Onorevoli: “lest you become…”

I suspect that most people fluent in the extensive and wondrously complex fluff of 40K will be familiar (or at least exposed to) the well-worn quote from Friedrich Nietzsche “battle not with monsters lest you become a monster yourself; if you gaze into the abyss long enough the abyss gazes into you." If the quote is not too trite or tired, I would like you, the gentle reader, to bring it back from your subconscious and hold it for a moment in the corner of your mind. We’ll return to it directly. I promise.

We’ve yet to see this squad of Terminators, armed with Storm Shield and Thunder Hammer, here on A Gentleman’s Ones, which is a shame, really, because they are uniquely responsible for a significant turn in the Onorevoli’s direction (if you are new here, the Onorevoli are my freshly minted SM Chapter who feature in the Battle Report both from February and March that you can link to on the right).

Having watched their calamitous performances on the tabletop, perhaps now is an ideal time to introduce some Onorevoli fluff.

I’ve mentioned previously, that the Onorevoli are my response to Referee Pitmann’s Iron Warriors, and I initially tried to incorporate various subtle ways in which that rivalry manifests itself in the models. You will have noticed, no doubt, that the Thunder Hammers have the Iron Warriors’ striped motif on the business end of said Hammer. Initially, I intended this to be an isolated gesture toward the rivalry, a gesture that was both cheeky and boastful, but reasonably subtle as well. I wanted it to seem as if these guys had spent so much time pounding the Iron Warriors that a bit of the IW motif had actually rubbed off onto their Hammers. I got a decent chuckle out of that.

But then the sentiment grew, and I began to think that perhaps more than just the paint had flaked off. I began to think of the Onorevoli as having been slowly consumed by their single-minded antagonism, so much so that the point of friction had begun to blur slightly, that the boundaries had started to disintegrate at the point of contact, that Nietzsche had somehow tapped this particular nail on its head. And so the IW striped motif spread throughout the Onorevoli Chapter, as if they had actually somehow, subconsciously come to emulate the enemy that they so thoroughly despise. The Onorevoli had become the monsters themselves.

More on the evolution of this idea tomorrow with some more terminators to help exemplify and explain the process. See you then.

Oh, one more thing: I was really flattered to wake this morning and find that one of my photos from Battle Report II (linked from March in the right margin) was featured in BoLS Wargames Gallery from yesterday. Some viewers, however, expressed a fair bit of confusion in the comments section about what the photo actually shows, and I wasn’t really sure how to respond –or if I should at all. I’m not on their blogroll, as this site is only two months old (!!!), so I doubt anyone there is even remotely aware of “A Gentleman’s Ones” at all. I was wondering if it would be bad form to direct readers to this blog in the comments page. Part of me says, yes, and part, no.