A Brief History of Lord Ethan's Exiles

Lord Ethan's Exiles are a mercenary outfit that tread the fine line between respectable mercenary and outright piracy. This ambiguity has often served as a benefit to their potential employers. The prospect of letting a privateer mercenary company loose in your rival's frontier worlds is often a sound investment if destabilizing your opponent is the ultimate goal rather than taking territory. This deniability is one of the major selling points of the Exiles. Their refusal to standardize their livery and an iron clad guarantee of client confidentiality has carved them a decent niche as the perfect outfit to carry out any desired false flag operation. They are the most active on the Periphery, though they often frequent fronts where low intensity conflict between great houses has been going at a low burn for some time.

Battlemaster BLR-1G "Bakunin"
Owned by notorious pirate Vivian Black
confirmed operating with the Exiles.

A selection of Battlemechs that have been positively identified as serving with the Exiles.

Origins

The Exiles were founded by Lord Miles Ethan, a veteran Mechwarrior from minor Davion nobility. He underwent his trial by fire in a succession of special operations units where he acquitted himself well in the field and was well liked by his subordinates and superiors. His promising career was cut short after an investigation initiated by the Davion Privy Council uncovered a massive smuggling ring run by many high ranking Davion officers, of which Miles was one of the leading figures. Miles avoided arrest and used his black market connections to flee Davion space and set himself up on in the Periphery as a pirate adjacent mercenary. After working for a few relatively unknown groups for several years, relations with Mile's last employer turned sour over a botched raid that turned into an ambush. He resolved it by leading a mutiny against his employer, seizing their Dropship and significant number of Battlemechs with the majority of the crew behind him. After marooning his old boss on an airless moon, he found himself in a position to take command, which he did. Rather than take a top down approach, he created a command council, which had three members of noble birth and three members of common birth, with Miles acting as a seventh member to break ties, thus Lord Ethans Exiles were born. The Exiles now have a solid reputation as a reliable unit that doesn't ask questions and well always ensure that the confidentiality of their clients is protected. Due to this, they are regularly employed by almost every one of the great houses and their practice of deliberately non-standard livery makes it hard for forces on the receiving end of the Exiles to distinguish them from regular Periphery pirates. At the time of writing they are estimated to have at least three Dropships, a well equipped but small Aerotech squadron, and a large and eclectic mix of Battlemechs, enough to field two full companies at last estimate. They are also known for backing up their Battlemechs with ground vehicles and infantry elements, often to serve as the smash and grab element of their force while the Battlemechs provide cover.

Shadowhawk SHD-2H confirmed operating with the Exiles
Note the non-standard woodland camouflage that is commonly used
by planetary militas and the factory red right leg. This suggests that
this battlemech was salvaged and brought back to operational status
after an engagement with a planetary militia.

Examples of the Exile's ground and Aerotech assets. Note the lack of unified livery or markings.

Composition

The overwhelming majority of the Exiles are political exiles from across the whole spectrum of the Inner Sphere. Lowborn ex-revolutionaries and disgraced nobility from the highest echelons of the Inner Sphere fill out their ranks, with a large number of more traditional pirates and fringe elements to make up numbers. Leadership positions in the company are almost all elected and prize money from the completion of significant contracts and war booty is fairly evenly split among all members of the company. If someone is lucky enough to survive several years as a member they are usually able to cash out and start a comfortable new life almost anywhere in the Inner Sphere. Despite this, the Exiles often take difficult or legally and ethically compromised contracts that often don't make it through the Mercenary Review Board. Despite this, service in the Exiles is a high risk / high return opportunity and there are plenty of desperate mercenaries in the Periphery.

Unknown Awesome AWS-8Q "The Smiling Tiger"
Rumored to be Lord Ethan's command battlemech

Wolverine WVR-6R in battered house Draconis livery
Confirmed to be in the service of the Exiles.

Current Operations

It is unclear if Lord Ethan remains in command of the Exiles, but the company has still retained his name. There was a credible rumour circulating that Lord Ethan was killed in a Skirmish with a House Davion kill team. This is difficult to verify as the Exiles go to great lengths to conceal the identities of their members. Even if it were true, the company does not seem to have suffered or degraded in combat performance with his demise. Instead they have continued to expand their operations and client base, the specifics of which are difficult to verify due to the highly irregular nature of their business arrangements. Regardless, if one has the right underworld connections, contact with the Exiles can be established and missions arranged even now, assuming you are willing to pay the full fee upfront and have both questionable ethics and no regard for personal honour.

Unknown Catapult CPLT-C1 in services with the Exiles
livery suggests possible Star League salvage.
(Uniform standard drab for desert operations.)

Unknown Thunderbolt TDR-5S confirmed in
service by the Exiles in the livery of the
elite Draconis unit "The Snow Spiders"

Twitch Instincts

I have come to hate video production, it takes what joy I got out of painting and sucks it away with checking camera angles, fighting the auto focus and not being able to paint at a leisurely pace that unwinds the brain. I also can't do Twitch. I generally do fine until someone actually joins the stream and starts to talk to me. In an instant what was a pleasurable meditative state becomes remarkably stressful, and I am very much not here for it. So with all that said, I think I'm done with painting entire projects on video. It is not fun and if I am going to do any more videos they will be very small technique demonstrations, which when pre-planned, are much easier to shoot and edit.
Rant done, now on to what I've been doing with myself lately.

The recent plague situation has theoretically meant more time indoors and at home to paint. Despite this, the actual malaise caused by living in these times, combined with the fact that I am working just as hard at my day job from home, means that my mental capacity for such work is greatly diminished. Never the less, I primed a load of miniatures for this upcoming period of isolation. What is most remarkable about it is that I'm coming to the tail end of my last major army projects, meaning I can move on to a variety of eclectic and smaller projects, rather than endlessly batching out the same rank and file.

To start with, Shadowspear. This project was a slog, combined with a bunch of demons I got from a dual purchase. I'm genuinely glad to see the back of it and I hope never to paint another marine for several years. I bought the box mostly for the updated Chaos models and the Ultramarines were a nice bonus. With that done I think I have more than enough miniatures to throw down for a 40k game, I hope to move on to a variety of other publishers for more varied material in future.

As for the miniatures themselves, I really do like the updated Chaos models, they are scaled up nicely to match with the new Primaris and their poses are pretty good. I especially like the new Obliterators, which give them a chunky, more menacing look. This look better reflect how well they perform on the table.

On the Ultramarines side of things, I kinda dig the new tacticool infiltrator marines, Picatinny rails on the Boltguns and all. That being said, I am still very much over painting them. I also had quite a hard time with the camo cloaks. Trying to combine a disruptive pattern uniform with shading and highlighting is frequently the bane of my existence, and I'm not looking forward to attempting it on some more contemporary figure that I have coming down the project pipeline.

With the trad fare out of the way I've also taken some time to paint a variety of smaller projects, mostly from my regular opponent goblinpaladin. These were really fun, and great opportunities to try out a variety of different techniques.

The first two were some freebies that I got for picking up some old Pal Ratha minis for Goblin's fantasy army projects. In the end I wasn't to revolutionary with how I painted them, and they turned out as just another relaxing project between armies. That being said, I'm really happy with how the Elven maiden's cloak turned out. My usual deal of starting with a high highlight basecoat and glazing in the mid tones and the shades worked very well.

These minis were more of Goblin's spares from another order, and I gotta say, props to the smaller manufacturers for creativity when the major manufacturers aren't aiming for that. These are mostly figures of noble bearing from a sci-fi civilians range. I'm very happy how all of them turned out, though as usual the noblewoman's blue-gray ceremonial armour was an utter pain to get right.

These two are from Ex-Manus a local sculptor that comes around to Cancon every year.  I like supporting the local guys, so I usually pick up a couple every time I see him. I also have a 'Totally Not Kora Elemental Bender' figure currently sitting in simple green, so I'll get around to her later. I admit, the sculpts aren't the most crisp, but I certainly love the charm and imagination that goes into the characters.

I've also been working on my scale models and display painting. To start with a variety of small practice vehicles, mostly as an excuse to practice my enamal techniques. All of which have turned out pretty well, especially the use of oil paints for soft shades and highlights. I've also finished up the Huntress from Nocturna. She is going to be entered into ScaleACT assuming that it does not become another casualty of the 'Rona.

I've also had to do a couple of fairly substantial projects in the lead up to isolation, all because I was expecting to play in a tourney in Wintercon this year, thus I had to prepare a shitload of 15mm US GIs for Chain of Command. All of which showcase my low effort batch painting in its finest, complete with using enamels to shade. But now that Wintercon is dead for now, they have fallen off the priority stack, especially since the AT guns I need to finish will have to be an order away to the UK.

Also, more Battletech. Just some more 3D printed mechs and vehicles so I can fill out an Alpha Strike company. I wasn't aiming too high for paint quality, but they will do, and will certainly look decent when massed on the table top.

Also, another project wrapped up for good. I was finally able to source the paints I needed to finish my PanO, so I did. This is another project that I won't expand on for some time, especially since they will require some fairly intense airbrush work.

After looking back through Instagram, it occurs to me that I have knocked over plenty of projects which I haven't really written about. Perhaps I shall go back and write about some of them, especially since my desire to do video work has dropped to almost nothing and I would like to practice my writing.

I think that will do for now. Until next time.