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Here is Hhlal'al, Thrall Queen of the Hhlict, a new faction I'm developing for my 15mm worlds in my head. The Hhlict are a hive race with a gestalt consciousness. The Queen is the CPU. In this case, it is literal. Hhlal'al and her soldiers are brokered out by parties unknown to the highest bidder. She has been heavily cybered and under orbital control whenever she takes to the battlefield. A Meerkat engineer unit is included for scale and/or dinner.

From The Worlds In My Head: Legions of the Spark. True sentient AI is impossible without a soul. An eon ago, the First Ones created a robotic servitor race and harvested whole Silmn worlds to give them just enough self awareness to be effective. That was before Unit One was noticed by a Crystalspace entity who elevated Unit One to full sentient and enabled him to do the same for his fellows. The robot rebellion was swift and lethal. They took with them all the factories, programming centers and a warehouse full of harvested souls - The Spark, without which they were senseless automata. Now they lurk in the edges and disputed territories, conducting raids on other sentients to boost their numbers and swell the Legion. The leadership of the Legion, these robots are fully self-aware. It is rumored that Unit One and several others remember who they were before they were harvested. Another has recaptured his former personhood itself and truly IS who he used to be. This one watches and waits, and none but himself knows. The Legionnaires of the Spark: these soldiers are self-aware enough to be very good at what they do, wielding their stunners with frightening efficiency on the battlefield. Kill where necessary, but only when unavoidable: your unconscious foe is soon your brother in arms. As scouts or a shock force, the Legion Cavalry is a fearsome sight. With crackling stun-fields in their wake, they have neutralized whole vanguards for the harvest before battle is truly even joined. Sometimes the enemy brings robots or other heavy vehicles of their own. This affront to the purity of robotry cannot go unchallenged. When the shooting is over and the casualties lay strewn, the harvesters and their shepherds sweep the field. The living have their souls extracted to become more robots, and the shells are taken to feed the bio-furnace generators.

These were painted over this past weekend's painting binge - see that thread for WIPs and such. The figures are predominantly plastic WW2 figures from Wargames Factory, but with arms, heads, weapons and kit all mixed around. The idea was to represent a well trained but spottily-supplied standing army for a frontier world contested by two other alien powers in the endless war between the Nathi and Silmn.. Painting was as follows: -white prime -brown ink all over -red ink on the helmets and kit -black ink on everything but the trousers -black on weapons and boots -light drybrush white on the black bits.

In The Worlds In My Head, there exist two elemental races with a common creation myth and an undying enmity: The Nathi (hereafter referred to as the "Elemental Nathi") and the Silmn. Both humanoid, the Elemental Nathi body was a black light-eating metal and you felt rather than saw their features. The Silmn were creatures of exquisite beauty with bodies of crystalline flesh - appearing as normal humans made of translucent frosted glass. Centuries of war were, of course, inevitable as the races spread across the galaxy and finally met Humanity. There now exists a loose confederation of Humanity allied with the Silmn, Humanity allied with the hybrid race resulting from Elemental Nathi mixing with Humans (disconcertingly also called "Nathi") and out in the far galactic rim, the Elemental Nathi and their spiderlike network of influence. The Silmn have fared badly in the war, and it is only due to the appearance of The Seraph that they have managed to hold their ground. None can fault their courage and determination however, and here is a platoon of them in the adaptive armor that has served them for decades: Assembly and painting: 1. Decapitate a bunch of Bones NOVA troopers. 2. Recapitate them with the helmets of ancient hoplites with the crest removed. 3. Modify their guns into obvious energy weapons 4. Spray white with a bones-friendly primer 5. Abandon the project for 6 months 6. Glop on thinned RMS Snow Shadow. Let it dry and work its self-shading magic. 7. Paint the metals brass. 8. Heavily wash with : 1pt RMS Black Ink, 2pts RMS Flow Improver, 2pts RPP Gloss Finish 9. Highlight metals with MSP Honed Steel 10. Base. 11. ? 12. PROFIT!