Alien Zoology

The Tartarus Rim, in spite of its remoteness, has become host to a wide variety of flora and fauna . . . which is another way of saying that I'd like to force my adventurers to deal with exotic creatures not previously familiar to them. To that end, we have some new creatures and alien races to share with you. First we have  a Ramshackle miniature which, for the purposes of our story, I have dubbed the Fell Worm in honor of its creator Curtis Fell.

The blind Fell Worm is a particularly adaptable species. Juvenile worms in early instars are quite small and often go undetected in spoiled meat and protein rich vegetable material. As a result, they have spread undetected on tramps and freighters throughout virtually all of human space. Any system with a sufficiently dry silicate rich environment is likely infested with these enormous scavengers.

Another type of miniature from Ramshackle is this lovely monkey . . .

Humans are but one variety of simianoid life found in the known galaxy. Many other intelligent (or at least marginally intelligent) species have evolved along similar lines. The alpha males of the Donald's Monkey can often be recognized by its distinctive blonde fringe, frequently combed over an otherwise bald head. While some believe these creatures distant relatives of the Jokaero they are much more aggressive and rather less analytical. So defensive are they of their territory that many believed that their faces always bore the rictus smile seen on these three individuals.

Next up we have a miniature originally from Grenadier, but available through one or two contemporary sources. I got mine from em4. You can find it in their aliens line, where they call it a "cockroach." If you have difficulty finding something there, you might also take a peak at Moonraker Miniatures, which seems to be collaborating with em4 and has much of their old stock. I'm calling these fellows the khepri, after the Egyptian scarab gods. (Any similarity to China Mieville's characters is strictly, well mostly coincidental, though I can't say as I dislike it.)

The khepri are rather unusual aliens. Their intelligence is the subject of some dispute. They appear to have complex language and craft great art, but they make no known tools and are not innately spacefaring, though they have befriended many other species and by this device spread far and wide, even though their numbers are small. They are believed to be native to the second planet in the Neith system, since their numbers are greatest there, though their presence in Khnum is nearly as great and they can be found throughout the Memphian and neighboring Tartarus sectors.

So as you can see, there's lots of interesting and dangerous animals out there. It's a big, lovely, scary universe. Keep your seatbelt fastened and your pistol handy. As always, thank you for reading along. I hope you have enjoyed it.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Spaceport Dicks

It's time to finish up February and begin the March of the local lawmen.

Several moons ago, back when I first began writing the adventures of the Lacerock Gang, I made mention of a very helpful set of Logansport's finest whom I dubbed the "spaceport dicks." Between then and now I added a second group to the courtesy patrol, the Logansport Constabulary. These fellows first came up in Madmen of the Moab Wastes. I bought them from EM4 specifically to start a local police force for Moab III. They belong to the near future plastics range. I figured a regular police force would be more useful than the security detail for what amounts to the local airport. You can see the first two in blue and white with the LPC initials on their shoulder. But with the purchase of the most lovely Spacelords from Doug at EM4 I now had two compatible but different security types. And these guys are nice. They're the fellows in black behind the beat cops.

I decided to give them the more official title Logan's Space Port Security.

Of course they're just carrying some kind of stun sticks, so they're not as well armed as the boys in blue, but they look much cooler while at it. Much to the chagrin of the fellow in red with the little white monkey.

Red anarchists. Red demons. What's next? Red letters? 

Nah, the letter is the usual white color. But with the squat and the Rex-Avis clan are my last two spacelords miniatures: a civilian with a ream of papers and the pilot of the ship the knight and his lady have chartered to take them off world. The pilot was my last miniature of February and the squat my first of March.

In total February worked out to an ogre in a vest, several more elves, a beastman recruit into the local Imperial Guard, a couple of quite dangerous adventuring women, a couple of local nobles, and a few members of a ship's crew, and demonic familiar sort of fellow not picture on the blog for about about thirteen miniatures. Not too shabby. 

And below is a little hint of things to come . . .

It looks like things might be taking a turn for the more buggy on the local religious scene. Which can only spell trouble.

Thanks for reading along. Hope you saw something you liked there.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Beauty and the Beast: A Fairy Tale of Wild Women and Satyrical Soldiers.

I like contrasts, and my February paint-cue surely shows that. It's been a month of the archetypically beastly and beautiful. Walking through a certain toystore once a friend pointed to a very masculine item called the "Bulldozer." It was large, black, and hard looking. The box was decorated with high visibility hazard stripes. On the cover were strong men posed with the namesake heavy equipment. It was clear that this was a toy designed for men by men. I wondered if the pink dolphins and transparent purple fairy wings to be found elsewhere were truly a woman's counterpart of this ode to testosterone or more properly a male fantasy of the feminine. (I strongly suspect the latter.) Much like the store's wares my own toys don't represent any proper study of masculine and feminine, originating squarely and uniformly in one or another Xy branded psyche. That said, the reference to the popular Western archetypes so deftly abbreviated in the French tale should be fairly clear.

Before the gigantic ogre of the previous post I painted these three elves. (Two of whom are male, no matter how glittery they might appear. Elves are always a little "metrosexual.")

Odd as this may sound, the elves are probably the least obviously gendered characters I've painted so far this month. While the officer is female she still elicited the standard "ugly" (but well painted dear) from my wife.

The next character, whom I'm calling Nepenthia Rex-Avis (Arthur Zanzibar's cousin), received no such greeting.

Nepenthia will, of course, give you surcease from sorrow if you but ask. The figure, Fidelia St. John Smythe, is another character that was available for a time from Ramshackle. She seems to be out of production now, sadly. If you can stumble across her she's a singularly characterful sculpt that would fit perfectly in just about any space western. It saddens me a little to review her knowing that she's become a bit harder to get hold of. Still, one can hope that Curtis will re-introduce her at some point, should there be enough demand, and she is something of an oddity, being designed specifically to fit into the hatch of a tank. (In this case the Vole Light Tank.) So she's a beauty that implies the presence of a beast by her very posture.

Next up, PFC Asean Fernsy:

He's none other than the elusive "Trooper Gaxt" from the old Citadel adventurers range. He's a quite goaty figure to begin with that I've hopefully made more so with a little careful pigmentation. I like to imagine this particular satyr sends up the punk rockers of my youth with his ripped trousers, spiked wristband, and bared torso. (The last of which is lost in the shadow in all of my photos, so you'll have to trust me. Our goat has no shirt. Only shoulder pads.) Anyway, I am decidedly pleased to have him in my band.

Here you can see him keeping company with our last new member, Jackie Kriegschreiber:

This truly fine lady is a part of EM4's scavengers range. They call her "Female Scavenger. Autoshotgun. Yasser Scarf." To my mind the scarf is more evocative of Jackie O or Audrey Hepburn, thus I've tried to give it a more feminine floral print; undoubtedly one of the more ambitious bits of painting I've done lately. My wife's first comment? . . . She loved the scarf. I'll take that as a positive review. She even called her strong. (Must be the eyepatch.)

Indeed, she is a dangerous looking and quite well armed character. (The EM4 scavengers are nothing if not prepared.)

All in all, I'm really quite pleased with this bunch. Of course, that's why I painted them. As always, thank you for reading along. May your own meetings on alien tabletop worlds be filled with mystery and adventure.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Madmen of the Moab Wastes

The growing story of Moab III has been begging for more characters. Today I bring you the first of several spaceport dicks, a pair of mad wastelanders, Kitty Luong's new beau, and a frog in space. Let's start with the spaceport dick and the mad hermits . . .

I first discussed Ramshackle miniatures last year. The fellow in the high tech red onesie comes from their metal range of post-nuclear survivors. Like everything from Ramshackle he's heavy on both the mass and the character. Like an old Bob Olley sculpt he's exaggerated in a way that almost seems cartoonish, or more accurately comic-bookish, but just believable and dark enough to make him really stinking interesting. Why is this crazy dude running around in space pyjamas anyway? Is he a miner who's had a little too much moonshine? (Awfully big gun for such an occasion.) Is that the world's tightest vac-suit? Is he mad genius or just mad? You have to paint him up to decide. I like that in a miniature.

The two fellows with him are from different EM4 ranges. The gent in blue is one of their plastic troopers and the fellow in green one of their metal scavengers. I particularly like the scavenger. But reviews later. First some size comparisons . . .

In this third shot I've included some Citadel miniatures of different ages for scale. On the outside are two older Rogue Trader era adventurers, one smallish and the other more typical. In the center is a smallish late edition Imperial Guard. The EM4 miniatures size up well enough while being a bit more delicate. The Ramshackle fellow is large even by recent Citadel standards. The scavenger is incredibly detailed and very cleanly cast. If there's any drawback at all it's that the amount of detail work for such a tiny miniature is really quite high. Keep your triple 0 dotter handy. The Ramshackle survivor, by comparison, is surprisingly plain at first glance. For a figure of his bulk, he's actually more subtle than you would expect.

The one disappointing note in the group comes from the plastic trooper. I bought these fellows to play the role of the local law, as inspired by Cheetor's campaign. (And not having the luck or budget to come into old Citadel Paranoia miniatures, though I'd love to have 'em if someone feels like sending a late Christmas present.) The EM4 troopers seemed like a perfect fit, and the price was terrific. They're intended to be SWAT style cops in the slum of the future. However in retrospect I think they might be a little more game marker and less miniature. Don't get me wrong, they're great for what they are, but as models they leave just a bit to be desired. 

I suspect EM4 was aiming at a relatively young audience. The miniatures are cast from a hard styrene plastic that would be much more familiar to aircraft and automobile modelers. Unlike the better vehicle kits, but quite akin to starter types, they are snap-fit, requiring no glue. The torso is cast in two pieces, front and back. The arms are cast together and sandwich into a slot. The head is integral to the torso front and the legs to the rear. The backpack is a fourth and final piece. Styrene plastic is typically injection molded into steel forms, which I believe is the case here. This means you can't have any negative space. (Relative to the mold, anyway.) The typical modeler solution to this is to cast lots and lots of parts, which isn't so young kid friendly. To keep them simple many sacrifices in detail were required and snap-fit leads to some large and unattractive gaps that need filling.

In fact, I was quite unable to fill the shoulder gap in a convincing way, so I sculpted some crude shoulder pads and moved on. I suppose for the price, less than a dollar a figure, they're not too bad. They should serve as useful starting points for later conversions. And EM4 is kind enough to sell some very nice conversion parts I will try out shortly. So with that one minor hiccup I'd still say I'm fairly pleased with EM4. The metal is splendid and the prices are great.

Below them are a miniature many will recognize as a space slann, an EM4 rebel I've nicknamed Blake Walker, and Kitty Lee whom you have met before. Believe it or not I didn't set out to match Kitty and Blake, but they did rather come out that way, which only seems appropriate as they two met on an FTLnet dating service a few years back and are now happily and productively involved. They make a cute couple, don't they?

Not unlike the pairing of the mad hermits, Blake and the frog, whom I shall call Constantine (the world's most dangerous frog) since my wife asked me if he was a Muppet, are a study in contrasts. The old Citadel sculpt is large and fairly simple with lots of relatively blank surfaces. In spite of this it has enormous character. The EM4 miniature is both much busier and daintier. (If you can safely call a man with three guns, a boot knife, and a dangerous attitude dainty.) Painting Blake was something of a technical challenge, since there's so much stuff squeezed together. There are both mechanical issues in painting such fine detail and artistic ones in making it all stand out. The frog, by contrast required considerable inventiveness and creativity. There's an enormous amount of exposed skin and some of the details are less than clear.

It's not incredibly obvious anymore, but half hidden below a layer of heavy yellow highlights you might just be able to make out a brown mottled pattern. I made a stab at trying to make him look like a real frog, or more accurately toad. His coloration is meant to approximate a red spotted toad. I painted black spots and short stripes all over him and then added a reddish brown above that. I then highlighted the whole thing with a dark golden yellow to blend it all together and make the pattern more subtle. I think maybe it made it too subtle, but live and learn. And either way, I'm pleased enough with the effect.

Also for the record, the three miniatures at the beginning were the last of 2014 and the last two are the first of 2015, so Happy New Year all, and happy painting.

Sincerely,

The Composer