Disgustingly Relentless

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umm this one is like a one off. I kinda wanted to take a break from doing Ashen Shrikes stuff but strictly speaking...this was what the Ashen Shrikes could have been.

In part, an explanation of the piece but also an explanation of how the whole Ashen Shrikes thing came from. 

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tldr:ashen shrikes were originally nurgle warband, inspired by the night lords novels and the new plague marines are goofy looking

This all started about last year, 2016, summer where I started reading the amazing Night Lords novels(SURPRISED, IF ANYONE HASNT NOTICED THAT I AM BASICALLY PUTTING TOGETHER A RENEGADE CHAPTER, COMPLETE WITH SHIP CREWS). I've read two of the Dark Apostle novels and they were...pretty ok I guess. Not as good as the Night Lords one tho. The novel was based around a very small group of chaos space marines which I really liked. and everything and every character was more personal, more fleshed out. it gave an insight to what being a chaos space marine would be really like. Not just yelling "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" all the time. what they do on downtime. so on. So its got me really inspired. because lets face it. I aint never gonna buy myself a 5000pt army. not 2000pt army. not even 1000pt army.  i dont have anyone around to play it with. I have the black reach set, mostly painted. but there is no one to play it with.

but what got me thinking was. huh. inq28. those stuff are really cool. and i dont need to play games with them.

and thus the wheels started to turn. inspired by the novels, I started brainstorming on how i could go about making a nurgle themed renegade characters. Centred around the plague champion and the devious navigator, i got pictures off from games workshop webstore and cobbled and photobashed them together to see what i can buy and what i can greenstuff. and originally, this was before the reveal of the primaris marine, the plague marine was going to be built upon a stormcast eternal. i was gonna buy the easy to fit stormcast sprues, some mk4 helmets and back packs and there. planned it all out, was gonna cost me like nothing to have 3 cool plague marine characters. never actually got around to buying the parts. because there is only one hobby store in the country. anyways, the whole ship crew thing was very fun. and i do a bunch more characters. currently i have sketched up like....12? including the enginseer and the chapters only terminator.

time passes. i put this on the back burner and get back to it thinking "huh. all these characters ive scribbled, i aint doing anything with them" and decided the least i could do is start drawing them real good as shown here with the Ashen Shrike chapter stuff I've uploaded. 

While drawing the plague marine, it got me thinking. "you know. it would be really hard for a human to survive in a nurgle blessed ship...all these crewmen ive thought up wouldnt last a day..." and thus, the chaos god was abandoned. the file name for  the pale marine was even named "nurgmarine.psd". i had to abandon some of the cool design elements ive thought up for the nurgle themed chapter and had to give it a new one. which was the three pronged metal spikes. disappointing that i had to ditch nurgle but was pretty happy wit this new one. and with that change, the other character development really picked up pace. and hence i now have another 8 or something more lined up.

and then, few months back, rumors of new marines appeared. some leaks here and there. and then BHAM that cool looking cover for the new 8th edition rule book with what looks like mk4 helmet for both the royalists and nurgle. i was kinda glad to know that both GW and myself think that MK4 helmet is the coolest. and then BHAM, the primaris marines are revealed. And they have their story behind them. which is...what ive been kind of suspecting to happen for a long time now. since the release of the death watch and kinda reassured by the release of the triumvirates. which is that another scale creep is happening. and GW is doing it in a way that people wont freak out like they did with Age of Sigmar. really smart thing for GW and i think all these new models coming out are really worth praising GW for. even tho their lawyers eat the occasional newborn baby or two. 

anyways, getting off topic. the point was, the hype levels were off the roof. art scale marines(with some overly techy stuff that can easily be greenstuffed) that has helmets very close to mk4 helmets. and they will be facing off the death guard, visually my favorite chapter. and the death guards are getting new models surely. surely these are going to be the worthy foes to fight the newest warriors of the emperor. surely they will be wearing similarly imposing armor...surely?

time and time passes, more leaks. more cool primaris stuff. some not as cool. but p cool. but what about the death guards? who is this fat guy with mouth for stomach? is this something from The Thing? tentacles? arent tentacles for tzeenth? or slaanesh? how big are they? they dont look as big as the primaris...and they look pretty stumpy...and short...especially when compared next to primaris marines. and why does that terminator have a goofy smile on its face...

long story short. the death guard minis, from what ive seen have amazing amounts of details. but my understanding of death guards wasnt about tentacles and mutations. it was about the rot, the decay, the despair, the inescapable clutches of entropy. and also the disgusting life that is reborn from that death and decay. the very best representation, i think of this, is the artwork of the plague marine in the Siege of Vrak forgeworld book. that thing is just all decay and death.

anyways. out of the new plague marine releases/upcoming releases, only one that fits what i think of death guard is Mortarion. no goofy smiles, no teeth, no tentacles. maybe some tentacles. but not as replacements for an arm. just rot rot rot. and not to help, latest reveal of the 3 plague marine pack showed me even goofier looking plague marines.

and with that last reveal, i said "eh. fuck it. I'm gonna draw what i like. and what i like is some rotten flesh". so thats it. ive been drawing this for about 2 weeks now. it took a lot of extra effort than usual since i knew this was going to be a one off. and also it has a tonnes of small details. i put a background element that fits, lighting and shading. and i took most of the design points i had planned way back then and shoved it in here. beefy(not beer gut) and bulkier, more menacing looking. i wanted mk4 armor and the bile spewer, the weapon i loved using in Dawn of War 2, but as a pistol form. which is...nice that GW thought that was also a cool idea and decided to put into the 8th edition Death Guards. if i do end up modeling this anyways, at least i know that gets a rule and i can use it. and also a plague knife, since death guard are all about that knife/firearm combos(which i love doing in Eternal Crusade. DEATH GUARD COSMETICS WHEN!?! ...yeah its not coming). and i wanted to embody that disgustingly-resilient-ness of a plague marine. the cant-be-killed-ness, cant-be-stopped-ness. kind of like a terminator. relentless

so...thats it. just explaining how this piece fits with whatever else i've been doing. how i got about to starting this whole Ashen Shrikes thing and just venting some of my disappointment at the new Death Guard miniatures. 

I am going to post like a showcasing image, because i realise a lot of the details have been made smaller through the resize and they could do well with their own separate image. just not now. its 3 am. and i took 2 hours writing this up

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PS: just to clarify. the work done on the new Death Guard minis are amazing and really showcases GW plastic at their finest. Its just that its not the design route i would have personally liked. thats it. if you love it, power to you. hope you put together and paint some great looking plague marines. cos they do look really nice. 

EDIT: here is the link to the showcase mistymiasma.deviantart.com/art…
Explains whatever needs to be explained behind some of the details

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I am open for more commissions. 
Check out the following link to see more details if you are interested yourself
www.deviantart.com/mistymiasma…

You can also check me out on twitter twitter.com/DiceyJune
where I will most likely be uploading stupid joke pictures.