House Orlock Cyber-Mastiffs

A few weeks back a friend of mine kicked off a Necromunda Dominion campaign and I'd originally thought that I might paint up the Palanite Enforcers I've had in my pile of opportunity since early 2020. After blocking in all of the basecoats though, I found that I'd begun to dread highlighting up so much black, so I carefully packed the minis away again and to be honest, I'm really glad I did because it's meant that I've gone back to House Orlock, who are my first Necromunda love.

The campaign is a couple of cycles in now and while getting organised for a game over the Easter bank holiday weekend, I thought I really should get the rims of the bases of all my Necromunda minis repainted black as that would look much better than the drab brown I'd originally painted them in and as I was working my way through my Orlock gang, I thought maybe I'll just try and throw some paint on a pair of cyber-mastiffs...

I've already painted a couple of versions of Macula, as well as a couple of hard-case mastiffs to accompany Scutinator-Primus Servalen, but I hadn't made a start on the ones from the Arms Masters and Wreckers kit that I picked up back at the tail end of 2020, but a campaign seemed like a great excuse to do so and having not long finished painting the trail hounds of my Wildercorps warband helped too.

Unlike the approach I took with painting the coats of trail hounds so they looked individual though, I wanted to lean into the technological decay of the 41st millennium so , inspired by the box art of the kit, have gone with the House Orlock cyber-mastiffs being completely hairless. Not only do they look unsettling, but I feel this plays into a couple of narrative elements as well, and Necromunda is all about the narrative after all.

In my mind, this pair of hounds were born of gene-vats, engineered for aggression and loyalty and designed to be hairless so that they can be more quickly and easily enhanced with cybernetics and put to use guarding the interests of the House of Iron. I'll need to get a couple more games before I can recruit either to my current gang though as I'm a little light on credits after adding another Gunner to the gang after the last game I played. 

A few of the other players in the campaign have been playing around with the Alliances that the House of books introduced to the game and that got me looking at a couple of the options that have strong allegiances with Hose Orlock, particularly the Rebel Lord. Enter Lady Teleri, last scion of House Ceredigion:

Lady Teleri wields the sabr cyfnos, an heirloom traditionally given to the firstborn of House Ceredigion, it was last wielded by her father Gwilym Ceredigion IX before his murder by agents unknown - the involvement of House Catallus was strongly suspected but could not be proved. 

In the wake of Gwilym's death, the chattels of House Ceredigion fell rapidly to the predations of the other Houses of Necromunda and for a while it seemed the name would be destined to become another one to be forgotten upon the spoil heaps of history. 

Whether Teleri intends to visit vengeance upon those she holds responsible for her family's fortunes or simply wishes to carve her own empire into the flesh of the Underhive is unknown, but there are those who whisper that the skull she carries with her is none other than that of her father Gwilym so that he might witness House Cerdigion rise to glory once again. 

Whether an alliance with the last scion of House Ceredigion will help the fortunes of my Orlock gang in the current Dominion campaign or not remains to be seen, but it'll be fun finding out and either way, I'll be sure to pop a wee update in a future blog post. Until next time though, thanks for reading and happy hobbying.