New Blog! Get yer new blogs here!

Hello dear readers!

I´ve started up a new blog focusing on my exploits as an illustrator. Check it out here:
 http://johan-egerkrans.blogspot.se/

Now back to the xenos warband...

The Hunter

- The Skadiir -

Hailing from the infamous ironwoods of the Garmian cluster the skadiir are a race of fierce and proud hunter-witches. Trackers beyond compare, with the ability to psychically home in on their quarry´s warpshadow, they are sometimes found in the employ of less than orthodox imperial agents.

The ironwoods are giant spherelike aggregates of thorns the size of small moons, orbiting the upper atmosphere of gas giants common in the cluster. These floating forests can all be considered as deathworlds, each teeming with various ferocious ecoystems of their own.

Only female skadii are ever encountered by outsiders - the males are hulking semi-sentient beasts who roam the cores of the ironwood orbs. When reaching maturity a skadii must earn the right to become a full member of the ruling matriarchy. She goes on a quest to hunt down and kill a particular prey. The more powerful the quarry the greater the honor, but she cannot rejoin her coven-pride until the quest is complete. Most choose among the various feral beasts roamning the forests of the thornworlds, but some particularly adventurous skadii choose exotic targets such as zoats, ork warlords or chaos champions (or in some cases even senior space marines ). It is these hunters that normally come into contact with the imperium. Should their goals coincide a skadii might be persuaded to join an Inquisitors warband.

If their hunt is successful they return to their home and are given the right to mate - otherwise they will stalk the stars until they die. The female goes into the deepwoods in search of one of the feral males, capture him and bring him back to the pride. There they mate and when the mating process is over the coven-pride kills and consumes the male. After bearing a huge litter the young hunter-witch is taken up as a full member of the matriarchy and her full psychic powers develop.

=I=

Predator in progress

Here's a little sneak peek of the Hunter halfway through the painting process. Getting the mottled predatory skin right was a lot of fun. 

Turned out a little "krootier" than originally planned perhaps, but I'm still quite happy with it. 

The hunt is afoot!

Early this year I was invited to partake in Iron Sleets first Invitational. My first plan was to create a group of xenos bountyhunters in an attempt to show off the diversity of sentient life in the galaxy. 

This unfortunately proved a bit too ambitous and I got completely stuck - none of the xenos turned out the way I wanted them. In the end I decided to do a slaaneshii themed entry instead where one of the xenos was reworked into a warped hellbrute construct. 

The xenos that I felt worked best - nicknamed The Hunter - was temporarily shelved after he had a little accident. Now however, I feel the time has come to get back to him as I'm really quite fond of this mini. There's a certain feline menace about him...

He'll probably end up part of Carax growing retinue of miscreants or I may actually do an entire band of xenos like originally intended.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

The watchman is more or less done. As usual when I begin to have ambitions the end result doesn't quite live up to what I had imagened.

Pretty pleased with the look of the shield on his back though.

Also it seems like GWs paints are drying up in an ever accelerating rate so a lot of my colours are becoming rather chunky... Any tips on countermeasures would be greatly appreciated...

Codex Nostalgis

I received something quite special in the mail today - a very well kept copy of the Codex Imperialis from the Warhammer 40.000 2nd edition box. 

This was my introduction to the larger 40k universe back in the early 90's. Before that I had mostly read about my darlings the orks and glimpsed snippets of the rest of the world in scattered White Dwarf articles, so this was the first time I really got a feel for whole story. I remember how reading about the Emperor, the Golden Throne, inquisitors and the the workings of the Astronomican completely blew my fifteen year old mind. Reading it again for the first time in 20 years really brought all that back and reaffirmed my conviction that this really is the ultimate introduction to the 40k universe. It´s all there - at least as far as the imperium is concerned. 

The writing by Rick Priestly and Andy Chambers outshines most recent publications. In effective, matter of fact text they present the horror of the 41st millenium in a way that is both imaginative and inspiring without ever being ponderous. It´s also laced with that dry wit that marked out the GW sourcebooks of old. 

Personally I´m very fond of the black and white illustrations mainly by Blanche and Mark Gibbons (plus some gems by Jes Goodwin and Adrian Smith). These two were the main illustrators in most GW publications during this period and I´ve always felt they complimented each other rather well. John sketching the gothic world in ink spattered grimdark and Mark nailing the characters with his more cleanly rendered slightly cartoony style. This is very much a mater of personal taste though. Also the layout and quality of the printing is admittedly rather basic by todays standards - the most recent 40.000 backgrond book is vastly superior in this respect. But still, it gets the job done.  

Really happpy to have this treasure in my bookshelf yet again. Now I´m going to try to get my hands on a copy of Rogue Trader and the Realm of Chaos books... That´ll probably prove to be a lot more difficult and a hell of a lot more expensive...

=I=

Guards! Guards!

I've been thinking a lot about Warhammer recently (what with it's recent demise and all) and have been itching to do something with an oldhammer feel.

I might eventually even paint up an old RoC champion like JRN have been doing to great sucess lately: http://miniatextures.blogspot.se/2015/07/chaos-champion-of-tzeentch-wip-3.html?m=1

But in the meantime here's a mini that sort of celebrates the Old World without actually being an Old World mini. He's supposed to be a humble Night Watchman from a backwards feudal world, keeping the townpeople safe from the brigands and vile beastmen lurking in the dark forests just outside the city gates. 

-EDIT-

Here's the final version after some adjustments.