Adeptus Arbite (Art Monday)

 This one was done back 1996 as a submission for a 40k fanzine. It went unpublished, primarily due to that zine closing up abruptly (a bit more on this next week).  

"Get up citizen!"

This one is somewhat small. I like all of the hive/post-industrial Gothic stuff happening in the background more than the figure in the foreground. If I had the opportunity to redo this I would probably put a lot more detail on the Arbite. Maybe also add a servo skull to accompany him or something (Cyber mastiffs were not a thing yet). Anyway, when I did this there was very little reference art. A sketch from around White Dwarf 130 (?) by Jes Goodwin and the miniatures that came for Confrontation and the squad that was released in the early months of Warhammer 40,000 2nd edition, and that was pretty much it.

"I am the Law!"

"No, I am the law!"
"I am the law too!"
"Yeah, well, I have a cyber mastiff, and that makes me the law and than some!"
"...But I'm the guy with the bigger gun."

Or something like that as my players got into their roles as Adeptus Arbites, Imperial Judges of Task Force Gamma.

If you recall back at the end of summer I did a review of Dredd and compared the Judges found in the world of Judge Dredd to the Arbites of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. I believe I stated that I really wanted to run an all Judge campaign for Dark Heresy. This past Friday I got my wish!

"I said: "Hotshot" "

 

My group hasn't played since last summer, and numerous personal events kept occurring that prevented us from picking that game back up. Leaving everything in a 'cliff hanger' state, I decided to run my Judge game, and have it pick up in the aftermath of the previous campaign, not revealing to the players the fates of their previous characters.

Accept one.

In the previous game, the players were running two teams and things were sort of crossing over and intermixing as both teams were working simultaneously to achieve multiple ends and stumbling over similar clues and tangents. In one of the last games, I had Da Masta Cheef's character, Boris, sent to join another character that was sort of removed from the main action to assist with whatever was going on. I decided that this new team of Judges, Task Force Gamma, would be investigating why Boris never showed up.

I just finished and sent out the mission brief, so for your amusement I shall share it with you. Sadly, I can't give you much insight with what's really going on as it would tip off my players (the few that bother to read my blog), and most of them only have a clue at best! LOL

(It was this or show you more progress shots of have half-finished Grey Hunters...)

Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice,

Mission Statement: You have been assigned to special Inquisition sponsored task force. Your skills and attributes have been found exemplary in your previous roles, and together you are the unit we need to assist in finding and retrieving Boris Sevastopol, a missing agent of the Holy Inquisition. You are to assess his last known location and from there track down his whereabouts, and retrieve him. Early indications point towards an abduction scenario, but this is a theory at best. Find the facts. Find Boris. Bring Boris back.   

 

Team Composition: Zurio Lug, Metalus Zek, Pontius, Bones Gunner, Taron Drake, and another member who will join later.

 

Note 1: You are mostly likely going to descend into areas of the city where Arbite presence is scare or totally non-existent. You are the law. But to enforce every infraction you see would take a life-time. You must stay focused on your task and achieve success in your mission.

Note 2: You have been provided with a special Inquisitional Rosette that will allow you to by-pass most systems, and deputize you to carry out your orders. You have also been assigned a pack with additional gear: A combat shot gun, 3 clips of ammo, Magnagles, Carapace Helm, and Arbite Riot armor. Use these at your discretion. Remember that resupplying you will be difficult. Also you have a week’s worth of water and rations.  

Note 3: Keep a log of your progress, clue gathering, and who made what decision so that all note-worthy events can be properly vetted upon post-mission examination.

Note 4: Regardless of what has transpired with Boris Sevastopol he must be brought back alive. If he is involved with sinister or heretical forces, your assigned Inquisitor would like to personally pass judgment: you are not to make a termination of the subject unless the situation can be resolved in no other way.

Note 5: The chain of command of your superiors is as follows: Col. Gentleman, Interrogator Errasmus and Inquisitor Svech.

 

 

And now the mission notes, in case you're curious...

 

 

Game one Notes:

• Task Force Gamma’s 1^st mission takes them to the abandoned lander where the lander black box has been retrieved. The pilot has been violently slain and is in a state of rapid decomposition.
• A sniper kills the pilot to Gamma’s lander and it is lost. The sniper wounds a squad member. The sniper is still at large
• Navigating through the abandoned retail complex of Freddicus Mejiers Mexiplex Location XXV, Gamma follows a trail of dead gangers gathering clues that lead them to the Sommer Wells Hab Level 33.
• In Sommer Wells Hab Level 33 a precinct is found with a lone Enforcer who is unkempt and a touch mad. Sgt. Rathers is his name, and he tells Gamma on the fate of his unit. He tells of the times of trouble,the coming of the flys and how they coincided with the arrival of “the one who promises to bring salvation.” He provides info on how to proceed to the next sublevel, as well as where to get medicae treatment.
• Sgt Rathers has a container that contains a contagious object that burst out of one of his men’s navel. No one from Gamma wanted to see what was in it.
• Sgt Rathers provided some Inferno shells (12) to the group if they would send word that he desperately needs assistance at his precinct.
• Sgt Rathers IDs Borris Sevastopol as this salvation figure, and points to a 3-story work in progress mural of Boris. The mural has the words “The Grounds Keeper of the Garden of Salvation” on a scroll at the bottom of the piece.
• The medicae provides healing assistance to Zurio and Bones*.

*Bones injured his leg leaping from the crashng lander, and Zurio was shot by a sniper.

It was a lot tension having these guys worm their way through an abandoned store bloc, gathering clues and follwing the bread crumbs. It was even more fun getting to role play the Sgt Rathers NPC who was pretty much mad as a hatter and paranoid. Also, I got to assign this team to Col. Gentleman who a previous player, that moved away, based (loosely) off of the character with the same name from the Venture Brother's Cartoon, but played more like SNL Sean Connery on the Jeopardy skits. But I totally envision the character in the cartoon, but suited up as an Arbite. I could go on, but let's just say that Colonel Gentleman in my campaign was a riot!

"With Mind-bullets!" Our Psy player will join us in a future game.

 

So after the game, with half the group gone, I put in the Dredd bluray for additional inspiration and we stayed up late getting idea for next time. I like the dystopic and quasi-anarchy state of the lower and underhive, and the amped up level of paranoia and danger that these Judges are going to have to endure. I wanted to point out that Judge Anderson and Judge Dredd being trapped in Peachtrees isn't going to be too different from where these guys are going, only that this team is going down deeper and will be experiencing more hardships and challenges and with little chance of back up or extraction... it's going to be blast!
:D

A Dredd-fully good time

My brother and I just saw the new Judge Dredd movie, Dredd 3-D.

"Yeah,"

I shall preface this review with a reason why I'm suddenly reviewing movies on a GW-fan-Hobby Blog. You see, without Judge Dredd and his 2,000 A.D. cohorts and cast members, the Warhammer 40,000 universe wouldn't be quite the same. Way back in the mid-'80's, around the time the GW designers were sculpting the 1st Space Marines, GW had the licence to make Judge Dredd miniatures as well as publish the Judge Dredd RPG. The early 40K universe presented in Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader was a mish-mash of influencing sci-fi genres: Dune, Aliens, Starship Troopers, and probably many others, but the strongest influence on the worlds of the Imperium, those places your marines are dying each week to protect, is undoubtedly Judge Dredd.

GW's Judge Dredd RPG

The world of Judge Dredd is basicly a dying wasteland with vast cities of humanity stacked and sprawled across hundreds of miles dotting the continents. Resources have been plundered and squandered long ago, or destroyed in the post atomic hell-scapes of the earth. Most citizens don't venture far from the blocks that they live and work in. The population so dense and numerous the Judges, the law enforcers of the Mega-Cities, are too few to deal with all of them. They are empowered to act as Judge, Jury and executioners for immediate and on the spot dispensation of justice. They are the law.



Jes Goodwin design sketch of an Adeptus Arbite

The worlds of the Imperium are either on the way, or already are, dying wastelands with vast hive cities of humanity dotting the continents. Stacked (more so than sprawled) across the continents, spewing forth pollutants and chemical waste as they pump their world dry of whatever resource of value that they can find and use. Most citizens don't venture far from the blocks that they live and work in. The population is so dense and numerous the Judges of the Adeptus Arbites, the law enforcers of the Hive worlds, are too few to deal with all of them. They are empowered to act as Judge, Jury and executioners for immediate and on the spot dispensation of justice in the name of the Holy Emperor on Terra. They are the law.

Not too much difference huh? The judges of both worlds see their worlds as a ceaseless cess-pool of crime. They see the Law as an ultimate, unwavering line that is unforgivable to step over. Extreme black and white: no gray. No sympathy or compassion for those that they dispense justice too. After all, you chose to commit that crime perp, now here's your sentence!




Yes, that is a Space Marine.

So back in 1987 the earliest blister packs of the new Warhammer 40,000 recycled some of these old Judge Dredd models, particularly the various perps, as "Space Pirates". Some packs had a few generic aliens from GW's Dr.Who miniature line tossed in as well (one of my models says 'Timelord' on the base tag, which I have used as an Astropath). I have quite a number of these that I gathered over the years, and they don't look very 40K-like much at all. Not to mention that most of these models didn't really have supporting rules in the Rogue Trader book, so much as they had a supporting role in filling up the gaps in the blister racks of the day. So awkward was this early launch of 40K, that the two brands even shared a product, Citi-Block, which had floor plans to use in recreating table-top blockwars. This background element rarely finds it's way onto the warzones of the 41st millennium, but make no doubt, the underhive is a warzone. The Necromunda game (and it's predecessor Confrontation) both dealt with gang warfare in the Underhives with the Judges/Enforcers of the Adeptus Arbites as a constant threat to the survival of the gang.

Fast forward 25 years later to today, and we find that only the look of the Arbites has (albeit slightly)changed (not so much for Dredd) except now they have cyber-mastiffs and 40k specific gear. As I read through The Book of Judgment for the Dark Heresy game I kept thinking about Judge Dredd and how far, and yet not so much, that GW has evolved the judges of their worlds. And literally today as I was watching this movie, I was thinking: "This is my next Dark Heresy campaign: Judges cleaning up the underhive!"

The top row were released for 40K 2nd ed, the bottom row were released for Confrontation.

Which, onto the review, is what we got with Dredd 3-D: Judges cleaning up the underhive. In Mega-Citi 1, whole City blocks rise up to the smoggy heavens in vast skyscrapers.This was poorly presented in the mid-'90s Judge Dredd movie but perfectly presented here in Dredd 3-D. Especially the gangs and how they fight for control over the various levels of a given block. Dredd and Anderson find themselves looking into a triple homicide but stick their noses in a bit too far, upsetting a very powerful crime lord, who will stop at nothing to protect her operations. To say too much more might give away too much, but I will say that I left feeling like I just read a classic Judge Dredd story. Dredd is never seen with his helmet off. Which is usually the case in the comics as well. The snear, the attitude, the unwavering persuit to serve justice to those he has targeted -all these things- are perfectly presented here. The awesomeness of the 'Lawgiver', which thankfully is improved here vs. the comics, makes for some great entertainment as well. And it left me wanting to play a game where I could control a judge, and clean out a hive spire of the filth that inhabits it.

Awesome grenade options: another thing GW swiped from Dredd.

 

Go see it, Unless you dislike blood. Cause I think as far as recent action movies go, maybe only Hobo with a Shotgun had more blood and guts than this does...