It is with great pleasure that I can present the last model(s) of the Lightning Hawks' Strike Chamber, the leader, the Lord-Celestant. Obviously there wasn't as much leeway for creativity when it came to choosing a leader for the army project: I was bound into having a Lord-Celestant since it is that character specifically in the lore that leads each of the Strike Chambers. However, that definitely didn't make it a chore, since within that stricture I was still able to find plenty of opportunity for tailoring the Lord-Celestant to my army project, especially since, as always, there is so much more that can be done with a character's model than what is available in the official one. That said, GW's Lord-Celestant model is quite nice, probably one of the nicest stock minis in the Stormcast range, but I knew it wouldn't do justice to the character I wanted to lead my army. Lord-Celestant's are described (on pages 60 and 61 of the 2018 Battletome) as thundering commanders who lead their chambers into battle with unrelenting fury and unwavering dedication, as figures of awe and fear and so full of Sigmar's holy strength that they are beyond the common people they defend. With this powerful lore, I really wanted to push the Lord-Celestant mini further, explore the ideas of their strength, control, aloofness, and awe-inspiring aura, and bring it out as much as possible for my character, Alcinous the Sunderer, to be at the head of these reforged machines of battle.
In doing this, I have taken a bit of licence with the mini, or rather minis. I really don't like the idea on the Warscroll for the Lord-Celestant that they shoot hammers out of their spinning cloak (I dare say nobody does, actually), so I needed to figure out an alternate way of representing the shooting attack. The most obvious and most elegantly simple solution was that he just uses a bow, which also fit in with having the Judicator unit in the army, but I couldn't get it onto the model in any suitable way since I was already using the back of the model for the hammer; and that's when I realised I could do a companion model carrying the Lord-Celestant's bow, and I decided a cherub would be a really interesting mini within the army as well as a nice nod back to the Old World. Apart from that, I used the bigger torso from the amazing Stardrake kit and the legs from one of the Knight-Heraldor models, a combination which gives Alcinous a much more imposing size. I have also painted him with the Obsidian Blade artefact from the Stormcast's Artefacts of Power list, since I really appreciate how it has a symbolic edge that fits with the goal of this army project: the glassy blade is cold, hard, dark, and keen, just like the reforged souls of the Stormcast themselves, so as Alcinous holds his Obsidian Blade aloft at the head of the army it symbolically represents the army in essence.
Below I've left quite a few images, with ones of both Alcinous with his cherub and each mini on its own.
-Jamie
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