u/GrimDarkMiniatures

Hello Brothers of the Death Guard, The Grandfather has seen fit to bless us with a gift, one of his greatest champions and my finest work: Haustor, The Untended.

This commission piece was highly collaborative, and is currently being painted by the client, u/Worried-Ad2956 .
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did in working on it.

TL;DR: This post is very detailed, Lore-covers all the Seventh Knell lore and background to the daemon prince Haustor, the artist commentary-covers how we developed the lore, the research, inspiration, and breakdown of the conversion/kitbashing process, and my artist info- a short explainer at the bottom explaining a bit about myself and what I do.
Link to my website is here: https://grimdarkminiatures.co.nz/home
If you are interested check out my other projects and commissions! Cheers and enjoy, B

That said, I present: Haustor

Lore: Once a mortal Astartes, Haustor has long since been transformed by the gifts of Nurgle into something more, both verdant and terrifying to behold. His providence is unique, for rumour has it he was once Hadrabulus Vioss, second to Typhon and commander of the Grave Warden Terminators of their Legion. Though none within the Imperium can attest to the time or nature of his corruption, nor the true events surrounding his death on some unnamed world in the Eye of Terror, it is known among the Death Guard that he was one of the original coconspirators who lead to their blessing by the Grandfather; slayer and defamer of their Navigators on the Legion’s transit through the warp to The Siege of Terra; and as such was a figure held in both esteem and revulsion, controversial to all save the men he conspired with on their path to damnation. Upon his death as a mortal champion of chaos, his standing within the legion and their warrior lodge befit him special ceremony; burial within the garden of Nurgle itself for one so devoted to the plague father. The grove of Gastroparesis was selected for this honour, much to the appreciation of its patron daemon, and after 7 days of ritual starvation and affliction under its mournful watch, the grave of Hadrabulus was left alone, the Grave Wardens casting a farewell to their gloried commander with final solemn joy knowing he was already within Nurgle’s eternal embrace.

Yet this was not the end for Hadrabulus.

Honoured as he was, Gastroparesis petitioned the Grandfather to bless his great champion once again with new life. For seven years, his grave was left untended, consumed by creeping decay, and upon the site of his grave a great rot-oak grew from the armoured form of Hadrabulus. The Lord of Maladies afflicted his ruined remains; suffusing it with his godly essence and the tattered remnants of his spoiled soul. Upon the final day of the seventh year of absence Gastroparesis himself would return to his resting place and anoint the twisted form of Hadrabulus in great bells of which the winds of chaos could chime, and the funeral bells the tolled 7 years past rang out again across the warp, the ritual of rebirth near complete.
And with such abstinence Nurgle was pleased, and spoke the true name of Hadrabulus for the first time. Amidst the gentle writhing of the grove, a song of decay would play out across the warp from the body of the gestalt Haustor, reaching out to those who would listen, and pressing on the minds of those who would not. Across many worlds around the Eye of Terror the faithful and heretic alike would experience a chilling and total silence none could explain. And then, the first bell tolled. The first knell begat a haunting melody that played in the back of the mind as nothing more than whispered music, subtle at first; but in time it became a hollow voice that would drive men mad. Dreaded hallucinations, infectious paranoia, and the mercurial breakdown in sanity followed as order gave way to chaos as the massed psychic resonance of Haustor distorted local reality upon 7 worlds simultaneously, idle thought and numerical sequences in the minds of the populace drawing in the dormant daemon prince and therefore the grove of Gastroparesis to them through discordant tones of grief. For 3 days the death toll rose as madness and famine consumed them, the weight of his absence felt through the sequence of bells foretelling an inevitable end to their suffering on the 7th day. And then on the 4th day, the Grave Wardens came, called back as they were by the echo of Haustor’s knell. Drawn by the complex numerological cadence of his song, they lay about each world in acts of desecration, preparing them for final consumption by the garden through rot, bolter and plague. On the 5th day those maddened by the call would relent and in their madness fashion crude helms in an attempt to block out the memetic infestation of their minds, yet it would not suffice, for in spirit he was already with them and enacting his own transformation upon all but the strongest of wills. Many turned to worship of the grandfather to inure themselves from suffering, their helms melting like wax into cast copper bells whose ringing echos that of the risen lord’s own, abandoning their last vestiges of reason as their bodies withered into walking corpses not wholly alive or dead. On the 6th day, those who had not already succumbed to the plagueridden assault of the Grave Wardens or the roaming bands of bell-helmed undead would find their bodies transforming into the same rotten woods that grew from the carcass of Haustor, and knew with certainty that they had forfeit a gift as the distinction between reality and the warp blurred into obscurity. In his final toll of the seventh hour of the seventh day, the ritual was complete; seven worlds held in interstice with the grove of Gastroparesis, and the Grave Wardens once again stood before their lord in triumph; and Nurgle was pleased. Hadrabulus, now Haustor, would walk again amongst them, and they would take a new name too in his service: The Seventh Knell, and bury their dead in the grove of which he walks and can never leave, in hope that rebirth will once again touch the remnants of the most horrifying warriors of the Death Guard Legion.

Artist Commentary: As a professional miniatures sculptor and conversion project enthusiast, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating this piece. Haustor has been an involved project start to finish, and is part of a wider ongoing project with this particular client and good friend of mine for a really unique and interesting take on a barely mentioned faction within the lore of the Death Guard Legion: The Seventh Knell Vectorium. They have one single appearance in the lore in War Zone Charadon - Act II: The Book of Fire, where they are mentioned as participating alongside Typhus’ forces in that campaign, and are generally noted as being more in alignment with Typhus than Mortarion, but aside from that there is no major detail on what they are like, other than a rather ominous name. Thus it gave us a huge amount of freedom in the scope of what we could create lore wise and this has gone a long way to informing my sculpting efforts for this army wide sculpting and conversion project.

We started at the basics, what does the Seventh Knell mean? “Seventh” obviously refers to Nurgle’s favoured number 7, as well as some form of sequence, and we wanted to incorporate that with an esoteric numerology angle. Likewise, “Knell” refers to the sound of a bell, specifically to announce a death, a funeral or a coming disaster. In addition, the term “Seventh Knell” is something of a biblical reference to Revelation, with the breaking of the seventh Seal and seventh Trumpet, both extremely dramatic prophetic events that are accompanied by unnerving silence (the breaking of the seventh Seal), followed by a series of seven mounting disasters and ending with a divine announcement wherein the worlds fate is sealed and given to God (post seventh Trumpet), both of which fit the theme spectacularly. With this in mind, bells were going to be a big theme aside from the obvious rot and decay, and we were enamoured by the idea that perhaps this warbands infections are more obscure, transmitting through sound and the sequence of notes and numbers themselves rather than the more traditional vectors of physical diseases. We settled on a more cerebral memetic plague, one which steadily announces its presence through the ringing of bells in the warp, driving people to insanity through a progressive ritual which the Seventh Knell Vectorium and the populations of the world under assault participate in a series of mounting disasters with a defined inevitable outcome that’s virtually impossible to stop and heavily inspired as an almost biblical world changing event.

We just needed a source of all this; and we found it in Hadrabulus Vioss.

Hadrabulus is a name dropped Death Guard commander, is a higher up in the Legion, was present at the Siege of Terra, and importantly was one of Typhus’ zealots who worked on corrupting the legion to chaos from within well before it obvious that they were going that way. And he has no recorded death. He’s basically a throwaway character from the writers, meant to serve the necessary function of being one of Typhon’s conspirators and nothing more, which made him fertile ground to transform into something a little more interesting for one of the die hard lodge members in the Death Guard Legion. He’s one of the few who would’ve actively embraced the fate they fell into, and was presumably highly competent as the secondary commander of the Grave Wardens under Typhus, making him an excellent candidate for a Daemon Prince. But we wanted him to feel strange.

Haustor and Hadrabulus aren’t really the same person anymore, Haustor is more of an idea or an idol than a traditional daemon prince. He can’t actually leave the grove he came to rest in, he’s bound there and trapped as much as anyone else’s soul would be in Nurgle’s domain, but he does have influence that can extend beyond what would be possible within physical reality precisely because he is a vessel specially created by Nurgle for an obscure psychic influence, with a rather powerful great unclean one (Gastroparesis) watching over him as his Patron.

Haustor’s influence is a complex interplay of rituals, esoteric arithmancy, numerology and psychic resonance, particularly the concepts of isopsephy and gematria (systems where words when reduced to numerical values can share the same numerical value and are thus mystically or spiritually connected), only taken to the extreme by introducing the numerology inherent in music. This is something he doesn’t have any real control over, but with a circumstance of these resonances being an interstice between reality and the warp, specifically in Nurgle’s domain. Even though there are sequences to the tones of the bells there is no predictable consistency or logic that can be applied to exactly how people of one world or other may find themselves at the mercy of his summoning ritual, it is down to random chance whether the inherently random winds of the warp will produce a sequence of bell sounds reduced to numerical forms from which other minds will resonate with when their own concepts are reduced, and in doing so start the process of interstice, drawing the warp and reality closer together until they are superimposed. Sound, melody, cadence, sequence, tone, words, thoughts, emotions and ideas are concepts which really don’t apply precisely in the warp, they are just the best analogy humans can give to the phenomena, thus the resonance can extend to concepts in which you might associate some similarity but no exact totality in meaning precisely because under an arithmancy system they are numerally summed to be equivalent. For example, can a song be thought of as a sequence of numbers? If Certainly. If so, if you add all numbers present in a song, can you find a song that is numerically equivalent. The answer would be yes. Can a series of events or sequence of thoughts in general be considered numerically? Also yes, if you are willing to reduce each word to numeric value. Is it then true that the ordinary sequences of day to day life something that if described can be resonated with because of the simple fact they are ordinary and magnified by the sheer scale of their commonality as a series of numeric events? Haustor’s ‘song’ can resonate with these possibilities precisely because they all represent some form of sequence and numerology in abstract, and this is what draws him closer, and as a result of his anchoring to the grove, draws the grove closer to these thoughts within the warp, with the echos of this song magnifying both himself and the afflicted thoughts like constructive interference between two waves on a psychic level, alike in numerological significance but distinct and random in form. Among the minds of mortals most interference will be destructive as people simple have different thoughts that are collectively random, never quite aligning meaningfully on the isopsephic level, but should Haustor’s melody and your thoughts align constructively it becomes a form of spiritual equivalence, and this it is as if he is already there. Should you become aware of this, it is basically the end for you, as that is one of the most dangerous things about memetics. Once you are aware of an idea, it’s often difficult or impossible to actively deny that idea, even attempting to reinforce its opposite still recognises the idea exists, and thus you cannot let it go. The idea itself acts as infection, leading psychosomatic breakdown of the body or wholly psychogenic responses to the intrusion. The only solution is to passively forget before it can effect you too much, or to never think it in the first place. When that idea is as simple as regular use and concept of sequences, and wholly unrelated concepts save for obscure connection through isopsephic equivalence; to cease thinking of it entirely is functionally impossible, thus you can only hope for a random chance of destructive interference that reduces your resonance with any sequence or generated numbers that could be played as part of Haustor’s song. I think that’s something that makes the concept of Haustor so terrifying, on a complete off chance in idle thought he can become aware of you, and you him, and that starts a process you are not equipped to handle, because it touches on aspects of existence that you cannot live without. Ideas themselves can be infectious, and ideas enhanced to their extreme can result in total ruin and madness; that is what Haustor is.

Something that Warhammer often doesn’t do well is making the warp feel vague and terrifying, particularly when it comes to their daemons and rituals. We felt Haustor’s ritual summoning and rebirth should really straddle the line between something that makes sense with a consistent structure and something nonsensical and irrational. In the idea for Haustor’s transformation from Hadrabulus and the associated summoning we wanted to give it a surface level consistent repetitive structure of events in 7s, but layer it with a complexity and timeline that’s borderline excessive, with deeper reference for someone looking into it but that also would escape defined meaning. Why must any of what happens with the Seventh Knell occur in the way it does? You can follow the reasoning until it begins to fray at the seems, and yet there is meaning, just held within utter nonsense and totally arbitrary conditions outside of an extreme subjective rationale. We harped the seventh idea hard; even the name Haustor is a contraction to a 7 letter word derived from Haustorium, meaning a specialised root like system or filament used by a parasitic organism to penetrate the hosts tissue and absorb nutrients from the host, which went on to inform the parasitic tree imagery shown in the model. Haustor is both the product of this parasitism and a source of it on a spiritual level, he is a self reinforcing problem, his memetic infection reaching out through ideas and sound to ultimately spell the doom of anyone who even begins to think about anything even remotely related to him on even the most abstract level. The ritual aspect is something analogous to Junji Ito’s Uzumaki, a seemingly bizarre and random series of horrifying events that begin from a raw concept (in Uzumaki’s case it is the concept of a spiral towards an inevitable end where meaning is erased), that ultimately are part of something greater that you could never resist even if you wanted to, you are just taken for the ride anyway despite believing you could change the outcome. The other obvious inspiration here is the King in Yellow, Hastur, another such entity from the lovecraft mythos whose terror is a complex yet inevitable ritual of summoning and memetic infection. We wanted the Seventh Knell to feel like they have a pretty drastic impact when they act, and Haustor is both the catalyst and goal of their actions. I think we achieved this with the effort we put into the lore, we did our research and have played more into the terror of the Death Guard than the whimsy, despite the comical amount of numerology we’ve engaged with.

Onto the model itself, I think there is a lot to be said. Much of it is hand sculpted, with some prominent pieces procured by my client that we incorporated into the build. The silhouette echos that of a massive terminator armoured marine, who was at some point torn to pieces and had a tree grow through him and colonise him completely. We took a forearm from the OG Nurgle daemon prince and I rebuilt the bulk of the arm at a larger scale (the sculpt is tiny by modern standards), and likewise for his other arm we lifted it from AoS’ Drycha kit, padding it out in places with decay where necessary. Much of his foliage and one leg is a conglomerate of green stuff and a sylvaneth treelord, with the hood of his terminator armour, his shoulder plating and his shin armour all taken from various death guard daemon engine kits, and reworked with careful trimming and additions to fit the silhouette we envisioned. The rest; his helmet, cowl, torso, abdomen, and leg armoured in the style of cataphractii plate are all hand sculpted details in green stuff, in all their twisted glory. He has 3 great bells and 4 smaller ones which form his set that I think frame the model really well and tell that narrative of melody and resonance. He is posed in the classic “come to me” pose, and feels super weighty as any respecting Nurgle daemon prince should.

I have a few favourite details on this model. I’m a huge fan of the segmented armour look, Mks II, III, and cataphractii have always been my personal favourite armour styles for their more antiquated look, and they reflect my attention to small details well when sculpting. I also love the trio of flies on his chest plate, those were painstakingly cut from existing Nurgle things and shaped individually to fit the curve of the armour. They’re small but I think they make the difference in giving a little more detail in what otherwise is a large blank space. Haustor is a busy model detail wise but he possesses ample negative space, and I think the contrast there is quite striking. His base deserves special mention too. For the basing enthusiasts out there, a little bit of super glue onto generous dobs of wet contrast paint go a long way to creating a creeping slime mold texture. It is a great technique to have in your toolkit, and is suitable to use on models too if you’re confident with it. I also enjoy the fleshy infestation around Haustor’s abdomen, it gives the impression that some kind of parasitic insects are nesting within him like some kind of hive, almost similar to that species of bees that make their hives out of meat proteins; gross, but hey it’s Nurgle, gross is his thing. It’s also echoed in the hive like pieces from the sylvaneth kits, the irony that is that he is in fact teeming with life: whilst being neither alive nor dead.

All in all I loved working on this guy, and I’d like to thank u/Worried-Ad2956 again for the privilege of allowing me to apply my skills to the piece and develop this army project with him. There are several other pieces I am happy to showcase in the coming weeks for the army project, including the Great Unclean One Gastroparesis and a sorcerer among other things, so look forward to more!

Artist info: Grimdark Miniatures is a sole artist commission sculpting studio. I am based in New Zealand, and I bring 18 years of experience to crafting tabletop miniatures for tabletop wargames and RPGs. I am a traditional sculptor with a focus on bespoke hand sculpted miniatures within a gritty, grimdark aesthetic.
I do everything from private conversion projects with heavy hand sculpted elements to pure hand sculpted physical masters and hybrid processes involving precision 3D scanning, digital preparation and delivery for commercial enterprises or particularly bespoke collectors. If you enjoy my work and would like to know more, you can check out my website here: https://grimdarkminiatures.co.nz/home
‘Enter’ to see the gallery :)

Perhaps I can do a commission for you!

Cheers everyone,
B

Hey fellow heretics, I have something for you. I wanted to showcase a commission piece I worked on a little while back for my sculpting commissions business. This piece was 100% hand sculpted using green stuff, milliput and aluminium foil. This sculpt took 117 hours total, not including curing times. I hope you enjoy it. I've got some lore for this piece and some artist commentary, so have a read if you like! Also the photos are a mix of the pure greenstuff raw images and black and white to better show off the detail, the full model in the later images has been basecoated in corax white as it was before being received by the client, just in case there's ay confusion :)

Thus I present, The Great Beast of Contagion:

Lore:

The Great Beast of Contagion is a foul monstrosity, an undead, daemonic giant of disease and flesh that mocks the shape of man. A long tumour of a tongue whips out from its mouth of rotten teeth, slurring its speech, and a crude cowl covers its misshapen head, itself torn by protruding, bug-like horns weeping with decay. Its skin is rich with sores, cancers and pock marks, growing eternally but never shedding, folding and sagging loosely over its vast bulk, concealing a terrifying strength and endurance which belies its tainted form. In its left hand it wields a rusted cannon with which to club its enemies or engulf its foes in a deluge of raw entropy, withering the hapless mortals before it to to scraps of rusted metal and rotting meat, and poisoning the soul itself. In its right hand a loose, leather flail is lazily gripped, its purpose to indulge in the ritual flagellation in exaltation of the degradation it encourages in friend and foe alike. Such wounds can be seen across its back, for its spine has been exposed by self flagellation, along with many smaller wounds seeped in pus and decay. To face The Great Beast of Contagion is to face a walking disease, a horror from the darkest nightmares rendered to reality by the darkest powers of this world. It is to see decay, and know that time has come for you.

Artist Commentary:

This project was a joy to work on. It originally started as a model concept for a great unclean one of warhammer fame, but evolved through some sketches I drew into something more. We really wanted something non-standard and flexible, to be used as both a tabletop gaming centerpiece to tie an existing army together, a versatile monster for various other games like trench crusade or dnd, and as a unique display piece that would be fun to paint up with all its rich texture. We didn't opt for a simple conversion of an existing sculpt like a GW standard or forge world Great Unclean One because honestly its been done countless times (even by myself for my own collection), and we wanted to push the concept further, and so the model is entirely hand sculpted. My client wanted me to push the horror aspect of the miniature up to 11, and create something that was really quite grim and imposing.

At the time I was really taken by this idea of using some bizarre weaponry for such a massive creature, and I landed on the cannon, partially because I'd seen some really well done Ogre Leadbelcher models and also because I think it offers the right mix of the functional/industrial look with a large rusted cast cannon juxtaposed with the sheer organic bulk of the creature. I think the fact that it is held as opposed to worked into the flesh suggests more intelligence in its operation, that this isn't merely a war beast; it uses its tools with malicious intent and strategy. Likewise the flail isn't typically a weapon of war; I designed it more after a cat o' nine tails (or seven in this case), and such flails are more typically associated with religious penance and corporal punishment, and virtually never as a weapon you would use in combat. This suggests the purpose here is different, and in this case I think it carries through it represents a form of madness, with the repeated scarring on its back to the point where the spine is exposed displaying that the type of degradation this entity indulges in is eternal; it doesn't change, it continues to flog itself because it can only decay, desires that for others in a sick way, and can never be better than that twisted desire.

The skin of the the beast was also fantastic to work on from that perspective, both the deep and subtle texture of the folds were built up over many, many hours of applied labour to create this sagging effect in extreme detail. This was interspersed with boils, scabs and lesions to really give the effect that nothing heals on this thing; all it does is fester and rot. Fire was also liberally used in creating some of the textures; a hand-held blowtorch offered some of the randomness of a living thing. I intentionally loosely mixed the green stuff I used for the skin texture in places to allow some of the yellow component to liquify and expand within textures I'd sculpted, and I further roughed up areas with tamiya plastic glue and fire. This produced some unique reactions on already cured green stuff and milliput. I had a wonderful time testing this process in this model and I think for future projects I can see myself using the technique again. 

My favourite details on this piece are definitely the hands and the heavily distorted face and tongue. The spine is also excellent, I worked really hard to get the perfect split as though his back has been ripped open, with the spine just on the edge of spilling out, only held in place by rancid flesh thats drawn taught. Every element of this commission drips with grossness a truly gigantic in scale. He's truly obese and immense and the perfect picture of wrongness, which in this case is very good.

All in all, I am extremely proud of this piece, and it now serves as that centerpiece we wanted, usually as an absolutely massive unique great unclean one, a chaos knight, the "dragon" for trench crusade or as a BBEG in DnD. The total time to complete was around 117 hours of dedicated sculpting, my second longest individual sculpt to date, but I think it was worth it.

Artist Info:

If you guys like what you see or are interested in having a piece like this commissioned, you can check out my work on my website here:

https://grimdarkminiatures.co.nz/home

Hit "Enter" on the homepage and it will take you to my gallery :)

For context, Grimdark Miniatures LTD is a New Zealand based, sole artist commission hand-sculpting and conversion service focused on creating unique models for tabletop wargames and RPGs, in my distinctive grimdark style, for both personal hobbyists and commercial indie studios. I've got 18 years of traditional sculpting experience, and I am passionate about bringing out unique narratives in tabletop miniatures through the craft of hand-sculpting. I particularly love seeing the hobby develop and all the cool stuff we put our time into; there's a lot of cool kitbashes, conversions and excellent painting out there and I appreciate it so much.

I hope you guys enjoy this piece as much as I do.

Cheers, B

Following on from my Orkimedes post last week, there's one, fun, final part to the commission.

A little grot assistant to help out the big lad!

Carrying around spare gubbinz, trusty spanners, an sum whurd' fink' kuld' "Blu-Printz", Grotmedes fancies himself something of a mek himself, although he never discusses such things outside of grot revolutionary committees, where such ideaz are more accepted. Most of the time the little lad is content to learn what he can from Da Boss-Mek and make himself useful least it be more fun for the meks of the workshop to feed him to the squigs. Wearing nothing but a simple robe and with a few wrenches as his sole possessions, Grotmedes is often shoved into any loose engines to get things working again if stuff goes wrong for any reason, and miraculously so far, he has survived, although not without severe trauma from "dat wun tym wiv da jumpa cablez". Only time will tell if Grotmedes has learn enough under Orkimedes to be a little more useful than a small gap spanner, or if he does indeed deserve to be squig food.

This miniature was really fun to make, his outfit generally echoes Orkimedes just obviously in much worse condition being a poor little gretchin. He's a bit scared, a little proud, and he's just trying to look smart, and maybe... he is? I presumed he could at least read given the blueprints I gave him. He's posed as if thinking "If Orkimedes is 'Finkn' 'Ard, Iz gotz ta 'Fink 'Ard too", and as a pair of models, I think they go well together. From a gameplay perspective, he exists so Orkimedes can be used as any of the Big Mek models, with Grotmedes filling in for a Grot Oiler or Grot Assistant where needed. Shokk Attack Gun Big Mek? Easy, Orkimedes figured out telyporta tech, who needs the gun when you are the gun. For Orkimedes, its easy, teleport to them yurself, krump 'em and then teleport back, much to the amazement of your trusty grot, who's only job here is to change da powa cellz. Mega-Armoured Mek? Not a problem; not only does Orkimedes have telyportaz, but you've seen this ork, his body is a temple, his spine's made of metal, and he's big; orks probably believe he doesn't need armour or he teleports bullet out of the way, all whilst grotmedes jots it down for later 'kontemplayshun'. And of course the standard big mek, he's already got everything he needs and he can just leave grotmedes in an engine somewhere next to da jumpa cables.

Anyway, hope you enjoy Grotmedes, the final final update to the Orkimedes posts (at least until my client can get back to me with them painted up!)

Again if you want to see my work, or enquire, see my website here or DM me.

Cheers guys, B

Hey guys, here's some pics of my recent commission sculpting piece. I'm quite proud of how this guy has turned out, so I hope you like it! I present, Ancient Arael. I have written some lore for him and given an artist commentary, so if you are interested have a read or just enjoy the post!

Lore:

From deep within his towering chassis, the former Erelim Arael seethes with divine rage. Though broken in body by the ravages of war, Arael lives on within the frame of his Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought, and it is through the instrumentation of this potent war-machine that the Traitor Legions will feel his wrath once more. In each of his mighty arms he wields a conversion beam projector, a devastating weapon of eradication with which scour from the earth those deemed unworthy of mercy in the Great Angel's eyes. As former commander of the Order of the Angel's Tears prior to Hanziel's inception in the later years of the great crusade, the venerable ancient is looked upon with reverence by his peers in the first sphere of the Blood Angels Legion, for is he is as wise as he is wrathful. Draped in the full skinned pelt of a Carnadon and clad in silken robes, his bearing echoes that of his Primarch Sanguinius, and to see him is to know his will be done. Icons of his former life, once crafted by his hand, are worked into his armoured plating; such that the warrior within not forget the man he was. Devoid of mortal senses within the cold shell of his sarcophagi, Arael takes solace in the patterns of fine filigree as examples of his more noble passions, though his touch will never grace such passions again. Yet the most important of these icons is the beautiful yet grotesque angel upon his chest, the most dire of all countenance to those who look upon him. From his chest the angel looks out to the left, with one wing cast out, unfurled, whilst the right wing lies obscured by the drapes of his silk vestment. The face of the angel echoes that of his own in life, a styled rendition whose eyes peer with the dispassionate authority of judgement as his lips purse in disgust at the grace spurned. With the head turned and the left wing fully open, he symbolises the unleashing of divine wrath through the brutal ministrations of the left hand path; the path of the destroyer, where no mercy lies and no quarter is given. The right wing, thus covered, is a path of grace not taken, resigning the subject to total oblivion. It is from Arael that Hanziel learned of the depths of their mandate, and it is with this understanding the Erelim of the first sphere carry out their dire purpose.

Artist's Commentary:

I hope you enjoyed the little lore excerpt. This commission was really fun, I honestly love working on custom dreadnoughts with interesting developed lore backgrounds. I really wanted to capture something unique and dreadnoughts are one of the perfect places within the 30K/40K setting to add a ton of character to both their lore and the model. The Horus Heresy dreadnought kits, in particular contemptor dreadnoughts just offer so much from a kitbashing, conversion and sculpting perspective, and you can tell a compelling narrative through their physicality and unique style. I particularly enjoyed having negative space on the armour plating to fill with neat little details, be it the filigree, the erelim mask (I envisioned this would be Arael's mask from when he was commander of the Erelim), and of course the draped Caranodon throw rug and the central angel on the chest. I think I struck the right balance here. I was going for an unsettling grimdark style; the warrior pride style savagery of the Carnodon corpse juxtaposes really well against the finer features. We wanted him to feel raw and brutal, but clearly wise and ancient, with an almost biblical feel, something terrifying you can't stop because its judgement is absolute, and yet it is still a shadow of what it once was, as all dreadnoughts tend to be. Some elements of the sculpt are intentionally rough too to give a more gritty battle-worn feel. It wasn't an easy project by any means; there's loads of texture, multiple distinct filigrees and particularly that angel wing took a fair bit of time. Total hours for the project were around 23 hours, not including curing time for the green stuff. Filigree in particular was a time sink but worth it for a unique look. In addition, all the bonding studs were cut individually from Mk VI shoulder pads and then placed. Many people may prefer drilling then ball bearing methods but the effect of plastic glue left in the wake of this process added some subtle texture I've come to enjoy in a model, thus I opted for this method, plus I had a lot of Mk VI shoulders in the bits mountain from other projects, so its good to recycle them into something like this. It's also a tad more stable for long term durability of the model as the plastic clue basically melts the plastic together, with no chance of studs popping off as you may have if you use superglue for this purpose. All in all, I really enjoyed creating this piece, now all that is left is to get a basecoat on it and send it off to be painted!

Artist Info:

If you guys like what you see or are interested in having a piece like this commissioned, you can check out my work on my website here:

https://grimdarkminiatures.co.nz/home

Hit "Enter" on the homepage and it will take you to my gallery :)

For context, Grimdark Miniatures LTD is a New Zealand based, sole artist commission hand-sculpting and conversion service focused on creating unique models for tabletop wargames and RPGs, in my distinctive grimdark style, for both personal hobbyists and commercial indie studios. I've got 18 years of traditional sculpting experience, and I am passionate about bringing out unique narratives in tabletop miniatures through the craft of hand-sculpting rather than relying on digital systems. I particularly love seeing the hobby develop and all the cool stuff we put our time into, there's a lot of cool kitbashes, conversions and excellent painting out there and I appreciate it so much.

I hope you guys enjoy this piece as much as I do.

Cheers, B

Following up on my post in r/minis from 2 weeks ago, as promised I have completed the sculpt for “Orkimedes” on time.

Sculpting the body and robes took about 22 hours total not including curing times, pure hand sculpting in green stuff and wire, with an extra 4 hours for his mechanical pieces and basing, so 26 hours all up. I think I’ve struck the balance just right between the statuesque Plato-like body I was going for, along with the more refined robes with checker pattern edging, and the intricate artificial spinal replacement (something that appears in older Ork lore) serving as that intricate mathematically distinct apparatus I mentioned in the original post.

Orkimedes sits deep in contemplation, finkn’ ‘Ard ‘bout da best way ta build da telyportaz, or whatever else he feels like building at the time. Unlike other of his age and occupation, he is not so heavily or obviously modified with cybernetics, any he does have are understated save for his eye lenses that colonise his skull, with lots of tubes and wires that feed electricity directly into his brain (he calls it brain”PoWaaaghh!”; as it helps him “‘fink fasta”). These neural and electrical conduits connect directly to his spine, nervous system, and his personal teleportaz, giving him uncanny movement speed, strength and dexterity, and complete control over local teleportation; All he has to do is ‘fink ‘bout it, and he teleports wherever he needs to be, though it drives him quite mad.

His body is in peak physical condition for an ork, refined by constant electrical stimulus and from the constant toil of building mega-gargants from scrap. Few orks outside of the largest warbosses can match him in size, and seldom in intelligence either, for he is among the smartest of all Meks at Ghazghkull’s disposal. Indeed it was Orkimedes who invented maffimatik, when he realised it was possible to ‘fink beyond “lotz”, and count on two hands instead of one.

This project was great to work on, I had to space out my work sessions quite a bit due to busy work weeks across the board on other projects but I think in the end I’ve outdone myself on Orkimedes. He is intended to stand in for a Big Mek with Kustom Mega Blasta and Power Klaw. He is currently unpainted as that is what the client wants. Orkimedes posing I think is really characterful and uncanny, he’s as jacked as we wanted him to be without going over the top, with a good sense of parody and grimdarkness that fits right into where good ork sculpts do best. I particularly like his head and the muscle refinement, and the spine turned out better than I expected despite how painstaking it was to create. Minute threading with brass rods and plastic wires done by hand is pretty challenging but the look is undeniable. I’m proud of this piece and I hope my client can enjoy it as much as I have in creating it.

For context, I am a New Zealand based sole artist commission studio specialising in hand sculpting miniatures from scratch for tabletop wargames and RPGs. I also do plenty of conversion pieces and you will find many warhammer conversions among my work. I specialise in grimdark and horror aesthetics and I bring 18 years of sculpting experience to each hand-sculpt or conversion I produce. I’m new to the reddit community so I’m trying to get my name out there a bit more, so if you like my work, let me know and perhaps I could do a cool conversion or unique hand sculpted miniature for you too!

All that said, if you would like to see more of my work, visit my website here: https://grimdarkminiatures.co.nz/home
‘Enter’ to see the gallery :)

Thanks again everyone,

Cheers, B

P.s. a kustom scrap built Ghaz is sitting in the background of image 12, another fun piece I’ve worked on that I’m happy to show here if people want, and image 11s beaky Mk VI marine may serve of something of a size comparison; Orkimedes is a big boy!

Just wanted to share a work in progress on my rendition of 'Orkimedes'. The sculpt is currently in the rough bulk detail stage at the moment, with refinements yet to come. I wanted to share because I think the concept for the model is pretty sweet. Based on the lore, we have few confirmed images of Orkimedes, the famously elusive personal mek of Ghazghkull 'emself, which has left the sculpt wide open for interpretation as for what this mek looks like. The design myself and my client have settled on is strange by ork standards, but I feel thats just the place to be. We want a mek thats notably less mechanical in terms of bionics and cybernetics, because they are old, industrious and more of a thinker and inventor who puts their resources to planning and creating tech on behalf of others rather than pursuing personal modification.

The posing intends to evoke a plato-esque body type, with a statuesque form. I've taken some inspiration a few famous statues to start building out this look, going for something somewhere between Myron's Discobolus and Auguste Rodin's The Thinker, as well as paintings of Plato and Archimedes. This is an ork who doesn't act or think like other orks, so having that juxtaposition of common ork scrappiness held against a body in peak condition but with ork proportions. as well as elaborate robes with understated armour and gubbins I think will strike that balance of uncanniness just right. He will have an apparatus mounted onto his back which comprises the more mechanical elements of the piece, along with his weapons, but we wanted that too to be odd looking by ork standards, not just with mechanical intricacy but being something that looks for lack of better words mathematical and way too precise, owing to the Orkimedes original inspiration, Archimedes of Syracuse. And of course he will need a teleporta, because he's the ork who designed that tech.

There's many things left to do, but I should have the completed piece ready in about 2 weeks from now. I will post an update once the model is complete :)

For context, I'm new to reddit so hello everyone! I am an New Zealand based sole artist commission studio specialising in hand sculpted miniatures and conversion pieces for tabletop wargames and RPGs, specialising in grimdark and horror aesthetics. I have 18 years experience creating and sculpting miniatures, and I started GrimDark Miniatures because sculpting is what I love to do. As per the rules of the subreddit, I'm not here to relentlessly promote, just to introduce myself to the page and share in the community of miniature creation. All that said, if anyone would like to check out more of my work; I do have a website which you can visit here: https://grimdarkminiatures.co.nz/gallery

Glad to join the community here, and I look forward to seeing more great minis from the talented people of r/minis.

Cheers, B