+ inload: Lamb's World +

+ Poor bloody infantry +

+ Human lives and human tears; the stuff of which Imperium is made. +

+ As with all of the wars during the dark days of Nova Terra Interregnum, it was the ordinary men and women of the Imperial Guard – both Old Imperial and Nova Terran – who made up the bulk of the combatants. +

+ Illustrated below are a selection of warriors from a single unremarkable planet – Lamb's World – as a representative sample of the fates of the majority of the Imperium's sons and daughters who found themselves in the Imperial Guard during this turbulent period. +

+ It is perhaps notable that a single planet had birthed warriors that fought on opposing sides. Such is the tragedy of civil war. +



+++

+ Shale Campaign +

+ Shale is a small desert world in the Bothusion system of Antona Australis. It is covered in uneven dusty terrain and vast seas of finely ground rock. Small scale mining colonies, designed to harvest the modest mineral resources, are dotted across the solid areas of Shale's surface. +

+ Its residents broadly remained loyal to the Old Imperium during the Nova Terra Interregnum. It was attacked on three occasions by Eldar of the Ythranmir Craftworld, the xenos advance gradually being brought to a bloody stalemate on the Northern Plains by the Planetary Defence Force. A detachment of Lamb's World soldiers were diverted to support. As rear-line support, they suffered light losses during the war, and the survivors remained for long years afterwards to stabilise the lawless region. +




+ Io Merioneth. Shale Northern Theatre. KIA - confirmed: blood loss. +



+ Cole Apseth. Shale Northern Theatre. KIA - confirmed: Partial disintegration. +


+ Enzo Acton. Shale Northern Theatre. KIA - unconfirmed (body unrecoverable) +

+++

+ Karminos Void Clearances +


+ The Karminos Void clearances were an onerous but necessary duty to ensure the passage of evacuees from the world of Saltkind – a lone bastion of Nova Terran sympathisers – to safer regions closer to the Segmentum Pacificus. +

+ The clearances took the form of a series of running engagements between greenskin pirates of the Moonbreakers and the Imperial Navy, with Imperial soldiery deployed to clear and secure the numerous dwarf planets of the region. Lamb's World troopers adapting to the microgravity difficult, and suffered catastrophic losses. +


+ Prentice Iones. Karminos Void. Executed for cowardice. Justification: obeying the orders of an officer found wanting. +

+++

+ Orar's Star +

+ The prosperous and heavily-polluted worlds orbitting Orar's Star descended into a microcosm of the civil war raging across the Imperium; and Lamb's World auxiliaries found themselves fighting on both sides of the war. Beginning the war under the command of the infamous Marshal Fenkmann, his defection saw the Eighteenth Lamb's World Rifles ('Dricc's Dusties') overrun by the Fourth Lamb's World Armoured. The defeated soldiers were drafted back into Old Terran lines for the Siege of Bree, serving as a penal battalion. +




+ Japeth Ffiniog. Orar's Star Campaign. KIA - confirmed: blood loss and exposure +



+ Ascer Caper. Orar's Star Campaign. KIA - confirmed: disarticulation +

+++

+ Trimunda +

+ The Queen of O was the human face of an insidious xeno threat that emerged on Trimunda Secundus, and led much of its population in a counter-uprising against the Nova Terran occupiers. Its forces were initially supported by the Old Imperium, though the findings of Inquisitrix Barbari Kills led to the Old Imperium instead enacting saturation bombing on their former allies' fastnesses, at the hands of the Sons of Spectra. +

+ The Lamb's World II were deployed in the aftermath, spending two decades picking through the sodden ruins to end the worm-ridden threat of the Queen once and for all. +


Rhuddion Caul. Trimunda Plains. KIA – confirmed: drowning.  +


Ogof Moel. Trimunda Plans. KIA - confirmed: gunshot. +

+++

+ Intercession of Vega Rim +

+ During the early years of the Nova Terra Interregnum, the soldiers of 'Riker's Bloody One Hundredth' (confusingly, officially the 46th Lamb's World Cavalry Regiment, under Caef-Maior Vedder) were diverted to the distant Vega Rim to stymie an advancing K'nib assault on the worlds of the Rim. +

+ The bulk of the fighting occurred over the critical salt flats of Varrasland, with an ever-shifting front and sporadic vicious battles. During the later years of the war, many of the worlds declared independence from the Imperium, and the Bloody One Hundredth – still in garrison – were wiped out by punitive strikes enacted by the vengeful Gatebreakers Chapter Astartes. +


+ Mordecai Frin and Otio Cymer. Intercession on Vega Rim. KIA – confirmed: bombardment strike. +


+++

3 comments:

Riot said...

Those are brilliant. Each one tells their own story (even without the supporting text) and plucks them out of the faceless masses of the Imperial forces. Quality stuff man.

(Kym) + Warburton + (Classic40K) said...

Very nice!

Suber said...

I love these Dirty Dozen (weel, Dirty Ten, whatever), really characterful. I painted my Imperial Guard in that exact cammo pattern (but not even close to you standards, of course), so I feel quite close to these! :)