Cobalt Scions: blue power armour step by step

June 14, 2020, 7:01 am

≫ Next: Dark Apostles and Traitorous Guardsmen

The second squad of Cobalt Scions Intercessors are complete, which also means I have finally finished the Imperial Fists battleforce box. I started painting this kit in September 2019, which means it's taken me A MERE TEN MONTHS to paint... 20 miniatures.

That makes it sound like more work than it actually was.

Don't get me wrong, it has been a time consuming level of detail; each basic marine takes about 6 hours. In total it's probably about 140 hours of work including build time and a little conversion time. That means if I'd been doing an hour of hobby a day, this would have been done in 4 months.

"Fascinating" calendar maths aside, I'm really, really happy right now. I set myself the challenge of doing the whole force to what for me is a high standard, and I actually kept at it! Those who know me will understand this is an unusual degree of discipline and focus.

The finished battleforce

I learned a lot working on this project, such that I'm in a position to provide a step by step of how I do the defining element of the painting: the blue armour. I've covered the paint recipes for other parts of the minis before, most recently in the post on Captain Lucullus, so I'll just talk about the blue in today's post.

Ultramarines blue power armour: step by step (mostly)

The technique is probably of intermediate difficulty, it's just time consuming because primaris marines have all the edges. If you have the brush control for edge highlights, you have all the skill you need.

Stage 1: I like the base, base, base, base, I like the fairly bright blue base

Get a nice, solid basecoat of Macragge Blue. I achieved this with a rattle can because I'm a slacker. Next, paint any non-blue parts of the model where there's a good chance you'll spooge paint on the blue. Metallic parts are the main contenders here, since the glossy shades used on them will look like ass if they get all over your carefully highlighted blue. And they will.

Stage 2: Loose and sloppy

Contrary to the subtitle, this one is not in fact for the horndogs. I am referring to the level of precision you should use for your first highlight stage, i.e. bugger all. This initial highlight of Calgar Blue should be a fat sausage of a highlight, and it should look like crap. See image below.

Actual crap.

I'm not saying to glob the paint on - it should still be nice and thin - but the lines themselves should be wide enough to show up when you do the sharper highlights later on, and there's no point being a perfectionist about this stage, because it's going to get mostly covered with paint.

Stage 3 & 4: edging and throwing shade

These next two steps can be done in any order; the one you do second is the one you'll have to be careful with.

Step 3 or 4: line in the recesses

I used Reaper's Blue Liner which is face meltingly great for this, but you can use Nuln Oil or watered down dark paint or whatever, really. I just like the liner because it's matte as hell, flows beautifully, and goes where you tell it.

Step 3 or 4: edge highlight

I used Fenrisian Grey for this. It's the standard 2nd highlight suggested by Citadel's colour app for Ultramarines armour, and it does good work. It's pretty damn bright, so you want to get as thin and crisp a line as possible. A good brush is your best friend here; at this point Windsor & Newton should be giving me commission for the number of friends I've sold on their Series 7 brushes. A size 1 or 2 will do fine for this stage.

Stage 5: knock it back

Paint the rest of the ****ing owl.

You will by now have made some mistakes, your highlights won't be as sharp as you hoped, and you'll be questioning your life choices. This stage is here to fix your sh*t. Take the basecoat colour (Macragge Blue), thin it down to the consistency of semi-skimmed milk, and apply it over any areas where the highlights look messy or overly thick. This has the effect of both tidying your errors and adding an extra layer stage to help the Calgar Blue fade into the basecoat. Be very careful not to let this go all the way over your highlights; you just want to go maybe halfway across your chonky Calgar Blue highlight stage. Unless you're fixing an error, in which case, do whatever you need to do.

Stage 6: dot highlights

Next up, make a 50/50 mix of white and Fenrisian Grey and apply a tiny dot to any corners. This helps the highlights pop a little more. You don't need to do this everywhere; it's best to focus on those corners which are naturally hit by any light coming from directly above the model. See the closeup from another marine in the squad below to see what I mean:

Stage 7: weathering

This is technically four stages, and if you want to keep your little plastic butcher looking clean, you can skip it. Personally, though, I think it helps bring it to life.

Dents & chips

Take the recess shade colour (Reaper's blue liner in my case) and apply dots, dents and scratches to any part of the armour you want to look busted up. I tend to focus on the lower half of the legs, as well as the elbows, hand guards, and pauldrons (obviously with the white pauldrons and red kneepads I'm using other colours).

You then want to highlight the lower edge of these dings with one of your highlight colours. I'm using my mid-tone, Calgar Blue, to keep the weathering fairly subdued, but if you wanted a more intense look, then Fenrisian Grey could work.

Note: you can do the shade/highlight in either order. The advantage of doing it with the recess first is that it's easier to see where you've put the scratches; the advantage of doing the recess colour second is that if you paint a dot of highlight and then do an overlapping dot of shade slightly above it, that'll make the highlight colour look like an immaculately well-painted edge highlight of your dark dot for very little effort.

If you want to see a video of this technique in action, it's derived from Darren Latham's excellent tutorial on painting white power armour.

After applying these two stages, I applied Army Painter Gunmental into the middle of any particularly big dents, being careful to leave a little of the shade colour showing the whole way around the gunmetal area to help retain definition.

Mud/dust

Pick a colour that closely replicates the colour of the ground the marine is standing on. As I'm going for grassy moorland bases, the earth is a mid/dark brown, so Typhus Corrosion is perfect. If you're using any kind of textured paint like this, use a busted old brush as it's really rough on the bristles.

I painted pure water over a boot/shin, and then applied a modest amount of Typhus Corrosion over the lower half of that area. Whilst it was still wet, I'd clean the brush again and use it to take off any overly thick areas of the texture paint and feather it out to let the blue show through, and to get a nice fade up the shin.

Final thoughts on the tutorial

And there you have it. If you have thoughts on how I'm going about this, or if you have questions about things I didn't say clearly enough, let me know in the comments section. It's definitely a time consuming technique that requires patience, and is arguably excessive for anything but character models, but I'm satisfied with the results. Having recently learned that the 'Eavy Metal team take two and a half days to paint a marine, I'm happy with the effort:reward ratio of getting these results in a third of the time.

Showcase: the other Intercessors

I cunningly decided to add all my sergeants' names to a scroll somewhere on their person so I could remember them in-game. Turns out Lytanus Cato doesn't fit on a scroll. Fancy that. Hopefully the impressionist scrawl above will serve as an aide memoire?

Lytanus also got a sword courtesy of the Land Speeder Storm kit. Just about the nerdiest thing I've done (in the last few months) was standing about in my living room with a katana, drawing it from various locations and considering the limitations of power armour. My goal was to try and figure out the least unergonomic place for a blade of that length to be if you don't have a second hand to hold the scabbard (because you don't necessarily want to let go of your bolt rifle) and you don't want it flapping about (which it will if it's lower slung). So the location looks weird, but has been proven effective under REASONABLE EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS. Re-sheathing will, however, be a cock. Maybe Lytanus can ask a squadmate for the common courtesy of a reacharound?

This is one of the techno-roider heads from Statuesque Miniatures. Wrinkles and harder lines were painted on to give the face a slightly more rugged look.

The eagle-eyed will note that these guys are a mix of marines from squads I and II. Why? because when I painted the first squad of intercessors back in October '19, I wanted to focus on the unfamiliar Mk.X armour and not worry about faces. Knowing I'd want some faces later on (I know it's silly not to wear a helmet, but it brings them to life so much) I painted the unit with mixed squad markings. I've now finished playing catch-up, and it's the cherry on top of my joy cake.

With GW's recent announcement of loads more primaris toys, I'll definitely be expanding this force. For now, though, it's time to pull another box out of the ~~pile of shame~~ cairn of opportunity.

↧

Dark Apostles and Traitorous Guardsmen

June 22, 2020, 6:18 am

≫ Next: A Conspiracy of Ravens

≪ Previous: Cobalt Scions: blue power armour step by step

Welcome back fellow followers of the Eightfold Path! It's another lovely day in the Word Bearers, every meal a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! I love... hmm. Might have cross-mojinated myself a bit there. Back on track Jeff, today we introduce another new character (might he be our mysterious narrator? Spoiler: No) and a unit of troops he inspired to come to our side. So settle in with a nice cup of tea and meet Halam Caeroth the Many Blessed. Dark Apostle of the Graven Star chapter of Word Bearers.

For those with long memories, my Dark Apostle will be familiar as the leader of the Chosen from the Dark Vengeance set (I don't advise doing a drinking game based on the number of times the word Dark will appear in this post). He always struck me as being perfect for a fallen Chaplain and so when it was time to embark on Operation Word Bearers he got promoted. Trouble is, Dark Apostles now have little helpers in the form of Dark Disciples (see?) and I didn't have any. Scouring the intertubes for options I ran into some Cthulhu cultists from Scibor Miniatures two of whom were perfect for what I wanted. More on them later, for now, let's get a closer look at Caeroth and find out why he is the Many Blessed.

I was torn with painting whether I would go for the black armour of a chaplain or the standard Gal Vorbak Red of the rest of my Word Bearers. In the end I figured black would look too much like a member of the Black Legion had wandered in and stuck around so red it was. As a nod to the chaplain scheme I made sure that the cloak was black and in fact liked the dusty black I achieved so much that it's become the standard cloth colour for the rest of the army. Stormvermin Fur mixed into black for the curious. Time for some backstory, summon mysterious narrator!

"If any of my brothers could be called a friend and an ally of mine it would be Halam. As Dark Apostle of our Chapter he shares certain of my goals and methods. Subtler methods of persuasion and conquest than the blunt tools of bolter and chainsword. For as long as I have known him he has demonstrated the effects of iron will upon the bretheren by containing various cacodemons and lesser servants of our Lords and Masters within his flesh. Not, you understand by undergoing the sacred synthesis of Gal Vorbak, no, he simply compels them to remain by will and ritual alone. He uses them to achieve a closer connection to the warp state and to demonstrate his mastery of willpower. It is an impressive feat although it has wrought considerable fleshchange upon his form. I know that one way or another I shall lose my friend one day. He will make a mistake or lose concentration and the imprisoned neverborn shall revenge themselves. Until that day, I know I can count on him."

The daemonic bits of this model were most fun to paint. I've always loved that bolter-being-reloaded-by-helpful-tentacles backpack and I hadn't even noticed the little dude trying to push his way out of Caeroth's shoulder pad. Clearly he currently has a Plaguebearer installed. Figuring out what colour would work against the red without popping too much was a challenge. In the end I summoned the painting hive mind of the Beard Bunker by sacred rituals of WhatsApp and asked them. We decided on purple and as any excuse to paint purple is leapt on by this painter I went for it. Fading the purple back into red made it look like the little guy is straining to push himself out of the metal and almost achieving it.

Adding their obsequious weirdness to the package are the Scibor Chaos Cultists. If I'm honest, Scibor's casting often lets down some nice ideas. There's often quite a rough texture to their parts that I can't fathom if it's moulding or sculting that causes it. As a result I resolved to paint them quite simply in order to mask the casting flaws. I also decided to make them a weird alien race rather than human mutants as that would add to the interplanetary feel of the Word Bearers. Let's hear some more about them:

"Those things following Halam? My brother, even I do not fully know, they apparently come from some alien world swallowed by the Eye millenia ago. The Dark Apostle found them on one of his wanderings and they seemed to take a shine to him. There's a whole cult of them aboard ship and he uses them as acolytes in all his rituals now. He says that their nature is some of the purest touch of Chaos he has ever known. They have taken the name Caerothi as their race although that is clearly not true and just a dedication to Halam. They speak only to him so only he knows their language and any Colchesian from them is only memorised passages of the Book of Lorgar. Who knows where they come from or why they follow Halam, he's not telling and I'm fairly sure they can't..."

The simplistic painting stopped at the book of course. Sadly all the Colchesian runes on the transfer sheets are in white. I'd've loved to use the decals to get perfect Colchesisaninto the book but had to use brush instead. I did use one of the big glyphs from the Night Lords on the right page as a sort of mystic rune. But lets move from the spreaders of The Word to those who heard it and went "you know what? He's right..."

These fine fellow-me-lads are the Tannabheim IXth. I've decided that all my cultists will be a lot bigger than their on table representations. So I can always draw another unit when one is massacred. The Tannabheim IXth represent a regiment that turned traitor during a war against the Word Bearers. In fact I'll let "him" tell you about them:

"Ah yes, the Tannabheim, they represent the real successes of our methods as a legion. Why kill the troops that the enemy have trained when we can simply turn them? As I understand it, the Tannabheim were part of a large deployment on Turok's World against us. The Imperium - as they so often do - had left them exposed and vulnerable, uncaring of their lives so long as they spent them slowly to buy time for redeployment. All the men in the regiment knew it, everyone knew they were doomed. They could see our forces readying for the assault and all their officers were spouting the sort of "not one step backward" rhetoric that marks doomed soldiers. So some of their scouts slipped out and approached our lines unarmed and under flag of truce. Brave of them. They doubtless thought they would be simply murdered but had to try nontheless.

"We told them that they would be spared if they forsook the Emperor that turned his back on them, swore to the Dark Gods and our service and fought on our side. They willingly agreed, seeing no great benefit in the alternative. We told them to give us a clear signal should their coup de etat succeed so that our hammer would not fall at dawn. As the binary system's light crested the horizon we saw a beautiful sight: 75 officers, commissars and loyalists crucified on the leading edge of their trenchlines. We sealed our bargain by annihilating the offerings with bolter fire and then advanced unopposed over their fortifications. They've been with us ever since."

The models are, of course, the traitor guardsmen from the Blackstone Fortress set. They look cracking as a group of guardsmen who have gone gradually native. I chose mustard drab for their uniforms to distinguish them from the rest of the Word Bearers. But to bind them to the army - and to prevent any "oh sorry mate, thought you were a guardsman" friendly fire incidents - included ragged bits of cloth in Word Bearers red to act as a recognition signal. I did some minor conversion too, just swopping the melee weapons on the two pairs of close combat lads to try to kill of some of the "twinsies!" vibe.

Expect to see a lot more cultists my warped friends. For the Word Bearers way is to spread them and encourage them. What do people think? Are we liking how the story feels? Mysterious narrator not too annoying a conceit? Love to find out. Until then, lovely people.

TTFN

↧

A Conspiracy of Ravens

June 29, 2020, 1:00 am

≫ Next: Inq28: Inquisitor Greyfax conversion

≪ Previous: Dark Apostles and Traitorous Guardsmen

Well met my vengeful brothers and sisters, we gather again to swell the ranks of the Word Bearers once more. This time with another example of our Master's plans coming to fruition in the form of a worshipful cult. Kind of a weird one this time, presenting the Corvid Cabal:

It is fair to say that I love almost everything that has come out of the Warcry range so far. Enough to make me seriously consider playing a game based on AoS, my "mehness" over which is long documented. When putting together plans for the Word Bearers however, I hit upon an idea. Some of these warbands are ripe for conversion over to 40k and use as wilder cultists. Rubbing my hands in evil glee I ordered a box and found a couple of spare models on ebay to round the unit out to 10. I'm not using the dude on stilts in the main army. He's just too bonkers. Instead I shall use him as a roleplay mini as the shaman of the whole cult. Just like all my cults, I'm assuming there are a couple of hundred in the Corvid Cabal. We just see 10 of them in a unit.

Before we delve into the details of modelling and painting we need to do two things, the first? Marvel at this miniature. It. Is. Gorgeous. The leader of the Corvid Cabal is clearly not someone with whom you should mess. Stunning Sculpt. The second? Well we need the backstory for the Corvid Cabal (which has definately not been written primarily to annoy Tom's Raven Guard, honest) and for that we turn once again to our mysterious narrator.

"The Corvid Cabal are rather special to me as I recruited them personally. I found them in the rebuilding ruins of a city called Tarno on Samalut IX. I was wandering the Imperium on one of my periodic reccees looking for potential and found myself on a world that had narrowly defeated an Ork Waaargh. It turns out that our misguided and holier-than-thou cousins of the Blood Angels and Raven Guard had been instrumental in this effort, in Tarno especially the Raven Guard were held in high esteem. Well, as high esteem as any thousand diluted imitation of their former might might be. Such was their reputation that something of a cultish worship of the Raven had sprung up as a symbol of the Emperor's protection and a Gnostic sect was forming around this worship.

"The Imperium, ignorant to the laws of cause and effect as they always, always are, were attempting to deal with this sect by destroying it utterly. As a result, there was already a state of undeclared civil war in Tarno with magistratum backed by Imperial troops raiding homes and fanes and arresting any who were found there. Shrouded in falsehoods I walked among the people of Tarno for a time, watching the progress and saw an opportunity. I joined the cult and through discussion and some telepathic manipulation twisted the minds of the shamen away from seeing the Emperor as the saviour raven. There were other powers out there that deserved their worship more. For a time I thought they would choose the Great Deciever as their totem, but the symbology of death and carrion carried them to the Grandfather's loving arms. I convinced them through dreams that escaping Samalut would be their salvation and so, stealing away aboard transport crates, the cult moved into orbit. They took over the sprint trader, I forget it's name, and headed for the Eye. I revealed my true self and guided them to their new home."

Obviously, being fantasy figures, there was going to be some conversion work needed to make them 40k-worthy. Most urgently a special weapon of some kind, given that the cultists can only have flamers or heavy stubbers in the rules (thank you Chapterhouse, y'gits) I figured a flamer would make more sense. I decided to make a jury-rigged home-made model so completely scratch built the thing:

I started with a couple of lengths of plasticard tube, drilled a bunch of holes and then fitted them together to form the shroud for the barrel. I attached that to a larger, rectangular lump of plasticard and fitted that to the arm. I bent a length of thick wire into the feed tube for the pilot light (inexpertly blobbed on with greenstuff), and added a guitar wire feed tube from the tanks on the back of the model. I had to shave away a lot of feathered cloak to make the tanks fit so they needed to be re-sculpted back in. A couple of thin plasticard strips over the vambraces to be the stabilising staps finished the thing off. I then hid my terrible modelling crimes with paint! Turned out ok!

All the others were converted with a variety of Necromunda and Genestealer Cult pistols. If they had a raven I left it because 1: they're cool, and 2: I figure a weaponised bird to the face is worth an autopistol. The pistol hands fit perfectly at the wrist. Very happy.

I wanted a variety of skin tones in the cult. In general I'm going to try to do this, partly to contast with the universally very pale marines and also to inject a little believable ethnic diversity into the army. As usual this meant a range of colours mixed from Burnt Umber, through Beige Brown up to the Caucasian Cadian Flesh. All of the Corvid Cabal are somewhere on this spectrum. It really increases the time taken to paint the unit but I love the effect. Trouble was, they still weren't looking properly 40k, they looked like fantasy minis with guns. Then I added the gang tattoos and everything became loveliness. The modern style body art pulled them the last few inches into the future that they needed and suddenly they were 40k miniatures.

And that's all folks! Hope you like the Corvid Cabal, would love to hear your thoughts and any similar projects you've embarked upon! Until next time, lovely people

TTFN

↧

Inq28: Inquisitor Greyfax conversion

July 6, 2020, 4:28 am

≫ Next: The Eridani Sector: the start of a new 40K campaign setting

≪ Previous: A Conspiracy of Ravens

Inquisitor Greyfax is one of those miniatures designed to convey the technological contradictions and iconic weirdness of the 40K setting. Unfortunately for my tastes, it actually goes too far. A crossbow attached to an assault rifle has a comedy charm, I grant you, but a candle on one's hat is asking for trouble, particularly when the hat is taller than the candle. If the hat doesn't catch fire first, there'll be wax running off the brim and giving poor Greyfax the look of a rock that's had seabirds nesting on it for a while. Perhaps it's a known trend in Imperial fashion: guano streak. And finally, we come to my favourite bit... the stiletto heels. Supporting the weight of power armour.

This should probably make everything except concrete qualify as dangerous terrain.

Suffice to say, I have once again returned to my classic hobby haunt: turning Games Workshop's output down to maximum volume. Behold the fruits of my partially successful labours:

Skulls, a corset, and power boobs... yeah, arguably it's still over ten. And I say 'partially successful' because originally I wanted to sculpt sabatons with a ridge that would be visually sympathetic to the style of the greaves; round-topped armoured boots would have looked weird beneath the ridged greaves. I had a good crack at it, but just couldn't get them to look symmetrical or, indeed, un-crap. In the end I yanked the eject button and sculpted very plain boots instead. I imagine they have steel toe-caps and are generally reinforced, but the rubberised surface conceals the joints.

I chose to sculpt wedge heels rather than flats because the character is a haughty woman for whom additional height will help the giant suit of armour look that much more imposing, and look, this is not the miniature on which to attempt "practical-looking female power armour." As an aside, bravo to GW for finally sculpting a woman in less gendered power armour! I'm referring, of course, to the Inquisitor Draxus sculpt. The increasing variety of styles is pleasing, both because the galaxy should be a varied place, and because it's fine for some people to dress in a very gendered way so long as that isn't the only way that gender is represented.

Anyway, back to this Greyfax conversion. Lore-wise, the suit itself is actually a suit that was salvaged from a ruined Sororitas convent following a mission to the Diaphone system. Following Nadiya Zelenko's promotion to being Inquisitor Drake's Interrogator, I figured I'd celebrate with a major kit upgrade. Here's hoping she doesn't die in her next mission, leaving me looking at this miniature while a single manly tear rolls down my face.

The Conversion

Before I could even get at the boots, I needed to swap out the head. The original miniature of newly-recruited Nadiya was from Statuesque Miniatures, so using one of their head sculpts that was semi-close to the original mini seemed like the best way of getting some consistency.

Since part of Greyfax's collar/neck was stuck to the head component, I needed to sculpt it from scratch. I pinned the head in place and sculpted around it.

Next up, I stripped down the condemnor boltgun so that it went from being a crossbow to a speargun. I sculpted a couple of tiny rivets onto the sides of the big not-an-ironsight thingy, and then got to thinking 'what is this thing for?' ...and came to the conclusion that it was a comically elaborate mount for a laser sight:

With all that out of the way I could snip off most of the shoes, then pin the mini to the base with some long pins running up the calves, and green stuff packed into the base's underside so that the pins had plenty of reinforcement to prevent getting bent off the base. At this stage I also applied some thin armatures for the feet so that the putty wouldn't be sliding all over the place when I came to sculpting the boots proper.

As mentioned in my intro, the sculpting of the boots didn't go well. My attempt at making sabatons looked like floppy fail. It seems I still suck at sculpting mechanical parts. Falling back on my old comfort zone of smoother shapes, I sculpted plain boots on.

Finally, with the mini very securely on the base, I could go about sculpting the hair. This was simple enough; I've had enough practice at this that I find hair pretty easy, as long as I remember to give it the right volume and weight.

Painting

As is often the case, I went for maximum effort on some bits of the paint job, then totally phoned it in on other parts. The metal in particular was pretty slack, consisting as it did of my now standard metal mix:

Basecoat Army Painter Gunmetal
Wash with Agrax Earthshade
Wash with Nuln Oil Gloss
Highlight with Army Painter Shining Silver

The blue tabard/lining was a more careful series of layers of various Coat d'arms and Army Painter blues, layering up, glazing down, and layering up again. The browns, similarly, were a combination of Vallejo, Coat d'arms and Army Painter colours, such that by the time I finished, the cloak was about three different levels of matte/gloss, which looked sub-optimal. I threw a layer of pure Lahmian Medium over it to get it consistent, which was successful in that it was now consistent...ly glossy. Ah well. Might need to throw some dullcoat at it at some point, but it'll do for now, and I'm happy with the colour itself.

Basing: why so plain?

There's something ridiculous about putting all that effort into a mini only do throw down this basic bitch base, but it needed to be consistent with my other Inq28 dudes, and needs to look OK on urban/indoor maps, since being out in a field is pretty rare during Inquisitor roleplay. Were I painting this mini in isolation, I would have gone for a light brown or possibly sandy base with more visual interest, since that would've contrasted much better with the dark brown, blue, and silver.

But who is this character?

As with all the agents of the Cetus Subsector, Interrogator Zelenko's bio is on the Beard Bunker's wiki. Her page is here. We're actually in the process of improving and enlarging some bits of the wiki, including our maps, so I'll put out a post about that when we've got the bulk of it done.

↧

The Eridani Sector: the start of a new 40K campaign setting

July 13, 2020, 10:43 am

≫ Next: Champions and Neverborn

≪ Previous: Inq28: Inquisitor Greyfax conversion

Regular readers may recall that all the gaming we Bunker dwellers do in the 40K mythos is set in a lovingly crafted region of space we refer to as the Achernar Sector. Every campaign, and sometimes individual games, leave their mark on the setting and help it grow.

There was just one problem.

A setting initially designed for roleplaying as Inquisition agents (the Cetus sub-sector) and contemplative space exploration (the Scyrian Expanse) doesn't lend itself to big, sweeping wars of the sort one would, on occasion, like to fight. Even fighting big wars in the other two sub-sectors in Achernar would have had too drastic an effect, so we ended up limiting our campaigns to single system affairs, and that's not ideal. One's own setting shouldn't feel constraining.

I am not a subtle creature, and thus my solution wasn't subtle either: create a whole new sector of space next to the current one, with the explicit intention of making it suitable for bigger, explodier wars.

To support this endeavour, my long-serving accomplice Tom and I have been hard at work for the last few weeks (months, technically) trying to create the resources that will be used by the rest of our gaming group and, perhaps, by you too. Naturally, this involved making a map.

Map!

Of course a map in and of itself is just a starting point; we've also written a bunch of initial broad brush strokes to get the lore ball rolling. This post is therefore going to cover the following:

The new map we made, and some pointers on making your own in Photoshop.
The substantial update we've carried out on our campaign wiki.
The ten thousand foot view of the Eridani Sector
The new map/diagram I made of the Cobalt Scions' new home system.

The New Sector Map

Making the background art

Making a map of something is my favourite way of coming up with the first few details of a thing. The process of just making up an image gives you a bunch of starting points to extrapolate from. What might that dark, dusty area be? What about that nebula, or that empty region? Who lives there, if anyone?

To ask those questions you need to have made the art, so let's talk about that. The illustration beneath the map started out as random splodges of colour over a procedurally generated starfield by adapting the technique shown in this very helpful Photoshop video tutorial.

The technique in that video is suitable for making low resolution images, so I had to fiddle around, at length, to get the initial noise filter and cloud generation to work at the massive resolution that the map file runs at (the finished Photoshop file is 1.4 gigabytes). Why so big? Partially because it's easier to add crisp detail at higher resolutions, and partially so that this thing can be printed (if I ever print it) without pixelating horribly.

Because I am a scrub, this was made using Photoshop CS2: the legacy version of Photoshop that Adobe let you use for free because it's so old it's obsolete.

Despite my limited skills and tools, the new Eridani map was immediately looking a lot nicer than the original map I made for the Achernar Sector. I don't think I even hesitated before I decided to replace the original art I'd slaved over. From that point on I just worked on Achernar and Eridani as one huge image to ensure consistency, and so that the art on the two separate maps would line up perfectly.

Naturally, immersion demanded that the new art for Achernar be somewhat faithful to its predecessor, just... amped up.

Out with the old...

...and in with the new.

Going beyond the Photoshop techniques in the video

Adding more stars in a variety of colours

This was done by drawing drawing tiny dots/circles for the stars, duplicating them, applying a gaussian blur to create a glow, and modifying the hue to create different colours. I'd also use the transform tool to make a variety of sizes. Once I had enough variety, I'd duplicate the layer(s) again and again, spreading them out and rearranging/rotating them until there was no obvious pattern, and then merging it all back down into a single layer because trust me, when you're working on a big file, you want to be organised about your layers right from the beginning or you'll get confused. If it has to be on separate layers, name those layers and keep them organised in folders.

Adding finer detail to the dust clouds/nebulae

The technique in the video is great if you're after some early 90s Star Trek-looking space, but real nebulae have way more definition than that. Now I'm not a pro illustrator, so I was never going to make something look real, but I could make it look more detailed at least.

With photos of real nebulae on my backup monitor, I set about zooming right in and creating more definition and highlights. I'd sketch the shapes I wanted with the brush tool, then use the smudge tool to get smoother fades and shapes, then finally fiddle with the layer's opacity until I was happy with how it looked. The same technique was used to add further definition to the dark dust clouds. Here's a step by step so you can see the different elements building up:

Since the original image is absurdly high res, you could cut out smaller sections of it and use it for yourself. Here's a link for the full resolution art. It's 109x37cm, or 43"x15", give or take, at 300DPI.

Achernar and Eridani art.jpg 17.6MB

Standard legalese applies if you actually wish to use this background art for anything; it's copyright me, naturally. I realise it's presumptuous to assume anyone would actually want to use it, but: I do not give permission for this image to be used for profit without my explicit consent. If you want to use it for anything not profit related (which seems like the less unlikely scenario) then go ahead. Just drop a comment here on the blog and let me know! Not because you have to, just because I'm curious and it'll bring me joy. Also if you linked back to the Beard Bunker that'd be great, but I ain't the boss of you.

Here are some closeups at 50% resolution, because woo! Bright colours.

Names Workshop: putting labels on it

The worst thing about making a map is that you will inevitably have to name some stuff. This usually ends up being a mix of historical references and slinging stuff through Google Translate, then whacking some syllables with a mallet so that it's not just a word in a foreign language.

I did at least have the luxury of a starting point. The idea was that the Cobalt Scions would feel like Rome's first conquests in the Mediterranean, so their home system of Thonis would be kind of Grecian, with the nearby Alyrian sub-sector being similarly named after Illyria, which is very much in that same area. The Iolan Reaches hints at the Ionian Sea, and the ancient North African King Massinissa, the first king of Numidia, gave his name to the Massylean sub-sector.

Sticking with the classical theme, I had three very bright stars in the bottom left of Eridani, so the old crone/witch tropes pretty much demanded to be used. Again, I creatively switched a vowel, this time for the Graeae. Or rather, Maisey did, since at this point I was whining about naming stuff in the group WhatsApp chat.

System labels, or star icons?

I considered following the classic 40K map trope of having icons for each system that denoted its role (e.g. hive world, agri world, etc). However, since many systems have multiple worlds (and indeed multiple stars - this decision based on actual science) I decided against that, and stuck with icons that show the number and colour of the stars in each system.

What's with the empty regions?

We deliberately wanted to have some areas be just broad brushstrokes, the idea being that the setting has the flexibility to have star systems added to it when we want something new to fight over and don't have it in the region already. That meant having some areas with established worlds, and some areas that emphasise the extent to which other people in our gaming group can contribute new locations and lore to the setting.

Refreshing the Wiki

As previous posts have attested, we use a wiki to track what happens in our corner of the 40K galaxy. This is all Tom's fault, since he's the Mechanicus cogitator masseuse; I just write and draw stuff. It was hitherto in standard Wikipedia display settings, which seemed a bit comedy given how hard we'd worked on the map, so we made more of an effort. Of course this also meant designing a new logo to fit the new look, but that was just a couple of hours of trial and error. Given that our biggest use of the wiki relates to our Inquisition roleplay, we decided to frame the logo as if you're browsing the archives of the Obelisk, our in-fiction Inquisition fortress in Cetus Major.

Click here to go to the wiki

Interactive map

Beyond working like any other wiki, the main thing to highlight on the practical level is the interactive map, which has now been updated. If you click on the map icon near the top right of any page covering a system or region, it links to a full screen map where all the words are hyperlinked, meaning you can load the map and then click on any word you see to be taken to the relevant wiki page. Once on that page, you just click the map/system icon at the top right to return to the map.

Of course, having a whole new sector to explore meant Tom had to go and add a whole raft of wiki pages to ensure there aren't any dead links. Some of those pages are, thus, wee baby stubs until we flesh those regions out. At the time of writing this, I've laid down basic lore for all the sub-sectors in Eridani, and of course everything in the more developed Achernar sector remains in place. I'll talk more about the lore we have got later in this article.

In case you're curious as to how Tom programmed the map, here's what he had to say on the subject:

Tom: My bit was easy; a little tedious to plot all the areas and link them up, but easy. Anyone with a little blessing of the Omnissiah can view the code to my page and see exactly how it was done. I used the HTML map tag for the main functionality and then found some javascript on Github to allow it to resize without breaking.

Welcome to the Achernar & Eridani Sectors

So here's the bit where we go into some of the actual lore. Obviously I'm not going to do so in much detail, since you can just browse the wiki, but it seems polite to provide a wee primer.

Click here for the interactive version

The Achernar Sector

This is our well-established area. It's right on the edge of the galaxy - indeed, its rimward edge is literally at the limit of the Astronomicon. This means bits of it have a frontier kind of feel; in border worlds like Erydimae, invoking Imperial authority is unlikely to hold much sway over the locals, for whom the Imperium is a distant abstraction, and the threats and business opportunities in the Halo Zone much more real.

That said, there are plenty of worlds in the region that are more classically Imperial, particularly sub-sector capitals like Cetus Major.

There are also regions like the Scyrian Expanse which haven't even been fully charted, and where most of the Imperial worlds are just newly-built outposts and mining operations. This is the area with the most known xenos activity, including SCY-039, a five-sun system utterly infested with greenskins, and SCY-028, or "N'Cea," a colony founded by a Tau fleet stranded on the wrong side of the galaxy following a malfunction with an experimental FTL device.

Click here for the interactive version

The Eridani Sector

This region is in many ways typical of the Imperium, in that of the hundreds of star systems in each sector, only a handful are under Imperial control. The Saedran and Massylean sub-sectors are relatively orderly places, with extensive trade running between the Imperial systems. Alyria, by contrast, is a collection of colonies who pay lip service to Imperial control and then spend much of their time in a state of conflict with each other trying to settle millennia-old grudges.

The Alyrian Sub-sector

The Iolan Reaches encompass possibly the most troublesome sub-sector. The few Imperial-held systems are spread thin, and surrounded by pirate wolf packs and xenos raiders. The region is a constant drain on Battlefleet Eridani's resources, but strategically cannot be abandoned as it connects the more prosperous Saedran and Massylean subs.

The sector's most notable stellar phenomenon is the Pheraean Rift, a dark region of space that occludes the light of the stars behind it, and seems to inhibit warp travel. As to whether this is a naturally occurring phenomenon or the work of xenos artifice is unknown, but the upshot is that anyone trying to cross the sector will need to follow the warp route through the heavily-defended Saedra system.

At a glance, the systems of the Graiae are perfectly normal Imperial colonies. The Ordo Hereticus, however, is very aware that the incidence of psykers in the colonies' populations is measurably higher than is normal. Whether this is due to some effect the Pheraean Rift has on the warp currents, or some other factor, is unknown.

There are other, more mysterious regions of Eridani. The lesser of these is the Targean Veil region, bordering on the equally unexplored Scyrian Expanse in the Achernar Sector. What alien threats may lurk in its many star systems remains unknown, and a superstitious Imperium stretched on all fronts finds itself disinclined to kick what may very well be a nest of bullet ants.

Finally, and most strangely, are the systems referred to as the Neophrae. Historical records indicate that there used to be trade with human settlements in this region, but that contact with those worlds was lost by the start of M36. A number of vessels that have since gone to explore the region have disappeared, or worse, found drifting in space, with no outer hull damage, a few signs of fighting in the corridors, and no bodies. Several eccentric figures in the techpriesthood suggest that if the Neophrae was home to a pre-Imperial human culture, there is a significant chance of finding archeotech, and possibly even STC data. As yet, though, they lack the influence needed to mount another expedition, given the apparent risks.

Thonis: a place for a space marine to call home

Of course one of the advantages of creating this initial draft of the Eridani Sector is that it's the home turf of my new marine army, and this in turn gave me a context in which to really develop their home system of Thonis. Clearly not satisfied with spending several weeks working obsessively in Photoshop, I made yet another map, this time of the four suns of Thonicia. I say 'map'... it's not to scale, so I guess it's more of a diagram. Once again, the map was the first thing I made; once I'd named and labelled the many planets in the system, I set about expanding their descriptions in the wiki.

This was also a chance to play with a very different visual style, although I did at least remain consistent with the font that was used in the main sector maps.

In closing...

With 40K's ninth edition almost upon us, and with it some solid tools for narrative gaming (thank you Crusade), I'm extremely stoked to start carving up the Eridani sector, not least of which because most of the group appear to be mustering Chaos armies. I'm starting to worry I'll be the lone defender of ~~an awful fascist dystopia~~ the mighty Imperium! Come at me, you heretical bastards.

Naturally the sector (and thus the wiki) will continue to develop over time. Leave a comment to let us know what you think so far, and if you've done something similar!

↧

Champions and Neverborn

July 20, 2020, 2:30 am

≫ Next: Heroes of the Revolution. Genestealer Cult #12 - Kellermorph and Locus

≪ Previous: The Eridani Sector: the start of a new 40K campaign setting

Welcome all you beloved of the Dark Gods. Take care where your eyes linger this day, for we are journeying beyond the material plane and into the higher realms. To lead us there we have a most appropriate guide, Sorot Tchure*, Master of Possession for the Graven Star chapter of the Word Bearers:

Masters of Possession are a handy addition if you want to use a bunch of daemons, and as anyone who knows the Word Bearers will have guessed, I want a bunch of daemons. Buah ha ha and if I may haaaaa. While the "floaty" models are not always great, this one at least manages to look like it is actually floating rather than skipping. The eldritch flames make it look like he is casting something and the energies are lifting him up. This wouldn't be a Graven Star post without some mysterious narrator action though, so lets find out a bit about Sorot Tchure shall we?

"Urgh, Tchure, you had to mention him didn't you? There are not many of my brothers I hold in contempt but Tchure is very much one of them. You see, there are two paths to magical power and sorcerous expertise. One is a respectable, slow study of text and apprenticeship with masters of the craft to bend the universe to your whim. The other is to simply open a conduit to the warp and say 'yes please'. Tchure has taken the quick and easy path and it will burn him in time, you'll see. Borrowed power is no power at all in my opinion. It's not like we need him. The Gal Vorbak rituals can be easily performed by myself and our Apostle. 'Master of Possession', ha! The nerve of the man..."

Huh, our mysterious narrator seems to be in a bit of a mood today...

As with most Word Bearer characters, the hard work of colour selection had already happened. So the real thing I want to talk about this time is those green flames, because they use a new paint to me. Hexwraith Flame. This is a technical paint, kinda like a wash, that does a fantastic job of mystical flames. I first painted the flames Corax White (another wonderful paint) and highlighted them with pure white. This gave a nice 3d white base to apply the Hexwraith over. I washed a single layer over the the whole thing, letting it spill over where I wanted mild OSL to hit. It worked perfectly. It is transparent enough to tint the paint beneath for OSL, and strong enough to colour well over the white. Brilliant job GDubs, very much a fan of Hexwraith. I decided that the glow needed a little balance, so I repeated the process on the eyes of the skull in the staff and his own eyes. Now it looks like he is filled with power about to tear a hole into the warp and let daemons spill forth! Speaking of which:

My first daemons burst forth! I had the devil's own job trying to photograph these so you'll have to forgive my efforts. There's something about Bloodletters. They're the archetypal daemon in many ways, horns, red skin, long tongue, the works. Love 'em, though my preference for Slaanesh and Nurgle has led to me never using them before. But in an undivided army, all are welcome!

When painting daemons, the real decision is the skin colour. It's 90% of the model. In the case of the Bloodletters I had a notion I was itching to try. I started from Bugman's Glow (I know, come with me on this) and drybrushed up gently through Cadian Flesh, Kislev Flesh and into Flayed One Flesh. They will look a lot like... well... weird phalluses at this stage. Ignore this and proceed! Mix red and chestnut ink in a 3:1 ratio and thin it with a little water and medium. Lots of ink. Glaze the entire model and let it dry, then do it again... and again. After 3 coats a nice "blood soaked flesh" colour emerges and is incredibly quick to pull off. I could probably paint an entire Khorne daemon army in a weekend with this method. Horns went black, tongues got Bugman's Glow and a Carroburg Crimson wash. Brass and bronze blades go on smoothly and is then shaded with brown ink on the brass and black on the bronze. I was agonising about the blades. A big part of me wanted to paint them glowing hot, but two things stopped me. One: The technique needs to be done flawlessly or it looks naff, and two: why would Khorne want to cauterise wounds? Surely we are here to let the blood flow...

I cast around on the intertubes until I found a nifty Ian Miller-esque Khorne icon, if anyone knows who drew this, please let me know, I'd love to credit them properly. I roughed out the design in Khorne Red, highlighted the edges and then stippled black wash into the middles to make a rough texture, cleaning up the edges with black was the final step. I enjoyed these daemons, can't wait to do some more, maybe some of Grandfather Nurgle's servants next...

To finish off we have the first of the Graven Star's Exalted Champions. Yes, once again, he's a Chosen from Dark Vengeance! That kit was gold for Chaos fans. Before we talk painting, lets meet Nar Merenkar through the eyes of our hopefully less grumpy mysterious narrator:

"There is, as there has always been, a hierachy within the Graven Star, some are on the ascent, some find disfavour. Nar Merenkar is very much on the rise. An impressive officer, willing to be a solid file officer for centuries, his qualities are being noted. Pious in his devotions while being cautious to solicit the God's favour directly so reducing the risk of catastrophic fleshchange. Everyone knows that Lord Khoura does not have many centuries left at the helm of the Graven Star. He is accellerating toward Apotheosis or Catastrophy and all can see it. Thus the two most exalted champions are jockeying for position and influence. If I get any say, Nar will be the next Lord of the Graven Star, but that jumped up little turd Sa'Quath might have something to say about that."

I love this miniature, it's just so perfectly chaos. Twisted without being cartoonish, professional in demeanour after centuries of practice and the slung bolter speaks to a practical, tactical mindset. I'm proudest of the power fist on this model. I pulled it off by cutting a large sheet of rune decals from the sheet, laying it on the fist and getting it nicely bedded down with microset and microsol, then cutting the excess away. Once this was done, I scratched away any runes that were spoiling the spacing within the space with a sharp scalpel and much patience. Finally I added some battle damage, first by streaking red through the white runes then deepening the scratches. Now the power fist looks like it's seen some use.

And that's all folks. There'll be more Word Bearers soon, until then, lovely people

TTFN

*Yup! That Sorot Tchure. In my headcanon he used the events of Know No Fear to gain his new powers. Definately didn't use a name generator and then later realise I'd named him after a famous one and retrofitted some backstory...

↧

Heroes of the Revolution. Genestealer Cult #12 - Kellermorph and Locus

July 27, 2020, 1:30 am

≫ Next: Inq28 Short Story: The Opportune Moment

≪ Previous: Champions and Neverborn

It had to happen. We all knew it was coming. I had just two models* in the entire Genestealer Cult range I did not have painted. It was kinda inevitable that my completionist urge would combine with the final release of the Kellermorph and complete the army once and for all**.

It was weirdly refreshing to jump back into painting some GSC lads. After 3000 points of these nutters I had the scheme down so just a nice simple job. Let's take a closer look at these two hombres starting with the Kellermorph:

I love the sculpting of this model, the flaring cape, thrown back to quickdraw his three pistols is especially awesome. In the lore he's supposed to be a sort of "people's hero" righting wrongs Zorro style. I'm not sure that works for the Starborn Souls' backstory but should I ever need a character assassinating gunfighter he's now right here. I deliberately kept the painting very simple on him. I wanted him to blend in to the rest of the army. To hide in plain sight until his moment to reveal himself and blaze away (seriously: 6-12x S4 D2 hitting on 2's? Filthy). To that end he recieved the standard Ortag Imperial boiler suit and pressure armour combo with the primer red cape that will allow him to hide among my industrial scenary I'm working on.

His buddy, the Locus, is almost the exact opposite of my feelings toward the Kellermorph. As a bodyguard he'd fit right in, but I was almost completely unimpressed by the sculpt and the rules for the mini. My completionist senses were screaming though so I set out to make a Locus I could love. First thing to go was that back-banner. Beyond making it tricky to go through doors, it seemed daft to have a big "look at me" on the bodyguard trying to seem unobtrusive. I also went for the "hood down" look as the scarred head was too cool not to use. I also replaced the "neurotraumal rod" with the bonesword that comes in the kit. I kinda wish I'd shaved off all the flutting papers because... what are they there for? Providing movement to a model exuding static patience? I dunno.

Given that painting this model was largely "pick a colour for the robe" I thought long and hard about it. Initially I had thought to use the purple that I'd used on the Magi, but that seemed wrong for something that is supposed to be lower status. In the end I plumbed for Ortag Imperial red again as it would bind the model to the army. Now, I've mentioned that neither of these models give me massive excitement to use in the 40k army, so why do I have them? Beyond completionism I mean. I think these two will make perfect representations of the two leader options for Necromunda genestealer cult gangs. So while they are technically part of the Starborn Souls expect to see them most often in the twisting depths of the Underhive.

And that's it. The Starborn Souls are done**, really done**. Feels weird! What about you? Do you ever feel like you "finish" a project? Or are you how I normally am, finish scaling a peak only to see more mountain ahead of you full of exciting variant projects? Seriously, I'm still planning stuff for my Blood Angels after 7000 points. I've got problems man... Until next time, lovely people.

TTFN

*Except for the Tectonic Fragdrill which may one day make an appearance but... meh.
**Except obviously there's going to be a Brood Brothers contingent one day. But that I am considering a seperate project. Honest.

↧

Inq28 Short Story: The Opportune Moment

August 3, 2020, 1:12 am

≫ Next: For Averland and the Emperor! - Empire Cavalry

≪ Previous: Heroes of the Revolution. Genestealer Cult #12 - Kellermorph and Locus

Today's post is the second of three linked short stories. It follows on directly from the end of part one, The Battle of Hasmides, this time from the perspective of an Inquisition soldier. It's one of those times when the Inquisition has a chance to capture an extremely valuable enemy, so long as they move quickly and take horrifying risks.

This week's story assumes familiarity with the 40K mythos, but it's not essential to have read the first story. Enjoy!

The Opportune Moment

Inquisition storm trooper Ingvar Almstedt felt a rare pang of nostalgia for Stohlbard. For home. He was sitting in the red-lit passenger compartment of a Valkyrie assault carrier, but he envisioned rain lashing pines; the smell of needles on the forest floor; people sitting around coil heaters, laughing and telling the stories of dead loved ones to keep their ghosts nearby. No one back on Stohlbard would ever hear his story. He was on the other side of the galaxy now, and everything he did was a secret. For his family, his story simply ended with ‘he left twenty years ago.’

All that remained of home were the men in this stupid Valkyrie flying a hundred stupid miles through a vacuum it wasn't designed to fly in so they could get shot up by… best not to think about that until there was no time to think. Better to think about something else. A third equipment check, maybe. Why not? Hellgun power feed… fine. HUD fine. Carapace attachments on tight. Sidearm still there and safety still on, of course. Grenades all present and correct. How about the squad radio? ‘Comms check,’ he voxed. ‘Clear?'

‘Clear as the space between your ears,' Jens said. From their shaking shoulders Ingvar could tell some of the others in the cabin were laughing, even though it wasn't that funny. He laughed along, joining in with the group decision to seem merry in the face of probable imminent death.

‘Poor Ingvar is afraid,’ Tørben said.

‘It's true,' Ingvar said. ‘What if I never spend another night with your mother?'

Laughing, Tørben replied, ‘I forgot you're only attracted to the old and infirm.'

‘You've got me mixed up with Søren.’

Everyone knew how Søren would respond; at this point it was essentially muscle memory. ‘Fuck you.’ And there it was.

Now the squad's laughter was genuine.

‘Are those the only two words you know?’ Ingvar asked.

‘Fuck you,’ Søren repeated, as if casually batting another ball aside.

More mirth.

Ingvar's HUD brought up a notification: thirty seconds to arrival. That probably didn’t mean thirty seconds until contact, that meant thirty seconds until they boarded the Dammerung, assessed the situation, and improvised a plan.

The Valkyrie was swallowed by the Dammerung's aft shuttle bay, and Ingvar felt the battleship's artificial gravity pull him down into his seat. It was a welcome sensation.

Out in the shuttle bay, Interrogator Ashar Lear and the other agents were disembarking from their Valkyrie. Normally the young Interrogator looked every bit the traditional Progenium schooled Inquisitor-in-waiting, all leather coat, jackboots and brocaded tunic; an ostentatious outfit rather at odds with her plain looks. Today, however, she was covered in carapace armour, as were almost all the rest, including the normally glamorous Nadiya Zelenko. Only Sera Jentiva, the assassin, insisted on wearing her signature armoured bodyglove, while Sister Airi had no need of carapace given her Sororitas power armour.

Ashar was talking to a pale-faced naval officer over the dying whine of the Valkyries' engines. Ingvar vaguely wondered if the officer was pale out of fear, or because he was void-born.

Given the relative calm of this shuttle bay Ingvar found it strange to think that he now stood on a battleship that had been boarded on both flanks, and by just about the most dangerous enemies he had faced in all his years with the Inquisition: Heretic Astartes.

They were here to take an officer of the XVII Legion. A Word Bearer.

Alive.

Ingvar reassured himself that if they'd survived the daemon engine on Samalut IX, they could survive this.

They moved towards the bridge, down broad corridors lined with pseudomarble busts of long-dead navy heroes. Nervous looking navy armsmen crouched behind the statues' plinths, shotguns braced, as if the enemy might spontaneously appear out of nowhere.

In fairness, with this particular enemy, that wasn't out of the question.

The bridge itself was protected by a full platoon of Navy storm troopers. Ingvar imagined they were sorely needed elsewhere. He followed Interrogator Lear and the others into the bridge proper, and immediately the battle went from being a remote abstraction to a very tangible situation. Right there, out of the bridge window, a barge of cyclopean proportions was crushed up against the port side of the Dammerung's hull. Off to starboard a smaller cruiser, still kilometres long, sat in the void.

An advantage of wearing a closed helm was that no one could see his jaw slacken. Just looking at the vessels gave him something akin to vertigo.

Ashar and the other agents gathered in the strategium behind the bridge. Ingvar and the others quietly listened in. The Admiral, Ortano, brought up a floating wireframe projection of the Dammerung on the strategium's hololathe, and a strategium support officer - alarmingly young to Ingvar's eyes - highlighted those areas where it was believed there were groups of Astartes.

It seemed the enemy’s focus was on disabling the Dammerung’s weapons, which would allow the Word Bearers’ barge and cruiser to fly away without the risk of being crippled. This wasn’t a boarding action intended to capture the ship; even Astartes warriors would need hours to capture an eleven kilometer starship, and with the rest of Battlefleet Achernar coming about as fast as they could, the Word Bearers didn’t have that long. This was a hit and run attack; a boarding action made by way of escape.

With the Navy officers having given them what scant information they had, the Ordos agents’ first order of business was to choose a viable target.

Several enemy groups were discounted immediately as being too large, or accompanied by too many sacrificial cultists for the small Inquisition team to handle, or because the limited intelligence available indicated an enemy psyker or summoned entities.

The eventual target was a group of “ten to sixteen” astartes who had disabled the starboard lance battery and were now fighting their way towards the engine room, presumably on the off-chance that if they could reach it, they’d have a chance at dealing catastrophic damage. The Dammerung's crew were trying to repel them, at appalling cost, but so far had only slowed them down.

This offered little time for planning.

“We'll head in that direction and plan as we go,” Ashar said, then donned her carapace helmet. “Options,” she said over squad vox as they left the bridge. Ingvar had come to like her command style; she was collaborative, but never left any doubt as to who was in charge.

Various ideas were offered and discarded until one of the sanctioned psykers, Padraic Larnock, made a suggestion.

“Astartes may be resilient to physical threats, but they still have human minds, indoctrinated or not. I say we use Agent Zelenko as our primary weapon. Keep her safe at the back until their leader is revealed, then at the opportune moment she imposes her Will on the heretic and compels him to submit, even if only for long enough for us to capture him."

Nadiya sounded alarmed. “I doubt I could compel an Astartes for more than a few moments,” she said.

“So we take the chance to disable his armour's power unit then pump him full of enough chemicals to knock out half the rats in Hive Sejanus,” Agent Dietersmann said, referring to the sedatives they'd brought.

“Good ideas,” Ashar said. “How do we make them happen?"

Planning continued as one of the Dammerung's junior tech-adepts led them through various service corridors and freight elevators. These spaces were empty but for the occasional servitor; it surprised Ingvar that a ship with such an enormous crew could have empty spaces on it, but then they were taking a quiet route, and what was more, he had to remind himself of the size of the ship. It was a city. The teeming thousands of men and women who made up the ship's complement were nothing set against the size of the vessel.

When the Inquisition team crossed a main thoroughfare, though, the sense of emptiness changed dramatically to a scene of utter devastation. Despite the filters in Ingvar's helm the stench of offal crept into the back of his mouth. They had emerged into the ship’s main spinal corridor, wide enough for a pair of eight wheelers to pass each other and several storeys high. It was more like a street in a hive, if the merchant stands were replaced with workshops and mess halls.

It was filled with the dead and the dying. Bodies torn apart by grenades and bolt rounds stretched from one side to the other. Some of them had been crushed, and Ingvar realised it was because the enemy had simply walked over their bodies as they moved aft toward the enginarium. Fear and hate filled him. These navy armsmen had stood and fought, but with shotguns and other basic weapons they had enjoyed little prospect of piercing Astartes plate. They had tried all the same, knowing that if the enemy reached the reactor core they were dead anyway.

The Inquisition team crossed the corridor in grim silence. Only once they were through into the next section of empty maintenance corridors did anyone resume planning.

Ashar split the team into four groups: the main thrust, two fire teams going down the parallel corridors to prevent flanking, and then two dragoons to form a rearguard and protect young Nadiya, now vital to the plan. When Ashar assigned Ingvar and Tørben to the rearguard his heart sank. He knew Tørben would be feeling the same, but it wasn’t like he was about to ask one of the others to sacrifice their chance at a good saga, so that was that.

Soon he and Tørben were leapfrogging down the corridor, covering each other’s movements, with absolutely no sign of enemy contact. They didn’t need to say anything; familiarity and training, along with the regular spacing of the bulkheads, meant they soon had the timing down. Cover, run, cover, run, all while Nadiya carried on ahead of them, barely looking back, probably doing whatever mental preparations psykers do, Ingvar reasoned. He wondered if she was nervous, but wasn’t about to make idle chat in a combat situation. Besides, he was pretty sure she viewed him and all the other Stohlbardians as staff rather than colleagues. Unlike Ashar and most of the other agents, Nadiya rarely spent time with the Stohlbardians for anything other than combat training; it seemed she felt they lacked the necessary levels of sophistication. Ingvar didn't care; she was young, arrogant, and was too preoccupied with trying to impress her betters while ignoring her juniors: a surefire recipe for solitude. He hoped for her sake that she'd grow out of it.

After a time, they found themselves directly on the trail of the enemy. Initially it was just more ruptured bodies, but then Sergeant Jørgensen voxed “Contact front, five Astartes, bolters.”

Five. A rearguard. From where he was, Ingvar couldn’t see either the enemy or the main Inquisition team; they were all further ahead and around at least one corner. He clenched his jaw and kept looking back the way they had come, staring down a corpse-littered corridor while listening to the snap of hellguns and the distinctive double-crack of bolter rounds firing and detonating.

Nadiya moved up to the final corner, but didn’t reveal her presence to the enemy.

Ingvar thought he heard a helmet-muffled scream, but couldn’t be sure.

“Contact lef--” came Evard’s voice, cutting out quickly. That wasn’t good. That meant the flanking team led by Padraic had encountered the enemy; Ingvar prayed the foe would be surprised by the presence of a battle psyker.

“Larnock, report,” Ashar voxed to Padraic.

The vox was silent.

“Larnock, status,” Ashar repeated.

“This is Larnock. We’re clear, but we need a medic.”

“Acknowledged. Stendahl, see to it. The rest of you, on me.”

It had all been voxed calmly, but someone was hurt. Probably dead. Hold your post, Ingvar told himself. Judging by his body language, Tørben felt the same.

“That’s the last of them. Rearguard, move up,” Ashar voxed.

Despite the plasma and melta weaponry the primary group was using, Ingvar found it hard to believe that five Astartes had just been neutralised. He and Tørben followed Nadiya around the corners.

Four dragoons were dead and Larnock was injured. It was hard to ID the bodies under the helmets, but that was a mercy. Ingvar didn’t want to know. They were still on mission and his discipline was slipping enough already. He told himself it was just tactical information.

Further up, he saw the first dead traitor marine. Even with half his torso melted away by plasma, he was so large that he almost seemed like part of the ship. That body had seen so much movement and power only moments ago, and now it looked like a broken statue stuffed with burnt flesh.

Larnock, bleeding from the arm, was assigned to the rearguard and was waiting for them at the final dead astartes, holding his force axe in his good hand as if the titanic warrior might come back to life.

“Hello,” Larnock said, as if greeting a fellow hiker on a trail. The incongruity of his tone made Ingvar laugh, even though Larnock was clearly in a lot of pain and gritting his teeth through it.

“Well done,” Ingvar said, gesturing at Larnock’s bloodied force axe. “Was it this one?”

“Not this gentleman, no. I believe Sera Jentiva got him from behind. With her power sword, one assumes.”

“Didn’t know she could do that to Astartes as well,” Ingvar said with a wry smile, pushing past the bleeding psyker and moving along down the corridor.

“Don’t tarry,” Nadiya called, already halfway towards the next junction. Ingvar decided not to point out he hadn’t stopped moving.

+This is Brannick in the strategium. Confirm copy?+ a young woman’s voice voxed over the squad channel.

“This is Lear, I copy. We’ve lost our master vox operator. What have you got?”

So Vidar was one of the four, then. Ingvar faltered in his steps. Vidar had thrashed him at regicide just the other day. Their last match. At least Ingvar had been gracious in defeat. He swept his sights across the target-free corridor as Tørben hustled past. They said nothing to each other about Vidar.

+The crew are still holding against your target at intersection theta-seven. The other boarding parties are retreating, so your target might start heading back your way any minute.+

“Confirm, all other parties retreating?” Ashar asked.

+Confirm all but yours. Thirty-four minutes before the Navy fleet will be inescapable, so your lot are cutting it fine if they don’t want to be left behind.+

“Acknowledged, Lear out.”

They soon reached the junction immediately before theta-seven, and Ashar reformed the team into three groups. No rearguard this time, not with the other boarding parties in retreat. Ingvar and Tørben were assigned to the right group with Ashar herself. She reasoned that with a plan dependent on psykers, having a null in their midst was a bad idea, even with her limiter on. Instead, she would take a team to move along the right service tunnel running parallel with the main corridor.

The left team did the same, but with Jentiva. Both were to remain quiet until the primary team indicated it was time to attack the enemy’s flanks.

Even through several bulkheads, Ingvar could hear the firefight raging ahead. The gunfire was constant, and he could only imagine how many of the ship’s crew had been sacrificed to hold the enemy in check.

The Inquisition team split up, and Ingvar’s group filed into the access tunnel on the right. Tørben took point. It was cramped going; in some places there was barely enough room to fit one’s boot on the deck between the piping and cables, and at times they had to bend double to fit their hellguns’ power packs under the overhead pipes. The corridor was only lit by the occasional red lamp, and Tørben blocked out most of the light. It was all Ingvar could do to avoid tripping, or smacking his gear against the pipes, not that there was any chance of the enemy hearing their approach over all the gunfire.

The heat, too, was almost unbearable in full carapace plate. The air cyclers did a much better job in the main corridors.

They reached the door that would open into junction theta-seven and, presumably, a wall of bullets. Every now and then they heard one bounce off the door. On the other side they could hear bolters, terrified screams, and - for a few moments - the amplified exhortations of a Navy priest. His voice cut off in a distorted cry of pain.

Lars moved up next to Ingvar, meltagun primed. If an Astartes did open the door, they would at least have a chance.

“Engaging,” voxed Sister Airi, leading the primary fire team. Ingvar tensed and untensed his legs like an athlete on the starting line. The volume of gunfire went up rapidly. Frag grenades went off. A faint green glow brightened the corridor as Ashar primed her plasma pistol.

They waited.

Ingvar stared at the door, daring it to open prematurely, knowing that the supercharged las weapon in his hands wouldn't stop an Astartes quickly enough to prevent his own death. He could only hope his death, when it came, would be swift enough to avoid the hopeless terror he'd seen so many other people experience. It wasn't that he worried people would think less of him if he showed that same fear; it was simply the idea of experiencing it. Of being reduced to animalistic responses, of that being the last thing. In the heat of the tunnel his sweat began to soak his fatigues.

“Flank! Flank! Flank!” Sergeant Jørgensen voxed. Ingvar didn’t have time to wonder why it hadn’t been Sister Airi’s voice, he just thumbed the door activation rune and brought his hellgun up.

It had seemed like the door hardly muffled the sound of the gunfight, but as soon as it was open the noise became a physical, sternum-shaking force. To Ingvar’s right, the ship’s crew were manning an improvised barricade that stretched across the main corridor. Copious casualties had added grotesquely to the barricade. Facing the barricade was a squad of six Astartes taking cover behind four large pillars. One of them had an oversized rotary cannon.

Ashar announced the flanking team’s presence by shooting the nearest traitor in the head. The giant clawed at his melting helmet, trying to remove it as the plasma cooked through into his skull. He failed.

Lars sprang from the doorway and fired the meltagun at another nearby marine. Firing from the hip he dropped his aim, melting the marine’s leg and the deck plating behind it. Ingvar brought his gun to bear even as the marine fell to the floor, scoring glowing lines across the Astartes’ armour with his hellgun. It clearly did some damage, but not enough to stop the crippled marine raising his bolter one-handed and putting a shot right into Lars’ unarmoured neck.

On the far side of the junction, the other flanking team stormed in and opened up with the volley gun and the plasma gun, overwhelming the marine with the rotary cannon. The traitors, now taking fire from all directions and clearly knowing that they were too big to fit in the access tunnels, made to withdraw through the primary team. They started to move at speed, and even so, returned fire at the flanking groups, no longer concerned with the armsmen still pouring small arms fire into them.

In making his failed attempt to save Lars, Ingvar now learned that he had made a mistake. He barely even realised what had happened as he fell to the floor, and then, as he looked at the stump where his right foot used to be, realised with horrifying clarity that his boot must have come out from behind the doorway when he leaned out to shoot. In that brief moment, one of the traitors had seen his foot, calculated the increased probability of a bolt round penetrating the armoured boot rather than a carapace-lined arm or helmet, and hit said boot while firing from the hip.

Ingvar knew he only had a few moments before the shock would render him completely useless. Even as he tried to rouse himself to move out of the way, or attack, or something, Tørben fell on him and rolled off. His left arm had almost but not quite been blown off at the shoulder, and was flopping around by one of the carapace straps. Tørben’s heart was pumping gouts of blood out of the severed artery. There was no saving him.

Looking back into the junction, the other flanking team were in a similar state. Half of them were on the floor. Steinar and his plasma gun had been a primary target. Ingvar had to assume the Astartes would make similarly short work of the primary team, even if there were a lot more of them. This plan had had always been near-suicide, but at this point Ingvar felt the cost was so appalling that it had to succeed.

Ashar advanced into the junction, diving behind one of the pillars as the glow returned to her plasma pistol. The nearest marine brought his bolter to bear and fired at the pillar, pinning her in cover. The other marines were already mostly out of view, having moved off into the corridor where the primary team were.

With a cry of pain, Ingvar crawled out the doorway on his knees, launching himself along with his left foot, and made a skidding grab for Lars’ meltagun.

He grabbed it and put a shot straight through the nearest marine’s centre mass. The traitor’s breastplate sloughed off like lava, and he fell. Ingvar pushed on, and Ashar emerged from behind the pillar. She overtook him quickly, and fired on a target around the corner. She took several bolter rounds to the chest and was knocked from her feet, though it looked like the carapace had absorbed the worst of it. Ingvar scrambled to the corner and slammed up against it. On instinct, he went to steady himself and put some weight on the foot that didn’t exist any more.

He screamed and fell to the floor, swore, and rolled over so that he could fire the meltagun prone at… whatever he’d see down the corridor.

It was a strange sight.

There were a number of figures moving towards each other, but in the middle of them all, a cloaked traitor holding a thunder hammer and a plasma pistol was walking towards Nadiya. She had steadied herself against the wall, and where her hand met it, frost was spreading. The traitor’s gait was slow, almost robotic. Reluctant, even. He let go of his hammer.

Ashar, back on her feet, came racing past Ingvar with her power sword drawn. Several traitors saw her and turned to fire.

Ingvar brought the meltagun up. He could only stop one of them, or so he thought.

To the traitor on the far side of the corridor, the sight of one of his brothers reduced to molten slag changed his priority from the woman with the sword to the injured soldier with the meltagun.

It was not a careful shot, but a wild burst. Some bolts detonated against Ingvar’s armour, others found the joints. His legs and right arm were destroyed from the inside as shrapnel from the exploding bolt rounds tried to escape the confines of Ingvar’s armour. As his heart spasmed and then gave out from the shock, the last thing Ingvar saw was Ashar’s power sword driving into the power unit of the traitors’ leader.

Through the shock, the pain and the panic, Ingvar hoped he’d done something.

Not that his family would ever know.

+ + +

That's it for today. If you enjoyed this, or if you thought it sucked, let me know why! Part 3 is already written, so that'll get posted once I've given it another pass with the Red Pen of Doom.

↧

For Averland and the Emperor! - Empire Cavalry

August 10, 2020, 5:21 am

≫ Next: Inquisition short story: Heloth's Revelation

≪ Previous: Inq28 Short Story: The Opportune Moment

There are times when you have the very, very best intentions but get sidetracked. My Empire have very much fitted into this catagory. Way back in 2015 I started this army. Five flamin' years ago. I got a couple of units painted (more on them later) and then got somewhat Dwarf distracted... Well, all that is over now. Averland rides to war and we ride with them!

Before we get to the new and shiny Averlanders lets have a bit of a recap of the army so far. So in the grand tradition of long running TV-series... previously on Averland:

I'll be linking in the old stuff to the relevant page of my old blog so if you are curious about the units shown, follow those links and read all about it! These fine fellows are the Knights of the Blazing Sun. Myrmidia is an important goddess in the Southern Empire so I felt I absolutely had to include some of her Knightly Order in the army. Do you want to know more?

Supporting the Knights are the first of what will be three units of pistoliers. The Averheim Firstborn are the flashy scions of noble families risking their vast wealth and to-be-inherited power in the cauldron of armed conflict. The unit has a reputation for bravery, showy riding aaaand considering themselves something of a cut above the hoi polloi. Want to know more?

Rather firmly at the other end of the socio-economic spectrum we find the plucky halflings from The Moot - it borders Averland - serving as Mountainuard Huntsmen in the Grand Army. Want to know more?

Finally in this recap we come to our first officer, the really rather eccentric Captain Harald von Agbeiten complete with motivational box and massive moustache. Want to know more? With that we have completed our roundup of historical projects so we can now move into the present day and enjoy some brand new Empire chaps!

These fine and lusty fellows are the Order of the Crossed Keys. Granted the freedom of all cities of Averland and bearing the Elector's proxy for proclaimation and dispute resolution. These are essentially Averland's equivalent of Greatswords in Jeff Headcanon. Averland, y'see, is a very horsey province, a bit like Lincolnshire, rolling grassy hills and a buttonne of horseflesh. So I figured that the personal guard of the Elector - well, the regent at the moment, RIP Marius - would be a mounted equivalent. Thankfully the torsos of the gorgeous greatswords kits fits the knight legs pretty darned well. I decided on a brassy tone for the armour to give that yellowish vibe - fits the army scheme see? - and black horses so that the yellow and black theme continued.

The banner of the Crossed Keys held proudly aloft alongside the Elector's Champion and leader of the Crossed Keys: Wolfgang Auspitz. His beard may be grey but his arm and eyes are strong and sharp as ever. I deliberately went for quite an understated banner for the Order of the Crossed Keys. I wanted the Averland colours to be the central feature with the Keys seeming more like a badge of office than heraldry. I find that the older a device is on a banner the simpler it is. I see the Crossed Keys as being as old as Averland itself.

As far as painting goes, the vast quantity of the painting is yellow and black. Two colours that cause shuddering in many painters, well good news. I've figured out a really simple system and even wrote a little tutorial about it way back when on the old blog. So if you're a Nuln or Averland painter, check it out for some quick painting help!

Naturally, with having a neat method for painting black and yellow I decided to throw all that out of the window and paint some white too... Yeah. These next pistoliers are from the regiment known as The Sons of Solland, sometimes the Sons of Sundered Solland when they are deep in their cups and feeling maudlin. Solland was once a province of the Empire before Gorbad Ironclaw attacked it and basically razed it. Solland being a neighbour of Averland, most of the refugees and displaced nobility ended up coming to Averland and resettling. The Sons of Solland may well fight for Averland, but they wear the colours of their mourned province and the black funereal plumes in their helmets to recall the dead.

And finally we return to our cover boy. This chap is Captain Uwe von Hochsleben, one of several planned Captains of Horse and one of the Aides de Camp or surrogate generals of the leader of the Grand Army of Averland: Prince Florian Federspiel. I wanted him to stand out from the surrounding cavalry so gave him an odd reddish bronze colour to his horse armour. With the rest of the cloth being "standard Averland" he both blends with the army but stands out from any unit he is in.

It's almost impossible to get a decent photo of Uwe's face. The shield is nightmarish to photograph around. But this is as good as it gets. He's a young guy, hard charging and bold needing to be tempered by the other more senior men.

That's all for now folks! Waaaay more Empire on the way (ahem, maybe another 4 units of knights, more pistoliers, 10 outriders... and that's just the horse...) so stay tuned. Comments and suggestions very gratefully recieved, I want to make this army awesome. Until next time, lovely people,

TTFN

↧

Inquisition short story: Heloth's Revelation

August 17, 2020, 6:43 am

≫ Next: Ikarran Legions

≪ Previous: For Averland and the Emperor! - Empire Cavalry

Today is the third and final short story covering an incursion into Imperial space by the Word Bearers. Part One covered the fleet engagement in Hasmides, Part Two covered the ensuing boarding action, and now, we have an Inquisitor talking to an imprisoned Heretic Astartes.

This story references Joshua Reynolds' novel Apocalypse, although today's story doesn't contain any spoilers for Reynolds' effort.

Inquisitor Eidan Drake of the Ordo Hereticus

Side note: would I recommend Apocalypse?

Well, I enjoyed it. You get some fun insights into the conflicts within the Word Bearers, and the tensions between primaris and non-primaris Imperial marines. There's also some fun stuff about the Ecclesiarchy and some vigorously take-no-prisoners Sisters of Battle.

In general I enjoyed the characters, although the cast was big enough that none of the characterisations have enough time to become all that deep. The title sounds like it's going to be wall-to-wall bolter porn, and there's some of that for sure, but Reynolds actually means the word in the original Greek sense, that is, a revelation. Or, to quote Wikipedia, "an unveiling or unfolding of things not previously known and which could not be known apart from the unveiling."

It certainly had some enjoyable revelations in it, and while it's been some time since I read it, I don't remember the prose being overly purple (a common problem in some Warhammer novels). I would, however, caution anyone with human ears against the audio version. The narrator does some obnoxious and borderline offensive accents, particularly for the White Scars, that reduce the characters to caricatures.

With that all said, you don't need to have read it for this story to make sense. Nor, indeed, are the first two stories essential.

Heloth’s Revelation

79 hours after the bombing of the Offices of the Admiralty on Kaprun.

18 hours after the Battle of Hasmides.

+++TO: Inquisitor Eidan Drake, Cetus Major

+++FROM: Inquisitor Hera Jovian, Kaprun

+++SUBJECT: A matter of taste

+++THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Suspicion is a weapon, and should be sharpened accordingly.

Dear Inquisitor Drake,

We don't know each other, but since we're expected to police our own, I feel professionally obligated to express my surprise that you:

1. Promoted your interrogator after only six months.

2. Promoted her despite the fact that she is a pariah.

To the first point one might raise an eyebrow but say nothing. There are some rare individuals who have achieved the same.

To the second point, I must ask if you have taken leave of your senses. How a pariah could be expected to perform the subtle duties of our calling with both hands tied behind her back is a mystery to me. Perfectly decent Imperial servants will have a natural inclination to disobey her. Over time, such rancour could even compromise the Ordos' ability to prosecute our duty in the region.

I have not petitioned Lord Inquisitor Habermann on the matter but you may expect, given the increasingly difficult circumstances in the Cetus sub, that myself and several of my colleagues are following your movements with rather more interest of late, particularly since you have yet to hand your captive over to the Kapran Inquisitors. You have enough going on in Cetus, and we have a great many highly experienced interrogators willing to lift this load from your shoulders.

Sincerely,

Jovian

+ MESSAGE ENDS +

+++TO: Inquisitor Hera Jovian, Kaprun

+++CC: Lord Inquisitor Anjaal Habermann, Hydraphur

+++FROM: Inquisitor Eidan Drake, Cetus Major

+++SUBJECT: re: A matter of taste

+++THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Wasted effort is a twofold heresy. The loyal servant produces nothing, and their enemy gains a reprieve.

Dear Inquisitor Jovian,

Implicit threats are always a source of entertainment, but the demands on my time are such that I prefer transparency. Concordantly you will note I have CCd the Lord Inquisitor, who approved Ashar's promotion to Interrogator under the late Inquisitor Kovach - something you would know had you performed a cursory spot of research first.

Your message implies that you neither researched how long Inquisitor Lear served as an agent, nor established the reasons for her promotion, merely that she is a pariah.

Since you saw fit to question the promotion of a woman who was just followed into battle by over 30 loyal individuals to face down multiple squads of heretic Astartes, and in a region you were tasked with protecting no less, I find it impossible to avoid the suspicion that envy played a role in your missive.

There is no doubt that Inquisitor Lear has much to learn about her new job, much as we did if the lengths of our respective apprenticeships are any measure.

As the majority of Inquisitors in the Kapran Sub declared me to be the Achernar Sector’s foremost expert in heretic Astartes, I will continue to interrogate the asset until I have nothing more to learn from it.

When I have actionable intelligence, it will of course be sent without delay. None of us want to see a second Hasmides.

Perhaps, if both of us focus on our jobs, it can be avoided.

Sincerely,

Drake

+ MESSAGE ENDS +

Cetus Major, high orbit, aboard the Inquisition vessel Trojan.

24 hours after the Battle of Hasmides.

85 hours after the bombing of the Offices of the Admiralty on Kaprun.

Eidan Drake watched Iarto Heloth through the one-way glass while considering his approach. The traitor remained manacled to his chair. The proportions of astartes warriors, even outside their armour, never failed to remind Eidan of his own mortality.

Unlike some heretic astartes, Heloth's physique had not been perceptibly remoulded by immaterium exposure. His allegiance was clear all the same; he was tattooed with blasphemous scripture that radiated in eight lines away from an octed branded over his hearts.

Eidan had interrogated a great many people in his career. He'd also dealt with a number of Astartes, both as allies and as quarries. Neither of these facts qualified him to execute the task at hand, they simply made him less unqualified. Indeed, it was his particular misfortune to be the least unqualified individual in the Achernar Sector.

Eidan had always been a man of doubt, both of himself and others. Doubt was one of the most important tools at his disposal, but any fool could see that showing those doubts would bear little fruit here. Right now, he was playing the role of Drake the interrogator. He let the role's mask fall into place. Unflappable. Empathetic. Analytical. Responsive. Intuitive.

Thus composed he entered the first door and locked it behind him. Then he opened the second.

‘You didn't bring your pariah this time,' Heloth said with a smile.

‘She isn't mine to bring, and you aren't a psyker,' Drake replied. His MIU link sealed the door behind him.

Heloth uttered a string of guttural words in another language. They were old words; older than the Imperium. Blood welled from his mouth.

Drake knew what they meant. They said a lot with a few coarse syllables. They were a desperate ploy from someone with nothing to lose.

I call upon the nearest, whatever you are. I accept you. I offer you the life of the other one in this room. If you do not claim his life, you may claim mine. This is my offering.

A pair of pallid, willowy hands unfurled in the air before Heloth. The hands pulled apart, widening the wound in realspace.

The daemon flopped out onto the cell floor like a foal tearing its way out of an invisible berthing sac. There was a spray of clear fluid. The taut skin on its ridged spine split in nine places. The exposed vertebrae parted to form nine mouths crowded with splintering teeth.

The spine drew breath.

The creature, all emaciated limbs and sparse dark hair, grew to the height of a tall man. It stood on two trembling arms, bent back like avian legs. Witchfire sputtered up within the mouth on its head. Its lips blistered, blackened, and peeled back.

A minor daemon. A wildcard. Weak-willed. Drake spoke a single word in the same language Heloth had used. As he pronounced it, a layer of skin on the roof of his mouth came away. He tasted copper.

The daemon reeled; its head swayed.

‘Look at me, Heloth,' Drake said. ‘Look at me. Pay close attention.' Outwardly calm, Drake placed a gauntleted hand on the stunned daemon's head. ‘You are not in control. You will never be in control again.'

Drake ignited his gauntlet and closed his fist. The daemon screamed. Its limbs went out from under it as its head caved in, forcing a gout of witchfire to surge from its mouth. The fire almost reached Heloth's chair.

‘You shouldn't know how to do that,' Heloth said. Like other Astartes, there was an unnerving void where his fear should have been.

To anyone else Drake would have just established himself as an implacable source of horror. To Heloth, it seemed, he had merely made himself interesting.

Interesting was just as usable.

‘You’re right, I shouldn't,' Drake agreed.

‘I can keep doing that for as long as I want. The next one could be much more powerful.'

‘A fine bluff,' Drake replied. ‘But a daemon won't take another's offering. You pledged yourself to a weak daemon. The others would lose stature if they submitted to you. You thought you had nothing left to lose, and now, that's true.’

Heloth smiled with bitter theatrical amusement; an obvious front to conceal his frustration.

‘Do your contemporaries know you can do that?’ Heloth asked.

‘They wouldn't understand,’ Drake said. It wasn't entirely true. Those who had been with him the longest knew of his mastery of the Ur-tongue.

‘You should find comrades who understand.'

‘Perhaps,' Drake said, smiling in a way that suggested he was at once joking and concealing genuine temptation. He probed the roof of his mouth with his tongue despite the discomfort, then smiled ruefully. ‘Funny, I only came to impart news. A gesture of goodwill, really. This wasn't how I imagined the conversation going.'

Heloth snorted in amusement, then laughed full-throated. It was a deep, resonant sound amplified by the scale of his transhuman ribcage. Drake laughed with him. It was a performance. In truth he was swimming in adrenaline from the daemonic attack. That, and the mere fact of being in a room with a giant that could snap him in half. All that potential energy, manacled to a chair. Waiting. Looking for the moment of opportunity. Drake saw a brief image of the daemon's face and shoved it to the back of his mind.

‘Well?' Heloth asked, still smiling.

‘I came to tell you we've emerged back into realspace. It was a short jump, but we seem to have lost a month,' Drake said, dressing the barefaced lie in a casual tone.

‘It matters little to me.'

‘I suppose not. Most people like to know these things.'

‘Imagine if you had died bringing me such incidental news! How pointless!' Heloth said, laughing. ‘I have lost millennia hiding in the Eye of Terror, and you think I care about a month!’

Drake obliged him with a wry smile, glad that he seemed to have bought the lie. ‘Now that we've reached an Inquisition Fortress I'll be able to requisition that vid record I mentioned,' he said.

‘The Anchorite of Almace?' Heloth asked, rather more eagerly than Drake suspected he meant to.

‘And a recording of a Word Bearer: Amatnim Ur-Nabas Lash, a man of high rank in your legion. You know him?'

‘I know he set out for Almace.’

‘You could learn what happened when he got there,’ Drake said. ‘The vid recordings reveal an uncomfortable truth, both for your faith and mine. It's not for the weak-willed.'

Heloth scoffed. ‘You think me weak-willed? Ironic, coming from an indoctrinated lackey.'

‘The citizenry are indoctrinated, as is necessary for the Imperium's survival. I am obliged to grapple with harder truths,' Drake replied. He dearly wanted to point out the weakness of falling to Chaos, but that would only entrench Heloth further. The mask of the interrogator didn't stoop to point scoring. He pushed on. ‘Tell me of Khairon's plans, and I'll tell you of the deeper truth Amatnim sought from the Anchorite. The deeper truth he's helped me to accept.'

‘Why would I betray my brothers on the strength of your word alone? Show me proof, and perhaps I may yet humour you.'

It was a ploy to gain some semblance of control. To be dictating terms. He had something Drake wanted, and without proof, Drake had no leverage. Eidan's doubt crept in. What if acceding to this request changed the dynamic? Was it a mistake?

Drake shrugged indifferently. ‘Very well; offering you proof costs me nothing.’

‘Run on, lapdog. Bring it to me.'

‘You've lived ten lifetimes, and that's the parting comment? I trust you'll think of something more lively upon my return.'

Heloth seemed to enjoy Drake's unflappability as one might enjoy any other puzzle. He grinned, the recesses of his teeth still reddened by the blood from his use of the Ur-tongue minutes before.

Drake smiled back, and left.

18 hours later.

The vid screen underlit Heloth's face as he watched. There was no sound - Drake had muted it - but he hadn't censored the visuals. He let the animation play for two minutes and three seconds, long enough for the look of surprise to cross Amatnim's face.

‘Pause,' Drake said. The slate's machine spirit answered with a click, and he lowered it away from Heloth's view.

The traitor looked conflicted. Curiosity, Drake reflected, was almost too potent a weapon.

‘You won't pass me to others in your organisation after this?’ Heloth asked.

‘I imagine you have no desire to be subjected to an indefinite number of sermons. Neither would I. Besides, you already know too much about me.'

Heloth gave a wry smile. ‘You seem to have no faith at all, Inquisitor.'

Drake shrugged. ‘Faith is for those without knowledge.'

‘You're not what I expected from the Inquisition.'

‘The Anchorite isn't what I expected from a Cardinal World of the Ecclesiarchy,’ Drake replied. Heloth was silent for a time; Drake waited. Got you, he thought.

‘How long has it been since Hasmides? A month?' Heloth asked.

‘And a day.'

A flicker of a smile crossed Heloth's face. To Drake, that said Heloth thought it was too late to do anything anyway. He could sate his curiosity and do no harm.

‘Eressus IX.’

‘Eressus… in the Eridani sector,' Drake said. He couldn't remember much about it, but he knew it was heavily populated.

‘Indeed. Not that it matters. The gods thirst, Inquisitor. Who are we to deny them succour?'

‘Laying it on a bit thick, aren't you?'

Heloth laughed, though Drake wasn't sure if it was at his chiding or at the imminent slaughter.

‘Now show me this “challenging truth,” and I'll judge for myself.’

‘As you wish,’ Drake said with a shrug.

Heloth would come to realise he should have been suspicious of Drake's willingness to honour his side of the bargain.

Drake produced a data slate from his coat pocket, dragged the side table over to Heloth's chair, and set the slate down. ‘The slate will respond to voice commands,' Drake said. ‘It has only two vid files on its drive, and no noospheric connection. Enjoy.'

Drake left the room, and watched him through the one-way window.

Heloth watched the first vid. It was surprisingly hard to read his reaction to the outcome of Amatnim’s foray into the Almace system. When it was over he watched the second much longer vid: the interview with the Anchorite. Drake found it quietly fascinating to see the shift in Heloth's demeanor. It didn't look like a full-blown crisis of faith so much as the introduction of doubt.

Drake stayed in the antechamber and observed him for a few hours as Heloth watched and re-watched the vids. The traitor gained the look of a man unable to resolve a circular thought. Drake allowed himself a little smile. When, he wondered, had he become someone who could eagerly anticipate a conversation with a man he was about to execute? The execution was merely a task to be performed, the sad end of an individual who had been created to do great things and strayed impossibly far. What Drake relished was much harder: cracking the certainty of a zealot. Religious belief has a way of justifying itself in the face of any evidence, but what the Anchorite offered wasn’t just evidence; it was a story. Drake already had the information he needed; this had shifted from necessity to sport.

He entered the room certain that he had nothing more to learn. As is so often the case when one is certain about something, he was wrong.

Hours later, Drake stepped onto the bridge of the Trojan with a stricken look on his face. Captain Janacek stood up from her command throne, as did several of the bridge crew.

‘How goes it?’ she asked.

‘Much better than expected.'

‘Your face says otherwise.'

‘Plot a course for the Kaprun system with all haste; we have a message to deliver.’

‘Why not use the astropa-’

‘That’s just it, Ariel,’ Drake said, ‘We can’t.’

Ariel Janacek knew from his tone that she didn’t want to know the details. ‘Our guest?’ she asked instead.

‘Has repented of his sins and, technically, is now freight.’

‘I see.’

4 days later.

Kaprun Prime has an incomplete halo: the Aureole. Tethered to the planet’s surface by seven space elevators, it was originally intended to go all the way around the planet. Primarily, it seemed, for the grandeur of it. Several centuries into its construction, with large sections already surplus to any practical requirements, a newly-appointed governor had called a halt to the project. By then it already boasted hundreds of habitable miles, and thousands of miles of scaffold. It would have needed thousands more. Even in its incomplete state it was the largest shipyard in the Achernar Sector, and the home of the battlefleet.

A few days before the Word Bearers’ attack on the Hasmides system, a bomb was detonated outside the Aureole's Offices of the Admiralty. Admiral Tryphosa and most of her senior strategic staff were slain. Hundreds of people died in mass decompressions. It was assumed Tryphosa’s death had been the Word Bearers’ primary objective, intended to reduce the effectiveness of the fleet. In reality it was a diversion. With the psychic shock of so many simultaneous unexpected deaths, it seemed reasonable that the Aureole’s astropaths would experience some psychic backwash. For those assessing the damage reports coming in, such things were expected, and taken as a symptom of the event rather than an event unto themselves. There were much bigger, more physical problems to handle.

When the Trojan arrived almost a fortnight later, things were still in a state of panicked upheaval. The Aureole hadn't been attacked in living memory.

Drake strode down the Aureole's promenade flanked by a squad of ten storm troopers and Interrogator Zelenko. He found his way blocked by Hera Jovian.

‘Inquisitor,’ Drake said unenthusiastically, but inclining his head in greeting all the same.

‘Inquisitor,’ Jovian replied with entirely unconcealed contempt.

‘You're compromising the grandeur of my big entrance.' The deadpan jest did nothing to deflate Jovian.

‘Why did you stop sending updates on your interrogation?’ She asked. ‘And why are you moving through a public area with such a big escort? Afraid I might take you away for questioning myself?'

‘This is neither the time nor the place, as well you should know. Come with me if you like, or move aside. Every other option will leave you nursing a hindsight hangover.'

Jovian fell into step with Drake as he started moving again, reminding him of a feline that was trying to look as though it meant to fall off a chair.

‘The prisoner?’ she asked.

‘Full of useful information. And dead.'

Pedestrians continued to give them a wide berth as the troopers' synchronised footsteps reverberated down the promenade.

‘And yet you sent no word? I will be sure to discuss this with-’

She stopped talking when Drake turned, without announcement, into the atrium of the sanctum astropathica. Jovian was forced to hurry after Drake's squad as they moved through the archway.

The presence of so many weapons in the atrium triggered two heavy combat servitors to uncouple from their alcoves. Drake looked round at the man behind the off-world comms kiosk, who smiled weakly and entered a command on his cogitator. The servitors slunk back into their alcoves.

‘I… I'm sorry Inquisitor, I have to check your rosette,' the man said.

Eidan wanted to smile at the man, and put him at ease. Drake simply commended him for doing his job, held up the Inquisition medallion hanging around his neck, and waited for the man to rush over and scan it. All the while, Jovian kept asking questions. Drake ignored her.

When they walked into the casting chamber several minutes later, the twenty astropaths within shrieked in surprise. Per Drake's instructions, the power to their cradles was shut off. Kaprun, capital world of the Achernar Sector, stopped receiving or broadcasting all astrotelepathic communication. The planet's primary interstellar data feed was offline. Hundreds of miles below them, planetside backup teams were being roused automatically to handle the influx of astropathic data: a constant stream of communications ranging from the trivial to the tactically vital, winding through warp space, holding the scattered planets of the Achernar Sector together.

‘One of you knows why I am here. Confess, and mercy will be granted swiftly and painlessly.'

Drake was immediately bombarded with nineteen mouths offering terrified but inconsequential confessions. The astropath in alcove fourteen was slow to follow suit. He was far too busy not saying something. Drake gestured for Interrogator Zelenko to proceed.

She approached the astropath with her customary confidence. The sort of entitled confidence, Drake thought, that generally came with an extremely privileged education. The astropath recoiled from her, but had nowhere to go. She scrutinised him, drawing power into herself.

‘He's still active,' she said.

‘It's not me,' the astropath said, fighting back tears, ‘it's him! He wants me to hear the Word. The mouth of Khairon is open and he wants all of us to hear the Word. Will you listen?’

‘Zelenko, can you disrupt it?' Drake asked.

‘What in Dorn's teeth is going on?' Jovian asked.

‘I'll do my best, but he's strong. Stronger than he should be,’ Zelenko said.

At Drake's bidding two of the troopers dragged the astropath from his alcove. He struggled, frail limbs creaking. ‘Will you not hear the Word? Will you not hear the Word?’ he cried.

‘I demand to know what is going on!' said Jovian.

Once they were back in the corridor outside the casting room, Drake held out his hand for one of the troopers' sidearms, and shot the astropath in the head.

‘Frustrating,’ Drake murmured as the astropath's body slumped down into the floor. ‘You make one heretic repent, and they already have another lined up.'

‘What?’ Jovian said.

‘The admiralty bombing. It was just to cover the psychic shockwave of a ritual. I don't understand how, but Orcus Khairon, a Word Bearers sorcerer, found a way to cast into this man's mind, and turn it to his purpose. They've got every message that's come through the Kaprun relay for the last two weeks. Had I sent word, he simply would have intercepted it and had advanced warning of my arrival, just like the Word Bearers were already running for Hasmides' Mandeville point when Battlefleet Achernar arrived to mete out punishment. They knew we were coming. That's why I sent you no updates, that's why it's important to do the job thoroughly, and that's why, Inquisitor, I have had better things to do than humour you. Will there be anything else?'

Inquisitor Jovian stared at the dead astropath in disbelief. Pleased with this petty triumph over an irksome colleague, Eidan and Drake both smiled.

↧

Ikarran Legions

August 24, 2020, 4:17 am

≫ Next: They're not just in the jungle...

≪ Previous: Inquisition short story: Heloth's Revelation

Allow me to indroduce the Ikarran Dynasty, my fledgling Crusade force which will combine my old Necron army from days-of-yore, and all the lovely newness of 9th Edition. For anyone who wishes to get ahead of the posts, a lot of the flavour text you'll read here can be found on the Cetus wiki.

The names the Ikarran Necrontyr used for the worlds of the Eridani Sector have been lost in time. Needless to say, both Eridani and Achenar Sector were once part of their dominion.
In an age when dinosaurs still roamed Terra, and humanity's ancestors were but tiny vermin desperately trying to avoid becoming the next meal, the Ikarran dynasty was at its peak. Victors of sorts of the War in Heaven, and vanquishers of the C'Tan, they along with the other dynasties were masters of the Galaxy. Seeing little more to achieve, they realised their lives would no longer have purpose. Withdrawing to their birth worlds, they erected defences as they went so that they could remain undisturbed until another worthy foe had arisen. Little did they know how long they would slumber...

Numberless Legion
While they may once have been sentient beings with a will of their own, now the majority of the Necrontyr are simple automatons. Tricked by the C’Tan and their Lords into the process of transference, their will and autonomy stripped away to produce more pliant and amenable units, it is perhaps a blessing that the Legion have little remaining awareness of their situation.

This of course is merely a sample of my warriors (there's 40-50 in total at last count before I add in the Indomitus models).

As with many, I was never keen on the green plastic rods so you'll find that throughout the army every one has been replaced with twisted electrical wire painted up to represent the energy contained within the gauss weapons. These warriors also have a few little conversions to show damage being repaired using the same techniques.

Cursed as Immortal
Naively you could think that the greater capacity of the Immortal frame would be an improvement on the effectively mindless Warrior. In reality it simply leaves these units with more awareness of what they have lost during transference, how much they are simply thralls of their Lord's will.

Crypt Techs
Devotees of the Canoptek Cult, these units act as a bridge to the technological constructs that maintain the crypts and chassis of the Necrontyr. Adapted to better interface with Canoptek, these tools can bolster the main units of the Necrontyr army in battle and ensure maximum effectiveness of the fighting units.

I built these Crypteks back when there weren't even models for them so they are an amalgam of parts from the warrior kit and various other sets to give them an even more technological appearance. Back when I was creating these Crypteks had differing abilities based on which cult they belonged to so the one on the left for example was able to teleport around on the board and I imagined the glowing button on his belt was the activation switch for this ability.

I hope this has wetted your apetite for more of these. You'll be getting to see plenty more as I resurrect and add to this force. You'll get to see some of my other attempts to avoid the dreaded "innanimate green plastic rods" and of course the gorgeous new kits that have been released with Indomitus.

That's it for now, but remember, We'll Be Back!

↧

They're not just in the jungle...

August 31, 2020, 12:05 am

≫ Next: Automated 40K Crusade Roster

≪ Previous: Ikarran Legions

... They ARE the jungle.

In a somewhat Stark contrast to Andy's take on the Tau, my vision of them is rather more utilitarian. I've gone for a very simple scheme indicative of the industrial war machinery of another regime that also believed in the Greater Good*. To add a layer of interest, and because I seem to always want to over compliate everything, I have pushed the boat out with the weathering and basing on these guys.

The main paint scheme is drab green and black. The Green starts with Death World Forest, then a wash/pin wash** of Athonian Camo Shade***, Elysian Green, then finally Ogryn Camo. The Black was Corvus Black everywhere but the deepest of recesses where I left the Choas Black undercoat showing, then highlighted with Eshin Grey and Dawnstone.

Next up was the weathing stage. This was achived by taking a very light colour and a very small brush and gently building up the chipping with tiny dots and stratches. This is time consuming and probably could be done with a sponge but I prefer the brush because I am a bit of a control freak. Then the largest and deepest of stratches gets a line or dot of black in them to show material under the paint. Once chipped there was a very gentle dust wash and several layers of mud around the ground contact points.

To finish up the painting I did the lens with a nice orange glowy effect, just for that hint of sci-fi in an otherwise very down to earth scheme.

Now basing. Normally basing is where I get lazy. Not this time! I've gone for the full on woodland basing scheme that I stole from Em's Wood Elves and used on my Blood Raven's. Start with a layer of Stirland mud, with some Vallejo Thick Mud (European) stippled over****. Then I took Ivy from Army Painter, Dead Leaf Litter from Green Stuff World, Green Tea from a tea bag, moss from the garden, and bits of stick I found whilst walking the dog. All these ingredients are then thrown at the base which I have covered in PVA, then they get drowned in watered down PVA to seal it in. The upside to all this PVA it leaves the base with a gentle shine that just makes it look moist*****.

I actually really enjoyed painting these guys as it focused on the weathering side of things which I do really enjoy and less on other aspects of painting that I find tedious. So this project is playing to my strengths and interests more. I think with my last few projects I've been trying to push myself into area's that I find more difficult (layering organics for example) and whilst there is merit to that, it kinda sucked the joy out of painting a bit. This is supposed to be fun, so I am going to let myself focus on what I find fun. I really want to try this scheme on a larger battlesuit.

So what is next for my fledging hunter cadre? Well, interestingly I don't have a plan this time. Or at least not what I would refer to as a plan. I'm not ordering the next unit until the current one is finished. I don't want a pile of unpainted plastic staring at what is left of my soul making me feel bad. So it's going to be one in one out. I'm also just going to be doing what I am actually interested in doing. Which, thankfully, is most of the Tau range with exception to a few of the character models. I'm just going to do whatever the winds of whimsey take me once a unit is done. If I feel like doing a vehicle next, I will. if I feel like I need more troops, then that is what is next. What I actually have sat on my desk right now is a XV25 Stealth Team. Because I wanted to paint those. So that is what I am doing.

Until next time

Maisey

* In which some participants were greater than others.

** Where appropriate.

*** Which in my head always gets called Athenian Camo Shade (careful Maisey, your education is showing).

**** Of which I am totally going to skip next time as it simply doesn't show on the smaller models.

*****HAHAHAAHAAH ONE OF THE FORBIDDEN WORDS!!!!

↧

Automated 40K Crusade Roster

September 6, 2020, 11:26 am

≫ Next: Forest Basing Step by Step

≪ Previous: They're not just in the jungle...

I honestly started this quixotic endeavour with the intention of making a simple spreadsheet to track my Crusade tallies. I'd never written an IF function in a spreadsheet before. I didn't even know IF functions were a thing in Google Sheets. Neither had I considered making something that could be used to make army lists in seconds via some tick boxes.

Sometimes, feature creep bears unexpected fruit.

Today's post is intended as a useful resource for anyone using the Crusade Rules in 9th edition 40K, but honestly, I think it's pretty useful for anyone who regularly changes their list between games.

What is it?

It's a digital version of the army roster for Warhammer 40,000 Crusade. It has been designed to suit tracking your Crusade force on your mobile phone using Google Sheets, so the sheets are formatted to be easily navigable on a small screen rather than a PC. Because it's a Google Sheet, you can update it on either your computer or your phone, and any changes you make will update across those platforms.

There is a sheet called 'Order of Battle' that has various automated cells that calculate things like points, supply usage, crusade points, and so on. There are then sheets for each unit to store information like their experience, abilities, combat tallies, relics, and so on. When you have entered the details for your individual units, you can use the tick boxes on the Order of Battle sheet to quickly tot up the value of the force you want to use for the next game.

The sheet displays both Power Level and Points, so you can use whichever you prefer. It doesn't matter either way - it's just as quick to add up either one.

Why did you make this?

Because I'm unaware of any resource that does this in a phone-friendly manner. Arguably it would be better as an app, but at least with Google Sheets this means you can change it to your liking. Once I'd gotten things like the tick boxes working, it seemed silly to have put all that effort in and then not make it available for other people.

Who helped?

I couldn't have made this without the assistance of Tom (occasional Bunker contributor and actual programmer). He pointed me in the direction of the formulas I needed to make this work, and badgered me about keeping the formulas consistent and tidy. Regular Bunker author Andy also made some good suggestions for further refinements, and even embarked on a crazed quest to code some scripts that would automate even more stuff, but ultimately they proved too crunchy for poor ol' Google Sheets.

Thanks also to the other Bunker dwellers, as well as the Independent Characters podcast community who provided excellent feedback.

How do I use it?

First thing's first: click this link to go to the sheet, or click either of the images below.

There is a Readme sheet that provides instructions, but I'll repeat them here:

1. Go to File and make a copy of the Google Sheet on your own Google Drive. It's probably best to do this, and the other initial setup, on a PC rather than your phone. That way it'll be much easier to change the colours, fonts and pretty much anything else you want to change.

2. Enter the appropriate information on the sheet for each unit. When you enter a number in a unit's Points, Power Level or Crusade Points, this will automatically update in the Order of Battle sheet. It might also be worth deleting any lines you don't need - most units don't have psychic powers, for example!

3. Prior to a game, click/press the tick boxes in the Order of Battle sheet to quickly add up your Points, Power Level and Crusade Points.

4. Use your phone to update your units' tallies during your games.

Customising the tab names & troubleshooting

Changing tab/sheet names

If you want to change the name of the tabs from Unit 1, 2, 3 etc, go ahead . After you have renamed them, you will also need to update the appropriate Crusade Card/Sheet Name field in the Order of Battle sheet. Google Sheets is less buggy if you rename the unit sheet first, then update the name in the Order of Battle sheet.

If you get the above steps and get a #REF error in the formulae, delete the sheet name on the Order of Battle. Then, enter the sheet name again - that should force a refresh and clear the problem.

Adding/removing unit sheets

If you delete any unit sheets, you'll want to delete its name from the Order of Battle sheet. Likewise if you need to add sheets for new units, you'll need to enter the new sheet name in the Order of Battle.

The easiest way to add a new unit is to right click on a unit card and duplicate it. If you end up having more than 20 units, add some rows to the bottom of the Order of Battle sheet, merge whatever cells you need to merge, then extrapolate the formulae down.

(If you're not sure what I mean by that, extrapolation is when you click on the cell with the formula, the mouse over the little square in the bottom right of the cell so that the cursor becomes a +, then click and drag down into the new cell.)

It's also worth noting that if you want to de-clutter your Order of Battle, you can just delete the unit name and that line will go blank.

Adding images for your units

One of the gamers in our group, Harvey, suggested it would be cool if there was space to add an image of each unit on its card. Obviously this will bloat your filsize, which is something to consider when accessing it with mobile data, but I've added an empty cell at the top of each tab. There are instructions in that box on how to add an image.

Since I'm a rampant obsessive, I have created a simple Photoshop file that's 1000x500 pixels. If you dump the photo you want to use into that file as a new layer, and use the transform tool (CTRL+T) to move it about and crop/resize to your liking, then save it as a JPG or whatever, this will ensure all your images will display with the same proportions inside the roster, which makes browsing between different unit cards less disorientating. Obviously you'll need to adjust the row height in the sheet when you first add the image; I didn't want to put a massive empty box on everyone's sheet just because some people might want to add images. Here are some examples:

If you want said template, go here. Of course you could also chuck in an army symbol or whatever else on your Order of Battle, as I've done here for my Cobalt Scions.

You'll note I've got an extra cell on the Order of Battle sheet shown above. The one where I've put the unit type next to the name. This let me keep the actual sheet names short for easier scrolling on my phone (the sheet names being the first column). I figured it'd be easier for me to parse my ridiculous Roman names if I also had the unit type displayed. If you want the same format, all you have to do is to unmerge the Sheet Name cell, then re-merge the cells as preferred. You can type anything in that second column, as it's not used in any formulae - only Column A is referenced by the formulae, and as long as what you write in Column A is a perfect match for the name of a sheet in the document, the formula will work.

Final Thoughts & Feedback

Hopefully this is of use; obviously you'll still need to manually enter all your units' points and power levels in their unit cards, and update those whenever GW put out any changes, but after that initial setup I hope you'll find this easier than the many clicks needed to create a list in Battlescribe.

I've chosen not to try and get this spreadsheet to contain all your units' rules and stats - this is just a Crusade Roster. Personally I find Battlescribe's output a bit visually bloaty, and the 40K app isn't yet ready to be an in-game thing, so I've made my own summary sheet for my Space Marines. I'll put that out in a future post after the new Codex drops.

If this roster is beneficial, or something didn't make sense, or if there are changes you'd like to suggest, leave a comment on this post and let me know!

↧

Forest Basing Step by Step

September 14, 2020, 2:30 am

≫ Next: Hordes of the Faithful - Word Bearers Cultists

≪ Previous: Automated 40K Crusade Roster

I've had a bit of interest on how I do the forest basing that is on my Tau. In response I've put together a little step by step of what I actually do to get this:

So grab your basing bits and lets get started.

I've grabbed a couple of spare empty bases, just so I can show the method:

I start by given them a solid base layer of Stirland Mud. This gives a nice textured surface to work up from. Leave to dry over night:

Next up I use Vallejo Thick Mud - European Mud. This is a diffrent colour, more desaturated and has a less consistant texture with little random bits of grass and the like. It all adds to the random, which is what we are after as nature hates straight lines. If I had a model on the base I would also stipple some up on to the feet/hooves/claws/tracks etc just to help blend the model into the base. Do not use your best brushes for this:

Once that has dried properly, again I tend to leave this over night, I superglue a few bits of stick, bark, and twig to the base. These I pick up during dog walks in the park but raiding the garden or any outside area works. I also super glue anything that needs a bit of height. I've been using some moss that was found in the garden and dried out. These make really nice scale plants. They look natural and just a bit alien, to me at least:

Once everything has been super glued and dried I go back in and blend them in with a bit more thick mud. Just making everything look as natual as possible:

Now we start to get a little messy. Gather together the rest of your basing bits. I've been using Ivy from Army Painter, Dead Leaf litter from Green Stuff World and a few bits raided from the kitchen. I've mostly been using green tea but anything from the herb rack would work as well. I've had good results from Dill and Oregano as well. Just mix it up from what you have to hand. The idea is to create multiple layers of texture and colour. To big I start with the larger object. Really soak it in PVA and press it down into where you want it. This is messy but messy is what we are aiming for:

I normally put down a thick layer of PVA then sprinkle tea/herb mix then add more PVA and add the leaf litter. Also don't be afraid to add other bits as well, on the base below I've added additional bark to it as that was what I felt was needed at the time:

Once you've done all the bases I tend to seal things down with a thinned layer of PVA. I don't worry about the sheen left by the PVA, it just adds to the natural deep damp woods feel of them. I once again leave this to dry proper then go in for the lap of victory and paint the base rims. Then we are done and have some very pretty bases ready for whatever models you want:

These are just a few random unused bases I put together to show the steps I take, but once you have a model on their you can adapt and have a mini-diorama on each and every base. If you have access to a hair drier you can speed things up. You don't have to limit yourself to what I've used. There are hundreds of great scenery products out there. Look up scale modelling and train modeller sites as they always go all out on their scenics. Just get creative and have fun with them.

Until next time,

Maisey

↧

Hordes of the Faithful - Word Bearers Cultists

September 17, 2020, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Cobalt Scions Repulsor Executioner

≪ Previous: Forest Basing Step by Step

It's fair to say: I've got a bit of a thing for cults. Not content with painting 3k of Genestealer Cults I turn my eyes to the Eightfold Path and chose that most culty of legions: The Word Bearers. Having already brought you the Tannabheim IXth and the Corvid Cabal, today we're meeting some more Cultists following the Graven Star. How many? Oh, just another 30...

Ok, cards on the table time, I might have been doing a LOT of painting lately. Quarentine psychosis has been doing a number on me and I've been finding solace at the bottom of a bottle (of paint). As a result... there's a fair few new recruits to the Word Bearer fold to show you. So many in fact that this would rapidly become The Word Bearer Bunker were I to keep to our normal monday schedule. So following the numerological predictions and the signs found in the flights of birds and the entrails of beasts... or picking what felt right... I'm taking over Thursdays in the name of Chaos!

Up first are the fine fillies and fellas of the Shining Scions. These are the cultists from the Blackstone Fortress: Escalation set and make a nice stylistic change from the ones I've already done. Lets meet them through the eyes of our persistant mysterious narrator:

"Oh yes, the Shining Scions. All very devoted souls but with something of a muddled tradition of worship. I'm fairly sure that they started out as a fairly standard low-hive pleasure cult dedicated to the Thirsting Prince but fairly rapidly started incorporating a muddle of ritual practices. They hide their faces and often switch masks, embrace hardship and privation without complaint and are as bloodthirsty as any I've met. Striking in as many directions as they did was always going to attract attention and they were lucky one of our agents was nearby as the Corpse God's noose was tightening. Now they bring their brand of uneducated but enthusiastic faith among our ranks. As good for manning a barricade as the next rabble."

While there is a datasheet for using the Escalation cultists "as is", I decided I wanted to expand them out into a more straightforward cult. That meant dealing with a few twins. For the most part a quick head/horn swop (there's a goliath in there) and some armour plates did the job. The above pictured grenade launcher was more of a challenge. I wanted to convert him so I didn't have to repeat the super-distinctive heavy stubber loader. Mercifully the gap between hands seems to be fairly consistent with many weapons and with a little wrist surgery he was sporting a lovely new autogun.

To increase the variety in the unit I also pushed the variety of skin tones. It also helps to humanise them against the deathly pale Word Bearers. I finally feel that I'm zeroing in on decent recipes for most "flavours" of human. Will have to do a post about it once I feel I've nailed the ratios. Other than skin the rest of the colours were provided by a Barak-nar Burgandy (love that colour) skirt, US Olive Drab trousers and German Fieldgrey rifles. I deliberately kept the colours drab except the skirt. Wanted the purpley pink to pop. I also dirtied the edges of the skirts with Typhus Corrosion to give them that low-down grubby look.

Rounding out the 30 are two units of the classic Dark Vengeance cultists (that box has done some work in my army). I love these chaps, so much the "basic grunt cultist" and with the extras that the DV box brought they have a nice variety. C'mon G-Dubs, give us some variety beyond that wee box of 6 cultists eh? As far as painting goes... I don't really know... I gave these a fast paint job way back when I was trying out Necromunda rules. I just tidied them up and added a few Word Bearers red accents.

So instead of going deep on the painting, I'll let our Mysterious Narrator talk about them instead:

"Those over there? Oh, they're the Remnant's Wrath. Yes it's an odd name isn't it? Quite a sad story really. They came so, so close to victory. What you see there is a motley collections of a half dozen very successful cults that had risen up on Sogren's World. The fighting was bitter and if I'm honest our side seemed destined to succeed. They had even petitioned for our aid and we were speeding our way on swift wings to help them. Tragically a strike cruiser of Novamarines..."he spits "were near enough to be re-routed to Sogren's World. Our brave boys can stand up to a lot, but not Astartes. Not even these diluted echoes that wear the armour today. By the time we arrived it was all we could do to hurt Guilliman's bastard offspring and rescue what we could. They put aside their bickering rivalries and banded together into one united cult, the Remnant's Wrath. To this day they maintain their numbers by absorbing the waifs and strays from all-but-destroyed cults. See? Quite the tragic tale."

Floating along with the cultists are a pair of Rogue Psykers (using the Blackstone Fortress datasheets) to provide some psychic boomstick support. Surely our Mysterious Narrator approves of these?

"Ha! Those two, yesssss, well, let's just say that the Remnant's Wrath were not above eugenics to produce the perfect psychic host. What they created was a pair of inbred, mutant brothers with some limited psychic potential and egos larger than some moons..."

I'll put him down as "unconvinced".

I decided to really lean in to the ostentation on these pair. They just scream "ego the size of Kansas" so I drew on Idi Amin and threw some leopard skin in there. On top of purple, classy innit?

So with that we shall draw our first Tainted Thursday to a close. Rest assured there are a lot more coming as the Word Bearer's are legion and I sold my soul to a devil at a crossroads one time in Georgia in exchange for the Paint Model Quickly skill. Until next time, lovely people,

TTFN

↧

Cobalt Scions Repulsor Executioner

September 21, 2020, 1:36 am

≫ Next: Marching Beneath Book and Flame - Word Bearers

≪ Previous: Hordes of the Faithful - Word Bearers Cultists

Welcome to another episode of Charlie dials a Citadel Miniature down to 10. In this episode, I'm going to explain my illegal assembly decisions, touch on upscaling the Cobalt Scions paint scheme to a large vehicle, and why there's a Dark Angels icon painted on its arse.

Why's it called Boriel's Wrath?

Aroundabout the time I was thinking my army dearly needed some anti-armour firepower, my friends Boris and Dan unexpectedly flung some GW vouchers at me for my birthday. Moved by their generosity, I decided to commemorate this in the painting. Thus, I combined their names and dubbed the tank Boriel's Wrath.

The name Boriel sounded like a Dark Angel, so I figured it was some hero the Cobalt Scions wanted to honour. Like the name, the story had to be a mix of Boris and Dan. Boris likes motorbiking and photography, while Dan's a wrestler.

I decided, therefore, that Boriel was a biker who was zipping around taking extremely well composed recon photos when he came across a force of Cobalt Scions pinned down by Emperor's Children. Being naturally helpful, he spent the next two hours providing freakishly precise positional intel on the enemy, allowing the Scions to fight their way clear of the trap. Naturally this enraged the Emperor's Children, and when they finally cornered Brother Boriel, he was promptly beaten to death with a sonic blaster (for those of you who don't know, i.e. basically everyone, Dan once took an exploding guitar to the face in a wrestling match).

Boriel's extremely noble tale is written on the tank's aft door. This has the added bonus of tying in to the Cobalt Scions' lore; like the Romans they're all about venerating heroes of the past and will pay tribute to any Imperial hero, not just those of their own chapter, in an attempt to encourage greater political cohesion.

Non-Codex Compliant Assembly Decisions

When the Repulsor Executioner first came out, it seemed way too busy. All those grenade launchers on the turret, all that stowage on the back... calm down, Cawl.

Then I saw some without the stowage. That helped. Said stowage looked inaccessibly high off the ground, and added a lot of visual noise. Then I noticed how the GW studio paint job of the plasma variant had left off the grenade launchers, and how much clearer the thing became visually. One issue remained: the mini storm bolter turrets. Apparently Belisarius "Totes a Genius" Cawl designed an anti-infantry defensive weapon incapable of aiming at its most common target, namely, ground-level infantry.

Great.

Since the turrets are integral to the turret's design, I was stuck with them. But then I thought, why not just stick the grenade launchers where the storm bolters are meant to go? At least grenades could come to ground quicker than a bullet, and could still be fired upwards at elevated targets.

A tip on sub-assemblies

That these tanks have to be painted in sub-assemblies is not news. What I didn't know was that contrary to the instructions, the main port & starboard anti-grav plate assemblies should NOT be glued in. They force the other fuselage plates apart, giving you a bad join. If you build the tank without them they just pop in afterwards - no need for glue!

This was a godsend both in terms of painting and assembly, and all due thanks go to the Paintmarine for his helpful video on the subject.

I actually took things a bit further than he did, and kept the front assembly separate as well, since this enabled me to spray them all with Leadbelcher spray separately to the main tank. You can see the sub-assemblies below:

Obviously masking with putty and tape was needed to ensure I still had bare plastic contact points, but that was easy enough.

Painting

For the most part I followed my usual steps for painting these guys (step by step guide here). The difference lay in the weathering, and painting the red lenses. There were also the freehand elements, of course. If you're new to freehand and don't know where to start, I wrote this Goonhammer article on the subject.

Red Lenses

The lenses were an attempt to cleave fairly close to the studio paint job, and went something like this:

Basecoat Citadel Mephiston Red
Basecoat Army Painter Chaotic Red
Use a glaze of Army Painter Matte Black and Chaotic Red on the parts of the lens you want to be dark.
Layer the brighter parts of the lens with Mephiston Red.
Highlight the Mephiston Red with Citadel's Evil Sunz Scarlet.
Highlight the Scarlet with Citadel's Wild Rider Red.
Glaze the whole thing with thinned Chaotic Red to pull the layers together.
Re-highlight with Wild Rider if needed.
Point highlight with a mix of Wild Rider and Citadel's Kislev Flesh or similar.

Dirt shading - lessons learned

It turns out that if you mix dark rich brown and black to make a dirt glaze, then put that over blue, it goes black. Being a Muppet, I'd forgotten my colour theory, and that orange is the opposite of blue. It looked great when I was applying it, but dried way darker. Suitably chastened, I went back over some of it with pure brown, which was light enough (and going over black enough) to retain some of its colour. This doesn't come out as clearly in the photos, but you can kind of see it's not pure black any more. I also did a few patches in the deepest recesses with a lighter brown - Army Painter Dirt Splatter - to get some tonal variation.

Final thoughts

I can't wait to get this beast on the table, but I suspect that might not happen for a while given that when I do finally play a game of 9th edition it'll be smaller games. This thing has a hefty points cost and I've no desire to be That Guy.

Once again, my thanks to Boris and Dan for bankrolling this flying brick. Aside from scenery and a couple of super-heavy tanks, it's one of the biggest miniatures I own.

↧

Marching Beneath Book and Flame - Word Bearers

September 24, 2020, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Cobalt Scions Primaris Ancient

≪ Previous: Cobalt Scions Repulsor Executioner

Well met fellow followers of The Word. We have gathered here on another Tainted Thursday to introduce you all to more brave warriors of the XVIIth Legion. Today it is the turn of more marines from the rank and file to swell the numbers among the Graven Star:

I haven't decided on a naming convention for squads yet. Just giving them the sergeant's name seems a bit too Imperial, so I'm working on coming up with cool ritual names for the units. I'll unveil them when they reach their final form - i.e. when I paint another 5 for each unit to bring them to 15 strong units. For now, lets take a gander at the lovely models.

I'm keen on keeping the mix of ranged and close combat armed lads. Maximum flexibility for Deadpool's Maximum Effort. It also reinforces the pleasing chaotic vibe of the squads, making them feel less uniform than their Imperial cousins.

I've pretty much got the painting for these down to a science now. Drybrush metallics over black. Paint in the armour plates with 2 coats of Gal Vorbak Red which isn't as beefy as it wants to be. Paint in the black areas either Corvus Black (for weapons) or German Camo Black Brown (for leather) then drown the whole thing in Nuln Oil. At that point a huge amount of the work has been done. I highlight the red up to Word Bearers Red with a little Cadian Flesh in there and the weapons get a crisp Dawnstone edge highlight. From there it's just details.

I suspect I am far from alone for having a trollish glee at including my friends armies as trophy racks. Charlie's Cobalt Scions had been getting a lot of outings so I decided that Boris and Drew's fledgeling Salamanders could do with a bit of the ol' head-on-a-spike treatment. And what a head it is. The dangling faceplate, the skull inside... *chef kiss* magnifique. Also nice that the champion's power sword will now make him S5 rather than just cut better. Buah ha ha haaaaa.

Technically, the CSM squad box comes with a missile launcher, buuuut, I had a box of havocs... and theirs is waaaay nicer. So with a little fiddling I managed to get a Havoc missile launcher to fit a normal chaos marine and thus give me all the lovely claw-ey glee. I forgot to photograph it, but I gave another one of the marines the "backpack with missiles dangling from it" to be extra ammo for this chap. Helps the story of the unit.

With all these extra lads painted I felt I'd earned another character, so here's the second of the Exalted Champions of the Graven Star: Varock Sa'quath. The story of his opposite number can be found here if you need a refresher.

Which means it is probably time to check in with our Mysterious Narrator to see if he's warmed up to him any...

"It is becoming clear that the days of our Lord Khoura are drawing to a close, he approaches either apotheosis or catastrophy. While we all hope that His Greatness shall ascend to the Warp the practical upshot is that there will be a leadership vacuum at the top. There are only two clear candidates, my preferred choice in Nar Merenkar, and then there is that lump of grox-snot over there: Varock Sa'quath. He is everything Merenkar is not: Brash; over-arrogant; demanding the Gods' attention with little thought to the consequences. With Sa'quath in charge the Graven Star would doubtless reap a wondrous harvest of the deluded Imperials. But they would do so on the pyres of most of the chapter. I, for one, will not tolerate that. Of course, that idiot Tchure is grooming the little maniac, that's what comes of losing half a brain I guess... oh and he's short. Yes I know it's petty but it's still a fact."

...so, nope, still not a fan...

This is another of the Chosen from the Dark Vengeance sets, with him being an older model and in quite a broad stance he does seem smaller than some of the new models. Hence my decision to make him a short-arse in canon! There's not a huge amount to talk about with the painting of Sa'quath so I'll leave the pictures to speak for themselves and draw this Tainted Thursday to a close. I'll be back next week with more followers of the Dark Gods. Until then, lovely people,

TTFN

↧

Cobalt Scions Primaris Ancient

September 28, 2020, 4:47 am

≫ Next: There's wrong, and there's wrong and then there's this...

≪ Previous: Marching Beneath Book and Flame - Word Bearers

Ancient Aulus Acastian, Cobalt Scions 3rd Company

As soon as I saw the Ancient in the Indomitus box, I realised how much I wanted... the Ancient from Dark Imperium. The monkish vibe of the new dude is amazing for Dark Angels or Black Templars or any of those medieval aesthetic dudes, but thematically feels way off the mark for my army. Since there's no standalone Ancient kit and Dark Imperium is now OOP I hit up eBay and got my mits on this wee fella.

Some extra snippage was required to cut down his left pauldron so I could stick a moulded version on there, but other than that he's very much the original, nicely understated model. Well, for a given value of understated. The painting was very much the normal recipe as described in the article on the Captain.

Here's some extra angles, after which I'll answer the burning questions you don't have about the heraldry...

So, heraldry. For reference, below is a side-by-side comparison of the banner with the art I made of the chapter homeworld of Thonis. Yeah, I... really didn't do a very accurate job. It's a... er... pastiche of... um... medieval cartography?

I figure the two star symbols on the banner represent Thonis’ two moons, Adelfos and Adelfi. The red trim is because it’s the Third Company’s banner. The bottom center panel is the captain’s personal heraldry; the Ultima symbol is a callback to the fact that Lucullus, the 3rd Company Captain, was in the Ultramarines before he was sent to help found the Cobalt Scions. The sword symbol marks him out as the recipient of one of the master-crafted power swords given to the four Ultramarines who founded the chapter. The white skull denotes his status as a leader, the red background denotes the company he leads, and the white stripe across the red background indicates he was in the 1st company (of the Ultramarines) prior to joining the Cobalt Scions' 3rd company.

Shiny New Model Syndrome

To my utter joy, I finally got a chance to play a game of 9th edition. My friend Drew has jumped face-first into the hobby, and just recently painted enough of her Craftworlders for us to play her first game of 40K. Naturally this also meant I got to put Ancient Aulus on the table for the first time. We'll talk more about Drew's experiences of 40K from the perspective of the uninitiated in a future post, but for now, here's a picture of her Wraithguard shortly before they carved up my Intercessors with their D-scythes. Bloody xenos.

The game started off looking pretty one-sided in my favour but ended up being extremely bloody when her Farseer went full psychic ham. The game's gory resolution ended with the photo below, in which the poses combined to make it look an awful lot like Sergeant Lytanus was mansplaining where to smack the alien robot to my captain:

As you will deduce from the absence of a banner in the above photo, poor Ancient Aulus was extremely stabbed up by Drew's Farseer. At least he's now had the Shiny New Model baptism of fire. Bring on the next battle, Covid lockdown rules permitting!

↧

There's wrong, and there's wrong and then there's this...

October 1, 2020, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Cobalt Scions Chaplain

≪ Previous: Cobalt Scions Primaris Ancient

Why am I quoting Sin City? Well, something gribbly this way comes and yeah... it fits...

I have a real fondness for representing Chaos with more of a "protean" Cthulhu vibe than the normal riot of spikes. Nothing wrong with a riot of spikes, I just like my Chaos gribbly and disturbing. So when it came time to do some spawn I turned to some 3rd party sources for my disturbing pretties. Lets start with one we have seen before:

Yup, I'm so fond of this chap that it's the second time I've painted him. He's just such a glorious heap of fleshy upsetting. Now, yes, I could have just used the previous version but that would have meant rebasing him and, well, he's only a tenner... If you want an upsetting pile of tentacles of your very own you can find one at Fenris Games under their Cthulhu Wars range. This one is called a Formless Spawn. Painting, as I'm sure you can imagine, was mostly managing skin blending. I went with the same Rakarth Flesh based tone that the rest of the Word Bearers luxuriate in. Then it was just a matter of picking out lots and lots of eyes... oh and speaking of eyes, you may start to notice a pattern with his friend...

Also from the Fenris Cthulhu Wars range, this is a Shoggoth. As I was painting it I was imagining how it attacked. What came to me was a sort of envelop-and-dissolve attack like a white blood cell. That indicated to me that the inner surface ought to look like it was oozing with some sort of digestive fluid. Several thin coats of Athonian Camoshade gave me a nice contrast between inside and outside and a hint of chemical nastiness... After that it was just all them eyes.

And finally we come to the Main Event. I've had this model for a while. It's a Reaper Bones "Dark Young" and it. Is. Massive. How massive you ask? Well...

I wasn't sure if something that huge could work as a "normal" spawn. Mercifully Forgeworld have something in their Imperial Armour Index called a Giant Spawn and so what was dubbed the "tentacle goat tripod" by the bunker dwellers can be fielded with stats appropriate to it's stature.

I wish I could give you exact recipes for the colours but I was mostly experimenting and iterating back and forth to get the result I wanted. I know I added Rakarth Flesh to the turquoise and continued the mix up to the pale inner tentacles. This binds the various colours together tonally. Simarily I darkened the mix to get the brown legs without them standing out. All in all he's rather lovely. I call him Patrick.

And with that we are all done for another Tainted Thursday! Rest assured there's still more to come. Until then, lovely people,

TTFN

↧

Cobalt Scions Chaplain

October 5, 2020, 11:03 am

≫ Next: Cry Havoc!

≪ Previous: There's wrong, and there's wrong and then there's this...

The Indomitus box mostly offered lovely sculpts that were thematically wrong for my army, but the Indomitus Chaplain jumped right into the category of DIS SPACE MAN PRETTY, PUT HIM RIGHT IN MY FACE PLEEZ. One eBay split later, the deed was done. Today's post is therefore a celebration of that most classic of 40K archetypes: a shouty bald man standing on a rock.

It's a small rock, because he is a man of taste. A man of refinement. The sort of man you could take home to your Reclusiarch and who could hold his own in the inevitable bout of competitive xenophobia.

Why a head swap?

The mini's original half-bionic head is great, but I can't be dealing with a character that looks exactly the same as the standard kit because I am a special special snowflake. This, therefore, is my stab at winning the regional semi-final of the "technically different" kitbash also-rans chufty league.

Le painting

There ain't much to say here that I haven't already said in previous Cobalt Scions posts, aside from the fact that I added glazes of Army Painter's Chaotic Red to darken the robes and crozius handle to prevent the red overpowering the rest of the mini. Arguably this resulted in the overall mini having insufficient contrast, but at least I hope it helps the head be more of a focal point.

The black armour was highlighted up with a blue-grey mix to try and differentiate it from the rubber seals, but I didn't push that far enough to be remotely obvious under certain lighting conditions. Fun fact: the final edge highlight is the same colour I use to highlight my regular bright blue marines - Fenrisian Grey.

I usually use moulded Imperial Fist shoulder pads on my dudes, but the giant spiky shoulder pad was too cool not to keep, so I had to freehand the fist icon. It's actually less faffy to freehand the icon rather than paint the moulded version, but in no way could I get anywhere near the consistency from model to model doing freehand.

What's his story?

Caius Verus has been the chaplain of the Third Company since he was awakened on Mars at the start of the Indomitus Crusade. When he woke, his experience was similar to his brother-marines; it was hard to trust that this wasn't just another simulation, and harder still to believe that he was now expected to provide rousing rhetoric in the heat of battle. He was far from alone in his uncertainty, and took some comfort from that.

Said comfort evaporated at the start of his first battle, when he was horrified to find himself delivering a speech that he'd neither written nor imagined. He felt as though someone else was operating his larynx. The speech itself lacked flair or context; it sounded to him like the tired platitudes that one might be subjected to by an Ecclesiarchy auto-hailer when passing a temple.

For weeks, every time he opened his mouth to boost morale of nearby allies, these rote speeches poured out of him. To the other Scions, they were the only speeches they'd heard in battle, and seemed perfectly normal. To Verus, the sermons stuffed in his head sounded almost as though they had been written by someone who barely believed in them, and he was determined to do better.

He snatched what time he could to study rhetoric and oratory for himself. Over time, he learned to suppress autonomic catechisms in favour of his own efforts. They lacked flair, and did little to inspire his brothers, but Captain Lucullus encouraged him to persist even if it meant failure in the short term. Progress was slow and demoralising, but with Lucullus' persistence, Verus grew wiser.

After decades of war and study, Verus eclipsed his tutor. Where Lucullus' dry, rational dialectic is useful for dealing with scheming politicians, it has little ability to turn a crowd of citizens to their duty. Verus is almost the opposite, capable of inspiring citizens and Astartes alike, although shrewder minds are less likely to be swayed. Rationally, Lucullus knows their skills are usefully complimentary, but he envies Verus' charisma and popularity. This occasionally seeps out of him in the form of aphorisms warning against using platitudes over substantive points, but Lucullus recognises this as the fruit of jealous vanity and does what he can to suppress the instinct.

Verus, for his part, now relishes his role, and some say is destined to gain rank within the Reclusiam. For now, he intends to remain where he is to show loyalty to Lucullus and the Third Company - a loyalty which, arguably, now holds him back from achieving all that he could.

What's next for the Cobalt Scions?

I really, really need a third troops unit, but I want the modular assault intercessors kit to come out so I can kitbash it with the regular intercessors and I've no idea how long it'll be until that kit is out. I have some other stuff to keep busy while I wait, including a new terrain project. Oh, and playing games, that's good too. Not that there are many opportunities to play said games given the current need for social distancing, but mercifully I now have a fellow nerd in my social bubble and am therefore getting a steady supply of mortal wounds delivered right into my face by her ----ing Farseer.

As ever, if you have thoughts on the paint job, Verus' background, or frankly anything about spehs muhreens and the impending codex, collar me in the comments section.

↧