Heresy & Heroes

Stomping his way onto tabletops in the near future is this brutal creation, my second Mortifactors Contemptor Dreadnought who has been given the title of ‘Nameless Death’. Armed with two power claws carved from Posul bronze and a skull helm, this guy is as much about intimidation as he is about brutal close-quarters killing power.

The keen-eyed and geeky amongst you (so that’s all of you then) and those who keep up with this little blog of mine will have recognised that this miniature used to be the Night Lords Contemptor chassis, but simply by removing a pair of bat wings (and by making a couple of other minor tweaks), I have been able to turn him into a pretty perfect Mortifactors Mini. I also left out the rotting heads that come with the dread, even though some of those were skulls, they were a bit more NL than M – more about fear than ritual.

The pose is a little static, but I was trying to go for a stationery pose that had a ‘come at me bro’ kind of feel and I think I’ve just about managed that. It could have gone worse, and the end result has a definite menace to it . The base is simple (though annoyingly, I appear to have been a bit stingy on the stand so from some angles he looks like he’s light enough not to make a mark in it, but this can be fixed if needs be) and I even experimented with a RMM technique for copper on that broken column/pipe thing.

On the fluff side of things, I decided to call him ‘Nameless Death’ because I couldn’t think of a name, and because I already wrote ‘Mortis’ on the middle part of his chest banner. That aside though, I like to think of him as an ancient machine, still showing the scars of battles that Sasebo Tezuka led the Mortifactors into himself. Over the centuries, between lost records and the creeping insanity that comes with being entombed alive within a dreadnought, the name of this warrior has long since been lost. All that remains is his martial prowess and his desire to crush the enemies of the Emperor.

There ain’t much new on the painting front here. Really happy with the claws as they are looking thoroughly nasty and once again prove that my much tried and tested bronze technique still holds its own. What’s more, it had been a while since I’d done anything with the Mortifactors so it was good to find out that I can return to it and no bodge it up too badly.

You might also notice a slight improvement with the pictures this time round. The new fancy-pants camera is doing very nicely thank you, though there are still areas where I need to learn things and still a few small toys to buy to help out. It’s coming along though and I’m sure you’ll agree that these snaps are plenty better than the old potato-quality shots I used to stick up here. I even managed to get this murky shot…

Well, I hope you enjoyed the pretty pictures almost as much as I enjoyed painting him up. It was fun, but it took me a good while to do, so maybe something smaller and faster next. Onwards!