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A Lesser Son of Greater Fathers: Dabbling in Epic


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Cheers lads/ladettes. Your praise means a lot.

 

 

These guys are so great that I only slightly lament seeing fewer Sons of Tyr.

 

They will return, but not for another year or two, and almost certainly not as a playable army, more a modelling project.

 

Damn dude, these guys are rad. I love what you're doing here by bringing the Ultramarine's dirty laundry out into the light. Awesome storyline and painting, can't wait for more.

 

Cheers brother, glad you like it. Trying to improve the story writing as well.

 

The Black One-hundred are awesome! :happy.:

 

Cheers bud. Glad you approve :)

 

Astounding work so far!
Might be too late, but have you thought about (for Ludvic) painting the faceplate black, with the remainder blue? Or perhaps vice versa.
(a black faceplate might tie him in more to your breachers, via the stripe on the boarding shield)

 

Not too late at all. I'm currently thinking of black torso and legs and blue arms. As for the helmet... I was thinking entirely black with gold leaf decoration. Thoughts?

 

Brilliant work, mate!! Nestor is a total boss :thumbsup:

 

 

Ps. the black pteruges look great :wink:

 

Cheers kizz. As stated, your Emperor's Children were a big inspiration.

 

Next, can't decide whether to do an Iron Hands consul on secondment, Destroyers or a Heavy Support squad (with added CHOOM)...

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Too cool. I love how you don't have the perfect little ultrasmurfs!!! Makes them more relatable. Although I want to know what they did for censure. Did they turn auxilia's into finger puppets like Night Lords?

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Gold leaf on black would look nice. Would he have any other armor segments with gold leaf, or would the helm be a standalone piece?

(Or you could go the bling route, gold faceplate with black helmet. I've noticed that having the faceplate a separate color really makes the mk IV stand out)

Either way, looking forwards to seeing you put your plan into action.

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These guys are awesome, very nicely done. 

 

I'm super curious to see what a Moritat would look like for The Black One-Hundred.

 

Cheers man. Actually I hadn't even considered a Moritat but now you mention it, it seems an obvious choice for a unit full of censuria. I'll give that some serious thought, thanks for the shout.

 

Too cool. I love how you don't have the perfect little ultrasmurfs!!! Makes them more relatable. Although I want to know what they did for censure. Did they turn auxilia's into finger puppets like Night Lords?

 

I was thinking about this, and how much to go into detail on the "requirements" for entry into the Black One Hundred. At the moment I'm leaning towards glossing over the why and the how of entry into the censuria, for two reasons. Firstly because less is more, and that is a touchstone of 40k/30k lore. Sometimes it's better to leave things to the imagination. Secondly, and in my view most pertinently, there is a serious risk of making them out to be diamonds-in-the-rough if I go down the route of explaining what they've all done - they're not supposed to be celebrated for their transgressions or infractions, as the Night Lords do. They're in the censuria company because they screwed up really, really badly. These are not good Ultramarines, neither in terms of their moral outlook or in terms of their prowess as warriors. Sure, some of them are skilled, even exceptional fighters, but those warriors would be counterbalanced by serious flaws in their character severe enough to almost nullify their use to the Legion as a whole. The whole point of a penitent unit like this - in my view - is that it harbours soldiers who, for whatever reason, would harm the units they were originally assigned to if they were allowed to reintegrate, whether through loss of morale, lack of prowess, insubordination or otherwise.

 

And I guess that's what I thought would be interesting about putting a unit like this in Ultramarines colours. What would the proudest, most celebrated Legion in the Imperium do with such men? Every Legion had warriors that didn't fit the way of warfighting passed down to them by their Primarch. These guys are a step further than that, in that they not only didn't fit the mold but were elements the XIII actively wished to rid itself of. In that situation, I thought a warrior who knew all too well that the Legion that raised him - his home, his brothers - wished to disown him would experience a curious kind of zealous drive to prove his utility. Not necessarily to his Legion - who require nothing more of him now except his death - but to himself, to prove his own worth as a fighter, as a warrior, and as a brother to those who, like him, were cast out. I figured there would exist an even stronger brotherhood within a unit of such misfits and no-hopers, as brotherhood is really all that's left to them - they've failed as Ultramarines and now have no one else but their fellow outcasts.

 

I'd be keen to hear people's thoughts, anyway. I'm well aware that it's easy to write about 'bad Ultramarines' and make it sound like they're Ultramarines but edgy and dangerous and basically all the things that a more grimdark Legion is, but painted in Ultramarines colours. That's not what I wanted. I wanted to write about the warriors who simply weren't good enough when it counted and were consigned to oblivion in the annals of history. I figure there's a story there.

 

I missed so much progress on this.  Always liked the Ultramarines and these guys are excellent.  Looking forward to seeing that Praetor finished.

 

Cheers brother. Much appreciated :smile.:

 

Gold leaf on black would look nice. Would he have any other armor segments with gold leaf, or would the helm be a standalone piece?

(Or you could go the bling route, gold faceplate with black helmet. I've noticed that having the faceplate a separate color really makes the mk IV stand out)

Either way, looking forwards to seeing you put your plan into action.

 

Probably just the helm with gold leaf, and the chestplate with gold decorations. I'm not sold on the split colours on the faceplate for the simple reason that I think he'll have a lot going on already colour-wise and I don't want to overload it. However, you did give me an idea for a Consul...

 

so good. The gold with the flat-black looks fantastic.

 

What paint are you using for the flat-black? Sorry if I missed it earlier in the thread.

 

Just Army Painter Black with a Strong Tone (Agrax Earthshade) wash, plus metal weathering. Nothing fancy I'm afraid. Thanks for the kind words, brother.

Edited by Brother-Captain Arkhan
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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Well. Hasn't it been a while?

 

Being overseas for most of the year, my ability to build new models is largely limited to holidays at home. Having the opportunity at the minute as it's Christmas, the modelling bug has bit me in full force thanks to a great game of Zone Mortalis played with Disease the other day. XIII and XIV Legions went 1-1 in the Assault mission type. Most importantly, I got some ideas for some new additions to the force, WIPs for which you can see below. Forgive the blurry pics, I left my good camera abroad so it's mobile only, for now. See if you can guess what they are:

 

VI

 

Officers of the Black One Hundred

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1385_zps2tkbfmih.jpg

 

 

 

Tarquin Hektor

Marked for Censure

[cf. Edict of Nikaea]

[spurious interrupt: note unauthorised recommission of subject[cf. Calth Atrocity]; order origination unknown]

 

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1374_zpsuqbljcxz.jpg

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1377_zpsqdzco73h.jpg

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1378_zps9q6e7pv4.jpg

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1379.jpg

 

 

 

Roland Tycho

[Former rank unknown; cf. Pyrrhus Tertius Debacle/Censure/Gradus Deiectio]

 

 

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1381_zps3rwe4sma.jpg

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1382_zpsqjj5mzmn.jpg

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1383_zpsoibypj5v.jpg

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1384_zpsaq0nhbrk.jpg

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Yay!!!! He's back!!!!

 

Both look great. Hektor though..... So regal yet dangerous and edgy all in one. Good use of the axe to make him not look too aristocratic. I expect copious amounts of blood :-P

Edited by jimbo13
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Cheers lads.

 

Here are some shots of some objective markers currently WIP. I thought, given the narrative scale of the Heresy and how fun it is to make objective markers, it'd be cool to do 'sets' of markers each themed around a specific battle or campaign. These are themed around recovery and relief efforts following the battle for Armatura, which may explain why there are so many dead Evocatii, as well as a couple World Eater helmets (to be added) and a sword so big only a Gal Vorbak could lift it...

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1388_zpsv6gsihjk.jpg

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1389_zpsjf7ismvb.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

//audio file uploading...done

//begin playback

 

<unintelligible>...but that was before the word came through that Calth had been hit. Bad. We didn't know, then, who the foe was, only that the rest of the Legion was hurting and we weren't there with them. The siege of the Khrave xenohold had taken too damned long and each of us knew it. Our muster was as fast as any I've witnessed - we left entire Auxilia regiments behind us in our haste to board Ardent Vigil - but it wasn't enough. No one knew what was happening - our masters in Chapter Command barely knew themselves, and informing a censuria unit like the Black One Hundred certainly wasn't on their list of priorities - but we all could sense the terrible gravity of what had happened. Something world - no, galaxy-shattering had occurred at Calth, and whatever it was, the Legion needed us. No matter our past indiscretions. We had to stand with the Legion in its hour of need.

 

But we never made it to Calth.The Vigil was rerouted, the word coming down from Legion Command itself, to go with all haste to Armatura, the war-world. We were to deploy directly to the surface to join the Evocatii defense under Orfeo. In ordinary circumstances, to be deployed alongside the Evocatii would mark a significant elevation of our standing within the Legion, but we knew it was no cause for celebration. It meant that whatever had happened at Calth must have been catastrophic on a scale not seen since the Psybrid debacle.

 

If Legion Command were redeploying censuria reserves like us to front-line, high-value postings it meant that there was no one else to send. The rest of the Legion had just been gutted at Calth and we'd been half a galaxy away in their hour of need.

 

Yet once more the fates conspired against us. The Vigil was becalmed in the Warp almost immediately after we set out, and for several months we drifted, seemingly making no progress, our Navigator bewildered by the turmoil that had erupted within the Immaterium. By the time we set foot on Armatura, months later, the Traitor Legions had done their work and departed.

 

I made landfall with the Hundred's first dropships. I walked in the ashes of the planetary capital and beheld one of the greatest worlds in Ultramar brought to its knees. I can't describe the emotion I felt. Not grief. Rage, yes, but a stunned sense of loss, too. To behold the devastation of the Legion's fortresses, to see the corpses of the once-proud Evocati piled in mounds ten, twenty metres high, their bodies defiled and their armour stripped by the Word Bearers... There are not words in any tongue to describe it. Something died, in that moment. Whether it was my faith in the Legion, or the dream of Ultramar the Glorious, I can't say. Amidst the rubble, I remember finding the helm of one of the fallen who had done this to our world. I gazed at it for a long moment, as if seeking an answer from the obscure, unreadable glyphs on the helm, trying to understand why this had happened, why these warriors who had stood with us as brothers had turned upon us and utterly obliterated the pride of our Legion.

 

I didn't find an answer, of course. But I knew that whatever we had been before, however far we had fallen in the Legion's estimation, we were still warriors of Guilliman's Legion, still soldiers of the XIII. We stood in the ashes and broken rubble of the greatest of our fortress-worlds and swore oaths that no matter the cost, we would prove our worth to the Legion in the days to come, and avenge those far greater than us who had fallen here in defense of fair Ultramar. And so, as I held the traitor Legionnaire's cracked helm in my gauntlet, seeing my own shattered face reflected in its vis-plate, I realised that our hour of redemption had come at last. Ultramar needed us. The Black One Hundred would not be found wanting.

 

end playback//

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1413_zpsdtsangdy.jpg

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1416_zpslaw84e9x.jpg

Edited by Brother-Captain Arkhan
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Bit of post-fluff explanation: the next few updates, hopefully to follow in rapid succession, will have a theme to them. I want to depict the Black One Hundred's journey across the Five Hundred Worlds, desperately trying - alongside other XIII Legion forces - to catch up with the XVII and XII Legions as they raze the realm of Ultramar to the ground. The above update chronicles the arrival of the Hundred on Armatura from the viewpoint of one of the line soldiers, and is consequently light on detail. I'll add future updates to flesh out the Black One Hundred's role in the Shadow Crusade and their eventual doom.

 

For now, here's another snapshot of one of the Hundred's battles, not necessarily in sync with the above update in terms of chronology: this was I Squad Ferrata in a Zone Mortalis game against a friend's Alpha Legion (not pictured). Ferrata carried themselves well, soaking up a lot of fire and bringing down a XX Legion unit masquerading as XVIII Legion Firedrakes (good dice!) I don't think I need to emphasise that hardened armour, a breaching shield and power gladius are brutal in low-points level ZM games.

 

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/Mjolnir771/IMAG1410_zpsue41ttmu.jpg

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