Elder Horrors for the Warhammer Universe

There's the faintest foul hint on the fell north wind.  A thrum, a pulse, the suggestion of alien voices chanting in unison.  The strangeness of the sound is abhorrent, but in it lies a truth begetting something more.  A piece of primal suggestion tugs at the soul recalling bygone eras of immemorial past.  It is the ancestral memory of an elder horror which stalked the world before man raised his first monument, and now it seeks to return!

Yes, I have been reading a lot of Lovecraft lately.  The Shadow Out of Time, Mountains of Madness, and of course Call of Cthulu.  I've really enjoyed stepping into Lovecraft's universe, where a daring scientific expedition or even a simple backwoods can be the setting for mystery, suspense, and horror.  It just so happened that a returning customer, Michael P., wanted a commission that fit perfectly with the great stories I've been reading.  With inspiration readily on hand, I set to work crafting a pair of horrors that would make Lovecraft proud.

Let's take a look!

The job was to convert two demon princes for Michael's fimir themed warriors of chaos army.  The basis for the conversions came from the Dark Lands collection with a few bitz from Warhammer and Warhammer 40k thrown in.

A lot of the work was original sculpt conversions done with Procreate (grey stuff) and green stuff modeling epoxy.  Procreate works really well for details that you want to hold a crisp edge, like this Cthulu prince's face tentacles.  Procreate also performs better than green stuff under an xacto blade or file for when you need to fine tune details or make adjustments.

To build the Cthulu theme on this piece I sculpted barnacles clinging to his shoulders, back, and appendages, and made ribbons of seaweed dangling from his horns and loin cloth.

Michael wanted a scythe hand for this model, so a bit of green stuff and a tyranid scything talon later.. and Cthulu prince was packing some serious stabby action.

I had the idea to make the tail have a mouth and teeth (chaos tip #1: add extra mouths, eyes, and teeth to increasy chaosy-ness).  After some thinking I came up with the notion to make it a blind snake as serpents are classic nautical beasts.

The demon prince plastic kit's wings fit excellently with the sculpt and scale of this piece.

The whole thing came together quite well, as it gets the theme across but doesn't ride the Cthulu-idea too hard.  I'm excited for Michael to add this to his force!

I did say that there was another prince in this commission, one that is certainly no less horrific than the last!

The theme of this one was definitely "eyeballs."  Which once again comes back to chaos tip #1 in stunning fashion.

I've done a stomach mouth before on a soul grinder project and was looking forward to take number two on the design.  For this one, the direction was stubby "frog" teeth (I know, frogs don't have teeth, but the descriptor strangely works).  I wanted a series of eyes low-set over the mouth to give a strong facial impression and a long forked tongue to drive home the amphibious nature of this grisly mutation.

Eyeballs are everywhere on this model, mounted on two shoulder tentacles, on its tail, on its fingertips, head, shoulders...

Technically this prince is a biclops, or two-eyed cyclops.  Yes, there is a difference, he has two eyes, but one is aligned over the other!

This giant got converted three-toed "fimir" feet as he is a mutated fimir champion.

And in case a slew of extra eyes wasn't enough, this prince has four more on the tips of his fingers; probably for use as a strange hand parascope or looking into finger-sized cracks.  Come to think of it, that would be quite handy, though you would have to be careful not to stub your eyes!

That's all the horrific and eldritch terror I have to unveil this week.  I'll be back next week with a look at some X-Wing minis that received new paint jobs!

Until then, good gaming and happy hobbying!