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...

Chaos Squats Get a Big Red APC Soviet Army Surplus!

The Hungry Ghosts have adopted a Big Red Armored Personnel Carrier from the defunct Soviet Union. Purchased from the Red Army's Annual 1 May International Worker's Day to 8 May Victory in Europe Day Red-Tag Sale, it is a welcomed addition that has soothed Hungry Ghost's lingering sadness at never getting a Star Wars Rebel Cruiser or a GI Joe APC while a Beardling. But the first foreign nation Hungry Ghosts went to was the USSR. You can still buy a Rebel Cruiser, but you can't do that anymore.

 Here we see the Burnt Scorpions Storm Troopers charging from the rear to battle some pesky Eldar. The more observant webizens may notice that there are more Burnt Scorpions than in the past, but we'll get to that later.

 Our APC is made from a Soviet T-34/85 hull. Our T-34 was designed in the late 1930s and hit the front lines of The Great Patriotic War (aka the eastern front of World War II) in 1940. Designed by Mikhail Koshkin and Alexander Morozov, the T-34 is the tank with the 2nd largest production number of any tank (the T-54/55 is first) and is still in use by Terran armies today.

This T-34/85 was transformed for the Warhammer 40K universe as an APC by using a 1/35 scale model (compared to the roughly 1/72 scale for Warhammer). The turret was replaced with 3 smaller 1/76 Sherman Tank turrets, and the original main cannon was shortened and placed in the front. Assorted Warhammer guns and vehicle bits were added as well.

 This produced a vehicle that a bunch of Squats could plausibly fit in. Unlike certain other Bag-of-Holding 40K transports.


All of this work was done by Time DuPertuis of Armorcast, originally intended for Ork use, but we will not hold that against him.

What is nice about the T-34/85 conversion is that it has a symmetry unmatched by other military vehicles looked at by Hungry Ghosts on eBay and elsewhere. 


The length is about 2x the width, the width is about 2x the height, which is about equally divided between tracks and armor. The hull is about equally divided between the front Dakka-Dakka zone and the rear Berserker-Box zone. The angle of slope of the front and rear armor is also symmetrical. 

This 4-fold symmetry of 1:2 relationships yields the number 8, the number of arrows in the Chaos Star and the Sacred Number of Khorne. And thus we shall name our APC The Mouth of Khorne.

 So what does all this accomplish? Fulfillment of Hungry Ghost's desire to have a land-version of the Korean Turtle-Ships (Geobukseon or Kobukson) used against Japanese invasions by the legendary Admiral Yi Sun-sin in the late 16th century. They were based on 15th century Turtle-Ships, and intended for use as a close-assault vessel.

Here we see another Turtle-Ship. There is debate as to whether Geobukseon were the first ironclad vessels used, but no debate that they had lots of spikes and dragon heads attached to the front that released noxious smoke or cannon fire. Dragon heads and lots of spikes are mandatory for any armored vehicle in the Legios Moriad XIV, so the final form of The Mouth of Khorne will more closely resemble the mighty turtle.


The Hungry Ghosts will tolerate no comments about Dwarfs and Turtles sharing speed-impairments; all comparisons shall be regarding powerful armor and an ability to traverse even the roughest of terrains.

Another view of the Burnt Scorpions emerging from The Mouth of Khorne. Hungry Ghosts is still not sure what the final carrying capacity for the APC will be. But it probably won't be finished for a couple of years, so there is time to think about that. A Chaos Squat equivalent to the Imperial Crassus Armored Assault Transport may be thing to do.

One more just because.

Learn more about Geobukseon here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_ship