Pomponia Valeria Exuperantia sighed again; sighs were becoming her most frequent expression as her reduced company shepherded Brother Lazarus and Siszter Hazel into a clearing in the Chambers of Challenge. Tall, snow-covered pine trees rose from what she had thought was a cavern, or some kind of chamber with cobbles and pavers to floor it.
A loud crash rose ahead; shards of rock and earth bounced off the trees, walls and through various skellies. A giant earth elemental burst through the chamber's floor and emerged from a pile of rubble as if solid rock had not been there before.
The company responded with well-oiled precision, reanimation magics of a necromancer long gone giving magical sinew to bone picked clean by misadventure in the Frozen City. Archer skellies fanned to the flank, plucking arrows from quivers and drawing longbows to pulls far greater than mortal muscle permitted. Khopesh and dagger whirling, Kreirdgeinek Tundreirtmum, once a barbarian come to Felsted for adventure and profitable rage, surged forward to render earth, fossil and rock asunder once again.
For my next entry, I present more undead adventurers for Pomponia's company, and an earth elemental summoned by the dastardly yet sartorially eloquent mind flayer, Bathalian D'Kuhl. As it says on the tin for the Golum's Haunt:
“..IT WALKS…!!” Paint something re-animated, stitched-together, bolted-together, re-created from steel, clay, earth, etc.
Well, skeletons are by definition reanimated by magic, and this earth elemental is certainly assembled from earth, clay and even a skeleton.
First up is the earth elemental. It's a Reaper Bones product, available here. Mine wasn't the white plastic, but the grey. It's a lot less fiddly, detail is clearer, though ti does have problems with rubber-like mold lines.
I put it on my usual Renedra paver base, and built up the rubble with railroad ballast and river rock shards from Michaels. I think it worked rather effectively to create rubble. Painting was relatively easy, with German Camouflage Black Brown, Charred Brown, Heavy Siena and Flat Earth from Vallejo, washed with the extremely useful Army Builder Strong tone. The skeleton on his shoulder was picked out in Army Builder Skeleton Bone.
Inspired by some of Sidney's work in "A Demonstration of Armes" in Laarden, I decided to go a bit bolder on the cobbles and pavers. I've always liked the look of green slate, and so I tried it here. It was really simple, just Dark Angels Green contrast paint from Games Workshop on top of the now usual Charcoal Gray and Hippo Gray from Delta Ceramcoat. It all got a black wash to fill it out. It's not perfect, but getting there.
The skellies are all kitbashed. I started with bodies from Games Workshop, the same box of five I used for other members of Pomponia's company. Instead of the spear and shield that came in the box, I picked up some later Tomb King archer bits off Ebay. That gave me four archers. The barbarian skelly I took two khopeshes from the bits, one of which had the blade snapped halfway. That became a dagger.
I'm rather pleased with the conversions. Painting was very simple. I primed them with Army Painter's Skeleton Bone. The bows and armbands are a dull red triad of Vallejo Burnt Cadmium Red, Craftsmart Burgundy, and Delta Ceramcoat Barn Red. All the leather is Vallejo Red Leather with Army Painter Strong Tone to wash. Finally, I used Games Workshop's Skeleton Bone contrast to ink the bones themselves. The photos give a yellow tinge to the GW contrasts, especially Skeleton Bone and Aggaros Dunes, but I like how they look in the flesh, so to speak.
The best part is the cobbles. Again inspired by Sidney, I decided to be a bit bolder. I picked out a few in Delta Ceramcoat Stonewedge Green and Barn Red, Apple Barrel Sky Blue, and GW Dark Angels Green Contrast. Then I washed it heavily with black to ink in the recesses, and blend it together. I really like it, and will use it both on further expansions of my Undead, but may even go back and update some of the earlier ones.
My favorite of the bunch has to be Kreirdgeinek Tundreirtmum. He's not technically a barbarian per the Frostgrave rules, since they use a single two-handed weapon; he'd more accurately be classed a tunnel fighter, since they do use two handed weapons, but he's reasonably put out with anger management issues and dispatching foes with quick brutality is probably workable. If pressed, bad pun there, he could be a "barbarian tunnel fighter" per the Forgotten Pacts supplement. It's the GW sculpt I used for the body, especially that very expressive skull.
So, points. One Squirrel point, for having 5 models. I'm also claiming eleven skull points, one for the skeleton on the earth elemental, five for the skellies faces, one for the skull on the quiver sling, and four more for the Janus skulls on Kreirdgeinek Tundreirtmum's khopesh and dagger.
Finally, five 28mm foot figures are 25 points, the earth elemental is easily 54mm high for 10 points there, plus twenty for the Golem's Haunt, for a total of 55 points. Not a points bomb by anybody's standards but mine as a ridiculously slow painter, but I hope to have a few more entries in before the lid closes Saturday morning.
