GUEST SHOWCASE: The Forces of Perpetua

Today I have a special guest article by a forge master of Chaos, Dan and his forces of Perpetua! If you're a fan of awesome, creative, and thematic conversions topped off by stunning paint jobs then you're in for a treat! This may very well be the coolest Slaves to Darkness army I've ever seen.

Dan: After dipping my toe in and out of AoS since it’s release, I’d never really found the right fit for me in terms of an army that looked right, played right and was fun to write background for. That was, until the release of the Slaves to Darkness Battletome towards the end of last year. 

Finally, an army that played and, most importantly, felt like the army for me. I’d played with a Warriors of Chaos army in WFB since I started the hobby some 23 years ago, so this felt like coming home to me.

Knowing my own limitations when it came to painting a new army – demanding job, young family, reticence to paint multiples of the same type of model etc – I planned out a very elite list, lead by Archaon (naturally) that I could hopefully actually complete. Since I had so few models in my initial list, It meant I could go to town on the conversions for them so I started pouring back through the battletome in search of a theme. 

I was inspired by the fact that S2D are the most numerous human civilisation in the Mortal Realms still, and that let the lore-addict and repressed RPG gamer in me fall deep into the idea of creating a workable setting and city my force could exist within. Inspired further by the wonderfully themed cities of Sigmar armies that were starting to appear on Twitter at the time, I knew what I wanted was an RPG setting level of detail for a workable city and society – but one which worshipped dark apocalypse gods of course! 

So was born Perpetua, the Shifting City. Based in Chamon, Perpetua was a forge city who sold their weapons and warmachines to other S2D societies throughout the realms. This gave me a clear aesthetic in the Iron Golem as Chamonite Cultists and in making corrupted versions of the steam and cog-tech wonders that populated my twitter feed. 

Unusually for me, I started with Archaon as my centrepiece. Normally I’d do the line infantry first and get bored before ever getting around to the big things, but as I knew the whole idea hinged on me being able to make a workable conversion that would stand in for Archaon, that’s where I had to start. Thankfully the 40K Chaos Space Marine and Necron ranges (plus a fistful of watch parts and steampunk costume jewelry) came to my aid and the aesthetic of the army started to take shape. 

Next, I needed to make sure I could make chaos warriors. After all, my small elite sensibilities were never going to paint a 40-man marauder unit! I wanted to use the helmets of the Iron Golem and carry across the all metal aesthetic to more elite troops. I chose the Stormcast as a base as they aren’t replete with the cloaks, gloves or leather bots of the chaos warrior range. Whilst they do have a little cloth and leather on them, I reasoned that in a magical realm where precious meals are abundant, more mundane materials like cloth and wood would actually be luxuries, so by including small amounts on my elite troops, and even more on my characters I could be representing their advanced status within a Chamonite society, the way more gold trim would to a realm where it was not as common a substance. 

I settled on using the Shattered Dominion basing, coupled with clearly fantasy scenic elements like the ruins on Archaon’s base as I wanted it to be clear that this was still an AoS army, despite my heavy plundering of the 40K range for parts! 

With the aesthetic now fully locked in, I shelved the project, promising I would slap some paint on it when the summer holidays rolled around (but secretly doubting myself and thinking I’d probably never get around to it). 

And then everything changed. As you all know, Nurgle hit the world with the business end of his pox stick and we went into lockdown. Owing to an underlying health condition, I was forced to shield with my family, avoiding leaving the house at all and having no contact with anyone else. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my family to bits, but 6 months inside with a 2 year old is … a lot! I picked up the paintbrush in an attempt to keep myself sane and thought I’d try out the new contrast paints as a way to get a very dark, metallic black colour giving me a twist on the traditional black and gold of chaos armies (a scheme which, despite having built 9 previous warriors of chaos armies, I’d never actually tried before). Before I knew it I had a regiment of Chaos Warriors ready for the battlefield. 

The need to keep busy during lockdown, excellent feedback and interactions I got from Twitter and Instagram and actual fun of painting the models meant I didn’t stop after 5 models. Within a few weeks I had tackled Archaon and had a full 2000 point army ready for the tabletop (the first time I’d achieved that milestone since AOS’ release.) Not ready to stop exploring the expanding lore of Perpetua that kept bubbling away in my mind, I just kept adding models, characters and units to the army. In the 6 months since the Pandemic took hold in the UK, I’ve completed 6.5K of models, giving me loads of options for lists, and I don’t plan to stop there. I’ve still got plans for conversions of mechanical furies, vortex beasts, marauder horsemen, another manticore, more soul grinders, allied skull cannons …

Thanks again to Dan for taking the time to share this wonderful army with us! You can follow him on Twitter here to keep up to date with any future additions to his forces of Perpetua as well as look back through everything he's completed already. There are a ton more awesome conversions for this army then he's even shown off here.

Until next time,

Tyler M.