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+++You know the deal, show us your Knights+++

= PERSONAL LOG: FABRICATOR-GENERAL ZEPHANIAH ADRIYEN, FORGE WORLD RAGNARUS = = ON THE SUBJECT OF HOUSE ASTOR AND LORD LEVIATHAN = = BEGIN LOG = I make this note to ensure the preservation of the knowledge of the events leading up to Lord Altair III's fall, in order to better prevent such failures from occurring in the future. Omnissiah willing, the current Princeps, Lady Lucienne Astor, will not fall to the temptations of the Dark Gods as Lord Altair did. In addition, I am doing this with the direct permission of Princeps Lucienne, which I have acquired both in writing and verbally. In late M41, Lord Altair II, then-Princeps, fell in battle to a Thousand Sons warband led by Exalted Sorcerer Asromiamun. His faithful armor and its then-loyal Machine Spirit, known as Leviathan, was recovered intact and repaired by myself and my then-apprentice, Enginseer Elias Traze, along with a team of servitors. Lord Altair III was just coming upon his Ritual of Becoming, and claimed the Knight Leviathan, as well as the throne of Princeps. Contrary to Lord Altair III's wishes, his predecessor had named Lady Lucienne as his successor, not Lord Altair III. In the various arbitrations lead by the various Barons of House Astor, there was much argument over the House's own traditions. Lady Lucienne would have been the first female Princeps of House Astor, and Lord Altair III was the firstborn of Lord Altair II. However, the fallen Princeps himself had named Lady Lucienne as his successor, against tradition. In the end, it was determined that Lady Lucienne would become Princeps, due to Lord Altair II's own order. Lord Altair III, in an act of hatred and jealousy toward his sister, attempted to poison her to death at her own coronation with a toxin of Chaotic origin, acquired from captured heretics whose public executions had not come to pass, in exchange for freedom. He failed, and was discovered almost immediately. He was brought up on trial and exiled. However, Leviathan itself, as well as my former apprentice, Elias, fought to preserve his status. In the end, the three were driven out of the Ragnarus sector aboard a Cultist-controlled ship formerly employed by Lord Altair III as his personal vessel. Elias, Leviathan, Lord Altair III and a small crew of hull-riding Cultists now harass House Astor's actions throughout nearby regions, as well as the actions of Forge World Ragnarus and the Crimson Knights Chapter. They go by the unified name of "Lord Leviathan", and have succumbed fully to the temptations of the Dark Gods, Leviathan's hull being reported as having grown large amounts of plant life as well as having its four Chaotic Attendants, including Elias himself. = END LOG = Lord Leviathan was just a little idea I had when looking over the Renegade Knight. I'm able to get a decent deal on an Imperial Knight from a friend of mine, and I'll be modelling this thing eventually. Came up with some cool fluff for him, too.

Okay, so. I'm likely going to be able to get an Imperial Knight by Tuesday. That's three days from now. I only have one decision to make: Leviathan or Princeps Astor? I'm running a Nurgle army and an AdMech/Astartes army as it is, and both have Knights sworn to and/or running them in fluff. Both are Questoris-Class Knights. One is Lord Leviathan, a Nurglite Knight with his own personal back garden and small retinue of devout followers. The other is Lady Astor, Princeps of the House Astor, sworn to Forge World Ragnarus. Leviathan was Lady Astor's brother until his betrayal, and I'm building both in the end anyway, but I'm wondering which to attempt for my first Knight. I figure Leviathan's more difficult to pull off (I'd essentially have to base his back for him to match my vision of what he should look like), but, frankly, my Nurgle army needs the boost in strength. My Imperium already has a decent size to it (nearly 2k points) and my Nurgle army is just over 1k. Thoughts?

Showcase your finished Chaos Knights conversions in this topic (and you can see more in the showcase in the Forge). If you don't mind Knights of the uhh... warped variety, here are my House Makabius Knights (I'm also working on a full House for Titanicus). And there's are the ones I'm currently working on for the ETL. +EDIT+ Note that this topic was split from the showcase for Imperial Knights.

I wanted to start a thread where I could catalog the process of building up my House Malinax army. I've been collecting Knights for a few years now. Originally, I ran a House Taranis Army - I love Knights and the Skitarii, so the House with the closest ties to Mars seemed a great fit! The issue I ran into was one that I suspect is common to many - the availability of transfer sheets. House Malinax has an equally great colour scheme, is really quite well supported in fluff (for a Knight House), and has a very easy to get hold of set of decals thanks to ladies and gentlemen at Forge World. But a Dark Mechanicum aligned house comes with issues of its own. Typically, Knight Houses don't do well on the table top if run by themselves as pure Knights. If you're playing with Imperial Knights, it's not so much of an issue. You can take that squad of Rangers or Vanguard to screen or capture objectives and have a really fluffy force. With Renegades, not so much - unless you want to play 'counts as'. I really like to play fluffy armies. I'm probably a little 'OCD' in that respect and, over time, I started to research what I could about Xana II itself, it being the defacto home world of my House. (Interesting place Xana II. To describe it as 'slightly dodgy', is somewhat akin to describing water as wet - and they still locked up old Scoria for taking tech heresy a bit too far... it kinda begs the question O.o...) The Knight aspect of my army is pretty simple. I currently own 5 Knights with a 6th awaiting delivery from FW. I'm going in blind to an extent as I have no idea whether or not the upcoming codex is going to increase my options at all - right now, I have no access to units like the new Armigers, let alone fluffy troop choices like Skitarii via normal rules support. Xana II is most well known in the fluff as being the Hell Forge that designed and produces the Hell Blade fighter, and Hell Talon fighter bomber. These make sense then to be present in a larger force I might field. The issue is, they count as Heretic Astartes units and really share nothing but the general 'Chaos' Keyword with my Knights - in fact, pretty much nothing does apart from two infantry HQ choices. My idea to tie things together then is this; I plan to convert a number of Skitarii (I have a bunch of these models spare) to act as cultists on the table top. I have this brain-fart about cultists who have been *ahem* 'blessed' by Nurgle through their association with Chaos. Seeing various limbs start to decay, fall off, and other fun forms of Papa Nurgles affection, I wondered if a solution for someone in that position would be to try and bargain with a Hell Forge to have your rotting bits replaced with bionic bits - much as is done with Skitarii. (Of course, they find out down the line that instead of rot, they rust and corrode and are no better off, but it makes things far more fun for me in terms of painting and converting - I love heavy weathering). These unfortunates then become cheap and fairly decent basic 'retainer' style troops for my Knight House, and the general theme and concept allows me to reach quite far into the wider Chaos infantry range if I choose to later. Having a Mark of Nurgle works great on the table top for me too, as if I were to have a 'rusty' Sorcerer, I can ramp up some of the negative to hit modifiers on my flyers and the like (up to about -3, if my theory-fu is strong), allowing somewhat normally fragile units some staying power. Anyhow, the intention is really to use this thread as something of a hobby journal, and a fun place to discuss and share ideas on some of the fluff I'm drawing from, as well as hopefully get some painting and conversion pointers from you good folk, as it's quite different from anything I've done before. With no more ado, here are some (hopefully not too terrible) pieces of eye candy of my starting point (note, my two standard Knights are currently with the Hellwrights - apologies!):