The Legend of Long Vøn - Kharadron Overlords Admiral

 It takes success and tremendous profit

 for a duardin to catapult themselves

 into the upper echelons of the airfleets,

 and individuals that have done so

 are battle-scarred veterans that have

 seen countless wars, boarding actions

 and aerial bombardments.

- Games Workshop

Hi-ho sailors! Welcome back to The Art of Caesura!

My growing Sky-fleet already has Brokk Grungsson to guide it, but what about when he's off helping other Baraks? Enter the true leader of my Sky-fleet: Long Vøn.

I had wanted to paint one of the single leader models for a while now -  especially after painting all the Thunderers at once! In game terms, I know that the Aether-Khemist is essential to any Kharadron Overlord army, and mine shall come, but first I wanted to paint the admiral. I mean look at that (skalf)hammer!

The above picture is the admiral after washes and before any highlights. As for his name, Long Vøn, I'm starting to come up with a bit of lore for my Sky-fleet, which I shall be sure to share in a future post. Suffice to say, the honorific "Long" in his name refers to the length of his...beard, of course!

While the style of the Admiral's armor is very similar to Brokk's, I knew I didn't want to paint him in metallics. In the stories, Brokk is rich and flashy so the coppery-brass armor suited him. For Long Vøn, I knew I wanted to paint his armor in the bluey-greens of Barak Mhornar, like the rest of the troops in my army to represent that Long Vøn likes to get stuck in with the lads, and doesn't hold himself apart from them. 

Knowing that he would be a similar colour to the rest of the army, I had to find another way to make him stand out. For me, that was his base. I generally like sculpted bases, but I must say, I really hated the base that comes with the admiral. It has tiny crystals growing out of the floor, which I just think is so out of touch with what Kharadron Overlords represent. No more are they the dwarves of old rummaging through gems in mountain holds, these are duardin of the skies! If they were going to do molded bases, I think even the sector mechanicus ones (or whatever the ones for Necromunda are called) would be more thematic as they could represent the floor of a ship or sky-port. 

Anyway, rant over, I was going to replace the base anyway with my wave aesthetic, but wanted to do something to make him stand out a bit more. How 'bout a whopping great skull!? 

As well as catching the eye, it would have the added benefit of raising him up to be almost eye-level with champions of other races (depending on the race, of course). I didn't take the skull all the way up to Ushabti Bone (stopping with layered dry brushed mixes of Steel Legion Drab and Ushabti Bone) because I didn't want it to be too bright and take attention away from him in his dark armor. 

As for actually painting Long Vøn himself, I stuck to the tried and true scheme I've been using for Barak Mhornar so far. You can find it detailed here and here.

One of the joys of painting is noticing all the little details that you wouldn't otherwise see. On this guy it was is drill-hammer. If you look carefully, there's a thumb-operated button to make the drill head spin - you can see the chain for the mechanism going over the top of the hammer head. 

I was trying to decide what colour to paint his helmet. I knew I wanted to do it slightly different than the Arkanauts or Thunderers to make his rank stand out more. I had already painted the Thunderers' Gunnery Sergeant's helmet all the lighter colour, so that was out. It also would have been hard to read against the white leather "collar" that the admiral shares in design with Brokk. 

As with all the HQ units in this army I magnetized his head. It's quite quick to do and now he can swap heads with Brokk in case Games Workshop release rules for an unnamed Balloon-Leader.

The view from above:

And another "human-eye view".

Welcome to the fleet Long Vøn! What do you think of him? Cs & Cs welcome below as always! We'll take a break from The Overlords for a bit, but I'm sure it won't be too long before the winds blow us back there!

Watching: Hellboy (2019)

Reading: Saga, Volume II - Brian K. Vaughn

Next Week:

Big Red...