Ankhara City of the Dead part 1

 

Ever since the wrap up of the truly epic Ankhara world campaign at GenCon thousands of years ago (tales are still told amongst those brave souls who survived- like that Harbinger who got swallowed whole by a Sphinx Abomination), I have dreamt about smaller scale games set in the ruins of the resurfaced necropolis. This would involve conflicts between Crypt Lords and their followers attempting to gain power in the new Eater of the Dead order.  There could also be bands of would-be tomb robbers looking for treasure and even more noble Aegyptian warbands seeking ways to undermine the rising undead tide (perhaps a formidable Anubi and Tethru team-up warband). Heck, maybe even multiple warbands against some kind of mindless undead monster. 

Yet I haven't really moved forward with anything more than daydreams, until now. I came across the Necropolis28 rules a few months ago and have pondered creating a warband for it. It recently hit me that mummies would be cool for the setting and I rummaged through my undead containers for parts. Several mummies have been put together and then I turned to some conversions. 

First up was this cat on a chest that I needed to give a cobra head to (above is an unmolested version of the mini with the converted one). The cat is a great mini from Crocodile Games while the head is from a source I don't recall (possibly Dark Fable). I like how this vicious beast has turned out. 

Next is another Crocodile Games figure, this Anubi horde mummy was given a different right hand and a big mummy warrior shield. It's a simple conversion that changes the original lowly horde mummy into something a little more dangerous. 

Then comes the undead lion from the Nightmare Lords Beastmaster. I held this mini in limbo for a very long time before basing him up and adding the wrappings. I think one of the beasts we used from time to time during the Ankhara campaign for the 'Lair of the Beast" subplot was a mummified lion. And now I've got one.

The final miniature for this entry is an undead Blade Dancer converted from the Tomb Queen and both of the Blade Dancer miniatures (all from Crocodile Games). 

It was a daunting task that turned out to be pretty simple. The toughest part was sculpting her hair. I think she came out pretty good and might be my favorite of this batch.

Hopefully this is just the start of a wider project to make the Ankhara game a reality. Below are the other miniatures that are in the painting queue so far. I hope to get them all painted up soon and get a few games in using them.

WarGods Minis Month 2020 - FINALE Skull Pig 2, Basti and Snake Priestesses

We sadly come to the end of the 2020 extended WarGods Minis Month. If there had been a physical GenCon I would've gotten a bunch of stuff finished up in time for whatever event Crocodile Games would've put on. We end where we began with a humongous Skull Pig (Entelodont) from Forge of Ice, but first a couple of character minis...

First up, the Snake Priestess from the Olympus line of miniatures from Crocodile Games. She helps make the Dionysus Amazon warband I used at the 2019 WarGods event more complete. I used a great Forge of Ice mini since I think this miniature was first available at last year's convention. She was a little flat with the snakes facing off to the sides, so I thought I'd make her a little more cinematic by carefully turning the snake heads towards the front a bit. I painted her back to sort of look like snake scales because there's something not quite right about this chick...

Above is the Snake Priestess with Absynthia, the Demigoddess of Dionysus from last years WarGods event. Below we have the Snake Priestess with the Sleazy Merchant from Forge of Ice.

Next up is a character for some WarGods skirmishing (or she can be a plain old priestess), Ashara 'Voice of the Dawn.' There will be stats and some background for her on my WarGods Skirmish Blog soon. She was given the bow and quiver on the ground behind her because she's a known archer (and after she died she was part of Shefdu's Grand Warband at the Battle of Ankhara as a Crypt Lord. In life she was known to travel with the renowned Nile Blues legend Big Bukka (as we can see below) and was likely the inspiration of his song "Her Arrows Were Poison."

Finally we come to the second of the two Forge of Ice Skull Pigs. This guy was a lot of trouble but he survived a couple of drops to the floor while painting without coming off his base or losing his head. I wanted to add something for him to be trying to gobble up on the ground and a skull seemed fitting for a Skull Pig!

And here we have both of the Skull Pigs rampaging through the desert wastes in search of some grub...

Archive 3.4 - Eater of the Dead Part 4 - Mummy Characters

The final installment of this look back at my giant Eater of the Dead Warband brings us the figures that make up the command units for the lesser mummies. Crypt Lords- heroes and champions in life with special powers making them formidable on the battlefield and leaders of units of lesser mummies; Necromancers- practitioners of the dark art of Necromancy who raise the dead to undertake the shadowy goals of the Eater of the Dead; and Dark Harbingers- in life they were great heroes for the living, now they've been brought back with memories of their life now twisted into service to the Eater of the Dead. Tragic.

Above is the Crypt Lord event mini from Crocodile Games.  Below is an alternate Dark Harbinger figure but he's only seen action as a Crypt Lord.  Both of these are unconverted figures from the Croc. 

This Sebeki Crypt Lord  from Alex Bates is a cool undead version of the Crocodile Games mascot figure. I didn't like his axe so swapped it for the big sword.

Taking a break from Crypt Lords for a moment, let's look at those who make all these reanimated mummies possible - the Necromancers. Above is an unnamed Necromancer conversion apparently tainted by contact with the Eaterof the Dead. The body is an original Tethru Master of Words. The head is one of the alternate options that came with the Scarab Ogre and some very simple putty work to cover the gaps. His spear and some other bits came from various plastic GW kits.  Finally, his wierd bug-like left arms came from a Ral Partha mini.

The Necromancer above is simply a headswap on the official Crocodile Games Necromancer. The head was left over from the Reaper figure used as the basis for the Dark Harbinger, Shefdu Sootootma. This was the Necromancer figure used in the Golden Fleece campaign, 'Redface' (a subtle reference to the skullcace color because it's all about the subtlety).

The last of the Necromancers is actually the second painted version of 'Llithyiki' - the Necromancer for Shefdu during the Ankhara Campaign. This is simply an unconverted figure from the old Celtos line of miniatures. I still think she's a really great option as a Necromancer figure. 

Back to the Crypt Lord parade with the named Crypt Lords. Above is the hippo-headed Sejetmu Dread Axe of the Nile. He's a headswap of one of the Warrior Mummy spearmen. Sejetmu was made the leader of the Axe mummy unit during the Ankhara campaign.

Above is a conversion of a Reaper mummy to give us Ashara 'Voice of the Tuat,' a Basti in life who had a golden voice ('the Voice of Honey'). She acted as captain of the mummy archers during the Ankhara campaign. Her sun disc was part of a standard (I think) while the bow and quiver came from the Crocodile Games weapons packs. A nice simple and effective conversion.

Below is the first of the first three Crypt Lords from the starting Ankhara campaign warband- Senshet 'the Mighty One' (because her Crypt Lord power was "mighty"). Just a straight up painting of the Crocodile Games figure. I don't remember what her scroll was meant to say, probably about "the Eater rules" or something like that.

These last two Crypt Lords (actually the first two to be painted) are Tebbi and Blackclaw. These were conceived of as criminal partners in life (check out their own skirmish blog which has languished for far too long for more info on their exploits) and Shefu's chief lieutenants in death. Blacklaw was able to steal at least one chariot during the Ankhara campaign- which probably earned him a Great Deed.

The Dark Harbinger Nabchuk the Nefarious is a slight conversion of a Privateer Press figure for the Golden Fleece Campaign. For that campaign I wanted a change from a mummy heavy Eater warband to a more Death Cultist heavy warband because I really wanted to have a Nekharu warband. That was a big difference. The conversion bits were the axehead (from one of the Heru Harbingers) and the head from a Nekharu Hero.

Starting out as a Crypt Lord in the Ankhara campaign (because you can only have one Harbinger in a warband and Shefdu was the star of that show), Hemati Shiver of the Lands (in life she was known as 'Protectrix of the Lands') was converted from a Stygian Priestess figure from the Chronopia line of miniatures. The backstory was that a young Shefdu Sootootma, bookish scribe before becoming a Harbinger of Thoth, was obsessed with Hemati's exploits as a Harbinger long before he was born. When Shefdu was raised as a Dark Harbinger he had one thought that lead his actions in the giant necropolis of Ankhara- to find Hemati and have her reanimated to fight by his side. Then after the big Ankhara finale, Hemati had slain enough 'breathers' that she leveled up to become a Dark Harbinger During the Heru-Typhon Civil War campaign as one of three different warbands I used.

The conversion was pretty straightforward. I removed the big disc at the top of her staff and made it into a poleaxe. The quiver was simply attached to her back as the shield was attached to her front. I used some strips of masking tape coated with thinned glue to make the remains of her wrappings.

Finally, the old bird himself, my favorite Harbinger for WarGods of Aegyptus (the live and the undead versions), Shefdu Sootootma Scribe of Khepri (previously known as the Scroll Traveller, the Scribe of the Dawn, and the Scribe of Oblivion). The early posts on this very blog are full of some narrative battle reports that also plant the story seeds of Shefdu and his former apprentice Mabuki-toth-re (my second favorite WarGods of Aegyptus Harbinger).

The conversion was pretty simple. I wanted a Tethru Dark Harbinger because they are my favorites of the Aegyptus setting. So I used a metal Tethru head from Crocodile Games and put it on a pretty cool Reaper mummy body. He needed a shield so I got a plastic one from GW that had an interesting shape and cut out a little piece of paper to be the tattered scroll. Sadly I don't recall what the hieroglyphs on the scroll are meant to say (probably part of Shefdu's treatise on the benefits of the use of a mace in combat over bladed weapons) but it's pretty characterful. 

And that concludes this archive entry of the Eater of the Dead miniatures I've painted over the years. Over 100 figures (I keep losing count) and that's not even counting the Death Cultists (non-mummy followers of the Eater of the Dead) but we'll get to them eventually.