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Lord Inquisitor Rorqin Holofernes shifted on his command throne and punched in few commands with his gauntleted hand. His throne rose up from the center of a lifted dais on the bridge, like an ornate, gothic, tower riddled with cables winding down to the vast bridge of the ancient ordo-issue starship. The luminous, tobacco-stain coloured pict-screens flickered and he heard the servitors murmur in their sockets below. Stellar charts flowed around him, pinpointing their current position in the space.

They had finally arrived, and he could not believe what he was witnessing. It was there, incomprehensibly immense, visible in the picts delivered by the probes launched after their translation. The probes hadn’t returned. Size of a large, class-Z planetoid, an astronomical body of its own with a mass of orbiting satellites. Composition augurs were going haywire. It was like a bad omen from the Mankind’s worst nightmares. Rotten, hazy, diabolical. And it was moving like it was guided by a will of its own. The reports he had read spoke of unfathomable ruin it had left in its wake. But even so, it was only one of the great calamities caused by the Rift, for this was the M.42. The Dark Millennium.

He shifted on his throne. Humming and crackling, he heard his baroque armour click and its servos whir. Its sentient machine spirit was restless, urging to unleash the stimms through his spinal sockets. He winced as his armoured fingers he had just used to tap on the mechanical keys on his left balled painfully in to a fist. “Soon”, he cooed and tapped on the rosette embedded in his chestplate. There would be enough blood to wet its auramite surface soon.

Indeed, this was not the time for clandestine actions and secrecy. Let the rogues and desperados of his trade scuttle in the shadowy hives and hunt for heretics or poke and examine the barbaric xenos in the fringes of space. This was the time to muster for the coming of the Archenemy and be ready for open confrontation. The reality tearing, malign hulk had to be stopped before it would enter the coreworlds.

Tilting his head, he glanced at the flickering data scrolling on one of the radiating monitors. It showed the status of various containment cells, barracks and stasis chambers on the ship. Their various occupants represented the worst of the worst and best of the best in the ordo’s arsenal. This mission’s parameters had seen to it. Ordo conclave of the Sector Saleos had seen to it. He had seen to it. Soon they too would make planetfall and bring down the Emperor’s justice on the Primogenitor.

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This inquisitor is one of my favorite models I have ever done. I built him originally last year, using the Blackstone Fortress’ Obsidius Mallex miniature and various bits with a lot of scraping and sculpting. He ended up looking quite the archetype of a power-armoured inquisitor. Over the months I tried several different paint schemes that didn’t work, but finally settled for a classic look straight from the 3rd edition Daemonhunters codex. Warm, metallic orange was painted so that the raised hammer on the left hand works as a lighting source that gradually fades towards the right leg. Orange was then complemented with regal red velvet on the clothes and cold browns on the leather and wood parts. The servoskull was placed opposite the hammer to further balance the model.

Along with the Dainton piece, another big inspiration was the tarot deck that features John Blanche’s various illustrations. 

I picked the new arco-flagellants kit to act as personal berserkers for the inquisitor. The revamped models are absolutely fantastic: each one is unique and very dynamic and the kit provides a lot of variety. Such a classic brought into this day. I left them mainly unconverted and went for a similar warm theme as I did with the inquisitor.

I am already working on some new members for the retinue so stay tuned! Next up is some armoured superhumans to do the Inquisitions bidding. I’m also going to build an interragator based on the “Black priest” artwork (already did one but wasnt happy with the scale and the look).