Sunday 17 May 2020

The Marionettes 2.0 (Part 3) Resurrection.



Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, Zenith rose to his feet, casually patting himself down to extinguish the flames that had engulfed him.
"Is that all you have tin man? I had worse burns on my first day in the forge." Mocked the Goliath.
The Princeps activated his power axe by way of reply.
"That's a real pretty axe you have there, think I'll keep it for myself and sell the rest of you for scrap tin man."
Zenith raised his bolter and fired two shots at the Mech Champion.
The first round tore into the Princeps' arm and his power axe dropped listlessly by his side, the second blew chunks from the coolant tank as the Mech Champion dived for cover.


Zenith leapt over the pipe work to follow up his attack.
"You're quick tin man, I'll give you that. Now let's see if you can fight as well as you move."
The Princeps emitted a burst of binary static as the Goliath closed the distance.
"Squeal all you want tin man, there's no one else here. So if you want to beg for your life, you better make it in Gothic."


"Time to die tin man." said Zenith with a grin.
As the Goliath carefully took aim once more with his boltgun, the Princeps' Grapplehawk dropped silently from the overhead pipework.


As one, the Grapplehawk and Mech Champion struck. The Princeps sliced through Zenith's wrist with his power axe and the Goliath's bolter fell to the floor, his hand still twitching upon its grip. At the same time the Grapplehawk clamped on to Zenith's left arm, it's fangs biting deep, severing his nerves and several of his fingers.
"I will not yield tin man!" Screamed Zenith into the Mech Champions face as the Princeps plunged his Shock Stave into the Goliath rending him unconscious.


Zenith awoke strapped to a gurney. Before him floated a Medicae unit, the likes of which he could never imagine in his wildest nightmare.
"I'll tell you nothing tin man" spat Zenith. "I am born of the Forge and you will not break me!"
Another burst of binary static, no doubt aimed at the Medicae unit, before the Mech Champion turned to face the Goliath.
In broken Low Gothic the Princeps addressed the Goliath for the first time.
"Break you? we're not here to break you Goliath. We're here to fix you."
Zenith began to scream......





Greetings Hivers!
I've managed to get another three models built and painted for my renegade Ad-Mech gang so I thought I'd show them off.

SH-41-T4N
The first of my Champions is SH-41-T4N is armed with a power axe, hand flamer and a Shock Stave. If he gets into combat he can be a real handful but more often than not he's more of a distraction.
The cog teeth (the Bloodied Cog) are hand painted and were a right pain to paint. I felt the model needed it though to add a little colour and highlight the fact that he's a champion.
I still enjoyed painting him though and feel that the cogs were worth the effort.
His pose makes him a bit of a bugger to photograph but he does look good in the Underhive.

SCR-33-TCH
The Grapplehawk is a pet from the Book of Judgement. It's described as a Cyber Engineered Xenos Familiar. As soon as I saw it I thought it would fit perfectly in my renegade Mech and immediately set about building one.
It's probably a bit bigger than it's supposed to be, but being of Xenos origin, I  thought that would give me some leeway with the size.
I really enjoyed raiding my bits box (and Rob's bit box) to build this and as simple as it looks this is its third build! The paint job is a bit rushed but I already have other projects beckoning for my time so it will have to do.
The wings came from a Tyranid Gargoyle. I cut away the arms and replaced them with some piston arms from the Dark Eldar Talos kit to make them more mechanical. The body, head and tail came from a Flesh and Metal Maulifaux Hound (cheers Rob). I chopped it up, reversed the tail and then extended the neck to make it more xenos looking. I added a pair of Sicarian Ruststalker legs with the feet removed and replaced them with clamps from the Dark Eldar Talos kit.
The more I look at this photo, the more I think I need to go back and retouch it. Perhaps it'll see a bit more love when I paint the final gang champion 😉
AFR-1-T


AFR-1-T is the gang's Rogue Doc and again I raided my bits box to build a wacky (and hopefully disturbing) Rogue Doc for my renegade Mech.
Who knows if they're renegade because of their dabbling with xenos artifacts, corrupted artifacts or both?
I'm really happy with how he's turned out and although he might only be a Rogue Doc armed with a Las Pistol, I still think he was worth the effort.



Epilogue
Zenith opened his eyes. A coldness permeated his body and the memory of something important floated tantalisingly beyond his reach. His brow furrowed in concentration as he attempted to grasp the memory, but it immediately swam away, lost forever to his scrutiny.
"He is complete?" enquired SH-41-T4N
"Affirmative." Replied AFR-1-T. "He had remarkably high acuity for a Goliath. I have augmented his abilities, he will make a fine support unit."
SH-41-T4N nodded.
"Come ZEN-1-TH. We have work to do"


"Take up position and cover us ZEN-1-TH" commanded SH-41-T4N.
"Affirmative....tin man!" came the reply.....

Until next time....may the Hive Spirits watch over you 😉















16 comments:

  1. Very nice indeed tin man zenith's loss will be hard felt by his brother Apex. His individuality has been added to their own ...

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    1. I thought it only fitting that he receive some sort of tribute....and I'm missing our tales in Rockridge 😉

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    2. Also the candy stripe cables on afr-1-t are excellent feels like some kind of sinister toy maker.

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    3. Cheers Rob.
      The cable was originally painted grey in an attempt to tie the model in with the rest of the gang. Then I decided to add some red stripes to tie it in further. I was a little unsure of them at first and thought about redoing them as black and yellow hazard stripes, but they've grown on me.
      Now that you've mentioned a sinister toy maker, they've grown on me more....cheers buddy.

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  2. Brilliant minis and the story and pictures, a great read and raid of the bits box as well as the Hive sump!

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    1. Cheers buddy, I do like a yarn or two and the fall (and rise) of Zenith seemed like a good excuse for one 😁

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  3. Simply fantastic! Disturbing, twisted, in a nutshell they are gorgeous! I will certainly steal some ideas ...
    Lord Adiatun Varunn

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  4. With candy stripe mechadendrite's Afr-1-t comes
    Softly through the shadow of the lume globe sun
    Stealing past the windows of the blissfully dead
    Looking for his victim shivering in bed
    Searching out fear in the gathering gloom
    And suddenly a movement in the corner of the room
    And there is nothing I can do when I realize with fright
    That Afr-1-t is having me for dinner tonight.

    R Smith
    Ancient Terran poet

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  5. The grapplehawk is my very favourite of this crew - that first shot where it's hanging upside down from the pipe is so atmospheric! Brilliant creation.

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    1. Thanks axiom.
      I really enjoyed building it and I had this vision of it hanging upside down when it's at rest, a bit like a bat...pretty sure that it's Covid free...hopefully ;-)

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  6. A cautionary tale on the dangers of monologuing. The join between the pistons and the wings is seamless. I would expect nothing less from an Adept of Mars.

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    1. Lol, the mouthy Goliath had to get his comeuppance.
      I have this idea in my head that the Renegade Mech won't be big on idle chatter or threats but more locked within their own thoughts or programming. So I thought it would be better to introduce the Princeps through the eyes of his victim.
      Cheers fella :)

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  7. That's dark :) More stories like this pls

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    1. Thanks fella. Now that the lockdown restrictions have been eased up we're hopeful of getting in more adventures in the underhive ;-)

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