From GregB: Espern Locarno, Imperial Navigator (60 Points)

Espern Locarno, Imperial Navigator - 28mm figure for GW's 40k Universe. He could be yours!

Hello again and welcome everyone - so sorry to be late to joining this edition of the Challenge, but I had a great opportunity to spend Christmas at our cabin on Lake Superior, visiting with family and keeping warm by the woodstove.  This was just perfect for relaxing, enjoying food and drink, and visiting, but not so ideal for painting, so hobbies took a back seat for a couple of weeks.

My first entry is modest, but is intended to accomplish a number of things at once - to obtain a landfall on "Challenge Island" and to provide an "entry fee".  Thus I submit Espern Locarno, Imperial Navigator, a character from the GW game "Blackstone Fortress".  Why paint this guy? Well, he looks pretty cool. Plus, I loved his description..."if you are looking to support your friends and manipulate your opponents, Espern Locarno is the explorer for you."   As someone who has a career in public affairs, this particular description really spoke to me :)

The shores of Lake Superior at Christmas, 2019.

And I generally love the characters of the Navigators in GW's 30k/40k setting. Essential for warp travel, the Navigators are important and influential in the 40k universe. Your Empire can't span the galaxy after all, unless your starships can travel through space.  It's nice that The Emperor can sit and rot away for eternity on his Golden Throne, but everything from His greatest battleships to his lowliest cargo lugs will require one of these pin-headed Navigators to get from point A to point B. 

Life it good when you can wear an outfit like this on your head...

The Navigators realize this.  And while they cannot challenge the Emperor, they still know they are part of the glue that holds the terrible and terrifying Imperium of the grim and dark future together. Insufferable, arrogant, entitled and required to be literally disconnected from reality as a core part of performing their work (steering a starship through the warp i.e. not-reality), the Navigators have always been fun symbols of the 40k universe. And as with many good science fiction symbols, for me, they also reflect much about our present...

Need to have some kind of respirator of course, just to ensure you air is better than anyone else's...and you need a skull on your cloak because 40k.

The Navigators also are a very clear sign of the influence that Frank Herbert's "Dune" universe had on the design of the original Warhammer 40k setting. Anyone who has read those books will no doubt see the many parallels. Oddly, the GW's writers these days seem to also be having their Titan commanders seem more and more like the "Dune" navigators as well, which I don't like so much...but I'll leave that blather about that some other time. 

"What do you mean I am just some kind of 'entry fee' - this is an outrage!"

As with "Dune", in 30k/40k the Navigators themselves are seldom seen on a battlefield, so there are not many figures representing them.  While I was not interested in "Blackstone Fortress" myself, I did go out of my way to track down one of these figures so I could paint one up.  The GW sculptor hit things out of the park with this figure - a perfect rendition of a whackadoodle Navigator.  He oozes arrogance, technical competence and a smug inability to grasp his own vulnerability, knowing there will always be someone at his beck and call to take care of things.

I'm hoping this submission will grant me landfall at "Reidy's Reef" - I know he's no age-of-sail model for sure, but I tried to have an aquatic colour palette on this guy, and I'm hoping a "ship is a ship" - even if it is a space ship.  So, assuming the naval figure gods show mercy, in terms of points, it will be 5 points for the 28mm figure, 30 points for the spot on "Challenge Island", and whatever bonus points one gets for providing the entry fee (perhaps that is zero...I admit I have lost track of things like this over some hectic recent weeks of travel).

And, as Curt has stipulated, as Challenge participants we are called to provide a prize figure...I think - or at least hope - that Espern here will make fine addition to some Challenger's collection.  Furthermore, given that I have been humbled by the honour of having a "Challenge Island" location allocated in my name, I would ask that Curt award Espern to a Challenger who successfully navigates "Burch's Bluffs"...so there you have it - Espern Locarno could be yours!

Well done to everyone for all of the great entries so far. The 10th Edition is shaping up to be one of the finest yet, looking forward to sharing the painting fun with all of you over the next few months. Cheers!

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First, welcome back to the Challenge, Greg! It's great to have you in the mosh pit again AND, as an extra bonus, your entry puts us over the half-way mark for entries from our 68 participants. Not bad for the first eight days!

Oooh, your Espern Locarno is rather fabulous. This figure alone tempts me to purchase the entire Blackstone Fortress boxed set. I like the colour scheme you went with for him - it's all wonderfully baroque, something I think Sarah would call 'Shabby-Chic', or in Espern's case, 'Shabby-Psyker-Chic'. 

As we discussed earlier, I have to smile at your description of the Navigators in 40K as they are, as you point out, shamelessly ripped off from the Navigator guilds from 'Dune'. I continue to marvel at the sheer moxy of GW's lawyers who litigate others for supposedly pilfering their IP when most of it is based on 20th century geek pop culture. But I digress. 

Mssr. Burch, you now have 60 points to mark your entry upon the field. Well done dude!