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Surprise is an insubstantial blade, a sword worthless in war. It breaks when troops rally. It snaps when commanders hold the line. But fear never fades. Fear is a blade that sharpens with use. So let the enemy know we come. Let their fears defeat them as everything falls dark. As the world's sun sets...As the city is wreathed in its final night... Let ten-thousand howls promise ten-thousand claws. The Night Lords are coming, and no soul that stands against us shall see another dawn. The War Sage Malcharion Hi everybody! I thought it's only appropriate to kick this thread off with a quote from Malcharion, since the Night Lords trilogy is one of the reasons why I came back to 40k. I've spent the last couple years building a modest force (I'm a terribly slow painter) and lurking around on this board, but now I've decided that I might as well join in on the fun. To give you an idea of what my Night Lords look like, here's some stuff I've finished recently. My MkIII squad, led by a still unnamed champion: And two Obliterators, the Eisenfresser: I managed to get my hands on some Gorgons a while back and I have to say, they are lovely miniatures. Naturally I just had to convert/corrupt one of them, which led to this fella: Warpsmith Hadur Cobannus Mars Ultor of the Ghoul Stars I hope you like them. There's more to come. INVENTARIUM Raptor Squad "Sol Invictus" - July 13th, 2016 Ceratus Knight Acheron - August 5th, 2016 Lord on Juggernaut - November 15th, 2016 Maulerfiend - January 17th, 2017 Headsman of Malal - April 26th, 2017 Terror Squad "Profugum" - September 2017 Warpsmith Hadur - January 2019 Terminator Lord Varkaus - July 2019 Hellforged Contemptor - August 2019 Sicaran Battle Tank - February 2020 Emissary Ostisoi - March 2020

Right, exactly what it says on the tin, chaps. I'm looking for assistance correlating what information there is to be had about the XIXth Legion's Terran period and recruitment, iconography, culture, etc. You know - the sort of stuff required to bring a force to life. I'm presently tossing up what to do with five or so truescale Mk.IIIs I've just about finished ; and one of the possibilitis which suggested itself to me was a band of Terran-origin XIXth legionnaires who'd wound up (as with so many of their kind) separated from their parent Legion at some point subsequent to Unification. Now, this in and of itself would be pretty straight-forward. Formations such as the Ashen Claws provide ample testament to this kind of force being out there in the universe. But if you've seen many of our previous Vox Stellarum logs floating about the place, and in particular what we tend to do with Heresy and Unification era stuff when it comes to fleshing out the fluff behind our projects ... then you'll already probably see wehre this is going. I like tying my miniature efforts of Terran extraction to their earth-culture origins, both in terms of naming and more involved elements of the modelling and equipment. Thus far, this has resulted in North Indian inflected Loyalist VIIIth and IVth; as well as Umbral's excellent Tibetan Night Lords. Yet when i turned my attention to the XIXth Legion, things became rather more difficult to 'pin down'. What we know from the Third and Sixth Black Books is that many of the Terran XIXth were drawn from the "Xeric tribes of the Asiatic dustfields", proximate to the Yndonesic Bloc with whom they seem to have been in a continual state of armed conflict. We also can make an inference of a sort as to their relative propinquity towards the eastern frontiers of Ursh, due to their involvement in the pacification of same as Astartes as part of Unification, but this is just tha - an "inference" (based in no small part on a similar pattern observable elsewhere of some Legions' first outings being in conflict in their own general 'neighbourhood'). So what does this give us? Well, not terribly much. However, it is a start. Only hits I've found in relation to potential meanings or derivations for "Xeric" is the straightforward and direct use of the term in reference to rather arid biomes, including at the present time a swathe of territory running through northwest China and Central Asia to western India, Iran, and so forth. And no doubt, given the reduction in habitability of the ensuing 28,000 or so years of human history on Terra, these realms will have expanded a great deal. Although so too will the "Yndonesic Bloc" - which I have little doubt encompasses a far broader extent than modern-day Indonesia. And while this might straight-up suggest Mongols or something, I have something a little different in mind. Specifically, the Scythians and/or [dependent upon which ethnographical sources you wish to rely upon] Saka peoples which inhabited much of that aforementioned expanse. So I guess what I'm asking is twofold - beyond what is stated above, what do we konw about these Xeric dust-tribes? Is there anything cited in the various Horus Heresy novels or other sources about them and other elements of the Terran XIX adt this point in time? And, further, do we have any information about unit-badges or other heraldry - the Black Book art has a rather bland "XIX" in a roundel; possibly supplemented by the six-armed starbursty sigil seen on the shoulderpad of some of the earlier Ashen Claws art (although this is cited as a unit-designator in the panel of tactical markings in Extermination so make of that what you will]. And, you know, anything else that may be useful :P

Yes, you read that right. Umbral and I are actually going to do a segment of the Unification Wars in [broadly] 28mm scale. And this isn't just a pipe-dream or a "we're planning on doing X wouldn't it be cool" ... we've actually already got half a dozen miniatures made, and another several already finely WIP; plus some reasonable setting-details to make it all make sense in. In terms of a bit of backstory for just *why* we're attempting to luridly illustrate one of the most exotically unknown parts of the 40k timeline ... some of you might have caught our various other Vox Stellarum logs either here or over on Ammobunker. The idea with these has always been to bring together the three things we love most about 40k [i.e. uniquely converted miniatures, well-crafted stories of narrative resonance and 4-dimensionality, and the fluff and setting we get to play with both in] as a sort of living novel or something. We have yet to play a game, despite spending almost a year on these projects thus far ... but with all of the incredible detail of characterization, background, and lovely LOVELY figures that we've racked up [cheers Umbral], it almost doesn't matter. It started out with an intent to run an Inq28/Inquisimunda campaign set somewhere proximate to the 'contemporary' 41st Millennium. That's still on-track. Then I said "wouldn't it be cool if..." [famous words of inspiration no doubt responsible for all manner of leaps both forward and backward apace in human history] "...we did Inq28 style gaming in the Horus Heresy - there's all SORTS of smaller-scale 'narrative' actions and plotlines we could explore in amidst the big battles!" - and so we started doing that as well [also still on-track, and progressing very nicely, if I do say so myself!]. And we briefly batted around a few ideas about Unification Wars stuff [because ever since reading Outcast Dead, and some part of Prospero Burns, as well as elements of the Black Books fluff, ti's been seriously prominent in my brain for some reason], although it always seemed a bit of an idyl day-dream reather than a serious miniatures project. Particularly with all the other stuff we get up to hobby-wise [we haven't even done a project-log for our other 'closer-to-40k' setting yet...]. But Umbral, bless him, had an idea one day and mocked up a few figures [which you'll be seeing shortly] using some Bretonnian Men A Arms I had sitting around mixed with some Cadian parts, and it instantly became apparent that he'd just made WW1 British Soldiers in a Lower-Tech Science Fiction Setting. "They're Albian Ironsides", he declared. And so they were, too! This naturally lead to two follow-up question: first up, what sort of setting could we plug them into ... and second, what would I be doing to go with them? The answer to the first, well you'll see a few elements of what we've come up with in due course. And as for the second ... THUNDER WARRIORS. I absolutely HAD to have Thunder Warriors. They're quite iconic for the Unification era obviously - but the concepts put together by most people thus far just don't quite 'do' it for us. Most of them are too small, or too 'clean' or too overtly "Marine-like". And fair enough. IT's an ill-fleshsed out area of fluff depiction [with even the otherwise wonderful Blanche illusrations basically having them in Mk.V Power Armour for some inexplicable reason], an dmost poeple can't be bothered to do truly 'original' things when playing around with a concept - so you get slightly converted plastic marines with Cadian HEavey Weapons Team sunglasses heads and plumes. We were wondering about usng some of th elarger Khorn Bloodbound heroes from Age of Sigmar, but were still umming and ahhing. Until in one of those totally 'meant to be' feats of serendipity, somebody screwed up a seriously bulk order we'd just done [which was supposed to include Horus Lupercal for an experiment in making a truescale Space Wolf Terminator for our Horus Heresy game ... but instead wound up with us getting most of a Leman Russ for some reason], thus leaading to Umbral having parts on his hands and a sudden flash of inspiration... You'll see the result of that particular happy 'accident' a little later. But the basic result was, we wound up realizing that the Primarch figures by Forge World were probably our best bet at doing Thunder Warriors - particularly as we already do everything else truescaled anyway, and they had lovely 'unique' armour-sets to them that quite clearly weren't ordianry Marine armour, and came handily with a lot of 'lower tech' elements [for example, Mortarion has what apppears to be CHAINMAIL in the gaps in his plate]. Now, some might disagree with our take on Thunder Warriors. THat's OK. It's your hobby after all. But after taking a look at their representation in The Outcast Dead, it became readily apparent that these guys were BIG. Bigger than Marines, in fact. Fully capable of taking on several of them at once AND WINNING [as proven by the incident related in the World Eaters/Warhounds fluff-piece from th relevant Black Book]. So with this in mind, we set out to create what I can only describe as table-top Demigods. Not the ordered, somewhat more 'predictable' and 'sanctified' Avataras or Aspects of the Emperor which the Primarchs are - but the sort of folk whom Babu Dhakal evokes in one's mind when one reads his bits in The Outcast Dead. Except in their PRIME rather than once they're cancer-ridden husks of their former selves once hte wars of Unification have already been won. Oh, and we also decided to give our Primarch-based Thunder Warriors an array of 'twists' based around the idea that they're not simple 'line' Thunder Warriors, but perhaps bespoke crafted [rather than 'off the rack'] creations for more 'particular' purposes. Kinda like forerunners to the actual Marine legions perhaps. Anyway, I'm rambling. On with the show!