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"How can a mere mortal man compare to the Emperor's finest?"
"Truly, a single stone cast on its own may but blemish the flesh, but a thousand such stones, given purpose and direction, attest differently."

Seven years removed from the hobby, I finally decided to make my return now that college is finished and I have full time employment. I've always been drawn to the fluff and modelling aspects of 40l, so this force is going to primarily play to my interests (however odd they may be). Tzneentch has held my fascination out of all of the chaos powers. It could be because I'm somewhat of an intellectual-type, but it could just because of the color blue.

For this army, I wanted to make a "count-as" Thousand Sons army, allowing me the freedom to choose my models and make my own story. I began by envisioning a rogue group of once loyal Librarians, drawn to the forbidden knowledge of the Rubric of Ahriman and of the Eldar's spirit stones for preserving/collecting life. Early experiments began with placing the souls of some of the strongest humans, felled in combat, into the shell of ritually prepared armour former in use by a Space Marine. What they found however, was that even the souls of the strongest of warriors could not fully drive armour intended for hyper genetically enhanced human warriors. A remedy to this problem was found however, that by placing countless souls into a single suit of armour, that they could become an effective warrior, albeit with reduced responses due to the time required to collectively focus so many independent souls (slow & purposeful).

The end goal is to create force led by rogue Librarians (Chaos Sorcerers), with support from golem automaton esqu space marines (Thousand Sons count-as), and a large backing of cultists that strive to prove themselves worthy to become one with their fellow warriors by joining them in spirit.

To begin, I used my ebay skills to hunt down some Space Marines for cheap. I wanted a more rag-tag feel for the group, collecting old suits of armour and reusing them for their own majicks, so I figured I would try and get a variety of different Space Marine models ranging from loyalist to chaos and paint them up as rusted spirit infused automatons.
First purchase was a small tactical squad previously painted up to what I guess was either Red Corsairs or Blood Angles.


Quick dip in some green juice.....




No more paint, and as a bonus, some of the glue wore off too, allowing me to rework/touch-up the model's placement.
Now begins the more interesting part, I haven't painted a model in over seven years. I'd like to think I was an "ok" painter before, but I wasn't sure how things would turn out. I wanted a simple scheme that could be painted without too much effort per model (at least for troops) and gave the rusted look I was trying to achieve. A few youtube videos and internet articles later, this resulted....




Next up is to provide a few accents to make the models stand out. I want to do some OSL for the eyes to help drive home the fact that these aren't "normal" Marines along with adding some runes/glyphs. Probably going to be blue to match the scheme of the Librarians and lend a slight Tzeentch theme.
Small preview of what is to come....


Really drawn to some of the older models, they just have this certain "feel" to them that I'm drawn to.

If you read all of this, I tip my (figurative) fedora to you. Wish I could give you a beer or cookie, but I still haven't found out how to send one via email yet.

object source lighting on the eyes, pretty happy with how they turned out for my first attempt.

good work on the eyes, but i would convert and kit bash the models first..as those 2 dudes are clearly loyalist space marines. they need to be given them a chaos identity. the purity seals need to go for definate, and modifications to their armour and weapons, for a start.