Inferno Overview: Talons of the Emperor

Heya!

As a kind of a follow on from Atia's Thousand Sons post last week, I'm going to give you all a bit of a taster of the Talons of the Emperor army in Inferno which is due to be released soon. The Talons of the Emperor consists of the Legio Custodes, the Silent Sisterhood and the Ordo Sinister and they are all covered in a single army list (which means you can do a combined Talons force without needing to ally which is quite nice).

The Fluff

Much like the Thousand Sons, there are sections in the book dedicated to the Legio Custodes, Sisters of Silence and Ordo Sinister.

In the Legio Custodes' section you find out more about what really does differenciate a Custode from an Astartes, for example the process for creating a Custode is consists of alchemical genetic manipulation and as a result each Custode is effectively bespoke warrior whereas an Astarte's creation involves various implants to achieve a mass reproducable soldier. You also find out more about the organisation and structure of the Legio Custodes and their role within the Imperium which is a really interesting read.

In the Silent Sisterhood's section, it highlights how mysterious the Sisterhood really is - nobody really knows their origin, just that some time into the Great Crusade they became effectively the Chamber Militant of Diviso Investigates and you'll find out more about their role in the Great Tithe. They have access to a lot of relics from the Dark Age of Technology that nobody else can use to help them harvest psykers from planets within the Imperium - an good example of this are their transports which subdue psykers and lock them away in sarcophagi in their outer hull ready to be taken back to the Black Ships. They even talk about the pariah gene and how some of the Sisters have refined their soulless void into something that they can use as a weapon in addition to its passive effects.

The Ordo Sinister was a surprise to me. This is a special Titan Legio where the Emperor requested the Mechanicum to build him some Warlord titans which He then modified to be powered using psykers like batteries (does this sound familiar to anyone else?). For the most part they have similar armaments to a standard Warlord Titan but they also have access to esoteric weaponry. As these titans are powered by psykers, they project an unnatural aura and can use titan-scale psychic abilities.

These titans still have to be piloted just like any other titan and they are by psychic nulls (so people with the pariah gene - though not members of the Sisterhood) - if the pilot was not a blank, they would just die instantly.

The Army List

It should almost come as no surprise to anyone that the named characters in the army list are none other than Captain-General Constantin Valdor and Sister-Commander Jenetia Krole and that there is a template available for creating a generic captain-esque character for either the Legio Custodes or Silent Sisterhood.

With everything released so far, most of the Legio Custodes army list available and there are only a few more kits that need to be released to cover the remaining units within the army list. If you were keeping an eye on our coverage of the Weekender, you will have seen images of all of the missing units except for Valdor himself.

On the other hand, the Sisterhood just needs some characters, a few upgrade kits and the transport that was previewed at the weekend to be released to be complete also so despite the lack of Sisters of Silence releases you can most of the way make a purely Sisters detachment already which is cool.

The Ordo Sinister's Warlord titan rules are in short "very angry". It costs more to field one of these than a standard Warlord so you are unlikely to play/fight with one of these unless you play Apocolypse. Forge World just need to release the weapon arm kit required for the standard Warlord Titan into an Ordo Sinister one.

Looking at the wargear sections, there appears to be many varieties of guardian spears such as the paragon spear - the event/warhammer world exclusive Custodian Tribune model has one of these (axe head rather than a blade) and the other spear variants have different guns on them which is really cool.

I can't wait to get started on painting up my Custodian Guard detachment - I am planning on painting mine up as the members of the sub-faction of the Legio Custodes called the Warders of the Vaults of Rython. There is a little bit of fluff about them in the book which I really liked and I love the colour scheme.

Until next time,

Hector Cephas.