Hyams - The Story That Was Never Told

Over the last couple of years, ex-GW illustrator has shared many of his fantastic Warhammer and 40k illustrations  over at his Facebook page. I'm a huge fan of Tony's artwork, and am lucky enough to own some of his nice Eldar pieces. One set of illustrations that caught my eye when Tony first posted them, was a series of 5 images of a character called Hyams. From conversation with Tony, the illustrations were commissioned by GW Books (the publishing arm of GW in the late 1980s and early 1990s) to accompany a novel about Hyams - a hive ganger who has a dream that he should travel to Holy Terra. We don't know who the author was, any more details of the storyline, or indeed why the book was never published. All we have are Tony's wonderful illustrations and tantalising titles:

 

'Portrait of Hyams'

 

Tough Guys Don't Need Armour - Adeptus Custodes

With the release of the new Custodian Guard in Games Workshop's 'Burning of Prospero' game, I decided it was high time that I got on and painted up my Rogue Trader equivalents. The half-naked cloaked figures with tall helmets and spears you see below, are indelibly imprinted in my mind as the image of Adeptus Custodes.

 



These are Adeptus Custodes.

These are some kind of mega-armoured giants.

Easy Rider - Another Logan's World Outrider

The best thing about a Mad Max style setting are the vehicles. And the coolest type of vehicle is a motorbike! I actually finished the second of my Maniax bikers a month or so ago, but never got round to posting him up. In game terms he's been hugely unsuccessful, failing to turn up on 3 out of 4 occasions. He's probably too busy seeking out new business opportunities for his paymaster.

 

 

Sam & Rico - Maniax For Hire

We're now four weeks in to our Helsreach / campaign, and although I painted up the final two members of my Maniac Mercenary crew accompanying my water seller, I haven't had chance to post up any pics.

 

The figures are from a pretty diverse pair of sources (in as far as 28mm space punks can be!). One the left is Psycho Sam, toting his shotgun and rockstar pose. Sam was sculpted by Mark Copplestone for the 2015 Oldhammer USA weekend. The fantastic guys in the US shipped over a box of the figures to be liberally distributed at the UK equivalent event - Bring Out Your Lead 2015, held at Wargames Foundry. I was lucky enough to be there and to get a copy.

 

The figure on the right is Little Rico -  a civilian from Metal Magic's Spacelords range, currently stocked by Moonraker Miniatures. I'm particularly fond of his little space monkey!

 



 

40kthulhu: Chapter 1 - The Object in the Bazaar

CHAPTER 1 - THE OBJECT IN THE BAZAAR

It was the morning after the sandstorm and the air was thick with tiny particles suspended in the air of the low-G zone. This was what had given rise to the vibrant trading hub at Urkar, just a few leagues distant from ancient Kahire. Merchants, smugglers, traders and many others besides made the most of the gravitic anomaly with both atmospheric craft and space-borne shuttles. In spite of the low visibility, the air above the landing pads was stacked high with craft, impatiently waiting their turn to land.

I had travelled to Urkar at the behest of my old professor, Kendry Mascharino. He had been sent a message from one Soloman Wyld, a junior holo-vid recordist for one of the Magnum Popula publications. According to Wyld, he had recorded some unsettling images at desert ruins near Kahire. Knowing my interest in unusual phenomena, and my studies in the subject, Professor Mascharino had been good enough to charter me an air-car south.

 

 

"Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling"

The village had no name, or perhaps it had been forgotten. It lay deep in the chaos wastes and had few visitors bar chaos hordes tramping south, or the occasional Carnival of Nurgle. Each and every villager bore the taint of chaos - the woodsman with axes in place of arms, the porcine butcher, the snake-skinned apothecary. Even the cattle had 6-legs and the sheep had fleshless skulls. Yet village life continued. The young and the strong strode off with bows and their father's swords. Left behind were the old, the lame, the mothers and the children, tending thorned corn, tanning cockatrice leather, building houses from giant bones.

Back at the start of the year, I began the 2016 Legacy Project on the Oldhammer forums. If you're not familiar with the concept, participants make, paint and donate a model to a pre-agreed theme. One of the participants then wins all of the models donated at the end of the project. We agreed that the theme for 2016 would be to create an imaginary classic Citadel range - C49 Chaos Villagers. We're nearing the end of the project, and I decided as organiser, it was high time I painted up my entry - the village piper.

I actually converted my figure back in January. He's based on the above piper from the Citadel Militia range, but his pipes are now somewhat more sinister being made from a child's corpse and bones (or a sleeping chaos baby if you prefer). I replaced his head with a squig and the right foot with one from a beastman. The resulting figure looked both sinister and a little bit comedic:

 

"That alien looks so naked!"

I was lucky enough to be offered a free figure through the 'Free Mini Friday' initiative over at the Oldhammer Facebook group. The principle is pretty straightforward - someone gives a figure to the first person to ask for it. That person then commits to paint it within a week, and to offer up another figure to someone else on the following Friday.

 

The figure kindly given to me was a rather terrifying vintage Grenadier Demon from the Fantasy Lords Demon set (thanks Matthew!):

 

Mxomycetes
Duke of the Mire