Sunday, November 30, 2008

Reconstituting a Keeper of Secrets - Part I: The Plan

I have had the parts for an old (Realms of Chaos era) Keeper of Secrets model hanging around my bits box for quite some time. I think an old Keeper of Secrets would make a fine addition to my daemons armies and I figured it was about time I re-assembled the creature. Even if I don't use it as a Keeper of Secrets, I think it would make a fine counts-as daemon prince.

There is only one problem with my plan. That problem being that I'd no idea whatsoever as to what happened to its lower pair of arms and head. Maybe they got lost, maybe I sold or swapped them for something else with one of my mates, maybe they're off pursuing their own political career in Segmentum Obscuris. I just don't know and cannot remember. The point being that I'm missing vital parts required to re-assemble my Keeper of Secrets. What I have got is illustrated to the left (the image is an out-of-production catalogue page by Games Workshop).

In order to reconstitute the miniature, I needed to source at least 2 arms and a head. Knocking around my bits box was this old ogre (right). This miniature has an interesting right arm (the one holding the spiked club that is resting on his foot). The size of the arm (width-wise) is just about spot on to blend in with the general physique of the rest of the Keeper of Secrets. I also like the look of the spiked club. All of the newer greater daemons sculpted by Games Workshop possess weapons these days (in the Realms of Chaos books, Keepers went in to battle with only their natural assets ... claws and so forth).

So, I carefully cut loose the right arm of the ogre from the shoulder and the tip of the boot. Whilst I wasn't too fussed with the ugly looking shoulder end of the arm, the tip of the club required a little bit of filing down to get it looking more natural; and to remove the excess boot that came off with it.

I have sourced the final two parts for the Keeper of Secrets from the Chaos Spawn plastic kit. The head is the one with the two horns curling down and a goatee horn whilst the left arm is the large clawed arm. The plan is now to milliput them all together such that the ogre arm and chaos spawn arm are positioned below the upper claw arms (i.e. where the original arms would have gone) and to pin the head to the neck stub.

In part II, the finished Keeper of Secrets conversion will be presented along with the paint job.

4 comments:

Sigmar said...

I'm looking forward to seeing this. I'm not sure about the choice of weaponry for a keeper of secrets though, I would imagine something grander or are you planning to change the weapons ?

I prefer to think of a keeper of secrets as a kind of clawed pincered type of Chaos Daemon rather than a weapon wielder.

Gret blog by the way, I've only just discovered you. I'm going to place a reference on my blog to your tree making tutorial which I am planning to follow to save some credit-crunch cash :)

All the best,
Sigmar
Sigmar's Warhammer Fantasy Blog

Gamers World said...

Hey, can I use your rules for lesser daemons in my cultist codex. You would get credit of course.

jabberjabber said...

Hi GamersWorld:
yes - you're more than welcome to use my rules for generic daemons.
I intend to collect them together in one place (eventually!) in a minidex of my own.

jabberjabber said...

Hi Sigmar,
a pleasure to meet you..!

With 3 claws / pincers, I think the resulting model should look suitably Slaaneshi. The club is unsubtle and not grand though, as you say. I'll post the final product tomorrow (probably). If I don't use it as a keeper, it'll certainly be useful as a daemon prince.

Good luck with the trees - I hope it works out well and I'm really glad to hear that someone is finding the tutorial of use.

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