Queen Bee Knight -- Thank you! Please read the new post

[JeffTibbetts]

How do you guys and gals feel about leaving off the crotch armor...? I kind of like the way it looks without it. Maybe I'll just trim it down a little. 

[Disruptor_fe404]

Use it but take off the bottom section, I reckon.

[JeffTibbetts]

That's kinda what I was thinking, maybe.

In the meantime, here's a little sketch of my concept for the pilot herself. I will be sculpting her sitting down, of course, but it helps me to imagine her first. She's something of a 90's Riot Grrrl in my head, hence the leggings. I'll just leave this here for now.

[GhostMalone]

Dude..... Your taking this seriously now,

 

I like it ;)

[Demus Ragnok]

Jeff.

 

Very nice.

 

Carry on.

[Excessus]

Nice drawing! Though I was expecting something more "Tank Girlish"... :)

[JeffTibbetts]

Nice drawing! Though I was expecting something more "Tank Girlish"... :)

Actually that might still happen. I was thinking of her somewhat. I might be adding some tattoos and piercings as I go. This was more about her body shape and general rough details.

[Forté]

The pose you've done is a huge improvement over the original. So much more life in the machine and the little details are amazing.

[Captain Semper]

You're gonna sculpt a pilot? :o Too awesome for words...

 

However, shouldn't the pilot be a noble from an ancient house? She looks like an escapee from the penal legions... I think, crisp uniform and hair a more appropriate approach. Even for a freeblade.

 

But that's just me. Follow your heart on this as it has served you well so far. :tu:

[Gillyfish]

I tend to agree with Semper - jumpsuit, sockets for neural connectors, maybe a bionic or two. She needs to look 40kish BUT, she is your project and you need to have the enthusiasm to carry it forward - so do what appeals to you. :)

[Excessus]

While following Semper's view, which I am inclined to partially agree with, this picture would maybe serve as an inspiration:

 

http://1-media-cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/tg/image/1342/14/1342146223109.jpg

[Gillyfish]

That was closer to what I had in mind. Cool find Excessus.

[JeffTibbetts]

So, I totally hear what you're all saying. And I agree to an extent. Now, here's my take on it as a longtime RPG player and GM, including the excellent Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy systems. Toss in my love of the old-school 40K Rogue Trader era, and a penchant for punk and gender equality. This is the thought process that went into making her who she was: 

 

Aurelia came from a heavily gender-divided culture, and a highly structuralized and hierarchical one at that. Growing up, seeing her father as a Noble and her mother a consort, she would have been fed these roles as her version of normal. This culture held men up as honorable, strong-willed people who were expected to do what they were told. Only the strongest among them would be able to exercise eccentricity or individualism, and even then in clear and pre-defined ways. One might drink too much, another would take a string of young lovers, etc. None of them would be able to really break out of their roles. 

 

Her mother, on the other hand, would fall into another class, for whom intrigue, politics, and society are everything. In my mind, I could see her mother quite clearly suffering in this role. Forced to involve herself in the sort of petty politics that we, as modern people in this age, find endlessly tedious and infuriating. Make one wrong move, and the 'mean girls' of the consorts court would be all over you. Shame and socializing pressure would be tough if you didn't enjoy it. Add to this the pressure of the male heir being widely considered to be inferior, and the family's stakes tied to him, and you can begin to see why Aurelia would see her mother's plight as tragic. 

 

Enter a rebellious, free-spirit-by-nature young lady, seeing the split between what's expected of her and her brother. Add to that the idea that the young scions of the Nobles that she meets are anything but honorable and strong. Many of them are given to frivolity and debauchery, knowing that this is the only time in their life they'll be able to live it up and sow their wild oats. These are the men she meets. Her vision of her father is torn as she begins to see her parents as real people, toiling endlessly to fulfill their roles and having next to no control over their lives. If I were her, I'd reject this society right down to its core. I would feel guilt and shame, knowing that to openly decry the culture would be to bring her parents' plans down, and ruin their life's work. But, nevertheless, that's not a life that she wants to lead. 

 

She knew she was stronger, smarter and more fit to don the Knight armor than her brother, but due to the circumstance of being born a woman she was the object of the men's desire and not the hunter that her heart told her she was. Again, if this were me, I'd rail against it. The ways in which that rebellion would manifest would start out simple. Drinking. Gambling. Casual sex or at least flirtation (it's complicated, okay?) might help her feel powerful or in control. Etc. Nothing that would outright get her father in trouble at first. Just things to make her think she's getting away with things. This would lead to a general decline, as her social circle would trend towards further decadence. She'd meet like-minded young men and women and eventually would become part of the bad crowd the Noble families all complain about. In the end, it would (and did) end up coming back to her father. 

 

A stoic man who truly did love her and saw the injustice of it with his own heart, he would defend her good name whenever he could, even at the expense of his own reputation to a point. Now, take this broken system and imagine her brother, Alistair, failing the Ritual of Becoming to his detriment and indeed, his death, and now this young lady would be thrust into the role that she had secretly longed for. She spent her young adulthood complaining that the Nobles and the Knights were a broken, flawed, deeply wrong "old boy's club" and now she'd have to join them. Her family was riven with grief and the burden was now on her shoulders. They chafed under the yoke.

 

Trying hard to prove herself, with a chip on her shoulder the size of the Grand Canyon, desperate to undo much of what she herself had done to her reputation... That would mess with anyone's head. Now, during her own Ritual of Becoming, her psyche was flooded with ingrained notions of fealty, honor, duty and loyalty. The guilt and shame she would have felt over her behavior would become painful. While on the one hand, intellectually she knew that the culture was wrong, she now felt keenly that it must be that way to ensure the strength of the Knightly order. They had survived because of these things. 

 

She tried pretty hard to do things their way. For years, donning the armor eventually and fighting alongside her largely male cousins and uncles. And she fought well, as she always knew she would. But, it would never be enough to make up for her past. No matter how hard she fought, how much she bled with them, they would always consider her an outsider. When the opportunity arose, in a state of melancholic shock and grief, to leave the relative shelter and oppression of her family, she took it. She struck a deal with the AdMech and became a Freeblade. She didn't leave the family altogether, but she knew that no matter what she did she would never fit in there and couldn't realize her potential. 

 

In the absence of her own culture, mingling with a people like the natives of Tonatzin, she tasted freedom. Here was a society that, while there were some gender roles and social status, was night and day different and it felt like a breath of fresh air. All of her anger and resentment over the way in which she had been forced to live boiled to the surface. She was tired of dressing the way they wanted her to. Fighting like a pilot but then being told to wear a dress and curtsy. She said "that life is for them, and now I have my own." From then on out, she did things the way she wanted to. Like a kid quitting law school and going to live with aborigines in the Amazon jungles, she had gone native. 

 

A uniform?! Don't make her laugh. Not very ladylike? She'll spit on your condescending face and challenge you to a duel. She knows the power her Knight armor gives her, and she's not afraid to throw her weight around. She scoffs at the war councils and endless paperwork of the Adeptus Munitorum, blowing off meetings but always coming through in the battle. She's a rogue element, the savior of the people but seen as a dangerous threat. Of course, with her undeniable value as a Knight pilot, nobody is able to pin her down or bring her under heel. The Adeptus Mechanicus loves and hates her, for she represents not only a humanity that is diametrically opposed to their inhumanity, but also because she leverages the Knight suits that are still her family's by rights. She simply refuses to play their game.

 

Nothing is more Riot Grrrl than this. She is a punk. A rebel. A feminist in a galaxy that has no time for pertinent little girls throwing temper tantrums. She wants to upset a galactic status quo and knows she can't. It's tragic, really. I love it when my roleplaying buddies try to think about how screwed up 40K is. It cracks me up. In my mind, she's the ultimate romantic idealist and simply can't accept that things are really as bad as they are. She takes her anger and aggression out through battle, as it's the only thing that's black and white for her. She has her objectives, knows who the enemy is, and persecutes them with her might.

 

So, yeah. 90's punk, and very UN 40K in a way. I get it. That's the idea. How much of that will come through on the model? Who knows? I like to think that she is a real, living person caught in a tragedy fit for the Greeks. It makes her come to life and remind me, by way of contrast, how much I love grim dark. When you see a really sad story like this, it just reminds you how far from human space marines and AdMech truly are. 

[BassWave]

I like how much thought you've put into this ONE model :D

 

All ill add about the pilot is that I think she'd look better in cargo pants.

 

In my opinion, i'm going to ignore the whole male heir thing with my household. In a galaxy where women can become princeps of an imperator titan, a powerful inquisitor, or a navy admiral, I find the whole idea that only men can be knight pilots silly. Especially since there is no biological reasoning behind it.

[JeffTibbetts]

I like how much thought you've put into this ONE model

All ill add about the pilot is that I think she'd look better in cargo pants.

In my opinion, i'm going to ignore the whole male heir thing with my household. In a galaxy where women can become princeps of an imperator titan, a powerful inquisitor, or a navy admiral, I find the whole idea that only men can be knight pilots silly. Especially since there is no biological reasoning behind it.

You don't think she'd look too Imperial Guard with cargo pants? I'm not opposed to that. What about something more like a utilikilt?

And yeah, I feel ya about that. Having read now most of the codex, companion, and Knights of the Imperium novel, it's very much a part of the fluff for better or worse so I felt the need to address it.

[Captain Semper]

So you got your fluff sorted out then! :D

 

Look forward for the 3D result!

[Excessus]

Hmm, stolen from deviantart without permission but something like this?

http://th01.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2014/076/0/e/mechanic_by_i_guyjin_i-d7am0fx.jpg

Sorry for posting humongous pictures in your thread man, I'll go with links instead.

[JeffTibbetts]

Hmm, stolen from deviantart without permission but something like this?

http://th01.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2014/076/0/e/mechanic_by_i_guyjin_i-d7am0fx.jpg

Sorry for posting humongous pictures in your thread man, I'll go with links instead.

Yes! I liked the last pic, too, but this is much closer. Note I don't think hair works with neural sockets (which are there in my sketch, but hard to make out. I love that pic.

[Excessus]

I think they can work with hair. Example that I also have on my wall:

 

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/ghost-in-the-shell-poster.jpg

 

Neural sockets aren't limited to necks...

[paz]

Just keeps getting better and better... cannot wait to see how the pilot comes out.

[JeffTibbetts]

I do love me some GITS, but that's a little high tech for 40K IMO. Spinal I can dig, but she's a full on high quality cyborg. 

[Excessus]

I do love me some GITS, but that's a little high tech for 40K IMO. Spinal I can dig, but she's a full on high quality cyborg. 

Yeah, I was just thinking about the connectors, not a full body cyborg.

[JeffTibbetts]

Right on. I think it makes sense to do some further down her spine, but honestly if she's sitting in her throne you won't even see them. Good thinking, though. I love how many people are contributing ideas. 

[Tyr13]

Id second the cargo pants look. I cant really see someone piloting a knight in a skirt, itd probably snag somewhere. If youre worried about ir looking too much like guard, you can always go for very unsoldier-like colours... maybe even add a couple of details that harken back to her past as a knight proper... parts of a unifrm or something, probably somewhat worn, maybe with a couple of oilstains, that kind of thing... and regarding hair, you could always go for something like a mohawk... its not unheard of after all *cougheshercough*. Just some ideas, great work though! :)

[JeffTibbetts]

Id second the cargo pants look. I cant really see someone piloting a knight in a skirt, itd probably snag somewhere. If youre worried about ir looking too much like guard, you can always go for very unsoldier-like colours... maybe even add a couple of details that harken back to her past as a knight proper... parts of a unifrm or something, probably somewhat worn, maybe with a couple of oilstains, that kind of thing... and regarding hair, you could always go for something like a mohawk... its not unheard of after all *cougheshercough*. Just some ideas, great work though!

I like those ideas a LOT. I love the idea that her pants could be cut-offs of her old uniform. Practical, irreverent, punk. And yeah, I have toyed with (and am still considering) a soft mohawk. Think the silly Skrillex hair. But, consider that idea coopted.