Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale

Hi, I'm Gretchin and I'm a Sword Art Online-aholic.

Actually, anyone that knows me will tell you that I am very fond of anime, but SAO is very much a favourite. It's not the best anime by a long stretch and many of its critics will cite that it's commercialised tripe, that it's a very prosaic concept, that Reki Kawahara's other work (Accel World) is better, that Log Horizon is better, but I love it. I even have my own steel-replica Elucidator, collect the light novels and my Elven Exiles are all based on SAO characters (as they appear in ALO).

Yeah, I know, I need help.

I mean it does have its faults: it's criticised as being sexist, that the characters display unrealistic psychology, that the dynamic between the characters is stilted and that it sometimes trivialises the situation the characters are in with mundanities. Personally, I found it an emotional rollercoaster that had me crying quite a few times (the end of the Mothers Rosario arc had me in pieces).

Anyway, you can guess how excited I am to see the new film Ordinal Scale which is due for general release in the UK and USA on June 29th. Until then, the trailer will have to suffice.

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Ennui and on Matters Alien

So, lately I've been doing nothing. Well, maybe not 'nothing', but aside from listlessly pottering about on some commissions and slowly working on two miniatures for the Oldhammer Legacy project, I really haven't had the inspiration or motivation to engage in the hobby. The recent inclemently humid weather hasn't helped either.

(This is the point where my diatribe rambles off on tangents that will come together in the end)

I love telling stories. When I was first introduced to the worlds of the 40K universe, I held a particular love for the little fiction-bites you would find in the rulebooks and codices of the 2nd Ed era (especially the very funny short in the Ork Codex when they try to use a weirdboy to psychically probe an Imperial Titan). Yet perhaps it was the tiny panel-short in White Dwarf 195 in their Legion of the Damned article that really sparked off my imagination.

When I entered secondary school, I was lucky enough to find a very old and seldom used computer set-up in a dusty corner of the library that had since been supplanted by a shiny new bank of Windows 95 PCs. It had a black-and-green monochrome interface and a very basic word processor program. I spent many a breaktime on that computer, typing out little bits of fiction (whatever ideas came into my head) and letting my creativity run riot. I remember these were absolutely terrible and prosaic, but they were my first steps.

Four years later, when I moved out of my parents house and into my first bedsit, I was kindly donated a long obsolete Windows 3.2 PC set-up and spent many an evening with the television quietly muttering in the background, tapping out short story after short story (sadly all lost now).

I was first introduced to the shadowy organisation of the Inquisition in Ian Watson's Inquisition War trilogy (Boxtree edition) and in the very hot month of May in 2001, I was one of the first to pick up my copy of Inquisitor (the book and figures pack - the one that came with Covenant and Preacher Yosef)... since then I've created so many Inquisitors, belonging to many different Ordos and adhering to many different philosophies... but never one belonging to the Ordo Xenos.

I can't really lay my finger onto why this might be, but if pushed, I'd have to say that I find the Ordo Xenos less interesting than their adversaries. Sure, they can use xenos weaponry, but they're less hazardous or damning than daemon weapons and their characters just seemed less 'complicated' than their Malleus and Hereticus colleagues. Heck, even Eisenhorn and Ravenor, despite belonging to the Ordo Xenos, didn't seem to do much alien hunting in their stories.

When Shadow Wars: Armageddon was announced, the knee-jerk cynic in me instantly came to the conclusion that GW had been lazy in rereleasing (essentially) Necromunda but without producing any new models. However, that voice was swiftly silenced as I came to the realisation that GW had actually released a skirmish game that anyone with a 40k army already could join in with.

Since then, I've seen some very funky warbands being built, especially those made by Oldhammerers using RT era miniatures. I've also been reintroducing myself to the Alien universe in preparation for the new film, so when GW released PDFs for the other 40k factions, naturally I drafted up a tyranids warband (just waiting on miniatures). I also glanced at the Inquisition PDF too (which I believe was published later) and pretty much dismissed it because it focused solely on the Ordo Xenos, but it bubbled away regardless in the back of my mind.

Almost a decade ago now, I and a friend on the Conclave (back when the board was still black-and-green monochrome) concocted a grand IC xenos conspiracy story that sadly never came to fruition as it became a little too convoluted and we both had very busy real lives. Anyway, in this grand conspiracy, my characters were operating as the antagonists, but a few days ago, it got me thinking about what it would be like to be on the other side of that curtain and the first seeds of a protagonist were planted....

So what has this got to do with anything at all? In a round about way, I guess it means I'm currently designing my first Ordo Xenos inquisitor. I'm downscaling the original conspiracy to something less complicated (seriously, you'd have to a mind like Alpharius to join the dots of the original), working on character background and finding a suitable miniature....

Watch this space!

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Prototype Avalonnian Knight

The general background is still being sketched out, so it's just pictures for now. He stands a little shy shorter than the Stormcast. Hope he passes muster in this new Age of Sigmar.

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Jovan Voortdurend – A DAoS Witch Hunter

The rise of the witch hunter in the Mortal Realms came out of necessity at the beginning of the Age of Chaos when the isolated settlements of man needed champions armed with both the knowledge and weapons to fight the dark forces of the ruinous powers. Indeed, the term ‘witch hunter’ has become something of a misnomer considering their foes include not only witches, but also the predations of daemons, cultists, rat men, the various forms of the undead and a thousand other cthonic entities that have risen in the apocalypse.

Neither was it just individual hunters that answered the call in defense of the Mortal Realms, but rather, as the millennia passed, whole family dynasties of hunters came to be. Relying on the foundations of wisdom from their ancestors, certain hunter bloodlines became infamous across all eight realms, each family armed with their own weapons, knowledge and creed. Indeed, each realm can be said to have influenced each family in the ways they wage war against their enemies: those in the realm of Shyish utilise bells, those in the realm of Hysh use mirrors and captured light, those in the realm of Aqshy wield weapons of purified flame, and so on.

Nor is the knowledge base universal amongst the dynasties for each often hold massive libraries filled with unique tomes of lore reflecting their individualistic creeds. For some are more than willing to utilise the blasphemous magicks and weapons of their enemies against them, whilst others are staunchly against such a practice; citing reasons from the robustly pragmatic to the fervently dogmatic. Similarly, not all families are solely devoted to the grace of Sigmar, but will often call upon the forgotten gods of order (and sometimes to other deities or pantheons of a more ambiguous alignment) for aid in their works.

Jovan Voortdurend belongs to a fractured bloodline of what is often referred to by the other dynasties as a “Ragged House of Vagabonds”. Despite his acerbic nature, his tattered demeanor and his ‘whatever it takes’ attitude to his work, he is an incredibly proficient hunter. Armed with a vast pool of knowledge and variety of esoteric weapons, he earns very few friends amongst his peers for his creed, but his results cannot be argued against; even if most say he walks a dark path and is bound to fall off the edge soon enough.

John Blanche's Pyratii of the Voodoo Forest - Gunwhayle

So, two months ago, I proposed on the INQ28 Facebook group the idea of doing something artistic in the 40mm scale based perhaps on the popular Femme Militant miniatures. Instead, Mr Blanche commented that perhaps I should look to making something more piratical for his own Voodoo Forest setting.

She was actually finished just over a fortnight ago, but I hadn't gotten around to taking some (rather terrible) photos of her until yesterday. She ended up being quite a few firsts for me (such as her pistol) and in the end she became something of personal vignette of myself. Unintentionally, I might add, although I do worry that my posterior really is that....large.

I called her Gunwhayle, spelled in that typical Blanchean way, for a nautical nod.

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Efrafan Warrior

♫ A long long time ago, I can still remember, when Games Workshop only had five stores ♫

Actually I can't, because this harkens back to the misty age of 1983, some months before I was born when the Manchester store first opened it's doors and they give away this very cute little miniature to celebrate: a unique Broo variant for Runequest.

Photo courtesy of Solegends

Some six years later, being a very precocious child obsessed with mythology (mostly Greek at that point), I was given my first 'choose your own adventure' book entitled; Steeleye and the Lost Magic.

Now this gem of a book was filled with some rather macabre and dark illustrations that may well have sparked my first interest in the larger fantasy genre. However, despite the years that have passed, this particular illustration has stayed with me.

I don't know why this particular illustration stayed with me above all the others in the book, but it's one I have been meaning to emulate in miniature form for a while. After a few false starts a year ago, I put it on the back burner until the DAoS movement started recently and I was inspired to give it another go.

 

The Efrafan (a name appropriated from Watership Down by Richard Adams) are native to the Realm of Ghur and, as warriors of Order, they are currently embattled in the bitter and protracted Underwarren War against the Skaven.

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Minimalism in AoS28

Okay, so perhaps I should start by explaining a little on what AoS28 is.

Following on from the successes of the INQ28 movement and it's ethos in exploring the darker, forgotten corners of the 41st Millennium and the people who dwell within. AoS28 proposes the same ideals, but naturally, focussing on the Mortal Realms following the cataclysmic events of the Age of Chaos. Inspired by the likes of that which came before (such as Mordheim), AoS28 seeks to move the action away from the frontline 'big battles' and discover what happened to those poor souls that did not have a safe haven in which to wait out the apocalypse. Coupled with the Blanchesque aesthetic that proved very popular in the INQ28 circles, AoS28 attempts to move away from the 'luminescent' vision of the Mortal Realms promoted by Games Workshop and instead delve into a much darker pastiche.

Okay, onto explaining what I mean by 'minimalism'.

Instead of the art/music movement popular in the 20th Century, what I mean by minimalism is rather the characters in the Mortal Realms that represent the 'Man on the Clapham Omnibus'. Now, the Blanchesque aesthetic, especially in miniatures, normally includes loading characters up with all sorts of trinkets, gewgaws, furs and such, treading that fine line between what is artistic and what is overloading. But what about turning that philosophy on it's head?

That is what I mean by minimalism, the dichotomy of the heroic in the simplistic. Compared the grand armies fighting on the front line, in these forgotten corners that the AoS28 ethos espouses, the lowly spearman would become the mightiest of heroes, defending the boarders of their besieged little niche. Essentially, with minimalism, I ask how would I (or anyone living an 'ordinary' life) fare should the forces of Chaos suddenly rampage about my doorstep? What kind of weapons could I find in my own home? What kind of armour, if any?

With minimalism in mind, gone are the mightiest heroes to be replaced by Fred Bloggs armed with a kitchen knife tied to a broom handle. Gone are powerful archmages to be replaced with Jane Doe the hedge witch and her bag of petty magicks.

Just a thought.

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