zaterdag 1 maart 2014

Third base

Or, at least, my third post about bases in so many weeks...

I scribed and distressed another batch of bases this afternoon (having put the milliput on last evening). But I couldn't photograph them until just now, so you'll have to settle for a flash photograph for the time being:
The large one on the left is for a Death Knight (a conversion using a  GW Chaos Warrior and some leftover Vampire Counts Skeletons bits). Seeing how he is a "big bad" and intended to be an end of quest monster, like the Lich lord, he gets a nice ornate 30mm base*. His ties in with the Lich lord, being in the same style of crypt style gravestone slabs. But the Death Knight's base features a somewhat more macabre "memento mori" type decoration instead of the Lich lord's more traditional brass effigy.
The smaller 25mm bases are for two wraiths (the leftmost two) and a banshee (the rightmost one).

I plan to have three wraiths in the end (so I need to get one more, at some point), each portraying some aspect of death. The ones I've already finished now are a wraith known only as "the Harvester", carrying a scythe. I've put a stalk of grain as stonecarving on his base, to tie in to this theme. The second wraith is known as "the Timekeeper", he carries a sand timer (and a kris-like knife). To cement his "relentless march of time" mood, he has a section of a astrological chart on his base.
The third wraith, as yet unacquired, will carry a paddle and be known as "the Oarsman".
So essentially I'll have a Father Time to keep track of whose time has run out, a Grim Reaper to harvest the lives of those whose time is up and a Charon to ferry the souls of the dead to their final home...
But they could also be a former executioner (scythe/reaping the lives of the guilty), a former astrologer/soothsayer (sand timer and chart) and a former priest (steersman of his congregation's souls) before their undeath.
Nice, evocative symbolism, that I can explain in several ways to my players. Just how I like it.
Or tell them nothing and let them speculate...

The banshee is just your typical screeching dead lady. As I'm trying to apply some background based cohesion to my collection of skeletal undead, I find myself thinking of her more and more as the Lich lord's wife, back when they were all still living. In this scheme, the wraiths would have been the old (Lich) lord's councilors and advisers.

*: I'm basing my infantry mini's for my own Dungeoneering/Questing/Chanson de Geste gaming (I really need to find an acronym or shorter term for this!) on a mix of 20mm, 25 and 30mm bases.
I'm using the following system for this:
-Regular (rank and file) humans, and any creatures of equal or lesser power, go on 20mm bases.
-Those humans of above average prowess but not dramatically so (for example, my Knight's Sergeant, Squire, the family's loyal War Hound, lesser wizards, etc.) and creature of comparable power and size (Orcs, greater Beastmen, Grave Guard, my Necromancer etc.) get 25mm bases.
-True Heroes, the ones stories and legends are told about (A.k.a. my Knight, the Dungeoneers, etc. The ones that will function as a player's avatar on the game table) get 30mm bases. So do dire foes/humanoid major bosses (the Lich Lord, Death Knight, an Orc warlord, the great Evil Wizard, etc.) Basically those human-sized fiends that are the final enemy at the end of heroic Quest...
For cavalry and larger monsters I have 40 and 50mm bases (Again with True Heroes getting the larger size.) Really unusual monsters such a Giants or Dragons, should I ever acquire those, will get even larger, custom sized bases.

2 opmerkingen:

  1. Thanks, they're actually quite simple to make. I've got a step by step posted on Warseer: http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?338839-Plants-Cloud-Tael-and-Quests-(Latching-on-to-the-WHQ-revival)/page2

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