Frank's: The Great Work - A Daemonic Legion of Slaanesh, Slaves to Darkness Style, "Rank & File", April 2023

 

This month was my slowest progress to date. This was partly due to intrusions on my hobby time, but also due to the nature of the models involved. Daemonettes riding mounts of Slaanesh are depicted in multiple places throughout Realm of Chaos Slaves to Darkness, but only one cast model appears in the book. On page 147, a single model is shown alongside a chaos knight, both riding Mounts of Slaanesh. Then on page 158, on the very left edge of the Daemonic Legion battle taking place, duplicates of this model can (barely) be seen formed as a unit. This figure was never actually released for sale, despite its appearance in Slaves to Darkness.

I kept the requirements for these cavalry quite modest in my daemonic legion, but even so, finding a dozen steeds of Slaanesh alone was quite an undertaking. Finding a dozen riders was simply impossible. Despite a multi-year search, in the end I acquired only two rider torsos, one I had never seen pictured before, and one set of legs+tail. Much tinkering and planning was undertaken to make up the shortfall. 

Several of the riders, I straight up converted from daemonette infantry figs. At least it is easy to cut and bend lead cast models with thin limbs. However, only a few of the daemonette infantry poses are conducive to being converted. Generally, it is the location of the daemonette's tail that determines suitability. In order to avoid repeats of the same couple conversions, I turned to the dark arts of 3d printing and scanning. First let me assuage your fears gentle reader, I did NOT just recast the figures. What I did do was scan the legs+tail piece, and 3d printed them in resin. The quality of the scans is not at a point where casting the model would even have been viable. The detail is simply not at a level where it could be seriously entertained. But, a workaround was possible... 

 

I was already chopping up daemonette models to convert into riders. The problem was the limited range of poses this method could generate. They all tend to look like they are 'standing' in the saddle, which is problematic when there is no saddle. What I attempted, and I think has succeeded, was to use the scan of the seated legs+tail as a base ‘dolly’ for a conversion. I clipped off the scan’s legs and tail just beyond the roots. This left me with a groin and tail stump. To this stump I attached the legs and tails of common metal daemonettes. Then I attached a torso taken from a daemonette. The end result is a daemonette rider conversion that is about 90% original lead, but the variety of poses is drastically increased, and they are cleanly seated on the Mount of Slaanesh.

 

These I painted in the same wild array of colors as the rest of the Slaaneshi Legion, favoring pastels wherever practical, and calling back to yellow for the leather on the riders for some consistency. In fact, I do believe this is the most colorful single unit I have ever painted

The lavender lass on the extreme left riding the pastel orange steed is the fabled unreleased and unconverted daemonette rider, who despite being a lowly rank and file lesser daemon, is the single rarest and most sought after model in this project. Her lime green sister riding the lavender steed in the center is the other unreleased torso I was able to acquire. She was built with one of the 3d printed groins, with the legs and tail taken from a standard daemonette. I do not honestly know the history of that torso model, it is lead, and looks to have been sculpted by the same hand as the unreleased rider in Slaves to Darkness, but since she does not appear in the book nor in Stuff of Legends, I just can’t say how she came to be.

This small unit is all I was able to get through this month, a second unit of these riders awaits for May. They are worth 720 points as a unit. This brings my OWAC VI running total to 5,624 and an adjusted model count of 69.