The uniform represents one of the Hive Guard uniforms of Praetoria and that used by the House Siganades Life Guard. They are one of, if not the richest families on Praetoria so I wanted to go for a really bright and unusual look.
First of all I took the normal Red, Blue and Yellow Praetorian colour scheme and shifted one colour across to Violet, Green and Orange. Unfortunately I really couldn't get it to work – the purple jacket and green pants just looked off. So I tried shifting it half a colour which made Red-Violet, Blue-Green, and Yellow-Orange. After the first trooper I was pretty confident that it was both wacky enough and striking for the look I was after.
For Sigenandus I will be using the Straken rules – as you can see from the pictures he is a complete war dog. Sigenandus is accompanied by a command squad with a heavy flamer, meltagun, two flamers, and two bodyguards. I will only be bringing him out for games where it will be relevant to have a Major-General on the field. So mostly big games, or games with an appropriate storyline, like a raid on the HQ camp.
So here are the pics:
(I have also included a fluff section under them if you are interested and/or have time to kill. I may have gotten carried away with it so I won’t be offended if you skip it! Some people may also recognise parts of the Major-General speech- just a bit of ironic fun.)
Majordomo & Personal Bodyguard of House Siganades - Dirk Maricho
Rudolfus the Epher Dragon
Epher Dragon (Varanus Epherensis), also known as the Praetorian Monitor, is a large species of carnivorous lizard found on the continent of Epher on the planet Praetoria. A member of the monitor lizard family (Varanidae), it is one of the largest living species of lizard, growing to a maximum length of 5 metres (16 ft) in rare cases and weighing up to around 100 kilograms (220 lb). In the wild it is an incredibly vicious bread of lizard, however training from birth can mould them into a loyal but possessive guard pet. Wild Epher Dragon colonies are becoming an increasing problem in the under-hives on Praetoria, leading to Hive Guard dragon hunts.
Aide de camp Cornet - Stallo Amalrich
Quartermaster Corporal-Major of the Hive Guard - Leonhard “Wick” Warngale
House Siganades Serjeant at Arms - Draga Burgundus
House Siganades Chamberlain Steward - Gerhart Starchari
House Siganades Seneschal Attendant - Lando Wracwulf
Thanks for checking these out, let me know what you think... now, do you have time for some fluff?
Time Off
“Guardsmen never return home” is how the saying goes, however in fact it does occasionally happen. The Grand Cruiser Praetoriae Vindictam was stationed in high orbit around Natal – a hollowed out moon of Praetoria. As the system's major spaceport and shipyard it is the Praetorian Navy’s major refitting and resupply station.
During the resupply, the men of the 5th Praetorian (combined arms) Brigade and the 3rd Macharian Thunder Guard Cavalry Brigade had been granted a month’s leave. While the sub-system shuttles to Praetoria were cheap, the latest air rationing reforms meant that only someone on an officers pay could afford the air levy.
Brigadier Weeton, presumably noticing the abundance of loitering Lasmen, had made the best of the situation and ordered a Major-General's Review and full Trooping the Colour for each regiment. Col. Ackland agreed that it seemed a good idea so the Thunder Guard regiments joined in too. It had been scheduled for the new Major-General’s arrival which meant nothing but polishing and parading for the next three weeks. While most of the men complained about the never ending drilling, in truth it beat sitting in a hole on some back-water planet surrounded by blood and death. After all, for the common Praetorian soldier parades were a familiar comforting embrace. They were less of a training and ceremonial function than they were an inherent behaviour - like a dog scratching behind its ear, or a grynx cleaning itself.
“What the freck do you call that Lasman?!” Bellowed Sergeant Dawson
“The precise and instinctive execution of recognised military movements by an individual or group in response to commands and or signals, Sergeant!” replied Simons
The sergeant smirked, “You're going to be a Beastmen General someday!”
The insults continued and while the training was hard and unrelenting the Lasmen lapped it up enjoying every minute…
“Get a haircut you Jokaero! Stand up straight Demiurg! And close your mouth Slann!”
“That drill stinks worse like a Loxatl! And for you punks that weren’t on Krast, Loxatl is an amphibius quadruped that smells of rancid milk, rotting egg, mint and Brigadier Weeton’s arse soup on a hot day!”
“St-op M-ooo-v-ing! You think I can’t see you, you Hrud vermin!”
“That timing is Groxshit! It’s up, 2, 3, down! Get it together!”
"Keep the line straight Thyrrus scum! Spacing! Watch your frecking spacing you frecking Zoats."
“With drill like that you shouldn’t be a Praetorian Guardsman, you should be a Catachan Captain!”
"What are you? A Stryxis?! Bend your arms again and I’ll break them off and use them as pace sticks."
“What are you? PDF!!”
“The Advancing in Review is FIFTEEN PACES! Can you count to fifteen or were you schooled on Cadia??!!”
"By the Emperor name, Guardsman, you are as worthless as a FART in power armour!”
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The Major-General's Review
Finally, the day of the Major-General's Review & Trooping the Colour came. Around the passageways of the guard decks of Praetoriae Vindictam wafted the smell of boot polish, uniform starch, lasgun oil, and brass polish. The men were bright eyed and eager to catch a glimpse of the new General.
To all the senior officers delight, the parade started on time and flowed perfectly. Straight Line Abreast, Nose to Tail, Pairing Up, Flank Turn, Mini Sweep, Pinwheel, Full Team Crack, Single File Cross, Figure Eight, Interlocking Circles….. The Praetorians and the Thunder Guard flawlessly executed every ceremonial drill manoeuvre in the book as a well-oiled machine. Then came the moment for the Major-General to mount the podium and address the parade. Even from the distance, the men could see he was an old man.
“Blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, left arm augmented at the shoulder, walks with a limp, bald and unshaven.” Noted Col. Ackland to himself.“Clearly past his prime, but I wonder if he knows anything about war? Pfft. The Lord Governor in his wisdom has sent us an old used-up politician. Sure, he may haveled a few scruffs against rioters in the hives, but that isn’t real war. A rich Margrave. What sort of General is he going to make?” thought Ackland.
Standing there in his striking red-violet coat with yellow-orange trim and blue-green pants –the uniform of House Sigenandus– the Margrave looked down upon the parade. Now was the moment when he ceased being a Margrave and commenced his time as a Major-General.
With that thought he launched into his address; a long and confusing rant on war, death and mankind. At times what he said boarded on heresy, while during other parts he appeared a practiced iterator. Was it no more than the depressed deranged chatter of an old man? Ackland wasn’t sure. Whatever the case, this was the man that was to lead them all. The 40th Line, the 105th Mechanised Dragoon, the 63rd Rifles, the 122nd Artillery, the 10thArmoured, and all of Col. Ackland’s 3rd Brigade of the Macharian Thunder Guard – not to mention all of the supporting units.
“By the Emperor Name” thought Ackland, “I hope he is saner then he sounds”.
***********************************
(Really? You really what to know what he said? Well that's OK, I actually wrote that bit first.)
The long and misunderstood ranting of Major-General Margrave Chretzo Sigenandus
“Destructive and cruel wars, motivated by fear, greed, and the desire for power, had been common occurrences throughout human history, as had torture and widespread violence inflicted for religious and ideological reasons.
Through times of heresy and civil war humans have suffered more at the hands of each other than through any natural disaster or by foreign alien foe.
By the 30th millennium, however, the highly intelligent human mind under the watch of the Emperor had invented not only the psychic beacon of Terra projecting an astropathic beam 70,000 light years across the Milky Way Galaxy. But also, immense Ballistic Weapons, Conversion Beamers, Bombardment Cannons, Turbolasers, Superhuman Primarchs and Space Marines, Vortex Warheads, Deathstrike Cannons, Virus Bombs, Disruption Macrocannons, Neural Shredders, Rad Grenades, and Nova Cannons. -If one weapon could be said to exemplify the righteous fury of the God-Emperor's wrath, it would be the Nova cannon. Intelligence in the service of madness!!
Halfway thought the 31st millennium, at the end of the Horus Heresy, the survivors looked with horror and incomprehension upon the devastation left behind: some say 10 quintillion human beings killed and many more maimed and disfigured. Never before had human madness been so destructive in its effect, so clearly visible. Little did they know that this was only the beginning.
By the end of the 36th millennium, in the wake of the Age of Apostasy and the Plague of Unbelief the number of people who died a violent death at the hand of their fellow humans would rise to more than one hundred centillion. They died not only through petty wars between nations, but also through mass exterminations and genocide. Such as the murder of twenty quintillion "class enemies, spies, and traitors" in Segmentum Tempestus under the Inquisition, or the unspeakable horrors of the countless holocaust led by the blessed Grey Knights where whole populations were exterminated. We only need to watch the daily news pic feeds to realize that the madness has not abated, that it is continuing into the 41st millennium.
Another aspect of the collective dysfunction of the human mind is the unprecedented violence that humans are inflicting on the galaxy - the destruction of oxygen producing forests and other plant and animal life; ill-treatment of animals on Agri-Worlds; and poisoning of rivers, oceans, and air. Driven by greed, ignorant of their connectedness to the whole, humans persist in behaviour that if continued unchecked, can only result in our own destruction.
The collective manifestations of the insanity that lies at the heart of the human condition constitute the greater part of human history. It is to a large extent a history of madness. If the history of humanity were a Magos Biologis’ clinical case history of a single human being, the diagnosis would have to be: chronic paranoid delusions, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty against his perceived "enemies" -his own unconsciousness projected outward-, criminally insane, with a few brief lucid intervals.
Ha.”
(Hepaused for a long while, then when the silence was almost deafening he finally said)
“So why are we here? What is our business? War?
War is a mind-set, and all action that comes out of such a mind-set will either strengthen the enemy, the perceived evil, or, if the war is won, will create a new enemy, a new evil equal to and often worse than the one that was defeated. There is a deep interrelatedness between your state of consciousness and external reality. When you are in the grip of a mind-set such as "war," your perceptions become extremely selective as well as distorted. In other words, you will see only what you want to see and then misinterpret it. You can imagine what kind of action comes out of such a delusional system. The mind left to itself creates monstrosities. Look at our urban landscapes and industrial wastelands of Praetoria. No civilization has ever produced so much ugliness.
No, our business not war, it is life …and death.
Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret to life is to "die before you die"--and find that there is no death. This, the mighty God Emperor himself has shown us.
So, let us voyage out into the stars not for feeble minded concepts such as war, not to label the xenos, the heretic and the mutant as enemies but to defy the essence of Chaos by living and to reap death to all else. We will bring death to the galaxy and in doing so destroy death itself.
FOR WE ARE MAN! And we are madness! Let us go out and do what man does best."