Yesterday I started working with the fat guy with a two handed power hammer and a Bolt pistol. He will be known as “Adsum” Levit Aaronic. Credits for the bad-ass title and name goes to Helbuck. Cheers! And thanks to the rest of you guys for great name suggestions. The decision sure was hard to make.
The two robed torsos next to “Adsum” will become blind pilgrims inspired by Thistle’s latest amazing Pilgrym art work. There’ll be third one when the bits arrive. Then there will be three (un)wise men following the rituals of the chapel.
IRON SLEET 
Love the fat man! I can’t wait to seek all the models painted.
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Adsum = I am present. Levit Aaronic suggests Levi (son of Jacob, father of the Levites or Jewish priests in the Old Testament). Aaronic suggest, of course, Aaron, brother of Moses, great-grandson of Levi, High Priest of the Jews.
They are suitable names for a noble family on the temple-world of Terra — does the family have any connection with the Ecclesiarchy? What was the reasoning behind the names? ”Adsum” is a wonderful nickname for such a burly, imposing man.
The model himself is wonderful — a physically powerful man at first glance, but if looked at more closely his skin is cracked and blistered, his face marred by pustules. I imagine he is sustained in part by drugs — in the same way his armour, no doubt once a fine knightly set, is pocked and rusted. I imagine it as yet another relic, treasured yet barely understood, uncleaned for fear of shifting the grime of wearers of millennia past.
His tabard seems to be pinned to his flesh (cf. the word cilice, St Therese of Lisieux once spent a day with her scapular-pin driven through her shoulder). Is this a penance for a particular sin or a general mortification?
The model has a haunting air of grandeur and decay, the great bell and hammer, the knightly armour and the purity seals, or the bloated body, rotting away before our eyes, no doubt stinking of sweat and pus — grandeur and decay defines Terrra and once again it echoes the God around whom Terra is built, his earthly form a rotting body clad in gold, the stench of his sacrificial carcass sweetened by incense, its soul yet divine as its body decays. What a sacrifice he has made!
The blinde pilgrimmes, whom I call the Goode Beadesmen of St Sebastianne Thore (a sympathetic Imperil saint, just my own name, feel free not to use it) are very touching, clad in filthy rags, seeing nothing but darkness yet lit by the fire of faith.
Wonderful work, as ever.
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Sorry, that line should have said ”I don’t mean anyone else to use it or to impose it on you” — can you merge that into the post above?
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Nice analysis Mr. Gray. Even though it is based on very early WIP models, you’ve given a good set of ideas to carry on with these models. Cheers!
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Patrick, I went with Adsum in another translation, that being, I am worthy. As for Arronic, as in the priestly order, who dictate rites. Levit, well that was just a bastardization on Levis. Thanks for the honor of using the idea.
Cheers,
Helbuck
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I read your description of ”Adsum” Levit Aaronic as a household priest who enforces the correct disciplyne of ascending the Silent Staires on hands and knees — adsum has a third meaning which suits his character, ”I attend”. He attends on the noble pilgrymmes of his house, assisting them at their devotions. He is worthy, as a priest of the Ecclesiarchy, he is present, a powerful presence, reminding us of the Emperor, in strength and in decay, he attends, a servant to the greate and goode as they honour the Emperor. He is both Levite and Aaron, a ceremonial priest and a tempyll-servant.
Wonderful.
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Thank YOU Helbuck for great name suggestion! The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of Adsum and his pursope. I first thought of cutting away his fatty legs and giving them more slim shape, but I started thinking “what if his wounded and bleeding legs would be the result of his task; many pilgrims die on his feet, crying in agony, scratching his legs with their last breaths.
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Already dreaming of these with your signature paint job. 🙂
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Looking good so far – I like the blind pilgryms…
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Damn I can see where you’re going with those blind men.
The Adsum is off the starting blocks and chugging towards the finish line.
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Not to digress from these splendid WIPS but Neil has just posted a link to mi Rottenchaple image on the biomechanics forest a couple of posts back – I would love to hear mr grays analysis of that one .,,,,
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Heading there myself too!
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The stinking sump of Rottenchapell. The chapell was very grand, full of heraldic shields and statues – decayed, filthy, dirty brown, the colour of mud and worse, almost all of the long ago picked away and sold – there is a little glimmering on the pole which supports the Rottenchapell sign, I suppose it escaped the claws of the hospitaliers, lighter lines amongst the brown suggesting traces of gilt that were not picked off, a statue still seems gold enough in the light, but this only adds to the sense of decay – there’s still a ghost of what the chapel once was. The Rottenchapell sign reads hobos, and although they have a little power they cherish that’s what these men are, tramps, scavenging on the scraps of rotten splendour, squatting in a chapel. The stairs, once as grand a processional way, I’m sure, as the planned pilgrym board, are littered with unmentionable bundles – I imagine the hospitaliers sleep, eat, live and foul this place. The air is still full of incense, but I imagine stale and foul, mixed with dust and sweat and worse.
The hospitaliers themselves…vultures, predators in their lair clawing at their prizes, squatting on the stairs, huddled together. Rottenchapele goes on up, we feel, beyond the bounds of the painting, the composition has no limit on its left side, so we imagine a great broad hall opening out, the hospitaliers clinging to one side for warmth and safety. Robes filthy, holed, greasy and foetid, skin pale yellow and necrotic, often pitiful and squalid stooping figures, but there are still these little bits of gold – gold masks, tubes – are these meant to deceive pilgrymmes, give their owners a little bit of respectability? Do even the corrupt, on Terra, find themselves drawn to the great psychic presence of God-Emperor and cannot help but echo him, rotting and splendid?
There are extravagances too, bought, I imagine, on the proceeds of their crimes – the ridiculous fur shako, the foul, greasy top hat stuck full of candles at the brim, then worn constantly as they go about their scavenging. The top hat and the name gives the composition an almost Dickensian air, like ‘Joe’ the fence in the Christmas Carol – these men are fences, bartering in the bodies, rights and goods of the dead and dying. The far-right hospitalier grips a golden box or data-slate hard, stooped over his prize.
The top-hatted hospitalier has a clock on his chest and there is another clock, half hidden, behind the sitting hospitalier on the far right – clocks symbolise time, decay, entropy, ten thousand years of rotting, dust and bodged repairs, withdrawing more and more – I doubt even the hospitaliers know rottenchapele inside out, they’re clinging to one side, figures of terror to the unfortunate pilgrymmes who fall into their hands, but also frightened and very small surrounded by the immense grandeur of Terra. They don’t look up and around like the pilgryms do, but keep looking in, telling tales of squalor, hunkering over stolen prizes, inward, greedy, self-absorbed souls who live for the next little scheme, frightened of the Emperor’s light.
The biomechanical dog-creature on the floor seems to have a crocodile’s head, which faintly reminds me of the Egyptian Great Devourer, a symbol of the rapacity of the hospitaliers.
There is a huge drip-covered candle, long gone out, in the upper reaches of rottenchapele. Another two huge candles have just gone out – will they be relit? No, I doubt it. Another bit abandoned, another withdrawal, the darknesse advancing. Now there’s only the two candles on the floor by the dubious looking cookpot – I don’t want to know what the red stuff inside it is! So the grandness and height and splendour of the chapelle steadily sinks into darkness while the clawing, the gluttony, the theft remains.
The smoke forms a leering skull high up on the wall, looking down at the Hospitalliers. Here is the vanitas/memento mori theme again. All of their crimes and plunder, the golden box they cling to, the huddled, squalid, sordid life that they cling to in another sense, the ridiculous looking dainties and luxuries that their crimes bring them are meaningless, their grasping hands will be prised away by death, death will take them all.
As the throne fails, the dreadful thought that the Emperor Himself may face death torments the upper levels of Terra….
I don’t know if you saw it, but I did an analysis of the ‘Halls of Terra’ yesterday:
https://ironsleet.com/2016/01/01/the-pilgrym/
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Bravo sire …..
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Patrick. Good show. Jolly good show.
And Kari – great builds!
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* Doffs cap *
Laurence, Jeff:
… high praise indeed. It’s an honour and a pleasure to have my analyses thought well of by so many talented bods. Thank you — I really mean it, thank you. Thank you again, both and all, of course, for the wonderful Pilgrymme (the art the miniatures… I now can’t get anything at all from unconverted citadel miniatures and the less said about the painting style the better…) and Laurence for 40K at all — the only fictional world I can really lose myself in, as different from the slick, glossy, liberal-democratic dull futures of Star Wars and Star Trek as one can imagine. I suppose I’d have been happier in the Middle Ages and 40K is an excellent substitute!
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I feel I should add no criticism is meant of the ‘Eavy Metal team’s skill, which is undeniable (I could not produce it or close to it), but the extremely bright style does not fit at all with Laurence’s art — which is 40K for me — and likewise, though the sculpting is invariably excellent (world-class beyond any doubt) the creations of Thistle and the other bods here are better than the studio editions — or perhaps suit me more would be a better way of putting it.
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So sorry — I regret the phrase ”the less said the better”, it is cruelly dismissive. V. ashamed Sorry for derailing blog — keep up the good work.
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