Inspired by this snippet of lore from 1988's White Dwarf 105 (in the article introducing the then-new original Land Raider), I decided Brother-Captain Fragman and the Star Leopards chapter - neither of whom were ever mentioned again, so far as I can find - deserved to make a comeback:
Since there's no canonical colour scheme for the Star Leopards, I decided to at least use something roughly contemporary to their debut, and went hunting in the old Space Hulk boxes under the stairs for one of my original Terminators - as you can see from the bits I didn't quite manage to properly cover (despite slopping the gloss black on ridiculously thick) I initially painted my Termis as Blood Angels before going back and just mucking around; based on the icon on the shoulder I think I was going for an original-black Dark Angel, and at the same time wanted to use the 'rocks floating in magma' pattern on the shoulder, which I guess I meant to do on the shin as well but never got around to it (I forget where that pattern's from, I feel like I saw it in a photo of some miniature somewhere). Anyway, the black and orange looked cool, so - ditching the magma pattern - I decided that's what Star Leopards look like. Initially I'd meant for Fragman to be part of the Empyrean Crusade (which I'd bought the starter set containing the mini for), so he'd have had a gold left arm, but after a bit of thinking I decided I'd like to just do the colour scheme as-is, and since he's from the Rogue Trader era he ended up here.
Since I've been doing worn paint on the crusade vehicles I tried to add a bit of silver damage to Fragman as well - normally I feel like infantry are too small and detail-heavy to benefit from a battle-damaged look unless they're supposed to look
really beaten up, whereas vehicles are big enough to need the extra visual interest and still have enough undamaged areas that adding a bit of paint chipping doesn't make the whole vehicle look like it's a wreck; from the tiny amount of lore I decided Fragman's constantly making honour-before-reason charges, so I drilled and cut a bunch of scars into his armour (but only on the front, Brother-Captain Fragman turns and runs from no-one), which also helped liven up the otherwise featureless left shin. The only other conversion work I did on him was to add a little book to his belt, from the assortment of accessories on the Intercessor sprue - I imagine "It is written!" is both his catchphrase and the reason for every unwise tactical decision he makes, so that's where it is written.
The orange turned out a bit more red than on the original Termi - that comes from the contrast I applied over the regular orange base - but I'm okay with that, I like how the colour scheme pops even if it does look a bit like it came from a supercar. Since the Termi has a grey chest eagle I decided to make all of the decoration on the armour follow suit, the same grey base plus Basilicum contrast paint as I typically use for stone like the Crux Terminatus; normally I'd paint on highlights to brighten it again, but after I put on the contrast I decided I liked it the way it was, preserving the overall dark look of the rest of the body against the bright orange parts. I did the same stone look on the hilt of the sword, which I'm not quite as happy about the result on, but it's not awful and I don't want to mess around with it - I usually find if I don't have a specific idea for something (which I don't for the sword), throwing more paint at it will just make things worse; the blade at least came out well, just bright silver with a blue ink wash over it. Normally I don't paint 'text' on purity seals, but the ones hanging off his belt are so large I felt like they needed the extra detail, and that meant I had to follow suit with the rest - kind of messy, but they're fine at tabletop distance. I copied the hazard stripe from the power fist onto Fragman's storm bolter (in the process reminding myself how I hate painting hazard stripes), with the blue trim echoed by the 'bare metal' colour being a dark grey base with blue ink over it - I used the same for his earpiece, and the tubes on the backs of his arms, and again didn't use any highlights, just let the ink wash do its work and left it at that. As always the face is more luck than design - I can
kind of see what I'm doing that small, but not exactly, so there's always a little bit of guesswork in where exactly I'm putting the tiny bit of paint on the tip of the brush when I'm doing small details like eyes and teeth. When I got to the hair I felt like white was a bit overdone for Marine captains, so I went for a Reed Richards dark brown with skunk stripes on the temples (or just the right temple, since the left of the face is recessed into the sculpt so I didn't try to do much on that side).
I like the personal heraldry on the left shoulder shield in the Ultramarine paint job
GW has, but wanted my own spin on it - the vertical bars actually come from medal ribbons, specifically the two awards (Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross) worn by 'Mad Jack' Churchill, who seemed like the kind of guy Fragman would get on well with. Like the Ultramarine version I copied the same colours onto the right shoulder, minus the logos, which are just a random skull, and '3' to show he's still captain of Three Company - at first I thought he'd just have the '3' in his heraldry as a memento of his time with the company, before he got moved up to the 1st, but since I didn't want to load on another symbol or marking elsewhere I decided that is his company markings, and the Star Leopards deviate from the Codex Astartes in some ways like having Terminator officers in other companies, like Space Wolves (which would seem to go against the insistence on doing things because "it is written", but they're fanatics, I'm sure they've got a bunch of contradictory sacred tomes, and can do whatever they want while claiming "it is written"). For the chapter logo I didn't have any more interesting ideas that 'leopard head', and ended up using the Thundercats symbol - in place of the checkerboard strip the Ultramarine one has on top of his right shield, I again went with strips, making it kind of a design motif for the chapter.
And then there's the cape, which initially I thought of perhaps doing in black with grey/white spots (kind of like an inverted snow leopard) to emphasise the 'star' in Star Leopards, but in the end I decided to just stick with the recognisable basic leopard colours; in hindsight there's more open space between the spots than there should be, but I wasn't sure how much room I'd need to leave for the small black spots when I was painting on the central brown ones, and mainly I'm just pleased I didn't make a mess of it. With the chapter lore I was inventing as I painted inevitably devolving into comedy, I decided their 'it is written' thing comes from them venerating a library of ancient tomes from the 'before time' (waaay pre-Imperium), which outside of fighting they spend their whole lives studying in an attempt to translate a few more of the ancient words and understand the wisdom of the far ancestors - so for the cape specifically, they don't know what 'upholstery of a seventies pimpmobile' means, but they're sure it must be important or the First Men wouldn't have written it down.
The Tyranid on the base is the colour scheme from my Morbis Gravis Strain hive, as is the ground colour and the bits of grass - I've done a couple of the more famous canon hive colours (the current Leviathan look, and the red-crest one that was all the rage in 3rd edition) on trophy heads on spikes on my chaos marines, so I thought I could indulge myself on this one. Back when I was planning on Fragman being part of the Empyrean Crusade (in which case the ground and rock would've been shades of red to match their bases) this would've served to attach Morbis Gravis to the six-degrees-of-separation game I have going with all my armies, but as it is that'll have to wait.
And finally, I decided his full name was Brother-Captain Howell Fragman, because that means the line "'Heresy!' he howled" was the scribe recording the battle being bored and indulging in wordplay to entertain himself.
