An Elder Gate for the Thousand Sons

Ben, a Thousand Sons player, had the idea for a Skyshield Landing Pad custom. This structure would tie into his army's theme of the quest for knowledge and sorcery.  We agreed that it should be an old temple of some sort yet still fit within the rules for the GW model.  After some designs, we came up with the idea that it would be configurable for friendly games as well as competitive play.  I chose to style it after an Old One's place of power as described in the lore of both the 40k universe and the Cthulhu stories merging the two in my own way.  The next step was to decide how the shielded and unfurled modes of the SSLP could be represented on the Elder Gate. I came up with a wall of fire since it would make sense that the wall would be mystical fire and that the encircling nature of the wall would relate to the Thousand Sons current emblem: an Ouroboros of fire. It then occurred to me that I could size the Wall of Fire to the proportions of the Aegis Defense Line.  This way, Ben could get dual use from the set.

Once all the preparations were made I began work. The process was fairly straight forward:  meticulously clip squares of acid free Bristol board and glue them to an armature of foam board and styrene. Then seal all the surfaces with more glue. The glyphs and tablets would be made of polymer clay as well as the walls of fire.  Now came another decision: what style of runes and symbols to use for the tablets?  I had at first considered using material from HP Lovecraft's Necronomicon mixed with Lizardmen runes then realized that if these beings were to be the progenitors of all the other races, should not their writing be some kind of root as well. So I looked over all the symbols and alphabets of the other races and began to scrawl across the tablets mixing the styles as the muse hit me.  I came up with four panels which would indicate the ziggurat's purpose: a gate to the Webway and the Warp.