Saturday 4 January 2014

Painting Progress

Hi!

Well I am busy doing a six day stretch with work with the added fun of an overnight shift during it too but I have been rummaging through my 6mm stuff for something to get on with painting until I get a day off so I can get on with sculpting stuff!

The result has left me with an intriguing possibility in the form of 40 of the old Epic Beastmen and about thirty plastic Minotaurs! Although I'd hoped to get some Orcs or Dwarves painted up first, I thought to myself I would try and get what I have painted while deciding on whether I wanted to order anything else so its looking like my first 6mm army for Aeroth will actually be the Horned Folk.

I currently have a test base almost complete and by end of play tonight hope to have it ready for a quick photo in the next day or too (daylight permitting!) and must admit that the old GW epic plastics are once again proving to be superb quality.

In the world of Aeroth, the Horned Folk are one of the near mythical Elder Races that the Elves supposedly drove into extinction during the Age of Legends some ten thousand years ago. However the Horned Folk survived after a fashion by retreating to their great Barrows, deep in the forested north east of the continent and have slumbered away the following centuries.

 Snowclad Forest

With the coming of the Death, the Horned Folk have been re-awakened and have begun to reconquer their ancestral lands from the tribes of Human Barbarians who now occupy it. This expansion has brought them into contact with both the Orcish Horde to the East and South and the Dwarves to the West and the brutish and savage nature of the Horned Folks has resulted in several border skirmishes already and full blown warfare has only been averted by the harshness of the winter.

In appearance, the Horned Folk look much like an amalgam of humanoid and great bulls. Standing up to a dozen feet high, the Horned Folk have great bull like heads, sprouting powerful horns, often adorned with intricately worked golden and bronze jewellery. 

Their bodies are covered in a coarse fur and their barrel chests and powerful limbs stand mute testimony to their physical strength. Centuries of sleeping in the cold embrace of the earth has altered many of them as tree roots have entwined themselves around their bodies and even consumed some of their elders entirely. 

Horned Folk Territory

In battle they wield heavy bladed bronze exes, maces and swords from another age and with their savage strength, they are fully capable of cleaving even a fully armoured Dwarf in two or crushing an Orcish skull with a single blow. 

Worshippers of a nameless Prince of the Fallen, the Horned Folk have no concept of peace and live for war, their great warriors wish only to slay for their god and bring slaves back to toil in their fields or fight in their armies. This attitude has not not made them popular with the Barbarians, many small tribes of whom have been slaughtered or driven into slavery but the Horned Folk are an elemental race, returned from the mists of time to reclaim an ancient empire.

Alongside their Minotaur nobles, resplendent in their bronze armour, march ranks of lesser Horned kin, smaller, man sized beastmen who serve their masters as a race of warriors. Well trained and disciplined, the Horned Kin form the bulk of raiding parties and also drive the lowly slaves into battle before them.

The centuries of sleep and invasion of trees into some of the most ancient barrows have deprived many of the elder Horned Folk of their bodies but their spirits now inhabit the soil, rocks and trees of the land and they can be raised to fight as great and terrible elemental creatures, often dwarfing even the mightiest Minotaur noble. These beings are revered as avatars of the Horned Folks god and are often adorned with small idols and their great misshapen bodies are bedecked with golden torcs, bronze breastplates inlaid with precious stones and even trophies of defeated foes.

Hopefully as I get on with the painting I will get chance to flesh out their background a bit and hope to bring a bit an overview of some of their conflicts with the other races!

All the best!



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