Redeem us from our solemn hour
Sanctus, Espiritus,
Insanity is all around us!
And from that gaping maw of darkness there roared and seethed a great stinging wind that choked at the lung and burnt the eyes and skin, and NONE could hear themselves within the terror! And the great wind roared and reared and swelled unto a vast and fearsome whirlwind that did dower beyond the highest reaches of the sky, blocking it out with burning smoke and brimstone, and the whirlwind howled and raged and tossed them about as dust before the storm, WHIPPING them round and round within the burning tempest until they all at once SCREAMED, SCREAMED with all their might that the pain might end, yet NO SOUND did leave their broken bodies that was not lost amongst the roar of the tempest an' the lightning!
Then did the lightning crack and split the tempest that it might send forth a great rain, not of water nor of blood but of BOILING OIL, and their skin was lashed and scared and seared 'til red and black yet still the rain of boiling oil did not cease, raking across their wretched frames again and again and as one they cried forth in begging that 'EMPEROR is LORD! EMPEROR deliver us from ruin! EMPEROR deliver us from darkness!'
And all them that were knew in their hearts that the END OF DAYS was at hand, and all them twisted and quaked with almighty terror at the judgement of the fire!
YET!
Yet it was not the end.
For at once there came from on high a vast and awesome blast of trumpets, clear as the dawn and clarion to smite all sound before its ring! And the heavens broke, and before the pit did usher forth a great host of glorious golden light that split the eye and drove back the darkness in fear, and the lightning and the tempest did part and scatter!
Then did there come a glorious voice speaking, 'I shall salve thy wounds and raise ye all unto the highest of heavens, where the clouds do not reach and where light is everlasting,
I shall strike down thy foes with fire and fury and plunge them to the blackest pit, there to wail in horror as their flesh rots before them forevermore,
I shall raise you up, all ye who are my chosen people, and carry you beyond pain and death, beyond heaven and hell unto a great shining kingdom of gold there to stay at my table in the eternal glory of absolute purity, if you will but honour my name in deed and word and body and soul!'
And their shame was washed in the fire, and they did KNOW in their very hearts that they heard the word of their MASTER, the once and forever KING!
And such it is that when the night is darkest and most terrible, when all that is good and noble seems lost, does the most glorious and radiant of LIGHT shine through the filth and the storm to smite away the lighting and the tempest!
Take heed and remember all you here today, that it was only when the men were lost in the very deepest and vilest bowls of the pit, only when they were utterly broken, hanging before the very precipice of DAMNATION, that it was at last that the EMPEROR did come to their aid, and it is this that is His covenant to mankind that in our darkest hour HE SHALL RAISE US FROM PERDITION!
I will not lie to you. I have no doubt we are all aware these are dark days before us, the direst of signs are there for any with the eyes to look. It's true, times are harsh, the struggle before us is immense and it will only get more savage and terrible before the end.
But!
That is precisely, PRECISELY, why it is now more than ever than you should take heart, and have FAITH, and fortify yourself with the TRUTH that is the GOD EMPEROR OF ALL MANKIND! For just as He reached down His hand in salvation for those fearful men in the pit, so too shall He again deliver the ultimate victory of man for all those who hold loyal to him NO MATTER THE COST!
I was like them once. Once I too was lost and alone, cast adrift in the empty Babylon of progress, my body numbed by the false promises of comfort while my soul screamed out in excruciation yet I WAS SAVED! I opened my eyes to the darkness and corruption around me and opened my eyes to the TRUTH of the gospel of the God Emperor our once and true Lord, and when I gave myself unto his most sublime mercy I was DELIVERED from my torment, my sin was NAILED to the wheel and my soul was washed anew white as snow by the blood of my scars!
Now I stand before you to tell you all to take heart, for all we need do to find our way to the Emperor and His Kingdom Of Gold is but to let go of our doubt and commit ourselves utterly to His word, in mind and deed and body and soul, and give unto him our ultimate loyalty unto death my brothers it is NEVER too late to renounce the darkness and cast yourself into the shining radiant purity of THE LIGHT!
Wonderful news everyone! I am a new man, saved from the death and torment that is the wages of sin, and delivered unto the glorious path of the God Emperor, for I am His servant and His plan is my destiny! I have been lifted up from the filth and the maggots to walk by his side in the everlasting kingdom of man! I have cast off the suffocating bands of degeneracy and wickedness and embraced the purity of the light!
Take heart, for I am at long last, just in time for their 20th anniversary, starting the Witch Hunters army I always wanted.
The first time I discovered the Witch Hunters was when I had just started into 40k for the first time, at age 8 going on 9. I was researching every scrap of information I could find on the Games Workshop website and so invariably turned to the Witch Hunters page and.... was horribly confused. Witches in space? Witch Hunters in space? What the hell was going on? What's with all the braziers and torches? Why is everything half-medieval in my sci-fi game? What the hell does this Inqzecution thing have to do with anything? Or this Ordos Hathfickfehichsurs? Wait their troops are mostly girls? Ew cooties!
Pretty much the only thing that didn't go completely over my head was a photo and short blurb describing a type of fighting machine called a Penitent Engine, which was a kind of battle robot powered by a prisoner hard-wired into it whose desperate frantic need for mercy and forgiveness directed the robot straight into the teeth of the opposition. And even at that young age the whole concept and the model were both very creepy awesome and the ultimate illustration of the evil of the Imperium, so that very quickly earned a special place in my heart even when I could not make any kind of sense out of the rest of the model line.
But the real origin of this Witch Hunter army lies almost a decade later, in 2011. By this time I had become a morbid depressed teenager and had discovered the darker joys of horror films and gloomy symphonic metal ballads about suicide. I had also learnt how to read and pronounce 'Ordo Hereticus' properly (well sort of, by habit I was still putting the accent emphasis on the second-to-last syllable for 'Ordo HereTICus' but it's a minor squibble).
And in what might have been their greatest stroke of brilliance in the 2010s, GW released the entire complete Witch Hunters codex online as a free PDF. One fateful night I decided to look through it out of curiosity. And everything changed.
I understood everything.
I understood the Imperium. I understood what playing an Imperial army was supposed to be like. I understood space gothic aesthetics and hunting witches in space with crossbows and everything. And I understood the appeal of it all. Reading through that book was what finally broke me out of my bubble of Tau-powered classic science fiction. Ever since then I've wanted an army of heavy metal Witch Hunters.
And finally I'm starting to get around to it this year. Here are my first results.
Squad Chastity is one of three planned 'assault' units of Battle Sisters. Much like my Tau, I'm building this army with a distinction between offensive core troop units equipped for going out and attacking the other side and defensive core troop units intended for locking down important sites and guarding against the other side coming out and attacking me (the key difference here of course being the total absence of a third force of flexible tactical units that can be used for either mission as needed).
This army represents my first ever clean sheet colour scheme, not reverse-engineered from any GW studio examples. Instead it comes from my own real life experience, being lifted directly from the school uniform of a Catholic Girls' School that some of my friends went to. In particular some goth girls I knew from there largely hated the place with a passion, and their horror stories about it left me with plentiful inspiration for grim dark religious horror about grim dark religious horror 40k factions.
Most notably, ever since I have always seen the Sisters of Battle as Catholic Schoolgirls In Space. Forget that nuns with guns nonsense, they are absolutely Catholic Schoolgirls with rocket guns and power armour (right down to actually being Schola Progenium brats in the codex lore), not least because that concept is SO MUCH MORE BRUTALLY GRIM-DARK, between the child soldier connotations and the implications of them being bound to and bossed around by an order of sleazy old beardos with near unlimited power and near zero oversight or accountability. The Ecclesiarchy is supposed to be all the worst parts of organised Abrahamic religion thrown into a telepod and given half a space empire to do as they please, and I am here for that as the nemesis for my grey Supermarionation Space Wellsians.
Anyway, this all culminated in one fateful evening after school when I had the sudden divine vision to try and take the uniform colours of this Catholic Girls' School and see how they looked on the Sisters of Battle in Dawn of War: Soulstorm. The final result was a lovely blue-white-gold colour scheme that I was so delighted with that I knew then and there that if I ever got the chance to do a Witch Hunters army on the tabletop that would be the colour scheme for the Sisters of Battle in it. The rest, as you can see, is history.
This particular incarnation of the colour scheme takes full advantage of the total freedom of colour combination in real life model painting to introduce some colour-coding for the different ranks. Thus, the regular Battle Sisters have lighter medium-blue robes (the source material's colour for junior-year students) while the veterans like the Superior leading this squad wear dark blue robes (the source material's colour for senior-years).
For those playing at home, the robes are respectively:
Medium Blue - Regal Blue base, layered with Caledor Sky and highlighted with a 50:50 mix of Caledor Sky and Lothern Blue
Dark Blue - Abaddon Black base, layered with Regal Blue and highlighted with a 50:50 mix of Regal Blue and Caledor Sky
The white armour was built up in drybrushes starting from Mechanicus Standard Grey and then working up to Dawnstone then a 50:50 mix of Dawnstone and Administratum Grey, then pure Administratum Grey and finally White Scar. After some sage deliberation I settled on the grey-based white palette rather than blue-white palette, both shown in the painting guide featured in White Dwarf #292(UK).
I also decided to use red lenses on the gunsights, both to act as a nice spot colour among all those blues and whites as well as to act as a perfect visual contrast to the green gunsights on my Tau.
The Sisters themselves received a range of hair colours, including a few skunk stripes for maximum 2003 gothic energy, and as a throwback to one of my favourite 40k art pieces - a corner vignette in Cities of Death featuring a Battle Sister blasting away with her bolter through a ruined window while incoming fire impacts all around her.
The same artwork was also major factor in my decision to go with dark grey urban rubble for the bases. From the outset I knew I had to base these models in a Witch Hunter army's natural habitat - sweeping through a dark gloomy Imperial city, wiping heretics and deviants away like the vermin they are with holy fire and blessed bolt-shells! This was also done with an eye towards building up this army with a central focus on Cityfighting for similar reasons.
Ironically for being inspired by a Catholic school, all these blues and whites and golds ended up being wonderfully reminiscent of Orthodox Church aesthetics (which I have always deeply and openly loved), which ended up being the genesis for the army's backstory as being rooted in the Eastern Ecclesiarchy, a de facto third Convent/Synod of the Ministorum responsible for managing and enlightening the Ultima Segmentum and Eastern Fringe; in theory a subordinate offshoot from the main branches on Terra and Ophelia, but for all practical intents and purposes an equal and autonomous branch, a status quo accepted by all because of both the logistical difficulties of directly managing the galactic east from Ophelia in the galactic south and Terra in the galactic centre-west, and because much like Ultramar it ensures the Imperium has a solid power base on the other side of the galaxy from its capital worlds.
In turn its primary Order Militant of Adepta Sororitas, the Order of The Crux Celestas that these Battle Sisters belong to, is technically an Order Minoris (though no-one is quite sure anymore whether it's supposed to be a subsidiary of the Convent Sanctorum or Convent Prioris, such information being long since lost to the ages), but has grown large and independent enough to be a full Convent in its own right, easily a match for any of the original six Orders Militant in size, equipment and significance.
And of course all this puts the army in the perfect spot to get into lots of fights with my Tau.
Unfortunately despite my best efforts the camera still seems to hate this colour scheme, stubbornly refusing to get the colour balance on the blues just right and leaving them appearing much lighter than they actually are in reality. The only exception so far has been this work in progress shot of the squad collected together in a corner of my painting space.
But such matters are of little concern in the Emperor's divine plan! Now here, take plenty of these pamphlets and be sure to share them with all your family and friends. And remember we'll be meeting to discuss and study the Emperor's Holy Creed every Tuesday night, Thursday night and Sunday morning. And be sure to stop by our first community pot-luck next Saturday!
