"Shine that light over here, Hemlut" whispered the Blacksmith in his gravely voice. Helmut did so, allowing his compatriots to find where the ground was softest; indicating a newly laid body. "I can never tell when he's angry with that voice of his" though Helmut as he did so. "This one's brand new, that crazy ol' loon'll pay good coin for this one," the masked man said in hushed tones. "Dig him up, boys, we've gots works to do!"

The purpose of my Ottersricht project is to tell stories, not follow rules. And as such, it makes sense that a crazy old necromancer is not likely capable of digging up bodies and dragging them to his lair on his own. Now, he could use animated corpses to do so, but that requires corpses in the first place. Plus corpses are unlikely to be very good at evading suspicion; being walking skeletons and all.

So this is where the Ignea Mortis come in. They are a band of outlaws who sell their service to the highest bidder. I envision them as something equivalent to the modern outlaw biker gang. They are led by the Blacksmith, who wears a steel mask. He never speaks of why he wears this mask; was it punishment from some long escaped prison or did he fashion it himself as some form of penance? The Blacksmith runs the gang with a literal iron glove and wields the tools of his trade. The blacks came out a bit sloppy, but but other than that I am happy with him. I even added a crying skull back-patch (like I said, they're analogous to a biker gang!). The skull was a Nurgle 40k decal that I painted over and added the bloody tear. I might go back and attempt to add a highlight, but I'm not sure. It looks a little flat, but it's also really small in real life!

The first member of the gang is Helmut Feuer. He's built from an Empire free company sprue with a Bretonian head. I also replaced the bow in his left hand with a torch from the flagellant sprue. He's holding the light while others in the gang do the digging. I also sculpted a backpack on, which came out really well for someone as bad at sculpting as I am (that is another goal of this project, to get better at sculpting!). I added a shovel with some mud still stuck to it to the pack as well to show he does his own share of digging. The buckle is the only part I'm not happy with, but that's how you get better. To the side of the pack I also attempted to do a little bit of sloppy OSL from the torch on him, as I wanted to add a reminder that these models are working at night. He, like his boss, is also heavily weathered to emphasize that they are doing dirty work. Grave robbing isn't clean after all.