Business is Picking Up

While much of the rest of the galaxy is under quarantine, thanks to the spread of some alien disease,

the Tartarus Rim has been relatively busy. Along with the usual stream of coreward tourists and itinerant workers seen at the shuttleport the infamous Duchess of Pain Court and her Boudoir Noire arrived from points unknown.

 



Meanwhile, business at Pie in the Sky remains steady as Longansport gears up for the district fair.

. . . . . . .

Stepping back from the table let me introduce the new arrivals. They're are a fun mixture of Colony 87 (now available from Crooked Dice), assorted oldhammer fan commissions, and Ramshackle's carnival barker from the pizza set Curtis Fell kindly sent out to his patrons. (Among whom I now count myself.)

Below are the first three of the rather extensive "third wave": the food vendor, the alien tourists, and the human pilot. I've really struggled with these. They look deceptively simple, but in reality the detail is incredibly fine, which makes them more of a challenge to paint. Break out the magnifying glass kiddos. In spite of all this, I love them and I'm glad to have them. Not much to say about the paint schemes here. I try to keep my NPCs varied. They are, after all, ordinary people from quite different backgrounds just out living their lives. While you might think I fell into a bit of a green and blue palette trap, I'm not too worried about it since the rest of the set has plenty of other hues already. (The blue for the pilot was a conscious decision, as my other two pilots are variously in khaki and green. I have a fourth I might paint in red and white.)

I've chosen to depict the food as sushi, which . . . seems not ideal. But hey, maybe that's a high tech tray. Hopefully it keeps it cold as the vendor walks his route and treats his customers to his favorite music.

The fan commissions are variously from Oldhammer in the New World and the Emporium of Rogue Dreams. "Psycho Sam", on the left, is by Mark Copplestone. "Max" and "Maddie," bracketing Mark Perry's legendary LE Chaos Amazon, are both by Drew Williams. Altogether, I think they make a fairly homogeneous and quite fantastic group, and I expect you will see more of them. Since they are supposed to be a gang I decided to go ahead and use that dreaded restricted palette. (Well, a little. I don't want to go too crazy.) I kept the colors mostly cooler, and leaned heavily on the black leather so prevalent in my memories of 80s glam punk and darker sci-fi. I did allow myself some "warm" colors as small touches here and there to break up the monotony. I am pretty darn happy with the overall effect.

Last but absolutely not least is our dimmunitive carnival barker by Curtis Fell of Ramshackle. I've chosen to give him a bright and eye catching outfit loosely based on Dick Van Dyke's Bert out of Mary Poppins. After all, he's trying to draw a crowd. Showmanship!

While not perfect, I'm reasonably pleased with the effect. He's colorful and eye catching and looks good at table distance.

Thank you for coming along for the ride. Hope to see you at the fair!

Sincerely,

The Composer

Pie in the Sky

Pizza pie, that is. Among the assorted artists out there sculpting retro-chic miniatures right now is one Curtis Fell of Ramshackle Games. Of course, making a living sculpting things is always a challenge, so Curtis, like many artists, has set up a Patreon account. "Buy me a coffee" he says. Well . . . I did.

(It was the least I could do. He's shared his coffee with me in the actual factual. And I know how important coffee is.)

And in return he has sent his patrons (including yours truly) delicious looking resin pizza pie served up by a hulking giant of a fellow out of battered and ancient looking ovens that could have sailed on the Titanic.

So now there's pizza on the Tartarus Rim. The locals seem pretty eager to give it a try . . . as soon as they're allowed to take off their masks, that is. (Must be some kind of space bug going around.)

Happy Mayday everyone. And remember essential workers of the world; United we stand.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Another Space Ride

Things have been quiet around Tartarus lately, but there have been a few new arrivals. Some months back a talented Spanish artist released his contribution to the growing Oldhammer hobby into the wild as part of a project called Space Riders. This was the first kickstarter I had the pleasure of backing. Things got a little hairy, what with the intercity move and some familial complications, but I've finally had a chance to brush up a few more of them. To refresh, the first member of this set I painted was the "Reptyle Centaur," who joined up with my crocs in a post called Reptiliad Revolution. Now he as a few friends . . . or maybe enemies. Frenemies with benefits? (It can be so hard to tell out in the wilds. Enmities can dissolve quickly in the face of a sand cyclone. And alliances even quicker.)

Recently arrived on Moab III are two particularly dangerous looking characters. The first, Tommy Takara, has used many aliases over the years: The Max, Angel Max, Max Power, and Max Engel. Takara landed at the starport about a week ago. Rumors have it that he's chasing some kind of Imperial bounty, though how far Imperial papers will get him is a matter of some conjecture.

Takara is a large man, noteworthy for mechanical prosthetics reputedly bequeathed him by the Martian Tech Cult. (His lack of official status has led to some suggestions that he was either born to someone from or himself enslaved in the penal test corps; the so called test bed slaves.) Even without the militarized limb he has the appearance of a powerful and aggressive human.

At almost the same time a tall orcoid called Gobbrott landed somewhere out in the wastes; reputedly also chasing bounty, though probably not for the Terrans.

His friends, such as he has any, usually call him Gob or Gobber. Equipped with a variable dispersion plasma rifle and a high intensity arc tracker he can be a fearsome opponent.

Adding to the strange and troublesome news from space comes a sighting from the ground; the giant Hulkus umberei. 

The Hulkus umberei, or ambler, is a semi-bipedal omnivore that has spread from coreward to many rim worlds. Their hardy desert metabolism has served them quite well in the galaxy's many hot and arid zones. Bull amblers stand from two to three meters at the shoulder and cows have occasionally been recorded with heights in excess of four. While slow appearing these giants can move quite quickly for short bursts, not unlike many cold blooded Terran species. The hulks are also fairly intelligent animals, occasionally fashioning  simple tools from logs and boulders. On some planets entire groups of amblers, called tanks, have passed missile weapons from generation to generation; using it as their principal hunting technique. Given their prodigious mass it is doubtless evident that these are not creatures to be trifled with.

How the hulk arrived on Moab III isn't precisely known, perhaps a collector brought one or several for a private menagerie and it escaped into the wild, but once established the creatures are virtually impossible to eliminate. They spend much of their life burrowing underground and hunt by detecting surface and subsurface vibrations, so traditional chemical and biological means of control are often ineffective. Trophy hunting has been known to help to some limited extent, and their flesh is a fairly prized delicacy . . . to those hunters able to catch them.

One final new arrival: a Ramshackle fellow known to the Rim as Gordon Frei.

Frei has been floating around the galaxy a long long time. Precisely how long is uncertain. He has considerable notoriety in technical circles. Some sources suggest he is a rogue mechan fleeing the Martian Tech Cult. Others claim he has never had any association with them, coming instead from Terra. Still others suggest a much darker origin; that he stepped out of a mysterious warpspace rift and that he preaches a terrible gospel of liberation. Whatever his history, he appears to be fleeing an Imperial warrant. Given his pallid and deeply scarred appearance the likeliest explanation is that the Imperial Cult regards him as some kind of dangerous mutant. He is also rumored to posses, alternately, either psionic abilities or alien or archaic technology of mysterious power; usually described as a variant of a graviton projector. There is no official record of his arrival in Logansport, but reliable witnesses have placed him at various locations around Moab III, primarily on the outskirts of the capital. More recently he has dropped out of view. Perhaps he has found transport off planet or maybe he is taking refuge out in the wastes.

That about sums up the recent news from the Tartarus Rim. As always thank you for listening. Hopefully there will be more very soon.

Sincerely,

The Composer

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

The Ramshackle Space Lords of the Tartarus Rim

Conspicuous among the families of the Tartarus Rim is the Rex-Avis clan. We have previously met several members, foremost among them Arthur Zanzibar Rex-Avis (in the tank chair) . . .

his mother and clan matriarch Livinia January "Colorado" Rex-Avis and her chief advisor and confidante Sir Stanley Ursaline-Drakemore, Royal Order of the Flowering Lamp . . .

and Colorado's younger sister Nepenthia Rex-Avis Wadsworth.

Today we meet the further clan offspring. First I bring you Olympia Sable Rex-Avis, the younger child of Colorado. She is a supreme negotiator and expert businesswoman. She is equally comfortable quietly retrieving family heirlooms from disreputable businessmen or convincing dubious creditors that forgiving family debts better suits their interests than  collecting them.

Olympia has a marked fondness for music and story, thus the rainbow chasing frogman Robin suits her twice. His skill on the banjo and his family histories and spectral quests are unrivaled in the Rim territories.

Adopted son Jasper Dysdeimos Rex-Avis completes the clan. His is the life of the fearless explorer, often far from home and hearth.

The natural son of a third sister, now deceased, Jasper's position in the clan was assured even before Colorado took him as her own some fifteen years prior.

Finally we see the entire clan together on a rare and celebrated occasion.

Apart from Colorado and Sir Stanley, who are from the Spacelords range, the clan members use miniatures from Ramshackle. This is a relatively new range of great character and potential. Some, like Nepenthia and Jasper, are cast in metal, but a great many others are made of a crisp and detailed, if somewhat brittle resin. (Nepenthia's ride, the Vole Light Tank, is made of the same resin by the same company.) All told I must say I very much like the line. They paint up better even than I might have guessed and I think they fit in quite well with both the Spacelords and the old Citadel miniatures that make up the bulk of my collection. Again, my hat is off to Mr. Fell and his cohorts at Ramshackle.

And my thanks goes also to you, gentle readers. I hope you find some use or enjoyment here.

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

Nuclear Renaissance Man

No, doc, it's not a cosmic rebirth, it's "Gorilla Gone Noughty in the Moab Wastes" . . .

. . . and a few other things along the way. It's time to wrap up January . . . a few days late and a couple of miniatures short, as per usual. We'd have done this quicker, but we had a little accident at the paint store. That can of dullcoate? Yeah, not so much. Seems it was the gloss. I hate the gloss. Can't ever completely get rid of it, though I've heard a course of antivirals helps. With time we're dulling things back down as best we can, but there'll probably always be a little residual glow from the infection.

Still, there's some good work here. Don't really want to consign them to the "strip and start over" bin just yet. Given that, we'll start with a fellow who used to go by Big Robb. Now his friends call him Robbie the Robot, or just Robbo. Of course they tend to do that when he's not looking directly at them. He's a little hard of hearing, so he misses things like that. He used to be the still-master at the famed Cap'n Oldermould fermented mould distillery until a vat explosion (who put the 'splodey squig in dere?) left him without his hands, most of his right shoulder, anything below the rib cage, and about 80% of his brain. Fortunately, orks don't really use that part anyway and most of the rest of that stuff can be replaced. Doc Hobble and Mr. Burn duly stitched him back together, added some new bits, and adopted him into the troop of "dreadlies."

This fellow is from the Ramshackle Boneyarders range of Nuclear Renaissance figures. They call him Gorillagon. (I can see why.) I've shown him in the company of some more standard orkoids above to give comparison (and to acclimate him into his new unit.) Below you can see him in the mixing it up with a short-leg oldhammer ork dreadnought, an ogryn, and the dual occupancy body members of Squigfeather's crew. He's a big boy, this Gorillagon. I think he absolutely fits right in among the orks. He even comes built in with some orky tooth pattern decoration that's just screaming for elaboration. There are several arm options, so mine isn't necessarily quite the same as yours will be, but it's a straight up build. I didn't tinker with it beyond cutting off the cast-on scenic base and replacing it with my own.

My new years resolutions included work on my eldar force and my genestealer cult. You can see a little bit of both here. These four fellows were also victims of the "gloss paint debacle." Even after considerable dulling they still look a twitch shinier than I'd like, but hey, they'll be okay.

To finish out, I built these two little terrain pieces a while back and then never got around to posting them. Both started life as packing materials, which I find to be a source of endless inspiration. They often look quite industrial. The first was the plastic insert in a box of 1/700 aircraft I'd picked up for some naval wargaming. (And which really ought to be the subject of their own post one day.) To it I added two worn out faucet cartridges, a small anime model piece whose provenance is lost to me, and some styrene stock.

Next up was the insert from . . . a round air freshener box? Add a few bits and some paint and viola . . . you have an industrial wastewater tank, or a well (which might be the same thing in some parts of the 40K empire) or a cistern . . . something like that. A concrete pond of some stripe. As an added feature, the plastic was clear, so you can make a very glossy pond surface simply by painting the back not the front.

Here's the two of them painted up and with a little added foliage. (Abandoned industrial sites ALWAYS have plants in the darndest places. Plants are patient. If it will collect dirt a plant will grow there eventually. And make it bigger so it collects more dirt and so on.)

So January wasn't too bad: an adventurer, several space slann, a bunch of trees. a couple of elves, a pair of bugs, and some industrial leftovers. Not my best month ever, but not bad. February is shaping up to be equally interesting if not more so, so stick around.

As always, thank you for reading. I hope you liked what you saw.

Sincerely,

The Composer.