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I am trying to find some better pictures but heres the gist of it,

The model is titled Librarian with scroll, its from 1989, it has 3 small circles on its left leg, one is an eye, one is a stick figure bird, and one is the worst looking skull ever.






So my question is what are they? maybe purity seals without paper? mutations (the eye at least)? some other option?

Wow that is one ugly paint job.

Yea but its the only photo that was large enough to see the eye thing.


I own the top one, nice and clean I am just stuck on how to paint the random circles.

it's what you get when you look at one of the original 40k marine sculpts with the knowledge of 20 years of fluff and 40k history that the sculptor didn't have, lol. the eye is usually associated with tzeentch and the warp so seeing it on a librarian is no shock.

I am considering painting it as a real eye coming out of a whole in the power armor, since I am doing souldrinkers its not to much of a problem.

The other thought was to make it a purity seal and ad a bit of paper to it.


what do you think would look best?

Considering that Librarians are "good" Psykers of Chaos as a whole, I'm not surprised at what I am seeing.

-J.

The eye is there because the emperor is watching... with the librarians leg.

You know, in the second spacehulk expansion, they had four coulours of psychic attacks. They were sybolised by a three armed lightning bolt, one a three eyed skull (or just the middle, eye of the warp, eye) The grim reaper and the eightpointed star. Could it be that?

Maybe the stick figure bird is a lightning bolt....


Bah I am just about ready to file them off! I just really hate to see antiques damaged...

I think you're reading too much into what are probably just the result of the modeller thinking "hey, got some free leg space here... medics get blood drops, what do I do for Librarians..."

Call it Artificier armour and be done with it

Looking at mine, the stick bird one just seems to be a normal imperial eagle but with a skull in place of the double head. No idea why though..

Love this sculpt though, the psychic hood is fantastic.

The iconography wasn't too set until 2nd edition. For a long time tech marines were symbolized by a big claw, and librarians a horned skull.

There was lots of art with Slanneshi daemons holding khorne banners and so on.

Eyes are old symbols of magic and psychics so it makes sense to put it on.

Well the way I see it, if you like them leave them. If they bug you file it off. I wouldnt see it as damaging the mini. Cmon it looks goofy!

I dont know much about the early sculpts but i think it might have been meant to be the eye of terra(as in the emperor's eye, not the huge warp rift)all the primarchs had the eye on their armour, so maybe librarians did too.

I own one of those librarians - I always assumed that those were amulets of protection and such fused to his armor. In the RT fluff, pre-batte rituals often involved meditating on these amulets and other icons (one story had a Warlord princeps hold the skull of his predicessor to help him fall into his mindlink with his titan).

I just painted them like purity seals, I also started a P&M blog so if you want to see pictures check there.

warboss wrote:it's what you get when you look at one of the original 40k marine sculpts with the knowledge of 20 years of fluff and 40k history that the sculptor didn't have, lol. the eye is usually associated with tzeentch and the warp so seeing it on a librarian is no shock.

The Eye used to be the standard symbol for Psyker- it was not only found on Chaos sorcerers, but also on Imperial Guard Psykers and some of the other adepts.

As for the two circles, I can only suspect that they are also insignias for him. They probably would be symbols designating campaigns that he has taken part in (we see this librarian has at least three significant campaigns under his belt).