77021 Dragoth as Iron Kingdoms Orgoth Deathless - and Court

[Jordan Peacock]

In the Iron Kingdoms RPG, if you want to have some ancient ruins/dungeons for the PCs to explore, your go-to ancient boogeymen tend to be the wicked "Orgoth" -- an ancient culture that was in some ways a sort of mish-mash of the bloodiest aspects of the Vikings and the Aztecs, who invaded the continent of Western Immoren from some mysterious fog-shrouded continent across the sea, employing necromancy and other dark arts to crush the local populace, but were eventually driven out when a convergence of events weakened them, and the locals finally rallied.

 

So, crazy catacombs that are part temple, part tomb, part torture chamber, part treasure cache, riddled with secret passages, traps, dangerously magic items, and lingering undead -- that's the Orgoth dungeon in a nutshell, complete with a big-bad insane undead warrior and his eternal court in some cobwebby throne room.  Furthermore, the Orgoth employed certain magics to delay natural processes of decay and ruin -- and these magics tend to become unstable over time -- so basically I have an in-universe reason to be inconsistent with how I depict the stage of decay of any particular part of the tomb (thus allowing for skeletons still wearing robes and/or armor, for instance).  The way to make it distinctive, however, is to have lots of spiky bits, and for everything to have grimacing faces (perhaps out of anger, perhaps in torment, perhaps both).  That goes for the models as well.

 

 

Several of the new Bones undead figures are perfect for this.  Reaper 77201 "Dragoth the Defiler" is great for the leader of the undead hordes -- the sort of character that, when a PC pokes his head into a chamber and sees him, anyone who has the least bit of sense starts contemplating the wisdom of a tactical retreat.  To give him a more distinctive "Orgoth" look, I used some epoxy putty to sculpt a big ugly "frowny face" in the gap at the top of the throne, and another on his chestplate.  The Orgoth are known for wielding larger-than-life swords, distinctive for having glowing embossed images of swarms of faces on each side of the blade; the figure already came with a sword held in the left hand, but for some reason even though it was posed as if the undead lord was resting his hand on the grip, with the blade tip downward, the plastic sword tip didn't actually touch the throne or base.  I found a pewter sword blade that I think was originally from a Heartbreaker Hobbies Nepharite of Algeroth (Warzone / Mutant Chronicles), and attached an Ogre Kingdoms gauntlet, topped with a random head/skull as an over-sized pommel.  (The gauntlet is way too large, but I imagined it could be a magical artifact enchanted to help wield that "surf-sword" with one hand.

 

The other figures are a mix of Bones figures I picked either for being obviously undead (77237 through 77245), or some evil Pathfinder warrior-types (89029, 89030, 89032).  For the skeletons, I added some putty to those with shields, to give them that Orgoth grimace.  

 

89029 "Hellknight Order of the Scourge" just looks like an evil knight, but he's got the horns, and with a little bit of putty I was able to turn the strange shield design into another frowny face.

 

89030 "Hellknight Order of the Nail" is perfect for Orgoth right off with his grimacing chestplate.  Even so, I added another ugly face to his shield.

 

89031 "Whispering Tyrant" isn't shown here, but I'm turning that one into an Orgoth "Excruciator" (ghostly torturer).

 

89032 "Anti-Paladin" is so perfect for an Orgoth warrior that I bought some extras.  Not only is there a big hideous face on the shield, but he's got horns and skulls ... and the bare face is so exaggerated in its grimace that I've just painted it up as an Orgoth "death mask."

 

 

I painted up the Deathless with glowing green on the blade, and tried to do a "cast light" effect on nearby surfaces.  Somehow, a lot of the details ended up turning out a lot more yellow than I'd intended; while that's probably fine for the skeletons, the bit of human (?) skin on the front (with a visible hand) was meant to be more of a leathery brown.  

 

 

And here are most of the stars of the Orgoth court (various skeletons off-stage in varying degrees of progress).  I am thinking of making a few "courtiers" of some sort, though most skeletal types would be wielding weapons and such.  I may just have to dig through the Bones pile and find some models (I have an excess of "hero/adventurer" types) and do some conversions to make them undead servants (musicians, etc.) instead.

[Glitterwolf]

Cool idea.

 

Love the Undead!

[ub3r_n3rd]

Great stuff!

[Jordan Peacock]

I just thought I'd throw in that there's another Reaper Bones mini that is PERFECT as some sort of undead Orgoth tomb-defender for an Iron Kingdoms campaign, owing to the big grimace-face shield he's got:

 

77408 Athak, Undead Knight

 

The outrageous helmet ... well, I guess I haven't seen Orgoth portrayed with bat-wing helmets, rather just horns, but if that's a problem, it'd be an easy conversion.