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Hi,

After years of lurking and being inspired by everyone's amazing projects I've finally decided to share what I've been working on. I was really in WH40k in high school (back in the 90s!) but I stopped when I went to College. About two years ago I bought some Death Company, Empire state troops, and Empire Flagellants, and I'm totally hooked on modeling again.

I've been a huge fan of the Inquisimunda style projects and so decided to start with a group of Imperial henchmen types. I couldn't think of any fresh angle on the Inquisition or Mechanicus but thought there was room in the background to explore the Navigators. I thought they were always a bit under-developed in the fluff, but could occupy an interesting position of power somewhat apart from the Imperium at large (like the Mechanicus, the Imperium would grind to a halt without them). So I decided to make my henchmen in the service of a powerful and as yet un-named Navigator household.

Although I will probably not start gaming again any time soon (I barely have enough time for modeling) it's still fun constructing this force within the limitations of a counts-as army list — as you might expect, a Coteaz-led GK army list.

I've got many more henchmen in various stages that I need to photograph, as well as two navigators that I'll post momentarily. Soon I'll post what I'm in the middle of building right now, an extremely converted counts-as dreadknight, and eventually I want to share my half-finished scratch-built drop ship (storm raven).

Sorry about the poor photos and the messy paint! I've always been more into converting ...

Sorry for all the edits — still getting used to the forum technology.

Instead of the traditional Navigator look (mostly gangly bald men in robes) I wanted something more mysterious.

I like to think of these Navigators as being incredibly wealthy, funded by millennia of lucrative shipping contracts and deals. A powerful Navigator house with particularly talented family members would be in great demand, and by offering their services to powerful members of the Imperium and Mechanicum, could preserve a degree of autonomy and independence. In addition to the wealth to hire any manner of exotic mercenary and household staff, they could easily possess priceless arceotech artifacts, retrofitted and repurposed remnants of the dark age of technology.

At the same time, I imagine them as being intensely paranoid, only leaving their palace-ships in entirely enclosing arceotech void suits. Is it to hide their hideously inhuman mutated forms? Or merely an abundance of caution, preserving their valuable lives at all costs.

Basically, that's my fluff explanation for building these count-as terminator armor suits for my navigators. They would count as Inquisitors in terminator armor (with divination powers; I know Navigators are not psychic in the usual sense, but it seems an appropriate way to represent their uncanny ability to peer directly into the warp) or even as solo Paladins.

Very cool, good idea to take something no-one else is doing and make it your own. Terminator Navigators, who'd have thought it?

My jaw dropped when I saw those suits. Your navigators are just lovely, but those suits .... They are inspired! Beautiful work.

Thanks! I love both of your stuff!

The suits took a long time to come together and the first one was actually built on top of an aborted attempt at a true-scale marine. I'll try to take some better photos this weekend and maybe host them somewhere else so they don't get so compressed.

And I still can't decide if the second navigator suit should be the same color or something else. Cosmonaut orange? Astronaut white? That may depend on the color of the "dreadknight", which will be my third navigator, piloting a much larger void suit ...

Great looking minis and have to agree with the others your navigators look awesome. Mysterious and intimidating.

I'm looking at this on my phone, never the best option but from what i can see the henchman are ace. I am looking forward to looking again on a computer

The navigators are unique and thats always a challenge. Nice idea, especially the helmets, and the painted one looks really good.

Wow! Absolutly MINDBLOWING! The big guys are pure madness! Love them very much!

What a fantastic idea for the navigators. They are really different in shape and size to everything else. Great painting on them all too!

Amazing conversions. Subscribed.

Interesting..very interesting Nice looking henchman, and great spin on the navigators.

Thanks everybody!

I managed to take some better photos. Still not perfect but you can at least see what's going on this time. The henchmen and Coteaz stand in (House Magister will be his title I think) were the first miniatures I'd painted in 12 or so years and I kept changing my mind about color schemes, so they ended up pretty caked in paint and sloppy. I also worked over a black undercoat, like I used to. I switched to white for the navigator which was a challenge at first but I think worked out much better. And I just got my hands on grey primer which I'm really excited to try soon.

Brilliantly looking gothic and wyrd. The suits are exceptional examples of jiggery pokery.

The new photos really show your work off. I'm in awe of your imagination, there are so many great ideas in these miniatures.

Beautiful!!

I'm so glad PDH pointed me towards this thread! Amazing work so far! The exo-suits are something truly original, and the henchmen have just the right amount of demented grimdark charm.
Also, don't beat yourself up over those paintjobs, because they are really great as well. These guys are completely 40k in their eclectic strangeness, but they are also quite special.

Instantly subscribed. Looking forward to your next update!

These are insanely brilliant! Great combinations of parts and some lovely painting too!

You are a kitbashing madman and I absolutely love it. Great work all around, and I really like the mad-scientist feel of the Navigator suits.

One of the coolest minis I've seen in a while. Great work!

Excellent stuff.

Really inspired work throughout. Those suits look phenomenal.

Brilliant stuff!

Outstanding!

Great imagination and bits box usage mate.

Wow, thanks everyone! I really appreciate it, especially coming from so many of you who inspired me in the first place.

I've got a few more unpainted conversions to share.

First, an old death cult assassin I built at the same time as the sniper, but never managed to quite finish. He's also built from an Empire state troop, which taxed my limited green-stuff abilities. The face would be painted as a death mask (it's the front of a space marine's bare face grafted onto a flagellant's head — the BA death masks were just too large for his small frame). Since then I've come up with a more interesting idea for death cultists — Abhuman Murder Cultists, who believe that their mutations are signs of sin, that can only be redeemed by killing in the name of the Emperor. So this cultist will probably end up as the base-line human overseer of a band of varied abhumans.

Then some newer conversions. A second servitor, this time with a non-standard pattern heavy plasma gun. I will probably try to sculpt a more traditional plasma barrel around the jetpack exhaust nozzle. And of course, add lots of wires. In time I may upgrade the first servitor's bolter to a matching heavy plasma gun.

And finally some Battlefield-Assistance Drones: esoteric and ancient pieces of technology that mount variable-field high-energy las weaponry. The household's Mechanicus liaison affirms that they are not heretical thinking machines, but driven by internal biological cogitator units and are merely glorified walking servo skulls, but the validity of this statement is unknown. The liaison now appears to include a number of similar drones in his personal coven. Counts-as Jokearoo of course. I have a lot of space marine torso back pieces so will probably make another of the Zentraedi pattern drone on the left.

Exciting lunacy! and I can't believe you're so dismissive of your painting skills, I'm certainly in awe.

subbing this man its awesome

Yes, glorious stuff. It captures the kind of medieval-meets-Mad-Max crazyawesome that was one of the best parts of the original Rogue Trader. And you took one of the lamest parts of RT, the idiot savant space monkeys, and made a great-looking and thematically appropriate counts-as.

What were the base models? I see you mentioned a lot of WHFB Empire troops, but I suspect there are many other things in the mix.

PS: abhumans atoning for their sin of being born by serving as suicide troops -- very grimdark. I've been toying with homebrew rules for exactly that, now in progress on my laptop.... I'll send you a link when I actually get it postable.

Awesome stuff. Those suits are fantastic - they look like the 40K equivalent of Titanfall suits! Exceptional converting.

Spoilered for size:

The suits would make great Thallax Cohort counts as. I might try building one...

EDIT: brillian stuff. I always loved navigators.