The Forges of Havukha have been lit

[The Officer]

 

Hi, The Officer here, returning to the B&C after quite a long absence. 

 

I used to play Dark Angels and be relatively active in that part of the board a long time ago, mostly during the 3rd edition. When I returned to the hobby after a long break, I discovered that the Rock had been infiltrated by the lackeys of Guilliman and spies of Terra, and for some reason found myself unable to forgive or forget... Luckily, the Adeptus Mechanicus was waiting! I have always been interested in them, but back in the 3rd there obviously weren’t any models available. Now, however, I seized the opportunity to finally show my allegiance to the Machine God!

 

Currently (and doubly so because of the pandemic), this is a modeling and painting hobby for me, though I hope to get some games going too after the plague clears. I made the classic move of acquiring a huge pile of grey plastic first and then trying to figure out how to get it all painted... Here's a few skitarii I've gotten fairly ready. 

 

 

Still getting the hang of photography...

 

These Skitarii hail from Havukha, my DIY world (home also to Astra Militarum and Adeptus Titanicus armies we may one day see realized!). They will have more squadmates as well as hoverboats to ride in, and will get a final round of fixes and touch ups when the units are at full strength, so any comments at this point are appreciated!

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

+++Short description of Havukha+++

 

Havukha is located in the galactic north. It was terraformed during the Age of Strife and intended as a staging area for exploration missions in the fringe regions, with chains of forge complexes around the polar regions and agricultural land on the equatorial zone, as well as a Titan Legion for military support. Then a mysterious disaster wiped out all life on the planet and plunged it into an ice age. Havukha was rediscovered during the Great Crusade by an Explorator Fleet from Mars. The promise of archeotech halted the exploration there and the fleet never left, instead becoming the Cult Mechanicus of Havukha. However, the most important discovery was that most of the Titans were still active. Slumbering on the frozen plains, sipping power from geothermal stations and guided only by their murderous machine spirits, they reacted to the explorators with furious hostility. They called themselves Legio Nihil, the Heralds of Silence, and wrangling them became the first objective, with Adeptus Titanicus sending new crews as fast as they could.

 

Many of the forges and much of ancient tech had been damaged by the ice, but apparently also by sabotage. Over the following milennia the Mechanicus slowly changed the climate and thawed the ice, and were able to restore some manufacturing capacity, eventually enough to become somewhat powerful in the subsector. However, when the agricultural nature of Havukha became apparent, the Administratum organized a mass migration of agri-workers, escorted by a congregation of the Adepta Sororitas and intent on restoring the world as a supply base in the galactic north. The Mechanicus was not happy, and only the dreadful unveiling of the Legio Nihil's true intentions prevented an all out war. An ancient death cult had crept into the minds of the Titan crews through their MIUs and spread to the rest of the legio personnel from them. Mixing Age of Strife era tenets with Imperial Creed, they announced that they worshipped the Emperor as the Bringer of Death and declared war on the life-spawned Chaos, and ultimately life itself. Their obvious willingness to wipe Havukha clean once more motivated everyone to not give them any excuse for a war, and led to all parties negotiating military pacts in order to direct the fury of the Legio against the enemies of the Imperium first. This led to an uneasy status quo that still remains, despite numerous incidents such as a chain of industrial grade “accidents” that wiped out all ecclesiarhcal presence on Havukha.

 

As the utility of Havukha as a base of operations for Explorator Fleets became evident, the research focus of the tech priests slowly shifted to data acquisition. Many ships of the Great Crusade era Explorator Fleet were still present and new exploration missions were easy to supply. Under the influence of Mars, two main research topics emerged: "The Eternal Glory of the Enduring Machine" and parallel to it "The Inevitable Degradation of Flesh". Many of the fleets launched from Havukha search for data on these subjects, either providing methods and archeotech for furthering the life-spans of machines or providing information on the modes of erosion of biological organisms. These two research topics have made their way into the color scheme of the Skitarii Legions of Havukha as well, a dual scheme with the black side representing the unyielding and eternal metal, the white side the brittle and crumbling bone. To show their allegiance to Mars, the havukhans retain their red robes.

 

 

 

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Beautiful work on the Skitarii models. The backstory you wrote is imaginative.

Mixing Age of Strife era tenets with Imperial Creed, they announced that they worshipped the Emperor as the Bringer of Death and declared war on the life-spawned Chaos, and ultimately life itself...

 

These two research topics have made their way into the color scheme of the Skitarii Legions of Havukha as well, a dual scheme with the black side representing the unyielding and eternal metal, the white side the brittle and crumbling bone.

Does this remind anyone else of Malice?

[The Officer]

Thank you for your comments!

 

Haha, I had completely forgotten about that Malice-thing! Chaos works in mysterious ways, I guess... It is a coincidence though, the color scheme was logically extrapolated from the Mechanicus logo, expanding outwards from the chest icon. Luckily it ended up being inverse to the Sons of Malice scheme!  

[DanPesci]

Awesome work/backstory so far!

 

Really digging that black and white split twinned with the more standard mars red. The light green works great with it too.

[The Officer]

Thanks! I'm glad you like the green, I was really struggling with it. I knew I wanted green instead of blue for the weapons, but a red-green-white color scheme becomes very christmassy so easily... I hope I managed to avoid that!