Coven of the Unmarred

Wow...
This is what I love most about this hobby....Unique conversions to put your thumbprint on your army.

Great conversion and sculpting work!!

The hunter throwing the knife at the guardian is pretty wow.

Friends,

I got around to writing up some fluff for my Coven, and therein I touched on the unique Cronos Parasite Engines that the Coven of the Unmarred employ.

Though the Talos is a terrific model (dare I say "perfect"?), and, by extension from being based off the same kit, the Cronos is a pretty good model, that later has never been horrific enough for me. The codex describes the machine as a soul sucking parasite that pulls in life-force, repackages it, then beams it out to the rest of the assembled troops. These freaky abilities make the Cronos the single most terrifying thing in the codex, as far as I'm concerned, and I've always felt that the model based off of the Talos didn't go far enough to distance itself from that bio-mechanical progenitor, failing to explore the full depth of horror available to such a unit.

Thus, I sought to convert it in the hope of making an engine that looked a little more like a true parasite
I started by swapping out the expressionless Cronos head for a head that is nothing more than a giant, gaping maw with the hope of it looking a little more like something that is hungry for souls!




Though I'm not a fan of the way the Cronos is represented, being a nid player at heart, I AM a fan of all those lovely tentacles. Thus, I aimed to keep this element, but I really wanted to go to town with it to make the Cronos look like a real tentacled horror. There are at least one kit's worth of tentacles in here, if not two:



They are meant to be reaching forward, towards a victim on the base who will be in the process of having his soul sucked



As the goal was to make this Cronos more organic and less mechanical, I needed to come up with a new way to represent the Spirit Vortex. I thought about carving it into the thing's skin, but I was worried about getting all those patterns right. In the end, I took the easy solution and used the original bit as a stamp:



I then went back over it and "dirtied" it up, making the skin look like it was all scarred.

I that picture you can also see the heads all around the Spirit Vortex. The user Krewl Rain, over on Warpshadow, dubbed this The Punchbowl of Souls, and I think I kind of like that. The idea is that I will add putty around each head to blend it into the next and into the body of the Cronos. Once painted, I'm hoping for the final effect to be a Freddy Kruger one, where the faces look like they are straining beneath the skin of the creature

Here are some more shots of the punchbowl:



Like with the hunters, this is just the beginning of my covenified Kabalite/Cult units, and I soon hope to add wych and reaver stand-ins.

Sir, your conversions are superb. I particularly like the Punchbowl of Souls - I was thinking of doing something similar (albeit on a smaller scale) for pain tokens.

those models make me jealous

A-MAZING!!! I've enjoyed all your work but these last couple are real standouts. I think you've done a great job capturing a truer essence of the spirit vortex; not to mention the rest of the Cronos looks great as well. And...since I somehow missed it before, that knife throwing model is now one of my all-time favorites. It just seems like everything was made exactly for that scene.
Thanks for sharing.

Hey Mr. Pink, from one Coven-fanatic to another I have to say this army is looking amazing so far.

I'm really torn between which I like more; the Talos-Raider or the horrifying Cronos. Armouring up the Talos and melding it into a raider body is a fantastic idea that I've seen tried in a few places but never to the same effect as you've achieved. I'm seriously thinking od trying out some of that chest and shoulder armour on my Dark Wraithlord when I get around to it. I also love the Horror mouth you've used for the Cronos. As you said, really brings out the parasite quality to it.

On the Cronos, I was looking at the pics and recon the spine has to do something to meld it to the punchbowl. I got the image of it curving over the punchbowl and finishing in some kind of crystal maybe to act a focus for all the energy its leeched from others and then is able to beam out to friend and foe depending on how it feels. I dunno, food for thought.

Look forward to seeing more insanity from you soon.

PHM

Duuuuuuuuuuuude, that's truly awe-inspiring. Fantastic work! I can just imagine the shapes of the souls writhing in the vortex trying to get out.

Darn it you guys! Stop making me want to spend ALL my money on the DE line!

It's crazy how talented you are with greenstuff, I also love using greenstuff, however I don't do it on all models XD. It's seriously nuts, how every single model in this army will be unique.

I always get good ideas out of threads like these, full of awesome conversions and greenstuff sculps.

I hope the painting will be as impressive, these minis with a good paintjob will truly be exceptional.

Through a hard-fought campaign of assaults on the morale of the Coven of the Unmarred, and on the sanctity of the hobby of fleshcrafting in general, Imperial authorities at Games Workshop tried to stamp out every last hint of creative inspiration and joy.

However...




... IT WILL NOT DIE!

The creativity is astounding. Those Warriors are unbelievably cool. Can't wait to see this stuff painted!

Hey mr pink. Not quite sure how I have managed to miss your stuff before but your conversions are AWESOME! I look forward to seeing what your re-invigorated hobby mojo brings you ( we all get the GW blues from time to time )

Oh my I've just worked out who you are!!!!!

Your stuff is phenomenal, I used to look at your stuff on modern synthesist all the time (the cronos pain engine snapped my realisation) and was always tempted to give some of it a go

I must say it's good to be back at it, and I'm glad to see that the fleshcrafters kept crafting over here in the Dark City. I've been stalking all of your threads and trying to mine out some good new ideas from them.

Spellcheck, you shouldn't be surprised you hadn't seen my stuff as you joined the board virtually the day after I last posted
I spent the other day getting caught up on your own work, and I must say I absolutely love it! Themed armies are a passion of mine (shocker), and yours is one of the best themed takes on Dark Eldar that I've seen. One of my favourites has to be your unit of top-hatted, dancing Incubi.
Glad you can empathize with the GW blues.

Benth3bear, glad to hear you've been over to Modern Synthesist. You should absolutely take a run at a super parasite cronos of your own.

I've posted a similar teaser on the ol bloggerino. I'll repost the photos from there below with a little more explanation. As teasers, the shots are pretty rough.

Our old friend Super Armoured Talos, who drags around the Coven Raider. I've got started on the spinal growth/mutation that will be growing out of the deck of the craft:



An unmarred disciple of the Coven, meant to rep a Lhmaen from an archon court:


A model from the Nurse unit (wych stand in), which serve as torturous assistants of the Haemonculi in the Coven:


One of the Marred/Lower Haemonculi in the force (I'm still in the process of puttying over his mechanical bits):


And, the most gruesome thing I've created of late.
These beasties are the next evolution of my Cronos concept: immature Cronos parasites who haven't yet grown into big bad pain engines. Any guess on what they're meant to represent in the actual DE list?



@Grub: ask and you shall receive:
SHOCK. HORROR.—Hell hath frozen over, and I've gotten back to ACTUALLY PAINTING MODELS for the first time in what feels like a decade:


I'll be posting more about the specific units, but I just wanted to contribute this stuff for now.

Its wonderful. I couldn't cope with playing with these units though, it would be too painful to have to take them off the board if they died

The Secret, Grub, is to make them all that shiny and nice, then you have no choice.
Or maybe it will make your opponent less likely to want to butcher them en masse. Perhaps you can use the beauty to lure your opponents models to within assault reach for a nice closer look >

(I'm glad you like the scheme! The new GW washes really are miles ahead of the old ones I grew up on )

Since no one's taken the bait on what that one gribbly horror is, I'll identify it as my covenified version of a mandrake.



That's my completed test model, and here are his less complete brothers:









And, of course, since I love cavalry/bike bases and the stories they can tell so much, there's this, which takes the whole idea of Mandrakes emerging from people's shadows far more seriously than it was probably intended:





What do folks think? The whole idea was to pick up on the tentacle-y, voracious-mawed horror of my Cronos, pitching these as junior cronos parasites.

Yup. Creepy and awesome idea. Paint scheme for these guys though? Fleshy might not work if they are crawling out of the shadows!

I love that one on the bike base, awesome idea!

Holy crap! Those mandrakes are downright sexy! Love the idea of the last one, where it emerges from the shadow

Wow. Umm might have to try my hand at this for my mandrakes. But the original models are so sexy.
One of my favorite conversions in some time.

Wow mr pink they are looking fantastic! I think your sculpting skills are excellent and I love the corrupted alien theme you have going on with these. A great idea for the mandrakes. I really digthe idea of them as mini cronos's and the one emerging from the shadows is ace.

those as mandrakes are going to be truly terrifying looking, especially the one coming out of the shadows. It is a great representation of how nightmarish the dark eldar should be.

Those are fantastic Mr Pink, as to be expected really! I must say the simple inversion of the pink horror jaws for the Cronos has had me itching to do something similar for a while, so when I get round to my Phobos or Deimos Engines I might have to steal said idea.

Heehee, they make me think of the little Coven grub on page 6 of the Supplement.
Great work!