This is an Inquisitor costume I originally decided to make as a slow build after I read Games Workshop's Eisenhorn. After dealing with stumbling blocks with my Marine armor, I put forth more effort to get this costume done in time for MegaCon in Orlando this February. This costume is fun to work with, since after a few simple pieces are finished, I can add greeblies where wanted, and it's a very flexible costume. For the basics that are readily available, I have black BDU pants, a burgundy dress shirt, a gold tie, a green denim vest, and black combat boots. The rest of the costume consists of:
The duster was a pretty simple thing...well for me anyhow, maybe not for my mom.
My duster is based on Simplicity pattern 5386. Mine is made with chocolate brown moleskin, and has a nice leathery, yet xenos, feel to it. It's a rather pricey fabric, but I was able to find it at Joanne Fabrics during a sale. I had my mom change the sleeves slightly by adding a strap and gold button to the cuffs.
Pauldrons
The duster looks very good for an Inquisitor, but even with shoulder pads in the coat, I still felt it didn't give my shoulders the bulk I wanted. Taking a clue from the illustration on the cover of the Eisenhorn Omnibus, I decided to make a pair of pauldrons.
After thinking of what would have the right shape, I decided to poke around and look at things like plastic containers and trash cans. While poking around a discount store, I spied a small plastic garbage pail, and liked its lines.
I started by roughly measuring how wide I wanted the pauldrons, from my collar to shoulder. After I got this rough measurement, I cut the top of the garbage pail off with a razor knife. From here, this piece was halved along the smallest diameter, giving me a symmetric pair a pauldron blanks. I decided which half would be right and left, and set to shaping them. I cut a slight slope on the front side of each, and a more drastic slope on the back. The inside corner of the front was rounded off. The final shape was pleasing, so I put down the knife, sat back, and looked at them.
To add a little more bulk to the relatively thin edges of the pauldrons, I used round foam rope caulking from the home improvement store. I am having difficulty getting paint to stick to it, so next time I'll use something else. I needed to slice a groove into the length of foam uniformly, so I hit upon a simple idea. Using a few inches of half-inch PVC, I mounted a #11 X-acto blade in its edge, and made a nice cutter. I just ran the length of foam though the PVC and pulled, cutting a pretty even groove. The rope caulking was then just superglued around the pauldron, doing a few inches at a time, and using plenty of close pins.
For the paint on these pauldrons, I decided to hint towards my Salamanders and went with green with gold trim. The fact that it was the paint colors I had lots of on hand had nothing to do with it...I suggest that you spend the money on atleast a primer that bonds well to plastic, as the paint on my pauldrons has trouble with chipping, but not nearly as bad as the caulking. I am hoping a few thick coats of a spray sealer will help. To attach these to the rest of the costume, I attached three scroll cases to the back of the pauldrons, using 1" brown strapping glued to the undersides of the pauldrons. For the front of the pauldrons, I am trying to avoid having straps criss-crossing all over, so I am planning on attaching pinbacks to the underside of each pauldron. These are going to pin through the duster and into a pair of suspenders under my vest. This should be enough to keep the weight of the scroll cases from pulling the pauldrons off.
Gloves
What good Inquisitor wants to run around and get his hands dirty?
For these gloves, I bought a simple black pair of work gloves, and tossed them into some Rit dye, which took care of the white stitching and yellow piping on the gloves. Just having black gloves is boring, so I took a clue from the PowerFists on Terminators, adding a skull to the knuckles of each glove. When Jack was around, he gave me a bag of Halloween skull rings. I sliced off the ring portion from eight of these, and drilled a 1/8" hole into the back of each, careful not to go all the way through. I then mounted each of these skulls to a sprue for painting. I primed them black and dusted gold paint on, which diffuses the shine and makes them look worn; you know, from brawling with heretics and xenos. I then simply riveted through the gloves into the holes in the backs of the skulls. I had to grind a few of the studs down that didn't break cleanly. I found out the hard way that these are sharp, so be careful and take care of the little details.
Rosette
The mark of the Inquisitor is his rosette. There is really no defined description of what a rosette is, but it incorporates the =][= symbology and more than likely a skull. There are references to some Inquisitors having theirs on a ring, others something like a brooch, some even holographic or a tattoo. From what I can figure, the rosette is a sort of custom piece for each Inquisitor, so the design is fairly open-ended.
I started with a simple wooden letter "I" from the crafts store. It was too tall and skinny, so I sectioned out a few inches in the center. Using the scrap left over, I added the 6 side pieces in the center and attached a plaster skull I have a mold for. This finsished the main part of the rosette. After looking at the peice, I thought it needed more detail, so I added a ridge along its perimeter. I split some bamboo skewers lengthwise and cut them to fit on straight portions. The curves were done using plastic shaved into a rough curve and bent to fit.
I decided that since this is a focal piece of the costume, I did't want to resort to a gold finish in a can. I opted to use a burnished gold Rub 'n Buff finish. It took more time than a spray paint, but I like the effect better, and you can actually polish it. I then screwed two small screw-eyes into the top of the rosette and turned to some leather thong material I bought. I cut 3 strips, one a few inches longer than the others, and started to braid, leaving a few inches extra on the center strand. I used superglue to hold the 3 strips together at this end. As I braided, I made sure I had the right tension and density of weave, and finished the end as I did the first. To attach this strap to the rosette, I threaded the long strip of one end through a screw-eye, and used a hangman's noose as a knot. It took a few tries to get the right number of wraps and such, but it came out nicely. I may soak the leather in some hot water to make it softer and less stiff.
PowerSword
For my PowerSword, I first putzed around in a 3-D modeling program my university has called CATIA. I played with dimensions and looks to decide what I liked. Below you can see my final model.
To start, I wanted to be sure my sword wasn't the typical foam and duct tape kind you usually see at conventions. To help with durability and rigidity, I cut a blank from MDF in the shape of the blade and its tang. Next, for the core of the grip, I cut a piece of 1" PVC pipe to length, and notched the upper end to fit over the MDF. If I were to do this again, I would try to make the groove deeper and tighter. Get your mind out of the gutter.
To build the blade section, I decided to use two pairs of foamcore blanks sandwiched onto the MDF. I cut these into the same size and shape of the MDF, less the tang. The foamcore was laminated using simple white glue, was weighted, and then allowed to dry overnight. To get the edges shaped correctly, I used an old R/C airplane trick. If you use some type of iron, and control it, you can shape foamcore. Basically, you are melting the foam and pushing it around with the iron. Once this cools, the foam is denser and harder, which means extra durability. I placed the edge of the blade along the edge my table, and slowly, using a normal clothes iron, pressed the edges down, following guidelines on the center of the blade. The goal is to get the cross-section of the blade to be a 6-sided diamond.
To build the =][= hand guard, I simply cut foamore to fit. To bulk up the grip, I used 3 1" PVC couplers, which slid over the main grip easily. These were cut to fit around the hand guard. Note that I left excess room in the bottom coupler. This is to hold the pommel. To stiffen the assembly, I drilled holes through the grip assembly, countersinking at both ends, and bolted everything together. This keeps the tang from shifting too much, and lends a good deal of rigidity. With all this done, I started the Bondo phase, which I am still doing. Every few layers, I spray paint to highlight problem areas and to use as a guide coat. I am trying to get the blade as smooth as possible, as it will have a brushed-on metallic finish. The hand guard is not as crucial, and I'm not being too anal about its smoothness. If someone comments on it, I suppose I'll have to do a durability test.
As mentioned before, this PowerSword gets a pommel. I am using a 1" PVC plug, which fits neatly into the bottom coupler. For the decoration, I am using a chrome skull that is sold in auto parts stores as a shift knob. To attach the two, I drilled a hole to set the ridge of the knob into, and engineered a fastening method. This involved a galvanized bolt, the end cap from a superglue container, a washer, and a threaded fitting. The fitting had to be ground to fit inside the skull, but after this, the rest was easy. The fitting was fastened tighly into the skull, the washer was ground to fit into the PVC plug, and the bolt was run though the superglue cap, the washer, the plug, and finally screwed onto the skull. The weight of this skull will help greatly in balancing the sword, as most of the weight is in the blade.
After a whole lot of Bondo and sanding, I finally got the blade to be very smooth, and got the =][= hand guard to an acceptable finish. The guard is extremely difficult to work with, so I left it fairly rough. I don't think it will be too noticeable, and if anything, it makes it look more like a wrought iron. After a final sanding and rubdown with a tackcloth, everything but the grip was primed a flat black. After an hour or so to allow for proper curing, this coat was lightly sanded, tacked, and recoated. I took my time with this priming process, as I want a good basecoat to paint over.
Once the primer coat was completely cured, it was time to finish the PowerSword. I used Pewter Liquid Leaf to paint the blade of the PowerSword. I originally intended to underpaint with neon blue "electrical bolts," but I found that the Liquid Leaf is too opaque to show them, so I chucked the underpainting idea. I took my time laying down this finish, using a soft brush. This stuff contains Xylene and other nasty stuff, so paint outside or with a fan going. The hand guard was painted over with a cheap acrylic black paint. I just use the $0.99 stuff from the local crafts store. I like this paint because it is fairly thick, easy to use, and looks nice. After this dried, then entire PowerSword was clearcoated with a semigloss sealer. The skulls on the hand guard were finished separately in Rub 'n Buff and glued to the =][=.
After completely priming the shifter knob skull, it too was finished with Rub 'n Buff. The PVC plug was painted black and clearcoated. Once both parts were cured, the were reassembled and installed into the handgrip. I should note that I don't clearcoat the Rub 'n Buff peices, as they tarnish/polish, and I feel this lends to a nicer finish.
With all the painting and such done, the last thing to do is wrap the grip (and hide my mistakes). Using the same method as my PowerMaul, I cut a strip of burgundy vinyl the width of my yardstick. Basically, this is the easiest way to make a uniform strip; I line up the table edge, vinyl edge, and yardstick edge, and cut the vinyl along the yardstick. I measure the circumference around the grip, and make that the length of my trim cut. Using my ruler, I first put the "zero" of the ruler on one edge on the strip, and swing it so the forementioned length is on the other edge. This angle will make the first wrap of the grip nice and even, with no trimming required, and it sets the wrapping angle. After fastening the trimmed bottom edge with glue, pull the vinyl fairly tight and wrap it up the grip, glueing now and then. I finished the wrap just under the =][= guard, and glued it securely.
Now I used scrap vinyl and filled up the space between the bars of the =][=, and then wrapped a strip of vinyl, cut to fit, around the top of the grip. Another peice of vinyl was cut to fit around the base of the blade and guard. This helps cover up all the junk at the base of the blade, and makes the =][= stand out a little more. I should have spend more time fitting and trimming this part, but it came out alright. The PowerSword is ready to go!
Inquisitorial Banner
This banner was originally intended for my interrogator to carry, but he flaked.
This banner consisted of two main parts, the pole and the actual banner. The pole is pretty easy; it's just a few lengths of 1/2" diameter PVC pipe, two couplers (one slip fit, one with a slip/thread), a cross-coupler, a threaded plug, and 3 slip caps. The slip coupler allows the cross bar and ornament assembly to detach from the main pole section. The threaded coupler allows the threaded plug to be removed as well. The aquila is just a foamcore cutout laminated with thin plasticard and painted gold.
The actual hanging banner is even simpler. I cut out the desired shape from some spare burlap I had left over from the monks' banner I made and edged it in burgundy vinyl. The "inquis" was freehanded onto the burlap and allowed to dry. Finally, the whole thing was attached to the crossbar on the banner pole.
Well, I got the costume done in time for Megacon 2007. I had to forgo the scrolls hanging from my pauldrons because of their weight. Since I didn't have anyone else costuming with me, I had plenty of stuff to go around, which worked out, since I decided not to rush my boltgun. As of right now, I only have a few photos, but I will post more as I find them. If you have one from Megacon 2007, I would love to have a copy.
I wore the same costume for Megacon 2008, but I went with the duster closed and with my finished bolter and psycannon. I also had a friend wear the beginnings of an Imperial Pilot costume I'm working on, and another friend went as an Arbites Judge.
DISCLAIMER: All images belong to the webmaster unless otherwise stated. Warhammer 40k, Forge World, and Dungeons and Dragons belong to their respective owners. Costumes and Props are mine, not to be sold. Especially my Space Marine Armor Costume, so don't ask.
