I need to ask you to bear with me on this on as the last few weeks have been particularly challenging and so there's a couple of tangents here.
Four weeks ago, my friend, mentor and line manager revealed that she had been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. She had been ill for quite some time but nevertheless the news hit hard as it was such a shock and it came with so much uncertainty for her and for all of us that knew her.
A fortnight ago, just a few days after her 50th birthday my friend passed away.
The news of her passing hit like a sledgehammer as we were all still processing the MND diagnosis. As a result, I've struggled to stay focused on much of anything over the last month which I gather is quite normal when coping with loss, but I feel as though I should be doing something.
What has this got to do with Dominion Zephon though? I hear you ask. Well,
the day after my friend's Celebration of Life last week, I was tidying a stack of unbuilt kits and as I was doing so, I came across Zephon who I'd picked up alongside Fafnir Rann as part of the 2022 Black Library Celebration in February. When the mini was revealed, I remember liking most of it other than the base and the overly chunky pauldrons. I could do something about that I thought. So on Friday evening I set to work building the kit and making a few tweaks so that I was happier with how it looked.
I also raided my bits box and replaced Zephon's stock pauldrons with a pair from the 2016 Imperial Space Marine which I think are a bit more in keeping with his artificed mkVI plate and help make him feel a bit less 'top heavy'. Swapping the pauldrons also means I can use decals for his heraldry which I prefer over using ones with sculpted details. I'm currently in two minds about removing the sculpted destroyer icons from the jump pack, I'll need to mull that over a bit though.
The final change I made was to carefully remove the fangs that were sculpted on the bare headed option for the kit - I felt they were just a little bit too space vampires and I may be wrong but I don't recall warriors of the IXth being described as possessing them. I'm more likely to go with finishing Zephon with his 'lid on' I think, but I thought I'd give this a go anyway as it's always good to have options.
Zephon is of course a fictional character, but through a cruel twist of fate his body conspired against him, rejecting augmetic limbs and cutting short his exemplary record of service in the early years of the Great Crusade. It wouldn't be until shortly before his death at Gorgon Bar during the Siege of Terra that he would regain the abilities so long lost to him, thanks in no small part to the ministrations of the Techpriest Arkhan Land.
There is a something of a parallel here as MND robbed my friend of control over her body as it progressed, though unfortunately unlike the far future where even during the Age of Darkness medical miracles and technological marvels are abound, sadly there is no cure for the disease that killed my friend and her loss leaves a huge gap in many people's lives.
Despite the parallel between reality and fiction, building Zephon isn't intended as a way to pay tribute to my friend, there are far more fitting ways I can and will do that - but it has been a way of channeling some of the grief into something constructive and a little cathartic.
Hobby funds permitting, I'm hoping to pick up a few of the kits from the new Age of Darkness range to paint up as a small contingent of Blood Angels over the coming months and my current thinking is that I'll paint up Zephon to accompany them - keeping his base relatively unostentatious and in a style that's easily replicated means I can tie him in with them without too much difficulty if I continue on that line of thought, though if that plan changes, I can just as easily paint him up for display instead.
Either way, it feels good to be actively planning and doing something among all the sadness, uncertainty, anxiety and all of the other swirling emotions and feelings.
Comments
Post a Comment