The Rot of Hondious: Battle Reports Games 1-3

The Rot of Hondious - Martin McCoy

Last month we had the absolute pleasure of attending the hobby meet-up Rich Grimmond 2023, hosted by Martin McCoy and Mike DeBolt. One of the highlights of the event was a narrative Inq28 campaign called The Rot of Hondious, that Martin and Bill Ford (of the Mordheim 2022 fame) co-ran. It centers around a backwater feudal planet largely shunned by the Imperium. Its isolation has escalated into a strict quarantine in the last twenty years as the planet has been wracked by a curious plague. The Red Joy seemingly takes hold of its victim’s central nervous system, compelling them to dance with joyous abandon, a rictus smile on their face until they collapse dehydrated, blood leaching from their pores. The Inquisition has recently taken an interest in the phenomenon, and the plague has started to become sentient, having infected the planet's meager psychic population. We played a Red Joy warband at the event and wanted to use this post to describe the narrative and how the event went!

The Rot of Hondious: Red Joy warband

The Road to Recovery is a Dead End Littered with Dead Bodies.

The Rot of Hondious, an Inq28 campaign held at the Rich Grimmond 2023 event, was fantastic. It gave us the opportunity to use Lucretia Barghest, an infected spyrehead, in some games of Forbidden Psalm! Although we had a few posts about her, including one showing how the model was converted, we have not shown the rest of the warband on the blog, and wanted to fix that. Part of the reason we decided to create a Red Joy warband, a host of bloody and mindless degenerates, was that it would give us an opportunity to paint a few eclectic models we recently got, namely a pair of MÖRK BORG goblins from Westfalia Miniatures, and a Bellman sculpted by Ana Polanšćak for the Folk Horrors II Kickstarter. While the models are quite different from each other, their macabre styling fit the concept of a deranged and bloody cult. For the remainder of the warband, we decided to use a selection of eclectic models we acquired over the years. Two were models from Ana’s first Kickstarter, and the final was one of WilhelMiniatures’ Forest Dwellers that I painted last year.

The Rot of Hondious: Lucretia Barghest

Pandemic Containment Collapse.

Lucretia Barghest used to curse getting stuck on the backwater of Hondious. Her glorious pilgrimage to Terra to bask in His radiance stymied by warp storms and the ill-fated rogue trader Mathias Torvald, or was it Sorvald? It didn’t matter. Her convictions were changing. No, not changing. Evolving. Transforming into something that could better celebrate His majesty. Something that could truly stand tall, projecting His magnanimous spirit. And those convictions were not based around walls. Not built around architecture, minarets, nor spires. Everything was so much simpler now, the scriptures of the Arxvs Dedicatvm finally clicked into place. It was not mortar, brick, or ferrocrete that formed the building blocks of the Imperial Faith. It was Flesh. She could hear them calling clearly now. She could hear them discussing it everywhere. Finally, there were no secrets. And what a joyous revelation it all was. Knitting everything together. Or rather everyone together.