grasslands and wood covered valleys where they find preys in abundance and they can measure their valour against the greatest of the beasts of the plains, the mighty Sharkahn, the stone-horned king of the wilds.
Members of this tribes are identified by their traditional warpaints realised with red ocre from the Brul'Hak, the Blood Mires, and by their custom of adorning thir manes with feathers and bones from the great Black Krakars that nest on top of the Bonewall. To prove their courage and to be accepted as hunters by the tribe, the young warriors have to climb the cursed barrier and steal some feathers from the nest of one of those giant carrion birds, a trial which costs the lives of many who attempt it.
Member of the tribe call themselves the Heirs of Sam-Harr (their name for Or, the Great Father) referring to an ancient legend which tells that their first Alderan, Valdros the Luminant, was born by the union between the God-Father Himself and a mortal woman, named Sumaya.
The current chieftain of the tribe, retaining the title of Vor'Haar (Pathfinder) is Argalyon Blackcloud, a fierce warrior, well known among the tribes for his legendary feats. He is the only warrior who ever ventured upon the Uplands and came back with the Secret of Iron, stolen from the bitter spirits who roams those lands along with Gorthanor, his legendary axe. He alone bested the great beast Magdoroth and ventured on the other side of the Bonewall to defeat the Children of the Snake in their own foul lands.
He is a faithful worshipper of Sam-Harr though his faith has recently been stained by the loss of his woman, Allarah, who was chosen by Orar to become one of his wives and thus had to abandon him to answer the call of the Wanderer King.










Welcome to the first painting update on PINXIT!
Today I present you the first of my Sons of Or, the warband I am working on for AoS as a personal project. 
I wanted to do something rather different from the usual fantasy esthetic we are all used to, one of the main advantages of AoS in my opinion is the freedom it allows in terms of imagery and references, since the Nine Realms are infinite and almost completely unexplored at the moment.
So after toying with some ideas I decided I wanted a native american vibe to my warriors (to some of them at least) since it's something I've never seen done on a fantasy setting before, not that I recall at least. The Irochese/Cherokee esthetic felt quite appropriate for the concept I had in mind for my ghurians, so I experimented with some red ochre tatoos and leathery textures and in the end I'm really pleased by the result (which is slightly less vibrant irl than it is in the pictures).
I even decided to add a touch of Old School, which always feels good, and painted the shaft of his crude mace in red, thought it did not look out of place for a primitive warrior with a taste for blood.
Finally I put a lot of efforts in painting the stone as if it was flint, which has a slightly yellow shade to it instead of regular grey stone.
So that's it, let me know what you think!