The Silver Fire of Dawn challenge - Grey Knights

[The Woodsman]

 

Great work all.

 

Reskin I agree that the Razorback needs a white desing on it. not sure if it should be on the gun covers for the heavy bolters or the red on the sides like on your land raider. 

You've convinced me, I added white to the Razorback and the tail of the Interceptor... kind of like the Jet Liners of todays aviation transport industry

 

 

Its what I would have suggested too. And I agree that large model's aren't actually harder than regular dudes. The only tricky bit (I find), is getting a nice, flat basecoat that doesn't look too thick. After that, everything is bigger, so in my opinion easier to shade and highlight, etc.

[Reskin]

I'll take some more pics tomorrow if I end up getting a game in tomorrow night. But cheers for the feedback, I was already leaning that way

[TPS]

 

"Brother-Techmarine, we are experiencing difficulties with our Land Raider."

"Describe 'Difficulties'."

"Our tracks and lower hull are dematerializing."

"Have you tried closing all doors and exorcising the vehicle?"

"Already tried, to no effect."

"Send me diagnostics."

 

....

 

 

 

 

"I see. You appear to have hit an area of diminished reality. Please stand by and praise the Omnissiah while I dispatch a repair team."

 

 

 

[Skywrath]

Holy Emperor...

[WAR]

Wowza   

[librisrouge]

That, my good sir, is simply pretty. The armory does well to have you amongst its ranks.

[The Woodsman]

Awesome, original work TPS! Well done on incorporating the fluff into your painting!

 

 

 

**Edit: added a WiP shot of Empistolary Vayle, just put him together this morning. I still have a bit of green-stuffing to do to tidy up some joints and parts I needed to shave off, before I get to work on painting him. I know a Nemesis Force Sword is an uncommon choice for Librarians, but I figured why not, I mentioned him being a gifted swordsman in this month's narrative, and I'm hoping we get the +1 Strength bonus in the new codex.

 

**Edit 2.0: I've condensed my narrative for this month, as well as pictures of both finished models, in a single post further down to facilitate finding it all when the time comes to vote.

**Edit: I've condensed my narrative for this month, as well as pictures of both finished models, in a single post further down to facilitate finding it all when the time comes to vote.

Edited December 22, 2020 by The Woodsman

[Reskin]

I’m speechless TPS, that’s a real beauty! It’s unique, got style and class!

 

I withdraw my entry, got no chance now ;)

 

 

That chaplain is exquisite! Clean, crisp, wonderful little kitbash!

Edited December 12, 2020 by Reskin

[The Woodsman]

I’m speechless TPS, that’s a real beauty! It’s unique, got style and class!

 

I withdraw my entry, got no chance now

 

 

That chaplain is exquisite! Clean, crisp, wonderful little kitbash!

 

Thanks man! Your vehicles are on point, don't be so hard on yourself! 

[Skywrath]

**Should you wish it Skywrath, I can edit my narrative post once all is said and done for the month and have both finished models and the fluff in one post. 

 

Up to you, mate, I'm chill :)

 

** Keep it up, Grey Knights, some outstanding admissions here!! ++

[TPS]

That, my good sir, is simply pretty. The armory does well to have you amongst its ranks.

 

 

Awesome, original work TPS! Well done on incorporating the fluff into your painting!

 

 

I’m speechless TPS, that’s a real beauty! It’s unique, got style and class!

Thanks for the kind words! Also, thanks for motivating me to finally paint that LR! Without this challenge, it would have probably sat on my shelf until the end of days.

[Skywrath]

So after converting a Custodes jetbike to a Ravenwing Talonmaster, I had an epiphany. It was a waste to waste (bad english structure, sorry) the custodes bits still on the sprue, and then a series of images flashed through my mind. The custodes torso, grey knight helmet, grey knight arms and custodes shoulderpads on a GK terminator legs. I was toying with making him helmet a custodian one, but then I thought, he would be more of a custodes rather than a Grey Knight, so I left that out. The original idea was to convert him into a Grand Master and give him the Halberd of Caliban, but after glancing in my box where my Grey Knights reside, I saw a very badly painted Paladin Ancient. So it was decided, he was to be a Paladin Ancient. I ripped the base of the old Paladin Ancient, shaved off the snow effects (while managing to cut my fingers with the scalpel, deeply), and glued him on. Gave him the Banner, used the top-knot of the custodian helmet as a leather tassel on top of the banner, to give it a dynamic wind effect. I also wanted to give him the regular storm-bolter to highlight some fluff that I made for him (also WIP, but the theme is this ancient is as old as the unification wars that he fought beside the Emperor). The end result was absolutely godsmacking dynamic.

 

I decided this model was going to be the epitome of my painting, so I went the one step further and practically busted my balls doing recess shading (something I never done for Grey Knights). Then to make it one step further, I decided to layer the gold areas to add more dynamic to the model. Made the gems in the Custodian armor red to match with the red accents, and then went over with ardcoat to give it that "gemmy" feel.  Without further ado here he is! He is still mostly a WIP (still need to do the banner/base and fix 1-2 splurges), but so far very damn chuffed with him (camera pictures still are fairly bad.. might have to resort taking a video for my upcoming submissions). Paint is nowhere that grainy on the actual miniature.

 

Edited December 13, 2020 by Skywrath

[The Woodsman]

Awesome kitbash, Skywrath!! The Custodes/Terminator combo really works. Keep it coming!

[Reskin]

Do you undercoat white Skywrath?

[Skywrath]

Awesome kitbash, Skywrath!! The Custodes/Terminator combo really works. Keep it coming!

 

Cheers friend!

 

Do you undercoat white Skywrath?

 

Bone - wraithbone spray.

[Freakshow668]

Excellent kitbash Skywrath, the customers bits really make him look suitably ornate for an ancient.

[librisrouge]

Ok, I got my vow complete. Figured I'd start with a repost of the librarian. It is a slightly better pic but I use my phone and silver is a pain to photograph without a really good light source.

I'm really proud of this model. It came out almost exactly as I imagined it, with bits from as many as five models and sculpted fire creating something that I've got and nobody else (muhahahahaha!) He'll see the table plenty once I play again and I dig it.

Then, there comes the strike squad. Nothing fancy here, just five old metal models with some paint on them.

I'm not 100% pleased with the force effect on the blades. It was supposed to look like a field on top of steel but my skills are nowhere in the same neighborhood as that, so it looks more like a bluish ribbon on bronze. Still, it looks ok and was a good attempt that I'll, hopefully, get better at with time. Not like playing GKs won't give me plenty of practice painting force blades.

Ok, ok, ok, some fluff. How about:

Brother Atlantes ignored the sting in his eyes as he brushed aside another daemon's attempts to break his concentration. They enemy had focused on his position as soon as they had deployed around the column of etheric energy rising into the atmosphere. Atlantes suspected that the Sons of Magnus hadn't realized the double edged danger of their strategy when they had conceived it. Against any other fighting force in the galaxy, saturating the battlefield in warp energy would have yielded them a wholesale advantage. Against the Knights of Titan, it merely provided them with an equal excess of energy to work with; energy Atlantes knew he could turn against their foe.

The enemy realized his plan as quickly as he had realized the weakness of theirs. Thoughts of temptation, rage, and sheer distracting noise consistently assailed him mind, cast aside though rigorous recitation of the 99 Evocations of Detestation he repeated on a barely conscious loop in his thoughts. Warp flame, summoned by multi-limbed horrors, were barely unwoven; deflected rather than destroyed. An essential compromise given the power they too were deriving from the column of power. Even more mundane bolt rounds, if any weapon in the Thousand Son's arsenal could be called mundane, streaked his way, leaving pits in the terminator armor that barely protected him.

Despite these attacks, the knights of Strike Squad Terricus had done an admiral job of defending him. Storm bolter fire suppressed the advances of rubricae while force halberds lashed out at lesser daemons who grew too eager for the kill and ventured into range. Justicar Terricus himself, recently raised to the position, found himself in battle with a herald of Tzeentch. Though the daemon was undoubtedly more powerful psychically, Terricus was its better martially and their fight quickly came to the standstill.

It wouldn't last though. Already two knights had fallen and they'd become cut off from the rest of the brotherhood. Between battlefield conditions and the warp energy emanating from the very ground, communication was haphazard at best. They would either succeed here, or die in the attempt.

Knowing he'd find no better time than now, Atlantes gathered his wits and power about himself. He'd be a liar if he didn't admit the thought of what he was about to do scared him. Grey Knights, like all space marines, felt fear, contrary to popular Imperial propaganda. Fear is too useful a tool for assessing danger, a critical skill on the battlefield. Fear simply didn't incapacitate them though, like it did mortals. Atlantes pushed it aside with no effort and stepped toward the column of energy, reaching forward with his hands.

As the energy began to enfold him, he knew this might become the turning point to the battle. He'd bend it to his will and cast it as a destructive force at his enemies, or become overwhelmed by the power, suffering for his hubris. Time would tell.

[Skywrath]

Excellent bit of fluff, Chaplain! That being said, the 99 Canticles of Detestation - is that officially so? I seem to recall a 666 something or rather, just wondering if those two are one and the same. 

[Reskin]

That’s the 666 secret words, or daemons names, or unwords. Anuncia

[librisrouge]

Excellent bit of fluff, Chaplain! That being said, the 99 Canticles of Detestation - is that officially so? I seem to recall a 666 something or rather, just wondering if those two are one and the same.

Thank you. The 99 Canticles are purely something I made up but GKs have many similar things that I just didn’t feel like looking up

[The Woodsman]

Great work and great narrative, libisrouge!! This month just gets hotter and hotter! I hope to be done with Epistolary Vayle tomorrow... I'll condense my narrative and both finished entries into one post when it's said and done. Again, smashing work to everyone involved!

[Freakshow668]

I'm ploughing on with my vow, things are starting to come together, model-wise. Need to finish off and do bases, then sort the fluff. Hope to be done by deadline.

[Reskin]

When do we vote?

[The Woodsman]

Okay, so my vow for the month is done! As I've mentioned in my post edits, I've consolidated both finished entries and my narrative here. 

 

The narrative: Purity of Faith

 

On the obsidian floor of the Basilica of the Emperor Eternal, High Reclusiarch Anatone Gerior knelt in prayer. On the thrice-damned industrial world of Armageddon, now corrupted beyond recognition by the Ways of Change, the Basilica was the only structure untouched by the perversions of Chaos. The purity of spirit and motive of the Sororitas who had given their lives to defend it, and the dying psalms of the Cannoness that led them had kept the foul touch of the Warp at bay. The chaplain’s muttered litanies echoed softly throughout the empty temple, the probing tendrils of the accursed entity besieging it forcing at his mental defenses, seeking to break through and complete the sacrilege the Cyclops had begun. If this one beacon of sanctity could be preserved, could not the flow of Chaos be stemmed and turned back? Could not this world, its name now whispered for millennia in the hallowed halls of the fortress-monastery on Titan, be purified and saved? Not only was Gerior the guardian of his brothers’ purity, he was a champion of the soul of the very Imperium itself. The battle that lay before him, inexorably weaved into his fate by the machinations of a terror older than time itself, would be the hardest and most crucial of his existence – the fate of millions lied in the balance.

 

“My Lord Gerior,” spoke Epistolary Temeter Vayle, suddenly standing at his side, a hand on his shoulder-plate. “They have come.”

 

The Librarian was Gerior’s right hand in the ministrations of the Chapter’s souls, his guidance and strength of will assets in both the battles of the mind and spirit, as well as in battle. He was as fine a swordsman as any amongst the Chapter’s command echelons and could wield the flow of the warp as a weapon sharper than any blade. His piercing blue eyes appeared stark and unnatural against his deathly pale skin, the calm at the heart of the storm, waiting to unleash the full measure of its power.

 

“The holy brothers stand ready at your command,” continued Vayle.

 

“Good… we will need their strength. As you will need yours, old friend. The one who comes before us now has laid waste to galaxies before you or I, or even our Holy Emperor trod the stars” answered Gerior, the strain of his mental exertions stretching his voice to a rasp.

 

“Then we shall meet him together, the heresy of its being is no much for the strength of our devotion.”

 

“Let us face him then, with the full wrath of the Emperor behind us.”

 

The two warriors strode through the carved wooden doors of the Basilica. In a half circle on the steps of the last remaining bastion of faith on Armageddon, nine warriors of the Purifier Order of the Grey Knights stood with Nemesis weapons at the ready, wreathed in holy flame. The ground trembled. The sky, bright with the unnatural gleam of colors that were not colors, of light that was not light, split and roiled. Before the Grey Knights stood an innumerable horde of many-faced and many-hued daemons, Horrors of Tzeentch. To the naked senses, they seemed to be at once both there and elsewhere, cackling and crying, screaming and whispering. To the psychic eye of the holy brothers standing in defense of the sacred ground they trod, they were simply the dejections of an entity to mad and profane to appear in solid form itself. Amongst the masses rose the towering shape of a being that defied existence itself – a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, one of the Nine, a manifestion of Tzeentch’s will and power given corporeal form and an emissary of darkness. When it spoke, it was not with a voice that its words were carried, nor was it through sound that they reached the ears of the High Reclusiarch. They were a tremor in his soul, a blade that gutted the very fabric of his spirit.

 

“Foolish mortal… you dare defy us? We are change, we are the beginning and the end of time… we are the intricacies of life and death and will be here after you have departed, as we were here before your insignificant existence took root. This rock is but a taste of what lies in store for your kind… for the entirety of your pathetic Imperium and the expanse of mortality itself! Hark! Foolish mortal, you gaze upon the Doom of Eternity!”

 

The Lord of Change known in the annals of the Black Library as U’czcaac’khen, to the scholars of the Inquisition as Kzact’en the Defier, and to the brothers of the Grey Knights as the Doom of Eternity rose to its full height and let out screech that sundered reality. It raised its obscene scepter to the skies and from the baleful heavens descended a storm of terrible, malignant energy. Bolts of un-lightning whipped from the staff’s tip and lashed out at the Purifiers standing before the daemonic horde. The flames of their faith rose to meet the hell-wrought bolts and the two elements clashed in mid-air.

 

“Its you who are the fool, Kzact’en of the Nine!” growled Gerior. His voice, only moments before a grating whisper struggling against the forces that assailed him, was now brought forward with righteous anger and holy purpose, the High Reclusiarch unleashing the full might of his will. “You underestimate our resolve and forget to whom you speak! It is in the sanctified halls of our deepest and most secrete chapels and naves that we have written and uttered the true names of your foul warp-kin, and yours does not elude the list! Temeter, now!”

 

As the Reclusiarch finished speaking, Vayle, as stoic and resolute as any battle-brother of the 666^th Chapter ever to stand before the hellish emanations of the Warp, unclasped and brought forth his Grimoire of True Names. It opened with a snap that was felt in the bones of each and every warrior present, and its pages, seemingly infinite, turned and turned and turned, a blinding, holy light spilling forth and bursting from the seems of the sacred tome. The Librarian’s eyes and hands burst and glowed with the same light, arcs of blessed lightning, the very opposite to that spewed forth by the daemonic terror and anathema to its kind, smote scores of Horrors as they gabbled and crawled forwards.

 

“U’czaac’khen, Emissary of Tzeentch and Doom of Eternity! Your true name is known to us, and with it, so unravels your power!” cried Vayle. “It is you who has met his doom, and your death shall free this world of the curse you have lain upon it, and never again shall you tread this hallowed soil!”

As lightning and warp-flame filled the air, and the Purifiers leapt forwards to meet the advancing horde, High Reclusiarch Anatone Gerior raised forth his battle-mace, Sanctifier. Imbued with the divine might of his office, he strode forwards to meet his mortal foe.

 

“Meet your downfall, warp-spawn! For Titan! For Armageddon! For the Emperor!

 

***

 

Entry #1: High Reclusiarch Anatone Gerior

 

 

Entry #2: Epistolary Temeter Vayle

 

So that's it for this month! Hopefully you guys enjoy the narrative and the models, I definitely had some fun putting it all together. Already looking forward to next month's entries as well Cheers!

Edited December 22, 2020 by The Woodsman

[Reskin]

Amazing work!