+ inload: Return to Terra +


+++

The officer looked down. 'Iron without, certainly'. He glanced around, disinterestedly. 'Looks mainly like he was meat and blood, within.' Another dead Iron Warrior couldn't be mourned. Not here. Not now. Deep underground, the Officia Monstrosa had not seen daylight for a long time – not that there was any to be found on the scorched surface.

By the accounts of the fragmented reports – by necessity, gathered from psychic spore by their Byblios – the surface was apocalyptic. The seas had boiled. The land, always hard, had become rad-scorched and haunted by the strange beings of the between-veil. It was constantly tormented by tectonic shifts, as though the bones of Old Earth were trying to shake off its monstrous children. Billions, if not trillions, were dead, displaced, or had been driven insane.

'Within. Without. All over the sarding place.' the other Iron Warrior's tone was flat, measured. 'Another dead eidikos. We're dangerously close to statistical failure, Cjarn.' The officer whipped around, bristling, his fingers playing on his axes.

'You will remember your place, legionary,' he barked. 'I couldn't give two steaming shits whether I confront the Old Stone with the Warmaster's Legions gathered at my back, or crawl at him single-handed and bare-arsed. As long as one of us lives to place one solid cut on that stone-faced, black-hearted monster, we continue. Dorn is going to rot in a cage.'

The two stood facing for a moment, slits in their blank faceplates giving each other nothing. After a moment, the legionary bowed his head.

'We'll need Charisto's gun.' He said, without rancour. Cjarn nodded, and the legionary bent to salvage what he could from the dead Iron Warrior.

They no longer observed the rituals of obscuring the honour marks. Honour was becoming a foreign concept in this war.

+++

+ Markings of the Officia Monstrosa +

+ Metallic schemes can suffer from looking a bit dull, or even unfinished; and so adding some eye-catching details is important. Compare the two figures below:



+ Both are finished to the same degree, but the first includes yellow markings around the faceplate along with a bright blue glare from the cycloptic eye lens. As a result, he's a more satisfying figure to look at. The other is very anonymous – useful if that's the effect you're going for, but certainly not great for a standalone or centrepiece figure. +

+ In terms of an army, sometimes it's good to have anonymous background models – think of them as the frame which serves to bring the viewer's eye to the models you're most proud of. That said, they should still receive attention – the armour of the second figure above still includes a level of tonal variation and detail; simply not as much as the other. +

Details like the yellow band on the pauldron and hazard markings
on the boltgun can break up and enliven muted schemes.

+ State of play +

+ I've not painted anything new for my Officia Monstrosa project recently, but equally I haven't shown you the squads in a completely finished state, with transfers, squad markings and so forth. I broke the Iron Warriors out for a photoshoot, so I'll be posting those up soon, along with some proper shots of the Leviathan and accompanying bits. Golg, while not strictly part of the project, is also all ready to be shown!. +

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