Chaos Squats 40K Special Character Chikibi Chhattisgarh, Hungry Ghosts Gunnery Sergeant, Volume II: The Title-Lengthening

Back from a word from our sponsor, but still scatterbrained. When Hungry Ghosts was in college, wearing our sponsoring Pantera Cowboys from Hell shirt, he was friends with a professor who enjoyed discussing Greco-Roman architecture (cause that was his job) and one such discussion topics was the "Yeshua ben Pantera" theory. For those lacking in Semitic linguistics skills, that means "Jesus, son of Pantera". 
The "Jesus, son of Pantera" theme had been in religious studies since the 2nd Century AD, and 'twas for centuries dismissed as pagan lies.
 Then came the construction of the Bingerbrück Hauptbahnhof at (for the time) the boundary of the Großherzogtum Hessen and the Rheinprovinz of Preußen in the late 1850s. This turned up a Roman cemetery containing a burial marker with an inscription belonging to a Roman soldier bearing the name

Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera

From Sidon, a city well known in biblical days, including for its place in Jesus's preaching tour of the region. Who is said to have lived 62 years, with 40 years of service in the Imperial Legions. But little else is known. Hungry Ghosts is also watching Die Römer im Südwesten (Germany) right now. Which is where Bingerbrück is. One of those places that are important that you've never heard of, Bingerbrück was the target of at least 7 major bombing missions in WW2.

 

Before...

 

 After.

Bingerbrück is the link from the left-bank Rhine railway to the Nahe valley railway, should one desire to travel from Mainz to Metz. Which is perhaps a surprisingly popular thing to do, or to prevent others from doing. Even the Swedes attacked in 1632.

Now that we have mentally traveled from the southeast frontier to the northwest frontier of Imperial Rome, when we last saw Chikibi ... he had been spontaneously mutated into another character,
Marbo Machinder

"strength in purity" the dwarf with the necrotic arm disagrees

 

There he is, coming through the door...

 

Here we have the left shooty-side of Chikibi. He is wielding a Las Pistol from the old Rogue Trader Squat/Imperial Guard weapons sprues (yes, sometimes someone actually uses one of them). Of course Las Pistols mostly suck, so Chikibi's humanoid wrist is wrapped with grenades...

 

 ...all the way...

...around.

Now you're thinking "Hey, sure he's got four arms, but two of the three others have skull-crushing claws and the other has a gun so big it needs its own character sheet strapped to it. So what's he going to do with those grenades?"

If Chikibi is somehow reduced to relying on his grenades, he will use his Chaos Gift of Sheer Anger to ram that fist into whatever passes for a mouth of whatever put him in the state of Sheer Anger, always hits/no saves, and pops the pins with his Willpower.

He's been told the arm will grow back. It will grow back.

The weird shape of Chikibi's shoulder-region made finding the right bit of armor not a problem at all, because I used another piece from the Ancient Skeleton Army sprues.

Cavalry armor breastplate!

http://solegends.com/citcat19912/c20334plasticskelarmy-02.htm

Didn't even have to change the rotation from the sprue.

So our crunchy-crunchy claw-arm has a wide range of movement available through the waist ridge of the plate, while the las-grenade arm pokes out as intended by the Undead, the left arm side. Chikibi's head can rotate about thanks to the curved edge for the right arm, and his rounded sack full of sugarplums and children's dreams is accommodated by the neck section. A frame joined unto a fearful symmetry.

 

The symbol on the breastplate is a variant of one of the Hungry Ghosts symbols:

But even with the smallest tip pen, it still looks a bit crammed, and is nigh impossible to photograph well.

Here we have an older picture, before the addition of the symbol. It is not terribly satisfactory either, with its expanse of red. So what to do here...

More pictures: With The Grudge Master

 

 Catchin' Orks

 

 Combating the Other Green Menace,

well, mostly brown, in this case.

The Grudge Master fears no flame.

Winters afoot...

A Word From Our Sponsor With The Grudge Master

Hungry Ghosts is cranky today due to elevated pain levels that are being very resistant to combative maneuvers. So we will take a small excursion to focus on one of the background players on the Hungry Ghosts team (literally).

 Continuing the tradition of using ancient t-shirts that no longer fit, this year's Hungry Ghosts troopers have been displayed on a 1992 Pantera Cowboys From Hell shirt.

 Wie So... our former field of battle was a Judas Priest Painkiller shirt, from 1990.

But this Rider of the Metal Monster, Breathing Smoke and Fire, due to incarnation in form of a nylon-cotton blend, got rather icky after two years in a basement apartment in Chicago.

The replacement comes from the tour supporting Pantera's second album, Vulgar Display of Power.

This album was renown for, in addition to general awesomeness, the name of its 4th song. Coincidentally, such is the default mood for the Hungry Ghosts army. Though The Grudge Master confidently brings it to a new level of power.

 Purchased at the September 4 1992 concert at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan (opening act, a then-unknown White Zombie), Hungry Ghosts wore this shirt at the start of his orientation at college the following day.

This shirt is also the "Diamond" / "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott Memorial Shirt. A powerful influence on the heavy metal guitar sound for over a decade, Dimebag was murdered by an audience member at a Damageplan concert in December 2004 in Columbus Ohio. Three others were killed and seven wounded among the band and audience who did not refrain from acting:

The gunman,  Nathan Gale, shot Abbott 3 times to the head, the third shot killing him instantly. Gale continued shooting, killing three others and wounding a further seven. Gale fired a total of fifteen shots, stopping to reload once and remaining silent throughout the shooting.

Jeff "Mayhem" Thompson, the band's head of security, was killed tackling Gale, as was Alrosa Villa [concert hall] employee Erin Halk. Audience member Nathan Bray was killed while trying to perform CPR on Abbott and Thompson. It was rumored that one crowd member leapt in front of the gunman, saving the lives of several band members. Damageplan drum technician, John "Kat" Brooks, was shot three times as he attempted to get the gun away from Gale, but was overpowered and taken hostage in a headlock position. Tour manager Chris Paluska was also injured.

Seven police officers came in the front entrance, led by Officer Rick Crum, and moved toward the stage. Officer James Niggemeyer came in through the back door, behind the stage. Gale only saw the officers in front of the stage; he didn't see Officer Niggemeyer, who was armed with a shotgun. He approached Gale from the opposite side of the stage to avoid hitting the hostage and fired a single shot just as Gale looked towards Niggemeyer, striking Gale in the face. 

(Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimebag_Darrell).

 

Continuing the spiral of history, Dimebag Darrell and the other members of Pantera recorded Light Comes Out of the Black with Rob Halford of Judas Priest for the 1992 soundtrack to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.