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This may seem something of a diversion from the Horus Heresy narrative wargaming project I'm presently working on; but in truth, rather than being a dire manifestation of Hobby ADHD, it's actually a return to something that's been bubbling away at the back of my head since somewhen late in 2012/early 2013. InquisiNecronMunda. A basic fluff rundown for this is that after reading Fall of Orpheus (IA:12 - which did the wonderful job of putting the almost lovecraftian Terror back into Necrons following the ... controversial rework they got with the second 'Newcron' codex) , I had the idea for exploring a similar event from a vastly different perspective. Instead of witnessing an entire Imperial Sector falling to massed armed force, this narrative would follow a pair of rival inquisitors (one Ordo Xenos, one Ordo Hereticus) as one of them attempted to first piece together the pattern of dark events engulfing the region ... while the other became steadily more and more convinced that the first was some sort of dangerous, dire radical in need of a swift purging. The miniature pictured above (with a guardsman and a truescaled Astartes for scale comparison) is my Ordo Xenos Inquisitor (my associate's running the Hereticus). Planned additions to the warband include the usual stock characters (sanctioned psyker; grizzled Imperial Guard veteran; lexmechanic; xenoarchaeologist ... that sort of thing) ... as well as some perhaps less well-worn numbers (Kroot warrior sanctioned xenos; an Eldar guide - either a Ranger or a Warlock; and other dramatis personae that would swiftly raise eyebrows (followed by bolters/handflamers) in more Orthodox circles). But we'll go into those later http://b1.ifrm.com/static/emo/2.png As you can see, the base-miniature for this character is the rather excellent plastic Fantasy Chaos Lord figure, with all the obvious chaos iconography filed off. I seriously liked the roaring ram-daemon shoulderpad, so that stayed; as did some of the armour-detailing. The rationale behind this was that I wanted an Inquisitor in some form of powered armour (or potentially even terminator armour) - but without going for the 'lazy' approach of simply using regular Astartes power armour. The Chaos Lord seemed to have the requisite imposing bulk and baroqueness to suit a well-equipped inquisitor (albeit in a much more 'dark ages'/medieval flavouring than, say, the Renaissance-inflected Inquisitor Tyrus [the visual concept of which I absolutely love]). The head's drawn from the superlatively useful Empire Flagellant kit - I felt it was the most 'dignified' yet 'stern' cranium in the kit, and radiated a sense of both zealous piety, as well as steadfast determination. It's the sort of head which one could easily see silhouetted against blood-red boiling skies such as those we saw on the classic 3rd ed Daemonhunters codex. Possibly because Shouty. And with a definite level of "worried". But also, "powerful". And with a strong sense of aged wisdom conveyed by the beard (remembering one of the classic 'inversions' from the original Inquisitor game being the tendency of *older* Inquisitors to be more radical than young orthodox puritans). Now as for the armament ... that gave me pause for thought. I did initially toy around with the idea of keeping somewhat converted versions of the model's original weaponry. There's a multitude of potential staff-based weapons one could conceive for an Imperial servant; and the left gauntlet poised upon the pommel of a rather massive sword looked pretty intimidating. It would, no doubt, have looked even MORE intimidating if I went with my initial inclination and added a vambrace-mounted plasma-pistol to the top of it. But something just didn't feel quite right. So we kept playing around with the contents of the almighty bits-box ... until some unused arms from Forgeworld's excellent Hector Rex model stumbled into view. I was initially a bit lukewarm about this outfitting - not least because I was still struggling to see how to work in a ranged weapon (because in a game with the occasional rampaging inhuman monstrosity, it's always seemed a bit of an OSH violation for an old man - even one in power armour - to get up close and personal with the gribblies); however after thinking about it some more, and with some chopping to reposition the sword-arm, it just seemed to *click*. There's something delightfully barbaric about the image of a trusted agent of the Emperor clad in somewhat primitive-looking (powered) plate-mail, and armed with a great hacky sword and shield. I did contemplate adding a pistol-sized weapon (or potentially one of the old 2nd edition metal Legion of the Damned bolters I have lying around - we've decided these are perhaps more 'carbine' weapons than the much larger modern Astartes bolters) hung on his belt ... but this would probably have just overcomplicated the miniature. Besides, parrt of the background I'd worked out ofr him was that he's a psyker of some ability - so perhaps mortal-material ranged weapons are unnecessary due to the Inquisitor's demonstrable facility with MIND BULLETS. About the only thing that's still niggling me about him (other than the fact that the sword's broken in two twice now) is the back of the miniature. I felt that he might require some obvious up-techenning in order to more properly bring the miniature into the 41st millennium, in the form of a power-back for his armour ... but nothing seemed to visually work. I tried a 2nd ed metal Legion of the Damned backpack for that baroque skull-look, an older plastic Chaos marine backpack, a Kasrkin's powerpack - and even the backpack from an Eversor Assassin. All of it distorted the silhouette and just looked 'tacked on'. So eventually, he was just left as-is. Fluffwise, I rationalized the lack of an overt power-pack by looking at the back of the Hector Rex model - which, Terminator armour style, appears to have an internal reactor.