Olshovilaag - The Fiend of the Harrowmark

Most of the Harrowmark is covered by virtually-impenetrable forest: Seemingly endless leagues of dark, tangled, twisted and unnatural woods. It is a corrupted land: the dead trees are warped by death-magic, skull-formed rock formations tower over the forest canopy like islands in an arboresque sea. The symbols and motifs of death are everywhere. 

Things live in these forests: malignant, spiteful things. It is a brave soul that ventures under the dark bowers, brave or foolish, as few who attempt to navigate the winding pathways ever emerge again. The forests are shaped by the death magic that permeates them and the things that emerge from the shadowy bowers are shaped by the forest.

One terrible example is the dreaded Olshovilaag; the Fiend of the Harrowmark. A massive undead construct made from a conglomeration of monster parts, horns, huge black-feathered wings, lots of skulls, tree branches, bones, rocks and broken weapons. A Death-monster, born from the forest itself. A crow-winged “Terrorgheist". The sound of its beating wings fills the villagers of the Harrowmark with dread. It's screeching stops their hearts and shreds their souls!

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This project was a great fun to do and really fast - 9 days from starting building to finishing painting. I wanted to quickly make a large undead creature for a scenario in our Malign Portents campaign "Thy Soul To Keep", but I didn't want to spend any money on it. So I decided to keep it as a "bits box only" project.

A quick rundown of the source for the parts used includes: Flesh Eater Courts Zombie Dragon, Daemon Prince, Island of Blood Griffon, Thundertusk, Rhinox, Mournfang, Kurnoth Hunters, Dryads, 1990s plastic Dragon, Araknarok, Skulls box, AoS Large basing kit, Citadel Woods... and probably a few things I've forgotten! I have a lot of hoarded left overs from other projects but I was also recently given a big box of bits by a good friend. That helped a lot with this beastie!

"Sketching out" ideas!



I had no idea where I was going with this build, and that was quite liberating! I was just rooting through boxes of parts and trying things out. If they worked I glued them on and started looking for the next bit! I knew I wanted something that looked like a huge undead-bird-construct, but I didn't even know how big it was going to be at the end, let alone what it would look like!

I think the hind legs were the hardest part to make, as by the time I got to them I had an idea of what it should look like, but I had nothing in my bits box that worked. So I started assembling the legs a piece at a time, and covered the worst joins with flock once it was done.

The first stage of painting (for nearly everything I do these days!) was a spray black undercoat and zenithal grey basecoat. Then a drybrush all over with Ushabti Bone. This gives me a great pre-shaded base layer to work up from and picks out all the details nicely.

After that I just picked out bone and wood areas, so it wasn't all one colour/texture.









(The name Olshovilaag is a bastardised phonetic version of the Hungarian folklore term for the underworld - Alsó világ.)