Try saying that nine times fast.
If you know about Ignis, you can imagine I also wanted to have Credence in my army.
Just like his master, Credence had a couple of potential forms, although I didn't get around to actually building any for him, unlike the two attempts at an Ignis. He's not actually described as a Castellax (or indeed at all, beyond his colours and shoulder-mounted bolt cannon), and so my first job was to pore over the Cybernetica units Legions could take. The options effectively narrowed it down to a Castellax if I wanted the hulking bodyguard with a bolt cannon vibe, so during a trip to Forgeworld I picked one up. What with constantly pushing Ignis back as I wasn't sure about what role or model he would take form as for so long, Inferno was actually published before I could build the Castellax. And in it, my problems were taken away, by revealing that Thousand Sons have their own pattern of Cybernetica unit, the Castellax-Achea. Well, Credence had to be one of them, then! Anybody wanna buy a Castellax, never been opened?
While Credence, by the time of the Ahriman series, basically has independent intelligence, operating without Ignis constantly pulling his strings, this wouldn't have been the case during the Heresy, when he was presumably - at least to begin with - a standard combat robot. It's the journey that would have made him Credence. So perhaps my Castellax-Achea could be that particular unit near the beginning of that journey.Castellax appear to have about zero dynamic poses natural to the mold, unless you decide to go at them with the blade. I decided to do the kind of silly looking rabbit paws pose as A) it means all his weapons are engaged and B) it kind of reminds me of a certain robotic T-Rex, or C) a mummy.
Part of my rationalising him as an ordinary Castellax-Achea is to do with that orange colour scheme. There's no getting around it, it wouldn't look good next to my red. And all that's separate from the first description, back in A Thousand Sons, of Thousand Sons robots being blue!
It seems the authors are determined to sneak something blue into the Crusade / Heresy-era XVth, just for the call-forward to their eventual colours, despite it making little sense. I'm not going to be painting my Ammitara blue either. Fortunately, Forgeworld's own examples are in Legion colours, so the silly blue idea obviously got ditched.
Perhaps if I did a metallic bronze like the Forge World allied to the Thousand Sons, I thought. But these Castellex-Achea aren't just allied robots, they're actual Legion members. So they have to be in the scheme. The model has some small flame detailing molded into the shoulder bosses, so I toyed with making that orange. I might still do it, or work up the gold to a bronze, at least.
The other thing I'm considering is adding a big loincloth to him. I have something that is mostly suitable, it just looks a bit cheap, even for my paintjob. I might be able to cut something out of a standard. We'll see, something to consider when I come back to highlight and decal him.
Credence's origin was recently - I feel - a bit needlessly jammed into Crimson King by McNeill, somewhat muddying this idea of mine. In it, Ignis seems to randomly or even accidentally just end up with a wrecked orange robot once belonging to an enemy force, and is last seen looking at it in satisfaction. A bit of a 'so what?' moment. I think there may have been an additional plot element that didn't survive the editing process, as there's an enemy Cybernetica Magos called Credence in the novel who disappears halfway through. A rather unfortunate dropped plot, would have been better to excise it completely.
Credence takes up a whole force org slot by himself (it doesn't seem right to add more to the maniple unless I can figure out something else to do to him to personalise him), but such are the sacrifices one makes for one's giant robot pet.
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