Be Honest. You Can't Tell I've Had Work Done, Right? (Grimdark WIP) (Patreon)

Hello!

The next Grimdark WIP is here and it's time for Little Horus to make his debut!  So, many community members might be wondering who this dude is and why I've spent so much time on this side project.  The reason I chose the Loken vs Horus Aximand battle is because it is one of the major story threads that has gestated since the Horus Heresy series began.  Across 50+ books, multiple storylines have unfolded, characters have come and died but this grudge match has been brewing across the entire series and in my opinion has one of the most satisfying payoffs to date.  And like I said before, Loken is one of my favourite characters from the series so I gotta give him some screen time! 👍

Anyways, Horus Aximand is 5th Captain of the Luna Wolves and later the Sons of Horus.  The name Horus was actually popular back on his homeworld of Cthonia because that's where his Primarch grew up (yes, even in the grimdarkness of the far future celebrities are a thing).  Aximand was further given the nickname 'Little Horus' because he bore an uncanny physical resemblance to his Primarch (this is noted as a 16th Legion gene seed trait).  Back in my Loken summary, I mentioned that Horus had a quartet of informal advisors who were meant to give Horus a spectrum of opinions based on their personalities.  Horus Aximand is described as the melancholic one of the Mournival and his symbol in the group is the half moon.

When Horus decided to join team Chaos the Mournival was split.  Abaddon and Aximand sided with their Primarch while Loken and Torgaddon said this was all a bad idea.  Long story short, all the Sons of Horus who disagreed with the new direction got a one way ticket to Istvaan III so they can be virus bombed.  When that didn't work the traitors went down to finish the job personally.  Horus Aximand ended up killing Torgaddon, his fellow Mournival member and Loken's buddy. 😭

And while Aximand did side with the traitors, the whole ordeal left him traumatised (by Space Marine standards anyways).  In a streak of black humour, he dubbed his relic power sword 'Mourn-It-All' (I thought that was pretty funny).  

Aximand began to dream about a shadowy figure haunting him (Space Marines don't dream so this was highly unusual).  Sometimes this figure actually shows up when Aximand was doing day to day activties.  This became such a problem that Aximand got distracted when mopping up some Shattered Legion elements and got his face cut off by a White Scar called Hibou Khan.  

While the apothecaries reattached his face, Aximand had another dream in which he finally saw the figure haunting him was actually Loken. Aximand thought 'phew, just a troublesome memory, I buried that shit on Istvaan III' and not y'know foreshadowing.  A fun side theory I like to entertain is that it was ghost Torgaddon haunting Aximand all this time.  Oh yeah, even though the face graft really messed up his looks, Aximand was noted as resembling his Primarch even more after this event.  

So Aximand was feeling better about backstabbing all his friends until Loken pops up again on the Vengeful Spirit.  Turns out he's alive and has been trying to sabotage the traitor's efforts since the betrayal!  After a huge brawl, Loken escapes again but not before delivering an epic speech about how heresy does not pay! And traitors should prepare their butts for a swift kick by the Emperor's Boot of Justice!  At this point Aximand went 'Oh shit, maybe I picked the wrong side.  Well, I'm too deep into this mess now, gotta double down!' 

So fast forward to the Siege of Terra and Abaddon has this great idea do exploit a weakness in Dorn's defences and hog all the glory (it wasn't a great idea).  Basically, a bunch of Sons of Horus strike teams try to attack a location called the Saturnine Wall which had cracked open from all the shelling.  But Dorn was counting on this to happen and Abaddon gets everyone killed and he gets beaten to a pulp like the failure he is.  You do not know how much joy it gave me to type that sentence out. 😄

Aximand was part of this whole mess but he managed to escape the initial slaughter.  However the Emperor's justice finally caught up to him as Loken shows up to fufill the oath he made on the Vengeful Spirit.  After Aximand freaks out for a bit, the two clash in one final duel.  And how does this fight turn out?  Well, I plan to show that later this month in visceral detail so stay tuned for that.  

Okay, onto the Necron side of things.  So the Nightbringer is actually Aza'gorod or 'Aza'gorod the Nightbringer', and was once the mighty Star God of death, darkness, and destruction. Legends tell of the Nightbringer as the first and most powerful of the C'tan, and in ancient Necrontyr hiero-scripts it is depicted as an ever-hungering god of death, feasting upon the pain and anguish of entire species (hence the Grim Reaper look). 

During the War in Heaven, the Nightbringer reaped such a tally of death that even the Old Ones feared it and even now the younger species have a his image entered the collective unconsciousness of as the personification of Death.  So yeah, very scary stuff. 😱

But then came the Great Retcon and the writers decided to hit all the C'tan with the Nerf bat so hard they literally shattered into millions of shards.  What's with their fascination with turning gods into shards?  Yeah, the C'tan are all grimdark Pokémon now which is much less scary.  But we did get this character gem in exchange.

Fun fact, the Nightbringer has actually shown up in two Ultramarine books.  The first time was as an end level boss in the first Uriel Ventris book (If I remember correctly, Ventris actually set it free by accident, whoops).  Recently, it popped up again in the latest Ventris book after he became a Primaris Marine and after Great Retcon turned C'tan into Pokémon.  Ventris even notes how much sadder this version of the Nightbringer is which is a hilarious 4th wall break in my opinion. 😄

So visually, I went for more or less the original Nightbringer style but with its reduced status as a C'tan shard.  I wanted to show the Nightbringer being hooked up to a device shackling its power although it can also work just by itself.  I'll also provide options for a more classical version in case players want to relive the glory days when the Necrons were the C'tan's lackeys and not the other way around.  I do have plans to include something resembling a Tesseract Vault for the Nightbringer as well.

Okay, onto the poses!  I'll start working on the Harlequin as well but as I mentioned last month, it probably won't be ready for next month's release.  

Fantasy voting starts in about a week.  Please have your suggestions in before then.  Thanks!  

So I mentioned this last month but starting next year, I'll be implementing a system that rewards long term patrons.  I'll have more information about that in a bit.  Stay tuned!