A rolling stone gathers a lot of xenos.

Epistolary Gabriel, Crimson Fists Geokinetic

Today I’d like to present Crimson Fists Epistolary Gabriel, Master of the Geokinesis psychic discipline! This Primaris Librarian is another long-term resident of the ‘Shelf of Shame’, having languished in his box since the model was released back in 2017. This model will also be my entry for the Warhammer Community #WarhammerPaintComp for April, which is on the theme of “Wise Wizards”. It was actually this contest that inspired me to bump Gabriel to the front of the queue.

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Assembling

The LED techniques used in this model are those described in my LED Psyker tutorial, except this time I used two separate circuits rather than one, powered by two separate batteries in the base. This required a 50mm base to accomodate both batteries, which was also useful also for allowing more room to model the ‘geokinetic’ floating rocks. One circuit consisted of three 1.8mm TruOpto Blue LEDs (the head and base) in parallel, and the other circuit was two Blue 0805 Chip LED (3V) (the hands). I expect it would have been possible to use five of the 0805 Chip LEDs running in parallel off a single battery instead, however I decided to use the LEDs I had in stock for this one rather than ordering more. The ‘energy’ effects around the hands was achieved with Water Splash Effect Gel, available from Green Stuff World, using the technique described in my Nighthaunt Candle tutorial.

If ez da rock I’d ‘ate to see da ‘ard place!

Zogbag, Ork Weirdboy

For the pose, I was going for the classic X-Men Magneto hovering posture, only throwing rocks instead of metal. I was also inspired by Apologist’s classic Iron Hands Clan Trago Librarian “Psi-Cursed Merdardus” (scroll down). The left hand is the default ‘open’ hand of the model, while the right I had to resculpt after removing the force sword. The left leg is also repositioned forward, although this might not be evident in the pictures. As he was no longer holding his sword I added a sheathed sword which was from the limited edition Space Marine Captain that was released a number of years ago. The “floating” rocks were made from small pieces of cork tile, cut into rock-like shapes with a hobby knife and then superglued together.

Painting

I’ve never particularly been a fan of the ‘codex’ approach of repainting armour for specialist roles. I quite like the Rogue Trader era solution of just one arm being the appropriate specialist colour, as I did with my Imperial Fist apothecary. But I didn’t feel this was an effective solution with the blue of the Librarius being so close to the blue of the Crimson Fists, and also with much of the model being hidden by robes.

I remember seeing in White Dwarf a long time ago an article with a Dark Angels army where all the specialists had their armour painted in Dark Angels colours – either green or the bone of the Deathwing – and their robes painted in the colours of their specialism. I thought that looked great, so I decided to follow that approach here. The paint recipe I used on the robes uses Citadel paints: Macragge Blue base, Nuln Oil shade, then highlight up through Calgar Blue highlight and Fenrisian Grey. Otherwise I stuck to the pallet that I used for the rest of the army. It would have been very easy to get carried away painting the Librarian’s ‘bling’ but ultimately I felt the focus of the model should be the LED effects.

That’s it for this week. I hope you found that interesting, hopefully see you back here again soon!