Horik Raloffson, Lord Commander of Karak Valldar

Today I am glad to start and present you a whole new long-term project here - middlehammer Dwarfs! I always liked their style - with big heads and no knees and lots of beautiful metal models. That and a lot of nostalgia from the times when I was facing them on the battlefield in 5th Ed. WFB.

The main idea of this project is to embrace the old style of GW miniatures while applying modern techniques - so the color palette is bright (at least brighter than my usual), the bases are juicy green and the metals are shiny - all done with my current skills and more elaborate bases.

To justify Dwarfs standing on green grass I have spun a whole backstory for them - of a small contingent of Dawi warriors stuck in an unimportant fort in nice surroundings of rolling green hills. It will be only moderately serious - and you can read the first installment below.

The Lord I am showing today is their leader - and the first model that I bought for this project - I always loved this guy. There are not many colors on him, so he's serving as a middle ground between my usual grimdarkness and the other dwarfs that will follow.

Although it’s unbelievable, not every transgression against dwarven law requires taking a Slayer oath - sometimes it means getting promoted! Horik is one such example. The third son in a powerful noble clan, he got involved in ‘youthful foolishness’, for which he got transferred to Karak Valldar to serve as an officer there. Only when he arrived he understood his elder’s intentions - “Karak” Valldar was a small, mostly surface-based fort overlooking a wide, hilly area of minimal importance. Amongst the ‘real’ holds, the crewmembers of this fort were mockingly called “The Hill Dwarfs”. Still, Horik wasn’t going to appear weak, so he took his new job as seriously as he could (albeit begrudgingly). Now, after a thousand years (or so he always says - time seems to go really slow in Karak Valldar), a much older and experienced dwarf, Horik holds the position of a Lord Commander here, still angry about his situation - but still too stubborn to actually admit this fact. The only hint to that is his helmet, which he commissioned shortly after coming here - officially it’s supposed to be a terrifying, warlike visage - while in reality it just reflects how mad he is all the time.