Painting Daemon Sultan

This is the eleventh and final faction I painted for Cthulhu Wars and the final faction produced specifically for the game. It was mostly done in tandem with Bubastis. Though they were first offered in separate crowd-funding campaigns, I got them together, later.

For the faction colour, I started with VGC 72.045 “Charred Brown”, but I later decided that this was not saturated enough over the Black Brown primer, so I switched over to Pro Acryl Mahogany, which is a little redder than the plastic.

Everything—except the parts of the Chaos Gates that should look like regular Gates—was primed Pro Acryl Black Brown, then zenithal’d white, then—with the exception of the Antithesis figures—basecoated the faction colour mostly on the bottom, then drybrushed white, then zenithal’d white a second time.

Azathoth has many names: The Daemon Sultan, the Blind Idiot, Nuclear Chaos, etc. For some reason, the nomenclature of the faction instead uses the triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, developed by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. This triad is popularly—albeit incorrectly—associated with Friedrich Hegel, so my friends and I refer to the Daemon Sultan as “the Hegel faction”.

The rules, the sculpts and the triad all give hints for painting. I ignored the box art, and instead I painted Avatar Synthesis to look a little like the earlier, neutral Azathoth. From there, I knew I should make it look as if Thesis and Antithesis could have combined into Synthesis, and so on.

Acolytes

The faction ships with its own sculpt for Acolyte Cultists, called Madmen. I used one of those as a High Priest, and I used maroon generic Acolytes from the first crowd-funding campaign in their place, so that all of the factions in my collection have similar-looking Acolytes, except Bubastis, which has none at all.

All the other factions’ Acolytes wear uniforms, but not Daemon Sultan. They wear practically all the colours used elsewhere on the faction, except the high-vis yellow.

I initially planned off-white robes to match the High Priest’s straitjacket, but I switched to VMC 70.927 “Dark Flesh” (a yellow) on the lowermost skirts and then added more and more variegation to reinforce the theme that Azathoth’s cultists are a ragtag collection of madmen. The books are all unique; this is not a god with one set of sacred scriptures. Patches of cloth and leather, with stitching, round out the look.

Chaos Gates

The Chaos Gates were airbrushed VGA 72.743 “Beasty Brown”, masking out the primed neutral greys of the central pentagram. The eyes were basecoated Pro Acryl Dark Ivory. Each of the other features of the gates were then patchworked with a limited set of colours used on the cultists and elsewhere: Pro Acryl Dark Jade, Red Grey and Mahogany; Vallejo Nocturna 72.028 “Lipstick”; and more Dark Flesh. These were then washed in a 50–50 mix of dark umber and black oil paints.

When the oil paint was dry, I finished the eyes and cleaned up overspray and excess wash on the pentagrams, to make them look like regular Gates being swallowed by somewhat goofy monsters.

Thesis

Here’s where I messed up. Below is the first version I made.

The Larvae and the Avatar got a zenithal airbrush basecoat of VFX Fluor SFX-02 “Acid Pink”. I then built up layers of pink and purple from Vallejo’s Nocturna (“Fantasy-Pro”) range: 74.025 “Imperial Purple”, 74.027 “Amethyst”, 74.028 “Witch Purple, and most importantly, the above-mentioned Lipstick. What I then thought would be the final splotchy highlight was Pro Acryl Pale Pink. I used Dark Flesh on the tongues and Pro Acryl ivories on the teeth.

I was happy that I had not done googly eyes on Thesis like the ones on the Chaos Gates, but after moving on and painting the rest of the faction, I decided that my Thesis looked too cartoonish. Some blood stains wouldn’t be enough.

I started washing the figures with oil paints like the Chaos Gates, but I also upped the grossness, painting more blood around the teeth and more inflamed boils and scratched chitin. The mohawks were highlighted with Pro Acryl Pale Yellow, which worked surprisingly well on the Dark Jade base.

Antithesis

Like the Thesis family, Antithesis also got custom bases. Avatar Antithesis took some patching before I primed it.

The paint job is simple. All three models were washed white in the cracks of the cloud-like organs. Their lower bodies were basecoated with VGC 72.067 “Cayman Green”, adding Dark Ivory as a subtle highlight on the suckers. The swirly upper spiral surface on each figure was airbrushed VFX Fluor SFX-06 “Speed Yellow”, with more of that in the cracks. The intervening clouds are drybrushed Charred Brown and some Mahogany with black highlights farthest away from the cracks.

The teeth on the Avatar were initially the same ivory colours as on Thesis, but here too I reversed course and made the teeth a less-human dark grey instead. The gums and mouths are SC-84 “Inktense Green” and Warcolours Turquoise Shade over the failed ivory wash: Not the best choice in retrospect, but it helps maintain faction cohesion. I should have used jade paints inside the mouths for even greater consistency with the other figures, but I painted Antithesis first and without the tan that makes such a nice contrast with the jade.

Avatar Antithesis is fun to look at. The tentacles near the custom base don’t stand out. It’s the sharp contrasts of the living cloud that catch the eye.

Synthesis

The two biggest Great Old Ones in this faction are too damned big. Avatar Synthesis in particular is impractical to paint by normal methods. I recommend temporarily pinning it to a larger handle by the base. At least it comes with a base.

The Synthesis figures were zenithal-airbrushed VGC 72.066 “Tan”, another one of the colours that would feature heavily on the Acolytes.

Like I said, the idea was to make the figures look a bit like the neutral Azathoth. I also wanted them to look partly like sand dunes on Mars as seen from orbit, with staining in both greyscale and deep rust red, but I ended up skipping the rust red because there were enough other colours in play by this point.

For continuity, I reused the brown and yellow from Antithesis on the slitted sides of Synthesis while, above and below, I went for a Fichtean triadic scheme. I picked Pro Acryl’s jade triad as the second arm of this triadic scheme, and Lipstick as the third arm, both used on Thesis. The Nocturna colours on Avatar feature in the central, galactic eye of Synthesis. The tentacles above and directly below that are also shaded in Lipstick. The other tentacles, the ones off to the sides with suckers on them, got a coat of Charred Brown, a wash of black, and highlights of Dark Ivory, Tan and Beasty Brown; the same colours were also used on the serpentine intestines on the backs of the figures.

The membranes between the topmost spikes on Avatar Synthesis’s back are very thin Ivory. Finally, its four outer eyes are painted to match Azathoth: A Red Grey foundation with irregular white slits running to VFX Fluor SFX-07 “Red Ecstasy”. I used a light oil wash for some of the shaded parts.

Retrospective

This was more work, and rework, than any other faction. The awkward digisculpts and eyeballs are partly to blame, but I should have done more planning and testing to save time. There’s a lot of creative freedom available with these models, so if you get the chance, take wilder swings.