The road to Legio II

This is Olvebanipal again. Back for some tips on how to write your legion fluff.

As I said in my first post, I decided to make my own legion. One of the greatest parts of the 40k lore is that there are three legions which we don’t know anything about. Even though Warhammer Horus Heresy, or 30k as I will begin to refer to it as, is a historical miniatures game within the lore of the Warhammer universe, the missing legions can be used to go around the strict rules of established fluff.

I’ve studied history, so I know all about how accuracy is important in popular culture for us nerds. I can rant on about the inaccuracies of the TV show Vikings or be furious about the portrayal of the birkebeiners in the coming, Norwegian movie with the same name. That does not, however, keep me from enjoying these films. I believe that many fans of the lore of the Horus Heresy is equally frustrated when they see armour marks, tanks and iconography which do not belong in that period.

My legion started as a chapter in 40k, inspired by the roman legions. As you know, that is basically what the writers of the HH novels did, but I was in love with the whole space marine legionnaires mixed with human auxiliaries-theme. When I then went back to write about the primarch of these guys, the theme suddenly changed.

The amount of wololo in this screenshot
would make my headphones catch fire.

I’ve been interested in ancient history since I was a kid, and one of the places that struck me as mysterious and fascinating was the ancient near east. The original Age of Empires also did its part in this interest. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Sumerians and Hittites were some of the factions you could play in this old classic. In my teens I began to listen to the band Nile, and their atmosphere certainly influenced the feel of the background of my legion.

So, I went through several versions of the primarch’s origin story. Some of my friends, now a part of this blog, gave me tips and helped me make the fluff fit with the canon. I was still undecided about the iconography and name for the legion. Adrian had earlier bought nail decals from eBay for his imperial knights, and that made me look for legion symbols among a throng of flowers, puppies, horses and hearts.

This is the actual decal I ordered.
My legion of princesses shall be
victorious!

Hobby tip: Buy nail decals from eBay. It’s a super way to get cheap markings for your miniature army.

Anyway, I searched for different animals, Rhino, Elephant, Lion, Bear, Snake, Bull… Bull... I found a simple, decal of a bull’s head. “This will do”, I thought.

Well…

Now I kind of regret it, because my legion with the colour scheme and iconography became very similar to the Forge World Minotaurs chapter. But I say to myself: “There is no Minotaurs chapter. This is the 31^st millennium.”

So the second legion, because the eleventh is too hard to pronounce, was named the Taurii, which I later found out should be Tauri, but hell… if GW can use bastardized Latin, so can I.

Hobby tip: Don’t be too quick to establish your army’s fluff. You will have to revise it. Ask friends and on forums. You don’t want to change it after you’ve converted your whole army to fit with a theme, as I did.

One of my first legionnaires.
I'll go more in debth about the
conversion in a later article.

So the primarch of Legio II Taurii was Apis, inspired by the… yes I know… Egyptian, not Mesopotamian, bull god. I use a lot of Egyptian names as well, so I’ve not bound myself to Mesopotamia.

Hobby tip: Don’t base your background too firmly on a real world culture. It may prove to be restricting instead of guiding.

Next time I’ll post the first part of the origins of the Taurii. Until then, please leave comments below if you have enjoyed this small introduction, or just want to share your experiences.

May Apis, King of Kings shine his light upon you.

- O    

PS:
Here is the trailer for the movie I mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf0zON29z3c

For you foreigners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkebeiner
Here is a link to the nail decal page: http://www.yrnails.com/bull-head.html