+ inload: Silver Stars markings and honorifics +

+ inload: Silver Stars Legionary markings +

+ We covered the basics of the Silver Stars paint scheme in this inload [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], but it doesn't really touch on the markings and so forth. Since I've had a couple of people asking about them – and very pleasingly, have seen some examples painted up by other hobbyists – I thought I'd scribble down my notes on the various sigils and markings. +

+++

+ Esoterica +

+ Before anything else, it's worth making the point that the Silver Stars are (out-of-universe) intentionally slightly unclear, and this has been intentionally built into their marking scheme. They are, after all, supposedly the returned Legion of a lost or forgotten Primarch; or possibly a renegade Chapter masquerading as such behind an abomination; or perhaps the time- or dimensionally-displaced results of some Other event. +

+[identquery: unresoved – all records REDACTED]+

+ I think a big part of the appeal of the lost and forgotten Primarchs and Legions is that we don't know who or what they were, what happened to them, or why. Giving definite answers to those questions misses the point. The key to their presence in the project, therefore, is to provoke curiosity – to cause viewers to think 'I want to know', rather than to answer said question. At root, I'm far more interested in creating a space for others to explore the Chapters of the Partisans and Pentarchy and the myriad groups of Imperial forces, both orthodox and secessionist, that are about in M33, than I am in the Silver Stars. They are effectively a plot device, rather than characters. In short, the qeustion of whether they are a lost Legion or something else entirely is more important than the answer. +

+ The downside to that, of course, is that it makes it difficult to give guidance or answers on markings and colour schemes – after all, if you're going to explore the space, you have to have some answers to create a sense of verisimilitude and believability – after all, even picking a name and colours is in some way pinning things down. To that end, I have framed my own answers to the various questions about the true nature of Volnoscere and his Silver Stars, but they will remain obscured. Is this scheme the scheme of one of the Lost Legions? If so, has it changed since Unification? Who can say? +

+++

+ The basics +

+ With that important proviso out of the way, let's get stuck in. Here's Legionary [REDACTED]. The basics of the scheme are armour as white as bone, as green as the ocean, as rose as coral; and with gold accents. In terms of placement, the helm and upper torso is turquoise (Citadel Hawk Turquoise), the remainder white (Army Painter Mummy Robes covered with Citadel Apothecary White, and highlighted with Valljo Off-white). +

+ The placements of accents varies according to armour mark and rank, but banding – on the shoulder pad rims and collar – is usually a muted gold. I'm afraid I'm a bit crap on metallics: I've usually stuck with my comfort zone of Boltgun Metal and Chainmail, and never learned the new paint names. Suffice to say it's a mid gold that's knocked back with a layer of Seraphim Sepia wash and Leviathan Purple added to recesses wet-in-wet. +

+ Legion markings +

+ Silver Stars bear what appear to be Legion symbols both on their left pauldron (as typical for Space Marines), and on the centre of their torso. The marking is a white, four-pointed star made up of four small, unconnected right-angled triangles. They typically appears to be rotating anti-clockwise on the pauldron and clockwise on the torso (both suggesting forward movement); but occasionally run in the opposite direction, which indicates a form of intra-Legion specialism or honorific termed Manawa. +

+ Whatever the direction of travel, and wherever it appears, the Silver Star symbol is near-universally rendered in white (that is, heraldic silver). This necessitates rose banding (Citadel Screamer Pink, for those painting their own) on the pauldrons in the form of an heraldic pale (a vertical stripe). +

+ Pauldrons are occasionally completely rose, or the rose band is a fess (a horizontal stripe) or a bend (a diagonal stripe from top left to bottom right). The colour also often appears on the belt buckle in a bend, and on the helm. Many Silver Stars wear plumes or headdress; any fabric or organic material is dyed coral-rose; and in their absence, a pale is applied on the top of the helmet, occasionally continuing over the faceplate. +

+ The right pauldron bears squad designations. Some appear to be alchemic symbols, commonly – but far from exclusively – those for Tin/Jupiter (♃), Gold/Sol (☉), and Bismuth (🜘). Others are more esoteric or unidentified, such as the example above. +

+ Besides the squad markings, the Legionaries frequently bear symbols on other areas, usually over the additional Astartes organs (symbolically, if not literally) – most frequently the secondary heart (right of the torso), and the sus-an membrane and catalepsean node (both on the helm). These are again alchemical symbols – occasionally modified – including that for calcination/Aries (♈︎), colgination/Taurus (♉︎) and scruple (℈) alongside the squad designation markings listed above. Considered unlikely to be personal honorifics owing to their frequent repetitions within groups (though this could equally demonstrate a close kinship or bond), these patterns may serve as markings to indicate larger formations, such as Company, Millennial or Wing. Equally, they may instead have a ritual, apotropaic function within the Legion. +

+ In addition to these markings are wedge-shaped numerals that usually appear within the belt buckle in black, but occasionally elsewhere, including on the front of the pauldron (as in the example above), on the helm, or on the rear of the backpack. These numerals are almost always identical, so do not seem to indicate squad, company etc. markings. Finally, the left knee appears to occasionally be decorated; seemingly according to purely personal preference. +

+ Notably, the Silver Stars rarely, if ever, seem to use numerals besides the aforementioned cuneiform. Similarly, script of any kind is notable by its absence. +

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+ Over to you +

+ I hope that's given a bit of clarity on how to go about painting and detailing your Silver Stars without giving too much away. If you do paint one up (or indeed any of the Partisan Chapters), I'd love to see and share it here – please post it on Instagram with the tags #somethingsarebestleftforgotten and/or #warofthefalseprimarch, or on the + Death of a Rubricist + Facebook group. +

+ inload: Gaugamela +

+ Titans! +

+ Gaugamela, the third Warlord of the Sons of the Temple (Legio Sumer-Nikator) is on the painting table. We last saw him when building the Reaver Maniple, at which point he looked a bit like this:

+ Fist and plasma here – these have since been returned to stablemate Manifest Law +

+ The head is from the wonderfully affable Artisans of Vaul, who you can look up on Facebook. The designs are available – nice and affordably – from the 3D design-sharing site CGTrader, through this node [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+]. To forestall any cries of anguish that (like me) you don't have access to a 3D printer, Artisans of Vaul have also licensed the designs out to Battle Bling and goldiesprints.co.uk. I've ordered a couple of additional bits from the former, and will doubtless pop up a mini-review soon in case you'd like to check things out before buying. +

+++

+ Just add weather +

+ Spool on an evening's painting work, and he's starting to look rather less factory-fresh. Prior to the stage below, the orange parts of the armour received another layer of Citadel's much-missed Solar Macharius Orange; the white parts a couple of layers of Mummy Robes (from Army Painter's Warpaint range – this colour's fast becoming a favourite for white); and the blue parts Vallejo's Prussian Blue. +

+ This initial weathering/toning is produced with a variegated wash of Citadel's Dryad Bark brown paint mixed with Daler Rowney's sepia ink. This is then heavily diluted with flow medium, water and granulation fluid. It's the combination of sepia and granulation fluid that causes the particles to gather, creating the instant 'sooty muck'. +

+ The wash is applied panel-by-panel with a 12mm (½in) flat brush, which I then quickly rinse and dry before using it to lift off the excess. This is done by drawing it slowly down the panel from top to bottom. The excess fluid is drawn up into the brush hairs by capillary action, allowing you to reinstate midtones/highlights as you wish. The advantage of using a large brush is speed; the advantage of a flat brush is that you can use the corner of the brush head to lift out fine details. +

+ There's no perfect consistency to the wash mix; in fact, I think it's more effective and realistic if it varies across the model. Try different proportions of the constituent parts for different effects. More paint and ink will create heavier results, while more water can cause backruns. +

+ The heraldic shield was an off-the-cuff idea to replicate the heraldry of Hofmeister – a lager that, like the Titan above, has enjoyed a resurrection and vast improvement from its 80s roots! I think the heraldry the beer uses is the coat of arms of Bavaria (where it's brewed) – and if you're ever stuck for heraldic ideas,  I thoroughly recommend looking at British county flags or the medieval states of Europe for inspiration. +

+++

+ Some Things Are Best Left Forgotten +

+ ... but not the Silver Stars. I've been beavering away on these; but much of my hobby time has been taken up with editing and sorting out the War of the False Primarch. If you're in the mood for some longer-form reading, go check out these recent articles:

• Index Astartes: Death Eagles
• The Extinction Armada

+ inload: White tutorial: Painting the Silver Stars

+ Painting Silver Stars + 

+ Some things may be best forgotten, but how you paint a uniform isn't one of them. I thought I'd exload my approach to painting the cool white I'm using for this mysterious possible-Legion of Space Marines. +

+ Silver Stars Astartes: painting white +

+ Whether the Silver Stars are a Legion of marines or not, they seem to favour Mark II Crusade Armour. The bodies and legs are from Txarli Factory [+noospheric exloadlink embedded+]; the remainder of the figures from a variety of GW and FW kits. As always, this proves the benefit of a deep bits box: I bought the Crusade Armour bits used here years ago, intending to use them for my Praetors of Calth Ultramarines. One side project after another, I decided that it was a shame they sat languishing, so I dug them out, and was pleasantly surprised to find I had a decent little pile of them – some twenty in all. +

+ Painting Silver Stars +

_1 Assemble your marine as normal. The bases I've used here are from Unreal Wargaming [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+].

_2 Prime using Halford's Grey Primer.

_3 Paint the base colours. I block in the metals with black (though note I've used Dryad Bark for the gorget, which will be gold. You can use them fairly interchangeably, but I think I'll proceed with brown for gold, and black for silver). I've used Sotek Green for the blue-turquoise, which seems to be nigh-identical to the old Hawk Turquoise.

4_I've used 'Mummy Robes' from The Army Painter's Warpaints range [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], a lovely smooth warm white. This takes two layers to get a smooth surface. Once dry, I overlay it with Apothecary White, one of Citadel's new Contrast range of paints. This is a lovely quick way to get some initial shading it – and perhaps more importantly, to help you identify where to pick out later.

5_ From here, it's essentially refining. This is a bit of a jump from the previous stage, I confess! Here, I've gone back over the white with more Mummy Robes, adding Vallejo's Off-White for highlights. I've also used Daler-Rowney's Payne's Grey acrylic ink, diluted with flow improver, to line the stronger shadows. I've used the same combination of colours to add weathering and scratches to the white armour – I suggest you do this sparingly, and don't make them so high contrast as you would on darker hues: white paint is obviously very high in value, and so marks look much more striking and obvious than on a low value hue.

The blue-turquoise highlights are simply Sotek Green with increasing amounts of Off-White. The gold is Balthasar Gold followed by Shining Gold, washed with two layers of Seraphim Sepia, with touches of Leviathan Purple added wet-in-wet. The two washes are also used over Iron Warriors (the modern Boltgun Metal equivalent) for the silver areas like the boltgun and backpack.

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+ inload: Behind the scenes of The War of the Lost Primarch +

+ Make new blogs, but keep the old +

+ New exciting projects always take up focus; but it's always good to keep an overview of things. Otherwise it's easy to end up a bit swamped and disenchanted after the chrome wears off (an image quite fitting for 40k...). I wanted the new site, Some Things Are Best Left Forgotten [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+] to be as immersive as possible. As a result, it's very story-focussed, with little, if any, out-of-universe material like modelling or painting planned. +

+ Fortunately, that's exactly the sort of material I can put here (alongside the usual material) – and I hope these behind-the-scenes inloads help to shed some light on the project. +

+++

+ In the Emperor's footsteps: building a Primarch +

+ At the end of last year, lunax7070 offered me a cast of his awesome Mark II Crusade marine. When it comes to truescale, there aren't many bigger! It's a fantastic kit, with full poseability. It wasn't going to fit in any of my forces, but then inspiration struck – I could use it to build a Lorgar to face off against my version of Guilliman. +

+ Spool on a few days, and when I sat down to build, I just couldn't help thinking that I could use it for something else, and ideas started to percolate. To cut a long story short, I ended up combining some very old ideas to come up with a new setting to explore; a bit like the Alien Wars of M36 [REF: tab at top]. +

+ Foremost amongst these were the Silver Stars of an abortive Unification Wars project [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+]. I had really enjoyed exploring the period and playing with a different way of writing, but it had proven just too broad to give a decent result in a sensible amount of time. +

Seeds sown in late MMXV

+ Learning from that, and which bits of the Alien Wars that people seemed to like best, I hit upon theming it around the War of the False Primarch – one of those brief mentions in GW's colour text that always seems so ripe with potential. +

+ The text is very brief, and basically involves five named Chapters wiping out eleven. It's an intriguing idea, and so I went about contacting hobbyists who had already done some work on the named Chapters. Amongst them are the_midnightmare, count.hodo, the_iron_within and biohazardmodels –  I thoroughly recommend you check out their awesome work. +

+ With some talented allies on board, I started putting together some introductory text and having fun creating maps in between updating the Silver Stars. After all, if I was asking people to contribute their marines to oppose or follow a (supposed) Primarch and his (supposed) Legion, then I thought it was only right that I put my money where my mouth was! +

...and his big brother, six years later.

+ The first new marine popped up here a couple of inloads ago; and at some point I'll take the chance to talk through the updates and changes made. For the moment, though, I hope this gives some idea of where the idea for a collaboration comes from – and, more importantly than that, I hope it encourages you to get involved! +

+++

+ A call to arms +

+ This blog is blessed with a readership hugely talented in modelling, painting and writing. I'd love it if you would consider getting involved. The invitation to the project can be read in full on Some Things Are Best Left Forgotten [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+], but in short, if you want to help explore the M34 setting, then please do get in contact either via the comments section below, or via the + Death of a Rubricist + Facebook group [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+]. +

+ Like the Alien Wars, it's a huge palette; which can make it a bit daunting to pick where to start. Pretty much anything will fit – and the broader the take-up, the richer the setting will become. However, I know some people prefer a narrower focus to give them a lead-in, and to that end, if you're a Rubricist who wants to contribute but doesn't have a clear point of inspiration, then I encourage you to turn your hands to one of the following options, in order of urgency:

• A Vigilant Space Marine (see below).
• A Space Marine from the Partisan Chapters, detailed here.
• A Battlefleet Gothic model.
• One of the Death Eagles (and whether you prefer the black and white modern scheme or pink and white originals, both will be fantastically useful).
• A Space Marine from the Silver Stars (pictured above)
• A model to represent Imperial Guard or Naval forces operating in the area.
• An Inquisitor or Inquisitorial team.

+ All will be used to illustrate articles on the new blog, and I'll preview those articles here in the hope that it'll inspire you talented so-and-sos to paint up some figures we can use to illuminate them. +

+++

+ The Vigilants +

+ The Vigilants are a concept I've created to make getting involved as easy as possible. I think a lot of people like the idea of invitationals, but are worried that they're 'not good enough'. I'm very keen that this project is as open as possible and want to break down any 'hobby gates'. +

+ To that end, the Vigilants are a Chapter of Space Marines that operate like the Deathwatch – individuals and small groups are seconded to the Inquisition's Ordo Astartes. They keep their original colouring, but supplement it with a red armour panel (usually the helm) with a yellow and black stripe. As I put it on the War of the False Primarch discussion group:

There’s an article going up this weekend (basically as soon as I have a figure painted). Vigilants are marked out by a red armour panel with a yellow and black stripe. This is usually, but not always, their helm. Other than that, they wear their Chapter colours.

The underlying concept is a reimagining of the Military Police from Rogue Trader – a militant wing under the auspices of the Ordo Astartes that allow the Inquisition to fight fire with fire. 

Set up during the Scouring, many of the original members were made of Blackshields that sought to rejoin the Imperium after Horus’ defeat. 

Two thousand years later, it’s now a position of honour for many Space Marine Chapters, with implied ties to the long inward-looking Adeptus Custodes, who use them as an intermediary (a relationship which eventually leads to the Vigilants being disbanded in a later period).

The Vigilants are really well-equipped during the War. They receive priority equipment and specialist weaponry in order to best their peers – lots of the weird stuff like conversion beamers, graviton weaponry and eradication rifles.

+ Long-time inloaders will know that I like to involve retrohammer touches, and so will probably have already divined that the visual inspiration for this is from Rogue Trader's Field Police:

+ The idea is simple. If you have a marine sitting around, you can get involved simply by repainting his helm. If you do so, please let me know either via the comments or on the Facebook group – I'd love to have as many examples as possible for the article. +

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