#grimdark terrain

[titanomancy]

While exploring some different shapes and styles for laser defense bastions, I was left with the conundrum of where to put garrisoning infantry stands when the roof is mostly laser. After noodling on it, I struck upon the notion of building plinth to provide conveniently infantry-sized platforms to represent troops occupying the structure.

The layout is taken almost entirely from the official Grimdark Terrain Dominator Prison Complex Xhi build, but I wanted to try and replicate the look of the now discontinued Imperial Bastion.

We also wound up using it as a proof of concept for pre-arranging the components in Blender and exporting to a flat .STL for printing, which worked reasonably well. Some minor artifacts due do to inadequate precision arranging the parts and I'm not sure it's actually that much of a time savings over hand assembly, but the finished product is rock solid and looks great on the tabletop.

[xenoplanetarum]

An old project, I should finish. 😅

[bfleuter]

Took the day off yesterday and made some terrain for the Grimdark Future. These two industrial containers were made from nut cans, nerf gun parts, and trash.

[holyfirethem]

"A jail? An altar? In Fleischtraum? Both mos' like. I don't know for certain, but I know it's cursed, sure n' simple. I'm leaving, an' you should too."

--

Big Weird Skull Terrain. Another thing checked off the hobby bucket list.

[thegodemperorsmycopilot]

This is quite a brilliant idea, we absolutely love it!

What army would you use as your chess pieces?

And what miniatures would be the pieces?

[mild-crusader]

Somewhere in the North Atlantic...

Once upon a windy early morning on the cavernous clifftop of some abandoned island a heretic crew of slavers has unearthed 5 stone idols inscribed in the glyphs of some lost alphabet of Europe's heathen antiquity, two anointed emissaries from hell oversee malnourished wretched slaves erecting the engraved stones in arrangement with forgotten constellations, while a heretic priest burns sage over a padlocked coffin stained with blood slowly sinking into the center of an old muddy battlefield...

Satisfied with their preparation the congregation of hell marches back to shore. They hope to be a safe at sea by midnight when the stars would hang in alignment above the odious carvings and Crom Cruach awakens. Reborn, full of hate and hunger...

how unhappy must they be to see that a cruiser typical of the Eire Rangers, Faithful soldiers of the Church, have laid anchor. And worse yet! Boot tracks headed straight to the site of their ritual!!!

Will the devoted Rangers cleanse the Island of idolatry before it's too late??? Can the servants of Evil thwart the pesky interpose of the pious??? Stay tuned dear reader, you're about to FIND OUT!

BATTLE REPORT

This was a game played at 700 ducats and 0 glory using the 1.5 playtest rules for Trench Crusade. Using the Scenario "Sabotage" on a 4 foot by 4 foot board. The Attackers were the Eire Rangers sub faction of New Antioch and the Defenders were the Heretic Legion without any sub faction. Lists are posted below.

EIRE RANGERS:

Trench Cleric with Standard Armour, Grenades and Pistol

Berserker Lieutenant with Trench Shield, Sword, Grenades and Shotgun

Shocktrooper Bard Fianna with Carnyx, Sword and Standard Armour

Shocktrooper Fianna with Submachine Gun, Two Swords and Standard Armour

Shocktrooper Fianna with Submachine Gun, Two Swords and Standard Armour

Shocktrooper Fianna with Semi Automatic Rifle, Two Swords and Standard Armour

Shocktrooper Fianna with Semi Automatic Rifle, Two Swords and Standard Armour

[ EXPLORATION MODIFIERS ] Reroll

HERETIC LEGION:

Heretic Priest with Silenced Pistol

Heretic Death Commando with Tartarus Claws

Anointed Heavy Infantry with Great Sword

Anointed Heavy Infantry with Great Sword and musical instrument

Heretic Legionnaire with Gas Mask Shovel Semi-Automatic Rifle and Unholy Trinket

Heretic Trooper with Gas Mask Shovel Semi-Automatic Rifle

Heretic Trooper with Gas Mask Shovel Semi-Automatic Rifle

Wretched with Sword

Wretched with knife

Wretched with knife

Turn 0 setting up the board,

After the Trench and ruins were on the table we took turns placing the point scoring relics the attackers are meant to destroy, represented by 5 upright Stones scattered around the board and a coffin in the middle. Now time to deploy the troops.

All but one of the Ranger team were skirmishers, while my Heretic's only skirmisher was Death Commando so I placed all my wretched, my Legionnaire, and my Musical Anointed Heavy Infantry on the front edge of their Deployment Zone, clear of any obstacles ready to climb the trench and rush into no-man's land,

Death Commando would sulk inside a ruined building near the middle edge of the board. According to the rules for this mission I had to leave 4 guys in reserve so Heretic Priest, Troopers, and the un-musical Anointed Heavy Infantry, sit on the bench for the time being.

The Rangers set up more spread out, one fireteam of 2 Shocktrooper Fiannas hiding in a separate room of the metal ruined building ready to charge the commando, one Shock Trooper at the top of the cliff One at the Base of the Cliff behind some scaffolding, and the rest behind their own trench.

Now, time to let the blood flow!

Turn 1 Crusading this Trench!

First unit to activate was the humble Wretched with knife dashing up into no man's land hoping to shank the Shocktrooper at the base of the cliff.

However, he was not able to reach the Enemy before the end of his turn so it's on to the Rangers.

The Ranger fireteam get to act as one unit so it's both of their turns and it's Open Season on Death Commando,

After the first hit left him with a blood token the second killed him completely, and that marks the first casualty of our trench crusade careers! The second member of the fire team ends the turn by moving out of the ruined building into no mans land eager to get a head start on idol smashing in the next turn.

Now Wretched with Sword is dispatched against the Fireteam to get revenge! Because of his proximity to the Music of the Anointed Heavy Infantry his movement gets a boost

he scrambles up into no man's land and lunges his sword at the Fianna.

Complete miss.

Back to the Rangers it's the Trench Cleric and he moves right up the support beam of the trench and shouts something about snakes

resulting in my wretched feeling a sudden compulsion to lie down in the dirt, snake-like.

Then he turns to face a nearby stone idol and lifts his holy crozier off the ground...

Before drawing his pistol and shooting it to bits and pieces!

+1 point to the Rangers

Heretic Legionaire activates and climbs on top of a pile of cargo to get a line of sight on the Rangers

He fires one shot and misses, Then hides under the trench convincing himself to charge over into closer range next turn.

Continuing our story, the Ranger under the scaffolding at the base of the cliff counter charges the humble wretched with knife

Sliding right up behind him and in front of another stone idol, he bloodies the wretched...

and transforms the heretical stone into a patch of gravel.

the last reluctant wretched prepares his journey over the trench walls

Luckily for him, I've reached the image limit on this site so he'll have until Part 2 to steady his nerves.

End of Part 1...

[ghoulish-arts]

WIP old barnhouse for a dark fantasy TTRPG I wanna run, experimented with trying to make thatched roofing by using the wire brush wheel on my Dremel, anxious to see if it takes paint well

[nekrosmagos]

[flo-85]

The Tormented Pillar of Skulls

I modeled this piece with a 3D pen. I imagine this piece is part of the landscape of Shyish, the realm of death. It took a really long time to add all those little skulls. The top is flattened so that you can place a figure on it.

[sara-paints]

WIP of my sniper for Grimdark Future Firefight. The cloak is 90% of the way there. I'll need to put some dry pigment and snow on it to help it match the terrain. Some layering on the main body, v and the face, and I'm basically done.

[cannibalsofj]

First of my own minis on my new blog!

I painted this lil guy before the holiday, and only got around to posting him now. I'm been dissatisfied with how bright my paint jobs have been, but before I look into some grimdark oil washes I wanted to do a model that leaned into that cartoon-iness. I also went for a wet blend on the wings, which I think turned out well for my first try!

I'm most proud of the base, though. The mini comes propped up on its own rock, but I added some homemade foam rocks and terrain paste to fill out the base. I painted it with a leopard-spotting technique that came out gorgeous. I even found a space to use my first ever tuft! All in all, this mini has me looking forward to stepping outside of my comfort zone and trying new techniques.

[titanomancy]

The complex organization of the Adeptus Ministratum, or Administratum, is responsible for the administration of the whole of the Imperium; it manages over a million inhabited worlds. Planetary government buildings, records offices, taxation centers, and many more are controlled by the Administratum; they are usually distinguished by the sign of the Imperial eagle over the main door. Many bloody assaults and valiant defenses have taken place in and around urban and planetary government buildings; they are natural command posts, and the fall of the Administratum normally indicates the fall of the city. This building is often the attacker’s primary target.

[kid-az]

Ouran War Game Club (If the Host Club played Warhammer)

Please bear with me nerding out about my current anime hyperfixation & Warhammer. Tbh this is actually pretty likely since all of the characters that Aren’t Haruhi have enough money to buy their tabletop armies, alongside fancy terrain & all of that fancier stuff to make their sessions more…

AUTHENTIC

Tamaki only uses the most glorious and heroic armies of all of the settings, which is why he primarily plays the Craftworld Eldar, High Elves, and the Lumineth Realmlords, all the while evoking the pompous glorious pride & chivalry of the Elves. He sobs loudly whenever the Craftworld Eldar are screwed over.

Kyoya is the world’s most sophisticated powergamer to end all powergamers, and therefore he only uses the most powerful armies to achieve one thing… victory. Although he constantly changes his armies depending on the edition and whatever army he’s fighting, he has quite a soft spot for the Necrons & Lizardmen/Seraphon.

The Hitachiin twins never played Warhammer before joking the Host Club, but they’d quickly become addicted to the game (Particularly Age of Sigmar) after opening up to playing with other people. The twins’ favored faction are the Orruks, with Hikaru playing Ironjawz and Kaoru playing Kruleboyz. Sometimes they’ll switch up their subfactions with one-another to confuse their opponents.

Out of the entire Host Club, Honey would be the least-interested in Warhammer, for the grimdark nature of all of the settings does not appeal to him. He has however painted & kept an army of Halflings gifted to him by Mori, and everyone dreads the day when he finally gains interest in playing the game.

Mori plays the Adeptus Mechanicus (40k), and Brettonia (Fantasy), and he is a calm, collective player who’ll never speak unless he is either spoken too or the occasional advice to help out a newly-starting player. He has never lost.

Haruhi never even heard of Warhammer before joining the Host Club, and she wasn’t the least bit ecstatic over the idea of buying overpriced plastic miniatures. She’d only start playing 40k & Age of Sigmar once Tamaki begged about it for the 10,00th time, promising to pay for all of the miniatures she’d use.

After playing a few tabletop sessions with the Imperial Fists & Stormcast Eternal, Haruhi would find herself actually having loads of fun playing the game, even if she often loses due to being a newbie. She has however greatly improved, and can now consistently score wins against Tamaki (Even when he isn’t deliberately trying to lose) and the Twins.

Renge is an unhinged psycho who plops a Warlord Titan onto the tabletop while laughing maniacally.

[helix-enterprises117]

Halo Reloaded: Seeing Triple III

The Warthog's engine growled under Silver's deft control, its tires kicking up clouds of dust as it navigated the desolate landscape. The inside of the vehicle was thick with the tension of its three very similar, yet distinctly different occupants. Silver, with a driving style that could only be described as 'enthusiastically reckless', seemed to find a sort of grim amusement in the occasional jolt that threatened to unseat them. Chief, for his part, sat with the stoicism of a boulder, his gaze fixed on some distant point, lost in thoughts that likely weighed as heavily as his armor.

Ranger, unable to stand the silence any longer, swiveled his turret around, a mischievous glint in his one good eye. "Hey, fellas," he started, voice dripping with a blend of curiosity and the kind of cheerfulness that only comes from blissful ignorance of true despair. "How long have you been playing the galaxy's most reluctant heroes? Feels like we've got enough grimdark backstories to start our own band."

Chief let out a sigh, the sound somehow carrying all the weight of his years. "Feels like since the dawn of time. It's been a never-ending parade of enemies. Insurrectionists, Covenant, Flood, Prometheans... And now these Banished chumps. Honestly, it's like the universe has a personal vendetta against my downtime."

"Banished? No such thing where I came from. Back in my timeline, it was more about Spartans going rogue and interservice, political in-fighting." Silver waved a hand dismissively, as if brushing away the memories along with the dust that had settled on the dashboard.

"You boys make my timeline sound like a walk in the park. No Banished, just a bunch of Forerunner tech that doesn't play nice," Ranger chimed in, trying to lighten the mood. He paused, his expression turning thoughtful under his helmet. "Makes me wonder what I'm missing out on. Or not."

The topic of age came up as naturally as anything else could in a conversation held at gunpoint by existential dread. "So, how old are we talking here? I'm a sprightly 2530 baby, myself," Ranger offered, injecting a note of pride into his voice.

"2511," Chief responded, his voice as flat and unexciting as a history lecture.

"Same." Silver chuffed, glancing over at Chief with a look that could almost be considered camaraderie if one squinted.

Ranger nodded, a smirk playing on his lips, "Makes me the kid, huh? Guess that explains the youthful charm." He laughed, a sound that bounced around the Warthog's interior.

"Y'know, I got a girl back home. Spartan Linda. Tied the knot and everything. You guys would love her; she's a real charmer, once you get past the sniper rifle."

Chief's reaction was almost comical, had anyone been in the mood for comedy. A slight twitch, like he'd been zapped by a low-voltage current, betrayed his surprise. "Linda..." he echoed, the name carrying a weight that seemed to anchor him to the spot. The moment stretched, filled with unspoken thoughts and feelings, a saga of 'what-ifs' and 'if-onlys'.

"Got a thing for your Linda, huh?" Ranger nudged, his tone playful yet edged with understanding. "Can't say I blame you. If she's anything like my Linda, she's one in a trillion."

The conversation meandered from there, shifting to less emotionally charged topics... that's a lie, it got more emotional. Ranger glanced back at his companions, a new thread of curiosity weaving through his thoughts.

"You know, I've been thinking... It's weird how everyone in your world can just... interact with Forerunner tech. In my dimension, it's a no-go unless you've got this rare Forerunner genome thing going on. Which, luckily, I do." He tapped the side of his helmet, as if to punctuate his point.

Silver, who had been navigating a particularly treacherous patch of terrain, perked up at this. "Yeah? That's a thing for me too." He noted with a half-smirk, then, as if a thought struck him, he directed a queston to the other Johns. "You ever hear of someone named Makee in your world?"

Both Chief and Ranger shook their heads, their interest piqued. Chief’s voice was the first to break the ensuing silence. "Makee? That's not a name that's come up. Who is she?"

In the rearview mirror, Silver's reflection showed a man wrestling with how to frame his next words. "She was... unique. A human, but the only one who joined the Covenant, believed in their cause. She could interpret the words of the Forerunners, activate and use their tech... She's like me, but she used her abilities for them."

The weight of the story hung in the air, heavier than the gravity on Onyx. Ranger, always one to push forward, nudged the topic. "So, what happened to her?"

Silver's grip on the steering wheel tightened, the muscles in his jaw working as he chose his words carefully. "One of my Spartans killed her," he said, a simple statement that carried layers of unsaid emotion.

The silence that followed was telling, filled with a mix of curiosity and respect for the delicate subject. It was Ranger who broke it, his tone treading the line between sensitive and inquisitive. "You sound... kinda fond of her?"

There was a pause, long enough to be uncomfortable, before Silver finally let out a breathy chuckle, laden with a cocktail of emotions. "Yeah, well, she was under my custody, and... we ended up falling for each other. And, uh, she—We..." He stumbled over the words, a rarity for someone usually so sure of himself.

Chief, the ever-stoic warrior, found himself at a loss, his brain trying to reboot like an old, overworked computer. "You were... involved with a POW?"

Ranger’s reaction was a mixture of shock and an almost irrepressible urge to laugh, not out of mockery, but sheer disbelief at the complexity of Silver's situation. "And let me guess, there were... consequences to this?"

Silver sighed, a sound that was half resignation, half defiance. "If by 'consequences,' you mean a baby, then yeah. I'm raising our child. Her name's Angel."

The revelation hit like a gravity hammer. Chief looked as if he’d been physically struck, the concept so foreign and shocking to his disciplined mind that it nearly sent him into a state of system failure. Ranger, on the other hand, clamped a hand over his mouth, his shoulders shaking with the effort to contain his laughter, not at the situation itself, but at the sheer absurdity of life and how it seemed to throw curveballs at the most unexpected of times.

Silver glanced at both of his counterparts through the mirror, a sheepish yet defiant look in his eyes. "Yeah, I know. It's a mess. But she's the best thing that's come out of all this chaos. Angel, I mean."

The Warthog trundled on, the silence now filled with a new understanding, a recognition of the complexities and the unanticipated paths their lives had taken.

Chief, still processing, finally nodded, a gesture of acknowledgment if not full comprehension. Ranger, finding his composure, offered a supportive clap on Silver's shoulder, his laughter subsiding into a knowing smirk.

"Life, huh?" Ranger mused, the landscape around them unforgiving and barren, yet somehow less desolate with the sharing of their intertwined tales. "Doesn't get much crazier than this."

[greenjudy]

Rook Notes, part 1

-About 6 hours in at this point.

-I like it here. (I'm playing on Steam Deck at the lowest graphical settings, which makes Rook feel a bit nearsighted as he bumbles along; but there's something about the movement, and the shapes, and the flavors, and the settings, that I like very much. If I want to see things very clearly, LOL, I enter Photo Mode and poke around.)

-Someone made the mosaics shine in a very distinct way. I want to shake that person's hand.

-I am getting used to working with the not-open-world terrain. It is a very good idea to look around. It is a very good idea to read codex entries. Some of the codex entries are truly wonderful.

-I enjoy the combat; this is unexpected. I only occasionally enjoyed the combat in Inquisition; I hung on by my teeth in DA2; and I loathed the combat in Origins. I was just not expecting to actually like Dragon Age fighting. Mage Rook Elen de Riva relies on death-from-above tactics and has just learned how to parry with his magical weapon.

-People have been saying 1) they can't dictate Rook's personality and 2) they find that Rook has no personality. I am baffled by these stances, which incidentally contradict each other. Did ye not play Dragon Age 2? There are three flavors of Hawke. You can mix and match, but if you let one of the three styles of response predominate, you get a person out the other end, someone who is not your self-insert, a person in their own right. The restrictions on the field paradoxically help to generate the sense that Hawke is a real person.

I am treating Rook like this. I'm picking sorrowful responses and enjoying getting to know this careful, regretful Crow mage.

-On a related note, people are apparently mad that the dialogue options are not cruel enough for their liking; in some cases at least, that seems to be the real issue behind "being unable to dictate Rook's personality."

SkillUp's now notorious video is full of complaints about the tone of DATV. "Everything is too safe, too YA, too friendly, too wholesome." This feels very much to me like a personal preference getting a weird sheen of moral outrage. "Art should reflect the true depravity of our world," or something; it reminds me of the ardent defenses of Game of Thrones and the way that show treats women. I think I will call this take GrimDark 2.0 for the time being.

-I will play more before weighing in on the tone, the writing and the shape of the story.

-I will tag for spoilers along the way with #DATV spoilers.

-I will try to figure out how to upload a picture of Elen de Riva.

-Rook out.

[iapetusneume]

Unyielding, and the Great Beasts

So I've been writing Director's Cuts for a lot of my one-shots and chapters, and it's been a great exercise for me to help show my thought process. But when I considered writing one for Chapter 2 of Unyielding, I ran into an interesting issue.

A lot of worldbuilding went into my OCs of Horse and Little Horse, and it is tied into ways in which the greater series of the Great Angel's Court (GAC) is going to be a Canon Divergence AU.

I felt like All My Thoughts on them would overwhelm everything else in the Director's Cut, so they're getting their own post.

So, in canon as it is already stated, Caliban was located close to the Eye of Terror. This had a direct affect on the planet in multiple ways. The obvious way is the Great Beasts - unique creatures who terrorize the land and can only be defeated by the knight orders of Caliban. It also has warped the land itself - Luther: First of the Fallen has some really great descriptions about how its difficult to make maps for Caliban because the terrain is always shifting.

Lion's motivation prior to the Imperium discovering him was that he wanted to free his people from the terrors of the Great Beasts. It was extremely treacherous to travel from one fort/settlement to another, and if the average layperson were to do it, they often had to do so accompanied by a knight or knights. [It could be debated if Lion wanted to make the knightly orders obsolete, but that could be a long post in and of itself.] But he wanted his people to have the chance to live without fear, and to turn Caliban into a paradise.

In canon, he launched a campaign with almost all of the other knightly orders of Caliban to rid the planet of the Great Beasts. In canon, it is also shortly after the last Great Beast is killed that the Impreium shows up.

Part of the divergence for GAC starts here. In Unyielding, most of the Great Beasts have been killed, but not all of them. I haven't completely plotted out all of the differences of handling the Knights of Lupus yet, but the final war/etc hasn't happened as of Unyielding.

"Ok, Iapetus," you may say, "but when are you going to get to Horse and Little Horse?"

I wanted to provide some context before I get into that.

We know, thanks to Corax, that the primarchs are creatures of the warp. How, exactly, it had not gone into detail. And I have a lot of theories to what that might look like, especially in terms of the Emperor making the deals with the Chaos Gods to get the 20 primarchs.

But, yes. Primarchs are creatures of the warp.

The Great Beasts are a direct result of Caliban being close to the Eye of Terror. In Unyielding, I've taken this to mean that all the power leaking in their direction manifests in different ways. It is only logical to assume that the Great Beasts are also creatures of the warp.

But they didn't get any fancy designers like the primarchs did. This was very much "some sentience amassed some shit over here and became a creature." In many ways, very on-brand for Chaos.

And then, we have Horse. Horse came about because I had been wondering how one gets a war horse that a primarch could use.

I have not gotten into it yet, and I'm not sure where or when it's going to come up, but Horse knew Lion before he was found by Luther. I'm not all about the Constant All The Time Grimdark, and Lion could have certainly torn apart plenty of Great Beasts with his bare hands as a little kiddo and had a friend while he did it.

I haven't decided what Horse looked like during this time, but at this time she did not look like a horse. This is important. Because later after Luther discovers Lion, Horse will decide to try to follow Lion.

She knows her form will not be accepted, and so it takes time to shapeshift. She changes into something that... well, it certainly looks a lot like a horse. But anyone who knows anything about horses is going to know that Something Is Up With That Horse when they look at her.

She's a terror when she wants to be. And at the start... she really wanted to remain with her friend. So she didn't kill anyone at the stables or in the Order, and loved being able to kill shit with Lion when he went out hunting. It was great.

My idea about the Great Beasts is that they mostly didn't fuck with one another and for various reasons would just try to not engage, and keep to their own territories. But I also see creatures of Chaos to be Extremely Petty and also easily holding grudges, so they will also go to try to fuck with others.

Lion and Horse were trying to mind their own business but often got in trouble. Such as it is.

So Lion doesn't like (most of) the Great Beasts, but Horse is cool because Horse is his friend. Lion rises within the Order, and she pretends to be a war horse because not one is gonna question this as long as she acts "somewhat" like a horse. And she's incredible in battle. No other actual horse would be able to keep up with Lion while he's fighting.

She eventually tries to have foals because she's a "horse" and this is something she's supposed to do. I still haven't decided if her children are technically 100% Great Beast or only 50%. (Chaos works in mysterious ways.) They're smaller than her and not as strong, but still a lot stronger than even the best war horses, and extremely smart. Little Horse is her eldest child, and in Unyielding is the only one in a position to be considered for a mount for Sanguinius. There are two other foals who are still growing and in training.

So, where do their names come from?

Horse's name is not Horse. Horse has a name in the language of the Great Beasts that can't be transcribed into Gothic, and its difficult to pronounce when spoken verbally. I also like to think that the language of the Great Beasts sounds terrifying to humans when it's spoken, so it's not a good habit to get into. There was a bit of confusion with the Order when they asked Lion what his horse's name was, and she wasn't really attached to anything else. Because he didn't want to just give her a name that wasn't hers, Lion felt it best to use a placeholder. So, she's "Horse."

It's in a similar vein that Little Horse is not his name, either. He also has a name in the language of the Great Beasts, but instead uses a placeholder around the humans.

I have not yet named the younger foals, but they would continue in the vein of being "placeholder" names. I also know whom the foals will eventually choose as their riders - the 2nd born will go to Jaghatai, and the 3rd born will go to Guilliman. That scenario is very cute, and if anyone wishes I can elaborate on it. But I digress.

So, how is Lion able to talk with Horse and Little Horse?

This is a twofold response. The first is, the Emperor designed the primarchs to pick language up extremely quickly. This is something that kicks in the moment the start hearing a new language. From what I've gathered, it simply improves their skill the more they engage with it. So when Lion was growing up, the language he heard from Horse was the first one he heard.

I also choose to believe that the language of the Great Beasts is actually something greater - it's the language of the creatures of the warp. It's something sewn into all the creatures' beings, and does not take long to have it drawn out. Calling it one's native language isn't quite right, but... there's similar vibes.

This is why we see Sanguinius rapidly starting to understand what Horse and Little Horse are saying. His comprehension isn't perfect in chapter 2, but it's progressing. Give him time, and he will be able to converse with them as easily as Lion does.

I had an interesting time trying to figure out how to depict the conversations. Horse and Little Horse are sentient beings with souls, but they don't have vocal chords that can make words the way humans know them. I think of it very much like the way that Han and Chewbacca talk in Star Wars. They both understand the other language perfectly but they can't speak the other language.

(Though in this case, the primarchs would be able to if they want to. Their vocal chords are Fancy but again, terrifying to for humans to hear them talking.)

Horse and Little Horse tend to keep their volume very low, because primarchs have good hearing and they don't want to spook the humans too much. But there's also very much the vibe of, the humans getting close to them are often going to be very high ranking knights or the stablemaster, who both know and respect them. And there's also the whole "this is a monster but the monster is on my side" which is terrifying but not the sort that is going to make them run away... but to be fair, primarchs are also terrifying and on their side.

I like to think that Sanguinius has access to more powers as a psyker in small ways like limited telepathy. I also have a theory that all the primarchs would be able to do this, but not all of them have figured it out. Lion: Son of the Forest really suggests that Lion didn't know about his latent psyker talents until much later, and so he doesn't know how to do limited telepathy now.

Last tidbit of information: Horse and Little Horse see Lion and his brothers as also Great Beasts. (At this point, they've met Horus and Sanguinius.) They will continue to believe this as they meet more primarchs. They are fearsome creatures with whom they share a kinship in the warp. Horse find it odd that the primarchs latch onto humanity so much, but Horse eventually sees it more like how her children are both Great Beasts and horses at the same time. But, of course, her children have never been a full horse but there's definitely a horse aspect to them. The primarchs are not human, never were, but humanity is a part of who they are.

I am probably forgetting some things and will probably reblog this later with more rambling. Also, please feel free to ask me questions.