I was previously undecided on this year's Halloween costume (since the current projects won't be ready in time) but during the drive home one night from life drawing, the subconscious came on the line and was like "Oh hai, you should be the Emperor of Mankind lolololol."

It was pretty near the most ridiculous thing I could think of and doing a serious photoshoot for it was a bit strange because it wasn't really a serious costume to begin with. It is definitely an abridged version - can't really throw together a suit of power armour in a month, sadly.... Dan Abnett writes of Horus wearing something simple like maille and furs for his travelling gear so I went with that tangent.

So, I used my Roman maille, made a red tunic out of the proverbial wool-viscose blend, used my tan linen Viking pants, and made the cloak out of flannel - it looks like pyjama material up close but drapes quite nicely indeed. The brown flaps are actually part of a subarmalis to use the Latin term, which is an over-your-head type deal that is put on after the tunic. You can't actually see it that well here but it's made of a leather-like material with gold fringes. The vambraces are made from ice-cream bucket plastic in between two layers of craft foam with craft foam embellishments. The boots are an old riding pair painted brown - attempted to glue some of the foam on there and it didn't stick at all. For example, the eagles originally had feet but they disappeared in the pub somewhere on Halloween night. And the laurel crown is made with ice-cream bucket plastic, a coat hanger, and brass wire. Thank god for gold spray paint.

Note Regarding the Aquila - I initially took a stab at a lightening bolt device for the embellishments, sort of thinking Unification Wars era, but I couldn't produce anything satisfactory for the life of me. So after a couple of fruitless days, I opted for a generic, single-headed aquila that still bore some similarity to the Imperial version. If this were a serious cosplay project, I would have stuck with the lighting bolts but didn't in favour of getting it finished in time.

Hope you enjoy!

Total Time = About 45 hrs.

The Emperor of Mankind is (c) Games Workshop, of course.