The results of what I would like to call Guard January, it just so happens this month I ended up painting a bunch of random Guard models, both old and new.

In order of appearance: -Kalitiya Al Makouma, Military Police Investigator turned Inquisitorial Retinue member after discovering a Genestealer cult in her regiment. She's part of the same Ordo Xenos team as Mord and Zex Al'Dakiz and Raphael Qvele.

-Severine Roodeker, lord militant to Rogue Trader Captain Tarriel Eleonora Corvinius. My character from the Wrath & Glory campaign featuring Alena. Her only real achievement, beyond nearly dying multiple times due to stupid crits, was killing the final boss with two lucky shots with a bolt pistol. Two of those crits led to her losing an arm and a leg, during separate incidents (the leg was ripped off by Khrave clone). The arm is a Wraithbone prosthesis, a gift from an Eldar Corsair for saving his skin and the leg was replaced by an AdMech prosthesis. The latter I didn't model because it'd require a lot of cutting, and Skitarii legs look too thin.

-Lieutenants Sasha Mearghuv, from a so far unnamed regiment. The base model is the Minka Lesk one, with a Wargames Atlantic Cannon Fodder 2 head instead of the regular one. (Same with both Kali and Sev.) First time I had the chance to paint one of the new Cadians, instead of just old ones. The colour scheme is WW2 GI, even if realised that's really similar to the Cadian 8th one, even if painting the pants a different colour does wonders I feel. Really hate how tied up she is to the overly big hero rock. But otherwise I do enjoy the new Cadian aesthetic when they don't have their odd helmets and non M36 rifles.

-Trooper Totterpole, from another unnamed regiment. This one is a straight up unmodified old Cadian Shock Trooper, using one of the few upgrade sprue heads I managed to get ahold off. He was meant to be painted up as a Vietnam Marine, but I quickly discovered that the old Cadians have too much armor to make that work, so on my third attempt I improvised with the armor colours. Which ended up pretty decent. The base is 'jungle', probably need to get some better materials for that in the future.

Techpriest Enginseer Bi-Δ Veltrok, the second most regular member of Inquisitor Wrex's retinue, she oversees the maintenance and upkeep of the many relics in the retinue's service. Often only absent when recalled to report on specific activity, deliver relics on behalf of the inquisition, or receive additional training in ancient machine rites.

She relishes every time she gets to partake in field work, particularly in stress testing xenos defenses against the technologies of the imperium. The many augments she has received in her time under inquisitorial service are far in excess of what an enginseer would normally sport, allowed only citing that she needs proper tools to represent the mechanicus' good name. In truth, many of her newer augments are battlefield salvage the magos would frown on, especially her left arm, liberated from a xenarite magos executed by the Inquisitor for aiding an ork incursion in the name of research.

Logos-Savant Akthelan

This was a bit of an odd model to make given what he does. He is basically a walking computer that, for lack of a better term, 'predicts' enemy actions.

A longer explanation is that he uses the information of his surroundings; collecting vast amounts of data using the antennae attached to his skull and back, wired servo-skull and an arcane artifact known as the Eye, and works out the statistical likelihood of what the actions would be of enemies, where they would be and where they are likely to attack from. This data is then broadcast to nearby task force members, either verbally or through the vox. This is done with an accuracy of somewhere between 90-95%.

Got and converted the final mini for the inquisitor retinue. Now to paint.

Warhammer 40,000 as a universe is trying to do the impossible.

Warhammer 40,000 is, broadly, a grim satire of fascism. It takes the fascist's worldview, all the xenophobia, conspiracism, hypernationalism, and militarism, and amplifies it to a galactically ridiculous scale.

"The Imperium of Man has ruled for 10,000 years, warring endlessly against heretics, traitors, aberrant humans, and aliens galore, all of whom are so wildly different from humanity that peaceful coexistence will simply never be possible. The only emotion stronger than our hatred of them is their hatred of us. So, we war. We war and war and battle and slaughter until the end of days. We throw our sacred human form, untainted by mutation or the hideous sciences of our ancestors, against the barbarian hordes by the millions, most of us dying in the process. We revere and worship the warriors elevated by the hand of our divine god-emperor, the apotheosis of our glorious, eternal state. These warriors, reborn in the Emperor's image with His sacred eugenics, to become the ultimate fighting men. And yes, they are all men. We are never safe, while we must constantly be defending our borders from our enemies, we must also be ever-vigilant within. Anybody, from our comrades on the front lines to our commanders, tech-priests, preachers, or politicians, could be a traitor. Nobody can ever TRULY be trusted, and those who truly are heretics, must not only be destroyed, but erased. They, and all memory of them must be eradicated. One heretic can sign the death warrant of his entire world, and sometimes, for the preservation of the human race, billions must die."

Warhammer 40k presents a world where all of this(asterisk) is true (VERY BIG ASTERISK)

Through this lens, a lot of the more... questionable aspects make sense.

T'au Empire Mind Control: The T'au are how fascists view liberals. They CANNOT understand that an integrated, multicultural society could ever POSSIBLY work. They cannot FATHOM that different communities can just... agree to work together, it HAS TO BE the woke mind virus. "Can you believe these fucking idiots tried to NEGOTIATE with TYRANIDS???? These fucking losers tried to make PEACE WITH ANOTHER RACE??? PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT"

Why the chaos gods are what they are: The followers of chaos represent everyone of the 'ingroup' the fascist hates. Because nothing, not even their sacred ingroup, is sacred to the fascist. The followers of chaos are the germans who resisted, the jewish antizionist, the rebel (Khorne), the intellectual (Tzeentch), the sick and disabled (Nurgle), and the queer (Slaanesh). "There is no reason ANYBODY, ESPECIALLY not those of our sacred ingroup, could object to our glorious genocide. And the runts of the litter must be eliminated to not be a drain on the rest"

And EVEN WITHIN 40k, a lot of this is bullshit.

The T'au mind control thing is provably bullshit because the Farsight Enclaves exist. A whole T'au society that exists free from the apparent mid control of the ethereals

The imperium feeds as much into the chaos gods as the traitors do. A stagnant, decaying empire (Nurgle), with an incomprehensibly vast and byzantine bureaucratic structure (Tzeentch), where a select few live appallingly lush and lavish lives of hedonism and pleasure, completely detached from the people they're supposed to govern (Slaanesh), all for the purpose of making ever more destructive and bloody war with everybody else (Khorne)

There is evidence of peaceful human coexistence with xenos empires during the Dark Age of Technology, including one humanity CREATED, and many inquisitors and rogue traders will GLADLY incorporate xenos into their retinues. Trade and coexistence with aliens DOES still happen in the imperium.

Hell, the parody of fascism is in the very MECHANICS OF THE WHOLE LORE. Fascists don't believe in "facts" or "truth", if they did, they wouldn't be fascists. Therefore, in 40k, "Everything is canon, nothing is true". This allows players to EITHER

Think critically and try to connect the dots to form their best guess as to what "canon" is

Or buy wholly into one side or another's propaganda

And one of those groups is going to find a "truth" they can accept and treat as fact a LOT more quickly than the other.

40k lays out in perfectly plain low gothic, all of the bullshit and hypocrisies of the Imperium. They'll let entire sectors die in the interests of preserving human life. The way the imperial guard are lauded as heroes but treated worse than the lasguns in their hands. The way that in order to become a space marine, one of humanity's great guardian angels, you must have everything that makes you human either beaten out of you or surgically removed. The priests who worship science and technology viewing scientific progress as the most abhorrent of heresies. The divine worship of a man who scoured entire worlds for the crime of worshipping him as a god.

Actually hang on lemme derail the flow of this post and talk more about the emperor. The Emperor is the chief hypocrite in an empire of hypocrites. "I AM NOT A GOD" says the 10-foot-tall gleaming golden immortal psychic god-man, "NOW GO FORTH MY ANGELS ON YOUR GLORIOUS CRUSADE TO BRING SCIENCE AND REASON, and by science and reason I mean doing exactly what I say without question and turning a blind eye to fundamental truths of the universe, TO THIS BENIGHTED GALAXY"

The problem is that parodying fascism is impossible. Fascism is already so inherently, fundamentally ridiculous a worldview, for all the reasons explained above, that distinguishing sincerity from irony is nigh impossible.

If you, an antifascist, read The Turner Diaries, you will probably assume it's satire. The book ends with Earth as an irradiated hellsacpe where few can survive and nothing about its resulting culture is explained. But nope! This is fascist propaganda! It was written by actual neo-nazis who committed actual hate crimes! It is an enthusiastic YAAAAAAAAAY APOCALYPTIC WARFARE!!!!!! YAAAAAAAAY GENOCIDE!!!!!!!! At least all the black people are gone! Hell, when Rogue One came out, Lucasfilm got all sort of shit flung at them for portraying the evil space nazis... as the bad guys... which they always were.

This is why both we, the fandom, and Games Workshop as a company, are DIRECTLY pushing SO HARD against the fascists in the space, and must push harder. 40K IS NOT FOR THEM. And no amount of clever writing or obvious parody will ever convince them otherwise. It does not matter how unfathomably stupid you make fascism look to people with functioning brains, fascists will gobble that shit up. You cannot make fascism look worse than it is, and you cannot make it stupid enough to convince fascists its stupid.

The problem isn't that Games Workshop isn't doing a good enough job writing the imperium as bad (although they aren't), the problem is that it will never be an adequate mockery to make the fascists feel unwelcome. It's not a bad parody of fascism, fascism is just beyond parody.

My biomancer psyker Rogue Trader, Elena von Valancius. For Owlcat Games' Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader CRPG

Formerly an Inquisition acolyte, she started out in Ordo Hereticus as a sanctioned psyker, until her master was killed in a joint mission with another Inquisitor, and he took her into his retinue in Ordo Malleus.

However, as years went by, she got in trouble with her master and he wanted to be rid of her in a... subtler manner. Coincidentally, Theodora laid her claim on her, and so Elena was shipped off to the Rogue Trader's retinue.

And now here she is, a Rogue Trader herself, free to chart her own path instead of getting thrown around from place to place.

Still. Seems she can't escape the Inquisition anyway, for fate brought her to meet Heinrix van Calox, an Ordo Xenos Interrogator.

(She jokes it's like she's collecting all three major ordos)

(and yes she's falling for Heinrix lmao, time to bond over being psykers, amirite?)

Explorator Kor-Gamma 78, also known as just Korga, serves as muscle, medic, and tech expert for his Inquisitor master. As much as he likes (/sarcasm) getting waist deep in heretical nonsense, he'd much rather look for lost tech.

Korga was made for October prompts on Twitter, and now I'm tempted to go make an entire Inquisitorial retinue...

Concept art for Interogator Solas' Retinue 'Gold Runners' - loyally serving Inquisitor Morgan of The Holy Orders of The Emperors Inquisition.

Character arc - Niobe von Valancius

portrait by @mayoonrices

I was tagged by @bnbc to participate in @fuchsiareign's Rogue Trader character arc prompt and it sounded like fun!

Niobe's arc is a strange one, and I'll explain why in due course.

To begin with, it's a story of love vs duty and pushing the limits of both in search of the answer to the following questions: which is strongest? Can a balance be achieved? Ultimately, it is a story of personal sacrifice for a perceived "greater good" (no, not in the Tau sense, that's heresy. ;) )

Niobe was born in a world of privilege most citizens of the Imperium could only dream of, but that doesn't mean her life was easy. From an early age, she was groomed to take up a specific position within her family hierarchy: ambassador to the other noble courts in Scarus sector. It's a role she then fulfilled for 2 decades, always on the lookout for ways she could advance her house's interests while undermining their rivals. It was a world of secrets and intrigue and double-dealing and she was profoundly lonely despite being surrounded by people.

Then she was summoned by Theodora von Valancius, THE von Valancius to whom House Theseis which she was part of was related by blood, but distantly enough that they had no right to the name. Until she took up the mantle of Rogue Trader, that is.

In some ways, her new duties weren't entirely unfamiliar to her: she had long been wrangling people with hidden agendas and uncertain loyalties, and she had the poise and authority to go with the title of Lord Captain.

Other things she had no idea about and had to learn as she went along while trying to keep her protectorate from falling apart. Part of what initially brought her and Heinrix close was her appreciation for his sharp intellect and sensible advice.

Then Commorragh happened. That constituted Niobe's "fall from grace" when she almost lost her life, her retinue, her love but most importantly of all, she lost some of her humanity. In order to save Heinrix from further torment, she grovelled before Tervantias and begged for his release, an unforgivable act in her eyes (and that of the Imperium). It left a deep scar and fuelled her existing xenophobia to unprecedented heights. She had never been fond of xenos, but after this she absolutely loathed them and hunted them down with extreme prejudice. She became less inclined to be merciful, and more likely to make examples of those who displeased her.

As for her relationship with Heinrix, it ended in a mutual agreement that their respective duties came first. He went on to become the next Lord Inquisitor while Niobe continued her tenure as Lord Captain, and the two met as often as their many responsibilities permitted. They had a son, Lysander, although Heinrix only found out about it 3 years after his birth.

This is where things get complicated, because I have two possible endings in mind for her - a bittersweet one which is in line with the ending slides I got and a much darker one which I came up with on a whim but which kind of tempts me to make canon. XD

In the first possible ending, she and Heinrix join forces many decades into the future for one last mission against the enemies of mankind, and die gloriously in battle, side by side, by ramming the ship into an enemy dreadnought.

In the second possible ending, Niobe's son Lysander manifests psychic powers and is taken away for sanctioning but doesn't make the cut and is sacrificed to the Emperor instead. Niobe, who had been very reluctant to let him go, is stricken by grief and becomes less and less interested in running her protectorate. Instead, she ends up locking herself up in her son's old rooms, which had been kept completely closed off and left untouched since his departure, and becomes a kind of Space Miss Havisham. In her deeply depressed, hopeless state, she is vulnerable to the predations of Grandfather Nurgle who corrupts her mind and body and gradually those of everyone in the estate. Eventually Heinrix himself calls a purge of that part of Dargonus.

Phew! That was a lot of text!

Zex Al'Dakiz and Raphael Qvele Formerly of Delta Company of the Roughnecks 143rd Regiment, now in the employ of Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor Celiya Xanthic after their platoon was ambushed by heretic forces, leaving them the only two survivors. Seen here during the investigation of a suspected chaos cult in the caverns of Gammioror Ten.

***

Turns out the Blooded, or at least two of the cooler models from that set (in my eyes at least), were very easy to remove any signs of heresy on them. It was just some shoulder spikes and then a chaos icon on the back of the marksman. The rest can just be explained away with them being members of an Inquisitor retinue and thus given some freer dress code.

Otherwise a nice and painless paint job, the majority of the steps used taken from Duncan Rhodes Roughnecks painting guide. With some substitution for TTT branded paints. It was fun to paint with mostly gray tones though for a change.

Had as per usual more issues figuring out a good/interesting base until I stumbled upon a good one by Xenus Minis. Which did make me have to make some modelling sand, but the end results were really good.

Now I just need to add some more members, and hope that I'll find a good Inquisitor, or even an Interrogator, model at some point.

Agniosanne van Hart, distant half-niece of the inquisitor and actually talented imperial Navy nepo baby. Had a habit of getting into drama and solving it with pistol duels when not deployed as a fighter pilot. Her mother doted on her, letting the situation get out of hand, where half the noble houses in the subsector had growing beef with the van Hart family. In an attempt to get Agniosanne out of the picture in a non-lethal fashion, her mother reached out to a supposed half sister who supposedly was employed in the arbites, asking if they perhaps had a use for a skilled pilot. A month later, inquisitor Wrex had arrived to evaluate and recruit her niece as the retinue's dedicated pilot. Agniosanne was gifted the family dueling pistol and her father's pocket watch in parting, and has been a reliable pilot and rakish charmer in the service of the inquisition ever since.

Veteran Sargeant 'Sarge' O'Connell

The veterans of the retinue are Death Korps of Krieg models, there are 3 more to come. These are really good models, but they won't be what I use for the Stormtroopers as those will likely be the Kaskrin when they arrive.

There are five models left for the Retinue. 3 veterans, 1 death cult assassin and their transport which shall be revealed in time.

Inquisitor Retinue WIP Making this for the Inquisitor ‘Battle for the Emperor’s Soul’ Specialist game (In 28mm form)

Inquisitor Thorn Talisac (A Horusian Resurrectionist, A sect that seeks to bring about the reincarnation of the Emperor by studying the effects of Warp possession of the Warmaster Horus) 

Rogue Trader Haro Jimenez (Rogue trader and gunslinger extraordinaire, known for getting his nose where it doesn’t belong) Colt Bisley (Death World Feral Guardsmen, superstitious, head hunting maniac with a big chain machete. One day the Lightening god will return to us!)

Zorg (Servo Skull, previously Inquisitor Adept jean baptist, caught smuggling heretic weapons, turned into mind scrubbed gun servitor as ironic justice.)

More members to come!

Can Inquisitors have Officio assassins on their retinue? Do they have authority over them?

They could have one attached for purpose of accomplishing a short term goal, but aside from that… no.

The Inquisition Ordos don’t have authority over the Officio Assassinorum or its operatives. If they want one for something, they have to make a request, and the request has to be agreed upon by a majority vote from the High Lords. The assassin will be deployed to operate within the scope of that assignment, and will follow it to the letter. The Inquisitor gets as much cooperation as the job entails.

What do you expect the Warhammer show Amazon is making to be like? Apparently they have Henry Cavill as an executive producer so it probably won't be awful

I hope and i pray that it’s set around the Inquisition or Rogue Traders. For 40k’s first foray into live action i think it should focus on creating atmosphere and conveying scale for the setting, and the diverse retinue of inquisitors and rogue traders has potential to showcase a variety of imperial factions and be challenged by threats of equal scale. It is my deepest wish that we don’t see so much as a single space marine until the second season, maybe the finale of the first if it’s the literal last shot. If any space marines show up it should be a 1-off season climax hype moment and then they fuck off for the rest of the show because otherwise they’ll be treated as the solution to every problem. If they do show up it should take a shit ton of favors from the cast to pull it off and should basically be used up for the future. This is bc I want the human scale to be maintained as much as possible and i also generally don’t want to see live action transhumans, i’m very skeptical of how well it’d go under fucking Amazon. An Ordo Xenos inquisitor is honestly my best proposal bc it naturally leads them into conflict with half the factions in the setting, and it means Eldar, Orks, and Genestealers will all be credible threats without risking getting curb stomped by the Dark Angels being on speed dial. Bc you know if any marines do show up they’ll be one of the first founders. Also please please PLEASE visit a forge world. That’s my take.

Character Arc: Imogene von Valancius

@bnbc tagged me to present the story arc of my RT! Thank you :D

Hers is a story of falling from grace, getting back up only to start down a road of moral descent. Imogene lived long enough to become the villain - first in her own eyes and then in the Imperium's.

Imogene Aeos Venria de Vahl af Calixis was born into power and privilege, and it was never a burden for her. Armed with her unwavering faith in the God-Emperor and a charming smile she reached what she believed was the pinnacle of her career with claiming governance over a planet back in the Calixis Sector.

And she made it look easy, so easy in fact that a long line of political enemies figured they could do it instead of her. Perhaps it was one of them that finally managed to stage a coup, maybe it was an unrelated event, or maybe a ploy of Theodora herself, but Imogene was abducted one night from her estate, no ransom was made, no demands presented. Just her, mistreated and tortured to the brink of her life, to be finally rescued by the von Valancius forces and informed of the summons made by Lady Theodora.

First step down on her new road.

She was more than capable of filling the shoes of her esteemed predecessor and done so gladly, but the toll was high and Imogene has not recovered from her previous ordeal before the next one came. Surviving Commorragh was the next step of her journey that left her sanity maimed. From there, it was a constant battle with nightmares plaguing her sleep as well as waking hours.

So it was pushing on, pushing forward, unthinkable to stop, almost heretical to think about taking a step back. And she did great things. To anyone outside her closest retinue she must have seemed like a blessing sent from the Emperor himself, His chosen, defeating all enemies of humanity with one brilliant victory after another.

But behind each success stood a secret, each a step downward. The Aeldari defeated with the help of a fellow Rogue Trader who succumbed to the whispers of Chaos. Footfall 'secured' for Kasballica with the blood of another of Imogene's peers. Her alliance with Xavier Calcazar, forged with a heresy of relying on the C'tan Shard. 

But it lasted like this for decades. People around her changed, the powers shifted, but in the end she leaves behind a prosperous and stable protectorate, if corrupt and run on shady dealings. She herself will be remembered as a lunatic, despite her accomplishments. Lost in her own world, laughing at things only she seemed to witness.

But it's not her worry anymore, nothing is. Imogene is done with her duties, done with keeping secrets, and done with the Imperium. She disappears the same day Lord Inquisitor Heinrix van Calox does, who himself barely escapes the trial his acolytes wanted him to face. Very few believe it was a coincidence, but there is little that can be done about it - wherever they decided to run off to, they left no trace to follow. 

Branded traitors and heretics, they took the last step of this journey together.

I lost track of who got tagged and who didn't, so I'll give a heads up to @iamaweretoad and @yrlietlanaevyss and who wants to give it a go! Please tag me in your RT's journey if you do! :D