Legion Seeker Squad Menkaura

Or Veteran squad?  Sometimes?  Maybe?

I mentioned the goal not just being modelling and (badly) painting the characters I like, but having a legal army as well.  I didn't mention Rites of War, but the obvious first choice was Pride of the Legion; easy to make and suits the low-numbers, elite troops vibe of the Thousand Sons.  This gives us the option to load up on Veterans and Terminators.  After Inferno launched, we also have Guard of the Crimson King, allowing deep-striking Terminators as troops.  Due to the amount of plastic Terminators I have, and the flexibility of Sekhmet being able to be both Cataphracti and Tartaros, I'm going to have 2 Terminator squads.  One might just be a Legion Terminator Squad instead of a second Sekhmet, we'll see.  So GotCK could work for me.  However, that second Terminator squad is going to be one of the last things I do.  And, most importantly, the whole point of this is to run Ahriman as my Warlord, and if you do that, your compulsory troops have to be Corvidae.  Which means I'd rather run PotL with two Corvidae veteran squads.  I already made one I haven't shown yet as it needs re-worked.  So, a second one will have to be made.  And you can get away with just five guys in the squad.  Though that is dangerous in terms of giving away victory points.

All that preamble was to show the thinking behind my choice to make a bare minimum Seeker squad that I could also sub in for all or part of a Veteran squad.  Well that and they can take a Land Raider as a dedicated transport.  Which I might do, I mean, I'm going to get one of the old-school Land Raiders at some point.  Anyway, I decided to quickly knock out some Seekers.  And once more, a couple of different thoughts merged in my mind.

Sneaky Beakies

Seekers, well, seek.  They're a bit sneaky.  And I absolutely love the sneaky beaky marines.  While I never had a full marine army, the first GW kit I ever owned was the original box of Imperial Space Marines, and so I'm quite nostalgic about corvus armour.  I had to have some.  So let's make them the sneaky Seekers.  How could I justify the XVth having mark VI armour?  I dunno, a Hidden One stole the plans and the XVth's allied Forge World built it for them, who cares.

More importantly, who would be the character in charge of the squad?  I knew instantly.  Menkaura.

I love this guy almost as much as I love Ctesias, even though he's just  a minor supporting character.  Originating in John French's work, he appears also in McNeil's Crimson King.  Having fallen for the trap of seeking for and then gaining true prescience (clearly the work of Frank Herbert was not in any of the Tizcan libraries), Menkaura ultimately becomes the Oracle of Many Eyes, trapped in a prison of inaction of his own making, but able to tell any who ask of their future, if they are prepared to pay his price.  In this post-Heresy fate, he is described as wearing a silver-fronted helm with no eye-lenses, instead being orbited by many silver eye-orbs.  To me, this suggested I represent him in his red armour with a silver faceplate and reinforcement studs.  I hit his studs with some pearlescent paint over steel, instead of the inked boltgun metal the other guys have on their shoulders.  He also uses the torso, legs and cloths from the Rubric squad leader.  I just figured Menkaura would be a bit into looking fancy.

I had gotten the vibe that he was slightly younger than most of his contemporaries in Ahriman's Coven, and slightly naive, but in Crimson King he's presented as older and bit easily distracted.  He later makes some choices in the novel that almost make him a kind of semi-antagonist in terms of plot terms.  This seems to go against the feeling of naivety and over-focus being his downfall presented in the earlier written (but set later) novel, as well as his seemingly resignedly sad loyalty and affection for Ahriman.  While people can easily change over the potentially thousands of years worth of experiences marines living in the Eye of Terror can have, I definitely have opinions about some of the things McNeil does.  Don't get me started on Master of Prospero.  One thing Graham did that I could get behind was giving him a staff and a plasma pistol as his personal weapons.  I gave him a bladed staff, it seems like Thousand Sons tend to have weapons that can be both sword and stave (Ahriman, Mhotep), which is kind of cool.

As for his squadmates, I was running out of loincloths, so had to get creative.  I'd came up with an emergency plan for this eventuality as soon as I looked at the sprues in Burning of Prospero.  People say you should sell the Custodes and Sisters if you, for example, play Thousand Sons, who will hardly be likely to ally with them.  Good advice, but I knew I could use several of their bits.  So, I cut off the bottoms of their tabards and re-purposed them as loincloths for my Seekers.

The fit wasn't always great, so a few other bits got stuck on alongside them, I think it all worked out.  One thing beaky armour - as awesome as it is - brought to my guys that was a concern was the lack of obvious ways to introduce gold and white to their colour scheme.  For my earlier mark III guys I gave them alternating gold and white belts, which you can barely see, but I know are there.  I was able to continue that idea on the mark VI guys using their chest power cabling.  It just helps tie things together.

The four marines all have combi-plasma, which seems like a flexible loadout for unleashing dakka, although I don't know if they'll all be alive long enough to get good use out of both their plasma and their special ammunition.  The squad will be Corvidae, so I guess the plan would be to Scout them forward using Ahriman's Warlord trait and just hole them up as long as possible in one place to shoot the crap out of anyone that comes near.  They might get a Land Raider Proteus at some point, I'm not sure yet.