Primus Medicae Consul Penthu Daast

Who?  No, really this time 

Yeah, he's about as minor a character as you can get, featuring in one chapter of Crimson King and a colour plate in Inferno.  I didn't even remember he was in Inferno until after I'd already started on his model.

So, you may have noticed I haven't posted my Ahriman yet.  This is because I didn't start on him until very recently, and while the original reason was that I was scared of mucking him up, I quickly came to realise that I didn't like his model.  Yeah, the guy who's model I'd waited years on, and I ended up thinking it was bleh.  I'll moan more about that later, no doubt, but for the moment just know that I wanted to make him more like how I saw Ahriman.  So I ordered the Sevrin Loth + Honour Guard kit for all those juicy conversion pieces.  This of course would allow me to make the game unit 'Ahriman's Coven', ie his Brotherhood of Psykers command squad. I already knew who had to be on this squad - Isodorus and Mabius Ro - but when looking over the bits, the idea of making an Apothecary really appealed.  I remembered that a named Apothecary had just shown up in Crimson King, so he would be the one donating his name to my miniature.  Welcome aboard, Penthu.

Putting him together
 

I'm still trying to use up all these Mark III plastics I have, so that's where his legs came from. While there's a plastic Apothecary torso in the honour guard kit, I wanted to use the resin ones on everyone i built from it, and I loved the 'smock' look of this tabard cloth.  Now, I'm unsure how Penthu will actually be used in my army.  I guess he'll either be a Primus Medicae or a simple Apothecary depending on how other Force Org choices are made.  So I wanted him to have wargear that reflected both.  This is a bit awkward as Primus Medicae's need to have a needle pistol, which Apothecaries can't upgrade to.  So his gun had to kind of look like both a needler and a bolt pistol?  This stumped me until I was looking through my new Tempestus Scions sprues (more on why I have those later) and saw the officer pistol with the chain-bayonet.  Perfect!  Space Marine Apothecaries always have chain weapons for battlefield surgery and the pistol looks both chunky and slim enough in places that I hope no-one will be upset with me if I want to say it's either a needler or a bolter.

About now was when I went flicking through Inferno to see how Apothecary shoulders should be painted.  And so it was that I got the pleasant surprise of finding Penthu in there, which is where I guess Graham got the idea to take him from?  Or vice-versa.  As my model was missing shoulder-pads and head at this point, it was really easy for me to just copy the image for those.  I decided to use the Achaen shoulders on mine to keep him a bit fancy and a little different, but painted the same way, and gave him a cloak as I like my officers to have those.  He's also sporting a transfer on his right knee to match the one in the drawing as I just wanted to try it out.