mortem tyrannis: flesh and steel

augebit Dominus plagas tuas, et plagas seminis tui, plagas magnas et perseverantes, infirmitates pessimas et perpetuas

    - Deuteronomium 28

Mars-pattern Rhino transports (corrupted; Death Guard affiliation)

A few months ago, winter put a halt to undercoating and therefore painting, but that freed up my hobby time to allow me to finally convert the trio of second-hand Rhinos that I had accumulated. I may have gone a little overboard...

Their Flesh Shall Consume Away While They Stand

I knew I wanted one to be crawling along the ground, thousands of hands growing out of the skirts of the vehicle, the shell corrupted with daemonic flesh. There are a few folks out there who have done this as well, so I had some references, but for the most part I just went nuts.

The meat cube for a turret was inspired by moldmoldmold and other Instagrammers, including damp_dog, bigbossredskullz, nergling, mutantmodifier, quarantine_miniatures. I'm very pleased with it - it looks so sticky.

I've had the teeth I used for the closed daemonic mouth for the rear hatch for a while now. It didn't quite turn out as planned, but lessons learned went into Tongue, below.

The missile and smoke launcher were already on the tank, so they got modified and painted as I went. Rust and grime, and a living entrail to load the rockets keep the 'overcome by wet flesh' theme.

I like to think that the eyeballs are just being constantly spit up by the daemonic mouth; they aren't attached to anything. The overgrown drivers' slits are how this thing sees.

Some of the faces are from random experiments in scupting I had lying around; others are from Flesh Eater Courts bits or just other faces I had lying around. The Pestigor above is from Blood Bowl; the bat-face below is from the new Flesh Eater Courts nightshriekers.

The hands are also mostly Flesh Eater Courts (they have so many open hands), and a few from other sources. Some have scraps of cloth. Are they people melded into the tank? Have they grown from chaos-stuff? Who knows.

I tried to distinguish between still-tank and flesh, but most of the tank is in flesh tones; hardly any white remains!

Their Eyes Shall Consume Away In Their Holes

This was intended to be more techno-horror, with rusted iron and corded steel melding with tentacles and fleshy protuberances. The missile rack was built-on when I acquired it, and the doors held open with cables. I decided to 'nail shut' the drivers' vision slits, as if generations of Death Guard had tried to keep whatever was within contained; the vehicle now sees from its own growths.

This turret is held aloft by tarnished cabling erupting from a grotesque mouth. Fun to sculpt but actually really annoying to paint! A lot of these conversions would have been easier to paint if I could have done sub-assemblies, actually...

Oh, also notice some Heresy-era markers - this is a Mars-pattern Rhino, but at one point the Death Guard were maintaining their old heraldry, including a letter-number code for the vehicle. This was done to provide some texture to those panels, but also to contrast with all the Nurgle iconography employed by this vehicle.

Really enjoyed mucking up the front here, as though centuries of previous shields had rotted into goo, with the current layer just the very latest. Shields are from Age of Sigmar Nurgle guys and Flesh Eater Courts (again).

Pretty much all the tentacles were sculpted by me, except for a few Age of Sigmar little ones with bells on. Lots of fun painting them all different colours.

The racks were also painted to look as though the edges had centuries of liquefication and rust. The symbol on the door is from Blood Bowl.

The great thing about weathering is that it can conceal how bad I am at painting a stripe.

Banners are from the Age of Sigmar; bells from Nighthaunt ghosts. I like that there are three kinds of Nurgle icons here.

Detail of an eye in the rocket launcher. How else can it see? 

Note that one of the icons in the back also has an eye.

Their Tongue Shall Consume Away In Their Mouth

This guy was so much fun to sculpt - it came together very smoothly. I didn't go as overboard on details, as I wanted the centrepiece of the back to be the standout...

But there is still a lot of lovely texture. I didn't bother with any other icons this time (I did consider putting one on the 'top' of the turret doors, but it would have been hidden in their final position), as I had roughed up the surface enough to be visually interesting.

Note the mushrooms instead of smoke launchers, to provide clouds of spores as cover.

This time I actually sculpted a little nose for the horrible face - and look at this great slightly curved missile rack I found from the modern Heresy range. Perfect for spitting rockets at the enemy (and so that all three tanks have the same loadout).

The centrepiece! This was incredible fun to sculpt and paint and then make wet with gloss varnish. The tank came without the doors on the hatch, so I could get the three-dimensional effect I wanted.

The side door also has vagina dentata, albeit closed and fanged rather than toothed.

As this tank didn't have the tracks applied yet, it gave me a chance to make it into a slug tank. I think I brought the white of the feet up too far, but it still looks both slimy and satisfying.

Drool.

I had considered making the eyeballs all glossy black for a creepy insectoid vibe, but that effect works better if the balls are uniform, and these are hand-made for a deliberately uneven, squirmy effect. Plus, I enjoy cartoonish colours as a contrast to the pale colours of the Death Guard.

I wanted the vehicle to be relatively toned down to focus on the ecstatic top hatch. Plus, the tank came with an open turret, so I had a chance to add a marine as the turret gunner this time.

I painted him in the usual way, but note that both his shoulder rims and his iconography are different from the infantry squads. I didn't want the tanks associated with specific squads, so I wanted him to have his own feel. Possibly this is like a Techmarine driver, although he has no indication of once being of the Cult Mechanicus; possibly he just belongs to the tank. The use of an Arabic numeral is also very different from the norm! (both transfers come from Blood Bowl)

So that's it for the Rhinos. I have several more mechanical bio-horrors that I sculpted during that period and am finishing the painting for - stay tuned here or on Instagram...