Gallery of the Swamps

Here is a gallery of all the miniatures I made for the Swamps of Axxos Inquisitor campaign. It is very unusual for me to make so many miniatures in just two months, but I got kind of carried away… As I had some pretty tight deadlines for the days we had agreed on to play the games, I sometimes got under quite a lot of pressure to finish the stuff. There’s nothing like a deadline to force you to complete a project. It has been great fun to do these. This whole project has been quite a journey for me and very educational, both in making the minis, writing and just playing the game, digging deeper into that part of it as well. I must confess that right after the last game I really needed to do something else, it goes like that when you get fully immersed in something and then finish it… The story itself have a bunch of deliberate loose ends, so I might get back to Axxos in the future, at least I hope so. I even have some unfinished miniatures from this campaign, it would be a shame to not finish them and play a little game with them.

Enough talk, I’ve taken a lot of pictures of the minis here they come:

The Swampgrubbers

I aim at introducing the pictures in the order that they showed up in our game

Inquisitor Stefan of Meteora

This is Lazar’s player character and what a great job he did building him and painting him. I’ve included this picture of Stefan out of a sense of completeness. He is at the moment the only one of the players’ miniatures I have a proper picture of. When I get the chance to photograph the rest of the players’ miniatures, I will make a post showcasing them properly.

Mayor Ugh of Swampgrubbertown

The boatman

Mamma Norma, Wise woman of Swampgrubbertown, Along with Ugh, the only one in possession of at least a little bit of intelligence

The priestess of Swampgrubbertown. She know everything, she know how to skin fish. She is in possession of forbidden and obscure knowledge and hence quite unhinged. The swampgrubbers couldn’t bear to listen to her ramblings, so they sewed her mouth shut. Holy woman.

The Marshal of Swampgrubbertown, You better behave!

 

Deputy

The other deputy

The marshal of Swampgrubbertown and his two deputies

Here come the escaped pitfighters, killing swampgrubbers by the droves:

The pitslaves; Them big psychoes!

To tell the truth, I did not have time to finish a batch of pitfighters for the first game, so I had to borrow from my cabinet. These are actually Bolg and Golg from my radical inquisitor Dominic Cisnerro’s retinue. These have been touched by chaos, but Dominic has halted the process somehow and are now using them for his own purposes, fight fire with fire… They have escaped from Dominic and ended up in another captivity as pitfighters, there they hooked up with a nameless, mute chronogladiator and escaped. With the arbites and their former owner hot on their heels, there was only one place to run to; the Swamps of Axxos, there they terrorized the swampgrubbers.

Bolg. On the left we can see his stimm injectors, he would have been a monster in close combat. On the right we can see that he is actually the property of the Inquisition.

Golg, Bolg’s twin brother. An autocannon is an unusual weapon for a pit slave, he might have had a chainfist in the pit, but stolen the cannon after their escape, A good weapon in a pinch.

 

The poor doomed chronogladiator.

Let’s sail across the lake and enter the swamps proper.

The beastmen, created by the Hermit

In reality all the beastmen and the big guardian creatures are cyborgs, made to imitate life and intelligence. The Hermit created them and many other, the swamps are crawling with them, to protect himself and to have some company. He did not want them to be human because of the betrayal of old, so he made them like this. They did not turn out quite as he had envisioned either and eventually the cultists and their psyker turned the beastmen against their creator and used them for their own nefarious purposes.

Alfa male Askur, consort of Helga, with grenade launcher

Sickly ratman with autogun

Snail creature

Beastcaller, sort of a shaman of the beastmen. He can control the big beasts of the swamps.

Predator

Pregnant Helga with her cyber rat bodyguard

Murderer of fake knights. Both snail creatures have electro flail weapons in their mechanical tentacles.

 

The Hermit and his guardian creatures

The slug thing. All my own sculpt except from the mouth which is from a Nurgle maggoth.

More angles

The Hermit’s special servoskull, which sat dormant on Ugh’s staff, woke up and let the inquisitors to the Hermit

The Hermit 

Dragon snake guardian creature

It vomits acid

All mine own sculpt except from the mouth and vomit which is from a maggoth, great kits with lots extra bits.

 

Now we move on to part two at the central Pillar in the center of the swamps.

The cultists of Nurgle and poor Ezekiah crucified

The death cult assassin, out for Gralum’s head

More death cult

After the game I’ve refined the paint job on the Death Cult assassin as it was a very rough and rudimentary paint job originally. I have a way of painting where I very fast get to a point where the miniature is basically finished and fully ready for the tabletop. After that it is merely a matter of refining the paint job and add details, to make it really stand out. Many of the miniatures for this game have had that extra attention, but not all. Some of them aren’t worth any extra attention, but some really need to be refined or I feel like they deserves to be improved. The assassin was one such.

An older miniature from my collection; a fallen Imperial guard beastman, kind of a spin on those very old Rogue Trader era Imperial guard beastmen. In reality just a mutant, perfect for this scenario.

Cultist no 2. Renegade militia from the Siege of Vraks. Another one from my collection. I made him as a test piece back in 2011 when I was working on my Siege of Vraks diorama “Fire on my position” for Golden Demon UK that year. There were these renegade militia soldiers on the diorama and I made this one as a color test before I painted the ones to go on the diorama. It is also one of my very first efforts at OSL my second I think…

I needed new cultists as well, so I painted this very old Warhammer FB cultist up for the occasion.

This one was lying dead in a bits box, missing his right arm, I can’t remember where I have used his arm. I resurrected him, gave him a new arm, a stub gun and a shield…another cultist done!

Demagogue for the chaos cultists, someone needs to keep them informed of the truth of their beliefs… I had this set of Forge World apostate preachers in my stash for years, just waiting for an excuse to be painted….

The banner bearer of the apostate preachers, in this instance he is a psyker, the brains in the operation and the one to torture Ezekiah, run the ritual and try to open the warp gate. Very fast paintjob for him and his demagoue partner, I might return to them at a later date with a little TLC…

Poor Ezekiah hanging on his cross. I sculpted him in one day. Not a perfect sculpt, I know, his legs are too short, his hands are too big and his arms too thin though he is emaciated. Everything about him is a little rough, which is ok I think. I am very proud of what I could achieve in one day. I got a little keen on this sculpting thing, I think I will do more of that in the future.

Ezekiah in decent clothes, for when the players have rescued him.

The whole thing started with this Ezekiah figure and the small snail thing, I got the idea that he was abducted, where would such a snail live and where would he take an astropath? The ideas just started to flow.

The swamp explorator team including their true leader

It was great fun to use to betray a player, it opened up a lot of opportunities for storytelling and enabled me to swap the henchmen of the betrayed player with the Hermit, so the players got to control him and his tower for the last part of the game.

Bob

Katafron Alfa 111001100

Dark tech Magos Beta 101 Known as the Assistant, lackey to the Doctor Epsilon 1110101

The plague marine bodyguard of the cultists

This one was only finished in the slightest way possible the night before the game… The miniature had been sitting on my shelf almost completely built for 3 years. He really deserved a proper paint job. To make a true scale marine I used the legs and back part of the body of a tartaros pattern terminator. An idea I got from my friend Thomas Kyrsting, who have made a bunch of such guys. I’ve trashed the armor with a motor tool and sculpted more chaos like metal trim everywhere, sculpted stomach and many details. This miniature deserved a proper paint job. I had the monday off, I work every other weekend, so I get some week days off, I almost repainted the whole thing monday, added a lot of details and added a lot of special effects. As I neared completion I noticed that he looked a lot like Romans Death guard plague marine on Massive Voodoo, so I added the water filter balls as orange bobble things and slime like he did, as a sort of homage. 😉

Freehand and special effects

Last but not least, the fabulous walking Tower of the Hermit

I did a little extra painting, weathering, detailing and water effects after the first game.

The servitors installed on the outside, I imagine there are a lot more inside.

Derelict old turret, only a real magos can make it work again

Water and nature everywhere

 

Size comparison

It’s been such a great journey and I am so proud of what I have achieved with this whole project. I need a little break from I28 at the moment to do something else and to sort of digest this whole experience but I will soon be back with more. I am sure there are more worlds to explore out there and I personally need to revisit the swamps once more.

The whole story of this project are here: Something brewing in the swamps, Prelude, In search of the Hermit, Interlude and Into madness

https://www.instagram.com/simonsen.1974/

Not only Secrets of the Void stuff there on instagram, as it is my personal account, but I put a lot of the stuff up there that I work on, so you find this and other projects there, check it out.

Thanks for looking

Kristian Simonsen