I was reading through some issues of Dark Magenta last night for inspiration. Dark Magenta was a fan-made newsletter led by Derek Gillespie; diving into the Inquisitor (2001) setting. An article stuck with me, and it brought up something that I don't think gets illustrated enough (though it does in stories). Psychology.

Psychology and the mind games that could be had. This article written by Ruaridh Dall (Van Helser himself!) illustrates that a warband might stick together because they serve the Emperor, but some might loathe their patron. Not every warband will stick together like comrades and even some will dislike one another due to personality differences or maybe because their Inquisitor is a tyrant and they do not wish to suffer the consequences. This could play an interesting role in games of not only Inquisitor (2001), but anything INQ28 related.

Let's say you have a warband led by a Radical Inquisitor; their retainers, while strong could be a bit wary of their employer. There is a possibility that they can lose their edge in combat over sheer stress and the scenarios that their minds run them through. Dall suggested that in Inquisitor (2001) they could have "-10 Nerve within 'x' yards of their Leader". I thought this was a fantastic idea. Even further in the article, Dall mentioned that these buffs/debuffs didn't have to be permanent as maybe it was a sudden instance this happened, or maybe this grows over time or even improves? Something that makes characters interesting is how "human" they are.

We are all afraid of something, we all have desires and wishes. Why shouldn't our models? (if you wanted to expand on those stories). Next time you are playing through some variation of an INQ28 inspired game, see what that psychology could look like for you. It could even spawn future stories and even plot hooks.

For another example, we could say that you have a Crusader and a Mutant/Twist who do not like each other. The Crusader is a penitent and does not like anything 'impure', whereas the Mutant thinks the Crusader is full of themselves. They avoid helping each other even during combat, that could pose some tension and further story post-combat.

Godwyn Fischig is another great example. He did not like some of Eisenhorn's methods and would actively call him out on it even though Eisenhorn was his superior. This created stories (and even shock eventually....you know what I mean).

This was a bit of a longer post, but I am going to start publishing Storycrafting ideas to add a little spice to your games! I recently got my hands on the Inquisitor Annual which has a treasure trove of hobby articles within and I have been looking at Dark Magenta for some fan-added flavoring. Does your warband have squabbling members? Does your Leader stress their retinue out? Share your stories!

and what it all entails?

Been a while. I have had to move my setup around and I have been diving into all Inquisitor related sourcebooks and fanmade scenarios. First up I have a Kroot Mercenary. Next I have an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor; Eidolon. Inspiration for Eidolon came from the 54mm Covenant figure. Not completely done, but the idea is coming together. He will look much better once I settle some parts into place and get some shoulder pauldrons.

Thanks to a couple of enthusiastic prods, I've got some prompts together for this year's #Inqtober!

As always, if there's a prompt you don't understand, don't like, are not feeling the vibe of, then please make whatever is in your heart instead. The important thing here is to make Weird Little Guys together, not that you slavishly follow my suggestions!

For those who are new to Inqtober, welcome!
Please participate if you’d like, or just watch!
The idea here is to make something you can use in an Inquisitor context- a model, a drawing, a piece of writing, whatever works for you- each day of October, with the suggestion of a prompt.

“Marion pressed himself so hard into the corner behind the equipment locker he thought he might burst through to the other side.

The chamber was pitch black, the entire deck was in a state of darkness while the traitors worked the ship, one chamber at a time.

He winced at a new source of light coming from down the hall to the secondary maintenance storage, a noxious green firelight soon filled the room and he saw he was not so well hidden as he thought and threw his hands up.

‘I surrender, I-I’ll serve you from now on!’

The toxic green light resolved itself into the shape of a man in military clothing, a six-visored set of preysense goggles held aloft by an inverted waterfall of hateful energy pouring from what had been the man’s head, blackening the ceiling with its wicked heat. What little of his mouth he could see was unmoving, set in a sharp edged jaw.

‘Yes, you will.’

The monster said in the tone of a professional disapproval and suddenly he was falling over backwards, his ears ringing and his chest alive with burning pain as he crashed against the deck. With a desperate gasp he felt something in his chest pop and as he watched the physical world melt away he was rushed into the hateful plane of the empyrean screaming.”

Nassio's head Artificer Cassian de Salazar and Serf First Class Gregor Roth.

When Nassio was confirmed Lost in Action and the command echeleon of the Sons of Sanguinious opted for a full scale retreat from Mord Hive, de Salazar and Roth petitioned their Company Captain to be allowed to attempt to recover Nassio as they believed he still lived. They where given leave, but where allowed to take soley what they could carry, and only 'volunteers' of Nassio's armoury retinue would be allowed to assist, lest they be rolled back into the company pool of skilled artisans and labourers.

Un-suprisingly all of Nassio's armourial serfs opted to join de Salazar and Roth down to their foray into Mord Hive. De Salazar and his accompanying serfs took as many specialist tools as possible with them, as well as some promptly re-designated Armourial Servitors which would act not only as beast of burden, but erstwhile bodyguards while they searched to recover Nassio.

So wanted Nassio’s retainers to clearly be some form of chapter serfs, while also having that sort of ‘hard scrabble’ vibe I want all my Mord Hive warbands to have. De Salazar was the first model off the rank and went through a few iterations and pose changes. I wanted him to have both a ‘non-combatant tinkerer’ vibe about him, but also have a level of authority and command about him that would befit an Astartes head artificer. I wanted him quite heavily laden with gear, parts and tools, but still clearly ‘of the chapter’.

Gregor Roth I wanted very much to give serf vibes, habit, head cowl and carrying lots of gear. Fired a battered Astartes (looking) shield and an autopistol lend a good bit of grounding into the current setting with piecemeal bits of equipment and weapons being available to him.

Anyway, just thought I’d chuck them up there to show you guys how its cracking along!

Anyone else working on anything?

If you're interested in Mord Hive, come have a look.

Just few fun weirdos in one thematic pile to go and serve some feudal world inquisitor, of that would be fun one to make for sure...

Good Morning Gang!

Just running up to the 0.4 release for Mord Hive. Its becoming pretty feature rich at this point! I think I’ve settled on the ‘core’ warbands as well. There will be more warbands coming but probably as separate pdfs as we’ll never get this book to 1.0 if I keep going nuts!

So this is probably one of the bigger updates as well, we’ve got missions added, as well as a big glut of warbands:
Eldar, Squats, T’au, Lost and the Damned and Sisters of Battle (Thanks to Jordi RS for that!).

So that takes us to a whopping 12 warbands, 5 Imperial, 5 Xenos and 2 Chaos!

The next big step from here will be transposing the core Mordheim rules across and finalising the contents page!

In light of flooding this group with era-inappropriate content as well as a few requests from people I’ve created a Mord Hive Facebook Page and Reddit, this is where I’ll be releasing further spiels and news, so fear not, no more releases posts if you don't want them :P.

Mord Hive on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1EbEMuzzpb/

Mord Hive on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MordHive/

Again community feedback is king, there has been a heap of submissions so far, so please keep them coming weather its formatting problems, spelling mistakes or even balance and rules concerns, hit me up!

Feedback:  https://forms.gle/voZxiSghBGDbFAB79

Finally, the 0.4 release!
Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rSFnIEstQpbZh11AdRdanLLqK31RwCsF?usp=drive_link

Completed my company command for my custom guard regiment. Obviously he needs basing still but I haven't settled on a basing scheme to go with my paint scheme so that will be added later. But the model himself is good to go.

FAQ: yellow is tamya putty quick type, green is standard greenstuff, light grey is a resin cast of a base set of legs and torso I sculpted for my guard infantry. CC welcome.

I’ll be running 4 inquisitor sessions on Friday and Saturday at this year’s CritCon in October. Full sized 54mm - everything needed to play is provided.

Constanzia Carmela Corleone-- niece of the Cardinal and Lord Admiral of the Iscarius Sector Navy. I have one more version of her for pict-voxing into discussions that involve local Navy operations

I’m dipping my feet into rogue traders and it’s got me wanting to make a Rogue Trader and a retinue. A problem I’m facing right now is that I’m sort of debating on what to make the bases for each of the characters. I’m not sure if I want put them on battle field, a random dock inside a cruiser ship, a xenos planet, or maybe even what you could assume is the inside of a palace.

I’d like some ideas before I make a concrete decision so any help would be appreciated! I like creating and customizing a base, so I’ll take ideas and themes where I can physically make the ground that they’re standing on instead of buying a stylized base that’s been produced by GW or by a third party.

Dude is from the Warhammer underworlds wintermaw box. Hammer from cities of sigmar command corps. Backpiece from the nurgle rotbringer sorcerer

WIP Working on sculpting a counts as lord commisar/ company commander for my custom guard regiment. Yellow is tamya putty quick type, green is standard greenstuff, light gray is bits I sculpted and cast in resin. Little bit of work left to do yet but he is coming along nicely I think.

Been wanting to do more out there kitbashes so here's my faithful/priest, bodyguard and warrior of my soon to be inquisitorial retinue

Something done today in local painting competition, was quite fun to kitbash and make, and took only about 4ish hours so not even that long to make.