Frank's: The Great Work - A Daemonic Legion of Slaanesh, Slaves to Darkness Style, "Leaders", February 2023

Welcome back friends, the great work continues...

With the good start on lesser daemons behind me in January, this month I undertook to paint the leaders of the Slaaneshi legion. Standing apart from the lesser daemons, both in terms of raw power and for having once been a mere mortal is my daemon prince, Thrustcraze, "the Insatiable". He began as a Minotaur Champion of Slaanesh and a Minotaur Lord model but has undergone some additions on his way to a place in this legion. I dig this particular model because it has a lot of little odd-ball mutations which don't matter in game but add a lot of color to the fig. The extra-long limbs, one mechanical foreleg, and numerous little tumors and piercings all make him far more chaotic than the typical citadel minotaur model. My model has had an appropriately sized Slaaneshi daemon weapon and a large hoplite style shield added as his primary weapons. The model for the blade came from a lovely Slaaneshi Champion's halberd, which on the much larger minotaur lord makes a snazzy gladius style blade. The shield came from my bits box. I suspect it was from a Hasslefree model, but I am not sure now. It has waited in the tray a few years at least. In order for him to look the part of a daemon prince he needed some wings. For those I hunted down a Slaves to Darkness era Bloodthirster, and attached them to his hunchback. That Bloodthirster's whip was also used on my next model for leader month and will turn up in this post shortly. I wanted to paint him in style with the rest of the legion, so yellow on his studded jockstrap and armored plates was the way forward. A pastel purple, not quite lavender, on the hide contrasted the yellow nicely. Here he is in all his glory...

From Thrustcraze I moved on to the actual lords of the Legion. A triumvirate of Keepers of Secrets make up the command group of my Slaaneshi Legion. The Keeper of Secrets was, and remains, a pretty complex model to assemble and has given more than a few hobbyists fits over the ages. The trick is to plan in advance and start from the ground up, and don't be shy about green stuff filling the inevitable gaps on the back and armpits. The model Games Workshop released to go with Slaves to Darkness publication had a fair number of parts to allow for some differentiation in greater daemon models. As you can see from this old catalog page, there were half a dozen different heads and then a couple poses each of the legs and various arms. 

I have always found a couple of the heads quite off-putting and out of theme. Namely the skulls, they just feel out of place. Also, there is the head with the eye-patch. the idea that the daemon cannot fix or otherwise replace a missing eye just seems laughable to me. Plus, it looks like he wants to be part of 'talk-like-a-pirate-day". No worries though, there are still three other heads I love. There are essentially two complete sets of parts besides heads. When I started resurrecting this project back in 2020, two felt like enough and I simply hunted down the parts and split the available posing options between two Keepers of Secrets. here is the result of that effort.

I gave the green one some maces on chains as weapons, and his pink comrade bears a legendary Rod of Command. Fasioned from the bones of a fallen Bloodthirster, one is presented to each Legion by the hand of Slaanesh, 'themself'. My Rod of Command was made from the 1980s Daemonette Chaos Familiar and a Mantic plastic imp as the other end. I was happy with these two in 2020, but now I felt they weren't quite 'fabulous' enough, and besides I really wanted a third Keeper for the Legion. A make-over was called for...

The first of my triad is Flexfondle, "the Desecrator". In order to get different upper arms for each Keeper, some heavy conversion work was required. Oddly neither set of produced Keeper upper arms have matching claws. There are, in fact, three different sorts of claws. You can see where this is going...more surgery. Flexfondle got a matching armored claw, and both were repainted yellow. His pose on the base also required his legs to be tweaked slightly, as that version of the Keeper model's legs makes the model lean back in such a way that looks 'ok' from the front, but is clearly about to fall over if viewed from any other angle. Lastly, his boots were also repainted yellow and now he looks his part as the Legion's General.

My second Keeper is the Legion's Champion, Slakespasm, "the Despoiler". He has also had a claw replaced with a twin of his original making his pose decidedly one challenging any foe. I also chopped up two Slaaneshi beastmen and two Champions for their snazzy Slaanesh-symbol mace-heads. These now form the flail ends of his chains. 

The Legion's third Keeper of Secrets is entirely new. Meet Nibblequake, "the Defiler", who serves as the Legion's Battle Standard Bearer. He has undergone extensive conversions. The bannerpole was made from a pair of plastic standards and its topper from the 'modern' daemonette plastic kit. The banner itself is John Blanche's iconic depiction of the Dark Prince, themself. I mean, what else could go on the banner of His legion? In addition, both his lower arms had to be recut and reposed to allow him to hold the banner upright and to brandish his whip, taken from that Bloodthirster model who gave up the wings for Thrustcraze. Then his upper claw was cut and replaced with a matching claw. Once again his legs had to adjusted to make him stand upright and not lean back, just like Flexfondle. Lastly, his head had to actaully rest on top of his neck joint rather than set into it as normal. This was needed because otherwise he would be peaking out from behind the banner.

While this project was undertaken out of love for the GW's original vision of Slaanesh in Warhammer, I always aim to make use of my models in as many systems as possible. Therefore, I am basing my models on circle bases appropriate for Warhammer 40,000 Rogue trader. These circular bases fit into square inserts that let these same models function properly in the older editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. 

I even went further to make sure that today's Warhammer players can also experience the real Slaanesh as the Lord of Pleasure, rather than the marketing friendly 'god of excess' seen today. Slaanesh was originally conceived as the chaos god of "sex, drugs, and rock and roll", not an impotent chained-up god of "perfection and obsession" as he is depicted today. To this end, I have made base inserts for these models to allow them to play comfortably in modern Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. These base inserts are so large that they needed appropriate filler to keep them from being just flocked compact discs. The trapped spirits of Slaaneshi followers (mostly elves) and a coven of Slaaneshi cultists provide mini dioramas here. When inspiration strikes me, I will make a third insert for the last Keeper of Secrets.

That is me 'done' for February. Discounting the two 'made-over' Keepers of Secrets I had initially finished in 2020, I have added another pair of 'large' models to this growing OWAC VI project, putting the (adjusted) score at 32 models to date. Although the Keepers of Secrets serve for 'free' in a Daemonic Legion, the Overlord has graciously indicated that the points value for these still count to the running total. At 900 points apiece, the point total to date now stands at 3,550 points. Till next month, the Great Work continues...