Rogue inspiration

Anyone who knows me will have noticed I'm something of a fan of the comic 2000AD. That's because it's not just awesome, but also, at least partly, responsible for the fact that I'm now a grown man who writes about science fiction in his spare time.

When I was a kid one of my favourite stories was Rogue Trooper. A genetically engineered soldier bred to fight in the harsh, chemical environment of the war-torn planet Nu Earth.

I recently bought the graphic novel Jaegir. It collects a new story set in that old Rogue Trooper universe. Specifically the part of the universe occupied by the Norts. The Norts were the heavily militarised, fascistic, totalitarian bad guys of the original story. They had the best gear, legions of crack troops and a seemingly non-existent moral code. What makes Jaegir so interesting is we get to see how these guys operate away from the warzone, in their cities and homelands.

The comic is written by Gordon Rennie (who has also written a handful of novels for Games Workshop and the script for the video game Killzone) and drawn by Simon Coleby (who drew Inquisitor Ascendant for Games Workshop and whose work keeps getting better and better).

If you haven't read Jaegir yet, but were a fan of the old Rogue Trooper I can thoroughly recommend it. It's note perfect in it's depiction of the Norts behind their frontlines.

The Norts are, generally, not very nice people. But their uniforms are kinda cool. That's cool in an oppressive, authoritarian, dystopian kind of way, of course. Upon reading the comic I was struck by the similarities of Nort officers with another oppressive, authoritarian, dystopian science-fiction universe. So struck that, as a short project and a little break from my 'Dredd' style Arbites Enforcers, I was inspired to build an officer for the denizen part of my city project. I took his tunic from the guy in the top left panel of the middle image and much of the rest of the uniform from the man in the bottom right of the third image.

I figured the resulting character could easily be found among the higher echelons of Kruenta Karoliina Arx Rotunda social circles, or perhaps aiding a local Inquisitor in deciphering anomalous fleet dispositions, or just assisting the Arbites with an incident where the clues keep pointing to one of the sprawling military establishments.

For those with an interest in this kind of thing, the head is from the officer that comes with the Baneblade tank, the body and legs are from a Dark Vengeance Chaos Cultist, the bolt pistol once belonged to a Space Marine Scout, the sword probably comes from a Marine of some kind, and the arms were scratched together with whatever bits I had lying around.