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I'm planning on making a true scale Word Bearers from the Battle of Calth. The idea is to model the characters Marduk and Burias from Dark Apostle/Dark Discipline from their time fighting the Ultramarines.

What I'm looking for are suggestions, comments, ideas, inspiration.

I'm not going for gaming mechanics, so I have full liberty when it comes to the wargear. However, I'm not 100% sure what kind of look/conversions I want to use to represent Heresy era Word Bearers. All red armour? Or some still with black? Chaotic? If so, how Chaotic? What kind of wargear?

Does Dark Discipline offer any more info on Burias and Marduk's pre Heresy stuff?

Plan so far:
-The squad will consist of five marines.
-Marduk will be a normal Marine at the time; Kol Badar was mentioned as being in the Legion for centuries longer than Marduk and was a sergeant when Lorgar just turned to Chaos. I assume that Marduk therefore was still new in the Legion, and not yet an officer.
-Burias: also a normal marine, but more aggressive (potential hints at his future possession), I like the idea of him having some close combat weapon, maybe a lightening claw.
-Officer: probably a sergeant or something. Thinking about giving him a power sword and a combi weapon. I have Azrael's hands lying around which I might use for that. However, plasma/bolter combi doesn't sound too fitting, might cut off the front part and add the front of the Sisters of Battle Canoness' combi flamer (how compatible are they?)
-Heavy weapon marine: Don't know if he should get a heavy bolter, missile launcher or something else.
-Other marine, probably just a bolter like Marduk. Any suggestions would be welcome.

So yeah...any ideas/suggestions/comments on the idea?

Nobody? :(

I haven't read Dark Apostle/Dark Discipline, but I would go for no noticeable chaos symbols on their armor yet. That said, it might be interesting to model them in a way that you could play them either as a regular SM army or a CSM army. Pre-Heresy they had a pretty cool chapter symbol of a book and a flame - maybe stick with that. This is the pic of the chapter symbol from 40k Lexicanum:



Personally, I could see a really neat red, white, and black color scheme. Maybe keep the armor loyalist, except for the backpacks - something like that.

I've been pondering about doing "gradations" of red. The officer would have totally red armour while the rest of the squad only have parts of their armour red (with the other parts dark grey).

I'm trying to keep the big chaos spikes, horns and backpacks out (or at least at a minimum). However, I do like the idea of small Chaos stars as little symbols on the weapons for example.

The armour (and backpacks) will be very much in the loyalist style, they will be based of the old plastic terminator models and upscaled to a mixture between Migsula's Legion and Apologist's Ultramarines. All marines, except Burias will wear helmets. His head will be based on the bare head from the Eldar Guardian sprue. Some might call it too small, I will have to see about that, but it kind of fits with the artwork from the Crimson Fist, especially since...well the normal Space Marines bare heads look huge compared to their helmets, those helmets are supposed to carry all sorts of gear in them and this beefy marine's skull.

As for the Legion symbol, that's still a hard one, I've seen a really nice and easy tutorial on B&C on how to do the current Word Bearers symbol. However, the flaming book is also very cool! Maybe I'll give the officer a banner on his backpack with the old design and the new symbol on the shoulder. The other shoulder will carry either unique symbols for each marine or other bits. I have been thinking about strapping a skeleton on one of those shoulderpads...