6mm Dollar Store Finds & 2mm Cities

Here are some more photos of what I've been up to. First we have four scenic pieces I found in the pet supply section of a Dollar store (Pound store for my UK friends):


Most of these will be for 6mm, but I think the bridge/tower combo might be better as 2mm, or could be used for both. The bit under the bridge is kinda dumb, to lay down a river beneath it will mean the river goes up and down a hump. I'm also thinking I should buy a second Aztec temple and spray paint it a sandy colour to use for 10mm Africa. I may even just do it for this one - since I don't have a single Aztec or Aztec-like fantasy culture in my plans! (well, maybe Warhammer's lizardmen)


Based on an idea I saw on The Miniatures Page, I've started putting together some 6mm sci-fi city buildings from cheap trophy stands available from a local craft superstore (Michael's). I've glued the matching pieces together, I just have to sand them, then glue them together as towers. I noticed last night the craft store has different shapes available now, but I'll wait for their next 25% off everything coupon before I buy more.


I'm also working on some 2mm cities to use either as representational scenics for Aeronef (based on CDs) or as edge-of-the-table pieces for Land Ironclads, Kull, Imaro, and my 18th/19th century historical projects. The latter aren't meant to be fought on, rather as the obejctive behind a defender.  I'm basing them on 2 12"x6" flooring tiles, and they're meant to be a bit closer to true 2mm scale than those on the CDs, which will be more like 0.5mm.

For the CD-cities, I'm doing several for my take on Victorian Venus (basically Space 1889's Mars), Ottoman-esque, and a generally European city or two (should work for North America as well). I may do an Aeronef NY, but bigger and on a tile, using my mini Statue of Liberty. For the bigger 2mm cities, I'm doing a bigger version of a Venuvian city, Victorian Mars (Wells' idea of Mars), a general European one, 18th century India, Valusia (Kull), one of the Giant-Kings' cities (also Kull), and an African-esque city (Imaro).

Then as a special project, I'm doing a "New London", aka Sky City, for Aeronef. Here are some early shots of the basics. Each CD is supported on a heavy bolt, glued to the cap of a toothpaste tube (Sensodyne makes great caps for 2mm scenics), which in turn is glued to the centre of the CD. The three CD's were then joined with popsicle/craft sticks underneath, which will be painted as monstrous girders.


One CD will be the industrical area, one the rich/administrative area with parks and the like, and the other the main city. I have anchors planned, as well as bridges, a telegraph line cable, aeronef docking and repair stations, factories, skyscrapers, etc.

In my universe, it will roam the Atlantic, as sort of a floating place of business for the British Empire (also a backup capital, if the Germans/French/Russians/Turks invade England!).  To defend itself, I'll be picking up some British turrets from Brigade this summer.

Missed one!

In my pic parade last week I forgot this in-progress picture of Irregular's 2mm castle:This is painted up as a generic medieval/fantasy castle, it's actually a light gray, not white. Some of the interior buildings will be wood, and I need to fix the lip on the road where the piece's base meets the wood bases. I also need to work on dry-brushing this, there are some finer features in piece that don't show up well.

I've got a couple more on order, one to do as a red fort from India, the other more malicious-looking.

2 and 3mm Scenics (WiP)

The last few weeks have been spent basing some 2mm Star Wars and 18th century India figures (possible the the widest gaps in interest one can imagine), but on the painting table my poor Vietnam project has been pushed to the side, literally, for some scenic pieces from Irregular (2mm) and Simply 6 (3mm). These are still being finished, but here's an early peek at them.

Since the manor on the right is actually intended as a plantation house for my Vietnam project, I guess the little guys can't complain too much.The one on the left is for some TBD European project.

And I also have some 3mm ruins from Simply 6 for city-fighting in Vietnam, still working on how to achieve depth to the rubble. There are four in total, these two are to be "concrete", the other two will be the typical white buildings that seem to be common in pictures of Tet (or at least the Osprey version).
The Star Wars project gets its first piece with an ion cannon base for the Battle of Hoth:
And for good measure, a missile base for a temperate world...
On to 18th century India, for which I'm using both of Irregular's "mid-east" pieces as a town and village respectively...
I plan on getting two more of these and doing them in more of a Northwest Frontier paint scheme. These two are for more tropical India.

I also have a cathedral and castle from Irregular underway. The red base around the cathedral is an attempt to show red cobblestones, hopefully drybrushing and a wash help pull out the details. Interestingly, while searching online for photos of a cathedral to base a paint scheme on, I found which cathedral this seems to be based on - that of Cologne.
And finally, here's a couple shots of a fantasy castle, in near-2mm scale, that came from some knick-knack store a long time ago. I think I remember what town I bought it in, but I'm not really sure of what store. This was way before I took up miniatures again, and before I even knew of 2mm as a scale, I just picked it up as a trinket, along with some little dragon figurines. Realizing it could serve a better purpose as a scenic bit, I stuck it to a base and am giving it a go. The hills and grass need some work, as do the boulders in the stream, otherwise I think it looks pretty good. And has given me a whole new appreciation for knick-knack stores...need to do some hunting for some of its brethren!

Christmas in July

This morning, while contemplating getting out of bed or having another 9 minutes of sleep, I heard the outer front door slamming, suggesting a parcel being placed between the doors! Bounding downstairs, I found a small, but heavy, package with Royal Mail markings - my latest Irregular order had arrived!

Risking being late for work, I spent some time fondling the new arrivals at the breakfast table. This order was my biggest yet, and was all over the map in terms of projects (hence the ridiculous label list for this post). Actually it was so big and spread out, I can't even remember exactly all of what I ordered until I cross-check the codes with the master list.

But, some early comments and plans...

VSF in Space - I like the Iron Stars rules, but have never been jiggy with the miniatures; to be honest, I've always liked the look of the Battlefleet Gothic ships for VSF. But not their prices. So I picked up the Heirs of Manacus (and expansion) and Heirs of Uranus fleets - look good! There's a new maker of ships in plastic (via Shapeways) of Gothic ships, hopefully that can be a third fleet for my VSF in space ideas.

Star Wars in 2mm - I got a bunch of the basic WWI/WWII infantry and MG/missile stands for troops, and some of the 2mm sci-fi support weapon stands too. I picked up the two and four legged walkers, and I think I'm going to prefer the Ground Zero Games/Germy walkers. Irregular's two-legged walkers look good, but are bigger than the GZG AT-AT clones, so they wouldn't match up (would be ok as AT-ST's on their own though). So I think the Irregular walkers will join the land ironclads I also ordered for some Land Ironclads gaming (they'd look good bronzed up).

WWI in the Air - I picked up the 1/300 WWI aircraft Irregular makes that no one else does, and some others that were just cheaper. This is a case where I can't remember just what that was though, although the Taubes were pretty obvious!

WWI on Land - Picked up some 2mm WWI tanks, either for a future If the Lord Spares Us project, or to trick up for Land Ironclads.

WWII on Land - To supplement my GHQ and CinC stuff, I picked up a fire engine as background fluff, and the steam train, it looks pretty sweet. I also got the doors, windows, roofs, stairs scenics pack, to try making some of my own buildings.

19th Century - Picked up more artillery for my fictional setting, but also for...

18th Century Imagi-Nations/SYW in India - I'd like to do the SYW in India (maybe in Europe too) in 2mm, so I picked up British and French SYW army packs to get me started. Also picked up additional artillery pieces, the army packs tend to be a bit short on that. I plan on using the King of the Battlefield rules, though I also picked up the new pdf of Might and Reason recently too, more for bigger 18th Century battles in Europe though, not India.

Kull and Imaro - Finally, I ordered a ton of codes to get further ahead on my 2mm fantasy projects. Lots of elephants and war mammoths, and infantry. Will have to make another larger order (e.g. 70+ of some codes, times two or three figures per code...) later this year. I messed up my polar war chariot order though, forgot the wolf chariots are single items, so only ordered 3, when I need 6 (see my There's no basing like sno' basing post for the start of the stands). Some of the elephants (the non-Howdah) ones are going to be converted to gunkwu's, I'll see how that goes, it's going to involve a fair bit of chopping.

Anyway, happy, happy!

July's order will be some more Splintered Light Miniatures (they're having a sale), some Calvacade samurai dwarves (another sale), and an order from an architectural model supplier, for 2-6mm civilian stuff (cars, small trains for targets, transport trucks).

There's no basing like sno' basing

I guess it's kind of appropriate that I had a warrior from Thule in my last post on 28mm Thurian Age figures, as I've been working on painting the bases for my initial 2mm Thulian forces. I have a complete unit of reindeer-pulled chariots, a polar bear chariot leader unit, and partial units of polar bear chariots and mammoth howdahs.

Since Thule is the one real northern nation in the Thulian Age, and their mounts all have a basis in the snow and tundra, I decided to do up their bases differently than the others, trying to capture a wintery environment.

So I spent January and February looking out on the landscape as I drove or trained around. These are some pictures of what I've come up with, the bases have gone through a bit of a process of doing and re-doing things that didn't quite work. I'll give my "mostly final" method down below.




So to do these bases, my method was:

1. Mount figures on base.
2. Glue some spots on the base and add sand (my usual basing method).
3. Where the base was still bare, add polyfill (spackle, what-have-you) for the snow drifts.
4. Prime.
5. Paint the sand areas a medium brown ('Mississippi mud' for me), representing dead, low ground cover.
6. Paint the snow drifts (polyfill/spackle) an off-white (I used a 'winter white'); this will take a couple of coats if you prime in anything other than white.
7. Dot and sponge white over the brown, representing vestiges of snow. If you have any flat areas (bare base, basically) in the sand areas, paint this white too.
8. If you put in wheel tracks, run white along the track (when the wheels beat down the dead vegetation, they expose the snow underneath).
9. Dot and sponge with a different brown ('spice brown' is my default dirt colour) anything you want to be muddy.
10. Drybrush a dull yellow (I use 'antique white actually) the brown sand areas, representing taller dead vegetation (long grasses, corn, shrubs), which stays yellow during the winter.
11. If any of your dotted and sponged white sand areas look like they could be improved, drybrush either your medium brown or dull yellow over them, representing the dead vegegation sticking out of the snow. This can be tricky, because I found that either the brown colour was now not dark enough (being on top of a white base) or I was painting the snow, rather than the sand bumps. Try somewhere, and see what your results are before going in whole hog.

Other than fantasy, or maybe some Viking uses, the only time I really see this basing method being useful is for 2 or 3mm WWI or WWII East Front stuff. Or the Winter and Continuation Wars of the USSR vs. Finland.

Now I just need to paint the blasted figures on the bases!

New Figures for the Thurian Age (and a completed snake statue)

At long last I have some things completed, rather than in half-finished states, although there are still lots of those projects lying around upstairs.

As mentioned previously, I had ordered some more D&D Collectible Miniatures Game figures for the Thurian Age, to fill in some gaps and add more snakemen and skeleton options.

At last - Thulsa Doom, although this shot doesn't do his skull face justice. A nice miniature, although it really matches the Thulsa Doom from the version of Riders Beyond the Sunrise that was completed by Lin Carter, rather than what we see of Thulsa Doom in Delcartes' Cat. But beggars can' be choosers, and he is cool looking.

Also as mentioned earlier, I was awaiting a new figure for Thelo CurKail, one of my new Thurian heroes, for skirmish games. This is the new Thelo, the old one has been relegated to tavern villainy.

A massive piece and the blue hair and skin don't quite match up with my version of Thule and its mammoth-riding warriors...but it'll do for now.

I've also finally completed one of the wooden Creatology puzzles I've been picking up for props. This is the snake statue for the Temple of the Serpent:

After spray-painting with flat black, then a satin green.

Finished, with details and ruby-eyes added, then coated with crackle medium paint to age. The final product, after being coated with Future Floor Polish, actually tones done the silvering you see here, which I'm going to call cobwebs if you see them from a distance.

A close-up of the final product.

Still on the table - cog, castle, tower, dirt cottage, dragon statue, sphinx.
Sill in the box - more birdhouses cum Splintered Lands buildings, Temple of Heaven puzzle, pirate schooner puzzle, another castle puzzle.

Welcome, my pretties

As mentioned, my order of D&D collectible miniature pre-painted plastic figures arrived yesterday (Monday). Mainly intended for adventures in the Thurian and Hyborian Ages with Warrior Heroes by Two Hour Wargames and Songs of Blades and Heroes by Ganesha Games, they can be used in other periods as well. There are still more to find - there's a better Thelo figure out there, and the best Thulsa Doom and a dire (grey) ape were out of stock when I ordered.

I'll supplement these with painted figures, I have a lot of old 25-28mm stuff around from the 1980's, plus I'll fill in with new stuff as needed (e.g. a better Brule will have to come from somewhere else).

Anyway, now for your consideration, I present:

Kull and Brule - yes, I know Brule carried a sword...and wore a kilt...and probably wasn't bald except for a ponytail...but this is as good as I could go in the mainly bi-racial (caucasian and asian) D&D lines. Kull is more the primitive Kull here, I imagine he's about to chop one of the stone tablets that stores Valusia's lengthy marriage codes. If needed, either of the two Conan figures below can sub in, I'm sure no one will call me on the eye colour...

Some new Thurian Age hereos: Thelo CurKail - freed gladiator (not his final figure, just a stand in for now), Dolyn from the Hills - soldier in the Royal Army, and Tjia the Half-man, double-sworded Thuranian freelancer (and runaway bride, of sorts). These all started life as RPG characters, so I'll present more background later.

Forces of the snakemen, using both lizardmen and snakemen from the D&D lines - the difference between a lizardman and a snake that walks seems pretty minor (unless your a snake or a lizard), so I'm using both freely. The bulkier looking lizards I'll call snakemen priests, i.e. the poorer fighters. The snakemen proper will be, well, snakemen warriors proper, a bit better with their skills (nunchuk skills, bow hunting skills, etc.).

Of course the snakemen need their leaders, from a snakeman chieftain to a high priestess to the Serpent that Speaks hissssself to an angry snake demon.

Some other forces of evil, leaders and sorcerers.

Not all their enemies will be of flesh or scales, some will be of bones (need more of dem bones tho).

Some of the creatures I picked up - armoured apes, an angry giant ape, and a demonic minotaur type guy.

Two versions of Conan (and backup Kulls) - his barbarian form and his soldierly/kingly form.

More characters, Conan liked his swordswomen.

And some others, including the four guardsmen on the left who will serve as Red Guards for now, even though they aren't too red. I like the swashbuckler, need to find some more of those.

My first battle will probably be a small re-creation of the battle between Kull and Brule and the snakemen from The Shadow Kingdom. Kull and Brule each add up to being their own warband pretty much, and I'll use all my snakey legions against them.

My Only Wish Is To See Far Acheron Again (with apologies to Jim Morrison)

...well, actually I wouldn't like to see Acheron again, but Valusia would be a trip. However, since I'm still in the middle of a bunch of terrain pieces, today sees my notes on Acheron go up.

Acheron is the remaining lands of the Old Race (aka Giant-Kings), who once ruled all of Thuria and have "100,000 years of history". The Old Race are long-lived wizards, with demon-tainted blood that gives them claim to be descendents of Set, the Serpent-Lord. They worship the rest of the Old Ones as well, and do so differently than their human subjects, on more of a personal relationship. However, their worship and black sorcery does require human blood and/or sacrifice to work (Note: this is all fiction, in case that wasn't clear).

Humans are their subjects and slaves, and have been since the beginning of time. The original humans they encountered (not the modern Thurians) at the dawn of time worshipped the Great Serpent (aka the Serpent That Speaks - not Set), and the humans have since merged the two religions and the Giant-Kings haven't really noticed. The humans under their rule also worship the Giant-Kings as blessed by Set. Despite being near-gods, the Giant-Kings haven't avoided getting jiggy with their subject women, resulting in hybrids identifiable by their height and pale complection, and talent with dark arts.

The human and hybrid populations grow much faster than the Giant-Kings and do much of the land's grunt work, leaving the Giant-Kings to rule, practice their dark arts, and lord around as living gods. The Lost Lands that separate Acheron from the Seven Empires (and anywhere else of note) have helped the Giant-Kings slip into myth and legend, but these myths and legends are still active and still plotting. They have spies and agents in Valusia (e.g. Guron, high priest of the God of the Black Shadow) and elsewhere, with the aim of regaining their former glory. The current ruler is King Ahotep.

Their capitol city is Luxor, on the Sea of Snakes. Additional cities are Sabatea, Erkulum, and Qarnak. The main river in the country is the Nilus, which later becomes the Styx, post-cataclysm. Their architecture is monolithic, some of the Hyborean Age colossal pyramids of Stygia are theirs. In most cities their architecture is sort of a suped-up real world Egyptian - stepped pyramidal apartment complexes for temples and the middle class. The poor live in block hovels, the true elites live in single pyramids. In other cities, their architecture is Petra-like, built into the sides of cliffs and hills. Generally their buildings are of black stone, but others are sandstone in colour, and all have towers or spires of a dark purple.

Their military has an Assyrian and Hittite flavour, with elite units of four-horse chariots, followed by spear-wielding cavalry, supported by mounted archers. On foot they have light, regular, and heavy spearmen, the first two being from the city levies. They also have light and regular foot bowmen, and the levies also raise slingers. The foot elite are the guardsmen of the king, armed with sword and carrying a shield.

***

In other news...last night was spent wrestling with polyfill, today I've been spray painting some other pieces and am about to go for a re-match with the polyfill. Had some good news this evening - today was a provincial holiday butI forgot that means the post office (federal) was still at work - so when I opened my front door to take out the recycling, what should I find but my order of pre-painted plastic miniatures (from the D&D line). So a future post will be on those - Kull and Conan and various friends and enemies.

Mysterious Thule (not that Thule, you cultists!)

This is the Thule of the Thurian Age, a mysterious land in the northwestern tip of the continent. We don't know much about it from the source material (they fight cave-savages and snow apes, and have fabulous ice caves), so I've had a freer hand making things up.

The residents of Thule are a generally dark-haired, Viking-like race, with an architecture of stupas (domed brick/stone buildings), and nothing larger than a town - and only one of those, the capitol of Skalauk. Otherwise it's comprised of villages with a temple, tombs of past village chiefs and storehouses all of stone/brick; everything else in the village is of timber. The political structure is feudal, with small armies and no national leader.

Militarily, they sure look impressive - the elite warriors are armoured with plate cuirasses and helmets, and armed with swords. They ride in chariots or war-sleds pulled by domesticated polar bears (smaller than our modern polar bears) or reindeer. Some also ride reindeer, and the real heavies of the Thurian Age are their Imperial Mammoths. Run of the mill warriors of Thule are armed as axemen, spearmen, or bowmen.

Thule was up next for my tour of the Thurian Age as I've been busy basing some units with a snowy theme. I've been taking pics along the way, but have one more step to do before I post anything. Otherwise I'm in the midst of a bunch of other terrain bits - snake statue, dragon statue, sphinx, Splintered Lands house, tower, ship and castle.

I liked the castle so I bought the snake...

The Creatology 3D puzzles have come up for discussion on The Miniatures Page message boards, and last post you saw the Creatology 3D puzzle castle I was using for 18mm anthropomorphic fantasy, which I'm quite happy with for my purposes. The TMP thread started with a post about a sphinx puzzle, so today I went to my local Michael's store to see if I could score one, with the additional intent to buy some gesso to try as primer.

I didn't find the sphinx, but I did find a skeletal snake for $1.50 that I've sussed out three uses for (now I gotta go back and buy two more of the things though!). The first use will be as a full model, representing a statue that can be used as a scenic piece either indoors or out.

This is the thing head on, and below is from the side, with our 40mm lady again standing in for scale.

I'm thinking of trying to paint it a jade colour, maybe starting off with black spray paint, then green, then maybe with some lighter highlighting afterwards. It came with googly eyes, but I'm going to use some plastic jewel pieces that you find in craft and dollar stores, my plan is for red (ruby) but may have to go with clear (diamonds).

If you just look at the head, I can think of two things I'd like to do with it on its own. The easy one will be to use it as an idol hanging from a temple wall (Kull anyone?), maybe done up in brass (ruby eyes would look good in that scenario), with a blood-stained altar below.

The second option will be to have it as part of the external entrance to the temple or some subterranean cavern, the sort of thing where you have to walk into the snake's mouth to gain entrance, with steps leading down once you're in.

Hmmm, now that I think of it, a third use would be to use the two pieces that make up the "bread" in the head sandwich and turn them on their side, so the tip of the snout meets in the middle, sort of forming an arch...guess that means three puzzles to buy tomorrow!

Now what to do with the bodies? I'm thinking with some strategic cuts, they'd make good "bleached bones of an ancient leviathan" scenices, for everything from 2mm fantasy up to 28mm skirmish. One scenic piece of the bones stretched out in the desert, another of them half-embedded in a cliff wall, maybe covered in loam in some dark forest, that sort of thing.

In other purchasing adventures, I picked up some 1/72 Airfix WWI infantry for the British, German, and Americans, so I guess I've started a "Through the Mud and Blood" project too... I also picked up a 1/720 model of the Hindenburg, for WWI and pulp aerial adventures.

Valusia In All Her Remaining Splendor

Well, so what do we know about the rest of Valusia?

She's an ancient land by time of Kull, sophisticated and wealthy but also decadent and stifling in its antiquity. With thousands of kings (apparently no ruling queens) in her past, the country is pushing 20,000 years of history (I set it around 22K). Its origins have been lost to history, although we do know its ancestors came from the east and warred with the serpent-men who rule the Seven Empires area after they had previously thrown off the yoke of the Giant-Kings.

By the time of Kull, Valusia is starting to fade, although in that way nations have of fading without really realizing it, with everyone in denial - eating, drinking, and being merry, and not noticing the barbarians at the gate (although in certain circles they do make snide comments about the one on the throne). Besides the barbarians at the gate (a small colony of Atlanteans on the coast), there is also a colony of Picts in Valusia on the border with Farsun, the Picts now having been allies of Valusia for a thousand years. Prior to that the Picts were also raiders on the coast.

The analogue I like to use to get a feel for Valusia is India, with ages sitting upon ages, grandiose architecture, and a history that goes back into legend.

Culturally we know the Valusians make use of slaves and have gladiatorial contests, eventually the gladiators can earn their freedom. They use dungeons for prisons (as opposed to labour camps, I suppose), and face bandits in the hills and mountains. The capitol is also called Valusia, a.k.a. the City of Wonders, a.k.a. the Crystal City of Valusia. Valusia itself is also known as the Land of Enchantment.

The Valusians seem to worship the mainstream world gods, but do allow the worship of Set (one of the Old Ones) to occur, at the Temple of the Serpent in the cities, but these are carefully monitored (at least under Kull) to make sure there isn't any crossover with the Great Serpent (the Serpent That Speaks, god of the serpent-men). It appears the Valusians have lost all real-world connection to the Giant-Kings, so they wouldn't be aware Set's temples could be a vector for intrigue coming from Acheron. Similarly, in a remote Valusian mountain city lies the Temple of Everlasting Darkness, dedicated to the God of the Black Shadow (another Old One), formerly governed by Guron. There's also a temple to the Great Scorpion there (you'll just have to read the stories for more on that).

Administratively (as lousy as that word is to describe the fantastic kingdom of Valusia), Valusia is broken into baronies, which can be used interchangeably with the term provinces. Technically though there are only two provinces, the large jurisdictions around the cities of Kamula and Valusia. Other cities have smaller jurisdictions around them that they oversee, mainly in terms of food production, which gives a bit of independence to all cities relative to the baronies they're found in. The Pictish colony is also a self-governed jurisdiction, appointing its own ruler.

The baronies are hereditary, passing from father to son (again, no female nobles seem to rule). Cities are ruled by a count, officially appointed by the king, but by tradition these are hereditary positions too.

Here's my list of the baronies, their capitols, and any notes on them. Those in italics are canon or pseudo-canon (for some reason in some editions of the stories names were changed from the originals - I've used the originals, but kept a couple of cool ones). The rest are made up by me for gaming purposes. The format for the list is "Barony - Capitol (notes)".

• Blaal - Blaal (also contains the city of Karaban and the Forbidden Swamp)
• Northern Shore - Mikkar
• North Marches - Northam (also has the Skull of Silence)
• Varana - Varana (also has the village of Hawks)
• Nabar - Zarawar
• Legan - Rowanbor
• Urungal - Urungal
• Strathspey - Strathspey
• Kachvar - Btoleny
• Alnakata - Kolderkon (also has the Tomb of King Kalenius, and Kolderkon is based on the RPG city of Ptolus)
• Yonla - Yonla
• Juven - Juven (also the Lake of Visions)
• Sylvilia - Wood
• Baradusa - Baradusa
• Yultana - Fanara
• Kartu - Komahar (also the Temple of Everlasting Darkness)
• Pictish Colony - Gat-nir
• Province of Kamula - Kamula
• Province of Valusia - City of Wonders (also the Forbidden Lake)

More to come, but now I'm off to do some painting...

The Armies of Valusia

So this will be my first nuts-and-bolts piece on the Thurian Age as I've interpreted it. I'll try to explicitly point out what I've made up out of thin air, the rest is either canon or extrapolations from canon. Probably much of this will depend on at least a basic familiarity with Robert E. Howard's tales of Kull of Atlantis, so this would be a good time to prompt those of you who haven't read Kull to do so. Now!

To begin with, however, while Commoria has been Valusia's hereditary and frequent enemy, of late under Kull Valusia has been at war on other fronts. Shortly after becoming king, Kull destroyed the Triple Federation of Farsun, Zarfhaana, and Verulia (the latter being my own assessment - it explains some of Verulia's interest in intriguing in Valusia). Kull also led his army into Grondar, deposing the sorcerers/demons who ruled there and installing a king, albeit one with ties to Valusia that come to haunt him later. Along with Commoria, Valusia has also had frequently nasty contact with Atlantean raiders, up to 500 in number coming ashore along the coast. Presumably similar in style to Viking raids on the British Isles in the late Dark Ages.

Valusia has two strands to its military. First there is the Royal Army, with significant mercenary contingents, under the direct command of the King and headquartered in Valusia (the city). The second strand is the Great Army, which is paid for by the state (out of state revenue/taxes) and under the overall command of a general. It is broken down into regional and local elements that are stationed across the nation. The Great Army also has a significant mercenary component, but this is less varied than the Royal Army, or at least the Royal Army as established by Kull.

The influx of mercenaries arises from Valusia's aged, decadent state - the citizens have it pretty good and aren't interested in a life in the legions. There are obvious modern parallels, as well as reflections in the later days of the Roman Empire.

Mercenaries are from the Pictish Isles, Lemuria, Atlantis, Kaa-U, Mu, and the hills of the east. All of these types are in the Royal Army; only Lemurians, Atlanteans, Mu-ians, and hillmen will be found in the Great Army. Generals and lower leaders will also often be from the mercenary ranks.

There are no feudal levies, or any feudal system at all, in Valusia. The barons are allowed their own small forces, essentially bodyguards, which keeps them from waging overt civil war or attempting a coup. As long as the Royal Army and the Great Army are loyal, the king will remain in power; and I'm not too sure if the king would need both to remain loyal either.

Native Valusia troops form the heavy and medium cavalry, the Red Slayers and Red Guards, bowmen from the mountains, and heavy and light footmen.

A breakdown of the troop types found in Valusia would therefore look like this:

• Pictish light foot (curved swords)
• Pictish javelinmen
• Mu-ian heavy swordsmen
• Atlantean spearmen
• Kaa-U short spearmen
• Lemurian bowmen
• Valusian bowmen (tall mountain men)
• Valusian heavy spearmen (spear + shield)
• Valusian light footmen (sword + shield)
• Allied Pictish warbands (horse archers with curved swords)
• Black Squadrons (elite)
• Black Legion (elite foot - say spear + shield)
• Red Slayers (elite of the elite lancers)
• Red Guard (king's bodyguard, subset of the Red Slayers)

I am working on the Royal Army to start with for my miniatures project, and so far for numbers I'm looking at:

• 2 x 500 Pictish horse archers (allied warbands)
• 2 x 1000 Lemurian bowmen
• 1 x 500 Red Slayers
• 1 x 100 Red Guard (either as a leader unit with Kull, or added to the Red Slayers)

(obviously this needs to be continued, but the total will come out to something around 10,000 soldiers - not the wild numbers usually seen in fantasy, but I've read my Hans Delbruck and I'm trying to find a middle ground)

Next up for the Thurian Age will be more on the rest of Valusia.

Pictish Warband, Allies of Valusia

Finally finished these stands! This is a unit of Pictish (racially similar to N. American Indians) horse archers, part of the Royal Army of Valusia. I'll give more background on the military of Valusia in another post, but these guys are armed with bows and bronze swords, except for Brule the Spear-slayer, who I've portrayed in the centre stand, in dark leather armour and with an iron sword. He's also on a chestnut horse, the rest of the warband rides pintos, paints, and dappled grays.

The warband is wearing quilted torso armour, black leather kilts, and most are wielding their bow, but I painted some waving their sword around. Most with swords in hand have their bow on their backs, and some of those with bows have swords across their backs.

My painting sequence was: base -> horse base colour -> legs -> loins -> torso -> arms and head (both bare flesh in this case) -> hair (or the occasional baldy) -> weapon(s) -> mane and tail -> spotting/dappling on horse.

Nothing special in the method, and it worked ok...no muscle twitches while adding the spotting saved on the angst. But I did decide to change things up when I get to my zebra-riders for Imaro. That will be a more challenging job, so I'm going to add the stripes (probably black added to white) before I start on the rider. The riders will have a lot of exposed flesh anyway, and they'll be dark-skinned obviously, so the occasional stray daub won't be too obvious...probably only obvious to me, actually.

Anyway, onto some pictures (pics of Picts, so to speak). I couldn't decide if they looked better with or without the flash, so for your consideration you get...both.



And some close-ups, showing a bit more detail (but also giving away the illusion a bit too).

Next up should be the Red Slayers and the Red Guard, but I've also started the process of painting up the bases for Lemurian mercenary foot archers (20 bases!) and Acheronian heavy chariots.

Musings, Brief

January is usually one of my hell-months for work, so the few hours I'm home are usually spent catching up on sleep, even Saturdays. But I have been getting in a few hours this past week to move along on a Pictish mounted warband (while listening to vol. 2 of the Conan audiobooks) and reading Imaro IV - The Naama War (hey, that rhymes!).

So far my reading of Imaro IV has uncovered three gameable land battles; a couple of others were just massacres, and another was a fantasy naval battle that is a whole 'nother genre of gaming I'm trying to avoid. I won't divulge too much about the battles yet, because I know a lot of us are reading the book as I speak and don't want to spoil things.

But in terms of miniatures, there hasn't been any "oops" in what I've planned, or more fortunately, painted! One modification is needed for the skin colour of regular Naamans, I need to figure out just what to use for "dark amber". I also will need to check into Irregular's 6mm Zulus for some figures for Shingane the Great Elephant and his Twins; he isn't really that tall, but like the giant-kings of Acheron, has that effect on the battlefield.

One neat new unit to come up with will be velociraptor-riding Naaman light cavalry. I was going to have to do something similar anyway for the Kaa-U terror bird riders of Kull's Thurian Age and for tauntauns for Star Wars. After several seconds of intensive study of pictures of tauntaun riders, ostrich jockeys, and Warhammer dark elf cavalry (thanks, Google Images), my plan is to use cavalry figures, then cut off the forelegs in a descending curve to get bipeds out of them. Then for the tails for the raptors and tauntauns, I'll add using clay.

I've been thinking about using clay for mods for the gunkwu (a much scarier conversion) and Imaro IV has reminded me I should be thinking about it for the rhino-riders too (horns covered in steel) rather than relying on the paint job. Some research has shown I can bake Sculpey on the miniatures, but the idea of putting metal into the oven doesn't sit easy. So I may try DAS, although I wish it came in smaller amounts, opening a brick-sized bag to add a couple dozen 2mm rhino horns and raptor tails seems a bit out of...well, scale.

My final musing for this week, also on conversions, came to me while on one endless drive or another this week, and I think I have a way to do antlers for reindeer (the Thules use reindeer for both chariots and mounts). More after a test!

The Thurian Age Part I - An Introduction to My Take On It

Robert E. Howard is one of my favourite authors, from his well-known Conan to one-off adventure and horror stories ("Pigeons From Hell" is one of the creepiest stories I've ever read). I haven't read many of his western or oriental stories, or any of his boxing stories, I'm kind of saving those to work through at a leisurely pace. It's like Marx Brothers movies - as great as each one is to see new, it also means one less that will be new to see, and eventually you reach the end of the line and there ain't no more.

Anyway, my favourite Howard character is Kull. Solomon Kane follows closely behind, but that's another topic for another day. As mentioned, I plan to do some gaming in Kull's Thurian Age, mainly in miniature now, but I had originally started together putting together notes for RPG'ing the Thurian Age.

The background material I've compiled is running at almost 50 pages to date, and I'll post bits and pieces of interest here. I want to be clear though that this is my expansion on the Thurian Age, not a scholarly examination of the works meant to be taken as gospel. To game in this age I've needed to know information never remotely covered in the canon, so I've extrapolated as needed and as best fits my feeling for the age.

My primary sources are the stories themselves, but where I agree with them I've incorporated ideas from Dale Rippke's "Hyborian Heresies" book, some of the chat on the Conan forums (we seem to agree that the ecology was probably more ice age-like), and the finished texts from the Lancer edition of "King Kull". I recently acquired the first volume of the reprinted 1970's Kull comics, and while a lot of it is kind of 70's goofy, there are some ideas I will use, but my early readings suggest not much. I do like how they conceived the walls of the City of Wonder though.

One of my first divergences from common thought is Kull's appearance. I've never really liked him as a near-clone of Conan, and he gets a bit Prince Valiant-ish in the comics (never mind the Speedos he's wearing). As a king, I picture him in his late 30's, early 40's, pretty grizzled, maybe a bit Kirk Douglas-ish (but with those iron-thews Kull and Conan shared). He certainly doesn't have long hair, which just seems impractical.

Since I can't draw for love nor money, I found this online superhero/rpg character creator called Hero Machine 2.5, which lets us bad drawers at least do a rough impression of a character. So I pieced this together for King Kull:
Not perfect, but it fits my general idea of him. He's geared up for battle here, and skipped the scarlet and purple robes, the silver cloaks, and his crown of red-gold. He has kept his pirate earring though.

Oh, and on the subject of tigers...although I've pictured a typical modern Asian tiger here, albeit in odd colours, to me the real tigers of Atlantis were saber-toothed tigers. More on that when I do a piece on the fauna of Thuria.

So onto my mapping project...

I liked the 1970's map by Tim Kirk, even though parts were wrong (lots of discussion on the Conan forums about Thurian Age maps, for those interested). The "Hyborian Heresies" also give a good overview of where the major continents and places are in the world. So working from those basics, I've used a simple hexmapping program to start making my own game-ready maps of the Thurian Age. The Kirk map was my original basis, I gridded it up and re-drew it in the software as best can be done with hexes, and then I started moving to new territories adjacent to the original map.

So here's my map of the main Thurian continent, showing the Seven Empires (including individual baronies of Valusia). Each hex is 36 miles across, 30 miles up-down. Clicking on the map will bring up a much better view.

Directly to the east lies more of the...Eastern Empires, as well as Khari and Lemuria:

Couple of comments for anyone who studies these in detail:

• If you're fitting these together, there's a one hex column overlap between the two maps;
• The red lines are national or provincial (in Valusia only) borders, however, some borders are defined by rivers, so if a red border suddenly ends, assume the river continues it;
• The Eastern Empires are actually three empires of nine nations total (3, 1, and 5);
• Lacking a better/cooler name, I like Dale Rippke's idea that Acheron could well have been the name of the land of the Giant-Kings.

I've gotten most of the map of the lands immediately south of the Seven Empires done, including Kaa-U and the rest of (old) Acheron.

More on the nations and armies of the Thurian Age in future posts.

Giant King Command Stands

As you'll recall from my last photos of my Giant King command stands, the general was done but his aides/henchmen were still stuck in primer grey. I've now got them done, and all that's left is a final touch-up of the green base, then a coat of Future, then Dullcote. But rather than wait for all that fussiness to be finished, here's the the preview:

I was trying out a new gold paint for the bronze shield, definitely a brighter paint than what you see for the general's shield and sceptre. For now I'm calling that a true gold, and will use the brighter stuff for bronze. This will be more critical when I get to Kull and his Red Slayers.

Weirdly, both Acheron and Valusia use purple as their colours, but different purples. And Valusia has gold in their standards.


I also finished the hybrid* general's command chariot, although this base really needs a touch up in green - my black wash from the patch of boulders seeped through a lot of the base.

* The giant kings interbred with us lowly humans, creating tall, pale offspring sort of the equivalent of bastard sons from medieval times. Most end up in the military or priesthood.

As a command chariot it was pretty crowded - there ended up being six painted figures on it! Two are bowmen, from the side shot you can see at the front one of the bowmen and his bow (light brown). This chariot has bronze barding for the horses and was made of bronze (or gold, I'm easy), regular Acheronian chariots will have quilted barding in various colours and be of wood.

Finally settled on burnt sienna as my chestnut horse colour. It took a few tries of different colours to get right.