#* oc posting!

[gaiadoeswarhammer]

okay here's lernaean. semi nudity under cut. art by @/soosmain!

full body + armour

+ close up bust

[gaiadoeswarhammer]

finally posting these but :3c my beloved lernaean by @soosmain !!

[gaiadoeswarhammer]

hello i am incredibly shy about this but i do this for @ossmodula (hi gisa). i have a snippet from the deathwatch mephiston au i have going on & this is a basically flashback from one of his squad members, karir of the twilight falcons, shortly before his death in the hive city their mission is happening in. karir is also the lone survivor of his chapter & he's adjusting really super well about it guys don't worry 🥲

their world was way too close to a sun & it would scorch whoever got caught in the daytime to a crisp so most people traveled by night and were a pretty nocturnal society. the place is dotted with hive cities across vast plains, and the twilight falcons would move between these hive cities by night to rotate guard. they had to arrive by a certain time before the hive cities shut down everything (gates, windows, etc) and if they didn't. well. they were left to cook in their power armour outside. they're sons of the warhawk, they should've been faster

[gaiadoeswarhammer]

so all of those chapter concepts *slap* but I am a simple creature who knows my weaknesses

So! Scalebound! Dragons!

Did they just wind up on/from a world with dragons and hit the jackpot? Did they find them elsewhere and go "hm. This aesthetic will slap tremendously. We can get so much Sick Heraldry with this" and let it be so?

Shitposting little bits aside I would love to know more about them!

HI HELLO ough thank you for enjoying my chapters. it makes me burst into flames (positive) whenever anyone loves my blorbos 🥲

i'll be so real with u, these guys are like 3 days old maybe. so not a lot is set in stone for them lmao some of this is still wip and subject to later change / i'm thinkin about it as i go. honestly i'm not sure even their name is gonna stay but it is slowly growing on me 🤔

the idea of the dragons having always been on the world they inhabit but are incredibly secluded creatures (possibly in dormancy/hibernation when first arrived?) is something i'm looking at! the chapter maybe settling in the heavily forested mountains, something far enough away to be left alone by baseline humans, and settling into draconic territory. maybe a chapter with an evolving philosophy who used to hunt the great beasts in something echoing lion's ancient purge of caliban since they are dark angels, but instead grew to hunt alongside them instead of making them extinct.

i think being an actual rider though is something reserved for chapter leads & company champions. maybe some veterans who have performed incredibly admirably? but i think it would also be really fun for their company markings to be something related to their associated champion's dragon or their scale colours. armour design could include horned helmets for the champions maybe, or even the traditional winged helmets being something resembling draconic instead of feathered, heavy furs, beautiful etchings in ceramite and in their blades & bows, etc.

i've been toying with the thoughts inspired by the emperor's spears (thank u to @cosmics-canteen the spears have infected me just a little bit) & the idea that some cultures view space marines as not just transhuman, but something supernatural entirely. the spears are seen as ghosts or as fae, and i do think it would be fun to lean into the scalebound as something fae or even as dragons themselves in a human form sometimes. this further ties into thoughts of their librarians being able to take draconic features on / their warp powers being draconic in nature. i'm a huge sucker for that sort of thing (humans with supernatural creature aspects & features) 🤡

i think their world is.. techno-medieval, if that makes sense? the sort of world that a knight house might originate from, in my eyes. a medieval populace who has technology they might not entirely understand or that's restricted to nobility. might be only things of farming or protection really, maybe medicine. unsure how to explain it otherwise so i just (wails pathetically)

i'm also heavily struck by the image of their chapter tithe being something framed as a sacrifice. like how they offer up gold or the princess in dragon stories, y'know? but instead these winged giants swoop down with their mysterious fully armoured riders and take their pick of the young men to be carried off and never seen again. it's horrifying, but if they don't make the offering themselves then the scalekin may take even more or might take their wrath out on the others, so it's a sacrifice they have to make. the populace doesn't understand much of who or what the astartes are, and they aren't exactly in a place where they're going to start asking those questions.

i think that's about all on my mind for the moment honestly? but i have an aesthetic slowly rotating in my head. dark foggy woods & empty fields, distant shapes in the clouds, bright eyes in the dark of the forest. overwhelming sense of stumbling onto something ancient and unknowable that could kill you without effort. you know how it goes 🫶

[gaiadoeswarhammer]

been thinkin bout the scalebound. toying with the idea that whatever psychic bond they form with their mounts actually kills them fairly quickly in terms of astartes lifetimes. maybe 100 yrs or so. it's a great honour but it's also a death sentence. 'divine right of kings but it's a curse' style shit going on

the only thing with this idea is: does it kill them because physically it's strenuous and eventually the body gives out. OR. mentally it drives them mad and they end up doing. y'know. some sort of ritual death when the madness gets too close to breaking them. maybe they willingly let their mount consume them. i'm leaning heavily towards the second one bc that adds a horrifying element to whoever gets chosen to become the next rider whether they like it or not

[gaiadoeswarhammer]

is an IW terminator warpsmith with a daemon possessed hammer who he fucking hates kinda slay or naur

[gaiadoeswarhammer]

debating on giving lernaean a tattoo of some sort......