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

Snakeskin and the Duchess

In the annals of the free goblin heroes of the Tartarus Rim none rise higher than Pliss Snakeskin.

His gang, the Veridian Boyz, are among the most renowned sneakers in the known galaxy, having quietly smuggled all manner of contraband and even people through their network of agents and unlisted shuttleports, extending to even some of the most secret facilities on the most heavily guarded planets. He himself can generally be recognized by his two most prized trophies: his eyepatch, won in a long ago fight with an orc who tried to enlist his involuntary assistance, and his lucky scarf, which the story says he found while escaping a prison on the old moon of Terra itself. As with all such rumors it is impossible to confirm it, but whatever the truth the original meaning of the design is long forgotten. For Snakeskin it apparently has a newer and more personal meaning: Freedom!

Perhaps his single most notorious exploit on the Rim involved rescuing Proconsul Christos Commodus from a carefully orchestrated kidnapping by none other than the notorious Duchess of Pain Court and her gang, the Boudoir Noir.

This event that was the single most key driver behind the current Treaty of Proserpine, which grants full rights to all goblinoid and orkoid inhabitants of the sector. (At least so long as the Terran Imperial Council remains unaware of this purely local situation.)

. . . . . . . 

This particular duo is of interest since the second provided me with the name and background for the first, thus linking the two of them together. The second, a limited edition Citadel Chaos Warrior, often cheekily referred to as the "Kinky Chaosette," was my first personality of 2020. I was struggling with how to paint her when a friend posted a picture of a bit of fan art to his facebook page: The Duke's Limousine out of Escape from New York. The things was, for reasons of finance, not actually shot in New York. Instead, my hometown provided the setting. Which of course endears it to me and virtually everyone else in my part of flyover country. With that car firmly in mind The Duchess was born.

(Incidentally, Pain Court was apparently once a nickname for the town, back in the very early days of French colonization. Before some other French colony asserted the trademark on the the nick. And you know what? Given what we're infamous for these days . . . I want it back!)

The preceding green fellow was actualy the penultimate miniature of 2019, and one about which I quite forgot. I think I might even have finished him in "Orktober," though don't quite me on that. He is, in point of fact, a Demonblade "Blood Claw Frother" originally released by Grenadier as a part of their K-Force range. I'd already painted the gobbo with the missile launcher out of the same pack, but what to do with the large headscarf? Of cousre! A 'Murican Flag! Why a goblin on the far reaches of space should have a U.S. flag unceremoniously draped about his noggin I didn't know, but . . . where there's a will the imagination writes a way. And really, what's more American than being rebellious and freedom loving, like our little green guy. He's an American knockoff on an Anglo classic, after all. (Which is itself a knockoff on an American knockoff on an Anglo knockoff on a bunch of Euro classics all wrapped up in a copy of the Sunday Times and served with a side of mixed pickle.) Ordinarily this much copying is supposed to lead to a grey sheet of paper, but maybe that theory isn't entirely correct. To paraphrase another son of St. Louis, ideas stolen from creations sufficiently diverse in time and culture can lead to a remarkably convincing simulacrum of greatness. (Maybe the only true genius that's out there.)

Anyway, both of these are pretty straightfoward builds. My paint slapped on someone else's sculpt. The only bit of deviousness was using a shield from the Bizaza Guard. The Duchess was supposed to have one of those generic plastic shields we all know and love. Strange as this may sound, I have so very very little fantasy in my leadpile that I have none. But I figure on converting the Bizaza gang over to outer space, so they didn't really need the shield especially. (I hope.) Eh, for better or worse . . . it's hers now!

Anyway, thank you for following along. Hope you enjoyed this little detour through the realms of imagination.

Sincerely,
The Composer

Farming the Final Frontier Part II: Pigs in Space!

. . . and goats, oxen, exotic foul, and a donkey.

It is sometimes said that diversity is the spice and the spice is the life. Even at the event horizon of cataclysm it pays to have more than one salable commodity. The original settlers of the Tartarus Rim long ago realized this truism and took efforts to diversify the local economy. In addition to the bovine noifen a number of other Terran and exotic species have been cultivated over the years.

Among the more prominent is the trusty pig. Compact, hardy, and delicious, pigs remain popular throughout human space, and particularly so in those areas heavily influenced by old Earth Asian cultures.

Another Terran transplant is the venerable goat. Independent animals requiring little tending make nearly optimal transplants in areas short on both advanced technology and skilled labor, thus goats can be found nearly everywhere along the Rim.

Somewhat less Terran is the local Tartaran "Bé Xanh" or "Blue Baby" hybrid of the Terran ox.

Exotic fauna have not escaped domestication. The Blanding Terror Bird, sometimes called Hell's Chicken, has become a profitable meat export. One world's monster becomes another's delicacy. Here we see both the Terror Birds and Noifen raised in the same enclosure. Thanks to their different ecological origins the two eat neither one another nor their opposite's feed.

Of course, all that livestock needs transportation, and local tramps are generally happy to provide it. Thus the ancient Terran two D program "Pigs in Space" comes to pass, albeit less happily for the pigs.

Hey, I never said the pigs were flying the spaceship! Like lambs to the slaughter we go.

As in every era, resource extraction has lead the way to the far edges of the settled universe. The "Final Frontier" would be less of a frontier without mining, ranching, and indeed farming.

. . . . .

Meanwhile behind the curtain:

Last summer at BOYL I finally came face to face with Foundry's products, and among other things they have quite a large line of assorted beasties, so I was able to add more diversity to my miniature ecosystem. For space livestock I picked up a good half dozen packs of miniatures; some  mundane, others fantastically monstrous. Below you can see about four packs worth getting the treatment: the "livestock" set and three "terror birds." These last come one to a pack, but there are three different poses. (Maybe more.) So the premium gets you some large and distinctive animals. In addition to these I also picked up the "wild pigs" who featured so prominently above.



There were quite a lot of other Foundry miniatures netted in the haul. Since I was already paying to ship myself I figured I'd make a proper adventure of it. But more on those later. For now, thanks for coming along on this little exploration of the Tartarus Rim. Hope to see you next time.

Sincerely,
The Composer

The Half Jimmy

Transport is always a challenge on the many near roadless mining planets and agricultural moons of the Tartarus Rim. Improvised vehicles, salvaged from the wreckage of mishap and malice, are incredibly common. The Half Jimmy might once have been a class of commercial vehicles, but its origins have become gray with time and distance. Its utility, however, is beyond question. Driving wheels make operation simple and intuitive to anyone familiar with ordinary wheeled cars, but substantial tracks taking the heavier loads give it an ability to navigate all but the most utterly impassable of trails. It isn't fast, but it will get you there.

Better still, it will help you take friends. Or equipment. Or supplies. It's a fairly versatile little vehicle. Particularly useful are some aftermarket additions: a large winch and a solid communications suite.

So where did this attractive model come from, I hear you ask? The answer requires a little telling, but it's not too complex in the end. Most of it came from the fine Curtis Fell of Ramshackle Games. Better yet, it came free! No, he isn't really in the business of giving away toys. (And if you like the fact that there are new characterful models out there I highly recommend paying him.) But castings don't always come out just so. Sometimes . . . molds break. Or resin acts up. Or probably a dozen other things I as a mere painter and putty pusher don't fully comprehend. And if you're in his vicinity he's more than happy to give you his rejects. (Rumor has it he might even include some with an order if you ask. Kind of the prize in the crackerjack box.)

Me? I never met a truck so battered I didn't think it'd look absolutely spiff! Spiff I say! . . . On some dusty forgotten gaming table. (With suitable paint and some added jewelry, that is.) When I was in the UK last summer Curtis gave me just such a bunch of misfit toys. (Expect more to arrive in the story later.) I had a cab, a bed, and a couple of tracks. So I needed wheels and . . . stuff. So on to the jewelry!

Mr. Cerous Rhino was a bead I got from a friend. As such, he had holes where his mouth and a$$#0! should have been. (This kind of seems appropriate, but . . . they were a little large and round.) A bit of greenstuff carefully shoved where the sun wasn't shining just then solved the . . . um . . . problem. The next thing required was wheels. These came donated from a badly worn Monogram B-24. Fenders were compliments of the end of a half used tube of epoxy. The plow was a bomb bay door off the bomber. Mixed in were jewlery parts, a cover from an electrical connector, a cell-phone antenna, and some general bits box mysteries from long forgotten trucks and motorcycles. You know. The usual suspects.

Slap some paint on it and it doesn't look half bad if I do say so myself!

This isn't absolutely the deepest dive into bashing up a truck, but hopefully you get at least a taste of how I dream this stuff into existence. In any case, thanks for joining me on the ride!

Sincerely,
The Composer

Land Sharks of the Tartarus Rim

The resort planet of Thalia, one of a trinity of idyllic worlds orbiting modest young suns collectively called the Kaeritas, boasts among its entertainments a big game preserve made to resemble a Medieval estate, complete with a turreted castle immediately adjacent to the shuttleport. It is at this manor that would be hunters and animal lovers alike generally begin their journeys. One of the more popular rentals is a converted Imperial IUC-4 utility skimmer, or "Yuk-4," most often called the "Land Shark" because of the teeth waggishly painted on the bow.

The shark boasts an added windscreen, improved passenger accommodations, an enhanced communications and entertainment system, and high-performance Belden F-type thrusters.

Of course, no craft can make up for luck if you want to spot some of the more popular attractions, like the wild grox mare pictured below.

Meanwhile beyond the fourth wall . . .

The skimmer was a fun little project made from bits mostly acquired at a convention two years ago. The new-model GW land speeder is probably self-evident. The F connectors off the coax jumper that gave it's life for the fuel truck are probably also fairly obvious. Perhaps less conspicuous are the bench seat out of a model pickup truck, the windscreen off a toy jeep, and the random . . . Tau? . . . plastic bit. (Same convention as the land speeder.)

The Grox is, of course, a grok from Krakon Games. While those are out of stock, the quite similar bullocks seem to be available. (And I approve of making two similar, but slightly different animals.) The castle glimpsed int he background is an Exin Castillos Gran Alcazar XII set I begged of my parents when I was young. The originals are out of production, but a new company, Exin Castillos New Generation, has picked up the name and appears to make most of the old bricks and a host of useful new ones. These have got to be about the most scenically satisfying building toys I've ever encountered. With just a bit of tweaking they're basically diorama quality. Fantastic stuff!

As always, thank you for joining me on this journey of the imagination.

Sincerely,
The Composer

The Tartarus Gryffin

Given its uncanny similarity to the eponymous creature of Terran myth the Tartarus Gryffin is almost certainly a project of some long ago genetic engineering. There is some archaeological evidence that Anesidora was terraformed as a resort during the ancient Third Terran Republic. It may well be that the gryffin was created there and spread slowly with private collectors. The great avimamalian creatures are remarkably fearsome predators, well suited to their native environment using their keen sight to hunt and their sense of smell to locate carrion many miles distant.

Enter the Rồng

Among the many sports found on the Tartarus Rim is the ancient game of Street Racing. Private parties maintain select roads especially for the purpose, though given the remoteness of the sites the tracks often serve several ends, simultaneously providing access to factories, mining compounds, or the private citadels of executives and government officials.

The car to beat in recent years has been Rồng-1, or "Dragon 1." Like all the vehicles of such races Rồng-1 is a restored and heavily modified twen-cen hydrocarbon burner. Replicas are legal, of course, so long as they follow the basic pattern, but the Dragon is an original (if any millennia old car with so many replacement parts can rightly be called original.) Her pedigree is beyond peer: a 1996 Shelby Viper with a McCullough 1710 flex-stage e-charger providing nearly optimal boost, coupled with a Christman supercooler that reduces thermal bleed and boost heat, even in hot conditions. The Dragon is currently in the stable of a Blake Walker, who makes his home near Lace Rock on Moab III.

Rồng 1 gained it's enigmatic name from an early owner, a gentleman of Asian ancestry in the ancient Earth state of Usa, where the car was built. In his native tongue rồng means dragon, and it was he that gave the car the first of it's many distinctive liveries. When absolutely correct, the name is pronounced approximately "raum", though opposing drivers generally prefer "wrong."

At the opposite end of today's lists can be seen Logansport A-1, often called "PTA" or "Smarty"

This vehicle belongs to a Logansport mining boss named Marcus Camber who has been collecting twen-cen guzzlers for many years. He has earned a rather unsavory reputation as a ruthless and remorseless competitor. Just what modifications Camber has made to his mount haven't been disclosed, but given his disregard for either courtesy or custom he is likely to be give Walker a real challenge, especially as he has had his sights on the Dragon for several years now.

Like the other cars mentioned before in Civil Transportation both Rồng-1 and LGPTA-1 are box scaled die cast toys, but they both work out well enough. Both are modified to some extent. Smarty got new interior colors, some weathering, and a coat of matte varnish to dull down the shine. The Dragon received a top to bottom repaint, with an added cowling for one of the assorted mysterious engine mods (perhaps the Christman supercooler.) All in all, I'm pleased enough. They're not perfect, but for such harsh conditions they don't really need to be. Both were the right price: free, but had I paid for them I doubt that they'd have been expensive. And they were fairly easy to break down, paint up, and bolt back together: all in all a win.

So now it's off to the races on distant Moab. As always, thanks for reading.

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

Civil Transportation for an Uncivil World

Your typical apocalyptic wasteland is never complete without a way to get around that requires the consumption of precious and rare resources which might well have precipitated the trouble in the first place. To that end I bring you vehicles of the unarmed sort. Our first example, El Burro Grande (which I can't help but call the burrito grande) is a small utility truck of uncertain ancestry. (Which is to say it was certainly not made by Imperial Motors.) The suspension is whacked all to heck. It's welded, bolted, riveted, and generally taped together from the pieces of a dozen donor vehicles. It's bullet scarred and battle bruised, but it runs when you can find fuel. And it's available for rent on a daily or even weekly basis (for those bigger jobs), and the owners don't tend to ask too many questions about new holes and burn marks that don't interfere with the machinery. This bright orange donkey of a cart may not win at the Derby, but he'll get you there. If you want fast, go get a red one. Logansport spacers are more concerned with payload and price.

Simple and reliable older vehicles are also quite popular, though they tend to be examples too heavily modified for the collector's market in the core worlds. The "Bummer" is one such. In this case passenger seating was sacrificed for cargo capacity. The weld jobs won't win any beauty contests, but they don't seem too likely to fall off in the wastes, which is something of a bonus. And it has enough ground clearance to get you through some of the sketchier boulder fields: a nice plus.

For those not familiar, the first truck is a more or less unmodified Gorka Morka "ork truk" acquired used on the bay. It was in rather brutal shape, missing parts, seemingly painted with housepaint, and held together (where applicable) with hot glue, but that just gives it more character to fit the scene. The second was an inexpensive die-cast Hummer given to me by a friend and quickly sent off to the chop shop for appropriate modifications and new paint. The scale is one of those arbitrary "box" scales you sometimes see where all models are about the same size, no matter how big the original was, but I figure there's a good deal of room for play. The landspeeder crew models I sometimes use to size these things fit, so it's all good.

There are several box scale die-cast jobs in the same odd-lot gift, so expect more vehicles to slowly pop up. Why there are so many vintage cars on this remote dust-bowl moon I'm not quite sure yet. Maybe there was a collector. Or maybe a couple of the designs just had legs and kept getting dredged back up for millennia. It's a strange and dark age and decent explanations are sometimes dearly bought, if you can get them at any price.

But anyway . . . as always thank you for reading. And stay tuned.

Sincerely,

The Composer