I've been re-reading Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun recently and listening to the marvellous Alzabo Soup podcast. And yesterday I finished Nightside the Long Sun. It's the first book in The Book of the Long Sun, which has sat on my shelf for a few years. The Book of the Short Sun is still probably a year or two off, unless Long Sun leaves me slavering for more.
One of the themes in Wolfe's Solar Cycle is the difference in human forms created by genetic engineering, cybernetics and eugenics. The soldier and aristocratic classes, for example, are easily identifiable by their height. That made me think about these outsized space marines, which I'd picked up for two quid in the local newsagent, with a promotional issue of some GW magazine for kids.
I don't find the current GW take on space marines particularly interesting; somehow, it seems less than the sum of its parts (Herbert's Sardaukar, Heinlein's starship troopers, warrior orders of the Crusades, etc). And I preferred the original rulebook's illustration of renegade humans in power armour just hanging out in some low dive to the monastic conception of the later books, in which maverick marines seemed impossible - unless they were chaos renegades. But I do like the idea of Wolfean super-soldiers. That combined with Wolfe's concepts of 'taluses' (war robots named after the brazen giant of Greek myth) and long-forgotten, dimly understood technology to give me a quick scheme for the painting of these fellows.
This method was very quick. Before I added the GW oxide paint to effect the verdigris, I painted them bronze, washed them in brown and drybrushed them in gold. They looked pretty good at that stage, so I almost held off 'ruining' them with the oxide. But I'm pleased with how they turned out. And, by sheer chance, I came across a box of 10 more for a third of the standard price in a most unlikely shop while performing Christmas-related drudgery today.
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