Genevieve

Genevieve's story can be traced back to the hive planet of Necromunda. Born as raised as a member of the Escher house, Genevieve moved up through the ranks swiftly, showing an aptitude for combat both at range and in close quarters, it was not long before she reached the rank of chieftain, leading her followers deeper into the hive. Here she formed the gang that would become to be known as Genevieve Undead.

Following a tip off, Genevieve and her gang tracked down a convoy of merchants moving valuable goods of various nature through the under hive. When they tried to ambush the convoy, they found that betrayal was at hand, the information had been fed to them by a rival gang who had instead ambushed them. Barely getting away with her own life, Genevieve saw the rest of her gang wiped out.

Vowing to take revenge, Genevieve took to the life of a bounty hunter, no job was out of her domain and no target too big. Word of Genevieve's success spread far, getting wind of this was the Wolf. He had use of a bounty hunter and made Genevieve an offer to join him so she may pursue her quarry, but this time backed up by a small army that was forming behind them.

It turned out that this arrangement was very beneficial, for it was Genevieve who tracked down the pirate known as the Captain amongst many other of the Wolf's current followers.

Karella & Karellin

Karella & Karelen were both created by the Mechanics intended to be used as living weapons for the field of battle. Little did they know how effective they may become. Karella was originally intended to be used as a psychic weapon, following on from a dark experiment to create a super psycher, she would become far more than this.

When unleashed on her first ( and as it turned out only ) combat drop, Karella met the battlefield, awash with psychic energy, unable to control her abilities, Karella absorbed all of the psychic turmoil of the battlefield, further more the build up of power couldn't be contained, especially by one who was not used to such overwhelming power. What happened next was mostly down to conjecture. Mostly it was believed that Karella unleashed the massive build up of power, wiping out friend and foe were they stood.

Worse was to come for Karella, upon unleashing the torrent of power, she had unwittingly opened a gate into the warp. A creature of that dimension seeing an opportunity, latched itself partially onto Karella's mind before the gate could be closed. Strong willed though she was, Karella could not stop the creature reimagining her form to better suit itself. However, Karella retained her own part of her mind, this caused her to become alarmingly unpredictable, as she wrestled for control of her body with the creature, thankfully the Wolf came to her aid. Hearing of the near disaster, he knew she would be a great ally. Knowing of her predicament, the Wolf had a null room made for her, where she could remain safe from psychic turmoil, until her special abilities were required again.



Karelen's story was of a similar vein. Karelen was also created as a weapon, although of a different type, given the abilities of a n arcoflagellent, Karelen was intended as a weapon of fear, sent among the enemy to sow discord in the ranks with her fearsome arcoflails.

Again it was on her first outing that trouble would rear it's ugly head. Taken a board a hulk during a cleansing mission, Karelen slipped away from her handlers, making her way deep into the hull of the enormous ship. Feared lost to whatever may lay inside Karelen was abandoned to her fate. Little did any of this concern Karelen, who in her own unknown state of mind wandered the corridors of the ship, her flails sparking off of the floor and walls as she went. As she did so, a voice whispered to her.

Many months later, an explorator team found Karelen alone and muttering to herself, when they attempted to take her with them, she did not resist. It is said that Karelen did not resist because the hulk had told her of her fait and that the Wolf would come as her saviour. It is also rumoured that the hulk whispered many secrets into her mind but for what purpose remains unknown.

The Captain & Otto

The Captain as he is known amongst his allies although never to his face was formerly a pirate who patrolled the outer reaches of the galaxy targeting merchant deep space vessels for their wares from his ship, the Leavil. Feared in the sector, the Captain gained a reputation as ferocious hunter of vessels foolish enough to fly in the area without support from military vessels, although even this was not always proof against the many raids carried out upon them.

The Captain's distinct appearance came about, when the discovery of a great space hulk was made by his crew, upon boarding, they were set upon by genestealers who had infested the enormous hulk many centuries before, the rest of the crew were wiped out to a man, save for the captain and his giant bodyguard Otto. Rumour had it, that this was were the Captain lost his eye and half a leg when under attack from one of the monstrous creatures, it was only intervention by Otto, that the Captain was saved from certain death. Otto, finding his master in great peril, felt no fear, coming straight at the stealer then plunging his power spear through it's chest.  Dragging the Captain back to the Leavil, Otto was able to pilot the ship away, placing himself and the Captain in deep stasis in the hope of being discovered by someone who might foolishly rescue them.

As chance would have it, with a bounty out for the Captain and his ship, word got back to the Wolf of it's whereabouts and an opportunity presented itself to swell his ranks with the kind of merciless scum that he had use for. Offering a deal of live and fight by his side or be left to die, the Captain did what any good pirate would do and sided with the winning side, taking his bodyguard Otto with him.

The Triplets

Amelia, Jessamyn & Elisha were born as triplets on the death world of Stryzix IV. Growing up they were as normal as anyone could be living in such a hostile environment, over time this began to change. As Elisha grew older so did her latent psychic abilities grow too. Word of this reached the Inquisition, as the colonists were not happy to have a rogue psycher in their midst.

Arrival of the Black Ship came to late to stop the inevitable, being unprotected from the attentions of the powers in the warp, Elisha eventually succumbed to the attentions of a daemonic spirit, this transformed her, still alive into a living daemon host with terrible power, the daemon however did not fully subvert Elisha to it's will and so she remained having some control over her new powers.

Upon arrival of the great ship, another surprise was in store for the crew, Elisha's transformation was to be expected, what was not to be expected was the shear ferocity and devotion that Elisha's 2 sisters showed in defending her when the Black Ship crew came for her. Every effort to subjugate the sisters was met with failure.

As luck would have it, a priest who only went by the name of The Wolf, was aboard that ship on that fateful day. Seeing the potential in the sisters, The Wolf offered to take them under his wing, so to speak, knowing full well the usefulness of such dedicated allies to have by his side.

Amelia & Jessamyn were inducted into a death cult, to hone their already potent skills, however they were never separated from their sister, more fool anyone else foolish enough to try again. . .

My Mentor

I mentioned previously that I owed a lot to my mentor and that they were of of the inspirations behind me starting this blog.  As someone who needs no introduction in the world of model painting and converting, especially in the world of the John Blanche inspired modeller, I am proud to introduce my mentor as Julian Bayliss. 

I have to credit Julian with the evolution of my painting and converting and with being a great friend too. I was lucky enough to get in touch with Julian initially by chance, after which Julian has helped me greatly with a lot of my projects.

Previously I mentioned the great time that I had at Golden Demon last year, entering was fun in itself, seeing the great models was pretty awesome, also getting to meet some of the artists and sculptures from GW was also awesome. What really made the day for me, was meeting up with Julian and being able to hang out and chat about the entries in the competition and also meet some other excellent painters too.

What I didn't expect is after we had collected out entires, I managed to get to do something that topped the possibility of recognition in the competition. I was quite amazed when Julian unexpectedly said that he was going to talk to one of my greatest inspirations in John Blanche and that I could come along to meet him too. This in itself was great, then Julian encouraged me to show John my model, The Collector and John really liked it much to my amazement!

Anyway, before and since then Julian continues to inspire me greatly, so with Julian's permission, I would like to show you a few of my favourite models of his. . .

Strassix & Thorbax

Gene brothers though they are, the 2 abhumans known as Strassix and Thorbax both took two very different paths.

Strassix was adopted by the Mechanicum and refitted for a role as a battlefield techseer, as part of this augmentative sight was given to him, the most telling part of the augmentation process was the fitting of antigrav motors so that he would freely float without the need of legs to move about. Tasked with the maintenance of the teams plasma weaponry, stars ensures that they are readily equipped to deal with any foe no matter how well armoured.

Throbax was assigned to an Astra Militarum assault unit specialising in ship to ship boarding actions, it was during one of these actions that he lost his left lower leg, when in a combined assault with Space Marines from the Space Wolves chapter, a Xenos monster of unknown origin removed his leg in it's mouth, needless to say, this did not go down well with Thorbax, who preceded to plunge his chainsword into the creatures head and then fire his plasma gun straight into the creatures maw. To commemorate the occasion, he then removed one of the creature's horns which was later grafted on to replace his missing lower leg.

These were 2 relatively simple conversions, Strassix was another model based on the awesome Cairn Wraith model, this time I only swapped out the head for a suitable beastman alternative and attached a plasma gun as well as various wires hanging down. Likewise, Thorax was similarly a simple conversion, removing the lower leg then replacing it with what I believe was the horn from a chaos knight's horse, then simply attaching a plasma gun and chainsword.

The Wolf

Following  on from The Collector I decided to create The Wolf. This character was the first in a number of models I converted for a kill team style game with my friends over at Warhammer World. Like a lot of my models, he was created using a fantasy model as the base for the conversion work. Having started out life as a necromancer, I changed out the head, using the lower part of a space marine helmet to create a respirator of sorts, this was then added onto with a cut down space marine backpack, finally I added on a Space Wolf power axe to give him his final identity. . .

The Wolf is a priest of the Imperial faith, somewhat misguided in his ways some would say! Sometimes mistaken for a crippled old man, The Wolf has no problems with showing his enemies the error of their ways, having retrieved the axe from a fallen Space Wolf on an unknown world, The Wolf grew in his influence, falling under the gaze of a noted inquisitor, The Wolf was given the lead of the inquisitor's band of henchmen, leading them fearlessly into many battles, always leading from the front, never further than the reach of his axe, thus the enemies of the Imperium came to fear him. . .

The Collector

The first of my real attempts at stepping up my game to the next level. . .

This model originally started out life as a Cairn Wraith that I bought on a whim with the intention of converting him some day. The idea came together when I was at work one day, I had a vision of some sort of Mechanicum priest who wanders the battlefields of the 41st millennium collecting things of interest, in this case a skull. 

To make it more interesting I decided to use a powerfist as I liked the idea of a massive fist holding the skull in a delicate way. Other parts came together as I progressed, adding on the banner from a Dark Elf Corsair to add interest, the transportation unit started off life as a Tyranid tail of some sort and this was spliced with a Dark Eldar Hellion Skyboard cut up to make the base unit.  

His little assistant was a last minute addition to make the base more interesting before taking him to Golden Demon last year, just as an excuse to show him off :-). The assistant was simply built from a Nurgling body, a Wood Elf Dryad head piece and a Dark Eldar rifle cut down to size. 

Although I didn't get anywhere in the competition (no surprise there as I'm still trying to improve my painting a lot), I did have an amazing and surprising day that made it more than worthwhile bringing the Collector along.

I hope you like him, comments are welcome. . .

Below, Ive added on some new improved photos of The Collector, like this blog, miniature photography is a learning curve all of it's own, hopefully I'll get there someday. . .

Hi, welcome to my brand new blog. I have decided to create this blog after being inspired by some of the awesome blogs out there, run by many of the great miniature painters and converters who are inspired by the almighty John Blanche. I will be posting up my own attempts to emulate the awesome work these guys and gals are putting out there. I hope you like it and welcome your feedback.

Gabe