Iron Gauntlet 2024: The Sulphurborn

[Lord Abaia]

One of my favorite threads I've ever read on the B&C, and one of the main reasons I got into the hobby was @Kierdale's thread for his psychopomps. I've similarly enjoyed @WarriorFish's Sundered and what I've seen of @Tallarn Commander's Warpborn. I'm also looking forward to reading about @Slave to Darkness's Khornate Word Bearers warband. I like reading about you guys' custom warbands and I'm going to channel that energy into my own hobby blog.

 

The warband is still a WIP. I have yet to settle on a name that I really enjoy. But I do have some solid themes I want to incorporate and a paint scheme. I mocked up this digital test model with the app impcat. I think I am partial to the one with the black boots.

Spoiler

I've also done up a test shoulder pad to see how the colors actually look in real life. I used the new Mantis Warrior Green contrast paint and then a conventional blue black for the trim. I'm going to have to come up with a method for touching up the green, otherwise I'm going to take some years off my life stressing out about painting so much black trim next to my beautiful, bright acid green.

Spoiler

 

 

I'm choosing a leviathan's cross for the symbol for a couple of reasons.

1. It invokes imagery of the occult
2. It is connected to alchemy where it is a symbol for brimstone (sulfur)
3. It looks cool
4. Its simple enough to freehand that I don't need to mess around with transfers.

Edited March 30 by Lord Abaia

[gaurdian31]

Looking good! I agree that the one with black boots looks better. Slightly more sinister I would say.

[Tallarn Commander]

Hi Magpie Knight,

I rather like your bright green/black/orange color scheme! And your warband's symbol is superb (I'm still pondering what sort of symbol to use on my nascent Warpborn warband).

With regard to touching up the Green, there are many ways you might go about it. One possible approach: Moot Green (with or without a Waywacher Green Glaze)

Although your test shoulder pad looked great as is and doesn't necessarily need any touching up.


I look forward to following your warband's progress!

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I think your shoulder pads look great, and realise you don't want to bother with transfers, I do think it might be a good idea to find somewhere where you can get a decal made of your symbol, both the save your sanity and to ensure it is a bit neater (mostly in the consistency of the black), as that's the one place I think the pads could see some improvement.

As for the boots, I prefer the bright green, but they both look nice - certainly, if you were to go with a darker base, I would go with the lighter colour, whereas on a lighter colour base the dark colour helps make the model feel grounded.

 

Look forward to seeing your army progress - your test model looks awesome.  Any idea of what rules you will be using for them?

Edited January 1, 2023 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Lord Abaia]

Thanks for the input!

 

@Dr_Ruminahui, I see what you mean about the transfer. I had done this one with a super fine tip pen and I had to use more of a stippling motion than a typical dragging motion. It may be something I can try to tidy up with some dark blue highlights. That might make it match better than it currently does being true black.

 

I've got some astrogranite type basing material (the real chunky one) that I think I will use for the basing. I've got a test model spray primed. I think I will paint it with green boots first, get it based, and see how it looks. If I think it would look better with darker boots, it shouldn't be hard to paint black over the green.

 

I haven't played an actual game of 40k in a long time, and this is primarily going to be a painting project. But if I were to play, I would run these guys as Word Bearers. My lore involves a lot of daemonkin and I like the ritual magic theme to their secondary.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I may have been a bit unfair about your symbol - it does look good, and the type of zoom in you did to show us the detail also shows off every inconsitency.  From a more realistic distance and focus they may be fine - but really, you are the only one in the position to make that evaluation.  Still, if you are going batty with all that fine painting over a squad of shoulder pads, decals are an option.

 

And I don't find the black a bad match, just that the contrast (which is normally a good thing) shows up every little zig and zag and difference in coverage.  Haven't really used a pen myself, so can't say how that will change things - but I look forward to hearing back from you.

 

Much could be said of my own unit symbol, and I haven't gone to decals - so I felt I needed to add the above caveat so not to come across as a hypocrite. 

Edited January 2, 2023 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Lord Abaia]

After 11 months, it's time to blow the dust off this old thread and start posting pics (now that I've finally started painting ).

 

I started painting this model back in 9th edition and finally put the finishing touches on it in 10th. I learned a couple of things in the process. 1) Contrast paint is pretty cool and Mantis Warrior Green is my favorite paint that I've ever used. 2) There really isn't a great way to touch up the green when my offending mistakes are going to be dark/black. So going forward I am going to paint, layer and highlight the trim and metal bits first, touch up with white and then apply my green contrast.

 

I changed the loincloth color from orange to purple. The orange looked good enough until I did the leather. And then they were too close in hue. I weighed my options and decided I liked the look of the leather better and would re-paint the cloth. I'm happy with the purple. Hopefully the future ones will look a little bit smoother since I won't be layering contrast over white over contrast again. Also these guys love Nurgle, any mistakes are just them looking the part.

 

I also deviated from my original scheme a bit with the helmet. I had originally decided to go for black trim on a black helmet, but with how bright the rest of the model is it really ended up with the face getting lost and the loincloth (bright orange originally) becoming the focal point. "My eyes are up here guys." So I changed the helmet trim to a dark gun metal. Its a subtle change, but I think it helped a lot.

 

With regards to the warband symbol. I leaned in to sloppy. I want it to look hand painted and almost graffiti like. I want to incorporate some punk imagery into my theme as well. Think crust-punk alchemists. Now the inconsistency in my painting will be a feature and not a bug

[Lord Abaia]

I just picked up a bottle of Vallejo Ice Yellow and am going to try and add some battle damage to my guy. I've also finished assembling the rest of my Shadowspear CSM. I'm not quite sure what to do with 2 possessed, but since I don't really play, I guess unit size doesn't matter much. My plan is to work my way through the legionaries before moving on the the more exciting models so I get my trim painting skills built back up. I'm really looking forward to the venomcrawler and kind of intimidated by the master of possession. He's probably my favorite model in the range and I want to do him justice, so I'm saving him for last and painting him in sub-assemblies.

 

I've also got some lore to drop about the warband:
 

Quote

 

The Blades Eternal were a loyalist chapter of I legion stock whose homeworld was touched by the warpstorms Dionys in M37. They were judged to be corrupted by Saint Bassilius and sentenced to a penitence crusade into the Eye as part of the unmitigated disaster known as the Abyssal Crusade. Upon entering the Eye, the crusade fleet was ambushed by massed traitor vessels and scattered. The Blades Eternal made it their mission to cleanse the deamon world of Nessus IV and establish a base of operations there.

 

On Nessus IV they met little resistance from the mutants and rabble who called the sulfurous swamp of a planet home. There were however plagued by a traitor warband who wore shifting multicolored armor and bore the icon of a feathered serpent. Through a combination of subterfuge and sorcery they ambushed the Blades Eternal, always seeming to know when and where to strike. Worst of all, the silent warriors made no effort to hide their intentions, to harvest the geneseed of their fallen brothers. Rather than permit their sacred geneseed to fall into the hands of these skulking thieves, the Blades Eternal opted to destroy their own geneseed.

 

In a ceremony led by Chief Apothecary Abaia, the future of the chapter was dissolved in a sulfurous stink. A vat was filled with the caustic acid that covered much of Nessus IV's surface and the entire stock of geneseed was fed to it. Then the Chief Apothecary removed the progenoids of all surviving brothers and fed them to the acid as well. The older battle brothers were better able to recover from the excission of their progenoids, but the younger brothers struggled.

 

Unbeknownst to them sacrifices such as this have great power in eyespace. Intentionally or not, sacrificing all hope in the name of defiance forged a powerful bond with the Father of Despair. The vat of sulfuric acid spewed forth neverborn from the garden of Nurgle who entered the ailing novitiates and lent them strength. A symbiotic link was formed and the younger brothers of the chapter mutated into daemonic monsters. Virtually all of the scouts and assault marines and half of the devastator marines were transformed into hulking warriors who would come to be known as the Cacogens.

 

When the ceremony was complete, they returned to the surface en masse for a valiant last stand against the sorcerous guerillas who had pushed them to this point, but they found no trace of the silent warriors. The Blades Eternal died in the caustic swamps of Nessus that day and the Alkaline Apostates were born. Transmuted into a weapon of inevitable entropy, they now take the fight back to the Imperium that sentenced them to death, not out of malice, but out of mercy. They seek to relieve humanity of the burden of hope and to give them the freedom that comes when you accept the inevitable. "No future! No hope!"

 

 

I'm taking a lot of inspiration for names and themes from The Book of The New Sun. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it for any 40k fans. There are tons of similar themes and it seems clear to me that some of the authors of the setting were fans. There are a lot of Latin words that pop up as names in 40k. For instance it's the only other place I've ever read about lictors, carnifexes, autarchs, or eidolons. There's also a horrific monster who psychically controls vast armies of cultists named Erebus.

 

The army will have a lot of possessed and daemonkin. They are referred to as Cacogens, which means something similar to carcinogen and is very close to the word calcogen, which is a term for the elements in the same period as sulfur on the periodic table. So it's a little chemistry/alchemy reference to go along with the warband symbol. The transformation of the younger warriors into Cacogens explains the absence of scouts in a way that I find satisfying. Scouts -> Possessed, Assault Marines -> Warp Talons, Devastators -> Obliterators (although some were stable enough to maintain a mortal form and turn into Havocs). I will include some daemon engines too. This army will look much more like a Word Bearers army than a Death Guard army.

 

Their warcry is "No future! No hope!" which is a song/album from a hardcore punk band called Defiance which will tie into my secondary theme. Just like how the Space Wolves are viking werewolves and the Blood Angels are Catholic renaissance vampires, my guys are punk alchemists. The Alkaline Apostates is what I'm tentatively going with, it's a little clumsy, but it's growing on me.

[Lord Abaia]

I finally got some time to test out some weathering on my test marine.

Spoiler

 

I'm happy enough with it as a proof of concept. I'm sure my technique will improve with experience, but I feel the color choices are pretty solid. I may have over done it some with the left shoulder pad and it almost looks like a glare over the warband symbol. Oops.

 

I also went back and re-highlighted the helmet and attempted a glass effect on the eye lenses to try and get it to grab the eye more.

 

Last I messed around with applying a transfer. It was a kill tally from an ork bomber transfer sheet that I applied to the left thigh armor. I used micro set and micro sol as directed, but it didn't kill the shine as much as I was hoping. I will probably pick up a matte varnish sometime soon. Eventually I will be using some of the script and runes from the Word Bearers transfer sheet to decorate characters and daemon engines, so I'd like to get thise looking better.

[gaurdian31]

He came out looking really good! The new lighting makes that green pop!

[Lord Abaia]

I, Lord Abaia, of the Sulphurborn take up your Challenges. I vow, before my brothers and sisters of the B&C to complete Challenge the First and submit it to the Liber before the deadline. I vow to support my fellow challengers to the best of my ability. May the Dark Gods curse me if I fail.

 

I am very excited to see that the Iron Gauntlet has returned! This type of thing is right up my alley. I've been very busy and under a lot of stress but have been trying to set aside more time for hobbying. I find a nice painting session to be good for my mental health, but the hard part is making time and then forcing myself to sit down and get started. One helpful thing is that I have begun visiting my LGS and meeting some of the other 40k players. There are a couple of players there with their own DIY marine chapters with detailed philosophies and lore. I think it will be a good environment for the type of narrative play I enjoy the most.

 

Anyway, I will be using this thread to document my progress in the challenge, beginning with an article (in the style of the old Index Astartes) describing the origins and history of my warband. Also I finally decided on a name for my warband that I am happy with: The Sulphurborn.

Edited March 30 by Lord Abaia

[Tallarn Commander]

Huzzah! I look forward to watching the progress of your Alkaline Apostates/Sulphurborn.

[Lord Abaia]

 

Index Astartes

The Sulphurborn Heretic Astartes Warband

 

 

Origins

The Blades Eternal were a loyalist chapter of I legion stock whose home world was touched by the warpstorms Dionys in M37. They were judged to be corrupted by Saint Bassilius and sentenced to a penitence crusade into the Eye as part of the unmitigated disaster known as the Abyssal Crusade. Upon entering the Eye, the crusade fleet was ambushed by massed traitor vessels and scattered. The Blades Eternal made it their mission to cleanse the deamon world of Nessus IV and establish a base of operations there.

On Nessus IV they met little resistance from the mutants and rabble who called the sulfurous swamp of a planet home. They were however plagued by a traitor warband who wore shifting multicolored armor and bore the icon of a feathered serpent. Through a combination of subterfuge and sorcery they ambushed the Blades Eternal, always seeming to know when and where to strike. Worst of all, the silent warriors made no effort to hide their intentions, to harvest the uncorrupted gene-seed of the fallen Blades. Rather than permit their sacred gene-seed to fall into the hands of these skulking thieves, the Blades Eternal opted to destroy it on their own terms.

In a ceremony led by Chief Apothecary Abaia, the future of the chapter was dissolved in a sulfurous stink. A vat was filled with the caustic acid that covered much of Nessus IV's surface and the entire stock of gene-seed was fed to it. Then the Chief Apothecary removed the progenoids of all surviving brothers and fed them to the acid as well. The older battle brothers were better able to recover from the excision of their progenoids, but the younger brothers struggled.

Unbeknownst to them sacrifices such as this have great power in eye-space. Intentionally or not, sacrificing all hope in the name of defiance forged a powerful bond with the Father of Despair. The vat of sulfuric acid spewed forth neverborn from the Garden of Nurgle who entered the ailing novitiates and lent them strength. A symbiotic link was formed and the younger brothers of the chapter mutated into daemonic monsters. Virtually all of the scout devastator and assault marines were transformed into hulking warriors who would come to be known as the Cacogens. When the ceremony was complete, they returned to the surface en masse for a valiant last stand against the sorcerous guerillas who had pushed them to this point, but they found no trace of the silent warriors. The Blades Eternal died in the caustic swamps of Nessus that day and the Sulphurborn rose in their place.

 

Home World

Nessus IV, the adopted home world of the Sulphurborn is an impossibly ancient world located within the Eye of Terror. The layers of the planetary crust are made up of stratified layers of ruins. Like the rings of a tree, these layers correspond to the empires of the past, each having waxed to great heights and subsequently fallen to decay. Rather than mining for ores or natural resources, the inhabitants of this world scratch out a meager existence by mining the sediment of the past and repurposing the recovered glass, steel, and stone.

 

The light from the system’s star has grown dim and ice has crept up from the planetary poles and has rendered only the equatorial regions habitable. Most settlements are huddled around the stinking sulfur springs, where the warmth bleeding out from the dying planet allows for some modicum of comfort. These sulfur springs are also a hazard as many of them are no better than boiling pools of caustic acid.

 

Combat Doctrine

Due to their high number of daemonkin, the Sulphurborn make extensive use of coordinated attacks where Cacogen shock troops storm the enemy lines under the cover of blistering heavy support from the warbands daemon engines and the Unburdened. In place of conventional flame weapons, the Sulfurborn opt to spray their enemies with gouts of boiling acid taken from the surface of Nessus IV.

 

Organization

Mirroring the different wings of their past as Dark Angels, the Sulphurborn are divided into different orders. At the top of the hierarchy stand the Cacogens, the scouts, devastators and assault marines who were bolstered by daemons became the Cacogens, fiercely loyal to Lord Abaia. They make up the possesses, warptalons and obliterators of the warband and are often found on the front lines, storming trenches or warp-striking in for near-suicidal missions of close-range support.

 

Next in the hierarchy, the Unburdened are made up of the veterans of the Blades Eternal who were strong enough to endure the sacrifice of their progenoids without neverborn assistance. Donning heavy armor and carrying the best weapons from the armory, they make up the terminators, chosen and havocs. The Unburdened rally around Mazgoth the Soothing, the former 7th company captain who was granted the boon of possession by the Conciliator as he leads them on surgical strikes against critical targets.

 

The third order of the warband have no formal title. Like the Unburdened they are made up of marines ancient enough to endure the removal of their glands unassisted. However rather than coming from the original Blades Eternal, they come from disparate chapters and legions. They make up the legionaries who hold the back lines and provide security for the daemon engines. These warriors are armed with whatever weapons they brought with them when they joined. The champions who lead these legionary squads are occasionally inducted into the ranks of the Unburdened after they have proven themselves through personal sacrifice and service.

 

The warband maintains very few ground vehicles, instead relying on daemon engines provided by the warsmiths. These bound daemons are revered as iron Cacogens, and although they are chained like beasts when not in use, the leaders of the Sulfurborn often will consult with these sage emissaries of the warp for wisdom.

 

Beliefs

Transmuted into a weapon of inevitable entropy, the Sulphurborn take the fight back to the Imperium that sentenced them to death, not out of malice, but out of mercy. They seek to relieve humanity of the burden of hope and to give them the freedom that comes when you accept the inevitable. A favored method is to pillage the reliquary of a defeated enemy and bring their sacred relics back to the great iron cauldron on Nessus to dissolve them among the remnants of their own past. Each destroyed relic is a shackle cast off. These pilgrimages are looked upon kindly by the Father of Entropy who bestows great gifts on his children for the services they are providing to the galaxy.

 

Gene-Seed

The Sulphurborn ritualistically remove their progenoid glands as a rite of induction to the warband. This relieves the marine of the burden of worrying about the future of the chapter. They have accepted their fleeting existence in the entropic universe and draw confidence and strength from this acceptance. As a direct consequence, the Sulphurborn are unable to recruit aspirants in the conventional way. All new members of the Sulphurborn are converts from other chapters or warbands who have unburdened themselves of past ties. When a convert joins the Sulphurborn their progenoids are ritualistically excised from their chest and neck by Lord Abaia the Concilliator and dissolved in an enormous iron cauldron containing a highly acidic slurry of sulfuric acid, the dissolved remnants of the Blades Eternal’s gene-seed stores and daemonic essences. The removal of the progenoids is physically taxing for the recruit, and if the marine has not had centuries to absorb the excreted progenoid hormones, they will enter a fatal state of shock as their body rejects itself. Daemonic essences from the Garden of Nurgle are channeled through the cauldron and into the open wounds in the aspirants’ neck and chest helping to stabilize the transition. This symbiotic possession often results in the aspirants swelling and mutating into monstrous Cacogens.

 

Battle-Cry

“No Future, No Hope!”

 

Edited March 27 by Lord Abaia

[Tallarn Commander]

Wonderful Lore! It might be fun to model a Chaos Marinewho survived the loss of their progenoid but was somehow horribly scarred, physically and/or mentally, by the procedure.

[Rusted Boltgun]

As above, really like your warband - their colours, emblem and lore.

I'd be keen to learn more about their loss of hope and how those not infused with Nurgle turned to Chaos.

I really like the use of the cauldron - the Astartes using a Chaos device / totem without perhaps realising it's significance!

[twopounder]

That's a powerful color combination. Its definitely going to bring a lot of attention to the table. Curious, does the home planet have any origin in the Nessus security scanning tool? Thought maybe you're being tongue-in-cheek with it. Have you decided on a helmet color for champions? Maybe a flaming orange/red color for a lot of contrast? Could also 

[sitnam]

I’m a big fan of renegade warbands, and this is just fantastic. It is a great play on the themes of Nurgle without feeling like a Death Guard knockoff.  And that color scheme is POPPING

[NovemberIX]

Amazing lore detail and I love the tragedy of their fall. The brightness of your color scheme look great, and should pop on the table. So a question, that warband that had been hunting the Blades Eternal, how do the Sulphurborn feel about them now some time after they've changed their alignment? Relatedly, I'm reading it as tzeentch shenaniganed around and lead some marines to Nurgle, is that intentional or am I reading too much into it?