+ Culture seeds +
+ Naming models is a particular peccadillo of mine; but it's a good thing to do if you'd like to explore the background for your Chapter, Regiment, Craftworld or so forth. +
+ Naming your characters is a nice way to bring some personality to them and make them feel more like your own creation, as well as offering another hook for your games – having a rival figure in another army will immediately add a frisson to games with a regular opponent. Recent years have seen Games Workshop push the narrative angle a bit more, with tables of names appearing in Kill Team and the like. All to the good! +
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+ Theoretical +
+ When deciding on names for the Gatebreakers, I wanted to reflect a couple of critical points about the Chapter:
- The names should distinguish the new Primaris marines of Chapter 333 and the 'ascended' original Astartes.
- The names should reflect a variety of cultures, as the Gatebreakers' pool of recruits is drawn from multiple worlds. This helps to imply the culture and background of the army without making things explicit.
- The names shouldn't be so varied that there's no sense of place.
+ To help with the first point, I decided that the new intake of Primaris marines should have a typical Romano-greek naming convention. Such names are skirting on clichéd, but having something recognisable helps to make the contrast clear. +
+ The Astartes' – that is, the old Chapter – names were drawn from two main pools: Far Eastern (Tibetan and Han Chinese) and West African (mainly rooted in Yoruba and Igbo). I didn't want this to be tokenistic, so I've applied the same 'futurising' elements I do to European-themed names by tweaking elements. John, for example, is quickly converted to Ion; and likewise Tenzing becomes Tenxing. To me, this helps with suggesting linguistic drift and also (hopefully) avoids any unintended consequences, like accidentally naming a Space Marine after a real person! +
+ To stick with the third point, the vast majority of the names are from these three main groupings. That seems sensible – after all, particular intakes of recruits are likely to end up in the same part of the Chapter as they'll be trained and learn to fight together. However, I've also seasoned these with a few one-off names from completely different cultures; representing odd survivors or recruits that – for one reason or another – are on their own. +
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| + Gatebreakers on operation + |
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+ Practical +
+ Anyway, there's the theory for you. The following is an image-dump of the finished marines with their names and ranks. Member-Ordinary denotes a 'battle-brother', while Member-Cardinal is equivalent to a squad leader or sergeant. +
+ Painting and developing this Chapter has been a treat, and it's a real pleasure to have the group finished. I hope you like 'em – which ones are your favourites? +
2 comments:
Oh man, this has been fun to see and to read. Great project, great conversions, inspiring stuff. I don't have to wherewithal to come up with my own Chapter, but your work has inspired me to try some Primaris figures of my own.
And the "beakie" helmet is still the best helmet, all these years later...great work!
Cheers Greg – very kind; and glad you've been enjoying it. If you'd like a hand to come up with a Chapter, let me know. I've been boiling over with ideas that I'll never get to develop, and it'd be lovely to see them go to use.
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