Snowlord's Peak - Tamsin To The Rescue! (Again!) (92 Points)

Extracts from the journal of TamsinP, Time Traveler, Society Girl and Adventuress


27th January, Some Time, Some Place

Sitting down to plot my route from O'Grady's Gulch to Snowlord's Peak, I observe the tiny lizard warriors shyly peeking from the edge of the long grass. I guess that curiosity has overcome their initial fear at my appearance. I beckon them over and a small group step forward.

"Excuse us, lady, but could you possibly help us escape from this gulch?" a very squeaky voice utters.

"My word, you speak English!"

"Indeed, lady. We used to be human, but were captured by an evil sorceror who experimented on us. Something to do with variance and deviants that he was trying to fix."

Variance? Deviants? That could only mean one thing - the evil mathaumaturgician Miles had been at work, building yet another abominable spreadsheet. How many cats had been sacrificed this time?

"My little green friends, of course I will help you. I am off to seek out the Snowlord, perhaps he will be able to assist you further."

"The Snowlord? But he's a scary ogre, why would he help us?"

"Scary ogre? What utter tish-tosh! I've known him for years and he's a real softie; the scary ogre thing is just a front he tries to put on."

"Well, if you're sure, then we'll accompany you. Perhaps we could carry your luggage for you?"

My luggage. Hmmm, it would be rude to refuse, but I don't actually have any luggage. After a bit of quick thinking, I realise that I do have a few hankies in the pockets of my shorts and use those to wrap up my stripped-down Glock. That creates some suitably sized parcels for my companions.

We set off for Snowlord' Peak. Progress is very slow, as their tiny legs mean they don't move very fast at all. Eventually, though, we do reach Snowlord's Peak and ascend the lower slopes. 


29th January, 2020, ascending Snowlord's Peak

A loud "roar!" breaks the peace and my reptilian train starts shaking.

"Oh do knock it off. That roar is about as convincing as, well, I can't think of anything as unconvincing as that at the moment."

"Ahh, Tamsin, Tamsin, Tamsin. I should have known. Unconvincing? Do you really think so?" the Snowlord says, appearing from behind a rock.

"Utterly unconvincing. And almost as ridiculous as some of your headwear. Speaking of which..."

"So what do you think? I got this from Pete, he was just here. Pretty fetching, isn't it?"

"You look ridiculous."

After a brief discussion, I find that I have been assigned a most important and peculiar mission. It appears that adjustments to the Spreadsheet Of Doom created a time-rift, sucking many veteran challengers to somewhere in the past. It has also split the Snowlord in two, and his memory has gone with the part that slipped back in time. Maybe the lack of memory could also explain why on earth he might think that he doesn't look a complete berk in that czapka...

The Snowlord has had a technician look at the SOD and they have identified coordinates for where everyone has been sent. These are now programmed into my device, along with those for my return.

"Before I forget, could you do something to help out my little green companions? It seems they are the result of one of Miles' experiments."

"Miles' experiments? Not again. Oh, well, I guess I'd better do something to help them out, but I wish he would stop tinkering with that SOD."


30th January, 17xx? the Caribbean?

With that sorted, I head down the mountain to a suitable location and activate the coordinates in my device. Stepping through the rift, I find myself on a sandy beach. I check my clothes - corset, bloused sleeves, tight breaches, jaunty feathered tricorne, cutlass, flintlock pistol - I'm going to guess the golden age of piracy, somewhere in the Caribbean.

Following footsteps in the sand, up the rise I see several gentlemen in piratical attire. They look familiar and then I realise that these are some of my fellow minions. 

"What ho Greg! Is everyone here?"

""My word, Tamsin! Good to see you! I take it you are the rescue party?

"It certainly seems so. Now, where is Captain Campbell? I need to discuss with him the arrangements for getting you back."

"His Lordship is up there under the palm trees, sitting  on his sodding throne, keeping out of the sun."

I trudge up to the trees and hail the *cough* mighty captain.

"Ahh, Tamsin, Tamsin, Tamsin. I should have known I would send you back to rescue me."

"To rescue you all."

"Ermm, yes, I suppose the others should be rescued too."

"Now look here, Curt. I need to know what has happened before I can return you all. So, tell me - how did you all end up here?"

"Well, you see, it was mutiny. Vile, terrible mutiny..."

"OK, so what was it you did to make them mutiny?"

"But it wasn't me!"

I arch a disbelieving eyebrow at him.

"It wasn't just me. It was the minions too."

"Look, I think you'd better start from the beginning here. Maybe a glass of wine would help?"

"Oh yes, I could do with one of those."

"I meant for me!"

"Oh, of course, where are my manners? A glass of wine for the good lady Tamsin, chop-chop!"

I take the proffered glass of wine and ask Curt to start from the beginning.

"Well, I arranged a sailing cruise for a few of the regulars. Everything was going swimmingly until I allowed you to go off travelling on your own..."

I fix him with a "do you really, honestly think you can try to lay any blame for this on me?" look. He reddens and continues his account.

"I guess it was always a silly idea to take the ship through Reidy's Reef. Who knows what strange effects all those mathaumaturgical practices are going to have? Anyway, we passed through some sort of rift and became a pirate ship. A bit of a shock, but everyone aboard seemed quite happy. At first anyway."

"So, something happened after that?"

"Well, as everything seemed to be tickety-boo, I decided to leave the minions in charge while I worked on some hat designs in my cabin. Here, what do you think of this one? I call it a "czapka"."

"It will look bloody ridiculous on you." I reply, recognising it as looking very like the hat I had seen earlier, back on Snowlord's Peak.

"Oh!" He looks crestfallen, but then brightens again - I can tell he will ignore my opinion on that hat. 

"Anyway, leaving the minions in charge was a bit of a mistake. First of all Byron scared the bejeezuss out of the passengers with his tales of monsters from the kingdom of death. Mind you, he's not all bad - he found some wood and knocked me up this chair."

I nod approvingly at the workmanship. "What went wrong after Byron?"

"Aahh, now, then there was Miles..."

"Miles. Hmmm, he's to blame for many things."

"Quite! It all seemed quite innocuous at first. He appeared just to be trying to interest them in some investments. "Collateralised Inverse Future Switchback Derivative Mutualised Aggregated Flipper Insurance-Linked Sub-Prime Industrial Commercial Domestic Retail Madeupword Multi-Layer Personal Interest Plan". I've no idea what that means, but his sales pitch had me hooked - all those bar charts, pie-charts and things were quite convincing."

"I would imagine so. So what was the problem?"

"Well, it was the price - twenty cats, 100 hamsters and your last-born grandchild."

"Hmm, is he here? MILES!"

I see one of the "pirates" look up from his notebook full of equations and mystical symbols. "You called, milady?"

"Yes. Curt has just been telling me about your investment product. Well, more about the price you were charging for it. Cats? Hamsters? Last-born grandchild? Really?"

"For my Spreadsheet Of Doom. The cats are necessary to make the formulae work; the hamsters spin the wheel that powers the spreadsheet."

"The grandchildren?"

"That was simply a sales ploy - I'd have allowed them to negotiate me into dropping that and thinking they'd got a bargain. The weird thing is, none of the suckers even tried to negotiate - they just signed them over to me."

I despair at the gullibility of my fellow challengers. Surely they know better than to trust these investment types? I return to quizzing Curt about what led to the mutiny.

"Then it was Greg. He started spreading heretical literature around. There were lots of mutterings, but I managed to quell things by convincing them it was all a big bluff."

"The real disquiet began when Paul came on duty. Speaking of Paul... I say, Captain Paul - is there any sign of those scoundrels?"

"Aye, Captain Campbell!" Paul calls down from the rock. He is looking out across the sea through his telescope. "They have The Challenge anchored off that island a couple of miles away. It appears they've elected a new Captain; you're not going to believe who it is!"

"Pray tell, what vagabond have the fools chosen?"

"It's Master, I guess Captain now, Rousell. He seems to have them all ashore, digging up sand and filling bags with it."

"The damned fools. I'm sure that rascal must have been behind the mutiny. I don't think he ever forgave me for stopping him smuggling budgies in badgers and trying to claim bears were women. Still, I can't believe that such sensible people as Sir Michael and Sir Sidney would have gone along with such idiocy. Nor can I credit that Frances o'Feck would vote for him."

"So, Paul - what did he do which might have led to the mutiny?" I ask, to get the tale back on track.

"Well, he had this mad idea that the passengers and crew need to practice beach landings from dawn to dusk. It might not have been so bad if he'd allowed them to use the boats to get ashore..."

Beach landings without using boats? That makes about as much sense as...

"After Paul it was Dave. Although the fault there was at least partly with Miles. You see, when I took aboard an extra passenger, rather than adding them to the end of the list Miles put them in the middle of the roster. When Dave came to do the medications, the list was off by one place for half of the passengers and they all got the wrong drugs. It was pandemonium."

"Hmmm, and partly your fault too, for not telling Miles to add them to the end of the list." I interject. Typically, Curt ignores me and continues. I realise he won't really accept that any of the blame lies with him.

"But what finally caused them to crack was when we tried to calm them down by handing out wax crayons and rocks. It turns out that Martin had ground up all the rocks and eaten all the crayons..."

"I was hungry. And drunk. And hungry." Martin pleaded.

"With no crayons and rocks to pacify them, the riotous behaviour got out of hand and they marched us into a boat, rowed us to this island and abandoned us here. Fortunately they were kind enough to  leave us some food and drink. It would have been nicer if they could have left us on a larger island, one with a bit more shade. This place is really far too small."

"But what about the Lady Sarah. Was she with you?"

"Now, there's a tale. It seems she was with us all along, but we didn't know until the passengers mutinied. After beaching us here, they removed the figurehead and threw it into the water. That's when it transformed into a living, breathing, swearing mermaid. I can tell you honestly that I have never in my life heard such foul language being uttered. Or strangeness - something about "No more hot air balloon rides for you rotten sonsofbitches". I mean, what is a hot air balloon?"

"So, the Lady Sarah was a figurehead and is now a mermaid?" I ask, somewhat incredulous.

"Yes. It appears that she didn't trust me and decided to secretly join us to keep an eye on my millinery choices. To do that, she made a deal with Calysto to turn her into a mermaid figurehead for the ship. Anyway, now she spends most of her time round that rock over there, sometimes sunning herself, sometimes diving into the water to catch fish, sometimes tormenting the gulls..."

I take a gulp of the wine and try to gather my thoughts. This weird event must have some significance, maybe it was necessary to renew the Challenge, provide a better way to tap into the imaginations of the challengers? Maybe...

"Do you know, Tamsin, I've been thinking. This experience - marooned on an island, perhaps we could learn from it, do something to improve morale."

"You know what, I was thinking much the same. Pray, what do you have in mind?"

"Well, instead of those fortnightly bonus themes, people could submit bonus point entries whenever they want. We could have a lot of different bonus themes, each at their own location on an island map."

"That actually doesn't sound completely daft, Curt. Maybe you could persuade those mutinous dogs to return to your benevolent Captaincy by allowing each of them to set a theme for a location and name it after them?"

"Those rotters don't deserve it!"

"Look, do you want to get off this island and back to 2019?" I counter.

"Yes!" Curt sulks.

"I say, chaps, do you think you could summon those rascals over here?" I call to the minions.

"They're already on their way back - I think they got fed up of filling bags with sand and piled them all on top of Ray!" Paul calls down from his lookout rock.

The mutineers weigh anchor just off our island and come ashore. I explain the proposal to them and they all welcome it. The rash of ideas they come up with for themes is quite invigorating.

With everything settled, we once more board The Challenge. I select the return coordinates on my device and the ship passes through the rift, returning to 2019 just ahead of the tenth running of the Challenge. Curt retires to his cabin with Sir Sidney of Roundwood to begin work on a map for this new idea.

A thought suddenly strikes me and I make my way into the Captain's cabin.

"Curt, do you realise that this is going to transfer the burden of scoring bonus entries from you to the minions?"

"What? Really? The thought had never crossed my mind!" he lies, unconvincingly.

"Well, you'd better make sure that there is a location that only you do the scoring for..."

"My dear, I am far ahead of you. There will be one, and I shall tailor the task to each individual who makes their way there."

"Well, OK, then, I suppose..."

As I leave the cabin, I can't help thinking of the evil glint in his eye when he mentioned individualised tasks...


10th February, 2020, Snowlord's Peak

Having returned Curt, his crew and his passengers to 2019, I check my device and select the coordinates that will return me to Snowlord's Peak. The Snowlord greets me on my return and we retire to his "den" where I give my account of what took place.

"Well, so there you have it Curt. That's the full story of what went wrong, how you lost your memory and why all these weirdos are trampling over your island."

"I see, I see. I guess that all makes sense. It was all Miles' fault. And those mutinous dogs. And those mad minions. But all's well now and people seem to love my spiffing idea of "Challenge Island."

I roll my eyes, tut loudly and make my excuses to leave, fully accepting that the Snowlord won't learn anything from this experience and that he will continue to try out mad ideas.

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OK, a few more pics:

Our heroine

This piece has taken much longer to finish than I'd originally anticipated. First of all, a really heavy cold stopped me painting for about a week and I couldn't do much on the next couple of days. Then the next few steps had long down-times (although I did make use of those to paint some figures). And then there was a problem with the water effect that meant I had to add some more to fix it.

But I got there in the end, finishing it off this afternoon.

There were some other bits that got painted, but I found that I didn't really have space on the "island" to include them:

As for points, I haven't a clue. In the main diorama there are nine 15mm foot figures plus the terrain (it's just under 6 inches square, the island is about 1/2 " high, the rocks an inch, the trees 4 " - I'll leave it to Curt to figure out how many points to give it).

And then I guess a few more points for the bits which didn't make it into the vignette, plus the points for completing my Snowlord's Peak challenge.

Before I forget, the figures are a mix of Blue Moon, Rebel Minis and (I think) Essex.  "Curt" is actually meant to be in the Sedan chair, but after painting I found it wouldn't fit!

Edited because I forgot something quite important:

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Hahaha! This is brilliant Tamsin. I knew you'd come through with flying colours and give us more than a few laughs along the way. 

I'll let the rollicking story speak for itself, though I must say that any allusion to me designing 'Challenge Island' merely to avoid work is complete and foundless conjecture. No, really, it's utter tosh. Ahem.

As to the vignette, I think it's spectacular.The figures, the island, the water effects (especially the waves) - it really is quite marvelous. It's a pity the other accouterments couldn't be used, but I'm happy you included a photo of them for us to enjoy. (I really could get used to the idea of being trotted around in a sedan chair!)

As to points, I think it only proper to include the other bits that didn't make the final cut and provide a few bonus points for your creative perspiration. 

Finally, for your efforts I think it only suitable (and in-theme no less) that you receive 'The Captain' painted by your's truly. I hope you like it Tamsin. Well done.

-Curt