Heresy era world eaters with red pauldrons?

[nurglethings]

Hello there,

Recently I was thinking of starting in the Horus Heresy with the world eaters. Normally everywhere you look you see them wearing white and blue, however now and then I encounter a piece of art with red instead of blue (see attached file).

 

I was wondering if an army like them would be ok with the lore or if it isn't. Also, if lore accurate, when did they start painting it that way? Some sources say it's just blood from the enemies, but that seems a bit over the top...

 

Is there anyone who can help me out?

[Valkyrion]

It's fine, honestly. The next Siege of Terra book has red World Eaters on the cover and you can't tell if they have white armour or not below the shoulders, and the two pictures you've linked are 100% legit bona fide completely and totally official images, so fill your boots. With blood. 

edit - just to say, if you want your World Eaters to have brass, or green, or yellow coloured trims and accents then you totally could do that too with very minimal justification required. The galaxy was a big place, companies/chapters/battalions/whatever all had their own schtick, so just make them World Eatery enough and the colours don't really matter. 

Edited July 11, 2022 by Valkyrion

[Pacific81]

I think to be honest once the butchers nails went in and Angron had taken full control of the Legion any dress code went out of the window, and certainly by the time they reached Terra there would be all sorts of modifications (I think they had already started to fall to Khorne hadn't they by that time? If so you could see some red starting to become more prevalent). 

And in all honesty, reading about how berserk they became, I think you could model them where they have forgotten to put on trousers in the morning and it would still be canon.. 

[nurglethings]

alright, thanks a lot

 

Now I just need to pick up a box for the heresy and I'm good to go

[Marshal Mittens]

4 hours ago, Pacific81 said:

I think to be honest once the butchers nails went in and Angron had taken full control of the Legion any dress code went out of the window, and certainly by the time they reached Terra there would be all sorts of modifications (I think they had already started to fall to Khorne hadn't they by that time? If so you could see some red starting to become more prevalent). 

And in all honesty, reading about how berserk they became, I think you could model them where they have forgotten to put on trousers in the morning and it would still be canon.. 

Even with the Butchers Nails, 50% of the World Eatters, more than any legion, had to be purged because they were too loyal at Istavan. 

[Arkhanist]

7 hours ago, Marshall Mittens said:

Even with the Butchers Nails, 50% of the World Eatters, more than any legion, had to be purged because they were too loyal at Istavan. 

Weeeell, they were purged because Angron didn't trust them to follow him into Heresy. Which arguably has more to do with his paranoia and lack of leadership skills than the loyalty of the legionnaires to the Emperor per se.

12 hours ago, nurglethings said:

Hello there,

Recently I was thinking of starting in the Horus Heresy with the world eaters. Normally everywhere you look you see them wearing white and blue, however now and then I encounter a piece of art with red instead of blue (see attached file)

I was wondering if an army like them would be ok with the lore or if it isn't. Also, if lore accurate, when did they start painting it that way? Some sources say it's just blood from the enemies, but that seems a bit over the top...

 

Canon wise, the World Eaters have to transition from white and blue to red all over, from pre-heresy to post-heresy. Red shoulders is kinda a mid-way point. The old fluff is that it was just dried blood and they didn't bother to clean their armour between battles. Which never made sense to me, given dry blood is kinda a rusty brown, not bezerker crimson. More modern fluff, as in the assault legionnaire description has it being them painting over the blue with red intentionally. Probably blood red because they liked how it looked when they were splattered with fresh gore. And it's an intentional rejection of their old colours and heraldy from when they were following the Emperor's orders.

I'm (slow) painting a Shadow Crusade WE force, so I'm painting the tac marines etc in white and blue, but I'll be giving the veterans red shoulders and the nailed on jaws symbol to show they've had the nails longer (i.e. aren't fresh recruits), and they're further along the path that leads to becoming Bezerkers. I'll even throw in a sneaky khorne symbol in places, to show the growing worship of him in the legion even before Angron's ascension (they worked closely with the Word Bearers, so were well aware of the nascent Chaos Gods).

A World Eaters force from later in the heresy, e.g. getting close to Terra would absolutely be fluffy to have red shoulders throughout, showing their acceleration towards Khorne and disregard for their old colours; you could use parts from chaos marines or the upcoming bezerker release to mix in with their armour, especially for veterans, and even go full red for say, rampagers. You can see the early signs of disregard for the importance of wearing armour in the rampager models, too.

Most people paint blue and white WE because they like it and it's different from the 40k WE force they may already have, and given the black book progession there's been a lot more time spent with the early-mid heresy events than its later stages. It might be a bit odd to do a great crusade mark II/III force with red shoulders, but even then the legions were huge and a particular company could paint them that way because of a charismatic praetor, to mark some particular event etc.

For a later-era force? Go nuts, it's absolutely lore appropriate!

Edited July 12, 2022 by Arkhanist

[quasistellar]

Red shoulders is definitely OK.

By the time they got to Terra they were barely a legion and mostly did their own thing -- Khârn just maintaining sanity for stretches long enough to hold them together to actually reach the surface of Terra.

After reading the books I really feel like Khârn is one of the most tragic characters (even more than Angron and maybe tied with Argel Tal) in the setting.

[Marshal Mittens]

I feel like they were one of the more effective traitor legions on terra?