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Among the many recently (in In imperial terms anyway) recontacted human cultures are the worlds of Oyashima Nihon. The people of Nihon-among-the-stars, as they styled it, appeared to preserve the culture of a small island culture on ancient Terra known variously as Japan, Nippon, or Cengu. The original colonists had departed earth by sub light travel at the behest of what is believed to be one of the first alpha grade human psykers - a woman who came to be called Ameratsu. Their journey took more than 20 thousand years, Terran subjective time. Ameratsu's visions had led them truly, and they found at the end of their long journey a cluster of eight worlds, the Oyashima. Other, faster human travelers had overtaken them and the sector was not uninhabited, but they were able to lay claim to the cluster. Many thousands of years later, the Great Crusade reached them. The Nihon had retained more technology than most human worlds, and were early converts to the cult of Mars, though in through their own cultural lens. Following the Horus Heresy, the Nihon closed their worlds to all but a few Mechanicum pilgrimages, focusing on developing their society and technology in isolation, believing that this would protect them from the corruption of Chaos. Over time, imperial missionaries strove to open the Oyahsima cluster to the Imperium - most received a elaborate execution for their trouble, but a few were successful, and implanted the idea of the God Emperor in the minds of the Nihon. They were culturally disposed to this in any event, and soon a fractious nobility ruled "in the Emperor's name".

I'm reactivating my Samurai Inquisition project with new fluff, and lots of new units. More to come!

interesting take on things will follow this fairly closely so far your two models look very interesting.

The Rogue trader Perry Calvamantus succeeded in opening the Oyashima to imperial trade several hundred years before present though a mix of diplomacy and force. Nearby imperial systems benefited from purchase of advanced Nihon tech at first - the Nihon having particular expertise in advanced fabrics and materials, Void engineering, bio engineering, the crafting of machine spirits, and the making of plasma weaponry, as well as many other areas. Soon however it became clear that this was not without cost, for the Nihon proved to be agressive and expansionistic. They soon came into conflict with the other regional human powers, particularly the Valarians.

The Nihon are ruled by a shogun who may be from any one of three dozen noble families. The shogun controls the army, which consists of PDF forces modelled on the imperial guard. However, the Nihon regard the Navy as the decisive arm, and the Navy is controlled by the noble families. The Nihon possessed a significant ship building capability even in their Pre-Imperial period, and that capability has enabled them to field an impressive fleet of home grown designs. Each ship is captained by a member of one of the noble families, and includes an impressive ground and air combat force. Though the Nihon like to claim that their ships are part of the "Imperial Fleet", this is a polite fiction. In fact the fleet is the private military of the nobility. This has not kept it from being a highly effective force. The fleet, unlike the PDF, is in a near constant state of alert, constantly involved in exploration, intercene skirmishes, meddling in the affairs of neighboring systems, and the protection of the far flung Nihon colonies. its personel are superbly armed and equipped, and its officers are the creme of the nobility.

Landing party of Armed Retainers of INS (Imperial Nihon Ship) Mikasa, Lord Nakamura Jhao commanding:

where did you get those samurais from?

Urban war triads. Nice figures!

First up, two psykers (Urban War Triad Kabuki). I am planning on using the Grey Knight codex henchmen, and running plenty of psykers, so I will need more (at least one per henchman unit). Urban war makes a few more similar figures, but I may use something else.





Next up are Arco Flagellents - I'll be using Urban war sumatori bodyguards.



Here are the Death Cult Assassins I have so far. Some Urban War Triads without their wings, some DC heroes click figs. I am thinking of adding the red spikes to all of them, or at least most of them.

Now we have Void Born Nezumi Armsmen. Smaller than their terrestrial counterparts, the Void born Nihon are referred to as "Nezumi", meaning "Rat" after the opportunistic scavengers that accompanied the Nihon to the stars. Though the term Nezumi is not entirely negative (the Nihon admire tenacity and adaptability), Void Born are somewhat lower status than planetary Nihon, generally restricted from positions of command and rarely receiving much advanced training. They do however form about a third of most ship crews, and thus are included in most planetary landing parties.



Like most people working with Wargame's factory plastics in 40K I did struggle with the scale a bit - their torsos scale nicely with 40K, but their arms and legs, and particularly the hands, are much smaller. This makes it very hard for them to hold a 40K weapon without looking silly. I cut down the lasguns to make them fit a bit better (and so they would look more like bolters),and had to sculpt the plasma rifles from scratch. I had planned on using the muskets that came with them, however they were about the thickness of a tyranid flesh hook, and thus looked waaay too small to use.



I'm in a bit of a quandary as to what colors to paint them. If I use the same red and brown as my other Armsmen, it will be easy to mix and match and build whatever squads I need to play a game. On the other hand, I want this army to be very colorful, and I'm a bit bored with the green/brown look. As they are sort of a separate caste, I could easily justify painting them differently. I'd like to some light blue and red or white, perhaps.

Additionally I'm in the process of building a storm raven out of bits. I ordered the basic hull, which you can get pretty cheap and am scratch building the rest. The goal is to turn this:



Into this:



Only a bit more angular and with an assault ramp on the front and a bubble turret on the top.

It's all good except for one thing... I don't like it how they are straight up based on ancient japan. It should just be a fluke that they are so similar. Or something, you can do better than that. I mean, honestly, it would be more likely that in 40000 years in the future (where there has been so much loss of knowlege) that there would be a fluke society similar to japan then there would be an actual society based off of japan. Any ways that what I think. Modeling is nice though, as well as painting.

To each their own fluff, I suppose. : ) I've been fascinated by the idea of people/cultures frozen in time by long space journeys.

I've more or less finished the first storm raven. Though it lacks the elegant grace of the terminator Hunter Killer, I do like it better than the stock stormraven. I may try to do the next one with wider spacing on the engines and longer tail uprights. Also mostly done is the" counts as Cortez", captain Tokuzoua. I do want to figure out how to do a robotic Chinese dragon to represent the psyber eagle.

The army is more or less done for now anyway - though I got a new fig to paint for x-mss (a Mishima dude), and the bases need work. Second Stormraven done:







Two HQs - Counts as Cortez and Crow. Might do a few more power armored Samurai, as Insurgency Walker gave me more of the heads.



Other Characters:



Obligatory Jokero



Psykers



Assassins



Army in Full:

Did a few more bits and bobs for this army....






Dust Tactics flyer (Der Blitz I think). Got it for $12 in a miniature market sale, wish I'd bought 2 to cover my storm ravens. I didn't realize it came mostly assembled. Don't love that - it feels like some of the fun part is already done as I like assembly more than painting. Still, it made it a quick project. Couldn't decide between laser cannons and missiles, decided to leave them as options for now, though they don't stay on very well. It is a very nice vehicle though. Two twin link heavy stubbers and two missiles or two lascannons seems like a pretty good loadout for a light 40K flyer.



Got this guy in a random lot. Not sure where he is from, but he fits in.



With a plasma servitor.



Someday I'm going to do this as a 40K bastion w/heavy bolters....

A few new items for this project:



Objective markers/table garnish. My dad got me these long ago from a museum gift shop IIRC.



The air force expands! I remounted the Dust fliers on transparent bases the same size as GW's for playing the new Flyer game. Worked very well, I will probably do all flyers that way going forward. I really like the Ground Attack version - I think I will get one more to finish the set.





Although I really like the nose art on this one I would like to do the A-10 predator look on the next one.



The other air superiority fighter. Rooster is from a set of veni vedi victi water slide transfers, I think.

Really cool work! Very neat theme and unlike anything I've seen around.

Nice theme for the army, it's looking really cool.

EDC

Really great collection here. Lots of character and style on display, and you're no slouch with a paint brush too! Really excellent work all round.

Gambatte ne, kestral-san! Well done!

This is a nifty project. I look forward to seeing you progress through it.

Thanks all - I'm glad to give a little back to Dakka for all it has done for me. : )

Glad you like the Storm Ravens - as a bonus they only cost $12 each because you could get the basic hull pieces for that much from bits sites at the time.

I do hope to do a little more with this - some of the troops are only speed painted and could use more love. Another ground attack flyer is probably inevitable. I'd like to redo the first storm raven into the pattern of the 2nd.

A few more bits from Urban war would be nice. I like the Dystopia wars Japanese models, but they are out of scale and very steampunk, where I've been more on the high tech side for this project.

We'll have to see what the new Warzone puts out. Nothing has really grabbed me yet, but we'll see.

Sadly, the demise of this army as a playable force doesn't help.

You may know of the Perry Brothers range of 28mm samurai. They might do as a source of parts now that the Wargames Factory plastic ashigaru and samurai are gone.