Rogue Quest Level 10: The Cleric - Mama Gijón

I've gone on record as saying that the Astropath archetype is my favourite element from the Warhammer 40,000 universe - the whole concept of blind psykers, holding the Imperium together rather presses my buttons. If you're a long time reader of the blog, it's probably apparent that I do like Astropaths - I've painted a few to date!

It was therefore inconceivable to me that I should build my Rogue Quest party without its own Astropath. Astropaths share some similarities to Clerics (monastic clothing, staffs topped with the icons of their faith/order), so it followed suit that my Astropath would represent the Cleric archetype.

Mama Gijón became an Astropath as a young woman. Her particular skill lies in the comprehension and sifting of layers of meaning, often hidden in complex astropathic communications. Now, as a bent old woman, Mama Gijón finds herself accompanying strangers on a quest through strange places. Her homeworld has been destroyed, yet her exotic blue-furred pet, Beyni provides a comforting reminder of home.

Mama Gijón is loosely based on the morally-suspect Moma Parsheen character from Ian Watson's Inquisition War trilogy:

"The Prime Astropath of Stalinvast was a small, thin, dark-skinned woman. And she was old, antique. Deep lines grooved her prune of a face. Her hair which shone so brightly red, must really be purest white...Glowing eyes opened. Sharp small claws flexed. She toyed with an animal, which must be her companion. The creature looked both voluptuous and savage. Would it defend its mistress fiercely? 'What is that?' whispered Jaq. 'It's called a cat,' Meh'Lindi told him." (Draco, Ian Watson)

In the navy - Fleet officers of the Imperium

I find variety helps with keeping up the pace of painting figures. Sometimes this means pulling out some figures to paint for no rhyme or reason other than because I like them. And that's why I painted my most recent pair of figures - because I fancied it!

The Imperial Navy has long an integral part of the 40k universe, particularly relating to the ship-to-ship space battle games of Spacefleet and Battlefleet Gothic. Unfortunately, Imperial Navy figures have been sadly underrepresented in 28mm figure form, with the singular exception of the Officer of the Fleet from the Imperial Guard Regimental Advisors set.

Imperial Naval Officer concepts by Jes Goodwin for the Spacefleet game.

Rogue Quest Level 8: The Magic User - Dwight Jelton

 

Last week in our ongoing 'Rogue Quest' project, JB posted a very nice looking barbarian. His interpretation played up to the archetype really nicely. For my fourth member of my adventuring party, I wanted to get my magic user sorted. JB has already visited the magic user archetype with his creepy blue-eyed psyker, and I confess I've ploughed the same furrow by selecting a 40k psyker figure.

 

It was about time that I painted up one of the Marauder Confrontation Psyker gangers, so this seemed like the ideal opportunity. I selected my favourite of the four (third from left in the image below).

 

Marauder Confrontation Psyker gangers. Pic from Stuff of Legends.

Sometimes girls go for the short guy - ratling genestealer hybrid

Back at the end of October, a painting and modelling competition was launched over at the Father's Hall Facebook group (home to all things relating to genestealers and their romantic associations with the human race). Between now and the end of November, participants are being invited to make and paint a new genestealer hybrid. The rules of the competition are:

 

1. Submit a finished hybrid, any generation, any race.
2. Post images of the model prior to priming and once finished. All models must be new work from the start of the competition.

I've been slowly collecting enough genestealer hybrids to make a small force at some point in the future, and the competition seemed like good motivation to make and paint a hybrid in a test colour scheme for the future force. And then I read the rules again: "any generation, any race."

 

I thought, 'I wonder if I could make a ratling genestealer hybrid....?'

 

Holding that thought, I hit ebay and snaffled this cool little fella - a weird pre-slotta halfing oni demon (he later had his horns removed and a slotta-tag added, becoming an Oriental Halfling):