Hate all traitors…there is no disease that I spit on more than treachery.
Aechylus, Ancient Dramaturge.
Do you remember the days when a dreadnought was a centre piece to the army? When you’d read old white dwarf articles and there would be a Sargent with a lovingly crafted banner or a captain with a head swap?
I wanted to capture the essence of those times with this dreadnought. The #returntoisstvan project in our group is centurion based, which themselves are fan rules set attempting to recreate those classic 2nd armies where you’d see mainly infantry.
The Contemptor chassis is piloted by an unidentified legionnaire. The legend prefix simply denoting it as Verecundian Aeternam. It was a common practice within the XVI to entomb disgraced Astartes within dreadnoughts, dishonoring the dead with eternal servitude as punishment for a discretion. What that was, or what would become of this machine post-Isstvan is lost to the tides of history.
I wanted the base to tell a story. The Horus Heresy is full of these wonderful vignettes. Small, incidental stories that contextualize the models. Here I had the idea to have a legionnaire reach for a melta bomb as the dreadnought casually crushes him underfoot. I want you to question, what will kill the legionnaire first? The dreadnought, or the inch of water beneath his cracked helmet he is being forced into? Will he manage to get the melta bomb?
The base of this piece came from the imperious Unreal Wargaming Bases with custom 3-D printed parts. If you are interested to see its construction and painting there will be a full tutorial coming in the Advent Calendar releases on Patreon.
