The Unknown update

Today, I finished a significant model for my Nurgle force, The Unknown. That model is the Lord of Contagion model from the Dark Imperium box. You can see I have made some small conversions to the model. I trimmed off everything that contained plumes of smoke, as I am not a fan of that kind of thing on models. I left it on my Dark Angel Interrogator Chaplain, as it works on that model, but it's hard to make smoke, fire and other elemental effects look realistic. I swapped one of the censers for a skull, which matches up nicely with the skull near his left heel. I also trimmed the monstrosity off the top. I feel the model now has a more muted look typical of the Death Guard. 

Like a lot of people, I never liked the cartoonish way that the GW team painted the models for the promotional images. I also have a very grimdark colour scheme for the plague zombie models, and so the Lord of Contagion was never going to be painted in bright colours. Instead, I went for a base colour of grey, with tan and green thrown around the model. I've never been a fan of blood and guts on models, but it's kind of obligatory on Nurgle models now, so I painted the guts with red, pink horror and a wash of red. I then added, having just bought it for the first time, a dash of Blood for the Blood God. It really does look like blood in the pot! That turned out quite well, I think. I kept the trampled nurglings quite muted, so you can't really make them out well. I prefer them as something you have to look for, rather than a focal point. The base, like that of the zombies, is fairly bare - just a couple of spent cartridges litter the floor, lending a bleak feel to the model.

Will he be joined by more plague marines? Probably not! The story behind The Unknown is that this character, Lord Knar, was a member of the Death Guard, but he felt their ambitions were too vainglorious and so he left the Death Guard. He wandered off during a battle, slay the crew of a Thunderhawk and flew off to lead a more humble existence, sewing death and plague wherever he went. Where he goes, he turns humans into plague zombies, and they now inhabit his Thunderhawk and follow him into battle. He visits unknown and under-populated worlds, slowly walking through the streets, cutting apart local defence militias and waiting for them to reanimate as skulking abominations of the Plague God. He refuses to fight alongside other space marines, as he finds them too ambitious. He turns his back on them, fading into a cloud of mist and flies...