Kabal of the Radiant Abyss

just thought I'd show off some of my conversions for my Kabal, trying to go for a Freakshow army, focussing heavily on messing with the minds of the enemy, along the lines of Scarecrow. Sorry for the bad photos. Hopefully I should get some more completed shots up before too long.

Firstly we have my completed Archon, Aroshamash, showing off just what a Soul Trap does:



Followed by his Court, namely 2 slave Orks, counting as Sslyths, 2 Medusae converted from Rogue Psykers with some Tyranid bits, and what I'm counting as 2 Ur-Ghuls, my big beastie that's closer to how I imagined Ur-Ghuls looking:




And lastly, my still quite WIP Raider, as seen by someone with a lungful of lovely Terrorfex gas:

Just to let you know, I'm going for a mostly white colour scheme, with black and green for secondary colours. For the Kabal symbol, I'm thinking of trying a sunbust done in gloss varnish over a black background, a truly radiant abyss. :p

That's going to look sick! A pain in the ass to transport but awesome nevertheless.

The Raider isn't actually too bad, it's able to balance pretty solidly on the ghosts, so can be taken apart for transport.

The ghosts look Amazing!

I love what you're doing here, I hope you have the stamina to do it justice

I absolutely love the Ur-Ghul and the Raider!

the raider gave my eyes a seizure of happiness

Glad you guys like the Raider. I'm thinking of redoing the ghosts on them, I've since changed my way of doing the ghosts to make it look more ethereal. Gotta love the Nihilakh Oxide.

I'm very happy with how the Ur-Ghul turned out. He's a bit bigger than planned, as he's pretty much a horizontal Tyranid Warrior with Devourers making his head. I'm just very much not a fan of the GW model, I never pictured them as "skinny guy doing a cartoon 'tough guy' pose", but rather a weird, scuttling horror with no eyes. Maybe I might look into doing a size-appropriate set made from genestealers.

Thought I might also show off my Succubus (a male one, at that!)


As well as one of my Haemonculi, with his Haemovore pets


Both are obviously still just WIP, only undercoated thus far. I've also got another Haemonculus in the works, who's mostly just parts so far. Well, "it's" main body is done, just need to attach it to its organ-sack. As a hint, basically it's meant to represent an experiment of my other Haemonculus, as to what would happen if you try to regrow a body before the original dies. The answer? Not pretty. I'll be using the 'pilot' Wrack body, for that nice 'unfinished' look, a skull for a head, and a Chronos tentacle for legs, all attached via tubes to a little slave creature fulfilling the role of organs for the incomplete parasite attached to it.

I can't view the new pics. Is it just me?

Nope, I'm just a moron making mistakes while posting at work. Accidentally put the link to the album for the image links, rather than the picture itself. Should be working now.

They're alive!!!!

I like the hair on the Succubus. He has a nice mane

These look amazing. Really loving the Archon sucking someone into his soul trap.

That Ur Ghul is wonderful, too. Can't wait to see what these look like painted.

Out of interest, what's that thing on your Haemonculus' head? I can't quite make it out.

Incidentally, I think he got his wings from the same guy as my Mandrake Lord.

The Shredder wrote:

Out of interest, what's that thing on your Haemonculus' head? I can't quite make it out.

Incidentally, I think he got his wings from the same guy as my Mandrake Lord.

It's one of the Treelord's "fairies", and two more are on the base. The wings are from a Vargheist.

Rokuro wrote:

It's one of the Treelord's "fairies", and two more are on the base.

Ah, thanks.

Rokuro wrote:

The wings are from a Vargheist.

Indeed - I was saying that I'd used the same ones on one of my models (well, 2 actually, though only was a DE one).

The question is - could the wings actually fly him across the battlefield

Lord_Alino wrote:

The question is - could the wings actually fly him across the battlefield

Sadly not. But wings should totally be an option for Haemonculi, considering where Scourges get theirs from.

Correct on the Treeman/Lord bits, I thought they'd be perfect represent some Haemovores. And yes, Haemonculi should be able to have wings, so that's why I chose the smaller set, so it looks like they help hover rather than fly.
I'll try to get some more pictures up soon, get some more work done on the Raider body.

It'd be cool to see a Haemonculus with 2 sets of Scourge bat-wings

Lord_Alino wrote:

The question is - could the wings actually fly him across the battlefield

Yes and no.

On their own, no. They're too small, relative to the Haemonculus. In fact, they're barely bigger than his coat.

Also, considering that they're grafted on, he'd have to do a really good job - otherwise there's a good chance they'd tear at the join when he started flapping them.

However, IIRC Haemonculi have something along the lines of a levitation device. Something like that makes wings a lot more interesting. Depending on the nature of the device, it could be that the wings suddenly need to provide far less force to get him far off the ground. Alternatively, the device could provide all the necessary lift, and the wings could be used purely for stability and control/orientation whilst in the air.

Not that GW has ever been overly concerned with physics or anatomy, but most of their models with wings would never be able to fly.  The new Scourges kits may be GW's first attempt to make winged humanoids somewhat realistic.  Then again, as jump troops, they're going for more of a parachute effect than actual flight.  They'd also look pretty silly flapping for dear life just to move a few extra yards.

Anatomists have speculated that in order for a human(oid) to achieve powered flight, their wings would have to each be roughly twice as long as their body length.  So a 6' human would need 12' of wings on each side or a 24' wing span.  Not coincidentally, this is basically a small hang glider.

But that's before we even get to muscle groups and blood supply...  All of which would increase the weight, forcing larger wings, which require more muscle and blood, which increases weight, forcing larger wings, which require more muscle and blood, ad infinitim.

So basically powered flight in earth like gravity, under muscle power is impossible for human(oid)s.  There have indeed been human sized flying creatures on earth, but only after they underwent millions of years of specialization, and developed adaptations like a sternum that protrudes 2 feet and is surrounded by 25 pounds of solid pectoral muscle on each side.

Just made myself hungry for chicken breast actually.

Yes, but if you have antigrvity devices you can do as you like

I love how this has turned into a (meta)physics discussion on whether Dark Eldar can fly if they have wings. :p

stilgar27 wrote:

Not that GW has ever been overly concerned with physics or anatomy, but most of their models with wings would never be able to fly.  The new Scourges kits may be GW's first attempt to make winged humanoids somewhat realistic.  Then again, as jump troops, they're going for more of a parachute effect than actual flight.  They'd also look pretty silly flapping for dear life just to move a few extra yards.

Anatomists have speculated that in order for a human(oid) to achieve powered flight, their wings would have to each be roughly twice as long as their body length.  So a 6' human would need 12' of wings on each side or a 24' wing span.  Not coincidentally, this is basically a small hang glider.

But that's before we even get to muscle groups and blood supply...  All of which would increase the weight, forcing larger wings, which require more muscle and blood, which increases weight, forcing larger wings, which require more muscle and blood, ad infinitim.

So basically powered flight in earth like gravity, under muscle power is impossible for human(oid)s.  There have indeed been human sized flying creatures on earth, but only after they underwent millions of years of specialization, and developed adaptations like a sternum that protrudes 2 feet and is surrounded by 25 pounds of solid pectoral muscle on each side.

There's also stuff like birds having beaks instead of teeth (to save weight), hollow bones (also to save weight), lungs that can effectively inhale and exhale at the same time etc.

Not to mention that birds, bats and flying dinosaurs all have wings instead of arms. Having both would add extra weight, make the creature less aerodynamic and probably also cause issues in terms of actually fitting both together so that the wings can still flap freely. And, that's before you get into stuff like carrying weapons or wearing armour.

Aroshamash wrote:

I love how this has turned into a (meta)physics discussion on whether Dark Eldar can fly if they have wings. :p

You've got to admit though - it's an interesting subject.

About the muscle size: that shouldn't be a problem. One should assume that the dark Eldar Haemonculus have constructed muscle that are abnormally powerful despite light weight.