Despite some unexpected gravity-based weathering, the first 2 sections of my modular space hulk board are complete.
Will the forces of Rogue Traders Barabbas and Barnabus Cadrel survive their venture aboard the Space Hulk?
Or will Magos Clarity Urksa obtain the hulk's treasures?
Painting technique (if you really want to know):
-prime flat black
-fix all the spots you missed with black acrylic (lamp black)
-daub on splotches of ochre, burnt umber, and burnt sienna.
-overbrush white acrylic (titanium deep buff)
-airbrush white acrylic to even out the layers
-paint all metal with burnt umber
-lightly drybrush with silver
-overbrush with burnt sienna
-outline panels in diluted black acrylic, black ink, brown ink, blue ink, and anything else you feel like diluting and using.
-add texture (1:1:1:1 mixture of PVA glue, water, acrylic paint, and fine sand)
-overbrush texture with mixes of burnt umber and burnt sienna
-call it a day
In Part 1, I covered the initial plans for this project. In brief, I'm "crashing" Iron Sleet's Primogenitor Invitational, where a bunch of incredibly talented people get together and work on vaguely cohesively themed projects.
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| Games Workshop |
Twin Rogue Traders, born moments apart, the undisputed children of Eusebius Drakemorton Cadrel and dynastic concubine sanctioned by the Sisters Famulous. A prodigy, reported to Administratum and filed, no doubt, among the other signs and wonders of the Imperium's waning days.
The Lex Imperialis, whose volumes and commentaries are said to stretch from one end of the galaxy to the other, provided the remedy for this dynastic crisis. An obscure clause in the Cadrel Warrant of Trade referenced one law, that law referenced another, and so after months of research (with the proverbial Sword of Dorn hanging over the infants), the adepts of the dynasty produced a satisfactory solution. Duabus anima in pari materia. Two souls, two bodies, two minds, yet one legal entity.
On their father's death, there would be only one Rogue Trader Cadrel. The Rogue Trader Cadrel, who only existed as the manifestation of the joint will of the twin children. Eusebius hired the finest tutors and psychosurgeons to raise them in the Cadrel ways. Jealousy and infighting were burned away; the two children were made closely codependent, unable to imagine life without the other or dream of seizing sole dynastic power. An unconventional approach, but what Rogue Trader dynasty follows convention?
When Eusebius died, Barabbas and Barnabus assumed control of a dynasty on the wane. Revenues from the Cold Trader - Xenos artifacts looted from distant worlds and sold to discerning collectors under the thinnest possible veil of legality - kept creditors and political rivals at bay, but the dynasty's coffers were slowly running dry.
The brothers met, as they often did, in the Cold Lightning's tertiary strategium. Neutral ground. No spies, no vox-recorders, no servants. Just two halves of the same Rogue Trader, discussing things without the mask of formal ceremony and secret signals. Many grand plots had lived and died in the ancient rust-streaked walls of the strategium.
"The Cygnus Gamma shipyards built four Hellbender-class cruisers," Barabbas said, in a storyteller's sing-song tone. "Only four. The Hellbender, first of her line, was destroyed in the Gothic Wars. The Lance of Dawn rests in the third reserve fleet of Holy Terra. The Gamella Magna was lost with all hands at the Battle of Corona VI. And the Cinderspine..."
"The Cinderspine, flagship of the Kossgrave dynasty, sailed beyond the Ghoul Stars and never returned," Barnabus said, cutting off his brother's story. "Is that why you brought me here, brother? Nostalgia for the old nursery tales?"
Barabbas smiled. "I found it. The Cinderspine." He tapped the a few keys and the holoprojector whirred to life. The images were faint and distorted. "Three weeks ago, one of our agents bribed an Imperial Navy auger-interpreter for maximal resolution pict-captures of Interdicted Object Theta-Grey-Epsilon. The space hulk they call Primogenitor."
"And the Cinderspine is part of the hulk?"
"Indisputably. Look, just here, you can see the dorsal spars. No other class then or since carried those triplex-arrays. In this pict you can even see a corner of the dynastic crest. The gun batteries would be here, putting the bridge and private sanctum here." But Barnabus wasn't listening. He was finishing the story, in the same sing-song tone, in his head.
The Cinderspine, flagship of the Kossgrave dynasty, sailed beyond the Ghoul Stars and never returned. Lord-Captain Sophia Kossgrave claimed to have charted a route through the Helical Rifts. The worlds beyond: unexplored, treasure-bearing, rich. The Lord-Captain sailed with her entire fleet. All contact was lost.
Three hundred years later, one ship, the frigate Scorpion, returned to the Imperium. Half her crew were dead, the other half were mad. Her navigator burned all charts and auto-immolated once they reached port. The ship's holds contained wealth beyond measure. Ingots of priceless ores stacked like nutri-bricks. Techno-relics from forgotten ages. The ship's logs indicated this wealth was chaff and dross to the fleet. They had been sent back to unload and return with more cargo vessels.
Since that day, no ship has crossed the Helical Rifts and returned. Of the Lord-Captain Kossgrave, the Cinderspine, and her fabled hoard, nothing is known.
"When can we sail?" he said.
The Space Hulk: Primogenitor
The first two 1'x1' panels are essentially complete. The cargo needs polishing and some plastic bits, but the main landing bay is done.
Working with plaster is fun but slightly more time-consuming than expected. Sorting bits and making sure they're bone dry is slow. If I wanted a perfectly even Paranoia or Star Wars space ship, I'd also need to spend time checking measurements to ensure exact alignment. For space hulks, +/- 1/16" of an inch isn't going to harm anyone.
Three main 1'x1' panels remain: a fuel depot, a second landing bay, and a temple-shrine.
I've been experimenting with weathering methods. I should have realized salt weathering (in any form) won't work on plaster. Even sealed with two coats of primer, plaster absorbs water like crazy. It sucks in the salt and crumbles in interesting (but unpredictable) ways.
The design ethos is "dead but not rotting". I want to create a distinctly Imperial ship that
feels abandoned but not yet utterly corrupt. A lot of space hulk
boards feel like a maze of generic mechanical greebling. I'd like to
inject some form of symmetry and purpose into the design, as if this was
a real place and not just a set.I've recently been inspired by Neil101's terrain (blog) but the level of sand, ash, and general decay is too high for this
project. I don't want this ship to look scavenged or repurposed.
Smashed, distorted, maybe with a boarding torpedo wedged in it
somewhere, but not a ruin turned into a hab turned into a factory turned
into a ruin.
I also want to keep that very 40k mashup of high technology and low gothic. Elegant curves plated in false stone to give a sense of borrowed antiquity. Vents repurposed to hold cables. Looming iconography. Practical details. A sense of overwhelming scale. This hangar is just a minor shuttle bay on the side of a single cruiser.
Scale and Pattern
The walls of the 1x1' panels
typically have five doors. Three on the lower level and two on the
upper, 5" off the base. They're not all identical, but the idea is that
the panels can be pushed against each other or connected by other bits
of terrain. The 5/8" MDF base (without the 1/4" plaster floor) is the
same height as my other terrain boards, meaning the hulk's panels can be
mixed with other modular terrain sets. 5" is also the floor height of
Games Workshop's Sector Imperialis and Sector Mechanicus lines. Sections can be attached directly or connected by small 3" tall corridor segments.
I like the large open sections. Space hulk corridors are deliberately claustrophobic, but you can't have claustrophobia without contrast. Hangars, holds, and temples provide spaces for massive firefights and even light vehicles.
Paint
The current plan is to basecoat black, add weathering in umber, sienna, and ochre, and overspray in a white-yellow. Then, a whole bunch of washes, texture daubs, and error correction. We'll see how it goes.
I'm not much of a painter, so working with colours that are "natural" seems sensible. Ochre is clay; umber and sienna are great for painting rust because they are rust. Oil paints are great for painting oil because they are oil.
The ideal end result should be something like Kari Hernesniemi's Monastery project... but significantly worse.
It seems everyone has space hulks on the brain this year. Iron Sleet has the Primogenitor invitational. WIP shots here.
On a good day I can usually put paint on the right end of a paintbrush and slop it onto some plastic. Compared to the usual quality of Invitational painters I might as well be using my fingers. I doubt I'm going to make it as an "official" participant, but the concept is interesting and it's nice to have an imaginary deadline.
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| Games Workshop |
Step 1: Method
What am I going to use to build this space hulk? I narrowed it down to 4 choices:
1. Plastic Terrain
Pros:
- Games Workshop's new Zone Mortalis kit is amazing.
- Plastic is very easy to customize.
- All current-generation GW terrain is built on the same (undisclosed) measurement grid. Sections from different kits fit together easily.
- Official consideration. GW, or semi-official campaigns, are unlikely to feature a competitor's products. Since I don't intend to submit this project for official consideration I can use whatever methods I'd like.
Cons:
- Cost. Building a small board is viable. Building a larger board, or a few hangar-sized interiors, would blow the budget for this project.
- Iteration. The cost of trying something, screwing up, and tearing down is much higher with expensive plastic kits.
2. MDF / Lasercut Terrain
Pros:
Cons:
- I've never managed to paint MDF in a way that makes it not look like MDF. I've tried textured sprays, plaster skims, sand, etc.
- Stacked flat sheets always look like stacked flat sheets. Death Ray Designs does astonishing work concealing the nature of their product, but edges and cuts are always visible.
- Measurements are not available.
3. 3D Printing
Pros:
- Infinite flexibility.
- Moderate cost.
- The new hotness, so plenty of tutorials exist.
Cons:
- Fiddly. It's easy to screw up 3D printing.
- Comparatively slow, depending on the size of the printer.
- Temptation to tinker endlessly and not get anything done.
Maybe in a year or two I'll pick up a printer. In the meantime:
4. Plaster Casting
Pros:
- Hirst Arts' Gothic and Sci-Fi lines mix easily to make gothic starships.
- Fast. A full cast to demold cycle is 30 minutes. Sorting the bits takes longer than making them. It's a nice way to relax after working on a thought-intensive project.
- Relatively cheap. Once you have the molds or mold-making material, casting is almost free. A 50lb bag of hard cement will last a lifetime.
- Flexible. I can cast plastic bits, sculpt new bits.
- Excellent measurements and guides.
Cons:
- Time. A full mold cycle might take 30 minutes, but some of the official plans call for 30 or 40 casts.
- Plaster isn't the easiest to work with. Soft plaster, like plaster of paris, snaps and crumbles. Harder plasters, like hydrostone (what I'm using) or dental stone, still produce lots of powder and flakes when cut and sanded.
I've decided to use a mix of existing plastic bits and plaster casts.
Side Note: Hirst Arts
This is what the internet used to be like. Hirst Arts' website is absolutely charming. There are so many tutorials, tips, guides, and tools! The owner genuinely cares about their work. There's no trickery. All measurements are given. All methods are described.
Other options might have tempted me, but I felt inspired by Hirst Arts. I'd recommend them without hesitation.
Step 2: Sharpening the Axe
Before casting anything, I used the measurements provided on Hirst Arts' website, plus a few of my own, to build a crude but functional 3D model of every part in Sketchup. I assembled them like LEGO bricks, checking alignment, height, and compatibility.
I also examined projects other people had completed using Hirst Arts blocks. Sveamore's space hulk is an excellent resource, though I wanted my hulk to be a bit less cramped and chaotic. I'd like the sections to feel designed, as though they were once harmonious elements of some vast cathedral-starship.
The central design is simple. Five 12"x12" sections, each 7" high, will be placed in a cross. They are modular and can be rearranged, but the base arrangement has a 24" long hangar, a cargo bay on one side, a fuel depot on the other, and a docking control temple-shrine on the end of the hangar. Small corridors and rooms with 3" high walls will branch off these main rooms.
Side Note: 40k Overlay Gothic
For me, part of the High Imperial aesthetic is functional, simple, industrial purity overlaid with gothic elements. A shrine in the middle of a nuclear power control room. Pipe-spars turned into buttresses. Everything is old or decorated to appear old. New things are dangerous. An alcove full of skulls reminds you that this place is safe. Generations of workers have lived and died here.
Ideally, the space hulk I'm building will have that aesthetic. A functional, far-future sci-fi core encrusted with grim darkness and millennia of tradition, poorly understood ritual, and decay. Pulsing blue power columns controlled not by advanced cogitators but by hardwired servitors. A simple hatchway decorated with candles. Lots of rust, lots of chipping. A ship that's dead but not yet rotten.
Step 3: Cast
Using Mold Star 30, I made a quick one-sided mold of some 40k panels and items. Some test casts with plaster of paris failed, and some elements of the mold didn't work as well as I would have liked, but it's reasonably functional.
Here's an evening's casting results. Most of the parts are from Hirst Art molds.
Quality is slowly improving. There are still plenty of bubbles... but bubbles look a lot like bullet holes!
Step 4: Story
There'd be no point in crashing an Invitational without coming up with an appropriately gothic story.
I'll put proper fiction in the next post, but in brief:
Twin Rogue Traders, Barabbas and Barnabus Cadrel of the Cadrel Dynasty, seek to raid the space hulk for filthy profit. "Unknown energy signature" is just another word for "treasure". While better-armed and less subtle factions seek to smash the space hulk apart and destroy its inhabitants, the Rogue Traders plot to sneak aboard on a small Ossifrage-class shuttle, acquire a few legendary items, and return to their ship with minimal loss of life and equipment.
Magos Clarity Urksa, seeking redemption in the eyes of Mars, dispatches servants of the Omnissiah to shadow the Rogue Traders and prevent sacred archaotechnology from falling into profane hands.
And, as ever, the Inquisition lurks in the background. Who could walk the Primogenitor's twisted decks and return uncorrupted?
If all goes well all factions will have a small Inq28-style / Kill Team force plus an Arvus-sized landing craft. Stay tuned for more updates.
