Another dreadnought character I've been working on for my solar list.
Heavily armoured to counter biological xenos attacks
Was thinking to run as a galatus (extra shielding better save is my logic). Thoughts and opinions?
Best caption for the last picture?
I wanted to try making a Ven Dread Proxy that looked like it used to be an allarus terminator.
*Original base model is a leviathan siege dreadnought - so it's bigger that other contemptor dreadnoughts
The forging of the Ultimum Supplicium.
During meditation this Blade Champion experienced a vision unlike any he had known in centuries of service.
He stood upon an endless plain of shattered blades. At its centre rested a single colossal sword, its point buried in the earth before the Golden Throne.
The Emperor spoke no words.
Instead, He simply placed one hand upon the blade.
When the Champion awoke, the design was burned into his memory with impossible clarity. Every proportion and every mechanism could be recalled perfectly, as though he had once forged it himself.
Rather than acting immediately, the Blade Champion sought judgment.
The design was presented before:
the artificers of the Imperial Palace
the senior Shield-Captains
the lore keepers of the Ten Thousand
They searched every vault and archive.
Eventually they discovered something astonishing.
The blueprint already existed.
It had been drafted during the Great Crusade.
The design bore annotations attributed to the Emperor Himself.
But it had never been constructed.
...
Only one suitable blade existed.
A titan-sized relic forged during the Dark Age of Technology.
It had been preserved for millennia.
Originally intended to become the execution blade of a Knight of the Imperium.
Instead...
The Custodes claimed it.
The Knight House protested.
The Fabricator-General questioned the decision.
None could overrule the authority of the Captain-General.
The relic was surrendered.
Its edge was recut.
Its balance altered.
Its machine spirit awakened.
Thus it became the relic grav tank The Ultimum Supplicium
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My first grav tank so I made a fun simple kitbash.
If I could give it additional rules -it would have assault on its gun. [Transport capacity of 1 blade champion] advance and change when he's inside
Melee would be Attack roll a D3+3
Ws 2+
Str 12 with lance [dev wounds]
Ap -4
Dmg6
**Penthesilea, The Golden Vow**
Among the Ten Thousand, there are tales of heroes dragged from the edge of death and sealed within dreadnought sarcophagi so that they might continue to serve.
Penthesilea was not one of them.
A Shield-Captain of unyielding resolve, she stood among the Emperor's personal guardians throughout the Great Crusade. She fought beside demigods, witnessed the triumph of Unity, and swore her life to the protection of the Master of Mankind.
Then came the Siege of Terra.
Though she survived the final battle, Penthesilea counted herself among the defeated. The Emperor had fallen. The Master she had sworn to protect was confined to the Golden Throne, neither living nor dead.
For centuries she stood vigil before Him, haunted by a single thought:
*We failed.*
Where her brothers turned their grief into duty, Penthesilea sought atonement.
She presented herself before the councils of the Emissaries Imperatus and made a request never before heard within their halls. Though whole in body and sound in mind, she petitioned to be interred within a dreadnought chassis.
When asked why she would surrender the perfection of her form, she gave but a single answer:
*"Take from me that which is human, for it failed the Emperor. Strip away flesh, pride, and comfort. Make of me His weapon, that I may never fail Him again."*
In time, her resolve could no longer be questioned.
The artisans of the Custodes forged for her a unique auramite war-form. Swifter and more agile than traditional dreadnoughts. Freed from the burden of life-support systems and mortuary machinery. It was fashioned not to preserve a dying hero, but to empower one who had willingly surrendered herself to duty.
Among the Ten Thousand, she became known as *The Golden Vow*.
To Penthesilea, a dreadnought is not a coffin.
It is a vow.
The wreckage of fallen war engines marks her passage across a thousand battlefields, silent monuments to her penance.
She seeks neither glory nor remembrance.
Only service.
And when the Emperor finally rises from the Golden Throne, it is said that Penthesilea intends to be waiting beside Him still—golden, vigilant, and unbroken.
_---------------
Second Dreadnought finished, this time a Contemptor-achillus Dreadnought proxy.
Thinking of ideas for a telemon and vendread at the moment
Before his mortal wounding, Asterion Solon was among the most renowned of the Venatari Shield-Captains. Leading swift interception strikes against raiders, infiltrators and those few enemies audacious enough to threaten the Throneworld itself. Among his brothers he was known as the Sky-Bound, for there was scarcely a corner of Terra's heavens he had not crossed.
His end came not in glorious conquest but in duty. Solon sacrificed himself to destroy an enemy vessel. Though victorious, his body was shattered.
Yet the Ten Thousand could not afford to lose such a commander.
His remains were interred within a Galatus Dreadnought, preserving both his life and his wisdom. Many believed this fate would be a cruel imprisonment for one whose soul belonged to the open sky. Solon himself remained silent throughout the Rite of Interment.
Only once the process was complete did he speak.
*"Then I shall fly by other means."*
Granted command of the Orion Assault Dropship *The Helios*, Solon returned to the skies he loved. The vessel became both fortress and command throne, carrying him endlessly across the atmosphere and orbital reaches of Terra. From its command deck he directs a permanent patrol of six Venatari Custodians, warriors personally selected from those who once served beneath him.
The citizens of Terra never see them descend. They are glimpsed only as golden contrails high above the clouds, six winged figures escorting an ancient dropship whose shadow passes silently across the world below.
To the enemies of the Imperium, the appearance of The Helios heralds swift judgment. The six Venatari strike first, descending like meteors from the heavens while Solon provides fire support and tactical command from above.
Among the Custodes, a saying has emerged:
*"The Sky-Bound never fell. He merely taught the heavens to carry him."*
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Finished my warlord for my king of the coliseum 500point games (running solar).
Eventually I'd like to create him a personal Orion Dropship and venatari unit
Finished this Axe captain, may use her as a proxy for Trajann.
More of a fan of the 40k models. I think the 30k models will look better kitbashed with stormcast parts to make them more dynamic
> *"The giant raised its weapon to execute a god.
> Instead, it lost its head.”*
They mocked the axe first.
Among the Ten Thousand, weapons are sacred instruments of precision — elegant, balanced, perfected through centuries of artifice. Tyrone’s guardian axe seemed almost vulgar by comparison. Its head was enormous, brutal in silhouette, closer to an executioner’s tool than a Custodian relic.
Some among the Shield-Captains joked it looked less like a weapon of Terra and more like something meant for the headsman’s block.
Tyrone never defended it.
He simply carried it into war.
And over the centuries, fewer and fewer warriors laughed.
The deed that ended the mockery forever occurred during the Cataclysm of Vannic Reach, where the battlefield burned beneath the shadow of Titans. Hive-spires collapsed under macro-cannon fire. Rivers turned to steam from reactor heat. Entire regiments vanished beneath the tread of god-machines.
At the center of the slaughter hunted the traitor Warhound Titan *Grief of Monarchs*, a swift and murderous engine armed with turbo-lasers that carved through Imperial armour columns like sunlight through mist. Unlike the towering Warlords of the Legios, the Warhound was a predator — fast, vicious, relentless.
It had already butchered three Imperial Knights and crippled a Reaver Titan before issuing its challenge.
The vox-amplifiers boomed across the battlefield:
> “Send forth your champion.”
The loyalist commanders expected a Knight pilot.
Perhaps a Titan Princeps.
Instead, a lone figure in blackened auramite walked from the smoke.
Tyrone.
The traitor ranks laughed openly. Even loyal soldiers watched in disbelief. Before him stood a god-engine dozens of metres tall, its claws capable of tearing apart tanks as though they were parchment.
And advancing to meet it was a single Custodian carrying a ludicrously oversized axe.
The Warhound attacked immediately.
Turbo-lasers shrieked across the battlefield, turning ferrocrete into molten glass. Vulcan mega-bolters thundered, saturating entire streets in explosive shells. Buildings collapsed around Tyrone in avalanches of flame and debris.
Still he advanced.
Unbroken.
Unhurried.
As though the Titan’s fury was little more than rainfall.
Then *Grief of Monarchs* lunged forward to finish him, its massive plasma blastgun swinging downward with enough force to annihilate a battle tank company in one strike.
Tyrone met the blow head-on.
The impact cracked the earth.
Witnesses swore the shockwave threw Space Marines from their feet and shattered armour plating half a kilometre away. For one impossible heartbeat, the descending strike of a Titan halted against the haft of a single guardian axe.
The Warhound hesitated.
That was its death.
Tyrone twisted.
Not with brute force alone, but with impossible precision — every movement flawless, every shift measured to perfection by the Emperor’s gene-craft.
The plasma weapon slid wide.
The Titan overextended.
And Tyrone moved.
What happened next became myth before the battle had even ended. Some claimed he vaulted upward in a single leap. Others insisted he ran across falling debris hurled into the air by the impact itself.
Whatever the truth, all accounts agree on one thing:
He reached the Titan’s neck.
And there, before two armies locked in stunned silence, Tyrone swung the ridiculous axe they had once mocked.
Once.
The blade sheared through armour plating, bundled cabling, and adamantium pistons in a storm of sparks and reactor fire. The severed head of *Grief of Monarchs* tore free from the chassis and crashed into the ruins below like a falling fortress.
For several seconds the decapitated Warhound remained standing.
Then the god-engine collapsed.
The battlefield fell silent.
Even the distant Titans ceased fire.
And atop the corpse of the fallen engine stood Tyrone alone, crimson cloak billowing through the firelight, his enormous axe resting upon one shoulder as though the execution had required no more effort than the beheading of a mortal man.
After Vannic Reach, no warrior within the Imperium ever mocked the weapon again.
For they had seen what it was made to kill.
And from that day onward, Tyrone bore a new title among the Legios of the Emperor:
**The Beheader of Giants.**
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Hi guys I've been working on my custode warlord (as a centerpiece model) for my custom shield host.
"He stood before the Emperor and did not dim.”
Among the Ten Thousand there are warriors of gold, radiant as the dawn of the Emperor’s dream.
But there exists one who is unlike any other.
He is known as Seraphael Lux, the Living Imperative.
It is said that those of the Adeptus Custodes who stand too long in the direct presence of the Emperor begin to change.
Not in flesh.
Not in mind.
But in their wargear.
The auramite, forged to embody perfection, cannot remain untouched by such proximity. Under the weight of the Emperor’s psychic radiance—vast beyond mortal comprehension—it slowly darkens.
Gold fades.
Lustre dies.
Until at last, it becomes black.
A mark not of failure…
but of endurance.
Proof that it has withstood what few in existence ever could.
During his vigil, Seraphael Lux stood closer than any Custodian was meant to endure. Where others would withdraw, he remained—unyielding—his auramite drinking in the Emperor’s radiance tenfold.
And still, he did not falter.
In time, the blackened armour changed.
Not through craft.
Not through artifice.
But through sheer, indomitable will.
As though the material itself had reached its limit, the void-dark auramite turned upon its nature—transforming into a flawless, argent sheen. A mirror beyond perfection, reflecting the immense psychic power it had once absorbed.
His armour is now so perfectly polished that it reflects not the world as it is…
but as it should be.
To stand near him, bathed in that radiance, is to feel something impossible:
Fear becomes irrelevant.
Pain becomes distant.
His presence imposes a single, crushing truth upon the battlefield:
Failure is not a conceivable outcome.
____
Seraphael Lux- The Living Imperative *Inspiration Exemplar*
Thanks to @cebhelot on IG for the art based him on.
"They are not prisoners. They are conclusions the Emperor chose not to reach."
Failed proto-guardians from before the Adeptus Custodes were perfected.
Created during the Unification Wars as experimental psychic Constructs.
They do not think.
They do not feel.
They simply obey his will.
Always facing the golden throne.
Always facing him.
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Sort of a cool paint project I thought about. Planning to use them as Armiger Warglaives or Dreadnoughts.
Finished some warden miniatures. The aim is for every custode in my army to be unique, just as the emperor intended. Colour coding my army to make life easier for my opponents - I tell them at start of the game- any custode in black armour has a fnp/defensive effect.