The Ghost Legion

by Migs

“No Ghost was ever seen by two pair of eyes”

– Ancient Terran Poet 

 

What an absolute trip the Pilgrym has been so far. I’ve never been so inspired. My Friends are creating stunning takes on Terra and humanity left and right, and making some of the best models I have ever seen. Thistle is injecting his genius the way only he can on this world forming around the characters. All of you guys have provided incredibly deep and inspired discussion around the action and Iron Sleet traffic is through the roof. Everything has intertwined into a current I’ve jumped head long into.

As you know, the Ghost Legion has captured my imagination unlike any other subject matter. With the XX redux, I only really wanted to build the two heroes and narrators of Pilgrym, but then they ended up being too much fun and two of my all time favorite models, and there was something to them that I aspire to in design – more so than things I consider my “art”.

Simplicity that is heavy in thinking but light in implementation. A sort of clarity and truth that I referred to in  the post that introduced Alpharius and Sgt. Jargassor. That I could reduce the models in to not so much my take of a subject matter but it’s distilled essence.

I wanted to create a group that elegantly and instantly spelled out Ghost Legion.

So I wanted to see if I could push this further. Create more models, yet still have the duo defined as an item. I started on two new models that would at the same time be nothing special, but very unique and elegant and hopefully fitting. I decided everyone would be hooded and metal skulls and death would feature. I wanted dynamic posing and distinct but simple basing. In contrast to all the rest of my Pilgrim activity, there would be no WIPs, these models are characters on Terra and my imagination and maybe thus not plastic and sculpting medium at all. These ones would be born ready.

A third one was created to run the Grid. He is called the Architect. Taking the hooded theme further into a cloaked character that seems really powerful. Alpharius’s armor was painted from a sea blue and sea green base to pale blue and eggshell green. So where the Military operatives got the night shadow blue, the green would both fit the whole and stand him apart nicely.

I’m building a few more things for them (for now) a surprise you guys will enjoy. Then it is on to Terra and the table itself, while hopefully finding moments to paint up the Ecclesiarchy.

IMG_0756
The Ghost Legion

IMG_0757IMG_0754

IMG_0762
I wanted to explore and offer some alternative lighting to show you a different angle to the paint jobs
IMG_0769
Alpharius
IMG_0768
Some of you have complimented the photos. Super simple setup. Single light source. iPhone 6s and Photos app editing is all I use to produce these. Dead easy and pretty efficient.
Tags:    
Migs

48 thoughts on “The Ghost Legion”

  3. Man, this is just awesome! Are you sure you’re not tempted to make more Legionaries? The first thing I thought when you mentioned that you’re expanding the team was that you were going to add another Marine or two. Might be a bit odd to have more Astartes around, but I am kinda curious how you’d do them.

    Like

    Reply

  4. Oh god. Not again. I’ve pulled that necromancer and hooded head out of my bits box to make an astropath. LMAO! Back to the drawing board.

    The new members look brilliant. I really like the mask on the hooded operative with sword. Is that from a Chaplain?

    The freehand on the Architects robes is just amazing. Love how it fades out.

    Very cool sniper.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thanks Peter. Well, great minds think alike and I’m sure you can pull it off as a completely different mini. The masked one is from a DA clamp pack chaplain, with the hood sanded and GD modified. The freehand on the cape is actually a decal I have painted on. Forge World has made a super cool Alpha legion transfer sheet that has these really cool metallic decals. I have carefully blended it in to the cape. Thanks again 🙂

      Like

      Reply

  5. a stunning group – as ihave said im really taken with units as opposed to individuals – an interaction between singular dynamics creating an overall dynamic – one character being much larger but a centre focal point and an artistic reduc just do it for me – no cheese, little bling and very very restrained colour palette – this is pretty much what i am aiming for but struggling to achieve – bravo and hussahhhhhh

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you my friend! You pretty much summed up my goal also. The palette could be seen as a sliding gradient between green and blue and another scale between black metal and silver. A few spots of pale skin and purple and greenish gold to spice it up and that ashen basing you coined.

      Like

      Reply

  6. The palette, the details (the little cut off skull and the thin white lines especially) and the composition that highlights the astartes (which for me is a lot what 40k is about which you capture so masterfully time after time) is breathtaking. I’m especially impressed with the seer, just complex enough to be intriguing while remaning very coherent with the group as a whole. I can’t see what model you based him/her off either, which always impresses me.

    Only critique might be that the sniper look a tad off to me, can’t really place exactly what it is. Maybe that the aquila stands out too much or just me obsessing over that it seems like half a death jester.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thanks. Beautifully put and very much appreciated. The sniper is definitely the one that stretches the imagery the most. Elven and cabalistic hints perhaps.

      Like

      Reply

  9. Stunning group Migs – the restrained palette is gorgeously understated, (as is the lack of fuss with the models themselves), while the increadible freehand & metalics lift them beautifully. The Architect epitomises these qualities, and is my personal favourite, but their real impact is as a group… lovely job mate.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. The Architect really transformed the group. He comes off perhaps as dangerous as Alpharius in a different way, with hints of psychic power and esoteric wargear and bionics. Thanks for the positive feedback Alex!!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  10. The composition as a groupe, as laurence says, centres rounde alphariusse omegonne… a vast figure, a god-angel of the forgotten paste. The very similar colour palette of the blamelesse ghostes, yet very different… light blue-green, blue-black, green which is almost blue set me thinking about the quote (from Carlyle)… “No Ghost was ever seen by two pair of eyes”. Firste, it suggests the secrecy of the ghoste legionne, working through intermediaries… then it suggests the endlessly changing plots and plans, no ghoste will appear in exactly the same guise to any two people, a changeableness and impossibility to pin down which is suggested by the writhing lernaean hydra and on the models by an almost iridescent colour-shifting.

    I believe they are inseparable as a groupe, the slighte gradations in colour, the arrangement of proportion and pose are essentialle, but I shall try to give each one an analysis, starting with alphariusse.

    He is vaste, nearlie twice the height of the mere mortals who surround him, and many times as broade… . His face is pallid and drawne, grey-blue-white, necrotic almost, sustained by chemicals and his own altered metabolisme, fused with machinery — tubes pierce his head, an eye replaced, the skin of his browe stretched over more machinery… a reminder howe inhumanne are the angels of deathe, the space marines, who sleepe notte, neither do they feare, who partake of the fleshe of menne and endure the veriest colde, sleet, paine and agonie… I suspect their lives are of constante suffering, that the augmetics pain them constantlie… his face is also drawne with the weighte of ten millennia of base yet, to his eyes, blameless treacherie, associationne with those he despises, yet his eyes will blaze in their sunken sockets with an holie purpose. There is a John Blanche space marine illustration that makes them necrotic, pained, inhuman, suffering and merciless, not the ”glory boys” one sees all to often…

    His armour is an anciente relic, no longer understood nor capable of repaire, coated with grime and dust… the tubes hanging below the chest-plate look like rotting vines or cobwebs, adding to the sense of decayed splendour, the metalle cutte, scarred and chipped, hints of a lighter ungrimed duck-egg blue, the legs and feet grimy especially with duste. I imagine the rubberised under-suit as mouldering, he runs through one of the filthy floors of the charnel-world, unmentionable filth and bones… but it is splendid too, a splendour suggested by the glimmers of pale silver on his armour. He carries a little silvered skull at his belt — a memento mori or a vanitas on the hopes of the ghoste legionne, who betrayed their father in order to better do his will, but have failed. The great gamble lost, the great game checkmated…. Perhaps they are just roving, purposeless spectres blown hither and thither but I thinke not… the pieces are being set on the boarde for another game… I thinke alphariusse being the palest has a slightlie symbolic meaning, echoing, though dulled, the fainte dignitie of a legionne that once marched glorious god-like from starre to starre.

    He runnes… I thinke this pose, leaning forward in a full run, showing the power-fiste and the great breastplate of his armour gives him a presence and a sense of power which a static ‘cool’ pose would not…

    Sergeant Jargassor echoes alphariusse in manie ways… he has a similar running pose and one eye is replaced by a pale yellow augmetic lens. However, the colour is slightly but so very perceptibly different and it tells us muche of his character… migs describes ‘velvety oil work’ and there is a much darker, soft, shadowy palette… more blacke than blue, without the silver splendour, his allegiance only picked oute in the embroidered XX on his hoode.. a more secret operative. He too is grimy and dirty, for who is not, but his face is especially dulled, almost maske-like. I wonder if the human agents of the legionne undergo surgery to assimilate their appearance to alphariusse… There is however an aire of command and dignity reinforced by the silver medallionne.

    The Architecte’s almost greene-blue shade echoes that of the Astra Telepathica, a subtle hinte that he is involved in communications and informationne… much like a mediaeval paintinge the illuminated pilgrymmage is deeply symbolic. The pose is hunched, secretive, a pale sliver of face visible, the very embrodiery of his allegiance is half picked away to a mere ‘x’… his robe is edged by fetters, I wonder why? a sort of serfe?… his communications-staff and metallic claw, painfulle, too, I imagine, give him the ever so slightly technical feel which suits his role, slightly mechanical, a dealere in informationne and data… He too has a little silver skull on his robe and a skull on the base.

    The skull-faced trooper seems a more fearsome character, the darkest black-blue of the group, a skull-mask more iron than silver… a cruel curved sword and skull-pins, with a black leather coate over his armour for concealement… all begrimed and dirty. The snyper, standing on some ruined arch, (I s think of the purpose to which the hook was put… a heretic’s rotting corpse for displaye..) his armour and weaponry has a metallic gleam… cold, an echo of a colde heart?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      1. Thank you migs… I can hardly produce what I do without the worke beyond compare the pilgrymme produces — Thistle, Marcus and Kari’s glorious illuminations, the miniatures produced by all of you are beyond compare… as for the time I do not reckon with time, it is all an honour and delight, be it reading up on the Greene Manne and the sacrificial king, exploring the holie Gothicke splendour of Terra the charnel-cathedrale or trying to depict the soul-torment of Alphariusse Omegonne…

        Liked by 1 person

  11. Nothing makes me happier to see you continue to expand the Legion; we are somewhat kindred spirits in that regard, he he. I am pretty excited to see you have added more human operatives; I feel they are the most compelling aspect of the XX legion. The human element is intoxicating and relatable (somewhat, ha ha). Very good use of the Death Jester’s legs. The arch he is on really looks like the ruins of Terra. How lightly he is perched really speaks to the skill of the operative. I also like that you did not go overboard to make his rifle look like some sniper rifle; such is his skill that any rifle would serve that purpose. The skull rebreather hidden beneath the other’s hood is pretty rad too. Grim, but not overdone. And lastly the robed guy, possibly my favorite. So simple and restrained, but filled with mystery and dread. The Alpha Legion at its finest!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      1. If my necrotic flesh, working away at my scribe’s desk deep in the Librariumme on Holie Terra, could still blush, it would be crimson — Thistle has said I see inside his mynde, high praise from Kari, Marcus and the Wiers’, FPOA’s delightful blending of two interests of mine (botanie and folklore… what a coincidence) and now this…

        Such a delight and honour to chime in even a small way with, and I mean it, such greate artistes. I can’t speak for Erick Wier, a true artist, who must enjoy of the pilgrymme project far more than I do, but for me, — a glorious game such as I played with my sister when I was little but greater, darker and more fascinating by far, exercise for the imagination in a world that is often quite as drab as thistle’s grim, industrial gabardine postwar time…

        Sorry, you can tell I’m a real geek…

        Scriptor Minimus Patricius Greye…

        Liked by 1 person

  12. Tight, cohesive group. The new figures are perfectly fitting, and Alpharius remains the monster to center them all.

    What’s really intriguing to me here is that in that final shot of the group, your palette is so muted and restrained, if I hadn’t been following these pieces and didn’t know better than a passing glance, I would say that the only paint on them was a grey undercoat. Then, of course, as you close in you begin to see the highlights and details. The effect is really interesting, and is probably the best example of success for what you were trying to accomplish – the characters projected into real life, are meant to be unseen shadow operatives; invisible until they are right on top of you to deliver the deathblow. The actual miniatures are pretty much shadows themselves until you get close enough to look into their faces. It’s really fascinating.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  13. Wow, what a wonderful group of models! They really look like professional operators, one with the shadows and unseen corners of the world. The restrained and muted color palette does wonders to further the ephemeral nature of them and tie them together as a whole. They have just the right amount of detail and subtle posing to highlight each of the model’s essence and specialty. Beautiful!

    Keep up the great work!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  16. Beautiful, beautiful stuff Migs as always. So harmonous and striking group.

    I like all the tasteful details that are distinctly your style. The scimitar, the details on the Architect, the metallic skull mask and the sniper’s base, everything! I’m also glad that you didn’t post any wips, keeps the magic intact.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  17. Another beautiful group. The new models don’t come as a surprise at all, they were always meant to be there. They are shadows, so bleak and inconspicuous, but for those who look there’s so much character, personality and detail.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  21. Fantastic models. The whole group works very well. Especially the Architect is a great addition that takes the theme a little further.

    Hard to keep up with all the activity. I guess that means that the Pilgrym project is working out quite succesfully so far!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  22. Beautiful paintjob, and I especially like the internal dynamics within the group… I’ve been pondering the balance of dynamic poses to static. The marine also manages to convey all the weight of a tank and the speed of a bird.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you sir! The white free hand lines brings that little bit of focus and sharpness to their ghostliness. I’m not one of those OTT free hand painters, but enjoy showing some precision where needed 🙂

      Like

      Reply
  24. Pingback: The First & The Last – IRON SLEET

Leave a comment