Saturday 14 September 2024

The Solar Watch - part 4.



High in geosynchronous orbit above the Imperial Palace, the cruiser 'Incarnadine Angel' hung like a predator of the void, held as it was amongst the bustling space lanes of the Throneworld. Huge whaleships of pilgrims jostled for space with the bulktraders of the Administratum, and threaded through with the patrol vessels of Battle fleet Solar. Sleek and dangerous, the 'Incarnadine Angel' bore the colours of the Solar Watch and the heraldry of the Talons of the Emperor, it's engines dark and lifeless for the moment.

On the bridge, the crew worked at their stations relaying information from their servitor machines and calling out flight paths of passing ships. The two hulking figures stood on the command diss tuned all this background noise out and watched intently upon their own data streams within their helmets.

Far below, the Allarus Terminators and Blade-Champion Desh were dealing with a corrupt ritual. The closest to the Imperial Palace for seven thousand years and the rest of the force was on standby in the Teleportarium.

Custodian-Vexilla Castivar Sanish reviewed the reports again, the numbers, the details were what mattered. Questions of how this had happened would come, but the priority was stopping the heretics and killing the cult from the head.

At his side Custodian-Serjant Gallimadean Calax suddenly stood up straight. He had been reviewing the same data streams as Sanish, noting the efficiency of the Terminators and that the cultists were all but destroyed in a matter of moments, when a vox-link had been pushed through on a secure channel.
Calax had reacted first to this and accessed the vox before patching Sanish into the link.

"This is Yor'Tar Dawne, Solar Watch respond" the faint crackle sounded in their helmets.
The second Blade-Champion of their cohort was calling, he had been called away on a long sweep of the Solar System and wouldn't have voxed through out of schedule if it wasn't important.

"Serjant Calax responding, report Blade-Champion, where are you?".

"Mercury, we have a problem. You are destroying some heretics on Terra correct?"

"Remember security protocols, that is not the subject for discussion over vox!" Castivar Sanish spat with venom, loathing the lack of security protocols.

"We don't have time, they belong to the Cult of the Eye, their leader Herath has just translated through a warp portal and rouses the masses here. We need the cohort to respond to the Mercury Command Hive, I'll do what I can and shunt a data-packet with what intelligence I have gathered, but I fear the upper reaches of the hive may be lost to corruption before we respond in force" a blast over the vox knocked out the signal.

Sanish and Calax looked at one another, then without saying a word broke away.
Sanish leaving the bridge to rouse the Shield-Captain from his training meditations and Calax calling out orders to recall all planetside units from their cohort, to bring the engines up to power and to plot a course to Mercury in as little a time as possible.

The race to Mercury, the race to stop the heretics and the race to support Blade-Champion Yor'Tar Dawne we're all just beginning...

*****

After a hobby break over the school summer holidays, and after finishing the previous Armoured Car, I have now managed to sit down and a nice painting session with these three characters from the Solar Watch army.

The first is the second Blade-Champion of the force, this time dual wielding his weapons:

He follows much the same as the previous Blade-Champion, I unconsciously followed the previous model and painted his cloak the deep red, when I had originally wanted to do this one black instead for some variation.

The biggest divergence is that he is bare headed. When I got the army from Fraser to paint, every model apart from the Shield-Captain had a helmet on and it looked odd for just that one model to be bareheaded.
So a pair of clippers and a little leverage cleared off some helmets and allowed me to replace them with Custodian bare heads.

The fleshtones add some painting variance into what becomes an essay in details as you have the work on the embossed filigree of the armour panels as you work around them.

In this case it is Cadian Fleshtone with a wash of Earthshade, a highlight with Cadian and then a wash of Riekland Flesh shade to finish.

Here he is next to the previous Blade-Champion:

The second character I finished off was this Vexilla:

I really like the imperious pose on this model, with the Vexilla held high for all to see.
Again it was just a case of sticking with the base palette of colours and working from there, no need to introduce extra colours into the scheme as it would just look messy then.

Lastly I finished off this Custodian Guard:

Another model down from the army, I know that Custodes don't have particular unit leaders, but this is the one featured in the story text above.
He follows all the usual colour scheme for the army and will be accompanied by a unit in due course.

With these three done, it brings the total count to:

To do:
  • Shield-Captain 
  • 8 Custodian Guard
  • 3 Allarus Terminators 
  • 6 Venatari
Done:
  • 2 Sword-Champions
  • Vexilla
  • 6 Custodian Guard 
  • 3 Allarus Terminators 
Twelve models down, Eighteen to go, I am planning on visiting Warhammer World at the end of the month (27th September) so am thinking of taking whatever I've gotten finished with me and getting a few photos on one of their lovely modelled terrain tables if they're free at the time.

Anyway, Until next time, have nice day...

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