Thorn Moons Crusade: Elder One Othalanga

Elder One Othalanga

Song of Othalanga, Cerberin Brier

With a Thousand Sons I walked betwixt a profusion of petals

Until lymph and serum congealed sweet and thick

Until my marrow drained and flesh transmogrified

For a thousand years I spurned the flesh change

But I had lived as half a being

Until the celestial tides wrought our metagenesis.

I am an envenomed barb, a binary poison

Cerberin brier, a wordless hex

The heart arrests and vision fades

Wreathed in white, brass, and iron

I forge adamantium and steel with branch and bough

I shape a truth that had been sleeping

As the Thousandth Son I am reborn

I am a wanderer of moons, a changer of ways.

From Throne to Thorne.

I must live, I must die, and live again

I am the memory of all that came before,

I am the worlds soil, and the world anew.

Although I spent a large portion of this year sculpting and then casting a better proportioned Space Marine, it all started with the idea of creating an Elder One for Iron Sleet’s upcoming Thorn Moons Crusade, a major collaborative event where the Imperium, led by a ravaging horde of Space Wolves, is attempting to the purge the herectical Green Mechanicvm from existance. Although few in number and their origin nebulous, each Elder One is a prodigious warrior that towers above most Astartes. Currently, all of the Elder Ones (each created by the esteemed FPOA) have been built from one of the Forge World Primarch models. This fits quite well with the “true-scale” marine that I created, as they are roughly the same size. Due to the Elder Ones’ connection with the Green Mechanicvm, I wanted to create one that was a techmarine. While I wanted to maintain some of the classic imagery (servo arm, cog symbols, etc), I wanted to subvert them a little with plant imagery, such as flowers and tree branches.

The Thorn King - John Blanche

As a techmarine, I thought he would prefer ranged weapons over melee ones, and decided to have him holding his master-crafted boltgun.

When trying to decide a weapon for him, I felt that I should continue to experiment with standard Space Marine imagery and give him a Boltgun. From the poem that I wrote, I knew that I wanted him to be a toxicologist, studying poisons and toxins. Giving him a Boltgun with a needler attached (as a combi-weapon) seemed like a good way of incorporating his interest in toxins into the classic Boltgun design. To build the weapon, I took one of the 2nd edition boltguns and replaced the skeletonized stock with a more standard fixed stock (from a Skitarii Radcarbine). I extended the barrel of the Boltgun and then added the needler on top (converted from a Sicarian Infiltrator subcarbine).

I wanted the Elder One to be a botanist who took special interest in flowers, so I added a few flowers growing on his shoulders.

To make the base, I just combined a 32 and 40mm base, filling the seams with green stuff and adding a few branches. I also gave it a coat of GW texture paint to give it that parched look.

One of the main inspirations for the character was John Blanche’s Voodoo Forest series of artwork, with all of its monstrous forests and thorns. John also did a piece shortly after the Thorn Moon Crusade was announced, featuring wild-eyed man with a beard of vines and thorns, with withered tree sprouting from his scalp. This image embodied the emotion that I was hoping to instill in the Elder One that I was creating, a wry smirk, harboring an antediluvian certainty that all would return to leaf and branch. To achieve this, I took the head of a Forge World Legion Praetor and sculpted a wiry beard. I used part of a dryad to create a branch sprouting from his forehead, and used green stuff to sculpt a few vines around it.

I added a book, filled with esoteric knowledge of toxins and poisons, to his side, strapped into a little harness that I sculpted from green stuff.

I think the model is finally about done and ready for paint. If anyone has any suggestions on either the conversion or the paint scheme, I would be happy to hear it!

- Adam Wier