poxbringer | Ann's Immaterium

I finished up my poxbringer from the Start Collecting box for Azazel’s Jewel of July painting challenge. The idea this time is to paint models that are sort of in the middle of the pecking order such as medics, lower level leaders, particularly swanky robots and so on. They should stand out from the rank and file, but aren’t really mean to stand alone.

The poxbringer buffs other friendly Nurgle daemon units by making them a bit physically stronger, and he also fights directly with a rather vicious sword and by being a minor psyker. He is no slouch in Age of Sigmar either. So he seems like a great candidate for Jewel of July.

Why can’t nurglings ever take anything seriously?!

I added a new disease to my collection: the dreaded Yellow Mold. The poxbringer told me that this malady was originally brewed by an adept for use against some particularly troublesome feral orks, by mutating ork spores. I told him that they just ripped off the idea from original Dungeons and Dragons. He said that Nurgle’s Yellow Mold isn’t adversely affected by either intense light nor fire (though the carrier might be) and that besides, “Everyone knows that D&D is just a made up game as opposed to real life.”

Yikes! Looks like that yellow mold is catching.

For my Yellow Mold, I liberally applied some acrylic texture fiber paste that I mixed with a bit Averland Sunset paint to the area in question. I teased the mixture so it would dry with a sort of furry or spiky texture. I drybrushed the area around the mold with sunset, and then did another light drybrush with white paint. I sealed the whole thing with a matte varnish to protect the pasted area, since the miniature will be handled a fair bit.

I used the left over paste on his sword with the idea that our poxbringer coats his blade with the mold, and occasionally leaves a victim alive but wounded….

I’m rather pleased at how the texture came out on his arm.

The mold initially makes itself known by its characteristic diuretic effect. After several weeks of raging thirst the host dies from dehydration. Delightfully, drinking more fluids seems to intensify and hasten the process. The mold then throws off contagious, airborne spores and dies. In the case of nurgle daemons it simply reaches an non-contagious equilibrium much like what is shown here with our friend.

If our friend wants the mold to become contagious, he waters it for about a week then stops. The mold will then throw spores and settle back into a sort of dormant state. Alternately (and preferably) he can force feed a portion of it to a victim, release that person and let nature takes its merry course.

So now some obligatory painfully close close-ups!

I personally propose purple guts are particularly pretty! 🙂

The purple bit is fairly subtle at tabletop distances, but it does a little variety to the usual bloody abdominal tableau. The recipe came from the the very useful January 2018 White Dwarf. I’m toying with the idea of testing it out as a flesh color on a daemonette, but we’ll see.

I put the suction palm-tentacle thing on his hand because I had a little extra green stuff left over from something else and I didn’t want to waste it. Pretty much the same for the sword with the fiber paste mixure, as well as the fact that I had tried a couple of different things with the sword and still wasn’t satisfied.

So the first herald I painted, Urnafortunus, will more often than not receive a lateral transfer to the rank of spoilpox scrivener. I like the scrivener’s powers but do not favor the official model. It is nice enough but I’m not a fan of Nurgle daemons being accountants. Such beings are meant to get their hands dirty. Leave the paperwork to Tzeetch’s minions, who love such things, says I!

I’m continuing work on my poxwalkers and hope to have another to add to my growing mob for next time, along with a cultist who looks an awful lot like this guy. Have been doing a lot of priming too and hope to make a start on painting my trio of old school plague marines at some point soon.

So I’ve been working on Becky the Bloat Drone still, but I also finally got this handsome fellow done. I’ve had him for a very long time. Despite having only now finished painting him, he’s been popping up primed with various colors in games now and again since 2013. Talk about an Unpainted Veteran of the Long War!

He’s a Kromlech “Morbid Spawn” model.

This resin mess started out his (?) career as a nameless chaos spawn in equally nameless space marine armies. He spent most of his early days furiously trying to come to grips with fire warriors before they gunned him down; usually quite successful thanks to the prevalence of doomcasters in those days. He’s also run with Daemonkin, and there was a Chaos Undivided time, which he doesn’t like to talk about, when he had a green body with one blue tentacle, one red, and one purple. His colleagues gave him the name Ezekyle to mock him. Those were dark days indeed. Happily, he has more recently found a new calling as a Herald of Nurgle or as they are styling them now, a Poxbringer.

His mighty array of weapons, the huge, rather nasty maw, that monstrous right arm (talk about a power fist!) and of course the varied spiky bits and last but not least that deadly triad of tentacles fully equips him, I’d say, to be every bit as formidable as a jumped-up plaguebearer with a balesword, a prehensile tongue, and a mouthy nurgling sidekick.

Once I get the Poxbringer, which came with the Nurgle battle force, painted then Urna will probably graduate once again to a counts-as Spoilpox Scrivener. His visage certainly seems to fit the powers a Scrivener brings to the table, i.e. makes plaguebearers step more lively and fight harder. I imagine any daemon in the ranks foolish enough to slack off or malinger will soon regret it. Pop said malinger into his Motivating Maw, give him a bit of a chew then spit him out again. I bet the rest of the unit would be falling all over itself to be the first to expend that extra two inches of movement or roll a 7+ with his sword! His motivating speech: “Shirkers will be shredded, malingers mauled and thieves throttled!” Perhaps instead of counting diseases he has a mania for perfect formations with lovely, straight columns and ranks? Who knows the mind of Chaos?

Always finding odd uses for that Nihilakh Oxide paint!

I call him (?) Urnafortunus or Pot Luck, because that is how I felt painting him. I tried various experiments or just went with my whims of the moment, and kept what I liked and repainted what I didn’t. A lot was done on the fly while watching Netflix with my husband. As usual I’ll catalog some of what I remember doing for anyone who is interested and my own future reference.

I did the skin with the usual white primer followed by Athonian Camoshade, then Agrax Earthshade, more Camoshade with some patches of yellow and orange glazes. Highlights were done with Nurgling Green. Used rust washes, some Baal Red, Carroburg Crimson, Nurgle’s Rot, and of course Blood for the Blood God on the skin until I liked the final result, or more accurately I had reached that sweet place where if I kept working on it I would be more likely to make the model worse rather than better.

Some of the small, bright red tentacles were painted with Tallarn Flesh, then washed with Bloodletter and then brightened up with a gloss varnish. With others I experimented with a bit of watered-down Blood for the Blood God.

Not his best side, but I’m not really sure he has one….

For the three big tentacles I used a mysterious and seemingly endless series of green, black, brown, purple, and blue washes. Then a final wash of glossy Nuln Oil, followed by giving the suckers a final wash of Biel-Tan to brighten them up a bit with regular Nuln Oil on the tentacle talons. The teeth and horns were just multiple coats of Nuln Oil.

I decided to use rust washes in the mouth and also where the bones are sticking out. I was going to paint the bones more traditionally, but in the end I decided this daemon had a weird, blackened skeleton so more Nuln Oil there. Going back to the mouth, I decided the various nasty bits in there needed a little brightening up, but not too much, so I did some highlights using various colors such as Ratskin Flesh and so on. I might eventually brighten it up some more but for now I’m happy with it.

Posting with a cultist for a size comparison shot.

So I’m going to continue my work on my bloat drone, though it is looking more and more like I’m not going to get it done by the end of the month in time for Azazel’s Decembuary Challenge. Still he has apparently become the challenge guy extraordinaire, which is fun, and he has one for February as well. So if I must eat the bitter ashes of defeat and disappointment in January, then perhaps for next month I’ll finish the bloater and complete the next challenge too and taste the ambrosia of victory with both the paintbrush and the dice cup!

Chaos Symbol Clip Art