+ inload: Hope is the First Step on the Road to Betrayal +

 + Followers of a False Primarch +

+ I want to know. That's at the core of any good tease – and I think it accounts for pretty much the entire appeal of the Lost Legions/Primarchs. Any answer, no matter how well-planned and executed, is going to be a big anticlimax, as it collapses the waveform of possibility into a final, definitive – and necessarily limited – answer. +

+ No, adding questions and leaving doubt; that seemed much more 40k to me. +

+++

+ ... and another thing that's very 40k is integrating older material with a new spin (or as it used to be called, graverobbing). To that end, the off-shoot blog + Some Things Are Best Left Forgotten + (STABLF) [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+] will update with a new article on Friday, detailing the Marines Vigilant. +

+ One of the Vigilant +

+ I'm trying to keep STABLF more tightly focussed on lore and organisation than on painting and real-world influences, and so here's a great place to look behind the scenes. The Vigilants are a Marine Chapter that I've come up with for the project that had to fulfill a few different points:

• To indulge in some winsome nostalgia;
• To be part of the explanation for how five Chapters defeated eleven;
• To allow me to paint some one-off marines;

but primarily...

• To allow anyone to get involved.

+ To that end, I envisaged the Vigilants as a sort of Deathwatch equivalent. Like the Deathwatch, the Vigilants are a militant group of Space Marines drawn from different Chapters that work under the auspices of the Inquisition – in the Vigilants case, the Ordo Astartes; the group tasked with ensuring the Space Marines don't go all rebelly again. +

+ I didn't want them to be a directly correlative group to the Deathwatch – that seemed a bit derivative – and the best way I've found for doing that is to draw a few threads from older material and weave them into the new. In this case, I styled the markings on the Rogue Trader-era Field Police, a concept that has fallen by the wayside; and added a few hints of the retconned older Mentor Legion Chapter background – namely that they use esoteric equipment and work variously in detail and in larger groups. +

'Master' Enoch, one of the upcoming Dramatis Personae, and a member of the Ordo Astartes.

+ The background is, effectively, an excuse. One of the things that most disappointed me about the Deathwatch – an otherwise very cool concept – was the fact that all the amazing heraldry and pageantry of a diverse group of Astartes was painted black, save a single shoulder pad. With the Vigilants, I've inverted that, with the Chapter heraldry of each miniature intact save for a red plate with a yellow and black hazard stripe. +

This member of the Patriarchs of Ulixis shows a red helm with hazard stripe and the old RT Field Police symbol on the hip plate.

+ This simple approach means that anyone who has a single marine can instantly get involved in the project, simply by painting a hazard stripe on them somewhere. I hope that this draws more people in to getting involved – after all, collaboration and discussion is really at the heart of any project. +

+ Before moving on, I just wanted to draw attention to the downside of writing background before trying things out on a model. Trying to paint the complex symbol of the High Lords of Terra (effectively the Other Side of the War of the False Primarch) on a shoulder pad was fun, but a challenge. +

+ I didn't want to make this a stumbling block or excuse for people not to get involved, and so wrote out the idea that all Tactical markings on a marine seconded to the Vigilants were replaced with this symbol. Instead, there's the option for a simpler triangle symbol; or nothing at all. There's the lesson, than – paint the model first, then write your background! +

+++

+ Sundries +

+ STABLF has been monopolising my blog writing time – apologies; though I hope you're also enjoying the material that pops up there. Here are a few pictures that I've been taking, along with some rather off-the-cuff thoughts and notes. I hope they're of interest. +

+ Little more than a test of using a white backdrop, this picture's a nice scale comparison of a Space Marine and unaugmented human. Working from home means that I've got much nicer natural lighting than usual, and that in turn meant I couldn't resist snapping a few things. +

+ A little preview/work-in-progress of the Silver Stars, this 'sample' has quickly expanded into a thirty-man army, complete with tank. I've drawn the line there, for the moment, and am making a pledge here that no further stuff for this lot until they're all painted! +

+ Another marine for the STABLF project, this was an experiment in making properly accurate Mark VII armour (and apologies – I realise that the 'how to make Mark VI' tutorial is still languishing. Promise I'll get it done once I find the damn WIP!). He was also going to be the 'case study' Vigilant, but his pose weighed against him. I like the fact he's sighting down the barrel, but while realistic, it obscures too much of him. He's a good example of a good gaming piece, but a challenge to photograph or showcase effectively. + 

+ The chap next to him is an anonymous scribe at the moment. Whether he'll end up of the side of the orthodoxy or Partisans is uncertain. Fun model, though. +

+ To close, a Silver Star – and in stark contrast to the figure above, he's been deliberately designed to allow close examination of all the bits and bobs that make the Stars what they are. Keep an eye out for a future inload! +