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Just a quick update from me today. Since I had a few moments in this busy week, I thought I'd tackle some low-hanging fruit for the Sigmar VI project and do some bases, this is generally because the Howling Griffons are Imperial and therefore lazy, where the Secessionists have to work for a living - er, I digress. I haven't really done many of the desert-themed ones before, so it was something nicely different from the lunar Khymara set ups I've been working on, and the warm tones are hopefully interesting to the eye. These are for the Eliminators (or true-scale scout snipers...) I mentioned, kindly donated by mad scientist, Huron advocate, and friend, @Xin Ceithan. Of the actual lore and significance to the Badab War of Sigmar VI, again, I could find nothing. Once more it's one of those throwaway little titbits, (like the mission legions, IMHO, I was there in the beginning, when Horus slew the Emperor, and to be honest he's doing a bad job of it, because he's had a four goes so far...ahem) that serve to just deepen everything. I did come across a few folks who'd done this before, a French chap over on DakkaDakka (If I can find the thread again I'll credit him - I'm a lazy Corpse Worshipper, see?), that came up with the idea of the Griffons doing a Heresy Raven Guard, becoming a guerrilla force, applying themselves in places where they could make the difference with reduced numbers. They had lost one of their Strike Cruisers and much of their heavy materiel at Khymara, so this makes a lot of sense, and opens up a few possibilities. Anyway, thanks for reading, and have a good one!

SESSION FOUR: I was harping on about doing a medical diorama based on the Howling Griffons actions at Khymara, and thought I had the parts, but I do not. However, I do have legacy models I will never use, belonging to armies I no longer have - I might have mentioned that. Anyway, I got to reading again, and found the segment about the death of Chaplain Armand Titus, hero of the Caradryad Campaign, which was the last action the Griffons prosecuted before the Badab War. Now, Khymara was a defeat for the Griffons, with the Executioners Space Marines butchering 70% of the 250-strong Loyalist Force. They had them at their mercy, but left them alone as soon as they became ineffective and all objectives were complete. One of their number refused to surrender. Armoured in his Dreadnought sarcophagus, and equipped with a power fist and twin-linked lascannon, he fought until his destruction. When the Griffons emerged to find him, they came upon his body, carefully laid out, surrounded by the broken weapons of his enemies, and a torn Executioners banner in his silent fist. Unfortunately, the Chaplain Dreadnought model is both expensive and rare, so I would never hack, chop and slice it up. I could do a little tribute to that magnificent end, though. I did drill up and hack his lascannon arm as well, with one of the barrels burst, but I have lost the image. I'll replace it if I remember. The model is technically finished, but I would like to try and add the banner, or maybe a Griffons' banner to add more colour to it. In other news, a very kind and generous soul (who is also obviously influenced by the Warp, obviously) has sent me some miniatures to complete another project mentioned earlier in this blog. I did have some bases like the one under the dreadnought made up, but this was wrong for the proposed camouflage scheme for the Sigmar VI Insurgency Force, so I made some more which will be desert themed. I do have one problem with this - there is almost no official fluff about Sigmar VI at all. I will have to do a lot more digging. Well, that's it. Hope you enjoyed, and thank you everyone who comments and reads the blog.

SESSION ONE: Just a quick one since I had some time today, and so I went delving in the boxes, the miniatures shuddering from fear and fright in the back of my attic, and I found the hull of a Land Raider Redeemer/Crusader with a goodly few bits. This fired up a few neurons, and I pored through the pages of Imperial Armour IX and found a very intriguing bit of artwork, namely the Howling Griffons Land Raider Prometheus. Well, you know, the FW kit has been out of production for ages, and there are a good few tutorials about, but I decided to go ahead and eyeball it, spending some time building the ABSOLUTE UNIT to the right. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly how I built this. I just saw parts and glue, and...yeah. I'm a little scared. I don't have the skill to completely render a full LR Prometheus, but I can have a crack at the sponsons. Unfortunately I was only able to complete one, and while it doesn't elevate, it does traverse, so I'm fairly happy about that. I've also decided on building it with assault cannons and the back of a Whirlwind launcher I found, and mounted by chopping up a spare Predator turret ring. Yes, that is the abomination (the Mazer-dubbed LR Khymera, after the Badab War Khymera campaign) to the left. I also unearthed a Vindicator...with the dozer blade... Send help?

SESSION ZERO: Welcome to the Blog! This is basically intended as a collection of projects - which likely won't ever get finished, but I don't want to clog up the WIP/HOH with my inane and meandering nonsense. You can see my very small pile of shame here, which consists of half an Infiltrators kit (Technically a Phobos Kill Team with the upgrades - I can't even remember the name), a Bladeguard kit, and two Intercessors. They've been sitting around for a while, doing not much of anything since I partially built and painted a Mantis Warriors KT, inspired by a character I've been playing in a Deathwatch RPG game over in the RPG Nook (Murderers In Black). I had the concept of a Librarian, but he didn't fit the game, and another player had suggested the Howling Griffons. Being an old hand at the Badab War, and my treasured WD101/Compendium, which sparked my greater interest in the hobby and drew me further into 40k from the 'gateway' drug of Space Crusade, I took a second look at them, and discovered a lot of ideas for the character aligned. I'll likely build the character bio etc, and leave him here for use (so I don't mess up anything elsewhere). It got me thinking, though - the Howling Griffons have an absurd paint scheme, and for me (my eyes are going) I thought it would be too much to try and paint a force of them, but then I saw a wonderful White Scars KT diorama (I forgot by who - I'll add it later) which had a complement of models on a magnificent display board. I was flicking through some Youtube channels as well, boning up on Howling Griffon lore for the character, and it struck me that the boys in Forgeworld had a partial solution, and the serried ranks of Mk VI in the Compendium came to my rescue. The Howling Griffons have three colour schemes: The classic gold and scarlet, the almost 6-colour choc-chip Sigmar VI Insurgency Force, and the Night World Livery of sable with quartered pauldron vignettes. I reasoned I could paint at least maybe one Intercessor or Bladeguard in the red and yellow scheme, the latter representing their bold attitude to oaths and honour, as well as their renowned swordsmanship. The Griffons have a lot of Psykers and the Deathwatch RPG paints them as Duellists, so this would be an excellent choice. I plan to modify the Mk X down to Mk VIII where I can, with minimal cuts to the poleyns, avoiding sculpting and other modelling work which is both beyond me and outside the scope of my time available. I also think it looks a bit cleaner, and I have loads of spare smol-marine heads. The other, sneakier miniatures will be in either the desert style camouflage, or the Night World livery, and I plan to acquire a single Eliminator who I can doll up with both (black armour, Sigmar VI cape). I can't go mad, since my budget is very, very small. I would also like a Librarian to round off the set (I'm not looking at many models - budget, budget, budget!) and the Phobos Lib looks like a good bet - since I'm weird and actually like Phobos armour. I'm not planning to do any significant conversions, but I will do what I can to make the models a little more interesting to me. Spoiler Warning: I like pouches. So that's about it for this post, I appreciate you taking the time to read it, and I know this isn't an innovative idea, but I thought it would be something to try and get me doing something with the remaining plastic crack, since I don't play anymore, and haven't rolled tabletop D6 dice since 2018. Just a note on expectations - I expect this blog to be slow. Very slow. I'll also be dumping a few ideas in here that won't be model related, but are RPG character, setting or history related, sprinkled with pics or brain-fluffs from my other projects. Be good.

My place for all things Space Marine! I have started to built a small force for the Horus Heresy, after having abandoned Space Marines for almost a decade now. The Nuncio Vox in the new MK6 kit looks too 40k in my eyes , so I have built my own version, for my two tactical squads.

An ongoing project to knock up some kitbashed standalone minis from the chapters engaged in the Badab War, because Badab is cool and kitbashing is probably the part of the hobby I enjoy the most. I had intended to start out easy with just my idea of what a standard tactical marine from each chapter might look like and I did do a few of those already (pics to follow) but a particular combination of parts gave me an idea and so I went with it. Here's my rendition of Old Night himself, Thulsa Kane of the Executioners. The basis is Tortuga Bay Studio's Myroslav Kado mini, with arms and axe from their Fortress Destroyer model. The head is from the new GW Terminator Chaplain, tilt shield from Fafnir Rann. There's also a dagger in a skull-encrusted scabbard from one of the GW limited edition webstore minis because "needs more skulls" was a definite consideration i had while assembling him!

Well, I started a thread on the 23rd of July but with the DB crash and roll back dogs ate it along with my homework. The beauty is you now will get a lot of WIP pictures like some rapid time lapse across a fortnight without my inane rambling. That won't last The downside is there will be lots of pictures in one post, but not much I can do about that as I am having to play catch up. The Wall of Bronze Beasts Printed scans from my copies of the IA books for inspiration and direction. The First Five Gotta start somewhere and as I want half in Mk VIII a squad in my take on that armour was the obvious starting point. At this point I was pleased. Mk VIII Chests How I did Mk VIII chest so the abdomen cables aren't exposed. I obviously could only do so many before I ran out so you'll start to see white bits as I lifted a cast of my modified chest plates. Losing Focus Rather than staying on point I wondered what the second squad in MK VIII would look like as I intend to give them Tigrus bolt guns. Great but still not one squad built Focus still lost... And what they would look like with a plasma gun, Ryza pattern of course. Second squad again, still off with the fairies... Standing on things is cool Lorenzen said so (at least I think he did long ago). And he is right. And he is doing Minotaurs too! Although I won't have bare flesh anywhere on mine, too page 3 exposing themselves and helms are more menacing. Note I went back to squad one again at this point. I was going to make this guy the combat squad leader but didn't which has led to problems (see later). Arguably you could say I'd regained my focus... Captain who became Sciron ...but you'd be wrong. An idea that escaped and broke focus. On the original thread the consensus was the name Sciron suited him more than Carcinus. When I say consensus like one person responded. Both are spare names from the FW brass etch sheet. I like him, pity I'll hardly ever use him. He is more progressed now and I will finish him for Grotsmasha;s challenge as a "funsies". Finally the Heavy I stopped procrastinating and prevaricating and finally built the squad heavy weapon. Quite happy with this, so I put all my avoidance energies into the special weapon bloke. Sons of Medusa No, really. Whilst avoiding doing the flamer I started fiddling with Sons of Medusa. I should write a book called Focus Lost or something. Flamers need bunkers to burn So, Armies on Parade and themed terrain is well important, more so than having an actual squad built, so I am doing this in tandem. Big, isn't it? Note I will be attacking this as Minotaurs so it'll be ouch time for me. Fits with them perfectly of course thus me doing it. And the fact I had the FW Siege of Vraks moduler resin trench stuff lying about gathering dust. More on this later but I'll be picking up the foam board and ply tomorrow. The gang is not all here Nine. Sort of like the Nazgul except not. Flamer guy all sinister on the right side. Missile launcher man strangely giving out quests. Sinister Close up of too many to be a combat squad and not remotely loaded right even if they where. Dexter And too few for a combat squad but at least a close up of elusive flamer chap. Note I cannot make my mind up on the last bolter man, who may also be squad leader, so I'll make another nine and then decide which one goes with these guys and then give the others Tigrus, then vacillate for ages over who gets to be Sergeant Aristophane, and then avoid building their plasma gunner and heavy bolterer for ages whilst building a full 6 ft. by 2 ft. trench system. However tonight is gym, then selling my FW Reaver on eBay, and then adding bulbs to all their ankles.

In the Ashes of the Thorns And who are you, the Tyrant said, that I should bend the knee Twelve high Lords on a far-off world, ‘tis all that I can see By a gilded seal, or a silver’d one, a Lion has his Claws And mine are cruel and sharp, my Lords, more cruel and sharp than yours. And so it came to pass, that in the 903rd year of the 41st millennium, a century before the Imperium would be shaken to its core and everything forever changed, Lugft Huron, Lord of Thorns, Chapter Master of the Astral Claws, and self-proclaimed Tyrant of Badab, did declare "just seccession" from the Imperium and, in so doing, ignite what was then the greatest conflict of our age. Alas, such was not to be, and if we could have seen what was yet to come within the next, darkest millennium, we might have counted ourselves lucky to be spared the horrors that came after Badab. Brother fought brother in a decade long war that saw seventeen warrior-brotherhoods of the Adeptus Astartes clash against each other in open conflict. Billions died and entire Chapters of Space Marine were condemned to crusades of Penitence, and even now, considering the horrors they would have to confront before that term was ended, it is impossible to say whether or not they survived. The war was brutal and bloody, with countless tales of equal parts valor and dishonor. These stories are too numerous to be told in full here. But even among every engagement throughout the war -- the Fires of Sacristan, the Angstrom Incident, Crow's World, and numerous others -- there is one that stands head and shoulders above the rest by the sheer measure of its violence and the gravity of its consequence. I speak, of course, of the final battle, the Siege that ended the War. I speak of the moments after the Tyrant found himself to stand alone among his manse in defiance of the Imperium of a Million Worlds upon his shadowed Throneworld. I speak of the Siege of Badab Primaris, and the Fall of the Palace of Thorns, when Lugft Huron, the Lion of Badab, died, his Claws with him, and something terrifying and black-hearted born into his place. Badab Primaris 913.M41 Long and hard had been the war, and many had already died among the Chapter. Yet more would die before the end. The smoke rising from the south meant that Surraek’s force had encountered the enemy. Most likely he and his charge of the Chapter now numbered among the honored dead, if the reports of the ferocity of the Carcharadon Astra were to be believed. Bashar Reyne glowered at this realization. This meant that unless the unlikely happened and they were reinforced, or the impossible happened and Surraek had actually survived the assault, he was the ranking officer in this sector. Turning away from the spiked parapet he stood at, he faced his command. Two depleted Tactical Squads lay at his disposal, his own and Cinnebre’s. Not enough. Not nearly enough, he thought. The Sharks had been reaping across Badab for days now, leaving a red wake behind, and they would be here in a matter of hours. The Claws would die here, he knew. There was no escape. Not now. Perhaps years ago, in the early days of the war, there might have been the possibility. But after ten years of fighting those loyal to the High Lords, ten years, brutal and bloody and restless, there was no return. The die had been cast and nought would change the number it showed upon its upward facing, save for the sweet release of death. So here the Astral Claws would make their final stand – upon the surface of their home – and so here they would die, but not before they reaped a terrible price from their attackers. A feeling came over Bashar Reyne then. Throughout the brutal centuries of his life, from the day he was first chosen to be a Neophyte of the chapter, through his days as a Marine of the Line in Tactical Squad Kherradan, through Veterancy and through his days serving first as a Sergeant, and later the honor of Veteran Sergeant, it was a feeling he had never known throughout war and strife. Peace. Reyne very nearly smiled at this realization, that he had accepted his final fate, but outwardly the grimace upon his face may well have been chiseled from stone from all it showed. A careful observer might have noted a slight shift in his eyes with this thought, but been unable to recognize it. Such a thing requires context, after all, and Bashar Reyne was not a Space Marine known for levity, but rather harshness and ill-compromise. To his men, only one thing he had to say before the end. “Die well.” It was a promise, as much it was an order. As the lights of hive spires began to go out as a wave approaching, heralding the arrival of some great cthonian marine predator, and a deathly silence began to replace the sounds of gunfire in the distance, Bashar Reyne ignited his power maul and awaited his end. Requiescat in Pace Veteran Sergeant Bashar Reyne of the Astral Claws Depicted as he was after taking overall battlefield command after the death of Tyrant's Centurion Surraek, Badab Primaris <urban combat//Zone Mortalis>, 913.M41. Confirmed KIA. Body found dismembered.

With the Space Marine Kill Teams rules firmed up (link goes to the last version I posted, though a few minor tweaks are described in multiple replies), it's time to expand. One of my favorite events in the setting, and one that has a definite focus on the Adeptus Astartes, is the Badab War (coincidentally, one of my favorite Chapters, the Exorcists, took part in that campaign). So here's my initial stab at Chapter Honours and skills for the various Chapters that participated in the Badab War. For the most part, I took the 6th edition Chapter Tactics that Forge World provided for these Chapters, and I adapted them to Shadow War: Armageddon. For Chapters that have identified Legion lineage, I used the skill progression from those Chapters as a baseline, though I tried to apply some tweaks here and there in order to introduce some (very minor) differences. A few of the Chapters simply use their predecessors' Chapter Honours (e.g., the Novamarines are among the Primogenitors, so I reasoned that they follow the Ultramarines rules exactly). Others are very close to their predecessor, but have minor adjustments to Chapter Honours or skills or both. And some were very distinct (e.g., the Executioners are almost nothing like the Imperial Fists). Page 1 (introduction and timeline) Hidden Content Page 2 (skills - Astral Claws, Carcharadons Astra, Executioners, Exorcists, Fire Angels) Hidden Content Page 3 (skills - Fire Hawks, Howling Griffons, Lamenters, Mantis Warriors, Marines Errant, Minotaurs, Novamarines, Raptors) Hidden Content Page 4 (skills - Red Scorpions, Sons of Medusa, Star Phantoms) Hidden Content Page 5 (Chapter Honours - Astral Claws (includes rules for Tyrant's Legion kill teams)) Hidden Content Page 6 (Chapter Honours - Carcharadons Astra, Executioners, Exorcists, Fire Angels) Hidden Content Page 7 (Chapter Honours - Fire Hawks, Howling Griffons, Lamenters, Mantis Warriors, Marines Errant, Minotaurs) Hidden Content Page 8 (Chapter Honours - Novamarines, Raptors, Red Scorpions, Sons of Medusa) Hidden Content Page 9 (Chapter Honours - Star Phantoms) Hidden Content I've tried to keep balance on par with the main Space Marines Kill Team rules, but I'll need other eyes to help me with that. I have an idea that these rules might include campaign rules, at the very least a series of scenarios to play out shadow wars (i.e., squad/team level skirmish battles) within the setting of the Badab War. These might potentially include a modification of the Shadow War: Armageddon campaign rules (though that might be nothing more than changing "Promethium caches" to "victory points" or "campaign points" or somesuch. That's way down the road, though. For now, the focus is getting these rules accurate and balanced. Any input is appreciated.

Hello Fraters, This is a public release to advise that the Cabal of Dead Ink will hopefully be publishing its first PDF project for general availability through the Downloads section soon. (Pending Admin approval etc). The release will be an original short story set in the run up to the Badab War, featuring new or barely known characters, and will hopefully be the first in a series from different perspectives and POV of both the Loyalists and Secessionist forces. It will also contain original artwork (covers and maybe interior art) of the same subject. It will not be a graphic novel product. You can rest assured that all artwork will be board and subject appropriate. The reason for this notice is to not only create interest, but also to prevent any concerns of improper use of the artwork. You can see one of our previous Notices of Interest for Graphic Designers/Digital Artists. We have sourced work from a professional artist called Dan Morison, who has been very generous in allowing us to use his art for this purpose, without remuneration as per GW IP Policy. We have permission to use it, and an email chain to provide evidence of what was agreed. Further, he will receive proper accreditation in the publications we make. The Cabal of Dead Ink would like to use this opportunity to highlight Dan's great style, and to give our public thanks to him for his trust and support. We would encourage anyone interested to go and see his stuff. We are still continuing with our plan in creating a BL Submissions Anthology, which will showcase the work of those who gave their shot to the recent Open Submissions window, but may have been declined, missed the window, or decided not to proceed for whatever reason. We are also working with Fraters within this forum to enhance and support our work with formatting and artistic skills, such as @TheTrans We look forward to discussing this further with any interested parties. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to PM me, or respond below, and I'll reply as soon, and as fully, as I can. I would also like to thank the help and support of the Cabal with getting us all this far. A lot of work goes on behind the scenes, for which I am eternally grateful. The Secession, and our Story, continues. Maz.