Hello, here are the first five members of my (more or less) radical Deathwatch kill-team that is stationed on a Rogue Trader vessel. I'm not a good painter and I never will be, but I had a lot of fun doing them.

From left to right:

Brother Ancalagon of the Black Dragons, Dragonclaw assault marine. Melee specialist. Seconded to the Deathwatch on the explicit wish of then-Inquisitor Redfeather and the other members of the kill-team after joint mission on Tyrea.

Brother-Epistolary Black Crow of the Night Wolves, usually acts as leader of the kill-team. Uses power fist in case he's forced to fight too close to Riverbear.

Kill-Marine Riverbear of the Night Wolves, untouchable, acts as scout, psyker assassin and diplomat/interpreter whenever blowing xenos up isn't the most beneficient course of action for humanity. Friend of Black Crow but usually keeps his distance during missions. Uses some collected pieces of xenos equipment which has brought him into conflict with more puritan members of the Deathwatch and the Ordo Xenos.

Deathwatch Keeper Barathiel of the Blood Angels (formerly tactical marine). Acts as quartermaster, advisor, diplomat where Imperial institutions are concerned and as a lockpick thanks to his clavis.

Deathwatch Champion Raziel, Black Shield. "Stipendium peccati mors est" ("The reward of sin is death") is the personal motto of the mysterious swordmaster who was made a Champion shortly after his admittance to the Deathwatch. So far no one has found out if he intends to kill all sinners he comes across or if he considers himself a sinner and seeks death. Raziel only speaks when absolutely necessary and secludes himself from his battle-brothers when not on missions.

Very cool. I would be interested in seeing what kind of write up you have for the Night Wolves, as I take it that they have some Native American leanings.

Baradiel said:

Hehe, thanks! Nice to see that's even obvious without the crappy green stuff feathers I made.

Rules-wise they use at the moment the second solo-mode ability from table 1-19 in RoB with Concealment and Silent Move as the improved skills, the squad mode abilties from the Storm Wardens, the psi-powers of the Space Wolves and a self-made advancement table I'm still pruning.

Their organization deviates a lot from the Codex Astartes. They only have ten of a single type of company called a Tribe-company which is led by a Warchief and includes all unit types in different ratios depending on the Warchief in question. Librarians are called Shamans, Apothecaries are called Medicine Men and double as Chaplains, they usually favour diagnostor helmets over the skull-faced ones.

Officially they believe themselves to be a second-founding chapter and have no idea who their primarch is, their homeworld is known to be close to the Eye of Terror but the exact coordinates are a closely-guarded secret.

I'll post the unofficial part tomorrow, it's getting late here. Just that much: their homeworld is a maiden world with an active world spirit. So in a certain sense the spirits of the land and the animals are actually speaking to the people there.

Okay, this story will get more than a bit crazy. It begins in the time when the Eldar were at the height of their power and started to become bored. A few Eldar on the search for new experiences got the idea to "become" a planet. They created a maiden world and built a psi-amplifying structure that would allow them to perceive everything on the planet and to control weather, plate tectonics, evolution etc. They transferred their spirits into it (practically dying, however at that time they could have simply left it to be reborn) and guided the development of the planet and life on it. In a relatively advanced stadium a Terran colony ship crash-landed there. Since the humans were unable to leave or call for help and the Eldar spirits had again become a bit bored with their project and the slightly psionic animals they had created they decided that the humans could stay as long as they would fit themselves into the existing ecosystem and not use anything they couldn't create with their own hands. In the following centuries they founded a tribal hunter-gatherer society where psykers played an important role as advisors since they were able to communicate with the worldspirit and the animals.

During the fall of the Eldar it turned out that the planet was a bit too close to the newly formed Eye of Terror, during the initial eruption a warp storm hit the planet. While the worldspirit survived and managed to shield a lot of the planet, other parts became infested by demons and the resident animals and humans that couldn't get under the shield in time mutated horribly and threatened to breach into the shielded areas. The worldspirit didn't know another way to help itself than to wreck the contaminated areas with earthquakes and volcanoes which neutralized the immediate threat but left behind wrecked monster-infested wastelands which forced the tribes to become more warlike.

During the Great Crusade an expeditionary force of Luna Wolves discovered the planet, this also marks the point there the Silver Spectre Eldar Pirate band started messing with humanity. They prepared the population for the arrival of the Space Marines, hid the worldspirit and summoned a warp storm that trapped them in the system for 2000 years. The Luna Wolves came as friends and partly adapted to their culture to make inclusion into the Empire easier, joined the monster hunting parties, scavenged parts from the original colony ship and with nothing else to do and no idea when they could leave started recruiting Marines out of the population who brought new battle doctrines favouring stealth and ambush tactics and of course their knowledge of the actual existence of the worldspirit with them. After 1500 years the original Luna Wolves were in the minority and were for the first time officially introduced to the Silver Spectres by the reawakened world spirit with news about the Betrayal and the consequences should they reestablish contact with the Imperium. This lead to them taking on a cover story as a recent founding which had lost records of its Legion of origin, changing their colour scheme and rechristening their vessels.

That is pretty slick, but I have a (possibly stupid?) question. Who are the Silver Spectres? Did I miss a reference? The name sounded familiar, but then I wondered if I might be thinking of the Silver Skulls (Space Marines). Also, do you have a timeline? When the humans first arrived must have been during the Dark Age of Technology or before, but how about the Luna Wolves? Just before the Heresy itself? Or were they already on the downslide? Do they now consider themselves a loyalist chapter, or are they renegades? If so, they must be renegades in secret, or there would be no real reason to hide their origin, I guess. I do really like that they are hiding their true selves behind a surface of "not knowing", that is a pretty awesome subversion of the almost over used "we don't know who our Primarch is!" line. Nice stuff.

Oh, and your painting looks fine to me - if I had a piece of (hopefully constructive) criticsm, it would only be that some of the highlighting and details look like they might have been applied with a "too large" brush - where a thinner line might have looked crisper. Thinking of the few "official" GW brushes my wife bought me, a "Standard" brush as opposed to a "Detail" brush, maybe. I do think the effect I am seeing would be less noticable in actual scale (if I were looking at the actual model and not a slightly larger/zoomed in photo). I particularly do like your shading on the cloak/robe, cape, and tabard, especially the last, the purple really pops to me. Also, nice BFG Chaos Cruiser in the back. It looks very similar to the colors I used!

RaiPaladin said:

Thanks for the feedback. You didn't miss a reference, the Silver Spectres are my Eldar "pirate band". They believe that the Eldar have to teach humanity to keep Chaos at bay. Both current Eldar politics and the Imperium are in the way of that, so they try to hinder the former and get a foothold in the latter through the Night Wolves, Radical Inquisitors and other more open-minded individuals in places of power. (I'll maybe post their story on the Rogue Trader boards after I have painted their seer.) don't have an exact timeline but I would place the crash of the colony ship into the very early Age of Strife directly after the Dark Age of Technology. The Luna Wolves came there relatively early during the Great Crusade (before they were renamed into Sons of Horus). The chapter doesn't consider themselves renegades, rather "loyal to humanity first, not the Imperium" of course they don't say that openly. They have nothing to do with Chaos though.

RaiPaladin said:

Thanks, when painting the last two of the bunch I actually found out that I had a fine-detail brush (I had forgotten about it after moving). I have already corrected a few of the more ugly issues on the earlier models. The Chaos cruiser is one of the few NPC ships I made so far. The Tyrant's Tithe of the Red Corsairs. http://fenvar.lima-city.de/Warhammer40k/BFGShips/TyrantsTithe2.jpg

Okay, here's the worst enemy of the kill-team, or is he? Some Puritan ideas I have floating around make that questionable. Anyway meet Fausterion the Wise, Tzeentch Sorcerer of the Black Legion, Headmaster of the Rule of Three.

Mass murder, mind control, slave trade, allying with Xenos, luring Tyranids to an Imperial world, tech-heresy, daemon summoning, calling the Emperor a rotten corpse, you name it, he's done it. Leader of the sorcerer circle Rule of Three, consisting of him, a sorcerer of Slaanesh and one of Nurgle he's out to amass as much power as possible even though he prefers acting from the background to being an easy target himself, especially since he only escaped the kill-team by jumping from a cliff. He has left the Black Legion a long time ago and currently lends his strength to the captain of a Red Corsair vessel.

And their other big enemy. Inquisitor Moriarty the Merciful of the Ordo Xenos. A Monodominant and former Confessor who would love to burn Marneus Calgar in a plasma reactor for fighting side by side with the Tau against the Tyranids. Unfortunately he's smart enough to know that if he would try it every loyal Astartes would try to kill him, so he keeps that specific urge under control, there are plenty of people to burn who don't have a genetically enhanced killer-lobby. I still have to paint him, but I'm unsure about what colour scheme would be appropriate. The Deathwatch scheme is already taken by my radical Inquisitor....

The background and artwork of your team and Night Wolves history is phenomonal!

I especially love the uniqueness of the Night Wolves a very interesting and unique history.

Kudos to you.