Protonid

When I was about 15, I got hold of my first copy of Rogue Trader, the first edition of Warhammer 40k. If I remember rightly, I bought it off a bloke called Gary for £5. It was worth nearly every penny.

Quite what the authors of Rogue Trader thought they were making, I'm not sure. While the rough background of 40k was there (there's an emperor, orcs and elves in space, everyone is miserable) there was also a whole load of completely mental stuff that faded away once they realised that the game was basically about different coloured teams of Space Marines bashing one another. That said, I don't know how anyone was going to play a serious wargame fighting things like the Bouncer or the Catachan Face Eater, which resembled a beach ball and a small towel respectively.

Anyhow, in Rogue Trader was this picture.

This is the first drawing of what later became the tyranids, one of the major antagonists of Warhammer 40,000. There was a model of this creature, dubbed the Protonid, of which about 17 were made. They looked like this:

In a fit of wine-related nostalgia, I decided to make my own version out of bits of leftover plastic kits and modelling putty. I give you... protonid!

In the cold light of day, he looks like the bastard offspring of a shaven weasel and the Loch Ness Monster. The blue glowing things are anti-gravity pods to hold him upright (the original description says that they spend most of their time in space, which is a sufficient excuse for me).

And the moral of this story? I probably ought to get out more.