The Pilgrym!

+++

From Throne to Thorne...

Green Man Cometh...

+++

On July 19th 2016 the Pilgrym Game took place in Warhammer World after more than half a year of collective preparation and development of a shared narrative over on Iron Sleet.

 The Pilgrym Collective! 
From top left to right: PDH, FPOA, Jeff Vader, JRN, Migsula, Ms. Tears of Envy. 
From bottom left to right: The Wier Brothers, Toni, Thistle, Iron Sleeter Kari and Mr. Tears of Isstvan.

It was a truly humbling experience, a pilgrymmage in itself, to be part of the incredible group of artists and 40K connoisseurs from around the world that make up the Pilgrym Collective. The amount of talent and inspiration that has been the Pilgrym during the last six months and on the day itself in Nottingham was overwhelming. A big thank you to Migsula, Thistle the Elder One and PDH for making this happen!

I participated with a Bio-Pilgrymmage of Green Mechanicvm and Bio-Explorers, which can be read about on Iron Sleet in these seven posts:

Bio-Pilgrymme, Part I: The Daerwynne Palimpsest and lost Mechanicvm
Bio-Pilgrymme, Part II: Of bodies changed...
Bio-Pilgrymme, Interlude: From Throne to Thorne
Bio-Pilgrymme, Part III: Enter Arch Magos Biologis Sverre Arrheniusse
Bio-Pilgrymme, Part IV: The Linnæanne Brotherhood
Bio-Pilgrymme, Interlude: The Crataegus Lament
Bio-Pilgrymme, Part V: Brostten Haggwers arrives on Terra 

There will be a full battle report on Iron Sleet in due time. Until then I have attached a small handful of images here - and please do check Instagram for #pilgrym for more images of the game unfolding.

The Pilgrym Seal is broken and cards are dealt.

 A secret alliance is forged deep in the darkness of the Botanicarium!

Sverre Arrheniusse is only a very short move from reaching the Pilgrym - the key to the Green Room...was it not for Lazaros the Kinder Fetcher!

Post Pilgrym #1: As it turns out this is a very fitting summer reading for a devoted disciple of the Green Mechanicvm...

Post Pilgrym #2: Legend...

Post Pilgrym #3: More Crataegus characters and narratives unfolding during the autumn of 2016!

The Bio-Pilgrymme, Part I: The Daerwynne Palimpsest and Lost Mechanicvm

+++

The Bio-Pilgrymme...

The God Emperor...

The Green Man Cometh!

+++

On January 1st 2016 a massive undertaking was launched over at Iron Sleet:

The Pilgrym...

A collaborative exploration of Terra itself in which I take part with a host of Lost Mechanicvm and a team of Bio-Explorers...

First up from me is the Arch Magos Biologis Sverre Arrhernius - the Bio-Pilgrymme - and a small handful of his most loyal Sicarian Thorn Guards! 

Arch Magos Biologis Sverre Arrhenius

To get the full story behind the Lost Mechanicvm, Crataegus Fragmentum, The Prigorian Divide (known simply as the The Rift), Rogue Traders, Brostten Haggwers and the Daerwynne Palimpsest I urge you to visit Iron Sleet (via the links above). Make sure to check back often and see all the other madness going on there during the spring and summer of 2016.

Here I will just quickly add to what is being said on Iron Sleet that my work on the Lost Mechanicvm is a thorough exploration of 'uncanny doublings and weird morphologies' in the weathered worlds of 40K in the 42nd Millennium. 

Close to my muse: 

Inspired by my work on forests at AAA, forest myths, Johns wickedly fine Voodoo-stuff, an incredible sketch by the ever talented Jakob Rune Nielsen (watch this space!!), Johan Egerkrans idea of Thorn Moons, holloways and a lot more! 

Next up are wips of a special pair of Lost Mechanicvm and the first few of Brostten Haggwers Bio-Explorers!

Melancholia III: Metamorphosis

Just to sum up:

The idea for Melancholia III was sparked while reading Dan Abnett’s brilliant Pariah a year ago. During the same period I read Robert MacFarlane’s eloquent Holloway. Two completely different but highly recommendable books: one set in the grim darkness of the future, another grounded in a profound knowledge of past and present landscapes of pilgrimage.

What these two books have in common are their descriptions of how some pathways, whether it being the harrowed streets of Queen Mab or the century old holloways of central Britain, are linear only in a simple sense. The latter is rather, maybe more than anything, wooden enclosures shaped by man over centuries in which rifts in time and space lead to ‘weird morphologies and uncanny doublings.’ (MacFarlane, 2012)

Treeman, Fighting Fantasy, John Blanche

 

This is a relationship Robert Pogue Harrison beautifully elaborates in his Forests – the Shadow of Civilization (1992) in which he unfolds how forests have played a major role throughout history in shaping us – as much as we have shaped them. From Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which the goddess Artemis transforms Actaeon into a stag while he is hunting in the forest transforming him into the hunted, to Michelangelo Frammartino’s amazingly beautiful and highly recommendable cinematographic work Alberi, a visual tour de force of sight and sound depicting a strange annual tradition in Southern Italy of celebrating ’tree men’ of a local forest, it is, fundamentally, a relationship of change and transformation.

Treeman, Alberi, Michelangelo Frammartino

 Treeman (detail), Alberi, Michelangelo Frammartino

Recently Melancholia III has in itself changed and transformed into a project of another scale and timespan including collaborative terrain building with an old friend and a pilgrimage to the heart of the Imperium. Both share the same DNA drawn from this relationship and the plethora of ‘weird morphologies and uncanny doublings’ that have emerged from it. 

In short, it has turned into a pilgrimage in itself fuelled by a profound fascination of the weathered worlds of the 41^st and 42^nd Millennium and humanity’s relationship with the concept of ‘nature’ in a galaxy of untold worlds torn by war and strife.

Happy New Year – and watch this space!

Intermezzo: Hinodian Bounty Huntress

I am working slowly but focused (!) on my Melancholia III-project but have recently finished building a Hinodian Bounty Huntress and she is now ready for paint.

 +++

She hails from the hive world of Meiji Prime placed in the Hinode System on the fringes of the Dalthus Sector...

The Hinode System is named after the red giant Hinode, which is a star in its later phases of stellar evolution: Its outer atmosphere being inflated and tenuous, making its radius immense and its surface temperature low. Hinode is placed in an area of space where sun worshipping seemingly is on the rise. This is particularly the case in the neighbouring Profundis System, which falls under the protection of the reclusive Sun Titans who also appear - albeit sporadically - in the sacred Liber Chronicarum of Hinode where they are referred to as sun gods of legend. 

 Hinode

Hinodians on Meiji Prime celebrate the deeply orange and slowly fading light of Hinode as a pure embodiment of the God Emperor and the distant Sol System. Especially the horizon spanning sunset during the almost all-encompassing autumnal season of the sunblazed planet.

+++

The Hinodian Bounty Huntress is based on the incredible Nurgle Chaos Lord. Inspired heavily by John Blanches excellent Femme Militant! 

 Slaver Huntress, John Blanche © GW

Mary Bones, John Blanche © GW 

She is blind from sun gazing. Apart from an integrated firethrower and solblade she wields a Hinodian shield. Her voluptuousness and bare scalp is a homage to Hinode. She is covered in sacred symbols and relics also in homage to the red giant... 

...oh, and she wears high heel and has a wooden leg in homage to Mary Bones :)

I am a bit rusty in my modelling, so I look forward to the paint job.

Kveld-Ulf finished for the Invitational!

I am happy to say, that I managed to finish my 13th Wulfen Lord Kveld-Ulf, called Modi, (almost) in time for the Invitational deadline. A few weeks ago it was posted with a nice introduction by Migsula on the amazingly inspiring Iron Sleet:

KVELD-ULF, JARL OF THE 13TH, VLKA FENRYKA

Please go and take a look - and be prepared to be sucked in on all the other goodness on Iron Sleet!

An Equinoxe, a Solar Eclipse and two wolves

I will be venturing into the Norwegian boreal for some time to celebrate the coming spring and returning daylight on the Northern Hemisphere. A celebration also relevant here, inspired as FPOA is by equal amounts of day and night, sun and moon.

On March 20th, the day of the spring equinox itself,  the sun was eclipsed by the moon on the Northern Hemisphere, marking the astronomical spring with an amazing celestial occurence.

My travels to the north means that I will be running out of time to finish my Wulfen in time for the Invitational deadline. But he will be travelling with me in crates of paint together with his two finished wolves, one black and one pale white (of course!) and my daylight lamp, so that the threesome can be uploaded when I return from the fells of the north in the second week of April.

Until then I am very honoured to be able to show you two other Space Wolves: First and foremost a recent gift from a very good friend. Ragnar Blackmane in all his ferocious glory. Painted in style by Jakob Rune Nielsen. Secondly my own version painted in the mid-1990es with handpainted banners and a slightly (only slightly) different colourscheme than Mcveys original Blackmane paintjob from the same period.

Jakobs version is amazing and I will try to achieve a similar scheme on the Wulfen: Dark grey, deep gold and red.

13th returned

The 13th Wulfen Lord Modi has rerturned from the unfathomable perils of the Æther with his two Fenrisian wolves! A huntsman loyal beyond measure who has searched for his beloved Primarch in the Eye of Terror for millennia and now, to heed a special calling, returned through the eye to wage war on the foes of his Northern brethren.

The threesome belong to a body of work more than a decade old and it is my contribution to the 1st Invitational over at Iron Sleet.

They take as their point of departure my deep fascination of Nordic mythology grounded as it is in Nordic landscapes and weather. This, I think, makes it a fitting entry in the Invitational - Iron Sleet itself initiated by a group of mad Norsemen working with weather and atmosphere more than anything else.

I began working on the Wulfen Lord and his wolves after returning home from Golden Demon UK 2003. He was intended for the UK Golden Demon in 2004 but I never got around to finish him. Since then he has been lost for almost a decade, probably in the Warp. But a recent spark of imagination and new inspiration from the extremely talented hands of Migsula, who is working on his mindblowingly beautiful Vlka Fenryka, have resulted in the Wulfen Lord and his two Fenrisian wolves going from early WIPs to being finally done and ready for paint.

In 2003 I had built my Space Wolf Lord Odin and his personal entourage of Space Wolf Valkyries in true scale, dwarfing the normal size of standard marines. For the Wulfen Lord I decided to go all in on scale.

As such, 13th Wulfen Lord Modi has been built around a Demon Prince sculpted by Juan Diaz at the turn of the millenium. It has been heavily converted by changing the pose of the original model and adding a large variety of sculpted elements like jewellery, totems, banners, cables, chains and drilled-out skulls. The areas where armour and fur have merged together were all sculpted to show that he, marked as he is by a flaw in his gene-seed and exposed to the perils of the warp for thousands of years, has mutated into a giant wolfman fused with his Astartes armour.

Apart from the remnants of his personal belongings like backpack, shields (the round shield with two interlocking wolves was originally intended for a major Valkyrian Shieldbearer), family emblems and a selection of important battle trophies he is also covered in wolf totems, tributes and seals marking him as the true warrior god he has become. One of the few who have fought alongside Russ himself.

With the wolves I wanted to utilise the idea behind the Invitational in order to emphasize the size of the Wulfen Lord. While the first of his two wolves has been outfitted with a longrange weapon (inspired in part by Neil101s excellent new Envoys of Russ over at Opus Maius) all that remains of the second wolf is a handcrafted Servo Skull still heeding the call of its master.

In his right hand 13th Wulfen Lord Modi still holds aloof - after aeons in the Æther - the family staff of his Primarch adorned with pledges, wows and seals of faith honouring the Alfather (to be added after painting the staff). In his left hand he wields a Lightning Claw, which has merged with his body being one of the few parts of his original Astartes armour still fully recognisable.

The result is a behemoth of man, Astartes and wolf!