Not me.
My chapter, the Dead Heads, only has a simple idea for a backstory – and that only came about when I was painting them. They were originally going to be Space Wolves. I had painted them the Space Wolf Blue Grey as a base color and then inked them with a wash of Blue ink. The color that created was a very rich deep blue – a good match is Phthalo Blue. Not wanting to cover over this with another layer of Space Wolf Blue Gray and then Space Wolf Grey, I left it and then decided to have my marines be one of the nameless alternate chapters. I just had to come up with a chapter symbol and a name.
I had a t-shirt with a smiley face with a bullet hole and liked the graphic. It was an easy and striking symbol and easy to modify for the different types of troops. A standard circle shape for the Tactical squad, a sunburst for the Devastator squad, a face with a tongue sticking out for the Assault squad, and an octagon for a Terminator squad. The blood trails on the symbol would reflect the campaigns in which the figure participated. The helmets were also a smiley face yellow with the bullet mark and blood trails – which looked pretty cool with the old beakie helmets.
For the name, I settled on ‘the Dead Heads’. I’m not a big Grateful Dead fan – but their video ‘Touch of Grey’ was big at the time. The other reason was the Ork books – I was assembling a Death Skulls army so it seemed a good match.
My only idea towards the backstory was that the Captain was on the battlefield when he had a brief moment of doubt – a caress of a touch of Chaos – when he was hit in the helmet by a bolter shell that failed to fully detonate. His resolve renewed, he fought on with vigor. The helmet and chapter symbol serve as a reminder of his temptation and mark his repentance.
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