Architect of Fate

When confronted with a being, or power, calling itself the "Architect of Fate", I get worried for the main forces of the story.  As a reader, we know that they're going to get sucked in to some twisted plot involving death, daemons, fire, and if they're really unlucky: Nurgle worshippers as well.  

I can't help but think how things might have been different if the Emperor was upfront with his primarchs from the start.  "Hey, Lorgar.  When you're out and about in the big wide Universe, watch out for this belief called chaos.  There's these warp aliens called Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch and Slaanesh.  They like to be worshipped by realspace inhabitants.  It's really bad stuff, son.  They lie as well and call themselves by other names such as Blurrrghh.  Stick with the Imperial Truth, okay?  No?  Okay -- its better to worship me than those others then".

The interested thing about the above thought train is that this is exactly the kind of conversation that happened in the alternate Universe Dornian Heresy where Lorgar's Word Bearers became the good guys of the piece.  And look what good that did: Dorn got corrupted instead of Horus... hmmmmm.  

Dornian Heresy: Salamanders (Malalamanders)

Aurelius Rex has started a serialization for the Dornian Heresy Salamanders Legion over at Bolter and Chainsword.

Although its early days in terms of writing up the Malalamanders, I wanted to give this one a plug as a chaos legion devoted to Malal has so much promise and excitement surrounding it!

Indeed, the premise for this entire Dornian Heresy series is very intoxicating: it is to invert the good guys and bad guys from the Horus Heresy.  i.e. What would happen if the Emperor had helped out Angron instead of snatched him away?  What would have happened if there were an alternate solution to the council of Nikea?  What if Horus resisted temptation and the powers of chaos were forced to turn to an alternative?  An alternative like Dorn of the Imperial Fists?  That's the broad overview of the idea behind the Dornian Heresy, and I've been following it for a while (going so far as to have a go at building and painting some alternate universe Blood Angels and Iron Hands).  

For the Salamanders, the idea is that Vulcan got horrendously burnt as a child and this started a cascade of events to turn him in to a bitter individual.  This will eventually lead to him devoting the legion to the chaos power of Malal.  I'm really interested in this option -- its a great way to launch a chaos marine force devoted to this old chaos power.  The serialization also provides opportunity for a bit of feedback if folks are interested.

Dornian Heresy: Night Lords

"Midnight clad, and wielding fear as a weapon, the Night Lords haunt the dark places of the Imperium. They do this not to hide from the light of justice, but because that is where those who would seek to harm the Emperor’s subjects are to be found. Since the time of their Primarch, Konrad Curze, the Night Lords have been guided by visions of the darkest of futures which they are driven to avert, even at the cost of their own lives. By their blood and sacrifice the Imperium of Mankind has been kept safe from rebellions, xenos invasions and betrayals without number."

The Dornian Heresy is the alternative history background being created at Bolter and Chainsword.  In a nut-shell, all the roles are reversed (and/or generally perturbed) compared to the Horus Heresy.  A couple of weeks ago, the authors published the draft background for the Night Lords, as the good guys.

I must say, I like this take on the Night Lords.  They're very focused on keeping the law (through fear) and punish severely those who waver in the eyes of the emperor -- especially those that seek to hide in the dark places.  A few of their number also share Night Haunter's precognitive ability -- also a very nice touch.  In the revised background, Curze still dies, but this time at the hands of Dorn.  He does this to save the Emperor as he sees in his visions the calamity that will befall the Imperium without his sacrifice.  His terminal words are recorded as: "Why did I come before you only to be killed? Because your Heresy, and the act you are about to commit, proves the truth of my actions at Cheraut. I merely tried to punish one who would go on to cause so much harm – my only regret is that I did not succeed in killing you before you made war on our father, our Emperor. Death is nothing compared to vindication." which bears a striking similarity (albeit reflected / inverted) to the official cannon.  

Gotta like the Loyal Night Lords.  They still rock.

Dornian Heresy: Dark Angels

A shout out to the Bolter and Chainsword forum who (several weeks ago now!) have published their draft of the alternative history Dark Angels.  The premise behind this one is that Luther won the internal struggle with the Lion and the Dark Angels became traitors. 

What fascinates me about this write up is that the Lion is the only primarch in the series who does not swap sides.  He actually remains loyal, but Luther forever sullies his name and makes him out to be a traitor.  In this version, Luther is the guy who comes to the fore on Caliban and terminates its association with the Imperium of Man. Dorn hears of this ... and offers a way out: joining the heresy ...

Dornian Heresy: Blood Angels

In the alternative Universe Dornian Heresy published by Bolter and Chainsword, the Blood Angels are the chosen of Nurgle.  But they have not totally succumbed to Nurgle.  Rather, they are cursed by the chaos god and must seek fresh body parts and blood to replace those afflicted by Nurgle's phage.  In doing so, they spread Nurgle's diseases along the way and serve his purpose regardless.

To realize this image of the corrupt and mutated blood angels, I've used a resin torso and shoulder from the Forge World plague marine conversion set.  For the helmet, I've clipped off the spike on the top and filed it down, but otherwise, no other special work was undertaken.

For the other body parts, I've used standard space marine bits.  To make them feel more Nurgle-like, I've applied damage across them (see the left shoulder for instance which is drilled to resemble having taken bolter fire).

Painting consisted of a standard Blood Angels pattern, but with liberal amounts of Devlan Mud washing, combined with green Nurgle-like emissions from various parts of the armour.  The helmet is intended to be an assault marine pattern.  The usual iconography has been replaced with a triple blood drop -- mixing the typical blood angels and Nurgle tripartite icons together.   

Dornian Heresy: Iron Hands

The unofficial background for Index Astartes: Iron Hands in the Dornian Heresy was written up and published by Bolter and Chainsword in late 2010.  To cut a long story short: the Dornian Heresy is an alternate reality timeline where the loyalist and traitor legion's affiliations have been inverted.  The Space Wolves shed blood and collect skulls for their Lord Khorne, whilst the World Eaters are the paragon of disciplined troops, loyal to the Emperor and on very friendly terms with the Emperor's Children legion.  If you haven't read the alternate reality background, then I'd encourage you to do so -- it is remarkable in a large number of ways. 

For the Iron Hands alternate history, Ferrus Manus slew Fulgrim and they went renegade.  But they're not truly renegade ... they just have a bit of a different idea about how to combat chaos than the Emperor has.  They want to upgrade (ascend?) humanity in to these metallic bodies they located on "tomb worlds" a while back.  By doing so, they will remove emotions from the weak, fallible human bodies and deny chaos their food stuff: strong, nasty emotions!  Perfectly logical, you see.  Just like a machine.  

In their research, they have mastered the phasing techonology of what was the necrons and adapted their Gauss weaponry.  And they're still modifying their own bodies, replacing parts with more reliable mechanical bits.  They're not ready to execute their master plan yet though. Only the very senior members of the Iron Hands have received the new metal bodies.  Most of the battered legion's clans still retain their power armour (etc.).

For a test miniature, I used a standard space marine torso, legs and back pack and combined them with a chaos space marine shoulder pad, necron gauss weapon and hands / lower arm (left arm) and a vehicle upgrade bit on the top of the back pack to give the suggestion of advanced and beyond-the-inert-imperium technology.  The head was chosen to be the bionic human head from the space marine kit.  I was toying with using a necron head, but the bionic head was much better suited to the background and the miniature.  The painting was relatively straight forward, with a standard approach to painting black, with silver edging around the shoulders.  I tried to add some green reflection from the gauss barrel on to the left forearm and the left hand side of the chest.  I'm not entirely convinced it works, but it's the first time I've thought about doing such an approach.  Finally, the base is one of the resin bases that I painted up some months earlier.