GrimDarkVania - Beginnings

At the start of 2019 I had an idea. I had just finished watching the 2nd season of Castlevania on Netflix. It didn't have many of the things I love about the games, but it got me hyped about the franchise in general again. Ever since I played Circle of the Moon on Game Boy Advance, it's been one of my favourite franchises. 
And that's when I started thinking... if Castle Dracula can move/teleport... and everybody in it is undead and/or immortal... what would happen if it moved to space? And what if the count just decided to sleep a bit longer than last time? Like, let's say... 40.000 years, give or take?

This is my army project where I bring characters and creatures from the Castlevania videogame series into Warhammer 40.000.

At first it was just one of those many crazy modeling ideas I had. But the more I thought about it, the more the idea took shape. After all, Castlevania's asthetic is by design very gothic horror. Old castles, candles, dark and stormy nights etc. and that just meshes very well with the "GrimDark" style of a few 40k factions.
I started by ordering some Necromunda Delaque gangers and giving them Skitarii Ranger rifles. And tadaa, there's a really good 40k take on the Bone Musket from Symphony of the Night.

But you can't just have infantry, you need characters and leaders. Now the idea of a 40k Dracula was just then taking shape, but inspired by the what the Inq28 community is putting out all the time, I decided that I wanted to build a 40k version of Death. In case you're new to Castlevania, Death - as in the skeleton in a robe and a scythe collecting souls - is actual Dracula's most loyal servant and usually one of the last bosses you face in every game. I build him out of Dominus Tech-Priest, a model I wanted to convert for a long time. 

That was the core idea for a while. Back then I converted one miniature to use as a vampire but wasn't sure on how to include her. I knew long-term I wanted Dracula and some more vampires like Carmilla, who's a recurring villian/boss from the series. But going through the wiki I noticed something: Castlevania actually has very few vampires. Outside of Castlevania 64 we never even get vampires as standard enemies. 

But I did have this really nice Wargames Exclusive model and with a simple arm swap I decided that she just had the look I was going for. Gothic, evil but not very Chaos-y. Not yet at least.

I decided that this was going to be Laura, a minor character who sometimes teams-up with Carmilla in the games. 

Now I had a few models, but I wasn't sure on where to go next so I let the project sleep for a while. But starting this year I picked it up again and kept thinking about how to play them and what other enemies from the game would fit with the asthetic for which I at first kinda settled on "undead AdMech". That's when I encountered the Skeleton Blades again and man, where they a shoe-in for Sicarian Ruststalkers.

So I settled for the first part of this army on "Adeptus Mechanicus with Skeletons" as a broad concept. That would give me a solid base for infantry filling different rolls. But since building an army is always such a big undertaking, I've decided to field them in Kill Team first.

I've used them in the local Kill Team league. And while I spend most of that time collecting what little bones the other players had left (seriously, I hate Custodes) it at least gave me an idea what they were and how they played.

I need to finish a few more models to actually field them as an army in a proper 40k game. Once those are done, I just need to figure out which other (Imperium?) army will be used to represent Dracula, Carmilla and Laura in some kind of HQ Detachement. No prize for whoever guesses first which 40k model I'm going to convert the tall, cloaked, long-haired vampire lord out of. :P