Except those were the exact tactics of Kurze in subjugating worlds. Eviscerate the entire population of one planet, show up at the next one after spreading stories of how you painfully killed every inhabitant in the local trade routes. Then the entire system screams for mercy and surrenders without a shot fired. Wearing your previous kills simply adds to the intimidation factor. (Plus there's other details, like the Forge World models wearing gloves/sleeves made of flayed skin.) Those aren't their bare arms. Those are skinned arms that the Night Raptors wore over their gauntlets, along with nailing, tying, or otherwise attaching flayed skin to their armor.
To me the Night Lords need those bat helmets and they must have lots of horror look I mean that's mainly their theme and I say as scary as possible.
No, skulls are overdone. You want to look horrific- disturbing. Hell even flayed skin is getting somewhat dull these days in area of horror due to the over saturation of slasher films.
yeah, black hair, skulls, flay skin, part of body maybe, and bat wings at the shoulder.. a few people severed hand on the shoulder would be scary but wings look much cooler
Night Lords should not look scarier than any other Chaos faction. All you can do is to make them right reputation on the battlefield. Your enemy must understand that he lives his last minutes not because he see some guys in powerarmour looking like hedgehogs, but because he see Night Lords. Their main weapon as I know is their reputation.
