Lamentorium's 35k Project Log

[Lamentorium]

Hello all. For those who don't know what 35k is (most likely everyone), I started a fan project earlier this year to explore the events of the Nova Terra Interregnum. Originally I wanted to play games in the Age of Apostasy (so I would paint my sisters), but I decided to do the Nova Terra Interregnum first as it sets up those events (meaning I will paint everything but my sisters).

 

The Nova Terra Interregnum happened during M35 and Age of Apostasy M36 (or the years following 35,000). During the Nova Terra Interregnum, the Imperium is split in two as the Segmentum Pacificus effectively secedes from the Imperium. Not long after, the Mechanicus undergoes a schism around the prophesies of the Forge World of Moirae, and then later there are a series of uprisings surrounding the management of the Ministorum (Alexian Uprisings). It is a chaotic century for the Imperium which climaxes in the Cataclysm of Souls, in which the Ministorum tries to organise the Imperium into a theocracy, there is a large civil war, and then afterwards things draw to a close. That's all canon and we defer to the canon (even when it is contradictory), but are effectively filling in the gaps and fleshing it out.

 

The project has quite a lot to it. I'm quite strict on many things such as not using copyrighted materials, sharing copyrighted materials (i.e. Games Workshop books), or using others' work without credit. That's required me to learn how to use Procreate and make a lot of my own art. We now have a bit of a community on Discord and r/35k on Reddit where others are contributing to this all, which brings me much joy.

 

Current Project: The Void Watchers.

 

I have planned a campaign to run November-December 2025 for anyone to take part in set on the planet of Meigor VI, which you can read here. You don't need to use our modified 5th edition ruleset. I want people to play what they enjoy. Part of this has been organising my first event in Dundee on December 13th-14th. To take part, I've had to paint an army and that is the Void Watchers.

 

The Void Watchers are an example of one of the Chapters I put in essentially to kill off in the setting. A handful survive in the Deathwatch, as I had a lot of requests on Reddit of people enjoying the scheme. An Iron Hands successor, their chapter symbol includes the Eye of Moirae - showing their allegiance to Nova Terra stemming from their support for the Moirae Heresies.

 

I don't have a lot left to paint; a scout squad, a devastator squad, a techmarine, an apothecary, and a chaplain. I'll show what I have painted already:

 

This is my latest completion: The tranports. I of course notice bits I missed now I have taken pictures.

 

One of the two Marine squads I painted

The command squad. The banner went much better than I thought it would.

The dreadnought. 

Edited October 22 by Lamentorium

[phandaal]

These are very cool! No surprise people like the color scheme. Very well done on the clean split between each side.

 

Edit - checked out that Reddit page as well. Neat to see all the other pictures and color schemes there. Those Terminators are great as well!

Edited October 22 by phandaal

[Endtransmission]

I can definitely see why people would want to try and continue the use of that colour scheme, it's really nice! (I'm a sucker for teal/black!). I'm definitely going to have a read through the campaign setting book later too

[MoriyaSchism]

That banner is beautiful. I really like your project idea. It's always great to see people explore the past of the setting and I love anything related to the Moirae Schism or some of the less focused on Imperial civil wars.

[Firedrake Cordova]

I like the colour scheme - you don't often see teal  (my favourite set of dice is Chessex Translucent Teal, so I'm obviously biased )

Edited October 22 by Firedrake Cordova

[W.A.Rorie]

Awesome job. Nice color options and love that a banner

[SvenIronhand]

3 hours ago, Lamentorium said:

I have planned a campaign to run November-December 2025 for anyone to take part in set on the planet of Meigor VI, which you can read here. You don't need to use our modified 5th edition ruleset. I want people to play what they enjoy. Part of this has been organising my first event in Dundee on December 13th-14th. To take part, I've had to paint an army and that is the Void Watchers.

 

Is there a place where I can download the campaign book?

[Endtransmission]

8 minutes ago, SvenIronhand said:

Is there a place where I can download the campaign book?

Go to the link in the post to get to the file. In the top bar you will see a little icon that looks like headphones. Next to that are three dots (...). click those and there's a Download option.

I have no idea why Adobe make things so complicated at times!

[Lamentorium]

Thanks all! I wanted them to be specific to 35k but I have no issues with people altering the scheme to make a successor that mysteriously looks like them.

 

(edit: I actually came up with the scheme using this website's army painter. I went through every colour until I saw one I liked that didn't seem so common with marines. Really worked as a strategy. Thanks to the people who developed that! It's very popular amongst the Discord.)

 

Book I's latest draft is here. I have updated a little bit of the lore in the latest draft to tie it into other things I wrote (Void Warfare and Meigor VI namely) and fill a few pot holes, as well as a rules update that I aim to put out after the community campaign is over (minor tweaks). I am on the very slow part of rewriting the army lists, which takes a very long time to go through.

Edited October 22 by Lamentorium

[Lamentorium]

Quite a lot of updates as it is a really big day on two different fronts.

Community Campaign Project

On the first front, I launched the campaign today which runs over November and December 2025 for people to get involved in the 35k setting: The Attack on Meigor VI (the hyperlink is to the campaign booklet). I had written this a couple of months ago, with Zarrek (a Discord member) doing the editing. She did a fantastic job in my view. People here are welcome to take part as I really enjoy just seeing people engage with the project.

 

The post on Reddit answers the basic questions of how to take part. Long story short,  report your games and campaigns where you battle on Meigor VI, let me know who wins through any means, post pictures of your games, and then I will work out who won the most campaigns at the end of the year. 

 

35k Rules Project

Beyond this, on the Discord I've begun work on the Space Marine supplements and also updated the core rules with the intention of releasing a finalised Book I in the new year. For those unaware, we use 4th edition Codices for their customisability and slightly modified 5th edition rules for their inclusion of things like running.

 

I've been trying to fit the core rules changes on 2 sides of A4, the actual recommended rules on 1 sheet. I differ from others in my view of fan rules supplements as I prefer to minimise referencing for players. I am trying to keep it light touch. I actually enjoyed reading through 20-year-old threads about what people liked and didn't like about 4th and 5th ed and focused on the main gripes. A couple of things were added - Our Weapons are Useless (you can choose to flee from a melee you can't win) and alterations to missions and scoring were included from the various supplements and campaign books I've done. These campaign books could be seen as a distraction, but as I'm one dude actually working through a few things in the meantime gave me a lot of space to work out what did and did not need changing.

 

For Space Marines, I wanted to add a number of units that weren't there in 4th edition (Ironclad Dreadnoughts, Seige Dreadnoughts, Breachers, Thunderfire Cannons - which I used the Rapier for, and the Land Raider Reedeemer). I also wanted to add some Heresy units, some new traits and drawbacks, and give references for ATSKNF and True Grit (both were in the 4th ed rulebook but aren't in the 5th ed one). The Space Marine supplement was similarly designed to fit on one sheet of paper and I got it on two, with an additional sheet of optional new units. I'm quite happy with the rules but, as always, the issue is just points. Again, one guy, limited playtesting capacity. Getting this done and the Imperial Guard one done means I can finalise those units in Book I and it's just the Votann, missions, and campaign system left.

 

Painting

The best comes last. I started this project in August and wanted to paint a 1250 point army in time for the campaign and I made it perfectly in time. I need to paint a boat load of terrain for my event in Dundee in December, so that was a major motivator for getting these done in time. I still want to add Breachers (since that's the Void Watchers' thing), the trinity of the Apothecary-Librarian-Chaplain, some Scouts and one single Terminator with the weapon he has in my event list.

 

Today I finished the Devastators, who were my last unit remaining. I really enjoyed painting these. The servo skull is 100% falling off at some point as I bent it slightly while painting it.

 

 

I wanted to do a display board and while shopping in B&M found this little tray, which I thought I could print stuff for to make it look like a ship they are waiting deployment from (since they are void-based). It worked out well, but the plastic was really not great to cut. It got quite gunky while hot, so made quite a mess. The prints I did fitted nearly perfectly into the ship without me having to cut much.

 

 

I wanted to take a couple of pictures of the army, perhaps they can go in Book I. It's been nice to paint at a slower pace. The last couple of years I've been doing big army projects, painting 60 Kriegsmen/Traitor Militia or 100 Iron Warriors at a time. One thing I like about 3rd-5th is the armies are smaller on the whole. I found Heresy pretty draining and, while I loved my Vraks project, it also was pretty draining.

 

 

Finally, I got some games in over the last week with my guys. I think I posted the limit, but can add another post if people want to see them. One game was playing against my old Lamenters army (hence my username), which was fun.

[Terminatorinhell]

Huge fan of the color scheme, that blue is one of my favorite shades.