This attempt at creating an Aspiring Champion of Nurgle is based around the Games Workshop Huron Blackheart model. It has had some minor changes made to it, such as the arm swap which incorporates a Black Templars power sword and a Death Guard shoulder pauldron, and additionally the inclusion of a bit of spine from the Mantic zombies kit as the thumb on the power claw... (a dropping accident a bit of time back led to inventive repairs!).
The Huron components of the model are from the finecast version - regrettably this is one of the earlier finecasts from before GW upped their quality control, and although there were no major gaps in the model, or bits that are missing or misshapen, certain parts of the casting, such as the detail on the power armour has not come through as well as perhaps it should have done.
Having said this, he's fulfilling a role in a Death Guard army and has spent (as the French might say... maybe) beaucoup time in zee warp. You'd therefore expect his kit t be in a bit of a state, so I'll try not to worry about it too much. I will say that it did make it trickier to paint the aforementioned details though. And that probably decreased the enjoyment. Being a particularly joyless bastard, I'll not beat myself up too severely on that count, though.
I did opt to give him his own personal armour scheme, as befits a champion of the Legion. I've used purple as a spot colour throughout the army, so I thought it would be a nice touch to give him purple fields as the background of his shoulder paldrons. I reversed my usual scheme of green and off-white for the power armour, in a similar way to my Lord of Nurgle and his retinue. The purple shoulder details is reasonably likely to be repeated for the unit he will roll with.
As he is going to be a character in my army, I will take the opportunity to give him a tiny bit of a back story though...
Leprae Naegleria is a veteran of the legion, and can trace his history back to before the Great Betrayal. As the vagaries of time and fate wax and wane differently in the Eye of Terror, he has seen many more battlefields and campaigns than any loyalist Imperial counterparts could even imagine.
Over the long passage of years, he has amused himself by taking trophies in the form of weapons from his vanquished foes.
First amongst is the blade Witches' Bane, a relic of the Black Templars chapter. This power sword was taken from the maimed corpse of the former chapter champion, Sigismund the Venerable. As all know, the Black Templars chain their weapons to their wrists in order that they may never be put down. This tradition did Sigismund little benefit once his arm was struck off at the elbow. Naegleria now wears it in a similar fashion, in mockery of Sigismund.
When the legion encountered a hive fleet of the Great Devourer in the Lancastria Cluster, Leprae Naegleria was grievously wounded whilst taking on a genestealer broodlord. The creatures' corrosive saliva and blood ultimately cost him his right arm, much of his right leg, as well as eating away at his face and torso. All this woeful damage caused by the outpouring of life from the twitching corpse of a slain enemy.
Such is the level of grudging respect that Naegleria is held in, such leadership that he commands over his cohorts that his barely living body was dragged back aboard a thunderhawk and flown back to the legion ship
Fist of Damnation and worked upon by the legion apothecaries, and fearsome augmetics and enhancements specially crafted by devotees of the machine cult were grafted to his body.
Of course, given his propensity for taking trophies from those he has bested, he ensured the remains of the broodlord creature were brought back to the
Fist of Damnation at the same time. Even now the machine cult and apothecaries work together on creating a weapon capable of utilising the corrosive biological agents present in the blood of the creature, and who can predict the kind of hideous constructs will be manufactured at the behest of Naegleria?
