Two years ago I made a somewhat popular post on /r/UnsolvedMysteries about the legendary UK cold-case 'Who put Bella in the Wych elm?'. Read it here.

In the two years since, I am glad to see more and more discussion on this case as it's been shared through podcasts, forums, and the like. I myself have actually received messages from several users over the years wanting to discuss it. As of recent, however, my interest had truly sparked again and I did some more digging.

The Murder

I suggest reading my aforementioned post for a clearer picture. But in general, the story goes like this. In 1942, two boys are out poaching for eggs in the then privately own Hagley Woods, in Hagley, England. Soon they climb a tree, and to their surprise, they find the remains on a human skull. Eventually, they contact an adult, who gets the police involved.

The Police find a number of strange pieces of evidence at the scene.

• The tree was hollow, and inside contained the rest of the remains of a human female, apart from a hand.
• The hand was found some distance from the tree. It had been completely severed.
• Pieces of Jewelry and valuables, suggesting this wasn't a robbery.
• The pathologist's report claims she was dead for at least 18 months before being found.
• A section of taffeta was found in her mouth, suggesting that she had died from suffocation
• Her jaw was found to be very irregular, which should have made her identity easy to find.

However, all of these clues lead to a dead end. The victim was never identified, and no one with her description (a very misshapen jaw) was ever reported missing. Rumors spread of witches and rituals, but nothing came of them.

Then, in 1944 on Upper Dean Street, Birmingham a message was graffitied onto a brick wall.

"Who put Bella down the Wych Elm - Hagley Wood"

What is most strange about this message, is that it gives a name. Something the police were yet to find. While the name wouldn't lead them any further, this was not the last of the graffiti. Over the next fifty years, this phrase would pop up all over the West Midlands area. Most famously on the giant obelisk at Hagley, just under a mile from where the body was found.

Popular Theories

• Bella was a Nazi spy.
• A traveling gypsy, who was murdered by another gypsy
• A prostitute in the area had disappeared around the same time, locally known as Bella.
• A man called Jack

Hi folks, like many others I've long been interested in the “Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?” case. I've been off-handedly wondering about this for a while now, simply out of pure curiosity - is the wych elm tree where "Bella" was found still standing? Was it cut down? Memorialized in some way? Have there been any reported cases of supernatural activity surrounding the tree? (Not implying actual existence of the supernatural, just looking for reports of claims).

A Google search showed no photos of the tree itself that weren't older (B&W) and it's not mentioned anywhere on the typical sites you'd go to for into on the case. Since I haven't been able to find anything on the state of the tree in my research, I was just curious if anyone else had stumbled upon any info about the fate of this mysterious tree.

Thanks!

2018 update on "Bella's" facial reconstruction: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/revealed-after-75-years-face-14329271

Hello, I'm quite new to 40k and was looking to make a drukhari combat patrol. I got some units which I thought looked really cool and this is what im looking at:

1 Succubus 2x5 Wyches 5 mandrakes 6 Reaver Jetbikes 1 ravager

Is this somewhat decent to start out with?

I take pride in my creativity , but the last time I made one they seemed a bit... Grossed out. Perhaps inside-out squiggoths were not a good idea.

My lab is stocked with all sorts of interesting things , but I need that spark of inspiration to really create.

For example , I have several types of tyranid organisms and their weapons. Perhaps I should modify the ammunition-organisms to do something fun?

Creativity is very , very welcome.

This is a list I am about to start testing in preparation for a GT happening in my city in November. It will be my first time at a tournament event and while there may be changes that affect the list between now and then, I think the skeleton is likely going to remain largely the same.

One note is that I dont know Haemonculus models and for aesthetic reasons I dont want to use them, so I've given myself the limitation of making a tournament competitive list with just 2/3rds of the codex available to me. Otherwise, I welcome feedback and suggestions on what could be improved.

We will start off with the list itself, and then some bullet points on how I expect it to play.

 

++ Patrol Detachment 0CP (Aeldari - Drukhari) [78 PL, 11CP, 1,310pts] ++

 

+ Configuration +

 

Battle Size [12CP]: 3. Strike Force (101-200 Total PL / 1001-2000 Points)

 

Detachment Command Cost

 

Obsession: Kabal of the Black Heart: Thirst for Power

 

+ HQ +

 

Archon [5 PL, -1CP, 80pts]: Labyrinthine Cunning, Overlord, Power sword, Splinter Pistol, Stratagem: Tolerated Ambition, The Helm of Spite

. Splintered Genius (Black Heart): Splintered Genius

 

Drazhar [8 PL, 145pts]: Hatred Eternal, Warlord

 

+ Troops +

 

Kabalite Trueborn [8 PL, 135pts]

. 6x Kabalite Trueborn: 6x Splinter Rifle

. Kabalite Trueborn w/ Heavy Weapon: Dark Lance

. Kabalite Trueborn w/ Special Weapon: Blaster

. Kabalite Trueborn w/ Special Weapon: Blaster

. Trueborn Sybarite: Splinter Rifle

 

Kabalite Warriors [3 PL, 40pts]

. 4x Kabalite Warrior: 4x Splinter Rifle

. Sybarite: Splinter Rifle

 

Kabalite Warriors [3 PL, 40pts]

. 4x Kabalite Warrior: 4x Splinter Rifle

. Sybarite: Splinter Rifle

 

+ Elites +

 

Incubi [4 PL, 80pts]

. 4x Incubi: 4x Klaive

. Klaivex: Demiklaives

 

Incubi [4 PL, 80pts]

. 4x Incubi: 4x Klaive

. Klaivex: Demiklaives

 

+ Fast Attack +

 

Scourges [5 PL, 75pts]

. Scourge w/ shardcarbine

. Scourge with Special / Heavy weapon: Shredder

. Scourge with Special / Heavy weapon: Shredder

. Scourge with Special / Heavy weapon: Shredder

. Solarite: Shardcarbine

 

+ Dedicated Transport +

 

Raider [6 PL, 105pts]: Dark Lance, K

Title says it all pretty much. I'm interested to know if a Custodian has ever been captured by the Drukhari Wych Cults and made to fight in the arena.

I got the Piety & Pain box set when it came out, but I never really did much with it. Now I'm looking to make a 1000 point force from them. Thing is, I'm mostly drawn to the Wych Cult models, so I want to be focusing on them. So far, I have Lelith, 10 Wyches and 5 Scourges, along with a single Venom. How would I go about expanding to 1000 points? Do I MSU Wyches and put them in venoms, or do I run them across the board while hoping Hellions and Reavers distract the enemy long enough to actually get into a fight?

Like to title says! Show me for inspiration and ideas!

I want to make mine with witch aelves and wych kits together. Or mostly some wych stuff on the AoS models

I have the 8th edition start collecting and am building a list on battlescribe but when i make a wych unit and i add any of the wych special weapons (Hydra gauntlets, razorflails or shard net and impaler) it comes up with an error “Wyches has 1 too many selections of Wych w/ razorflail (maximum 0).” Is there a reason for this?

If you're looking for specific stuff, I can take a look in my bits boxes

So what will be everyones go to loadout for a 10man wych squad?

I feel as though a shardnet and impaler will be a given, but are any other weapons worthwhile taking? A hekatrix with morvaines agoniser could be very useful, especially on bloodbrides who hit on 2’s anyway. Other than that i think i’ll be running mine fairly barebones.

In 2018 while driving through Hagley, England, I saw upon a hill nearby a great obelisk. Keen to know what's it was built for I found myself on a little google adventure.

The obelisk was built on the order of Lord Lyttelton, however, that is not its primary reason for being so famous. Graffitied on the side (at least at the time of my original research) was the phrase "Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?".

So this begs some questions. Who is Bella? Why is she in a Wych Elm tree? And why graffiti this on an obelisk?

The start of this mystery begins in 1942, in the small village of Hagley, Worcestershire, England. Four young boys were poaching for Birds Eggs in the local Hagley Woods of the Hagley Estate.

At some point, one boy decided to climb a tree (A Wych Elm Tree, near Wychbury Hill) to hunt for birds' nests. However, it was not a bird's nest they found, but rather a human skull. This human skull was placed inside a hollow section of the trunk.

After returning home and informing their parents, the police get involved. When the police arrive at the area and search the rest of the trunk they find an almost complete skeleton, with a shoe, a gold wedding ring, and some fragments of clothing. The skull still had some tufts of hair and had a clear dental pattern, despite some missing teeth. A hand was also found some distance from the rest of the body.

The pathologist’s examination showed that it was of a female who had been dead about eighteen months (placing her death before October 1941). A section of taffeta was found in her mouth, suggesting that she had died from suffocation. Her jaw was found to be very irregular, which should have made her identity easy to find. However, after trawling through dental and medical records, they could find no clear identity.

Rumors of her being a sacrifice begin to appear, apparently related to black magic due to the separated hand and enclosing her body in a tree.

Police were at a dead end, and with World War 2 raging on, resources were limited.

Then, in 1944, a graffiti message appeared on a wall in Upper Dean Street, Birmingham, a close-by city. The message read "Who put Bella down the Wych Elm - Hagley Wood". This is obviously referencing the murder, it has the village name, the tree she was found in, and now a name. The investigation reignited, with police trying to search for any missing persons called Bella. They would find nothing. To this day her identity is unknown.

But that isn't the end. This graff

Last night I managed to squeak through a verrrry near-win against Custodes with the new codex, and I felt like it highlighted a major weakness in our current army: we are NOT good at dealing with saves. It was running 1500pts, two patrol detachments: kabal and coven, no cult. While poison can help to mitigate high toughess, Drukhari High-AP weapons tend to be limited to single big swings like Blasters, and against army-wide 2+/4++ we just don't have the volume to reliably force fails. Most of our mortal wounds are "when you roll a 6 to wound" and while that's nice we don't really have the numbers to make it count.

So what do we do? I sat down the codex last night and tried to identify what my list is lacking, and I've been floating a few things. I was surprised to find ... it's the Wych Cult, I mostly ignored them in 8e but damn yeah it's the Year of the Wych.

1. Bloodbrides with Precise Killers have the attack volume to force fails and throw out enough high AP to make it count. Wyches generally drop absolute buckets of dice and even if you're not getting spicy with Blade Artists, they've got the numbers to force 1s.

2. Slashing Impact is great since – despite requiring 6s – it's detachment-wide and based on the number of models in the unit. You're getting 1-2 MWs out of a 10-wych unit but if you're running a decently-sized patrol detachment that adds up.

3. Eviscerating fly-by seems like one of our most reliable sources of Mortal Wounds. 10 Hellions are 175 points and they'll average 5 mortal wounds for 2CP BEFORE you drop in the raw numbers from their splinter pods, the extra MWs from Slashing Impact, and the fact they've got 3 decently hitty attacks each. Mortal Wounds AND volume is a real winner. I've been thinking about using Painbringer to bump them to T5 just to increase their odds of actually getting into melee alive. What do I want to give bikes? Well:

4. Reavers can now hypothetically charge 43" (Eager to Flay + Matchless Swiftness + Hypex + Agile Hunters + Deadly Rivals) and while you're probably not dumping quite that much of your army into going zoom, it highlights just how much zoom they bring even without upgrades. I wasn't using hypex, agile hunters or deadly rivals and I pulled off a 32" charge from behind a ruin in my deployment zone. Reavers also have access to Blasters and Grav Talons, which are some of our best tools for cracking tough nuts. I'm starting to suspect that Splintermind might supplant Painbringer this edition

Hello there. I’m currently painting up some wych cult, but have come to a bit of a...problem. I am doing burgundy armour, highlighting with word bearers red. However, some of the models have boob-plates, which are obviously round and not edged. How would one go about highlighting this armour?

This is my latest update about collecting a pure Wych Cult army. In short: I am collecting and playing a Wych Cult only force--no Kabal, no Coven, no Aeldari soup--and trying to get the most out of it.

Not just with Drukhari, but overall, I'm a player who generally sticks to one subfaction in lists. This, I'll admit, shut outs a lot of strong list-building options (especially with Drukhari), even though I am a pretty matched play/competitive-minded player. But this is how I 40k, and should help explain why I am so focused on this Wych Cult project.

Which Cult?

I used Cult of the Red Grief for my first two games with the new codex and am convinced that they are the right one for me moving forward. I always found their lore and color scheme awesome (it's how I'm painting my army), and they have some powerful rules as well. They have the best movement of all the Wych Cults, which gives great flexibility in the matchups where you can’t just overpower your opponent.

What’s New in the List?

I kept basically the same list I was using before the new codex, but I replaced a Succubus with the new Master Succubus, a unit of Wyches with Bloodbrides, and replaced Yvraine (who was a placeholder until I got more models!) with a unit of Hellions.

One change had an impact on squad loadouts--the new Wych weapon allocation rules mean you have to diversify. I currently don’t have any hydra gauntlets, so have been forced to stick with 1 Razorflail and 1 Shardnet and Impaler per squad of 10 Wyches.

I think the Shardned and Impaler is probably the only must-take, but I will be maxing out on Wych weapons for my 10 Wych squads since the other constraint means the 5 Wych squads in Venoms can’t take any. Ultimately this saved me points for now, and with the Heketarii blades so much deadlier now, I don’t mind at all.

Next, Khymerae unit size changed. Before they were 2-6 pairs per squad, which was a bit strange, but meant you could take up to 12 models in the squad. Now, they are 2-6 models, so I needed to split my 10 Khymerae into two units (which as it turns out broke my list, since this are too many Fast Attack units whether with 2 Patrols or 1 Battalion, so my list was actually not legal in my two games with the new codex...I thought beasts didn’t count like before. This will be fixed moving forward.)

Cult of the Red Grief Double Patrol

Succubus, Hyper-swift reflexes, Blood Glaive, Blast Pistol, Grave Lotus

Master Succubus, Triptych Whip, Archite G

I recently moved and lost some of my minis unfortunately. I am in need of 1 set of razorflail and 2 sets of hydra gauntlets.

Hello there. I’m coming here to request help/tips/links etc to aid me with converting a box of AoS Witch Aelves into Wych Cult. I want to do something to make the Hekatrix Bloodbrides stand out, but I have never done a conversion/kitbash before. As such, I am unsure what to do, where to start or even what tools I’ll need. I know I’m gonna have to get some splinter pistols to satisfy WYSIWYG, but I could really use any advice possible. As a reward, every Archon/Succubus/Haemonculi that aids me shall receive a delivery of 15 Tau slaves, 5 Imperial Guard slaves, a selection of various drugs, 3 Master-Crafted Power Swords and 2 Mawloc poison glands delivered to their Commorragh residence...

More info from the Drukhari FB page.

Some AP on basic weaponry is nice.

https://preview.redd.it/0qdpxibt2ui61.jpg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c9e0c2a65c125fd2a70e6c90275f57c56aa4dc36

According to the rules, you can have 1 master per Detachment, And each one need to be unique, how do Custom Cults Count? Do they have to be different picks, or are at all counts as one?

So, I ran a 1k list that was pure Wych Cult last week twice and ended up tabling both players.

The +1 to invuln custom obsession is nuts when your wyches a have the shardnet and impaler to lock things down and maintain a 3++.

Also, a Succubus with hydra gauntlets, Precision Blows, and Adrenalight is surprisingly nasty. Precision blows gives you mortal wounds on 6s to wound and the s3 hydra gauntlets mean you’re often wounding on 5+ re-rollable. I was routinely doing 2-3 mortals per fight phase along with normal damage and a 3++ meant she had a solid chance of getting to stick around to do it again the next turn. Plus, preventing fall backs meant people were gonna have a hard time shooting her ever again.

The Reavers are a bit expensive, but a 9 bike unit with Painbringer is actually pretty useful. They can actually do a decent job of surviving with fire and fade to let you dictate what will get to shoot at them the following turn plus lightning fast reflexes.

Finally, I threw in Drazhar too because his ability to blender skyrockets when he has a lot of freedom provided by super fast tarpits of wyches.

Here’s the list:

 

++ Battalion Detachment 0CP (Aeldari - Drukhari) [51 PL, 1,000pts, 6CP] ++

 

+ Configuration +

 

Battle Size [6CP]: 2. Incursion (51-100 Total PL / 501-1000 Points)

 

Detachment Command Cost

 

Fixed Combat Drug Selections

 

Obsession

. Custom Cult: Acrobatic Display

 

+ HQ +

 

Drazhar [6 PL, 135pts]

 

Succubus [3 PL, 60pts]: Adrenalight (Combat Drug), Hydra gauntlets, Precision Blows, The Helm of Spite, Warlord

 

Succubus [3 PL, 60pts]: Hypex (Combat Drug), Shardnet and impaler

 

+ Troops +

 

Wyches [3 PL, 60pts]: Grave Lotus (Combat Drug)

. Hekatrix: Hekatarii blade, Splinter pistol

. 3x Wych: 3x Hekatarii blade, 3x Splinter Pistol

. Wych with Wych Weapon: Shardnet and impaler

 

Wyches [3 PL, 50pts]: Serpentin (Combat Drug)

. Hekatrix: Hekatarii blade, Splinter pistol

. 4x Wych: 4x Hekatarii blade, 4x Splinter Pistol

 

Wyches [3 PL, 50pts]: Splintermind (Combat Drug)

. Hekatrix: Hekatarii blade, Splinter pistol

. 4x Wych: 4x Hekatarii blade, 4x Splinter Pistol

 

+ Elites +

 

Mandrakes [4 PL, 75pts]

. 4x Mandrake: 4x Baleblast, 4x Glimmersteel