Sons on the Run: A Scouring-era project

[Pacific81]

This is a blog thread for my new favourite hobby thing, which is Sons of Horus. Why 'The Scouring' as a setting? Many years ago, a poster on the sadly departed Great Crusade forum (Wolf Lord Mjolnir, also known as Dave) and I were chatting about it as a hobby project. We agreed it would be quite a cool narrative for the Traitors especially; Horus was dead and the survivors were suddenly left without their cause and progenitor, the war was lost. What made them fight on, rather than just lay down their guns or make one last charge (as I am sure some did)? We discussed that possibly it was a sense of brotherhood - those same tunnel-rat gangers who had fought as kids on Cthonia, had followed their commander (much as with history's wars and those of today, most of the combatants would have simply done this without understanding the larger geo-political picture) fighting through seven years of civil war against their former kin. Even though they were now very much the 'bad guys', and had done very bad things, that common human element of a bond with the men who had fought alongside them for so long, through all of that bloodshed, was all that was left. 

Finally and most importantly, it would hopefully be a fun modelling project. The warriors as they appeared after Horus's death would be very much different from those who had fought in the Great Crusade or even those who had been there when the Traitor's die was cast on the surface of Istvaan. So, its the opportunity to kitbash, convert and try something a bit different. 

 

For reference material, there isn't that much out there. We have Chaos Marines, but they have existed in the Eye of Terror for millennia, their armour slowly warping, and the survivors (certainly of the Sons of Horus Legion, who were less 'warp-tainted' than many of the others) would not have that appearance yet. So instead I have gone from descriptions in Aaron Dembski-Bowden's quite excellent Horus books, as well as the Night Lords Trilogy, which did a wonderful job of imagining the marines as warriors with all too human frailties, and not simply snarling two-dimensional villains. Also, some of the wonderful artwork in the Heresy Collected Visions books; The Sons of Horus are very much illustrated as almost feral-looking, brutal murderers. With lots of spikes and determination, even if the colour schemes have been ratified since. So, a bit of that artwork below for starters, and then the next posts will be first attempts at the minis themselves.