+ + + Border Skirmish with Outlaw Mutants! + + +

The underhive creaks, a stirring of dust trickling through seventeen layers of ancient civilization, abandoned factora, desecrated shrines to petty military-industrial divinities. Soon, this borderzone just past Dust Falls will become a scene of blood and death. For now, a three-spined rat grooms itself under the dust shower...

The cohort of scavvy muties that call themselves the Cult of the Three-Eyed King face down Dust Falls United Metalworkers on a scrappy borderlevel of Hive Primus, as a chance meeting between Herne and the Goliath Shin goes pretty much as you'd expect...

Herne, lit by the glare of some fading Solar-esque™ floodlights

vincit omnia sanguis

When Games Workshop announced the new Sisters of Battle project, I was cautiously excited. One of my best mates in high school had collected them back in the late 90s, and I'd always liked the miniatures. As the sculpts started to be revealed, my caution gave way to regular excitement. I decided to get the boxed set on release! Yeah!

Which was lucky, as it turned out that you had about a twenty minute window to decide if you wanted it, when it was released. Bloody hell.

shiny

 It has since turned out that the monoposey nature of the original boxed set was giving way to more genuinely multipart models, although I haven't gotten the new kits yet (they release next week, after all). This is good, because while these are good sculpts, I don't want every single flamer sister to be standing on a smouldering daemon, you know?

In the meantime, though, I had to figure out how I was going to paint them. So! The first few months of 2020 have been a combination of new sisters and my Old World Army Challenge gnomes. I can't show you those (you have to follow the Challenge blog!), but I can show you my sisters.

Repost: Abate the Edge of Traitors

The Inquisitor and several of his acolytes, standing before the Mantis Warriors Razorback APC Dao Găm

The Inquisitor held his right hand by his side. Around him the air grew leaden, heavy. The charge that always lay in this place, that quiescent during his mundane works, a thrumming energy in potentia, began to crawl its way toward reality. His fingers arched into a complex pattern, a perfect geometric web. Points of jale light formed across points on his glossy protective gloves.

Behind the Inquisitor, his mortal servants shifted. Leth the Silent’s porcelain mask grew colder as the shadows began to flicker, blending from fuligin to sangoire. Beside him, sparks of dead colour flared on the Dimachaerus’s swords. The Exile ignored the prickling across its scalp, activating a gleaming rune on the deck panel; a holo-projector flared to life, showing a scarred planet.

Their Inquisitor master raised his left hand. Behind the soft gurgling of his rebreathing unit, he was speaking words in a helical tongue. Both hands now moved, exactly mirroring, and the unnatural lights dimmed on the hand; following a binaric chant, they were replicated, exactly, on the false-light sphere which hovered over the command deck.

The shadows returned to black. Lights returned to reds and blues; monitors to healthy green-on-black. Across the desk from the Inquisitor and his people, Lieutenant Commander Gwak Chae'u of the Mantis Warriors cleared his throat.

“I take it those are to be our targets then, Lord Inquisitor?” The distaste for the rank was concealed, to a point.

The Inquisitor’s inhuman eyes flickered. “Yes, Commander. You may inform your master.”

“I - he is uncomfortable…” Gwak’s expression flattened. “That is to say, we have made the error…

The Exile’s pointed ears flickered; some alien expression of amusement, although its oval eyes betrayed no emotion. Behind the Inquisitor, one of his more human minions coughed and shoved a cigar in his too-wide mouth.

"You have rather more recent experience fighting other Astartes than most, Mantis Warrior.” The rebreather unit hissed. “Ergo, you are perfect for this investigation. Dixi.”

Lt. Comm. Gwak held his eyes for a moment and then, bowing, withdrew.

The falselight globe spun lazily above the briefing table, witch-lights gleaming. The scarred world was in turmoil; icons indicating renegade forces blinked in and out of focus, pursued or pursuing their Imperial prosecutors. Here the crossed, sanguine axes of Orkish mercenaries grew brighter as they ravaged a promethium depot; there a white rose collapsed in pixel fire as a cathedral’s defenders changed their allegiance.

The witch-lights followed their targets’ icons, flickering only as the falselight projector’s machine spirit ran the inflow routines. Unlike the turmoil across much else on the map, the sword-and-wings icons remained steady as faith…