“In the deep cold of the void, The Primogenitor plunges forwards. Take a look at its various denizens, boarders and dwellers, travelling to their glories and follies. Prepare to explore its rotting space cathedrals and dark corridors, and uncover the stories embedded into its layers and bones made of thousands of dead starships. Witness it wreaking havoc throughout the domains of mankind, bringing ruin and destruction to everything it touches.”
Firstly, a massive thank you on behalf of Iron Sleet crew to everyone who answered our call to join us in our world-building mission. We are grateful that so many (I mean, a lot) of you followed us into the exploration of the absurdly sized, reality bending space hulk. With the help of your collective imagination and hobby spirit, the setting has been refined into a massive conglomerate of stories, illustrations and miniature art. Collective world-building itself is in the very essence of 40.000, where everyone can create their own unique stories and get inspired by others. We reached out to you, and you provided us with massive amount of entries through various platforms, which we will be dropping in jam-packed blog posts for everyone to enjoy in the coming weeks. Without further ado, here is the first wave! Get ready to board The Primogenitor…
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Artist: Beckerhuserhosenhaur aka @symptomatic_chaos
Artist: Andy/Glowlabs_
Artist: Sunfire
Lars Amstradt’s escape pod shot through the silent void, mere moments before the ship he had just escaped was pulled apart by the immense form of the Primogenitor. Falling towards the hulk, with nothing but the echo of his own ragged breath to keep him company, Lars took stock of his injuries. The pod’s cogitator had calculated what seemed a safe enough landing site: a small break in the rust-stained hull of the Primogenitor, leading into an area that still looked to have some functioning systems within.
There were a handful of turrets somehow still operating at various points along the surface. The pod had taken a glancing hit from an autocannon, sending it through a wall just south of its intended destination. Searching for a route back to the surface, Lars followed the only corridor in sight along a twisting path that seemed at times to loop around into itself in impossibly tight spirals. After several minutes of walking he came to another doorway, opening out into a room entirely covered in the same tiles that he had seen earlier. It may once have been some kind of storage, but was now barely recognizable among the triangular tesselation jutting from between broken walls and floors.
In the center was a conical capsule, inert but for the soft glow of what seemed to be an engine, or perhaps an exhaust for some alien mechanism hidden within. There was a thick cable running out from a port in the side of the capsule, trailing up into a horrific sentinel of welded flesh and metal. Lars could see three organic spines hanging from it, pockmarked with narrow lesions and holes that made his skin crawl. It hovered silently in the center of the room, as if waiting, expectant.
It focused its single gargantuan eye on Lars.
Artist: Bodt Thrower
ZOLA is an man of iron. He was born/made in M21 somewhere near the solar system. Some say Chtonia.
Others say Terra itself.
01110100 01101001 01101110 00100000 01101101 01100001 01101110 is his/its real name.
The soulless man who made him nicknamed him Zola.
A strange name for a soldier.
For he is a soldier. He protected the men of stone and mankind during millenias of warfare and conquest through the galaxy.
He is a rare survivor of the cybernetic revolt.
Since then he was an explorator, a vagrant , a mercenary. Dorothy his mega-lascannon can change the issue of any battle.
His last contract was for Eldar xenos.
He fought for them with such bravery they considered him like a ghost warrior and let him display their heraldry.
When he heard about the Primogenitor space hulk he thought it was an opportunity for… redemption.
As he believed The Emperor could be the last of the Men of Gold.
He stole a merchant ship; the Emerald Kansas; and launched it on the path of the moon-like wreckage.
Now he roams through its cold corridors, walking in the carbonic snow, waiting for the arrival on Holy Terra.
Will he try to kill the Emperor, and win the longest war ? or will he bow down and ask for a heart ?
Artist: @shanti.miniatures
+++ Alone in the dark depths of the Primogenitor…
The mission was as clear as it was impossible. Find and retrieve the holy STC that, according to the whispers of the great Omnissiah, was buried in the most ancient section of the Primogenitor. That grotesquely huge space hulk, it darkened the heavens, consumed everything in its path, a solar eclipse of it’s own. From the forges of Mars to burning battlefields with towering Titans to the inner sanctums of the Cult Mechanicus, nothing he had ever seen could prepare him for this.
There was 19 of them when they boarded it, who knows how long ago. Days? Weeks? Hours? It didn’t matter now. The mission had failed. One after one they had all met their fate. Some missing, some dead, some driven mad by the horrors they had encountered. Now he was all alone. But still never alone. He was electric, extatic even, to know that he would die in the arms of his God, the Omnissiah.
Alone in the dark depths of the Primogenitor he wanders on… +++
Artist: Matthew Leahy aka Dr. Mathias
Artist: @lukasadolfsson03
Gustav aka @hobby_painter
“They heard the sound of children laughter, a second later a Flash of lightning from the muzzle and a deafening sound of the cannon. The shells Tore through his men. He felt incapable of moving, like if something was holding him in place. A huge man stepped forward from the shadows, his armor dark and full of imperial markings. The commander gasped for Air. The voice of the inquisitor boomed “your schemes end here cultistscum”. He tried to object but no sounds came from his lips. “Guilty – Guilty – Guilty” the disfiguered baby babbled. His neck snapped.”
Artisti: @wgjpainting
Alpha-5 are one team of marines who’s asigned units were wiped out in the hersey and the ensuing mayhem that followed. They were left for dead or forgotten because of the caranage that took place. Broken, confused or maimed they fought their way back to Terra, fighting off death and damnation with the true grit and determination that marines are known for. Eventually upob reaching Terra, the expectation to return to their fold, fight along side their brothers once again is soon quashed, they are only to be silenced and hidden away, repurposed. The imperium had other ideas for them.
Effectively forgotten by all and cast from memory, from books, from history, they were ideal weapons to be used to hunt down the lost relics and artifacts that could serve the imperium….maybe even save it.
The Primogenitor has the most valuable of all relics known to date hidden within its twisted guts of machine and rock. Its claimed one forgotten team, Beta-4, so can this one survive and return with their primary missions Relic.
Artist: James Stone aka @theempyrean_
Ganyrus the Forgotten has waited for aeons, travelled through black holes and across the stars to find The Primogenitor. As it begins its collision course towards Terra, Necron scouts planted in its heart have finally awoken, opening small portals across space-time. Through them, Ganyrus has lead his cohort of Necrons and their Hyperphase Obelisk onto the Primogenitor so that they may meet the Adeptus Astartes invaders and gift them with the Obelisk–on which, there is a message inscribed for any representative of the Imperium who might listen:
Everything you’ve been told is a lie.
Artist: Specter-Leviatan Semper Vigilans
In the Innis Hive, eyes of public have been focused up, on stars, which contrasted to Lummenitors and Inquisition. But even they had some to watch the sky above their heads. The ranks of Observers were not thin, but after the sun rose…
From the remnants of hive came signal, one observatory had survived and send message of its discovery. It had something to do with the Space Hulk.
So rescue party will be sent to extract those information and judge their usefulness.
The Observer and his ObServitor must just wait, but the Fallen Sun has not died yet.
Artist: Duncan Hall
“Inquisitor Ichoros has built his legacy aboard the Primogenitor. When the Biologis ignored his theories on how to stop Hive Fleet Charybdis in its tracks, he took matters into his own hands. For decades he has worked in hiding, creating a brood of hybrids infected with Nurgle’s most virulent gifts… gifts they will someday deliver to the Hive Fleet. This is his brood and his laboratory aboard the Primogenitor.”
Artist: Monkeyraffle
The scream that echoed back was not entirely his own. Ionas had forgotten himself for a moment and raged as the last lume-globe sputtered out, he quickly realised his mistake, covering his mouth so that all that emerged were heaving sobs.
He had entered this section of the great hulk with a team of seven others. Data tethers had been employed to make extraction possible but the interference had soon become too strong for a reliable signal. Even the chronometer embedded into Ionas’ arm had begun to run backwards and forwards with alarming regularity.
That’s when it had found them…
The salvage team had rounded a corner and suddenly it was among them. A towering giant of oily steel and sickly bone, screaming with an almost human voice. Three of their number died immediately, crushed and gored with sickening ease. The survivors had scattered, Ionas had found himself with the old man Creon and the greenhorn Neolus. Time had become an elastic thing since then, the ration packs had ran out and Creon had become too weak to keep up. Ionas had persuaded the boy to leave the wretched old man while he slept, it was for the best. Hours later screams had rang down the corridors only to stop as quickly as they had started. That hadn’t sat right with the boy and sometime later he had left while Ionas slept, Ionas begrudgingly accepted that it was only fair.
As he fumbled his way through the darkness he began to hear the sound desperate crying. Hope began to build in Ionas that he wasn’t alone after all. As he entered an open chamber he could hear it clearly now, he could barely make out a hunched shadow amongst the gloom, ‘Neolus? Is that you boy?’. The sound stopped immediately. The shadow began to rise from the ground with the sound of whirring gears and rasping pistons. The stench of Ozone and a sweaty, animal musk filled the air. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he could see it, a skeletal form wrapped in paper thin skin amongst the workings of an impossibly bulky machine, tears streaked the cheeks of a dusty face from beneath a horned helm which covered the eyes. The two shared a moment of silence which seemed to hang in the air for an eternity. The creature screamed through blacked teeth and rotting gums. The scream that echoed back was not entirely its own.
Artist: @The_iron_within
IRON SLEET 
Wow. All of these are fantastic – well done everyone!
The Epic-scale marines in the Engine Room diorama is brilliant.
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Wow. Really. This is the 40k I want to see more of! Will keep coming back to this page over the weekend.
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This makes everything else worthwhile.
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Stunning work by everyone. Stunning.
Cheers,
Pete.
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So cool. Really really inspired by all this.
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I Really like it all, such a great ambience on these! The edges of reality and The white Bull in particular. Excellent storytelling and excellent models!
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Super !
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WONDERFUL stuff everyone. Sweet Lord Emperor, it is such a huge pleasure – and honor – to see all this incredible work done for the Primogenitor up here on Iron Sleet. Thank you!
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Incredible work across the board. Bravo to Iron sleet for setting up such an atmospheric setting for everyone to work with too! It’s been a privilege.
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Totally stoked to the max to see all the amazing interpretations of the setting. Thank you Iron Sleet for hosting this invitational and thank you to all the artists who took part. I’m deeply honored to be part of the journey. Looking forward to the rest of the submissions.
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Amazing stuff!
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Wow! Some absolutely fantastic, inspiring, entries here. Well done everyone!
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