Back when the Horus Heresy books were first published, I pounced on every single new volume, devouring its stories. I had always been drawn to the Horus Heresy after first reading about it in the rulebook of the first Space Marine game. Yuo know; the game that would later become Epic.
In that booklet, only hints were given about the proceedings, and much remained hidden behind the veil of time, as 10,000 years had passed since then, and most had been forgotten. There were many hints and references, and loads of very cool black and white artwork depicting the horrors of the conflict. Many wondrous and strange machines were also shown.
In hindsight, I miss that sense of wonder and mystery. Because while the Horus Heresy books were very captivating reads, especially the first couple of trilogies (I find they declined in quality after that, with some notable exceptions), the books explained and highlighted every single aspect of the Great Crusade and the Heresy. And this meant that there was no real mystery to these stories anymore, where the Horus Heresy used to be almost mythical in the lore.
But as the loss of mystery must be lamented, at least one positive came out of it; the Stormbird.
The Stormbird was the precursor to the Thunderhawk. But not built according to an STC, but individually built by artisans on Terra. They were described in the books as being streamlined, with folding wings, sturdy, large and beautiful, in contrast to the utalitarian, square and brutish shape of the smaller Thunderhawk that gradually replaced it during the Great Crusade.
And I just had to have one, so I began imagining what it would look like, based on the desciptions in the Horus Heresy books. I wanted it in Imperial Fists colours, to match my Heresy Era IF (which I built way before modeling HH armies was even a thing, using the proper metal armour variant miniatures. So it was Rogue Trader
and Horus Heresy; talk about niche
).
There was an individual though, who built a lander based on one of the illustrations in the Space marine booklet. It was made by marrying an Aurora class mech drop ship to a GI joe Dragonhawk, and while it looked awesome, it was not a Stormbird. He later stated so himself, but within the community, there was always some confusion between what was old in the lore and what was old miniature- or illustration-wise. Hence, a lot of people misnomered his really nice creation as a Stormbird, but that just never gelled with me.
The illustration in Space Marine
His pretty faithful creation'My' Stormbird was based on the descriptions in the books, and so it had to have folding wings, and most of all; it had to be streamlined and beautiful. While still looking like a massive craft at the same time; a bit like an airliner if you will.
At the time, there was this Playstation game I saw screenshots of, called Dropship (never played it myself), and the craft in there were actually very close to what I had in mind!
A dropship. From DropshipSo on a whim, I bought a large Thunderbird 2 toy off Ebay, which had quite a similar shape, and also a 1/48 F-14 Tomcat kit to donate its wings to the project.
My digital, top-down mockupI did some crude photoshopping to marry the two shapes together, to see if this would work and when I was satisfied it would, I obviously dropped the project and stored it.
As you do
This was roughly 18 years or so ago. But of late, I've been reminding myself every now and then of that project. I'm a model kit builder at heart, and the thought of creating something like a Stormbird still rouses that model builder in me. So when I came across the (partially) stripped Thunderbird 2 again a couple of days ago, I took it out of storage and it's been looking at me (slightly accusingly) from my gaming table ever since.
Anyway; now I face this dilemma; do I finally get started on this beast, probably dedicating many months of hobby time to the project, or do I spend that (often very limited) time on painting actual miniatures, such as finishing my Night Goblin army and several Frostgrave warbands and monsters?
Choices, choices...
18 April 2008, 03:10:53 PM