The Wolves of Caliban

So why have I called my Space Marine Chapter the Wolves of Caliban?  The explanation comes in three parts each of which I will detail below:

1)  I did have a Space Marine army back in the late 90’s but for some reason hadn’t looked at the chapters and thought they would look cool as Stormtroopers (never, ever again!) so I had a long break before getting back into 40K and by then I’d read some of the books and got a feel for the background of the Dark Angels. It didn’t hurt when I split the Dark Imperium box (7th Ed) with a friend and took the Dark Angels side.  The fact that they have there own purpose didn’t hurt either.  I particularly enjoyed the book Angels of Darkness by Gav Thorpe which leaves you with that question who is right Astelan or Boreas.

2) Cypher – not sure I need to say more.  Having got into 7th Ed and then spotted the Triumverte of the Primarch the Cypher miniature appealed to me.  This allowed me to spin the background of the Dark Angels to portray Cypher as not quite so dark and the Dark Angels themselves to be slightly darker.  The story in the book of the return of Gulliman left me thinking that Cypher was very much grey and looking out for himself.  Then again was he trying to speak to the Emperor to point out the Lion’s turning, or was it more Chaos guided and looking to do something with the Lion’s sword (whatever happned to that?).  Anyway I’ve gone with the former.

3) The final piece of the puzzle with the Wolves of Caliban was the purchase from a friend (on the very cheap) of a large quantity of Marines and their vehicles – whoops!  Anyway the collection has most been painted up as Space Wolves, although thankfully without all the Wolf related gubbins so no pelts etc.  I didn’t want to repaint the entire lot from the beginning (lazy I know) so a few tweeks and painting of shoulder pad, knee pads etc and I hope to have the Wolves of Caliban.

The result is therefore a Dark Angels successor chapter with maybe a little leaning towards Cypher.  More details to come in the next post on the history of the chapter.