I started painting these weirdos some time ago for the Between the Bolter and Me Vastarian Painting Challenge and in my usual style finished them around 18 months late.

Vastarian is a Necromunda (or Inquisitor 28mm, Inq28, perhaps) type setting. The lore is set out HERE on the Between the Bolter and Me blog. Vastarian is essentially a shrine world of the Imperium on a pilgrim route to Holy Terra. It is (or was) characterised by a large amount of beautiful and renowned architecture and also an unusual level of tolerance for various cults to develop their own version of the Imperial Creed. This went to chaos however when the Cicatrix Maledictum opened causing a psychic awakening in large parts of the population–many cults that had been benign or focused on scholarship and theology suddenly became bizarre and deranged under this baleful influence and madness began to reign unchecked.

What is unique about the setting from a 40K perspective is that Chaos is not involved, nor are genestealers or similar. The factions are warring servants of their Emperor all convinced that their bizarre form of worship is the correct one and that all others are dangerous heretics. The previous state of tolerance and harmony is gone.

I decided to create a warband from figures I already had with the aesthetic of what Vastarian might have looked like if the setting had been created in circa 1998 with an old school Confrontation / Necromunda vibe. The warband lore is based on the Confrontation Psyker Gang archetype. My conception of them is that pre-Cicatrix Maledictum the cult was based on veneration of psykers as prophets of the Emperor rather than as something to be feared or destroyed. When the warp rift opened, due to the fact they had been dabbling in the occult already, they were more prepared than most for the disaster that came.

The figures are:
The leader is Privateer Godwin from Hasslefree Miniatures; a figure based on Jes Goodwin. I am not sure if this company is still in business though the sculptor, Kev White, is still going and I think is employed by Games Workshop now. A shame as Hasslefree made some absolutely stunning minis.
The caryatids are winged devil babies from Reaper Miniatures Familiar Pack IX.
The military advisor is the Trooper Leader with Handgun & Cigar from eM4 Miniatures Future Wars range.
The clerk is also from eM4 Miniatures, but from the legendary Spacelords range, being the Civilian Carrying Documents.

The psykers themselves are of course Rogue Trader models with modern plastic arms from the Empire hunters/scouts kit from the Warhammer Fantasy range.

Overall, I am very happy with how these turned out. The only issue is if you look closely you will see varnish has bubbled in a few spots, annoying and I don’t know what caused it, but you cannot see it unless you look very closely. I may go back and cover that up with some dark paint at some stage (it has mostly appeared in crevices and areas that would normally be shaded) if it continues to annoy me. The eM4 Miniatures range is great – I am very tempted to get some more to paint! I highly recommend them though they are smaller than GW minis, and probably a lot smaller than what GW is currently putting out.