Nobody's Expectation

When there really isn't much left to paint, sometimes you just have to start over. 

Inquisitor was a grand experiment from GW, about twenty years ago. Launching an entirely new narrative skirmish system using models in a totally different scale? You can see how it didn't quite take off. Not only were the chonky lead figures the very devil to build (lead!), but the whole system was about creating your own characters, and the kits didn't really lend themselves well to kit bashing (lead!!). 

Shame - with someone running the game in Dungeon Master style, it was a hoot. Great fluff, solid if rather complicated rules. Not a trace of balance other than what you decided was fun for your characters, mind, and obviously what the dice then threw at you, but some proper roleplaying hilarity every time we played it. Like the Inquisitor who managed to get possessed by his own Daemon Sword and then get his head cut off by a rival, trapping his own soul in the blade. Or a series of battles between a Radical Recongregator and a Puritan Monodominant, neither ever quite getting the upper hand for long, until they were forced to grudgingly fight side by side against a daemonic incursion. 

Here he is as I found him - missing a spiky thumb, which I miraculously found lodged in the back of another model deeper in the shelf. He'd clearly been having a go.

Anyhoo - this big chappie is Witch Hunter Tyrus, who was the poster boy for the book. One look at the model convinced me I needed it, and although I painted it (fairly well by my own standards!) fairly fast, I was saddened by the fact that all that incredible fine armour detail wasn't modelled on. Nothing I could achieve then or now, but having run out of other stuff to paint, I thought the old man deserved a new lick of paint. 

Here he is now, and it was worth the update I reckon. Trying to copy the underlit face from the cover art came out better than I hoped, and if it's not perfect, I'm not complaining. Still white and red, but I've gone to gold trim and white guns, plus rather crisper edges than I used to bother with.

'Dies Irae Dies Illa' on the shoulders, although the last A ran out of space a bit and is underneath the scroll, I guess. 'A day of fury, that day', approximately, a quote from the Requiem Mass. 

He is mildly kitbashed - I got two from the original range, and the loincloth here is pinched from Delphan Gruss, the techpriest. (He's next, to my surprise - various bits of him kept surfacing in the bitz box for years, but little did I realise that the whole figure was actually still in there!) The tilting plate has been swapped for a scroll and seal, the power knife for a gatling laser from an old plastic beetleback Titan, but otherwise he's as nature intended. 

Because I cracked the book out to reference the art, it's now lying temptingly around on my shelves. Anyone for a little narrative game?