Mobile Workshops.

so I'm in the process of getting a shopping list together of various bits to do up a scratch-built Haemonculi Coven.

One idea I had was having Raiders that have been modified to act as mobile processors or surgical theatres or even just material transports.

most prominently, the Aethersail that we all love so much about the Raider would be taken off.

In its place, I'm thinking of putting some sort of second deck or "workbench" on top of the two poles that are mounted on the Raider's deck.. Nothing too huge, but just big enough to have a small pile of corpses or body parts sitting on top of it. Occasionally there'd be a Wrack crawling about this pile taking choice bits and limbs.

My first thought was to take that extendable platform bit that comes with the Raider and put it on top to serve as the workbench. I'm not entirely sure what I could do to make it look like it wasn't just awkwardly stuck on top. If I go this route, then I might add some long and thin ironworks in the form of tusks and spikes to stud this second platform with - that way the wracks beneath would have extra handholds for moving about the vehicle, and to help with keeping the Fleshpile heaped together if I end up making it too big."

other ideas include having multiple "cages" or barrels of some sort flank the raider or the support pole that runs in between the two Aethersail supports, each cage/barrel thing will end up holding surgery chemicals/blood or sorted body parts.

what would you do for your Haemonculi's Transportation Needs?

I keep thinking of Walt and Jesse's Rollin' Lab from Breaking Bad as I type this.

Find a thin tube of some kind or shape a length of sprue to form a beam/spine that can be raised above the raider deck, at a height of a little more than a DE model. Get some of those semi-circular accessory bits off a chaos vehicle accessory sprue (the ones with the spikes sticking out of them). Get 4 of those. Glue them together to form two complete circles. Either keep the spikes or replace them with dark eldar blades that you should have tons of! Cut the beam/spine piece so you can insert the two rings onto it (evenly spaced), forming one long piece. Fix this onto the Raider so you have the two rings hanging above the raider deck, held into place by the spine and whatever support struts you build for the ends. From the rings you can convert a couple models of your favourite torture subjects and hang them from their arms in those rings. Your Haemonculus now has a mobile prison from which to harvest whatever bits he needs during raids!

Alternatively if you don't want to hang people from the rings they come with little bits on the inside of the curve that are about half the thickness of the piece. You can stick a plasticard circle into there and glue it in place without any trouble at all, they'll actually hold the plasticard in place for you. Make small circular platforms out of them.

Another idea would be to build a smallish pit/processing vat for captured bodies, raise that up at the back of the vehicle and add tubes and pipes running from under it to a dispensing machine built onto the front prow (direct them along both sides of the vehicle rather than through the centre). Your raider can now be used to process "materials" and turn them into "product" for the Wracks and Grots to snack on during battle. Going back to that chaos accessory piece you could easily raise that above the centre of the vehicle, add a crude ladder to climb up through it and then extend a platform (the boarding platform you get in all raider kits) from that to the pit so your Haemy can easily climb up and refill the processing vat!

I don't think there's much room a raider model to add much more than this. If you go too far into adding a second level the model will look out of proportions I think. You might be better scratch building a Tantalus from a bunch of raider kits, you could probably get away with adding a second level to that without it looking weird. Or try and custom build something resembling Jabba's slave barge and having "count as" a Tantalus.