For my first month of rank & file models I wanted to start with one of the units unique to my project. In a Realm of Chaos Daemonic Legion army list, one of the auxiliary contingent options available to a Khorne or Slaanesh legion is an Undead Contingent. Note, I did not mention Nurgle or Tzeentch. This is because when Games Workshop published Realm of Chaos The Lost and the Damned, the auxiliaries portion of daemonic legions were dropped in favor of allowing any mortal fantasy or 40k models to be included in the Legion. In practice this meant almost everything that was available through the Auxiliaries section of Slaves to Darkness was now available to a daemonic legion without restriction. But, some things were no longer available, and Undead followers of the Chaos gods, were one of those casualties.
In Slaves to Darkness, an Undead contingent has to have a leader model and then an assortment of Undead units. Without the leader, undead just mull about subject to stupidity. Leaders could be a necromancer, liche, vampire, or undead champion of chaos (Slaanesh, in my case, of course).
I opted to start mine with an Undead Champion as the leader. I wanted something unusual so I chose a Minotaur champion. In Realm of Chaos lore, Minotaurs are the guardians of Chaos shrines, and I imagined mine must have died defending his charge and was then chosen to fight in my Slaaneshi legion as a curse or reward depending on one's point of view. His model was a fun conversion. I started with an old Ral Partha Skeleton Giant, and snipped his head and arm off. I then replaced his head with the fleshless Keeper of Secrets head from the original Keeper blister. I added an ensnaring tongue to this to give it a distinctly Slaaneshi appearance. I wanted another chaos mutation on my failed Minotaur Champion, so I used a claw from a 4th/5th edition Fiend of Slaanesh. Those Fiend models were a lot beefier than the originals, and came on 40mm bases instead of cavalry bases. His claw is right on for the Champion's scale. For his weapon I wanted him to have something size appropriate, and I clipped the halberd from a Slaaneshi Champion, which made a nice bastard sword on the big fella. This would be either a daemon weapon or a chaos weapon depending on the day. I also painted his 'one' eye a sickly yellow as I wanted to imply he had the "Evil Eye" mutation. This totaled him up as a Minotaur Champion (random profile) with a fairly low number of chaos rewards, probably four plius his weapon, making him 230 points.
I could still grant him more rewards if I was feeling spendy, or he could be given any number of chaos attributes for his weapon unless he had been blessed with a daemon weapon already. But 230 points seems just fine for now.
The cheapest models available for a unit in a daemonic legion are skeletons. They are, in fact, at 10 points a piece, the cheapest models in the entire legion. They should be, as they are pretty hopeless on such a battlefield. Their purpose here is not to actually kill anything, but rather to form a walking bulwark of expendable wounds, that will take charges from my legion's foes. Many terrible things in a Khornate Legion have nasty high-tech guns or can fly, not least the dreaded Bloodthirsters. Skeletons can provide the valuable characters of my legion cover, and make it impossible for a flying terror to declare a charge against models following closely behind them.Therefore all these models are included so they may die again in the service of the pleasure god. A theme of failed mortal followers is taking shape in my mind.
Skeleton models in and of themselves are pretty simple things, and do
not tend to have much by the way of chaos flavor or mutations. I wanted
to ensure they fit the flavor of my Slaaneshi Legion so I was fairly
choosy in who I added to the unit. The first thing I did was find
skeletons with a proper Oldhammer feel but were a bit easier to convert
the way I had in mind. Most of my skeletons ended up being Crooked Dice
sculpts, with a few from Die Hard miniatures as well. Whenever possible,
I clipped off the ends of spears, maces and axes, and replaced these
with a 3d printed Slaanesh Icon I had scanned from the old Realm of Chaos era Slaaneshi
beastman model.
The mace heads were resized, printed, and distributed as single or double handed maces to give the skeletons some appropriate iconography. I also added extra musicians and a little banner. A cult leader, still wearing his robes, and an armored bodyguard round out the unit. There are 20 Skeletons in the unit, adding 200 points to the total. Or, to put it another way, the price of a pair of daemonettes.
The backstory for these doomed fellows had come together for me by now. These models represent what was once the Cult of Unflagging Revelers. This cult had been charged with keeping one of Slaanesh's shrines safe from enemies, but they failed and were found out by a warband of Khorne. The Khornate followers slaughtered the cult, and even brought low the shrine's guardian. Slaanesh was not entertained by this failure and cursed the cult to arise as the Unending Revelers, who now serve as expendable fodder in his Legion. They will die over and over to keep Slaanesh's beloved servants safe for a few moments longer. On the field the Cult continually dances and plays bawdy tunes, as they try to equal the rest of the legion in its joy at the savagery to be unleashed. But alas, they can feel nothing and being undead cannot partake in any of the pleasures manifest around them.
All told, this month adds 21 models to the army , one of which could have been a leader entry, worth a total of 430 points. I enjoyed these quite a bit and may well expand the contingent in a later month if I can gather another 20-30 skeletons in time.
