The Re-Imagined Imperium Revised!

Hi!

Well we're back from an amazing week in Rome and countless hours of investigating aged ruins and beautiful art and I've found myself re-exploring my re-imagined Imperium.

Whereas my previous attempts did away with the Grimdark and moved tech forward a bit, having visited the glories of Rome, I feel I need to take things a few steps further and really get my teeth into the setting and rework it some more to suit how my ideas are slowly developing!

To begin with, I am thinking of doing away with the Gothic feel of the Imperium and replacing it with something altogether more classical with more than a hint of the British Empire, Dune and quite a few other sci-fi novels added to the mix!

With that in mind, I've been poring through my art book collections and the thousands of photos we took whilst on holiday for suitable inspiration and hope to begin fleshing things out over the course of the coming week.

I'm thinking of the Imperium at large being more like the Roman Empire at it's height with lots of marble columns, grand sculpture and a more classical look to them. Also in the past the Imperium was much larger but due to The Horus Heresy and assorted wars and pandemics, the Imperium shrank back within it's borders for over a millennium but now fresh armies and explorers are setting out to reclaim lost worlds.

Imagine Imperial Conquistadores leading small expeditions in search of lost cities of gold, Rogue Traders plying the frontier and trading with civilisations of aliens and humans outwith the Imperial remit and the Imperial forces themselves getting a bit of a rethink too with Legions of power armoured troops, Imperial Auxiliaries and at the heart of the Imperium, Empress Lionstone playing off the noble houses against one another to further her plans.

I am hoping to crack on with using a mixture of figures from a wide assortment of manufacturers from sci-fi to fantasy and historical to start fleshing out the inhabitants of the Imperium and will also be sculpting my own bits and bobs when needed as I've got some cracking ideas I want to try out!

I also need to re-explore my scenery collection and really go to town with building some suitable locales for the inhabitants of the Imperium to live in, fight over, loot and explore!

This will give me the opportunity to play around with lots of monolithic ruins as well as a lot of new buildings and scenery to work with and I am also taking lots of inspiration from the Orientalist painters with their rather fabulous illustration of twisting alleys and lush, exotic decorations on buildings for Farpoint itself.

Imagine something like this but with alien traders, weird beasts and ramshackle vehicles, not to mention bulky tech liberally strewn around the place with Imperial Legionaries patrolling the streets!

All in all, I need to spend quite a bit of time going through my original notes for my Re-Imagined Imperium but I am rather looking forward to the opportunity!

In other news, I have been slowly painting through some Xenos scum for my Imperials to mix it up with and hope to show some pics later on this weekend once everything's painted and based. I am also going to be showing a few NPC's for Farpoint as well as exploring the setting in a bit more depth so do check back!

All the best!