Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

One thing I've noticed about CSM is that you can't put too much gold on them. Maybe that's what I like about them.

So I was painting today and the thought struck me: Where did all this gold come from?

My friend said the blingy stuff are gifts from the Chaos gods. Sure, but do things like armor and weapon trim just turn into gold by magic, or is it mined somewhere by cultists for the CSM to make fancy things with? I probably shouldn't try to mix our earthly logic into 40k but it has me perplexed. Feels better painting gold on my marines if I know how it got there.

One word, Slaves, The CSM have ALOT of them.

I assume there are daemon worlds that are just chock full of all sorts of material goodies, gold included. They've gotta tempt mankind with something, right?

DoW

I'm much more inclined to think that its some kind of paint rather than mined smelted and added to armour by a jeweler.

Abbaddon is a busy tyrant. Why bother raiding a 100 different Goldsmiths, when he can just knock off one Halfords auto centre?

So, basically they get their gold the same way we do in the 21st century? Through blood, sweat and tears. Makes sense to me, and kind of makes me want to put more gold on them.

ChaoticBob wrote:So, basically they get their gold the same way we do in the 21st century? Through blood, sweat and tears. Makes sense to me, and kind of makes me want to put more gold on them.

Sure. Just not THEIR blood sweat and tears. xD

Referring to Marines, and chaos forces in general, they have smiths aboard their ships that handle things like the upkeep of wargear. I'd assume that warbands slaves skilled in metal work and jewelry would be given works related to them, else the marines themselves would do the work (the slaves handle things like oilng leather,polishing armour, menial tasks, etc whereas typically the marines are the ones who do things like fix the holy wargear, else there's some mechanicus are around). Depending on the warband I'd assume that concerning the marine's armour the slaves would create the materials, the trimmings, etc, and it would be the marines that affixed them. The chaos gods would provide their servants with things like amulets etc, but if I think that vast quantities of riches would be too easily attainable by humans for them to be giving to their servants (unless it was horribly tainted....which would happen anyway if cultists had their hands on it).

There are probably more prescious metals out there, but in the real world gold is a rich metal, and thus painting your models to be covered in it connates their amassed wealth, etc. =P

ChaoticBob wrote:So, basically they get their gold the same way we do in the 21st century? Through blood, sweat and tears. Makes sense to me, and kind of makes me want to put more gold on them.

That's how everything in M41 comes about.

It's not too much of a stretch to assume that a Chaos Marine who did something particularily pleasing to the Dark Gods had his trim turn into solid gold. Or Warp gold, or whatever. On the same token, it's just as easy to accept that his trims might turn into butter because the Dark Gods aren't feeling all too serious that day.

It's limited only by your imagination, in short

Dark Apostle Thirst wrote: On the same token, it's just as easy to accept that his trims might turn into butter because the Dark Gods aren't feeling all too serious that day.

But would they be worth 2k monies?

Platuan4th wrote:

Dark Apostle Thirst wrote: On the same token, it's just as easy to accept that his trims might turn into butter because the Dark Gods aren't feeling all too serious that day.

But would they be worth 2k monies?

Depends on the Chaos God. I'm thinking Slaanesh would be the best for making butter delicious enough to be worth 2k monies.

They get the gold for armour trims from the gold teeth ripped from the jaws of space pirates...

The DA deathwing does something similar with the feathers of the space pirate's space parrots

What else do they have to spend their stipend on? And after a thousand years of combat you are going to be able to afford some gold trim.

I always thought brass was the metal of choice for Chaos and evil.

Eh, maybe you can't tell at 28mm.

Brass is Khorne's chosen metal, specifically, not generic Chaos. The Blood God's colors being red, black and brass, apparently.

The Chaos Gods can make their champions look like whatever the heck they feel like making them look like.