I lived, captain-general. It was short, and it was painful, but by the nine hells, I lived. I'd rather have it that way than yours - no joy, no hate, no fear. Unbreakable without growth, immortal without passion
The Primarch Ushotan of the IVth Legio Cataegis
Introduction
The Legio Cataegis or Thunder Warriors to use their Low Gothic nomenclature were the predecessors of the Legiones Astartes. Though crudely armed and augmented by comparison, the Cataegis would prove to be more than adequate in tipping the balance in the Wars of Unification, paving the foundations for what would become the Imperium with their blood and sacrifice.
Theirs is a tale doubly touched by tragedy though, for not only did the bio-alchemy which enhanced them drastically foreshortened their lifespans but as the Unification of Terra drew near the Emperor ordered their liquidation by the Legio Custodes and proto-Astartes. The Cataegis were monsters created only to win a world and the Master of Mankind had far greater ambitions in mind. Indeed, had the cataclysmic wars of the Horus Heresy not torn the galaxy asunder and derailed the Great Crusade it is very likely that the same fate would have awaited the Astartes.
Like so many of the darker corners of the history of the far future, I think the Unification Wars are a fascinating era very ripe for exploration and I'd initially thought about trying to build some models of the Thunder Warriors after devouring the Limited Edition of Valdor: Birth of the Imperium novel when it was released in 2019. The book was fantastic and I particularly enjoyed discovering more about the Custodes, the Cataegis and Astartes, particularly as these revelations built upon the seeds sown in Book VIII of Forge World's Horus Heresy series, as well as those scattered throughout other novels from the Black Library and there's something incredibly rewarding about piecing everything together from the scattered sources of lore.
As is so often the case with ideas like this though, I didn't get around to developing or progressing it at the time, but in late 2020 I bought a Humble Bundle containing a selection of Black Library audiobooks including Valdor and listening to it brought the idea of making models of the Cataegis bubbling back to the surface again, but where to start?
After some thought, and a bit of research into how others had gone about similar projects, I had a few chats with
Fabricator-General of The Fenpyrian Forge James Fenlon, about how he went about making his which you can see
here.
James was phenomenally helpful, providing a lot of tips and feedback and even sending me a few of the harder to find bits that the build I had in mind required so I could get started for which I'm incredibly grateful.
Concept Sketching
After carefully following James' advice and tips on shaping the arms and restyling the pauldrons to achieve the desired look, I mocked up the first Thunder Warrior quite quickly (see above). With the concept successfully sketched out I thought I'd have a go at a couple more but although I did a lot of preparatory work such as sourcing and ordering bits, building some pre-imperial weaponry and preparing everything for assembly, the project stalled and others began to take precedent. In the end, almost a year would pass before I returned to it and while I'm still not sure where the impetus sprang from, in September of 2021 I dug out the wee box I'd carefully stored all the bits for the three planned models and started to put them together.
Although the legionnaires of the Cataegis were primarily engineered and equipped with combat in the press of melee in mind, more than a few of their number would come to be armed with a wide variety of ranged weapons as the Wars of Unification liberated more and more technoarkana from the hoards of tyrants and despots brought low by the Emperor's armies...
A Concise Historie of the Unification of Terra, Tyfal Forr
At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it because it meant I could have some fun making some unique wargear for each of the Thunder Warriors. Various sources describe the Cataegis as using an archaic pattern of the Terran boltgun, but in Valdor the bolt weapons wielded by the proto-Astartes seem unfamiliar to some, so I decided that this presented an opportunity to explore some pre-Imperial weapon designs as part of the project. From an 'in-universe' perspective, I feel that having a mix of weapons across the three works OK because while there was probably some standardisation of equipment and armament across the twenty regiments of the Legio Cataegis, it would not have been on the same scale as would be seen in the later deployment of the Legiones Astartes, so it's not too much of a stretch.
The rest of the models draw upon components from a variety of kits, including legs and bodies from Stormcast Eternals, arms and shoulder pads from Iron Hands Gorgon Terminators and backpacks from Sigismund and Alexis Polux. For the most part, they're relatively simple 'cut and paste' kitbashes, though the legs of two of them did require a little greenstuff work to fill some gaps. I also looted some pouches and grenades from the Necromunda Enforcers kits as they're starkly different in appearance to those we're familiar seeing at the belts of Astartes.
Warriors of Caged Thunder and with Whom Lightning Smote
Assembling the models was pretty easy for the most part, though I did take quite a while to settle on the heads I've finally gone with. Anyway, without further ado, here are the assembled models in more detail:
This
Legionary is armed with a
plasma caster and
concussion maul. Though primitive in construction and of questionable stability by the later Imperial standards, plasma casters were still horrifically effective weapons, capable of reducing even the most heavily armoured of foes to nought but charred bone and ash in a heartbeat.
Somewhat unusually, this Legionary carries a disintegration gun, likely manufactured by the Terra Watt Clan in the Ural Forges. Functioning in a broadly similar fashion to the Adrathic weaponry which would come to be favoured by the Imperial Household, disintegration weapons were as feared as they were potent.
Finally, this
Legionary wields a
concussion maul and
flechette blaster. Although notoriously inaccurate,
flechette blasters were simple to construct, easy to maintain and devastatingly effective against lightly armoured infantry, making them ideal for softening up a foe while charging into melee range.
Inspiration for the disintegration gun came from an Astartes miniature that is wearing a very distinctive suit of armour, while the plasma caster and flechette blaster were mainly the result of combining bits in ways that seemed to make sense and thinking about how the weapon would actually work. The concussion mauls were a bit easier, essentially being less refined versions of power weapons and ideally suited for the brutal short ranged fighting styles of the Cataegis.
Unification
The final aspect of the 'build' phase of was making suitable bases for the Cataegis and I decided to go for a classic combo of 'mud, debris and skulls' theme, partly because I can replicate this quite easily if I decide to build any more Thunder Warriors (or other Unification Era miniatures) in future, but also because it seemed fitting for the kinds of battlefields these warriors would be fighting over. The skulls came from the Citadel 'Skulls' kit and were mostly used straight from the sprue, though a few were cut so that they would sit at specific angles. The mud is my trusty 'go to' Vallejo texture paint and the debris came from the Primaris Infiltrators kit if I remember rightly.
Although this was a bit of a stop/start project and since the models aren't painted yet it isn't really finished it's been really fun to bring it to this point and who knows, 2022 might see me moving it on further.
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