A New Challenge - The Cult of the New Colossus

 Well hello strangers - been quite a while since I was here last and what a time it's been! I hope this post finds those of you who still check in on this blog as well as can be. I'm afraid the Dr Who Battlefield project kind of fell by the wayside thanks to a combination of homeschooling, redecorating and work worries in the form of a restructure. Thankfully that all worked out in the end and I once more find myself furloughed and with time on my hands. 

On to pastures new...

I do have an update on the Dr Who stuff - lots of model/conversions I had fun with back in Lockdown 1.0 but no painting yet. I'll share that with you as soon as I get round to taking some WIP photos. Instead of that I present a new project as I head back to old school Warhammer fantasy. Having admired the Old World Army Challenge from afar for some time now, I’m very glad to have been able to join the noble ranks of OWAC challengers this year! If you've not heard of the challenge before head on over to the blog and acquaint yourself with the fruits of past and present entries - we've already got our January entries in. Basically the idea is to paint up an army of at least 1000 points over six months and hopefully not fall prey to the vagaries of real life or painter's block and join the fallen on the Field of Bones! My entries will of course be posted up on the OWAC blog first but once the 24 hours grace period is over I am free to share my pictures as I see fit. If you haven't already then please do follow the OWAC blog and check out the Facebook group - the more traffic there the better!

The following is a reproduction of my introduction post on the OWAC blog - in future months I won't be just copying and pasting stuff from there to here as that seems a little redundant. Where applicable I'll be going in to a little more detail on the paint schemes, techniques, background, etc than I might on the official site to save waffling on too much there!

Now I have only really dabbled very slightly with the Ruinous Powers previously, having always been drawn more to the boisterous world of Orcdom. That being said, I have somehow managed to amass a large tub of Chaos miniatures over the years and now seems like as good a time as any to paint them. You may notice that the army I propose to paint over the next six months is rather large and exceeds the suggested points values for each month of the challenge. Lunacy? More than likely. Hubris? Maybe just a little. Actually it’s more to do with my desire to paint them all up together to attempt some sort of cohesion across the army as I really dislike trying to match in paint schemes having returned to a project months or years later. I’ll be concentrating on the more human elements of the army for the challenge so if I do run behind the targets I’m setting myself, it’ll be the more “exotic” elements like the larger Chaos creatures that will have to be done at a later date but we’ll see how we go on.

I have some fairly comprehensive ideas on theme for this army - probably thanks to extended time spent on furlough throughout the year. More by accident and the fickle whim of the great God Ebay, I have ended up with a predominantly human Chaos army, with far fewer Chaos Warriors and Demons than you would maybe otherwise see. This certainly works for me in terms of the pathetic aesthetic and I much prefer this kind of low fantasy and sinister  side of Chaos (as can be found in WFRP) than the overblown, daemonic riot of colour that Realms of Chaos can be - not that there’s owt wrong with that!

My original intention had been to create a Chaos horde much like that depicted in the illustration above from the 3rd ed. rule book. I still intend to kitbash those awesome skull faced soldiers at some point in the future as part of this army but figured that would be a bit too much work for this challenge what with everything else on my plate! My general will still be modelled on the Dragon rider to give the army a splash of high fantasy among the lowly ranks. However In terms of background for this project, due to the large number of cultists and thugs making up its ranks, I wanted to go in a slightly different direction. Whilst pondering the matter, the phrase, “huddled masses” kept popping up. I had thought it was from TS Eliot’s The Wasteland but had misremembered the line - 

“ Who are those hooded hordes swarming

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth”

Definitely the sort of imagery I had in mind for the army, however, it turns out that the huddled masses in question are from the poem, The New Colossus, which was written by Emma Lazarus to raise money for a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, which incidentally can still be found cast in bronze, on said pedestal. The full verse goes,

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

What does a poem about the Statue of Liberty have to do with an old school Chaos army I hear you ask? Well, I’ll start with the disclaimer that using these lines as inspiration for a horde of Chaos worshipping lunatics wasn’t necessarily intended to be political satire on my part. although I guess it could be read as such. Rather I felt those well intentioned words could take on suitably sinister overtones were they to come from some insidious Demon of Chaos, rather than a benevolent 93m tall Champion of Law! For me that was always the appeal of Chaos - the slow and inevitable corruption of order from the inside out, as wonderfully illustrated on the cover to the Shadows Over Bogenhafen campaign for WFRP. 

I didn’t really want to dedicate my army to any of the four better known Chaos Powers and The New Colossus actually sounded like a suitably creepy name for a new minor Chaos God or better still, a Daemon Prince, perhaps with ambitions of attaining Godhood. Lovecraft has featured regularly amongst the audiobooks I listen to whilst painting and The Horror at Red Hook, albeit some of his less tolerant work, has been particularly influential for me, with its secret cults, poverty-stricken slums and secret rites invoking all manner of eldritch horror. Why not transplant that idea from 1920’s New York to the Old World? The Cult of the New Colossus opens its arms wide to all those shunned by the Empire and Bretonnia because they are different. Race, colour creed or wealth (or lack thereof!) have no bearing in the cult - all that is required is the renewing of the old ways, the passing on of knowledge of forbidden things and preparing the way for the return of the New Colossus.

The idea further cemented itself whilst searching for suitable models for the war altar I have planned. I’d ended up with quite the motley collection of evil priests, anti-clerics and various hooded and dubious looking wizards - ideal for a cabal of cult leaders who had perhaps once been good and upstanding members of the clergy, intelligentsia, or perhaps even state-sanctioned wizards - now sadly seduced and all too willing to beckon others more vulnerable or gullible than themselves to be drawn moth-like to the bright light of Chaos.

The horror... The horror... Six months of solid painting with monthly deadlines!

Along with this idea of the huddled masses flocking to the banner of Chaos, I’ll be throwing in references and themes from some of my favourite writers. Konrad’s Heart of Darkness, the aforementioned The Wasteland by TS Eliot, along with his poem The Hollow Men and Ginsberg’s The Howl provide a perfect, if somewhat grim depiction of the psyche and motivation of the army. As also mentioned, the work of Lovecraft forms a suitably creepy backdrop of secret cults working tirelessly to wake things that were better left sleeping. Oh and I’ll be stealing the odd line here and there from these literary giants for banner and shield designs!

One of Beksinski's beautiful nightmares - From the Mouth of Doom

In terms of colour palette and mood, I’ll be looking to the likes of Achilleos, Frazetta and Beksinski. If I can master the air brush I’ve had sat around for a while now, I hope to develop my painting a bit further by attempting a few new techniques like air brush glazing and bounce lighting to achieve the look I want across the army. 

Achilleos' Who's Next - the colour palette I'm after!

Musically, the likes of The Sword, Judas Priest and Lift to Experience have had an influence on the army theme too - more through the lyrics to their songs than the style of their music, although who doesn’t love the classic combination of Metal and Chaos? Of course album cover art from theirs and a few other Metal bands will no doubt inspire a few banner and shield designs.

So there we have it - a Chaos cult masquerading as a new quasi-religious/political organisation, standing up for the common man and railing against the old outdated and unfair system of Human society, whilst secretly working to summon up foul and ancient things long forgotten. Its ranks are filled with the weak-minded, dispossessed and desperate, fully convinced that the path they have chosen is both the right and the righteous one. The “tired, poor and  wretched refuse” mentioned in Lazarus’ poem will become the large human element in my army - homeless and tempest-tost, rejected or forgotten by their own society and driven straight in to the welcoming arms of a dark God. I give you the Cult of The New Colossus holding up that irresistible lamp to the golden door that promises to open the way to freedom, justice and glory...

General 504

Freder Van Moloch 

Chaos Knight mounted on Dragon

Heavy armour, hand weapon, shield

Unfortunately the Dragon I ordered from Ral Partha came with two back feet so he's still in bits! There is a front foot on its way as we speak from the ever helpful folk at RPE Europe...

L15 Chaos Sorcerer on foot 155

Zauber Verlockung the Allurer

With Familiar

12 Mounted Chaos Warriors 1344

Baphomir and his Knights Exemplar 

Chaos Steeds, Standard, heavy armour, shields, barding, lances, hand weapons

12 Chaos Warriors on foot 962

The False Knights on the Road

Heavy armour, shields, hand weapons, standard

28 Thugs led by a Marauder 282

Kurtz and his Hollow Men

Light armour, hand weapons, shields, standard

18 Cultists of the Red Redemption 259

Marauder leader and Champion, standard, musician, light armour, shields, flails

14 Thug archers 222

Giudas Preest and his Leather Rebels

Marauder leader and Champion, standard, musician, light armour, bows, hand weapons

10 Minotaurs 506

Pasiphae’s Brood

Hand weapons, standard

Led by L10 Hero - light armour double handed weapon

30 Beastmen 521

The Flock

L10 hero, standard, musician, light armour, shields

20 Beastmen 521

The Herd

L10 hero, standard, musician, light armour, shields

7 Chaos Centaurs 464

Chiron’s Children

L10 hero, light armour, hand weapons, shields

1 Chaos Beastmaster 133

Heavy armour, hand weapon

5 Chaos Hounds

Chaos Host 550

1 Jabberwock

1 Cockatrice

1 Hydra

1 Dragon Ogre?

Baggage Train and War Altar

War Altar with Daemonic portal and assorted cultists, worshippers and materialised Daemon Prince - The New Colossus

Evil Wizard on litter

Beast of burden

Army Total - 5616

And finally my humble offering to our beneficent Overlord - our way of thanking Iannick for all the hard work that goes in to running the OWAC each year.