To follow up my previous blog post – and thank you if you read it!  – here’s a bit of a ‘commentary’ on the background/lore that this piece of fiction was intended to help establish.

Firstly, where I’ve mentioned specific named characters, planets and warzones – these reflect my plans for the army I’ll be building and painting, as well as other wider hobby projects. To begin with, my hobby focus initially will be on the Rostokhar campaign – the initial squads of Ashen Sentinels I’m painting are for Boarding Actions, and I’ve a couple of other Boarding Patrols planned when that’s finished. One of these is Ad Mech, and the other is the main antagonist of this campaign narrative – spoilers for this below!

The narrative will start with actions on the Orbital Defence Arrays above Rostokhar III, before taking to the planet’s surface. In hobby terms, this means that once the Boarding Patrol is complete, I’ll start my ‘main’ Ashen Sentinels army – a 2000 point list that will be modelled to look like they’re fighting on the dusty, red, rad saturated surface of the Forge World.

Secondly, I’ve named characters – Captains – that I either own, or will get, and who I have a narrative in mind for. So the 2k army I will build is going to be painted as from the 3rd Company, lead by 3rd Company Captain; he will be the Captain in Gravis Armour with Heavy Bolt Rifle miniature. 4th Company Captain, to accompany the Boarding Patrol(s) is the Captain exclusive to Imperium Magazine. I have, or will get, other models representing commanders of the Ashen Sentinels, for example the Gravis armoured Captain from Dark Imperium will be painted as the 2nd Company Captain. I intend to get the other Captain in Gravis Armour miniature – he’ll be Chapter Master Noumen Arkos. I’ve plans for others, when I have the appropriate miniatures; for example when (if) the Warhammer Heroes set of Primaris are released in the UK, they’ll be painted as Ashen Sentinels of the 5th Company. I also have a small contingent of Phobos marines that I’ll paint up – either to field as a 1000 point army on their own, or to combine with other units so I can mix up my army lists.

Finally, I’ve tried to leave enough space for any future expansion, both in terms of lore and new units/models. For example, I’ve not mentioned the 1st, 7th, 8th and 9th Company Captains! With the recently announced set of Space Marine models, there are enough available to actually make and paint each Company Captain (and the Chapter Command!) if you wanted. Maybe, eventually, I may do that! As well as leaving space for that, there’s narrative space for whatever conflict I want to include. The thread about Battlegroup Palaemon searching for relics from fallen Space Marines allows justification if I ever did any narrative games where they fight Imperial forces.

So that’s an insight into my thoughts and intentions behind that piece of fiction. There’ll be more fiction to come in the future – right now for me it’s back to painting; over in the Works In Progress forum, you can see where I’m currently up to (about to add decals to the first painted Assault Intercessor Squad).