Artist's commentary
Maximum Heresy: Order of Our Common Weal
Deep within the eastern fringe of Ultima Segmentum, a former Preceptory of the Order of the Valorous Heart have done the unthinkable, and abandoned their sacred vows of service to the Imperium. Now fighting for the Farsight Enclaves as the Gue'kou'taal, "human faithful preservers," these veterans of the Damocles Gulf Crusade have made what they believe is a devil's bargain with the Tau in the hopes of preventing the masses of humanity still residing within the Damocles Gulf from ever falling to the corrupting influence of Chaos. The self declared Order of Our Common Weal is well armed with unique wargear of mixed human and Tau manufacture, and stands ready to do battle against the terrors of the warp, wherever they may appear.
Pictured: Supported by the Houndshark Assault Transport, a Cadre Superior of the Common Weal directs her mission group to contain a catastrophic Eje'chel, a "wound in causality."
This is an art piece I commissioned from Celeng. Here's the Common Weal insignia for the curious.
This sprang out of a desire to explore the "what if?" question of what it would take to convince a group of Sisters of Battle to undertake the extremely unlikely act of defecting to the Tau. What I came up with was a unit of Sisters left behind during the Damocles Gulf Crusade, who fought alongside the Tau out of necessity during the post-Crusade Ork invasion of the sub-sector, and were then faced with an impossible choice. Either they could do what duty demanded, and lead the fellow humans they'd just spent months fighting to save into a hopeless suicidal battle against the very xenos who'd also recently fought and bled for humanity, or they could sacrificing everything they held dear, and dedicate themselves to helping the Tau prevent the billions of humans who would be residing within the Farsight Enclaves from ever turning the place into a new railgun toting daemon engine infested Eye of Terror. For the Greater Good of Mankind, they did what they felt was right.