Dark Skies Over The Harrowmark - part 4 The Cleavermaw

The Cleavermaw was a hulking conglomeration of different wrecked and captured ships, cobbled together over many years from the orruk pirate crew's victims and any old junk they could salvage. The various parts were completely mismatched and it sailed in an ungainly, awkward way. It looked like a dog, steered like a cow and smelled like a slum. Luckily it also packed a punch like a prizefighter: it was equipped with vast amounts of heavy artillery and loaded with thaumaturgic devices of varying reputability.

The Cleavermaw was a little too big to be managed efficiently by her crew. They were not few in number but the ship was large and ungainly and unresponsive to her helm. Kaptain Mogrum deemed it too risky to sail at higher altitudes, as it was even more unweatherly.

Flying at very low levels came with its own dangers though - especially in the Harrowmark. The ship should have made frequent violent turns to avoid the many obstacles that appeared from the forest, but the crew often didn’t bother and just ploughed on through everything that got in the way! The hull often scraped over a rocky spire, grazed the brow of a hill, knocked tiles off the roof of a tall building or crashed through the top branches of a tree. Monsters occasionally leapt out of the forest canopy to attack the ship and crossbow bolts, bullets and arrows of all kinds were often found embedded in the ship’s timbers at the end of a voyage.

The Cleavermaws often spent a lot of time doing repair work using materials captured from their victims’ sky-vessels. They didn’t seem to mind this as it seemed to make capturing merchants with no cargo on board worthwhile!

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First steps.

I plan for this to be my main sky-vessel for the Dark Skies game, so I want to go all-out on the build and the paint job.

My plan is to give it a mast and painted sail, to make a flying stand from 3 Citadel Woods trees on a 160mm round base, and to add a lot "repairs" to the hull and deck. To follow the style established for the Rotmoon I will probably sling a lot of baggage along it's sides as well. I also want to add several "arcane devices" for magical protections, probably made from Ork Big Gunz bits...

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Decking and internal strengthening.

The diagonal support beams from the old Fortified Manor kit slotted nicely between the Gloomtide and the Frigate hill and held the Kharadron ship in place very snugly.

Next steps: more details to be added to the Frigate (the bits are in the post hopefully!), the base and Citadel Woods trees flying stand, a mast and some magical devices.

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Update: 18th March 2020

The Cleavermaw is "airborne" now! That is a 160mm round base, by the way. This ship is pretty big!