Space pixies... evil ones.

Dark Eldar are famous for many things: spikes, pain, spikes, topknots, spikes... the list goes on. What they are not famous for is being conducive to last-minute paint jobs. It’s all those smooth, crisp lines. Most experienced hobbyists would not, therefore, try to paint a squad of five of them and a six-man hive gang and a character model the night before they’re due to be used.

To do something like that, you’d have to resemble the end of a bell.

Konk, konk.

I spent hours and hours on that bloody character development pack, and hours more on painting one of the agents participating in the Inq28 scenario. The other twelve models got an evening (and a good chunk of the next morning whilst waiting for everyone to arrive).

The added challenge? The Dark Eldar were a secret. It’s not easy to keep a secret when you’re painting at the dining table and live with two of the people playing in the fudging scenario. Bless ’em, they did a fine job of looking the other way when told to, and my hands were frequently used as a shield too.

In case you’re wondering how I painted the armour, it was drybrushed chainmail and then given a glaze of equal parts blue ink, green ink, and Lahmian medium. That's it. I had no time for highlighting, so just moved straight on to the other details.

They were also good fun to use in a roleplay scenario. By way of example, the leader’s phantasm grenade launcher covered the area in inky black hallucinogenic smoke, which made it a little tricky for the protagonists to keep track of where she was. It ain’t a fight with Eldar unless they’re right proper gittish.

I might go over the actual scenario when I’ve finished basing the agents (and thus can accompany said description with pretty pictures). Rather than running a big long narrative, we’re taking it in turns to GM single, day-long standalone missions. Much easier to manage when some of the players have to travel big distances to play, see.

It’s nice to have finally done something with the Cetus sub-sector setting that Jeff designed aaaages ago. I just need to remember to update the wiki with the new stuff I just pulled out of my brain-meats, so that the setting can grow. Organically. Like a tumour.

~Charlie