Fandom Factions: The Slumbering Horror Kabal

The great thing about running a club-wide narrative campaign is that you get to play against an amazing variety of different armies with different themes, and I wanted to take the opportunity to spotlight some of the brilliant orders of battle that have taken part in the Echoes of Nihilus campaign I have been running. The first of what I hope will be many of these campaign centric Fandom Faction articles belongs to JB and his Slumbering Horror Kabal, a Drukhari force that kicked up a storm in the campaign by achieving the highest number of campaign points in their alliance at time of writing and being amongst those considered as one of the "big bads" of the narrative.

If you love what you see here I highly recommend checking out JB's instagam (account name: @theliquidlamps) where you'll not only find more of their hobby works but also some pictures of the Slumbering Horror Kabal's games in the Nihilus Imperium as well!

How many points of tabletop ready miniatures does your army currently stand at?

How many points of tabletop ready miniatures does your army currently stand at? What month is it? GW juggle the points values pretty frequently these days, but as of Q1 2024 my collection sits at approximately 2700 points.

The Slumbering Horror Kabal in all it's (in?)glory

What inspired you to collect this faction?

Ages ago when I was in my early teens and able to tear my attention away from WHFB* long enough to dabble in 40k I recall browsing a local game store. Back then there were really two options: Night Lords or Dark Eldar; I was a spooky kid and craved a spooky faction. The sales assistant, bless them, recognized this and advised me that Night Lords would be the best option, since Dark Eldar were a very difficult and unforgiving army to collect and play.

Joke’s on them, I hate myself and have a crippling compulsion to prove myself by doing things the hard way. I chose Dark Eldar!

All of this was of course purely theoretical. I didn’t have the kind of money required to actually get into the hobby, at most being able to afford a character model here or there, since my parents were more keen on me learning to cast my own minis in the garage than have me spend money on GW. My friends and I would simply use paper cut-outs to play the games.

Fast forward to me being an adult with sudden access to disposable income. I’d gotten back into the hobby, crafted myself a very janky Chaos Space Marine warband - inexplicably not Night Lords - and set my sights on actually making the Dark Eldar kabal I’d been wanting since I was a kid.

As it turned out, not listening to advice and finding employment worked out for JB's Drukhari plans

Can you give us some insight into your colour scheme?

I decided very early on that I didn’t want to do a dark colour scheme, since that felt kind of played out. Oh, Dark Eldar are dark, eh? Cool, very out of the box thinking. The idea of pale, ghostly fae emerging from the darkness struck a chord with me and so I settled on bone as the primary colour, with black as contrast and a cold purple as the accent. Tying it together I added flairs of teal blending into a fluorescent green, trying to evoke blue and green flames I associate with witchcraft and the Fair Folk.

For my Coven units I went a different direction, since I wanted them to not only stand apart from the Kabal units, but also from the Craftworld units they were based on. Black is a colour I rarely see on Craftworld units, and was also present as a secondary colour for the Kabal units, and to tie them together further - as well as add an unnatural tone to them - I gave the edges a gradient of purple, teal and fluorescent green, evoking the colours of an oil slick or contaminated water.

The blacks of JB's coven invoke images of oil slicks and contaminated waters

Does your faction have a backstory?

I think it would be strange for someone to devote this much time and money on little guys and not have a narrative for them.

Commorragh is not a city in the conventional sense, though very few things about the Webway can be called conventional. It sprawls in ways only its natives comprehend, and contains many pockets that appear as nations unto themselves.

One such pocket contains the Obsidian Spires; three massive towers emerging from the ground like the claws of some unfathomably large beast, surrounded by what the locals refer to as the Howling Forest. This is the home of the Slumbering Horror.

A relatively young kabal mostly known for their intense terror tactics, with unconventional raiding strategies by Drukhari standards, favouring heavy psychological warfare before attacking, seemingly appearing out of the shadows themselves.

As a point of pride, or arrogance, the kabal’s uniform is pale, reminiscent of polished bone, emerging from the darkness like revenants to drag their victims, kicking and screaming, back to the Howling Forest.

The forest acts as the first barrier to the kabal’s territory, and a grim warning to trespassers: miles upon miles of bodies, twisted and broken, bones bursting from leathery skin and splitting into branches, kept alive and in perpetual agony, their groans and cries growing louder and more desperate as newcomers approach. A common pastime among the members of the kabal is releasing captured slaves into the forest for a grand hunt, with those few who survive the longest driven mad by the pleading faces in the trees.

This seeming mastery of darkness and terror comes from the kabal’s close ties to the Boneweavers, a haemonculous coven based at the bottom of the Spires’ oubliettes. Led by the venerable Hantu, He Who Tends The Void, this group is suspected to be the true power behind the Slumbering Horror; indeed, the current archon, Me’nderita, She Who Prowls The Shadows, is said to have been granted eternal life by the coven, at the cost of her shadow.

The group’s motivations are inscrutable, but they take the greatest joy in desecrating and tormenting the Asuryani dead, pillaged wraithbone being the most prized material for its artisans’ creations.

The numerous raider vehicles of the kabal really help with the army's terror tactics and slave hunts

What are your favourite models in your faction?

My Pain Engines. The thing I get the most enjoyment out of in the hobby is building crazy sh*t and seeing peoples’ reactions, and those Taloi were created with one purpose: to upset Eldar and Ynnari players who thought we could be friends.

Second to my Coven creations is Me’nderita herself, as well as her retinue of old school Incubi.

JB's Pain Engines certainly riled up their rival Aeldari player during the campaign!

Any interesting facts about your faction?

Much of the faction symbology reflects various interests and obsessions of mine. The Slumbering Horror is an obvious nod to international cringelord H.P. Lovecraft, the markings on the vehicles are alchemical symbols, and the icons on the Coven units… well, if you know you know. Grant us eyes!

Much of the army's imagery were inspired by H.P. Lovecraft

So what's next for your faction?

When I originally wrote this focus I said “nothing, I have nothing to add, no notes.” Then they made Incubi good again, and so I sourced some more old school metal minis for my Archon’s retinue. Then I needed Mandrakes for a big doubles game this week, and so I smashed some together in a few days.

Basically who knows at this point? My storage space is limited, so probably nothing too big. I’d love for Grotesques to not be sh*t anymore so I could justify making some more, so maybe when we get our 10th edition codex halfway through 11th edition I’ll be motivated to make some.

* - WHFB stands for Warhammer Fantasy Battles for those not in the know. It's basically the original name for Warhammer: The Old World.

Thanks JB! If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to comment down below and let the owner of this army know! And if you would like to be featured in future Fandom Faction articles please email us at dj.driver.theprojectside@gmail.com with up to 6 pictures of your army (including a full army shot if possible) and answers to the 7 headlined questions outlined above in this post. We will endeavor to feature as many submissions as possible, however if there are any issues we will let you know as soon as we can.