After equipping his army with these new warmachines, Kazgar decided to turn east rather than continue south, a route which would take him across the Dark Lands far to the south of Zarr Nagrund. The army forged a path across the wastelands without more than a few minor skirmishes until they reached a magma river that seemed to block their way from horizon to horizon. There was no clear way round, and to go through would be suicide. With no way to fly over the river, the army turned south once more and began looking for a crossing further down. As they marched however, Kazgar heard screams of pain echo up the line and he marched back to investigate. He witnessed a being of lava, fire and fury rise up from the molten river and drag one of his warriors away. Before panic could set in with the already worried looking hobgoblins, Kazgar pulled his army away from the river and began to investigate these new creatures of flame.
He discovered that they were wrought both of the power of Aqshy, the lore of fire and flame, and other, fouler magical matter that he could not recognise or control. When he pulled on the wind of fire, the creatures rose up from the lava and cursed and slashed at him, but he kept himself well out of their reach. Trying to control them was like trying to hold sand in a sieve however, and control repeatedly slipped through his grasp. As soon as they were let go the daemons sunk back into the magma, and Kazgar knew it would be futile to try and pull them forth again and hold them with will alone. He set up camp beside the river of lava and ordered his warriors bring forth hammers and anvil the hobgoblins had been dragging along since taking them from the engineer. Kazgar spent five days and five nights smithing steel upon the anvil, creating iron shells and masks that were lined with runes of warding and control. He then crafted weapons, from axes and blades to claws and chains, and set each suit of armour down with two weapons on the bank of the lava.
Kazgar called the daemons forth again, and this time used all his willpower to force the daemons out of the magma and into the iron shells he had made for them. Once trapped in their new bodies, the daemons were immediately freed from their molten home and prison, but Kazgar found them no less difficult to control. Several of the daemons rampaged into his camp until he managed to subdue them all with the strength of his will. Tethered to their new mortal bodies as they now were, Kazgar bid the daemons return to the wind of Aqshy and thus they departed, their armour falling empty to the ground before the destruction could continue unchecked. Kazgar collected the armour and ordered it be carried along with the army from then on, for if need arose he could now call forth the daemons and bind them back into their iron casing to be unleashed upon his enemies at war, although their help would always be a fleeting thing as they tried to break free of their bonds.
Enjoying his newfound ability to bind daemons, Kazgar decided to set his sights on larger prey and go hunting for other daemons to practice this art on. He had heard tales of mighty Sorcerer Prophets who could bind the most powerful of the K’daai, the fire daemons he now had serving his command. These were the lesser K’daai however, and he knew without practice binding a great Destroyer was far beyond his skill. This quest took him south until a river crossing allowed the army to continue eastwards once more. Finding a daemon was no easy feat, and it took Kazgar many weeks before he heard rumors from captured enemies of a daemon stalking the land, and another month before he finally caught up with it. This great beast it was said was a bloodthirsty monster or total rage and destruction. The dead left in is wake proved testament to that fact, as well as giving Kazgar a way to track the creature he now hunted.
The trail eventually led them to a mighty cave in the side of a rock face that jutted out from the ground like a grasping talon of obsidian. Here Kazgar made camp, and set about the task of forging a shell strong enough to bind this violent soul with minimal risk of it breaking free. Rather than try to create a suit of armour that would allow the daemon top walk freely, probably straight into Kazgars’ army, he instead decided to forge a huge cannon. It took Kazgar and his dwarfs several days to finish the great device, his hobgoblin raiders going off to find supplies when Kazgar demanded it of them. When the cannon was finished, Kazgar had his warmachines drawn up to face the mouth of the cave and cast his will deep inside. It didn’t take him long to find the slumbering daemon, it’s thirst for blood sated temporarily so that it slept. As soon as it felt his presence however, the great daemon Ashaxazahr roared it’s fury and it’s hunger took control once again.
The daemon charged out of the cave in a mindless rush, and went headlong straight into a gout of searing hot magma fired from one of the cannons. Incendiary fire rained down on it next, blowing chunks of its unholy flesh away and letting the black vapour that smoked through it’s veins seep out in place of blood. Kazgar was ready for the daemon, and a moment after the warmachines struck he assailed it with fire of his own. Hurling fireballs and grasping for the daemons spirit with the wind of Shyish, the Sorcerer did all he could to weaken the greater daemon before the inevitable happened and Ashaxazahr surged forth once more, running straight at Kazgar as it lifted it’s mighty brass axe and pounded it’s leathery wings, launching itself in a long swooping glide straight at the Prophet.
Azkarag, the great Taur’ruk that had accompanied Kazgar ever since his exile from Zarr Nagrund, surged forwards and launched himself to intercept. Axe met axe in a great shower of red sparks, and the two began to circle each other, one on four hooves the other on two. Kazgar had been relying on his champion to do such a feat, for the Taur’ruk alone had the might and the tenacity to hold the bloodthirster in combat while Kazgar worked his magic. Weakened somewhat by the magma and the deathshrieker fire, Ashaxazahr was unable to crush Azkarag as would be expected, but the Taur’ruk could focus only on defending himself and staying alive, barely able to block every incoming attack let alone strike any of his own. But the Taur’ruk was just playing for time, and as Kazgar chanted his binding incantation a hundred captured slaves were sacrificed by warriors of the Faceless legion. The raw power created was enough to pull the daemon into the iron cage that was the Hellcannon, forever trapping it there, binding it’s rage and tempering it’s hunger, at least most of the time.
The hellcannon shook and shuddered in its rage, but it was futile. Ashaxazahr was enslaved to the will of Kazgar the Cruel.
Despite his new found skill for daemon binding, the next thing to enter Kazgars’ arsenal of war was a daemon of a very different kind. After capturing Ashaxazahr in the Hellcannon, the army marched northeast towards a nearby mine. This would be Kazgars’ first real test of a battle where the odds were stacked against him, laying siege to a remote outpost and underground labyrinth of a mine. With his new warmachines at his disposal and the fury of the Fireborn at his command however, Kazgar felt confident of his chance of success. The garrison of the mine formed up to meet him in open battle, backed by their own warmachines high on the outpost walls and driven forwards into battle. These machines fascinated Kazgar in both their construction and their purpose, for clearly they were mining trains but here they were being driven towards him, their huge steam cannons no doubt just as effective against flesh as they were underground.
Kazgar considered this and quickly summoned Grilk, the hobgoblin Khan given new orders to spread to the army with all haste. No longer did Kazgar require immediate control of the mine as a base of operations, he would make the goal of this battle the capture of the war engines instead. His orders were given out and executed with a precision born of fear of angering their Lord, and the army once again proved itself on the battlefield. Shelling the enemy warmachines with fire from Ashaxazahr ensured return fire was subdued and randomly aimed, and Kazgars’ own magma fire killed great swathes of enemy infantry. He had his slave regiments march where the thickest fighting was taking place, bogging the enemy down with sheer numbers while his shock troops, the Blessed Centaurs, charged headlong at the stream trains and tore their drivers from their carriages. Kazgars’ Faceless quickly adopted the new machines and pumped coal into their engines, running them away as the Overseer of the garrison realised that this was a burglary not a siege.
Leaving the slaves as a rearguard to slow any pursuit down, Kazgar and his legion retreated with their newly stolen engines of war.
Kazgar made camp south of the mines and immediately set about investigating the newly captured war engines, putting his own engineering and smithing experience to good use in learning how they worked and thinking of ways to improve them. One thing was for sure, he would have to use them against their former masters and try again to take the outpost and the mine. The Overseer had cursed him for a cheat and a coward, and only through a show of power and strength of arms could Kazgar redeem himself and prove the Overseer wrong. If the Lord of the mine formed his garrison up to meet him again though, they would no doubt be expecting such an act of irony, their own stream trains being driven against them. No, Kazgar decided he would have to find a suitable way to change at least some of the machines so he could keep the upper hand with the act of surprise. He contemplated mounting bigger cannons on them, but then an idea struck him that was so brutal he couldn’t resist it.
Two months after stealing the Iron Daemons, the legion of Kazgar marched back to the mines and laid out their battle line. The Overseer had repaired the damage done to his walls and warmachines and immediately sounded the war horns at the sight of his enemies return. Rank upon rank of infernal guard, miners, hobgoblins and even slaves formed up to confront him. New warmachines appeared bristling on the walls, and Kazgar thanked the Overseer for building them for him, an insult which triggered the first shot to be fired and the battle to begin. Kazgar had kept his new war engines in his reserve force, along with Azkarag and the Bull Centaurs, keeping them concealed by the cloud of ash which was seemingly kicked up behind the advancing wolf raiders on the flank but which was actually a clever augment Kazgar was holding in front of the Iron Daemons with his arcane will. The Overseer sent the slaves out to face the flank where the hobgoblins advanced, a crucial mistake that Kazgar had banked on him making during the opening stage of the siege.
Hellcannon and Deathshrieker fired overhead to suppress the enemy warmachines, but this time there were too many and no amount of fire Kazgar could unleash would keep the guns of the outpost from blasting down into his legion. Just as the forces made contact, a bloody melee erupting between the infernal garrison and the Faceless, Kazgar dropped the veil over the Bull Centaurs and instead bid the ash rise up in front of the walls, a thick cloud that swirled around the battlements and obscured the vision of the warmachine crews and their Overseer Lord. At the same moment, the hobgoblins broke into a retreat and made way for the Centaurs, and the new Iron Daemon engines that came with them. The steam cannons had been removed and replaced with a vast arrangement of massive picks, blades and circular saws. The slaves screamed in terror as the Skullcrackers lived up to their names and ploughed straight through them and into the flank of the infernal guard beyond them.
Unseen by the Overseer on the wall, the Skullcrackers churned their way from the right to the left straight across the front of the outpost, crushing, pulping and dismembering all the infantry of the garrison as Kazgars’ own warmachines now turned their attention on the gate. The hobgoblins had circled around and swept in again and to pick off any survivors, peppering them with arrows and stabbing them with spears. The Centaurs reached the gate just as the Hellcannon blasted it open, and they dispensed the armour of the K’daai as Kazgar turned his attention to summoning forth his Fireborn. The daemons were the first into the outpost, spreading fear and fire in their wake. The Centaurs followed them in, followed soon after by the infantry. Kazgar let the ashstorm lift just as he reached the gate himself, giving the Overseer at last a glimpse of a battlefield which had just gone from a stalemate edging in his own favour, to a massacre that left his garrison dead and his mines defenceless.
Thus did Kazgar claim the mine for his own, a new base from which to launch future explorations.
I have one more set of images to upload shortly, the destroyer. That’ll be everything that I’ve painted to date and I’ll add more pictures as I paint more (which might not be very often). Any more details I go back and add I’ll update pictures too.
After claiming the mines and outpost as his own, Kazgar spent many days searching the lower tunnels for slaves and survivors, and organised a new taskforce so that mining would continue as it always had at the outpost which he now named Ash Forge. While his warriors were not at war they would work, the hobgoblins and slaves given the hardest jobs and the Faceless and Blackshards working in shifts either in the garrison at the outpost or supervising at the mine. The Centaurs leant their strength to moving pre and metals when needed, but they were considered holy creatures second only to Kazgar in the legion and were not forced to work. As time went on, Kazgar explored all of his new fortress in the making, delving deep into the mines to see what the previous Overseer had been uncovering there.
Aside from precious gems and gold, which was a plentiful hoard in itself, the mine also led down to a huge underground chasm where a magma rift had split the rock and formed a lake of molten lava. Here were the forges, where slaves were worked to death in the extreme heat smelting iron and producing weapons and armour for the legion. Deep in the fiery lake Kazgar could feel a powerful presence though, and upon investigating this he realised what it was. One of the K’daai was dwelling in the lava lake, a being so powerful and destructive that it could tear down the mine from the inside should it awaken and unleash it’s wrath. The Sorcerer Prophet immediately set about turning the forges to a greater purpose, for fear that the recent battle above the mines may have disturbed the K’daai. He spent over a week forging a great iron shell with tall razor sharp spikes down it’s back, and a huge demonic mask with monstrous horns that would spread terror even in the ranks of the most steadfast of enemies.
Kazgar summoned the K’daai from the lake with his arcane might and bound it into this iron shell before it could unleash it’s destructive wrath.
Now he can call on it at times of war, though to say he could control it would be far from the truth. He refers to this daemon simply as the Destroyer.
It seems you opened this blog very late, a lot of stuff almost done ;). But I like what you showed until now and the fluff is very dense.
:hat off
TheHoodedMan
I still have a lot of stuff to paint, from memory I think it's,
40 hobgoblins
9 wolf raiders
5 daemonsmiths
A Castellan
Kazgar on Bale Taurus
Sorcerer Prophet with Lammasu
Siege giant
Dreadquake
7 more Fireglaives
And still to buy...
9 more Centaurs
20 more Infernal guard
20 more Fireglaives
Blunderbuss conversions
Another Hellcannon or two
Another Deathshrieker or two
Another Magma cannon
Maybe more K'daai
Loads more hobgoblins
I actually like your bases…they’re different and I like that. I especially like all the short stories of fluff you have added to each model, great stuff!
The splattered blood on the Skullcracker is a nice touch too :cheers
This is certainly a log to watch. Neat models! Once you’ve finished the log, or I’ve become too eager, I’ll take my time to read through all the background. With such fluff writing skills you’re bound to have good chances at upcoming Scribe’s Contests.
