One of the great things about Forgeworld’s Horus Heresy setting is the number of unique units and character types it introduced to the setting, none more beloved than Moritats and Legion Destroyers. Naturally then, when I began my Dusk Raiders hobby project, I wanted to include a unit of Destroyers (just not in Mk.IV warplate) and saw an opportunity with leftover parts to build a Moritat in Mk.III warplate to lead them.

In terms of parts, I had already purchased enough Mk.III Despoiler Squads to provide the number of Phobos-pattern Bolt Pistols required for dual-wielding Destroyers, giving me a surplus of bodies it being my intention to use the unique torso sculpts for squad leaders across my entire Dusk Raiders force, retaining the un-marked torsos for the Destroyer squad members themselves. I naturally decided that the torsos featuring the skull motif should be used for the Sergeants of specialist kill squads such as the Destroyers, and also earmarked one for a Legion Moritat.

One of the other iconic elements of Legion Destroyers is the underslung Rad Missile Launchers they use, and Forgeworld produces an excellent array of underslung weaponry, including the Proteus-II pattern missile launchers. Again, given that they come in packs of five, and I was only going to be using two, this gave me a surplus. I felt that the power pack and locator, in particular, would be a great way to represent a Moritat’s advanced power plant and targeter, and looks appropriate to Mk.III warplate.

The finishing touch to my Moritat, would come from a very unlikely source…

When I was younger, I fielded a Rogue Trader era Imperial Guard army (the ones with the iconic firemen’s helmets), including a Rapier Laser Destroyer. Partly out of nostalgia, and partly out of ‘rule of cool’, I wanted to include a battery of Rapiers as part of my force. As it happens the crew for Forgeworld’s Rapiers, features a Legionary in Mk.III warplate with a transverse plume, which differs from the longitudinal plume included in the squad command upgrade set, and which would be perfect for my erstwhile Moritat.

It’s probably worth going off at a short tangent here, to explain why the direction of the plume is important.

The Legiones Astartes of the Horus Heresy setting are loosely based on the historical composition of the Roman Legions from the 1st to 3rd Centuries CE. One of the most iconic elements of the Roman Legionary’s armour is the helmet or ‘Galea’ that they wear. Rank was often denoted in the Roman Legions, much like the Legiones Astartes, by the addition of a helmet plume. In the case of your typical Roman legionary, this would be longitudinal, as seen for Legiones Astartes Sergeants in the Mk.III upgrade set. Roman Centurions, by contrast, would wear transverse plumes. As the lore fanatics amongst you will know, ‘Moritat’ is actually a term coined later by the Raven Guard, the actual rank of such ‘lone wolf’ individuals being Centurion, hence the need for a transverse plume.

Now I have played around with this a little in my own force, and added colour and patterning to aid with rank identification (especially as the sergeant of my Mk.II clad assault squad has a transverse plume) – In my Dusk Raiders, high ranks such as ‘Praetor’ have plumes of white, black, and red; mid/specialist ranks such as ‘Centurions’ use black and red; and lowly ranks such as ‘Sergeants’, simply use plain red.

So anyway…

The last component of my kitbash would be two Volkite Serpentas actually leftover from the Mk.II assault weapons set I bought for kitting out the sergeant of my assault squad – The set is essentially no different to the Mk.III set, apart from the arms supplied, so the weapons are cross-compatible. My force makes extensive use of Volkite weaponry, to give it the sense of being part of the heyday of the ‘Great Crusade’, so the Serpentas were a must. I also took the decision that I would not model cables running from the powerpack to the weapons, as seen on later armour marks (such as the Mk.IV Moritats Forgeworld sells), to give the idea that this is a much earlier iteration of the Moritat-type Centurion. I instead relied on ammo pouches of a size equivalent to the power cartridges of a Volkite Serpenta.

The final touch was to give my Moritat a suitably grim moniker, playing on the deflagration effect of Volkite weaponry. I settled on ‘Ash-Maker’ partly for this reason, and partly because I made heavy use of ash pigment on the bases of my Destroyers to make them stand out from the rest of my force. I also wanted to give my Legion Destroyers and their master a suitably darker piece of narrative – Music plays a very important role in my creative process, and I was heavily influenced by the amazing covers of ‘Paint it black’ by both Sebastian Böhm and Valerie Broussard, as well as the remix of ‘War Pigs’ Junkie XL created for the film 300.