18Mar: completed skyweaver: Kabal of the Smoldering Cauldron

Hello! Under 1 month ago, I traded my Necron army for a large force of mostly unbuilt Dark Eldar models. I will be cataloging my painting efforts and fluff development in this thread.

Firstly, let's dicuss the state of the models that I received. I ended up with approximately this list of models:

2 older haemonculus
Urien Rakarth unbuilt
Drazhar, Master of Blades (metal)
Lelith Hesperax (finecast)

10 trueborn partially converted, mixed with blasters, shredders and dark lances
3 heavily converted grotesques using nids and talos bits
5 finecast incubi
10 incubi converted from Dark Elf Executioners (guy did a pretty good job on these, not going to lie)
15 finecast wracks

4 venoms (2 unbuilt, one pretty poorly converted to look wrackish)
7 raiders (3 unbuilt, 2 in atrocious states of paint/repair, 1 that was again poorly wrackified and 1 that is not cost effective to futz with)

10 kabalite warriors on sprue
30+ wyches, both built and on sprue

1 razorwing jetfighter with ALL THE MISSILES! glued on
6 built reavers, 6 more that were totally desroyed
5 scourges on sprue

2 ravagers, one of which was unbuilt
1 talos
1 chronos
1 voidraven bomber made from 2 razorwings bashed together

He also had built a pretty cool Dais of Destruction that is now pretty useless but looks decent enough. It has some kind of weird forgeworld parts and then 2 raiders bashed together. He built a decent enough Asdrubael Vect model, but he used some Chaos sorcerer parts that looked completely out of place. I took him off of the Dais, swapped some weapons and count him as an Archon now.

I went out and purchased a new Archon, Succubus Razorwing Jetfighter, and another box of scourges since they're the coolest models ever. I also snapped up 5 warspears from Hordes to convert to Grotesques.

Some of the Raiders were poorly painted from the owner PRIOR to the guy I traded with and spent a LONG time in some LA Totally Awesome. Lots of toothbrush scrubbing to get gunky enamel paint off of those things. I snapped some bits up off of ebay and now have 6 fully working raiders and 2 ravagers with only 1 of the ones supplied being totally salvageable.

The prior PRIOR owner had done a lot of very poor crew-into-model conversions, so those were taken apart or discarded. All dark lances on infantry were ripped off and all the trueborn shredders were converted to blasters via blast pistol tips.

All said and done, I have fully salvaged everything and now only need a couple of bits to finish 1 venom.

Next up will be the fluff I've fleshed out so far and the first painted models I did.

The Kabal of the Smoldering Cauldron are one of the Kabals that were forcibly integrated into Commoragh during the rise of Vect. They occupied a stretch of the webway known as Rillie Kiam, or the Glittering Fire. It was a great crossroad city in the webway before the fall and was well known for the giant, ever burning brazier at the center of the city.

After the fall, many spokes of Rillie Kiam were closed off due to unrepairable damage wrought to the webway, though it retained its link to Commoragh. Even though much of the webway access was lost, Rillie Kiam still retained a number of working routes through the webway and into realspace itself and it was considered to be a very valuable location for travel.

Long before the rise of Vect, a number of gangs began to occupy and war over this section of the webway, and eventually a gang came to control the great brazier on the central area, which was considered to be the ultimate prize of the area. It is a massive brazier of almost immeasurable distance, and though the flames had long died out, offered a great vantage point for any gang controlling it. They cemented their hold and began harassing the traders and slavers who used this area as a pass through, charging them tariffs and extorting them out of their goods. Anyone who did not comply was brutally murdered.

Eventually, the leader of this gang, Ker'norath devised a cunning way to keep himself safe from She Who Thirsts... he reignited the great brazier, but only at a minimal level of it's previously bright glory. A system of many chains, hooks and cages were suspended over the smoldering flames below and rigged to be raised and lowered at will. The gang's enemies and victims would be suspended above the fire and tortured over vast amounts of time by systematically torching them. If a victim were to be so charred that their nerves could no longer feel any pain, they would be raised out of the fire and their charred flesh would be flayed off to expose fresh nerve endings and suspended above the flames yet again. The gang attracted many journeyman haemonculi eager to play with the victims and practice their craft, flaying the victims or altering them to feel ever more pain from the flames below.

In creating this system of torture, Ker'norath was able to sustain himself and his loyal gang members for much longer and easily than many Dark Eldar were accustomed to. They were a terror to anyone passing through their domain and not easily quelled. The number of haemonculi perfecting their craft and the constant supply of sufferin victims allowed the gang allowed members to be revived quickly after combat and many decided to find new routes through the webway rather than through Rillie Kiam.

When Vect came to power, he crushed the gang simply by sheer volume of bodies and had Ker'norath cast into the flames of his own creation. Ker'norath's second in command, Votrih, swore allegance to Vect and the gang was reformed into the Kabal of the Smoldering Cauldron.

Vect allowed for tariffs to be imposed by the Kabal (so long as he was given his "fair" share), and the Kabal began to raid realspace themselves to supplement the income and greedily add to the collection of victims suspended above the cauldron.


That's what I have developed for a back story thus far. Feel free to comment or critique, I'm very open to amending it to better fit existing fluff.

I started my painting with the vehicles, since we're a mechanized style army, they make the most impact visually during a game. Apologies for the poor lighting, cold weather has kept me from snapping shots outside with better lighting and I am too dumb to build a proper lightbox.

I own a number of armies for a number of different games, but am very bad at getting them painted. I hope this log will keep me motivated to get the army done. I will be focusing on a table top quality with each large model taking me no longer than 1-2 days of invested time to complete. Please, feel free to provide critique and tips, as I greatly appreciate it.

First up is my completed Raider. I free-handed the symbol on there, as I don't much care for any of the transparencies that came with the raider kits. I'm seriously not looking forward to reproducing that on other raiders, as my freehand skills are awful.


Next up is the first venom I did. I have another venom that is almost done, but it needs some finishing touches. (please note I did properly glue in the canopy after taking that pic)


Finally, the first steps of the groteque conversions, pre-greenstuff work. This will be my first time working with greenstuff and I am very apprehensive about it.


Please feel free to comment and critique. I can also post the pic of the converted Dais or the nid-grots or anything if there is interest.

A friend of mine who I consider a greenstuff expert wants to tell you to have a little olive oil on your fingers at all times when working with it. He's created some pretty awesome stuff with it, including a very convincing Flesh Gauntlet, so I trust his weird advice.

Ok time for a massive photo dump.

I've gotten WAY into Harlequins with their release. I will pretty much be rolling a Masque any time I field my Dark Eldar.

I have not come up with a name or back story for my Harlequin troupe, but I have built and painted a ton of them already.

First up: a Death Jester (first model I've ever bought, built, primed and painted in under 24 hours!) and the Solitaire:





Here is the Voidweaver that GW shoved down my throat with the FoC (back arc shuriken cannon is magnetized so it doesn't snap off in transport):


Here's a shot of one of completed Starweaver (1 more to paint, will buy a third at a later date):




Here is my first completed troupe. I have painted a second and am mostly done with the third. Will post more pics of these other 2 down the road.






Side note: I have painted some Reavers and another Venom before my Harlequin craze, I just never shot a photo of them. I'll be posting them sometimes soon.

Ooh I love the black and orange scheme (maybe I am a little biased) and the harlequins look nice, I don't normally like them without the cheques but yours are great Looking forward to more!
P.s. +1 for cat icon ^~^

I took photos of my painted Dark Eldar that I finished a while ago.

First up are 2 reavers I got painted up. Orange is a really hard color to paint well. The bases were made by the previous owner, and I really like them painted up. Thankfully, there's enough prebuilt to cover all my reavers, because I do not have the patience to create more.




Here's 2 of my Venoms finished up. One is the Venom in the first set of pictures, but now it's based and the cockpit is glued in place.


My first of 2 Ravagers fully painted:




And finally, my first "unit" of Kabalite Warriors. Super speedy paint as they rarely hit the table, and when they do, they die pretty fast.

I like the basing on these guys. The photos are a little dark to see 100%, but it looks very natural

Thanks for the feedback guys. I usually take my photos outside so they're easier to see, but it's so cold and snowy that I just am not dedicated enough to go snap pics outside. Unfortunately, this cat tree is the only spot in my house that isn't either too dark or so bright that all you see is a white blurry mess.

Shadowseer painted! This is my most prodigious painting spree ever.

Just bought and repainted a classic Death Jester on ebay today.

Before:


After:

Like how your models are coming. If you can, I'd love to see what your Dias model looks like.

Absolutely. It's in the basement in a state of disrepair due to the lack of rules for it currently, but if I ever get the motivation to fix it up, it will be quite the nifty model. I'm still trying to justify a use for a tantalus because I could retrofit it to be a counts-as model for it.

I'll snap some pics and post them tomorrow night.

Here's the shots of the Dais of Destruction/possible future Tantalus. One of the engines and one of the blades on the back fell off and a few sails snapped off. This is a back burner project for me as I am still trying to justify a use for a tantalus but it is a pretty cool model minus a few odd design choices (lots and lots of engines for one)

Apparently the "outriggers" were Forgeworld pieces, but I have no idea what kit they were from. If anyone has any advice on what I should do with this thing, feel free to comment.








I finished up a few Harlequin Troupes that are now ready to deploy to the battlefield.

This is the Light Troupe, complete with Starweaver and Shadowseer.


This is the Dark Troupe, along with the Venom they ride in. I will eventually buy and paint a Starweaver and Shadowseer for them, but for now, this is both thematic and allows me to run my minimum Masque requirement.


Finally, here is the supporting cast. The Death Jesters will share a Venom with an Archon that is wearing -2LD armor. They will have a good laugh as they turn infantry to crimson splatters and tell them where to run. The Solitaire will do Solitare things. I buy a Venom for him as well.


I will likely grab a third Jester and eventually some bikes, even though I think they are of dubious value, just so I can run the mega-formation for re-rollable 1s.

I still need to paint 1 player and the Shadowseer for the Twilight Troupe and paint their Starweaver. Hopefully I will have this done by next weekend.

The outriggers are totally from an actual FW Tantalus.

Oof. That sucks to know. I wish he had all the other parts for it, then.

I really like that ship. Also I really like your Quinns color choice, makes me want to get some.

Been a bit since an update due to some family stuffs (in-law stuffs on top of that. Seriously, sort your life out!)

Regardless, I got the rest of the troupe and their starweaver painted! I split it down the middle due to the duality and transitive nature of this troupe.






Here's a shot of the troupe and their whip.


I have a pair of starweavers left and that's it for now!

I'm starting to get an itch to paint up some Farsight Enclaves suits so I can run a Harlequins/Tau list next.

My photo quality is absolute garbage. Hot, nasty garbage. I'm going to spend some time tomorrow attempting to build a lightbox to remedy this and redo my pictures by next week some time.

In the meantime, I did get my first Skyweaver painted. I did pick up a pot of Eshin Grey as recommended, and it turned out even harder to read than my previous method. Again, not for lack of results, just terrible photo quality. Much easier to apply than my previous method, though!





I am going to grab 1 more box of these guys, a final Starweaver and one more each of a DJ and SS, then I'm done done done with harlequins.

Man, you're painting those minis like mad

And yes, some better space to take pictures would really improve your model - well, more exactly what we on the internet can see of your models

So I built a cheap little light box and took a couple test snaps. Didn't seem to turnout very well... I think I need stronger lighting and/or two sources of side lighting. What do you think? Better, worse, or other?

Looking better, just a few tips:

Ideally you'll want to have 3-4 lightsources, one on each side (slightly angled backwards) and on top. The 4th would be behind the box so you don't have that many shadows.
You can also try to set the two on the sides a bit higher and angle them down- and backwards so you have more light on the front of the model.

The best bet would be to try for yourself what works for you best. But I recommend at least 2 lightsources, so that the cast shadow (on your photos beside the base) disapears

Oh, and don't zoom in with your camera, make makro photos and get it as close as possible. At least don't use digital zoom, if you have a camera with a good optical zoom, that's ok. But digital zoom just reduces the quality/resolution of the photo. Higher resolution means less grainy Images. You can scale it down later.

Hope I helped a bit

Appreciate the input. I'll be looking into a better way to light this puppy up and will post some better pics along with a full army shot of the Harlequins sometime in the near future.