From Curt: The Emperor of Mankind and his Thunder Warriors (Treachery) (130 Points)

 Hey there!

I saved this one for Greg's posting day as we have been huge fans of the 30K lore for years and have spent countless hours discussing the stories and characters from the ridiculously expansive 'Horus Heresy' series of books (think Wagnerian opera crossed with a Latino melodrama, but with chain swords). To be frank most of the novels are pretty bad, but there are just enough good ones to have kept us coming back for more.

One of very niche bits of this GrimDark lore is set in the time before the Horus Heresy, before the Great Crusade, back to what is described as 'The Unification Wars' of Terra. This was when the Emperor was just one of the many 'techno-barbarians' fighting to be top dog over a post-apocalyptic Earth. In prosecuting this war, he created 20 legions of genetically modified super soldiers that were called Thunder Warriors (something's rhyming here...). These gene-enhanced freaks, er, peerless warriors became the prototypes for later gene-enhanced freaks known as, you guessed it, the Space Marines.

A Techno-Barbarian by John Blanche

Okay, if this wasn't dorky enough the next few paragraphs will descend into a high level of 30K nerdiness, so feel free to skim forward to the next ***. 

Whereas the Space Marines were chosen at childhood to be indoctrinated and genetically enhanced (yeah, nothing dark there), the Thunder Warriors instead originated from a pool of mature candidates, all fanatically loyal to the Emperor, who's bodies and minds were genetically manipulated for aggression and combat. The process was, um, 'imperfect' where the Warriors often became increasingly unstable, both physically and mentally. 

The Unification Wars were brought to a bloody conclusion at the Battle of Mount Ararat. It was not only the last gasp of the Emperor's adversaries on Earth but also of the Thunder Warriors themselves. Though Imperial propaganda depicts them all dying to a man in the last furious hours of the battle, they in fact were eradicated by the Custodes (i.e. The Great Golden @ssholes) on the Emperor's orders (and here, finally, is my hook to the 'Treachery' theme).

A few Thunder Warriors escaped the culling and eked out lives as fugitives in the backwaters of Imperial society. Black Library has a 30K novel, 'The Outcast Dead', that describes a brutal gang boss who was originally a Thunder Warrior. Some great space opera in that.

The French edition of 'The Outcast Dead'. Why French? Because 'La Mort des Parias' just sounds way cooler.

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The idea of the Thunder Warriors originated from a series of concept drawings John Blanche (the creator/visionary of GW's 'GrimDark') did in the early 90s. 

Those drawings not only captured the imagination of nerds like me, but also inspired 3D designers to create groovy models based on his vision. 

So I have a small group of eight Thunder Warriors for you today. These are digital sculpts by the talented folks over at Good Game Wargame. I like the nod to the ancient Roman lorica segmentata armour with the scalloped pauldrons waist tassets and open-faced, combed helmets. They have a very neo-imperial look, I think.

In trying to reflect Blanche's baroque art for these I went with a dark copper base, lifted with a mid-tone brass colour, and finally spot-highlighted with an aged gold. I didn't want them too resplendent as that drifts more towards the Custodes, so I tried to keep them darker and a bit more primitive looking.

As a counterpoint, the Emperor is seen here in pristine white Saturnine terminator armour. From the lore, the Saturnine pattern is one of the earliest versions of the super heavy power armour common in 30/40K. The origins of the armour are sort of conflicted but, hey, a bit of mystery is a good thing, right? The model here is from by Sedivalle through Cults3D. 

I did an experiment by painting up a head of a Dark Age viking lord, placing it in the armour's cowl and then filling it with acrylic liquid water from AK Interactive. It gives an interesting murky/spooky effect that you really can't discern in the photos. Still, it was a neat thing to try out.

The armour is very baroque and grotesque, with huge hunched armoured pauldrons and heavy, segmented limbs. I went with giving him two power claws as I can't see the Big E deigning to use firearms when he could create a 'morale building opportunity' by eviscerating things up close. Yup, this armour conveys a big dose of 'just f&ck off'.

I considered doing his armour with more bling, you know, lots of gold with all the trimmings, but I figured that maybe a more austere, anonymous look would be more appropriate, providing a stark contrast between him and his warriors in their garish bronze, brass an red.

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As to points? Hmm, each one of the Thunder Warriors comes in at about 50mm so maybe 9 points each? The Emperor is a hulking 75mm so perhaps 15 points? Based on those estimates the total should be 87 and with the location bonus it should pop it to 107 points, but I bow to our esteemed Wednesday Minion to adjudicate as his astute wisdom sees fit.

To my delight, this entry ticks quite a few boxes across our various duels:

- Another Squirrel Point.

- Points for the 30/40K duel

- Mech Madness for the Emperor's armour

- The Can Opener Duel for various powered armour.

- Finally, as these are a bunch of Warhammer-themed figures, there are skulls aplenty with 44 in total.

Thanks for dropping in (and for your patience)!

- Curt

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Allow me to summarize my reaction thusly - OH HELL YEAH!!!

I am honoured to Minion this delightful submission! As Curt has noted, our shared interest in the Horus Heresy/30k setting is strong, and reaches back to the very old, John-Blanche-inspiration driven era of the setting, when the outlines of the story were known, but many details were left deliberately vague so as to sustain an era of mystery around the period of "history" in that setting, which in turn was a pillar of the portrait of the grim dark 40k setting, which...well, I could go on and on - and I may at some other post...but TL:DR - this is f*cking awesome. 

The Thunder Warriors are stunning and look the exact part. I think your selection of the metallic tones is spot on, landing at "seriously significant" but south of "regal", and that is perfect, as it was the Custodes who are all covered in gold etc. but who managed, at the moment of great crisis facing The Emperor, to utterly fail at every level, from being unable to fight at the Emperor's side when he truly needed them, to bungling things like a prisoner transfer during the Siege of Terra, thus serving as exemplars for the universal truth that any state organization set up on purpose to be 'elite' will turn into expensive pumpkins...Constantine Valdor had great hot-take-perspectives on the Space Marine "project", but was still pointless in the end...but I digress and digress...you see how awesome the 30k lore discussion is, right? Right?) 

This brings me to The Emperor himself here, and your fantastic realization of that particular entity/character. "The Emperor" in 30k/40k is one of those lore concepts that are, IMO, strongest when left to the imagination to the greatest extent possible (something the assorted authors of the sprawling Horus Heresy series struggled with). I love how you have him here - not only is the acrylic liquid water a cool little hobby triumph on its own, but what a clever way for him to remain "present yet hazy", even in his giant Saturnine armour. The decision to keep the armour itself relatively unadorned adds to this effect. When portrayed in art/propaganda of the setting, of course The Emperor would be all golden bits and crafted eagles etc, but here, in his "work clothes", it is just right. It is all amazing - it "lands" just perfectly to me!

As an aside...how did you approach the pelts? Asking for a friend...

For scoring, I will rate the Thunder Warrior at 54mm. Your proposal for The Emperor is just fine, I will bump this up to a total of 130 points, just on the basis of the acrylic water (!) in addition to general amazing-ness. Really, really awesome dude - thanks!

GregB