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Hi

Wall of Neurotic text incoming. Grab a coffee, grab a beer, whatever gets you through my nonsense.

So I managed to get my hands on a Dark Vengeance Interrogator Chaplain, and I want to make him the standard bearer for my Black Templars Honor Guard (gonna use the 'Masters of the Chapter' models for the rest of the guard), not insubstantially influenced by this guy's chaplain:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/38395113@N02/9762208151/in/photolist-fSDSnD-GL5FiU-qVjTcL-bYY5iu-s51mZp-qiyuBm-bYY5Dh-gDTfkT-bPpBAp-fshHKe-hxvs3c-bAuEw7-bPpisM-bAuDmm-ckj77u-bPpwAr-asUKSP-bAuF9y-cS14zQ-fshHTt-brmqDY-cJP6T9-bEgmdT-bvJiww-bAvZGW-dmEPVm-dCuumn-r18HKa-fau4rs-9LfPc2-fTV6MP-bEgmbP-brmqFC-bPqDFg-fTW6dW-brmqCY-fTV4E2-gDTfkH-cJP7fS-joXopX-gDTfjR-6sRDV5-c3ZCvo-gDTfkc-gDTfmp-fDqVb4-ipYaRk-edpLBW-qR7cRx-fSEVDS

But I have a number of problems, and would be super appreciative of the advice of anyone who has more experience guiding my shaky, novice hands.
First up is nice and simple. Which head to you prefer? I'm keen to templar him up, but at the same time, bare head fits with the rest of the honor guards.

But lets get weird and maybe more complicated than is necessary. As you can see, the dude has a big ol' Dark Angels insignia on the back of his cape. I'm going to try and sand that off.
He's also got stuff on his left shoulder pad. If I want to get a similar effect to Duncan McGregor, who swaps out the molded DA pad for a different templar pad, what should I do? just lop the whole arm off (power sword is just blu-tacked on rn)? try to just cut off the shoulder pad? or try to sand the pad down until I can just glue a new pad on top? the plastic looks like its solid the whole way through on that bit of the model.

Next up is the issue of his crozius arm. The way the arm itself is angled seems to fit near-perfectly with the banner. And I want to say just whack off the hand and get gluing. This should work fine, right? RIGHT???
Not all that keen on the skull on the shoulder pad though. Is it worth trying to sand that down too? It's hollow, so I'm limited by that.
Thankfully, the crozius arm is a separate part, but I think it's currently the one with the best angle to hold the banner without obscuring the mini. I have plenty of arms that I could substitute though, and get a nice angle with greenstuff, thus skipping the entire shoulder pad dilemma on that arm. Worth it?

Also to make things even more unnecessarily hard for myself, and now you too, I sort of want to save as much of the crozius as I can because I'm probably going to make a biker chaplain at some point, so please consider that in your suggestions. Unless your suggestion is telling me to get fethed, because I imagine it will probs be slightly less considerate of the intricacies of this particular conversion.

Thanks so much if you've mad it this far, really appreciate all yer help!

Looks like Dakka cut off the photos of the heads (my fault, think these files are a tad too big. Soz, new phone, still learning)

The skull pad would be easy enough to get flat, shave as much as you can of the detail off with a sharp knife and then file down to get a smooth surface.

If you have a suitable replacement arm then I say that'd be the easiest way to get around the DA pad, the alternative if you like the pose and don't have a replacement is to go full Templar ad stick a whopping great parchment over the whole thing (very easy to sculpt, or you probably have dozens in yours bits box). One big sheet and a couple of purity seals and you'd be able to cover most of the DA symbols.