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So I'm doing a scratchbuilt Vulkan He'stan. His right shoulder pad has a big open portion and a little bannner on it. My idea was that it would be cool to have the shoulder pad be a pre-Heresy portion of the armor, and I was going to do it up to represent the eighteenth legion. I'm going to put XVIII on the nameplate, but the big circular portion has me stymied. Originally I was thinking about putting the eighteenth Greek letter on there, but it's sigma, and I think that looks kind of dull. Any suggestions? The circular portion is about the size of a Marine's face. It's just a little too tall for the chapter logo, but if I played Fists (either kind, really) I think one of their decals might fit, if that gives you an idea of the size I'm working with. I have to finish him by Saturday, so any suggestions are welcome!

pics would help immensely as I have next to no clue what im really looking at.

Sorry, I didn't think seeing a picture would really help. Here you go.



This is a WiP photo from my first attempt at this. This is the shoulder pad I'm talking about.

Holy crap! Look at all these helpful suggestions!

Seriously, though, I have been kicking around just doing a stylized number eighteen or letter R. It's a tough call, though.

A little surprised that no one has had any ideas, though.

How about just painting some flames on it?

But to point out the obvious, it's something you should've thought about when building the guy. I'd say replace the shoulderpad if you really can't make it work.

Paint the XVIII on the circle and 'Vulcan' on the banner.

are you doing the chapter symbol on the other shoulder? if not, a drake's head would be pretty appropriate and would pop right out on that circular bit. if you wanted to get fancy, you could do the drake's head on a background of flames. small area to work in, though

I had a plan Johnno, it just didn't work out. The symbol I wanted to put there wound up looking silly.

Varl, I was wanting to have the shoulderpad be older than the chapter, so it would predate the Salamander symbol.

SickSix, that might be a good idea. My worry on that was that it would leave a large portion of the circle empty. I thought about putting a laurel on either side, but that would look way better if the number was vertical. Can you do Roman numerals vertically?

as I understand it, the salamanders chapter *is* the 18th legion. the 18th didn't get split up into chapters after the heresy because there weren't enough of them left. they just don't use their legion identifier (XVIII) anymore I believe the drake symbol is part of the original legion heraldry (just like the omega symbol was worn by the original ultramarines), so it definitely wouldn't be out of place on pre-heresy armor.

 varl wrote:
as I understand it, the salamanders chapter *is* the 18th legion. the 18th didn't get split up into chapters after the heresy because there weren't enough of them left. they just don't use their legion identifier (XVIII) anymore I believe the drake symbol is part of the original legion heraldry (just like the omega symbol was worn by the original ultramarines), so it definitely wouldn't be out of place on pre-heresy armor.

There is the Legion pre-heresy and the Legion pre-reunion with their primarch. Before the Primarchs returned the legions were called their numbers and had a nickname. That nickname may or may not have had much to do with the name of the legion post reunion.

ah, fair point. guess it depends on how far back you want to go. if you want to go as far back as pre-vulkan for the 18th, I think very little has actually been written. you could do whatever you want

edit: of course, having a pre-vulkan legion symbol on a vulkan model might be a bit odd :p

My idea was that Vulkan He'Stan, as well as the previous patriarchs of the chapter to hold the title, would be the ones who use the oldest chapter relics. Since most of Primarch Vulkan's armor has probably been destroyed by now, it didn't seem unreasonable to me to have a piece of his armor predate the discovery of the Primarch, since that would be the next best thing as far as preserving their history goes. I just wasn't sure what kind of iconography to go with.

I had thought about going with the eighteenth character in a non english language, but none I have seen have looked good so far. I even thought about doing the symbol of Earth/Terra, but I looked it up and decided that wouldn't look that great either.

I do think the spear shaft is a bit too long :(

The spear 'tip' is longer than he is tall...

I'm actually happy with his weapon the way it is. The only part of the model I have questions about is the one shoulder pad. Thanks for the input, though.

And I think I'm going to go ahead and go with SickSix's suggestion, so thanks for the advice, but that's all I need.