Vespiadas, our flagship's Navigator, sacrifices his life and soul to deliver us from the Warp's clutches. Forget not his heroism.
Second entry for #Owlcatober #RogueTrader by Ulter (she doesn't Reddit, so I post on her behalf)
A Wraithlord inspired by the Eldar fan-themed art event.
It did not work out as well as I intended - it is an FDM model and some details are lost, and it is too small for the fabric to look natural. Perhaps if I get around to making a Wraithknight...
"Once more the ancient dead rise up in bodies of wraithbone to spare their children from joining them. Yet now the Warhost assembles right on the festival's eve, and old Autarch embodied in a Wraithlord joins the crowd, his towering gaunt form covered in simple raiments hastily fashioned in mere hours by artisans bewildered by a sudden request, and a size-appropriate fan in hand."
After brawls in my multi-species city started getting out of hand I decided to segregate my population. I assigned houses in my agri-district to Cretonians only, and in the city proper - to humans and Dondorians.
I expected them to shuffle around, and change jobs as well, but instead half of the Cretonian-assigned homes stay empty and half of Cretonians are homeless.
How do I manage that?
I made a recast of a classic Ranger mini into a transparent epoxy to create full invisibility effect.
Turned out really well!
The paintjob is pretty basic and mostly a proof of concept. But now I see that my idea works as I intended, and I will improve upon it when I have more time.
I'll likely make the full Rangers unit over the course of a week (darn the silicone is expensive).
As I read the novel some things are either confusing or look like plot holes - but perhaps there are reasons unmentioned in the text that make it make sense. I would greatly welcome any explanations so I could stop puzzling over those things.
-Regarding the Necron FTL travel methods: Trazyn and Orikan travel to Serenade multiple times on small craft - Night Scythes and Ghost Arks - seemingly with no great expenditure of time. In the prologue Trazyn jumps into a Night Scythe wormhole and seems to arrive back home to Solemnace in an instant. But when they have to bring a large force in they have to spend decades traveling in their voidships - seemingly much longer than Night Scythes needed for the same journey prior.
Does that reflect some sort of limitation of wormhole technology? As in, each wormhole is limited in the amount of units it can transport and then it collapses? Because otherwise I don't see how it wouldn't be more efficient to send several Scythes and march an army through their portal. A limited throughput would be critical when deploying in a combat zone under fire, but in that situation they could just find a secluded place in the forest and have years to cross over without anyone noticing. So, did I miss something?
And, additionally, I assume the wormhole portals simply can't be made large enough for anything larger than an infantry unit?
-In a battle between Orikan's and Trazyn's forces in the Serenade caves damaged warriors could not phase out and were lost permanently. But after the fight the area was secure. What prevented them from dragging broken Necrons out of the cave outside of phase-translation interference and recover them? Or do Necrons get permanently destroyed if they are not returned to the resurrection crypts in short order?
-Orikan foresaw the Ork Waaagh! messing up his plans in great detail, 50 years in advance. To the point of knowing who the Warboss will be. So what stopped him from doing the Aeldari and just sending a Deathmark and taking him out before Waaagh! could even form? Or do multitude of other minor things that could redirect the orks somewhere else. Is this somehow a limitation of his predictive powers or is he just not very smart with this kind of things?
This was supposed to come hot on the heels of the original propaganda poster but life had other plans. Art by Ulter.
This time ensign Mira Sunwell poses in her full officer dress uniform. No official depictions of it seem to exist, so we did our best to construct it from the description found on SARNA.
Ulter also had her fun with a retro-futuristic computer on the background. I think it fits 80s sci-fi vibes rather well!
When communication with Wraith constructs is described it is usually some sort of spirit communion by Spiritseers or other psykers.
But I am curious, can Wraiths just plainly talk with some sort of voice modulator unit and hear and understand others' speech? I'd assume talking with a Wraith like that will be somewhat to conversing with a human with a moderate dementia, as they struggle to keep track of the discussion, but still.
Alternatively, do normal Aeldari without psycher training have enough of a psychic potential to commune with a Wraith?
So can, say, an Aspect warrior sit with his now-dead friend in a Wraithguard by the campfire and share some stories, or do they need Spiritseer as an interpreter?
Large statuette of Saint Celestine, painted by my wife with a bit of my assistance.
Does it capture the glory of His chosen well enough?
No bananas in grim darkness of the far future for scale, only dry numbers - she is about 25 CM (10") tall.
Sculpt by h3LLcreator on Patreon.
The meta level answer is clear - Asuriani are a dying people, and them coming back to life would run counter to this core concept.
But what is the lore reason?
Drukari can come back from the dead with relative ease. It may be reserved for the most influential of them, and require Homunculus mastery of life, but... Even if only Homunculi know how to do this, Asuriani had thousands of years to buy, steal, blackmail or otherwise gain this knowledge. And on the technical side, whatever their dark cousins can do, Asuriani can match, with enough effort.
Besides, they have an advantage of having the souls of their dead safely contained in the Soulstones - unlike Drukari who have to reconstruct souls from fragments. Seemingly, they can bring back a large portion of their dead. So why don't they?
If you get caught by Ordis when sneaking on the Orbiter as Stalker you get shooed away and on the retry there are "No Stalker allowed" posters all over this place.
Ordis is funny.
After fiddling with the body parts I decided that a spear facing forward looks badass. I was right.
It ended up sagging a bit, but ah well. Minor things.
I've been struggling with Z-banding. After multiple tests I am pretty confident that this is the result of mechanical issue with Z-axis. And honestly Z-assembly on K1 is a tad intimidating. I would greatly appreciate if you could help me narrow down the source of the problem before I tear down the entire frame to get Z-rods out and start poking around stepper motor housing.
And I did thoroughly clean and re-lubed the z-rods/screws and loosened and tightened z-screw nuts, so I'm seemingly out of easy solutions.
I started trying to print my FDM minis. I followed ObscuraNox guide and settings and got good overall geometry, but I still have very pronounced layer lines - something that good prints in this sub don't. So I must be doing something wrong despite using the tested settings. Can you help figure out what am I missing?
The printer is Creality k1, 0,2 nozzle, filament is Esun PLA +HF.
Remembering some Canopian propaganda I started thinking - maybe recruitment pool for MechWarriors is a bit unexpected at times.
BattleMech piloting heavily relies on the pilot's sense of balance and body coordination. Good spatial and body-position awareness is what makes a difference between lumbering hunk of steel and a metal giant gracefully dodging fire and kicking tanks into other enemies.
So perhaps best MechWarriors are not soldiers and marksmen, but instead gymnasts, martial artists and dancers? People trained from early age develop way better body coordination than those who start as adults. And as fragged up as BattleTech universe is, I don't think many can afford to put their 5-year old kids into a Mech seat for early training. Therefore kids from dancing and sports background will have a notable edge later on.
And on the flipside aforementioned soldiers and marksmen would not really benefit from their existing skills as Mech' jockeys as movements and tactics of a foot soldier don't translate much into giant mecha, and neither does handgun marksmanship has much in common with using BattleMech weaponry.
So recruiting catgirl dancers as pilots for light mechs seems like a surprisingly good idea.
Is there anything in the proper lore that would corroborate or disprove my theory?
I've been experimenting with printing minis for a while and I think set my printer up as well as I can, yet still I don't get prints as clean as some that are showcased here. Layer lines are fairly sharp and visible even on 0,05 height and 0,2 nozzle.
So perhaps it is the filament that is lacking. Are there any specific types of filament best suited for making minis?
Edit: do non-standard filaments like Silk make any difference, or do they just add extra complications?
I played just a few games and in cases where I had to go first I felt at a severe disadvantage.
If I try being aggressive and score objectives I take heavy losses because Eldar units are ridiculously squishy and can't take a hit.
If I play it safe and just reposition my units then I don't get to score anything and if I am not careful enough, risk getting my units exposed to enemy fire anyway (in latest game Lord of Change got to Deep Strike on the first turn in a position where it could see a little bit of my Fire Prism and deleted it immediately).
The advise I've seen talk about using low-value units to draw out the opponent but do we really have "chaff" units to do so? Even Guardians are 100 units for 10 soldiers that die as easily as Imperial Guardsmen at nearly half the price per head.
Edit: speaking about 1000 points games.
I swung the door open - perhaps too vigorously but not that forcefully and it exploded.
Not broke or snapped - exploded!
Is that... normal?
I've been looking at some 3D models for extra effects for Eldar weapons and it had a Shuriken Cannon shoot giant ninja stars. And the Wasp walker has a shuriken cannon belt-fed with similar ninja stars.
Which frustrates me to no end as this is very much not how the weapon is described in the lore. If anything it sounds much like Mass Effect guns: an acceleration field launches thin slices of dense material at hypervelocity. So it is a shuriken in the sense that it is a flat projectile, but it is extremely thin projectile, not a giant ass ninja star!
I guess the thing on the Wasp's cannon can be smaller slabs that are star-shaped, and then each one is sliced into several dozen individual shots. But anyhow, taking the "shuriken" part too literally is a poor design choice.
Just ranting.
EDIT: Good responses all, I concede that I am wrong regarding official lore. But my issue stands, it looks like a silly ninja star. The flat projectile could have a myriad of cool and interesting shapes, but instead its stars from a cool ninja corner shop.
