When I initially started working on this project-log, I intended to do pretty much all the posts therein without 'breaking character' so to speak. Buuuut, I'm impatient at the best of times, and it takes quite some time to put together those sorts of posts due to the quotefinding, Old Norse translating, and musical selection - to say nothing of the photography, painting, etc.
This means that at the moment, there sits on my desk a reasonable number of assembly-complete miniatures that will otherwise not see the light of day for *quite some time* as I haven't sorted their fluff presentation and such. And we can't have that.
So with that in mind , and by way of keeping things 'ticking over' ... here's the first two representatives of the Nithhoggr Heavy Assault Regiment to go with the Harii and their other Mortal Auxilia presented previously.
[brief note on the name: yes, I know "Nidhoggr" tends to lead people to presume the really big dragon under the roots of hte World Tree in Nordic mythology ... but what people almost invariably forget is that it's less a "name" than a "description", that translating as ... well you often hear it rendered "Malice Striker", but that doesn't really get across what "Nith" is ; "Sin-Hewer" would perhaps be a better representation]
The concept behind the Nithhoggr is quite simple. The extant Mortal Auxilia i've built for this force so far are based on Van Saars, largely unconverted (they're gorgeous miniatures, if a bit fiddly in the assembly...) - and despite the speed and dexterity implied by those designs, as well as their almost completley enclosing armoured body-suits, they nevertheless seem a bit ... fragile, to put it bluntly.
Whereas for the sort of foes the Harii are likely to be encountering, this will not always be an ideal outfitting for highly-trained and surprisingly valuable non-Astartes combatants.
So with that in mind, I set about attempting to build Mortal troops that felt a significant degree "heavier" - both in armour and armament - obviously optimized for much more vicious fighting against far hardier foes; most likely intended to be employed in 'Zone Mortalis' style engagements as part of ship boarding efforts, and potentially also against enemy Astartes.
This therefore required a few things - foremost of which would be pretty obvious and significant armour clearly designed to withstand significant punishment at the hands of hostile encounters and environments. Mk.III torsos with a bit of trimming about the armpit/shoulder area were an admirable start as far as that was concerned, and ought paint up nicely. [as a bonus, it provided not only a way to make sure these guys looked *visually* different from some of the other Storm Trooper ish miniatures I've put together over the past year or so - with the Thorians' use of neophyte hybrid torsos, and the Carolean Guard being built with more conventional Scion torsos; albeit the Mortal Auxilia for my Heresy-era Loyalist Iron Warriors are similarly outfitted ... but due to the time-difference, are unlikely to find themselves on the same board .. ] [the fact I had a reasonable number of Mk.III torso parts left over from Prospero deu to my ongoing allergy to ever doing non-truescale Marines, was further helpful]; while Scion helms managed that solid combination of obviously militaristic, obviously sci-fi, and obviously crammed with useful gadgetry to help its wearer to survive both combat and voids etc. [no doubt bronzing the lenses will be a handy way to represent interior HUDs and scanners, ocular augmentsand such]
In terms of armament ... well, to start off with , i figured that most of the 'standard' weaponry you see on Scion-esque equivalents was a bit ... underpowered. Hot-shot lasguns or hellguns or whatever they are these days aren't *bad* per se, however both the reduced rate of fire and relative lack of strength made them back-seat contenders straight form the get-go; whereas my desire to distance the silhouette of these chaps from actual Scions made it difficult to justify those weapons with the requisite backpacks anyway. I did contemplate a few rounds of the hellgun-into-human-sized-bolter conversion I tried some weeks ago [lifted from inspiration found elsewehre in teh Inquisisphere], and may yet do something of that nature.
But for some inexorable reason, what I eventually wound up going with ... was a grenade-launcher. As while it might not fire as fast as a Marine [or a mortal, for that matter]'s bolter, it has far greater versatility, particularly in the closed confines the Nithhoggr were intended to excel in [I mean ... bouncing frag grenades off walls and round corners , as compared to standing around waiting for the foe to round the corner or attempting to shoot *through* it , right?] - while krak rounds have a greater punch to them than bolt rounds in any case.
Because a regular grenade launcher seemed a bit ... underdone for these guys, a scope was added [which will be providing a real-time display in helmet , just as such a scope would for an Astartes - enabling improvements in operation , and presumably also heping with estimation of trajectory of projectiles, blast radiii etc.] ; and also a rather brutal axe-blade. Although it was then pointed out by an associate that particularly in light of hte pistol grip and a few other factors, this might not be the most *practical* close-combat slash door-breaking/busting addition .. *sigh* - I guess i'll just have to make a note of it in characterizzation.
In any case, the pointing Nithhoggr will be an NCO of some description, hence why he's posed as if giving an order. The vials at his waist represent 'specialist ammunition' for his grenade-launcher , adapted for more 'exotic' situations than the usual grenades he's carrying. [I mean, it may also be wise to be using some sort of concussion grenade as compared to a frag-grenade when htere's a whole lot of piping around or something, for starters; or good ol' poison gas and such, for that matter, or even incendiaries - will have to have a think about what he might be carrying and for what situations they may be designed]; while he's also carrying a more 'sensible' close-combat weapon, grenades, pouches, etc. etc.. Meanwhile, armour autosenses mounted on his power-pack scan the environment, to help alert him of impending danger while he's otherwise engaged.
The other Nithhoggr trooper, however, has a far more 'speedy' pose and specialization going on - running, with arms outstretched in either direction; presumably firing his bolt-pistol in the direction he is sprinting, while his plasma pistol strafes sideways at right-angles to the direction of his feet. This may be teh result of his back-pack mounted auto-senses alerting him to a target which must be countered - hence why it and his gunbarrel and helmet are all three of them pointing the same way, while the bolt-pistol administers suppressive fire to keep foes' heads down [and/or all over the room - if they're unlucky] en route.
The posing kinda came about from a half-remembered Infinity miniature which I .. may have hallucinated, as i don't seem to be able to find it again via capacious utilage of google image search. Although I *did* find quite a few 'dynamic' poses to imitate with my 40k/Inq28 efforts, so that was worth an evening, all the same!
In terms of other equipment, he once again has a close combat weapon, various forms of grenades [this tiem from the Orlock sprue] [and whatever that .. flare-looking thing is ...] , pouches, as well as what i am using to perhaps represent bolt-pistol 'specialist ammunition' in the form of the bandolier of what would otherwise appear to be shotgun shells from the Scion set on his left hip. I contemplated giving him another knife, again probably a Scion one - but coudln't work out a location to sensibly affix it for easy/quick drawing.
Future drafts in this direction will probably include additional weapons specialists [plus the ever popular 'demolitions' specialist option I seem to frequently include in Mortal military projects .. ], attempts at 'line' Nithhoggr equpped with relatively standard weapons - which may be the grenade launcher again, or might be something else depending upon how my thinking goes ...
... and a few more 'character'/individual types, including one that's half-completed bu which I'll save the reveal for, for now.
Part of the issue is that as cool as it is, the Scion kit really isn't *that* diverse - meaning attempts to build genuinely different-looking troops out of the same five legs, with the *very limited* range of arms requiring pretty significant alterations to do anything outside the 'standard' out-of-the-box loadouts , and the fact that various things like the plasmagun option are rather 'distinctively' posed, thus requiring hacking apart hellgun-holding arms, along with my ongoing efforts to find workable "holding a x" left hands due to those being largely mounted on the weapons in question which i won't be using ...
... well, there's a lot of work required - I'll put it that way.
It'd be very cool if ForgeWorld realized this, and started rolling out rather more 'various' arm posing and equipping for Scions in the same manner as what they did previously for Cadians, or more recently for the endless parade of Marines [which I have gotten *huge* use out of, mind - even for non-marine projects :P ] ; including some of the more 'realistic' sorts of things we might expect on spec-ops soldiers like auspexes, anti-tank mines, and other such things .... but I am not entirely hopeful.
On the plus side, I'm at least a little bit impressed with some of the things [not shown in this entry - just to clarify ... you'll see htem soon enough] I've managed to pull off as a result of the above, including one of those aforementioned 'character' miniatures with an arm painstakingly cut up and rebuilt out of 5 or 6 different pieces. So as ever, a paucity of options is a strong driver for improvements in technical proficiency and imagionation.
In any case, I apologize for not choosing to 'hold off' til the next entry I was going to upload in the more 'narrative' style was actually finished; but 'regular service' will most likely resume shortly.
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And as applies the axe .. like i said above - it's definitely aesthetic, although jury's out on its functionality 
