Gaunt's Ghosts Tanith Costume
I've been a fan of the Gaunt's Ghosts series by Dan Abnett for years. About a month before Dragoncon 2011 I decided to toss together a Tanith costume. The uniform of the regiment is described multiple times in the series (yet the cover artists for the books keep getting it wrong) and I had most of the stuff already sitting around. I modified the lasrifle my friend TJ gave me to give it a bit of character though it's technically not accurate to the book description.
I picked up a black bag to be a musette bag at a thrift store, a black beret at an army/navy store, a bolt of grey cloth for a camo cloak, some black webbing suspenders and a set of kneepads from the hardware store.
Since they weren't described in the book, I modified the knee pads to look more like the cover art versions by filling in and grinding out the plastic grooves. Some black paint and they were good to go.
For added details I picked up a Swiss bayonet on ebay to be my straight silver, holstered my laspistol on my belt, made a set of tube charges from PVC to put in the bag and made a couple frag grenades to hang from the webbing.
All in all it came out pretty well for being a "thrown together" costume. Having a camo pattern for the camocloak like on the cover art would make the costume more recognizable but that's the detail everyone gets wrong. The cloaks are usually a basic grey until they change to the color of their surroundings which much of the time aren't the standard "camo" colors. Technically I couldn't be a Tanith trooper as they're all described as "black hair and blue eyes" but calling myself a Verghastite or Belladon would make an obscure costume even more unknown.
In 2012 I wore the costume to Dragoncon again along with my friend TJ who tossed together his own version.
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