Daddy's Home

 

We're all old enough to remember the classic artwork by Tony Hough, right?

Well, my Cult needed a Patriarch. And they got one, courtesy of the Shadow Throne set, so it should have been job done. Until I remembered I'd already painted one (for Leofa), and that the big guy on the pipe is awfully similar to the current Tyranid Broodlord. 

Clippers! Greenstuff! Bitz Box! Assemble!

There was a model based on the original pic, back in the 80s, and a cracker it is too. Way out of my price range these days (which in fairness is usually any money at all), but I'm nothing if not creative. And cheap. The two together are alchemy. 

So scratching around in the box got me enough odds and ends to fashion a throne of sorts. It's made out of T'au cast-offs, in fact - some stairs from a Tidewall Droneport, and two halves of a massive shoulder gun from a Stormsurge, split and glued across the ends. Then an assortment of chains, exhaust pipes, decorative gargoyles and cult symbols, with a spare copy of the Eversor's jump ruin as the back brace. This is all tied together with my usual lack of aplomb - it's very clearly cobbled together, but that's part of its shambolic charm in my view. 

That's the emergency brake, standard on all chair lifts

He has a day job as a singer at Jabba's Palace

The big chap himself has his tail cut off, a gut made from greenstuff, a Putrid Blightking stomach and tons of spare Tyranid adrenal glands. Which, by the way, are not living up to their name. Ad from the Latin meaning 'above', Renal meaning 'Kidney' - it's a gland on top of your kidney. I mean, xenos biology isn't my field, but I'm sure their equivalent probably isn't on the outside of their body, right?

Pedantry aside, the narrative here is that the cult have been milking these external glands and bottling the juice for purposes. If you buy their coffee, make sure it's black, if you get my meaning. 

Although I've got a pair of the little Psychic Familiars, I couldn't do justice to the art without a whispering advisor. This crooked hunchback is one of many spare Neophyte torsos stuck on a pair of Dark Age Viking legs. Finding an appropriate hand was impossible, so this is crudely sculpted from an Acolyte arm with Frostgrave Barbarian Archer fingers - it gives the right impression without being particularly convincing close up. It was the absolute devil to glue together, though, two tiny fingers that wanted to bond to my life-size one far more than the hand I was trying to graft to, so this was good enough after half an hour of swearing. It looks a bit more like he's shouting than whispering discreetly, but it'll do.

Papa, can you hear me?

Overall, the Patriarch is Xaviering his chair over the battlefield, sitting on a big leather cushion and keeping his feet warm on a nice green stuff rug. It's a nice view from up there, but he clearly needs either more exercise or less food. 

There is more to come for the cult, but that's the end of the Shadow Throne box. Next - the other half of that!