I've been thinking a lot about Custodians and their artwork lately. They're not just bodyguards, and I feel like their other intended purposes get overlooked a lot. In the same vein, I've thought about their vehicles a lot. Especially since the new Liber released. I've always cleaved to the idea that they would hold them to the same standards as they hold themselves - that is, to be more than just warriors. To remember, perhaps, to engrave a memory into it. They already do that with their own names, after all, engrave memories into themselves in a never-ending story. Not just 'haha big smashy scary names' like Astartes, but something actually meaningful. (Similarly, I've always loved the idea they'd name their things, ships in particular, after Old Terra animals/places/ideas as a way of memorializing them, carrying the flame as the light dies.) Someone has to remember, after all, and there are more ways to remember than just the written word.
So when I got my hands on the Orion Dropship and Ares Gunship within a month and a half of each other, I wanted to do something Fun:tm:.
Neither are based yet - I need to get some models set aside that I can place on the base - but they're complete otherwise. For both, I decided against just flat colors, and wanted something more meaningful for such centerpiece models.
On her outer right nacelle, she bears a rendition of the Burning of Prospero. Inner left bears a moment, frozen in time, far less dramatic and yet far more personal - the snowstorm in which Constantin Valdor faces Ushotan for the last time, Astartes clustered in the wind, two pinpricks of shining and rusted gold in a whirl of white. Behind them lies the Imperial Palace, faint in the distance.
On the outer left, she bears memory of the greatest failure of them all: the War of Shame, the loss of the Impossible City, the fall of the Imperial Webway. It is the one shining moment in that blackened abyss - the moment the sun rose in a sunless realm.
I took some... artistic liberties with Drachn'yen. Damn thing has too many teeth.
The inner left is a memory of the Lion's Gate, commemorating both battles that took place there ten thousand years apart.
I had so much fun with this one - I originally wanted to do the triumph at Ullanor, but actual images of that moment are scarce, and would have needed way more detail. I thought it likely, however, that given that Custodians are supposed to be artisans, they would depict their shame as a way of exploring it, as well as exploring their triumphs.
The Orion bears a different take on a similar theme. Remembrance, yes, but not of war - of the past, of the future, and the threads between them.
The outer right nacelle, I believe, is fairly recognizable. The Legio Custodes remembers art and culture in its keepings. The inner right nacelle, conversely, is a rendition of the Sol System in the 41st Millennium, albeit a.. more wishful one. What could have been, perhaps, rather than what is.
The inner left nacelle is Mount Everest, as it was at the beginning of M2 - unspoiled, untouched, unknowable. The outer left is Sunrise on the Imperial Palace. The same mountain range, millennia later.
(I originally wanted to make the Palace quite a bit taller and add air traffic, but the sunrise came out so well I simply could not cover it up.)
Hence: The Same Sky. It is the same sky, the same stars, both in M2 and in M41. Seen through different eyes, perhaps adorned differently, and worn, but the same sky, nonetheless. The same sky all of humanity has looked up at in awe from Terra. Even eyes filled by a golden glow, marred by cynicism and knowledge, destroyed and hollowed out and rebuilt by a man calling himself Emperor to suit his needs, could look up at those stars and appreciate their beauty, and could appreciate the world they stood on.
Starry Night was great fun to paint. Took me hours, but it came together surprisingly far faster than I had expected. Sunrise took, weirdly, only about an hour. Blending sunsets and sky is so much fun. Highly recommend.
Anyway, yeah. Been thinking about the Custodian mindset on art and history and remembrance a lot. Doesn't show, I know.
blakekathryn
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