There’s a post over at Fallen Princes where Inspiration is
the name of the (background to the) game.
He’s quoting Byron, no less !
There’s a bit of serious literature it will be hard to live up to. But it did prompt me to offer up what I find
as inspiration.
I have received some favourable feedback for the background
and exposition pieces that I have put up on here over the years. A lot of the more recent posts I’ve done have
been sort of self generating; feeding off the fluff that other bloggers have
created for their iggies is huge fun; collaboration like this is what this
hobby is all about (for me). So one huge
inspiration is the work of other people who are, hypothetically, whirling away
through the blogosphere even as you read this.
Forge World’s Imperial Armour books are a main source for
models upon which to build 72 Army Group.
But this is heavily cut with my reading of military history and own
experience in BAOR; this is one source of expositions about how and why the
Departmento Munitorium would function.
Military history tends to be written on a mico and macro scale (more on
this later), so this fits in well with the pieces I’ve published on the blog.
I harbour a long running and deep seated antipathy for Dan
Abnett; he owes me a lot of sleep. His
(IMHO) excellent books about the Inquisition and the Sabbat Worlds crusade are
a clear inspiration and pool of ideas, fluff and so on. So it would disingenuous to list inspirations
for an Imperial Guard blog and not mention him.
The mini’s themselves are a clear source of inspiration; to
get variety into my ‘army’ has always been a goal – the Hulin Rifles are Vicky
Lamb jock bits with Pig Iron bodies.
Seeing nicely done minis go together is inspiration in and of itself –
there will be Void Dragons accompanying the Craftworlders who hunt down the
Emperor’s Children – adding Corsair garnish to the Craftworld salad and Cabal croutons.
All inspired by ‘The Doom of Mymera’.
The DKK Assault Brigade army list merely vindicated my
existing army – itself based on 19 Krieg Armoured Regt from IA1. So it’s not all driven by FW. And not all driven by Dan Abnett – I’m adding
Blood Pact, not First and Only. And
obviously not all driven on reports from Op Granby or writings by Beavor,
Hastings and Holmes. But of course,
there’s a little bit from here, a little bit from there and Lo! And behold;
another new snippet about the Devos IV campaign gets posted.
From outside of the 40K/military history bubble, there’s any
amount of concepts and ideas pulled in from other places – the profiles of all
the officers owe more to FRPG than 40K; there’s the obvious draw of converting
Star Wars models to fit the world. I
think that there is a lot of other literature out there, some sci fi, some not,
which could all feed more posts that further explore the worlds of the Dynorwic
Cluster.
Occasionally there might be a thing that happens during the
day or someone I meet or have met years ago, all of these things can inform
what I write, even if they do not make it into the finished passage.
So, I draw inspiration from where ever I can get it. I commend the ‘background’ tagged posts to
the house.
