Unit showcase - Wraiths

Weak or strong, the Vampire Lord's enemies always fell in the end. And yet death was rarely where their misery stopped. Zombies and skeletons would be raised from their corpses, or their great heroes pulled forth from their graves as wights. Yet of those that fell, the ones with a greater will, a stronger mind, were most prized of all. The sorcerers, wizards and clerics of the defeated army could hold themselves in the monochrome expanse of the spirit realm for some time before fading to oblivion. It was these souls the Vampire Lord's necromancers sought, tearing them from that vast grey numbness and half back into the land of the living.

 

A Time of Reclamation

The Vampire Lord's domain could trace its origins to back before the God War. At first just a minor village with a watchful tower nearby, it grew over time to the small barony it is today. But in those intervening years the borders shifted and bent, flowing this way and that with the pressures from the surrounding nations.

One such intruding nation, long since collapsed upon itself, was Orcish. Many abandoned villages and ruins of this old kingdom lie scattered across the edges of the Vampire Lord's territory, ignored by all but wayward travellers looking for temporary shelter in their journeys. It was, after all, close to the mountains, and storms and squalls often descended from those peaks with little warning.

The God Citadel

Travellers did not know this place. They could not. If they turned their horse towards it, the horse would shy away. If they set their eyes to the horizon on which it lay, their eyes would twitch and shift. Caravans would wind their trails casually around it. Never hard enough to wonder why the path they took drifted, but never through this place.

This place held the God Citadel. This place was old. This place held power. This place was almost unknown. Almost. Over the centuries there had been a few curious adventurers, the odd fleeing bandit, and occasionally a thorough cartographer who had stumbled across it. Evidence of their journeys were sketchy at best, but fragments were told through tattered journals, in fireside tales, and in the parchments of discredited maps that showed places people knew not to be true.

Press-moulding shields

So in the process of finally coming close to finishing my Nightmare Legion, I decided they needed to all be bearing the classic coffin-shaped shield from the 80s. Unfortunately I only owned about six, but I would need 17. I'd made overtures in the Oldhammer Trading Company Facebook group about sourcing some, but I'd never managed to close a deal. Then I read about press-moulds using some stuff called Oyumaru. Basically a reusable heat-malleable plasticy stuff for making moulds.

Unit showcase - Zombie Trolls

Across the lands of Mantica, there is trade. Markets bustle, coin changes hands and people barter. If you want food to feed your children, you can find someone who'll sell it. If you want silks for your bed, there are places to buy it. These things are obvious, and the wheels of commerce turn ever onward. Yet there are some things that are frowned upon; purchases that, according to those in charge, should not be made. But where there's money to be made, there will be those willing to sell the unsavoury. Beneath the great cities, behind the walls in dark alleys, there are the black markets. Contraband: stolen goods, narcotics, and the like pedalled to those with the money to buy it. But go deeper, go darker, and you find the real items of depravity. Scrolls of foul magic, severed parts of fantastic beasts, curses cast for coin and more. These deep markets are where the Vampire Lord's Necromancers do trade, collecting the spell components that they are unable to gather themselves. And collecting, too, the exotic corpses to be resurrected by their arcane powers. Corpses such as Trolls.

Dwarven Wight

After the night's rituals drew to a close, and the morning sun crested the horizon, the Vampire Lord's latest minion arose. Another Wight, yet this time the grand hero whose corpse was defiled and raised into undeath was not a knight of the Brotherhood or a champion of Basilea, but a mighty dwarven adventurer, lost to the evils of a dungeon, fallen as he undertook the Dwarf King's Quest.

Unit showcase - Zombie Werewolves

In life, the Vampire Lord had loved to hunt boars and other wildlife in the forests surrounding his castle. In death, his pursuits translated into a crazed bloodlust upon the field of battle, tempered with a cold pragmatism from centuries of self-preservation. When you are essentially immortal, barring a few key weaknesses, one tends to take those weaknesses rather seriously and work to avoid them. Yet even still, sometimes the thrill of the hunt was too much to ignore. Sometimes to truly feel alive in undeath you had to take risks. You had to hunt the most dangerous prey.

X Marks the Spot

With his domain expanded after the border skirmish, the Vampire Lord sent his eyes and ears out on leather wings to survey his new lands. The foul magics that linked the fell bats to the Vampire returned images of plains and forests, hills and valleys. Fairly standard terrain spread across an unassuming expanse. Bored with the view, he sent the psychic command to call his minions back to his ancient keep.

The Nightmare Legion

Painting up an oldhammer Regiment of Renown, The Nightmare Legion. I'm a slow painter, so it's slow going, but in the end I will have a full model count Revenants Legion. Eight down, 32 to go!

Plus shields.

This image will also be added to my progress tracking Google photos album.

Do Unto Others

The ritual to create a mummy from the ancestor's embalmed corpse, performed a few weeks prior, had caused a flicker of dark energies to emanate from the Vampire's castle. At the time the Vampire and the necromancer thought nothing of it, it was a slight pulse, and certainly of no consequence. Yet unbeknownst to them both the pulse was like a signal, and in far off lands it was received. The cursed high priest knew the echoes of the magics developed by his people, yet this was different, cast by an outsider...

The dust laden raiding force encroached into the edges of the Vampire's territory, eager to secure an advanced position from which to study those that dared attempt its rituals. The Vampire, for his part, knew he needed to push them out and extend the edges of his own realm, to gather ever more villages into tithe to his throne.

Knights in Shining Armour

The bats circled the tower, shrieking and flapping in their insidious way. To outsiders, it was just noise. To the Vampire Lord, the shrieks and flaps carried meaning: Knights on horses, pennants flapping, searching, searching.

This time the encounter would be no accident. The Vampire was prepared. He knew they'd be searching for more mystic items, artefacts, cursed objects and the like. And he wanted them. And he also wanted the knights dead.

Angel with the Scabbed Wings

The Vampire Lord's lithe form almost flowed like a shadow as he stepped down from his throne and strode across the room. He could sense them, the angels, the energies that coursed through them. Their power was anathema to his, and they were inside his domain.

He did not stop to question why they were here, or what they were doing. His mental commands echoed in the skulls of his lieutenants; prepare for war.

Forge Fires Burning

The vampire awoke in the coffin deep in the catacombs beneath his castle, his wounds still closing over from the defeat the night before. At least he assumes it was the night before; he couldn't really remember much aside from the flapping of leathery wings, the gouts of flame, and his legions crumbling before the blows of the abyssal dwarves. Focussing his mind on the battle just past, his eyes flared with anger as he recalled his elite ephemeral guard being engulfed in an explosion from one of the dwarf's infernal contraptions before they could even engage the enemy, and took little solace in the fact his revenant knights destroyed the other war machine before it could wreak similar havoc. He knew he had to gather more energies from the nodes of power he'd found, yet was unable. The mystic vortices seemed to be becoming more and more plentiful across the land, and yet more varied opponents emerge to vie for control, preventing the Vampire Lord from claiming the secrets within.

1500 points battle of my undead against Tim's Abyssal dwarves. Pillage scenario, 7 objectives. 5-1 loss for the undead, with heavy casualties. Great friendly opponent, fast moving game, good fun despite the obvious disparity in skill and experience.

Spires of Insanity

Among the cursed items salvaged from the battle against The Brotherhood was a map and an odd kind of token. Hewn of some sort of bone, to look upon it caused the brain to twist in unnatural ways. The Vampire Lord could sense the power within it. Akin to necromancy, yet born in some other place, it was certainly worth investigating. Ordering the necromancers to reanimate his depleted forces, he spread the map before him and planned his route.

Dredging the Swamp

The Vampire Lord, furious at his defeat by the orcs, traversed the countryside back towards his castle in the deep of the forests. Some small villages were encountered along the way, and his sycophant necromancer underlings were more than happy to replenish his ranks. Unfortunately there were no trolls or great legendary warriors among the villages, so the zombie trolls and wights went unrenewed.

The Valley of Strife

The orcs and the undead crested opposite sides of the desolate valley at the same time. Rumours and portends had led them here, to the site of the abandoned, ancient, orc village. Nodes of power scattered around the landscape could be felt by the users of magic in each force. Six in total, both sides knew they must claim them and unlock their secrets. Neither side could afford to yield to the other. The bloodbath was about to begin...