Desert nomad cannibal Ghouls of Khorne

Well, the title is pretty descriptive. If you find out a better name, please be my guest; this is what sleep deprivation makes to me.

I had these almost finished, but the final touches have taken me some additional time, for obvious parenting reasons. Anyway, let me talk about what I'm showing today. They are the Khorne guys from the Shadespire core box, the other half of the commission I took from a friend.

We discussed long about the possibilities these minis offered, trying to find the mood for them. After many different ideas, I told him that I had the skellies warband and I planned to heavily convert them into a desert undead theme, but not the classic Egyptian-like concept. Cloaks, turbans, loose clothes, scimitars... that kind of thing. He also loved the idea, so we begun to translate that concept to these Khorne minis. After getting some bits, I started to work walking this path:

Yeah, desert made this to my skin

Deadly slap of doom

My face may look skinny, but look at my abs

Right from the One Thousand and One Nights

What do you mean my hands look 'different'?

You can see what I mean. I went for this kind of exotic vibe, thinking of a nomadic tribe of desert dwellers, hiding in the ruins of ancient lavish towns now shattered in pieces, hunting in the shadows, avid for flesh of any kind.

The original concept of 'ghoul' has Arabic roots, first coming into European culture with the translation of the One Thousand and One Nights, so it all made some kind of sense. I didn't try to achieve an accurate Arabic ghoul anyway, but just the kind of pastiche we are used within the Warhammer universe. So I painted the skins in this kind of sick, ashen tones:

Who are you calling sick?

Then I considered the Khorne idea. They had to have something red, so I thought of painting some small areas and see where to go chromatically from there.

Leaving the black dead eyes was an idea that came to mind when I saw this pic

I restrained the palette to earthy colours, all in brown, beige, some grey... I didn't envision them in a Red Era fashion, so I favoured mostly dull colours. The only touch of colour was the turban. I wanted something distinctive, a visual reference, and I tried this particular yellow:

I kept the basic poses (except for the spear guy, that anyway is bearing a two handed weapon) so they are more or less recognizable, yet... different.

Desert cannibal ghoul Power Rangers

Just an ambientation pic:

Ahhh, this feels like home...

It's certainly been a different project. I planned to do exactly this kind of conversion work to my own Sepulchral Guard; I like the vibe, but I don't know if I'll finally do it. We'll see whenever I unpack them!