"Recitation of Faith" - Terminator Chaplain Conversion - Part 1

Chaplains rouse Space Marines to war 

with their litanies of faith, 

and never is this spiritual fortification more vital 

than amidst the blood and horror of boarding actions 

and beachhead strikes.

- Games Workshop

Hello all! Welcome to your weekly dose of The Art of Caesura!

As usual, I'm sending you lots of positive vibes, especially if you need them today.

After almost half a year of Hellboy content on the blog, it's time to return to my beloved Black Templars. I have actually been working away in the background over the past few months, polishing off a few high-profile projects for my Templars. The first of which I will begin to reveal today!

Today is the first part of a kit-bash that I'm pretty proud of. We're going to be looking at it in detail over the next few weeks and today we'll look at the build. 

For those unfamiliar with Black Templars, they are inspired by crusading knights and are really not fans of psychic folks (the whole "burn the witch" mentality). So much so that they are perhaps the only Space Marine chapter that do not use psykers on the battlefield. So no librarians for you. But what about the cool Terminator Librarian model that came in my Leviathan box? NO!

What Black Templars do love though is Chaplains - those zealous zealots that stoke the religious fervour of their battle brothers. I remember hotly anticipating the "new" Terminator Chaplain, and then being very underwhelmed when it was actually revealed:

 

Especially compared to the models that it was replacing...

The one below, while now showing its age - in terms of proportions, was one of my favourite 40k miniatures ever! It just exudes so much menace -they both had much more character than the new one in my opinion. 

Anyway, once I saw that the official up-scaled Terminator Chaplain was not going to be something that I was interested in, I started eyeing up that Terminator Librarian that I wasn't going to be using...

Thus started one of the more ambitious conversions I have done: transforming the Terminator Librarian into a Terminator Chaplain.

I started by partially assembling him and deciding on what needed to stay and what needed to go. On the "to go" list were: the psychic hood, the psychic tubes on the sides of his chest, and the little psychic blebs all over his armour. At this stage I was happy to keep all purity seals and ribbons; and I was on the fence about whether or not I would fill in (or file off) the arcane markings on his armour. 

I looked for psychic symbols elsewhere on the model and found the ram-horned skull on both his Iron Halo thing on top of the model and on his left pauldron. So I just pared the horns off and left the rest. 

Next, it was time to address his head enclosure. Obviously the psychic hood had to go, but what would I replace it with? A shoulder pad, that's what! You can see on the new official Termy Chappy that, like standard terminators, he has the armour plating with the recessed holes in it (like the insides of pauldrons, for example) around his head. 

So, I replaced the right pauldron with one from the very old Black Templars Upgrade Sprue, and cut off a slice of the one that came with the Libby Termy. It was uncanny how well it fit! It wasn't absolutely perfect, but for replacing a hat with a shoulder, it was pretty darn good!

I glued it in position and would later add milliput as you shall see. 

Next, I returned to his arms, his left arm in particular. This was one of the easiest and most effective swaps. I straight-up swapped his left hand (with dangling psychic bracelet) with the hand holding The Skull of Cacodominus from the "new" Black Templars Upgrade Sprue. Not only did it fit perfectly, but it was a nice thumb in the nose to the model's psychic origins (it being the skull of a psyker, and a reference, perhaps, to the reason Black Templars don't use Librarians). 

I did an ol' dry fit of the model at this point and was quite happy with how things were coming together. 

With the model coming together, I moved towards adding details (as opposed to removing them as I had been doing up to this point). I used some Milliput to fill in the gaps in the head-shoulder pad. 

I applied the first layer of Milliput and then allowed it to cure overnight before refining it and sanding it. Knowing that the face would be a focal point for the model, I took my time with this part. 

With the cowl sorted, I turned my attention towards some light reading - the whopping great tomb on his back. It had some arcane symbol on it which I just covered with Milliput to make it look more austere and less arcane. 

I spent a long time humming and hawing about what to do for a Crozius Arcanum in his right hand. I fiddled around to see if I would fashion one out of bits, I even started looking online for 3D printing services local to me as I was beginning to think about his head as well. Ultimately I just stole the top half of the Crozius from the Chaplain on Bike (which I have yet to assemble. What will I do for his Crozius now? We'll cross that bridge when I get to it!)

Hot damn! It was all really coming together! I ended up leaving the esoteric engravings on his armour, reasoning that Chaplains might have script engraved into their armour too. 

I always love spraying a kitbash because it just unifies everything and makes this unique creation look like something you could buy off the shelf!

I look forward to going through the painting process with you next week! See you then right here on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler

Watching: Slow Horses (Season 4)

Gaming: Space Marine 2

Next Week:

Painting this chappie!