Cult Enos - Vastarian

Intro

Saturday morning, I should be sleeping as I'm still getting niggled by whatever virus I managed to pick up last week but it's hot and sticky so I'm now down in my relatively cooler office with coffee, keyboard and some music.

This week I will be going through another project that I started late last year and completed earlier this year. It will be photo heavy with a bit of lore and again if you want to see more images and descriptions of the builds let me know and I can create a post based on that.

Right now I'm listening to Swim by Caribou which was released back in 2010. 

Doomed

So this project actually started off with inspiration from the game The Doomed by Chris McDowall and published by Osprey games. One of the factions in the book are called the inheritor courts and along with the stats have the visual cues of; autumn, helmets, heraldry, nobility, law and hierarchy. This was around the time that I had become aware of Inq28 as a concept and so I was looking at lots of models which shared in my mind a similar aesthetic.

I believe the cities of sigmar freeguild models had recently been released as well and these had really captured my imagination. So I guess with the inspiration of a game, influence of other great models and the release of some new kits there was an alignment for this project.

Test, Test, 123

So I had a vague idea about what I wanted to create. I don't believe I actually sat down and wrote a list using the rules from The Doomed I think in this instance I very much just wanted to make some cool scifi/fantasy looking models and had started to establish an idea about what I wanted to achieve.

I've always really liked the admech models and had actually built a set of four in early in 2023 just because I wanted to build some and paint some of them. So I decided that if the freeguild steel helms would be bringing the fantasy essence I would use admech models to introduce the scifi aspects. I had actually picked up a freeguild steelhelm as one of warhammers models of the month and had some spare skitarii ranger bits lying around, so with these low investment bits I was able to put together a test model and experiment with the paint scheme.

The expansion of ideas

With my test model complete I wanted to expand the idea further and put together some kind of squad. Again I didn't really have any lists in mind just a vague idea of what I wanted to achieve. I'm not much of a planner in my personal life (I leave that for work), I much prefer to work on a free form basis.

I did know however that I would need more admech and freeguild bits so I ordered some boxes. As well as the skitarii rangers and freeguild steelhelms I picked up some fusiliers, fusil-major, one kastelan robot and a couple of kataphron destroyers. I had no idea what I wanted to do with these models but I liked them and was pretty sure they would lend themselves to a project in the future if not this one.

Once my bit's and pieces had arrived I decided that if I was to build a small warband they would need some kind of lieutenant or general. If I remember correctly I think I did take some inspiration from the possible options for the inheritor courts faction in the The Doomed for this one. I decided to give this guy a power shield from a deathwatch kit and really liked how the shield looked so ended up exploring this further.

So now I had a couple of models I needed to develop some direction in which to go. After sitting down and looking at the bits I landed on wanting to create pairs of different load outs so the warband would have flexibility if I wanted to try and fit it into a game system.

I ended up going with two models which would indicate a long range capacity, two models which took inspiration from the Imperial Navy Breachers model with the shield and two models which would be melee focused.

I now had a seven man squad that could be slotted into different games and more importantly I had templates should I wish to increase the numbers of any particular model variation.

Big Brother

As I have mentioned I had picked up some additional kits and as I found myself in the zone and really enjoying the feel of what I had been creating I decided that I wanted to do something with the kastelan robot. I have always really liked this model but found it a bit pricey and had never had any specific ideas for it. I think the combination of having both the robot and fusil-master with ogor on my desk got my imagination going.

I was still really digging the aesthetic of the wooden shields in a  scifi setting and the ogor comes with a massive version of the fusiliers type shield. Initially I was going to go with having a robot armed with a club and shield join the warband as a huge melee focused unit however I wanted to lean into the aspect of it being more like a slave ogryn.

To this end I cut away the face screen of the robot and inserted an ogryn head to make it look more like a mechanized suit. After a bit of experimentation I realized that the clubs provided with fusil-master ogor where a bit on the small side when in the robots hand so I opted to use a sword (or rather two) from the sisters of battle paragan warsuit models. 

Eventually I had achieved the look I was aiming for and was left with a brute of a model to accompany my warband.

Vastarian

Around the time of completing my slave ogryn warrior betweenthebolterandme Vastarian setting flew onto my radar. If you haven't already done so please do check out their blog which has been running for a long time and has so many great articles to explore. On that note they also have an amazing podcast where they discuss many topics Dragged into tubolasers. 

"Vastarian is an open invitational where we are encouraging people to create Imperial Cults that are at war with each other on the cathedral world (Vastarian)." 

The background and lore created for Vastarian really inspired me and allowed me to add an element of lore and history to these models which at the time had no ties, they where not created for a specific game and only had a loose aesthetic direction, by using the setting of Vastarian I was able to give them some gravitas.

As I started to explore the lore and create the back story I realized that I needed to create an inquisitor. I wanted this inquisitor to be corrupted by the warp and for this to be visually obvious, I also wanted to create a companion that would form the basis of his retinue (the retinue hasn't actually grown any larger however this is something I want to return to in the future).

With the completion of these models I had the basis for my Vastarian cult and a pretty cool warband.

The Cult of Enos

In an isolated area of Vastarian there lay a forgotten and abandoned Adeptus Mechanicus enclave.

This enclave had become the gathering point of locals who searched for further meaning within their day to day lives.

This gathering would have been frowned upon on other worlds, however the inclusiveness of Vastarian allowed such assemblies to grow and flourish.

During the Age of the Witches, all inhabitants of Vastarian started to become molested by tainted visions pulling them towards their own version of the truth. These visions were the culmination of the Cicatrix Maledictum triggering the awakening of a powerful localized psychic entity.

The awakening of this psychic entity could be traced down to an Inquisitor with psychic leanings visiting Vastarian.

Inquisitor Enos Macath and his retinue, including his right hand man Amil Cortek, arrived at Vastarian in search of ship repairs after enduring a brutal warp flight. Unknown to the psyker, he had become subtly corrupted by the warp.

Upon arriving on Vastarian, Enos soon lost track of his purpose and as he became evermore corrupted and empowered he felt himself drawn to a long forgotten place.

Upon finding himself at the abandoned mechanicus fort, Enos found himself welcomed and revered as a God by the collection of worshippers.

With his new found militia, Cult Enos quickly developed machinations towards grandeur and power. With the power of the warp and his knowledge acquired through his work as an inquisitor, he unlocked the potential of the weaponry found within the fort.

Armed and inspired, the Militia of Enos set forth into Vastarian to spread the good word.

The indigenous people of this planet can often be heard to remark about the times before the blue flowers blossomed and the power from high touch them with his gifted hand.

Some even say the flowers are of nefarious origin and a symbol of chaos corrupting the very core of this world and its inhabitants.

It's not over

I still had a lot of admech and freeguild bits and found myself inspired to see what else I could create within this aesthetic and setting. I knew I wanted to create some other bigger models, mechanized war machines that would add clout to the warband and I knew I wanted to incorporate the fusiliers wooden shields. I liked how the shields where kind of stationary, almost like small fortifications and so I wondered about creating mobile fortresses on tracks or legs that where raised above the inconveniences of war and able to rain down heavy fire power.

Ultimately I created two models with interchangeable platforms (I'm not normally this smart and was quite happy with how this turned out). 

The first platform contains a lasgun major and the second is a preacher and his follower raining down the good word in a blazing fire.

The modes of transport for the platforms are either legs taken from an ambot or the tracks from a kataphron destroyer.

 

Outro

Thinking about this project retrospectively has really identified some key principles in the way that I hobby and highlighted the kind of processes I enjoy when it comes to moving forward with a creative idea. 

If I have one take away it would be that executing an idea because it is cool is really great but by adding meaning to the process and the end result I found that this not only drives motivation but also inspires further creativity.