Full Spectrum Dominance: Mechanicus Reclaimator

ALL NECROMUNDA, ALL THE TIME

Another addition for my Necromunda collection, this week sees my custom Bounty Hunter "The Reclaimator" added to the field, along with his macabre familiar. The original model is the Drakoath Chieftain who first appeared in Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, and the inspiration came from a similar conversion I first saw on Facebook. This model was a long time coming - I think the conversion was done some time in January but I was distracted painting other things and never had the guts to get on with it - I was nervous about messing it up!

This ended a few weeks ago, as I reached capacity and finished painting all the Goliath gangers I own, then bashed out a few Bounty Hunters and Hired Scum. With no more excuses, I got on with it, and despite my trepidation enjoyed painting this model a lot more than I expected! Painting plastic is a joy compared to resin sometimes, and added to that I had complete creative control - my other Scum were often based off the Forgeworld Studio paint schemes (or at least could be compared to them) and this added pressure.

I concentrated on making the model feel old and battered, with cloth highlighted almost to pure grey, and no hugely bright colours aside from the glowing plasma pistol. I wanted the scheme to feel washed out, relying on a few key points on the model to pop - the aforementioned gun, the bones, the verdigris on the metal.

Once I was happy with him, I came across an old conversion I had made some years ago, when Inquisimunda (or Inq28 as it is now) was something I was looking to get into. A hideous floating familiar converted from the plastic Wraith model was something I knew I had to refurbish and get onto the Necromunda table, and this seemed like a good excuse to give the Reclaimator a friend. The cloth was quickly painted in the same washed out red as the Bounty Hunter, and it was given a Necromunda base. Now I have the perfect counts-as Servo-Skull for my Bounty Hunter, a tallyman who keeps records for the Techpriest-gone-rogue and floats about freaking people out.

I think both models work well as a pair, but they're also strong conversions and paintjobs that can stand alone. Here's some more pictures and flavour text - all credit to Dark Heresy for the initial descriptions of a Reclaimator.

Reclaimators are the the most-skilled and certainly least trusted of the Adeptus Mechanicus' minor ranks of Tech-priests. It is their task to redeem raw materials from old and damaged systems, to scavenge parts and be tasked with the endless cycle of minor repairs needed to keep a starship flying or a hive city’s infrastructure from collapsing under its own weight. By necessity, a Reclaimator’s skills begin to stray into a higher understanding of machinery and technology than most of their brethren and many learn to worship the Machine God in a fragmentary and superstitious manner, marking them apart from their fellows. Reclaimators themselves are often sent into dangerous or unsafe areas with little direct supervision, and they scavenge and salvage a good deal more than their masters know. As a result, most Reclaimators have a well-deserved reputation as suspicious, shifty characters who sell their skills and the items they retrieve or repair for a good profit on the Imperial black market. Many have links to criminal gangs and more than a few are willing to resort to robbery and even murder to build up their spoils if they think they can get away with it.

Technology is a thing little understood in the Imperium of the late 41st Millennium and its workings lie shrouded in mystery and superstition for most of humanity. The Adeptus Mechanicus holds undisputed rights to the secret lore of science and technology, but the Tech-priests themselves are comparably few in number when set against the teeming billions of the Hive Worlds or even the isolated crews of starships plying the void. Such people rely on technological infrastructure in great profusion simply to live, be it a hive water-recyk system or a ship’s thermal heaters. The ongoing low-grade maintenance of such petty systems, along with the day-to-day workings of the more sophisticated parts of a manufactora’s machinery and the like, are left to an army of technomats, functionaries, duct-crawlers, voidwalkers and work-prefects gifted by their Mechanicus masters with just sufficient knowledge to perform their tasks with due deference and supplication to the Machine Spirits and nothing more. Of this disparate group, arguably the most skilled and certainly least trusted are the Reclaimators.

In the Calixis Sector, Reclaimators are common in the reaches of the hive cities of Scintilla, Malfi and other worlds, as well as on the great Chartist vessels and numerous small trader ships. Despite their vital purpose, however, they rarely enjoy a good reputation, although in some places their ill-renown is more deserved than others. In the depth of the Sibellus underhive, it is well organised networks of Hereteks and "reks" that are the real power behind the infamous narcogangs. On war-ravaged Tranch, the men and women who make up the numerous Reclaimator scav-packs that prowl the ruins are often little more than murderous bandits weighed down by dead men’s plunder and broken trinket-fetishes. Among the Void Born it is no different; the wreaker crews of breaker-ships and junkers are considered untrustworthy and accursed of their kind and the void families tell dark stories of death-scows, haunted vessels filled with scavengers driven to cannibalism and madness by want or by uncovering something best left alone in their desire for valuable salvage.

The nightmarish hive world of Necromunda is a little different, for the immense manufactora are dominated by the Houses and the Gangs. The Adeptus Mechanicus is a less obtrusive presence, usually happy to monitor from afar. Nonetheless, there are times the Mechanicus must intervene or deploy their agents on missions of importance. The wandering Bounty Hunter known as the Reclaimator may well be one of these priests; his mission long forgotten or his presence in the underhive the result of some schism or exile. It is obvious from his appearance that this creature is no longer a Tech-priest in any traditional sense, but has been driven feral by his time in the hellish tunnels of Hive Primus. Less of a shifty scavenger looking to make a profit, this servant of the Machine God has learned to hunt and kill to survive, and grown a taste for it.

Clad in scraps of red cloth now supplemented with scavenged armour plating, furs and other feral trappings, the Reclaimator strikes a fearsome appearance. He carries an array of weapons; a valuable plasma pistol, an immense arquebus of unknown origin, a three-fingered power claw and a simple knife. His original mission may well have been to recover lost technologies and keep things running in the depths of the underhive, but this seems to have been overtaken by a desire to hunt. Nonetheless, part of his agreed payment is always the bionics and other mechanical enhancements his targets may carry.

The Reclaimator rarely speaks, preferring to operate alone, but has been seen with a strange floating familiar on a number of occasions. This deformed creature appears to be constantly muttering, dictating what it sees to a quill-armed servo-skull hardplugged directly into its brain. Agreements and contracts with employers, tallies of kills, technologies recovered and chance encounters are all recorded. Some say the servitor-creature has been with the Reclaimator since he first came to the underhive, and just as the Tech-priest has devolved and been forced to adapt to his surroundings, so the servitor creature has degraded until it is this malformed creature hidden under tattered robes. All agree that its appearance and constant, low muttering disturbing

The creature cannot write anymore - or perhaps never could - so dictates directly to the scribe-skull hardplugged into its skull

A rolling record of everything it witnesses is endlessly written over - who knows what use the Reclaimator has for this information? Knowledge is power...

The servitor-creature can usually be seen accompanying the Reclaimator, but not always. It is not known where the Reclaimator has claimed as his base or resting place, or if he even needs to sleep