All you can eat HERESY!!! Just $4.99 a plate at the Black Dragon!

I sh!t you not, there's a sign that says that above the mess haul entrance on board the Black Dragons' flagship!

My slight variation from the 'official' icon.

I've always like the Black Dragons Space Marine chapter. Rife with mutation, and rumored to even be encouraging it. Yet denying that heretical practice outwardly, but not enough to avoid being on the eternal shit list of several marine chapters (notably the Dark Angels who are all about concealing dark chapter secrets and my eternal favorites, the Marines Malevolent).  Additionally, the Inquisition, and Magos biologis aren't too fond of them either as it seems their gene tithes are always late, yet flawless when finally collected.

Curious that...

The Black Dragons are rumored to be a Salamanders' successor chapter and the only reason I can tell that that, might be is because their chapter emblem is a freaking lizard! Yes folks, in the Grim Dark this is what passes for genetic research! There is mention of a slightly darker skin tone among their more mutated members, but that's going on the assumption that also in the grim dark, everybody is genetically Caucasian to begin with except the Salamanders...

Anyways, all this rambling comes to you because I've painted my 1st Black Dragon marine:

I hate how zoomed in close photos add a million flaws...

This is my (as yet unnamed) captain of the chapter's 7th company. Any passing resemblance to the former Captain I killed Draigo of my ebayed off Storm Wardens' army is purely coincidental. Black armor is fairly easy to paint (I should know, once having had a HUGE Iron Hands army), and only a light drybrushing of Administratum Gray was applied to keep the armor from being too flat and featureless.  Indeed, by my usual 40k painting standards, this guy's armor is damned near pristine!

Grunts won't get checkers, but maybe vehicles will...

The 7th company's Codex Astartes color is orange, however not wanting my guys to look like Halloween Marines, I stole Codicer Ignatius' idea of putting the company color on the bolter. Additionally, there's a large roundel on this mini's shoulder pauldron and as the company captain, it seemed to be a good place to put some heraldry. In this case, a black and orange checker board with the company number over it. Lemme tell ya, for those who haven't tried, painting checkerboards sucks! The other shoulder got a dragon decal which was my 1st use of my Fallout Hobbies decals, and I couldn't be happier with them! Hell, it went on easier than most any GW decal that I've ever put on a SM pauldron!

Aside from his Mk II artificer this captain stands out as an oddity as here's armed simply, with just a bolter and sword. That's a pretty stark contrast to most Marine characters, and even sergeants who tend to be armed with the best the chapter has to offer! There is one caveat to that though, as a Salamanders' successor, each character gets a free 'master-crafted' upgrade to 1 weapon. So ya see that gold hilt on the sword? Yup, you guessed it: a Master-Crafted CCW!

Now all that's left to do is to decapitate Neverness' new daemon prince with that Master-Crafted sword...