Fluffing it.

So I’ve had a pretty quiet hobby week,  between one thing or another I’ve not got nearly as much done on my ETL Vow as I’d have liked.  In the meantime however I have started working on the background for my army a little more so I thought it would be a good time to discuss army background and what that means to you.

I think we’re quite lucky in the Horus Heresy community.  Not only do we have some amazingly talented modellers & painters, many of whom write amazing backgrounds for their creations (check out Death of a Rubricist for example) but we also seem to have a lot less of the win at all cost type of players prevalent in standard 40k, I’m not saying there aren’t some out there, they’re just less common. 

Also between Black Library and Forgeworld we have an excellent starting point to go from.

 

Something like that…

 

Now obviously the amount of backstory you want to give your army is entirely up to you, you might just want to go as far as their current campaign, a few campaigns worth or (if you’re a bit OCD with it like me) their entire campaign history! And it can be as detailed or vague as you like, especially if its written as a retrospective (in a similar fashion to how FW writes their HH series) as a person reviewing data and records from a time already past, that way gaps in the timeline can be explained as missing or damaged records that you can fill in later.

 

I'm sure it was nothing important.

That’s the approach I’ve taken, I started off with their current campaign and has kinda been working backwards from there.  The other things you’ll want to think about are where your army is fighting, who they’re fighting and one that is less obvious, when.

Where they’re fighting will mostly just dictate your choice of basing, but it will also have an effect on how much source material you have to begin with, if you set your army in the heart of the crusade fleets like the 63^rd for example, there is much, much more information available, which means your slightly more tied down to established events than if you choose the fringes of the expansion which that then gives you more creative freedom, so both have their merits and drawbacks.

Who is an interesting question in the context of the Great Crusade/early Heresy Era, since the Expedition Fleets were conquering worlds over the breadth of the galaxy it really gives you scope to come up with some totally bizarre concepts for enemies and obviously ,the later into the Crusade and then into the Heresy you get your enemies will change again as you inevitably get drawn into the civil war, no matter which side you’re on.

Which brings you finally to when, and not just when in the timeline, if your backstory is part of a campaign, how long has your army been in the field?  If you set your army mid campaign it can make for some interesting list decisions, using odd numbered troops in squads to represent casualties that haven’t yet been replaced or using full squads but with a few members having slightly different markings to represent units that have been amalgamated due to casualties but not yet had time to update their designations.

I like to make work for myself, so I settled on an expedition fleet not mentioned in the books set in an area of space with very little background information.  The locations changed twice, originally it was to be an extended campaign in the Halo Stars, that then moved to the Ghoul Stars (for somewhere a little more remote) and finally to the region known as the Death of Reason to tie in with something I have in mind for the armies future. I did give myself one concession however in that I picked Orks and Eldar as the primary adversaries for my army although I do plan to explore some xenos and human foes for their backstory as I fill in the gaps of the expeditions history.

From reading other people’s backgrounds as well as writing my own I’ve noticed everyone has a slightly different style, much like novel writing, which I suppose isn’t that surprising, it’s still worldbuilding, just within an established canon. I find I work best when I start with broad strokes, for example I decided early on that the company would aid in the defence of Metalica Forge World at some point, thus being joined by a demi-legion of titans from the Legio Metalica, they would also fight at Neverlight, simply because I liked the name and there’ve very little information about it giving me free reign, I knew the company would remain loyalist once news of the Heresy reached them and that in trying to return to the Imperium their journey would take them, battered and a fraction of their former strength, to Macragge,  I had to do a bit of rethinking with dates once Betrayer came out as the ruinstorm would essentially block them from getting to the Ultramarines until the end of the war, so now they arrive around the time that Know no Fear ends.  Sometimes you have to go back and change things, sometimes you don’t have to but you want to because you think of something that appeals to you more, makes more sense, or just works better.

Forgeworlds timeline has been very useful (check out Battle Bunnies for their timeline going back into the Crusade)

 

It’s also worth mentioning as it is in a similar vein, your army is what you choose to make it.  I’ve been criticised in the past that my Iron Warriors don’t have enough siege guns in the list, but the legions are so vast and varied at this point, sure the Iron Warriors might be known for their siegecraft, and in the background I write for them I certainly intend to show that the 6^th can bring the heavy guns out, but their current campaign, fighting small to mid-sized skirmishes against speed freak Orks and fending off intermittent hit and run raids by Eldar, doesn’t call for them.  At least not in the numbers everyone seems to expect me to field.

Ultimately, whatever you choose, there’s no wrong way to flesh out your backstory.

Until next time.