In Praise Of Roebeast

This is Roebeast, and his blog, Roebeast's Magical House of Sunshine, can be found easily enough here on Blogspot:

http://roebeast.blogspot.com/

I sing his praises today, because he is apparently one of the three other people than myself who bought Fantasy Modeling when it first came out.

FM was a fantastic magazine, born of the early 1980s, the success of Starlog magazine, and the fantasy gaming craze that grew into what us old grognards of today think of as simply "gaming and gamers."

It was devoted largely to miniature modeling and painting, but had articles about modelbuilding, kitbashing, gaming, wargaming, and so much more. It was a glorious thing, to those of us who lived way the hell and gone out in the boonies, back in the day, back before cell phones and web connections made nothing very distant at all.

It only lasted four issues. I mourned the hell out of it when it folded. I'd subscribed for the coming year; they sorrowfully sent me a check for the balance of my money (and an offer to invest it in a subscription to Starlog.)

Today, though, we live in a very different world, a world where if I want Leonard Nimoy's music album on CD, I can order it on Amazon (or Ebay, if I want the original vinyl.) Today, NOTHING seems like it's very hard to get. The internet is a place where if ANYONE EVER GAVE A SHIT ABOUT IT, there's a site... or a blog... or a retrospective... or a photo gallery... or, in many cases, the thing itself, available for download for a reasonable fee, or free.

But not Fantasy Modeling. It was just too obscure. Too few people had bought it, read it. All the copies ever printed were trashed, or lost, or made into mouse bedding somewhere out there. I searched, I hunted. But the only "Fantasy Modeling" my google-fu ever returned were exotic dance studios and nude clubs in various cities across the nation.

Not that this was a bad thing, but it weren't what I were lookin' for.

But then, casting his mighty shadow across the dawning Web, came Roebeast, modeling tools in one great hand, mouse in the other. He took a break from his many vocations, including blogging, comics work, modeling, gaming, and (if his picture is any indication), killing zombies with sledgehammers.

And he dug into his pile of old and beloved periodicals, and took the time to digitally preserve a grand and glorious thing for the benefit of us all.

Check his link, above, if you still don't get what I'm talking about. His comics and model work is quite worthwhile, too.

Thanks, RB. When's issue four going up?

Man Cave

Man cave goooooooood.

The Colossus of Ylourgne

Long one, this time.
One of the neater things TSR ever published was the old Castle Amber module.

It had nothing to do with the Roger Zelazny novels. It was a rather unique Dungeons and Dragons adventure based on the works and worlds of fantasy author Clark Ashton Smith, and it was a doozy, containing mysteries, puzzles, monsters, planar travel, and at one point required the party to time travel in order to solve a mystery. At this point, this post will take two forms: the black text explaining what the party did, as opposed to the red text quoting from the Smith original story...

Upon successfully obtaining the Potion of Time Travel, the party, in their quest to escape from a parallel universe (medieval France) and return to the Forgotten Realms, set forth to the capital of the province, Vyones, in order to seek out the Viper-Circled Mirror from the wizard Gaspard du Nord.

Unfortunately, en route, they encountered a terrified curate, fleeing from his monastery – the last survivor. The monastery had been destroyed by the necromancer Nathaire, in the body of a hideous horror, the Colossus!

“In the interim, several monks of the Cistercian brotherhood, watching the grey wall of Ylourgne at early dawn with their habitual vigilance, were the first, after Gaspard, to behold the monstrous horror created by the necromancers.”

“Then, with both hands, the colossus tore loose an immense rock that was deeply embedded in the hillside; and lifting this rock, he flung it at the stubborn walls. The tremendous mass broke in an entire side of the chapel; and those who had gathered therein were found later, crushed into bloody pulp amid the splinters of their carven Christ.” ---Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne

The party hurried along the King’s Road north, to Vyones, finding the town in an uproar, and the Viceroy hard pressed to maintain order. Caravans of the wealthy and noble were headed south, and they’d commandeered most of the province’s standing military to escort them! The party did what they could to help… until summoned to the chambers of the Viceroy’s chief advisor… the wizard Gaspard du Nord. Du Nord had once been a pupil of Nathaire’s, and had a secret weapon that might help against the hideous horror…

“Working feverishly by the light of the westering moon and a single dim taper, Gaspard assembled various ingredients of familiar alchemic use which he possessed, and compounded from these, through a long and somewhat cabalistic process, a dark-grey powder which he had seen employed by Nathaire on numerous occasions. He had reasoned that the colossus, being formed from the bones and flesh of dead men unlawfully raised up, and energized only by the soul of a dead sorcerer, would be subject to the influence of this powder, which Nathaire had used for the laying of resurrected liches.”

“Gaspard made a considerable quantity of the mixture, arguing that no mere finger-pinch would suffice for the lulling of the gigantic charnel monstrosity. His guttering yellow candle was dimmed by the white dawn as he ended the Latin formula of fearsome verbal invocation from which the compound would derive much of its efficacy. The formula, which called for the cooperation of Alastor and other evil spirits, he used with unwillingness. But he knew that there was no alternative: sorcery could be fought only with sorcery.” ---Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne

A bargain was struck: Gaspard would surrender the Viper-Circled Mirror if the group would aid him in laying low his former master. Armed with three pouches of the necromantic powder, and their own spells, the group set out for Ylourgne at all speed, hoping to head the monster off before it could attack the city.

They almost made it.

“A cloud of arrows, visible even at that distance, rose to meet the monster, who apparently did not even pause to pluck them from his hide. Great boulders hurled from mangonels were no more to him than a pelting of gravel; the heavy bolts of arbalests, embedded in his flesh, were mere slivers.”
“Nothing could stay his advance. The tiny figures of a company of pikemen, who opposed him with out-thrust weapons, swept from the wall above the eastern gate by a single sidelong blow of the seventy-foot pine that he bore for a cudgel.” ---- Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne

“His head was level with the tower, and his eyes flamed like wells of burning brimstone as he drew near. His lips were parted over stalactitic fangs in a hateful snarl; and he cried out in a voice like the rumbling of articulate thunder: "Ho! Ye puling priests and devotees of a powerless God! Come forth and bow to Nathaire the master, before he sweeps you into limbo!" “ – Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne

The group paled before the enormity of the task. One swat of that tree the monster used for a club would squash a man like a tomato! But armed with courage and firepower, they advanced…
They knew that the Colossus’ backpack contained Nathaire’s apprentices… all necromancers themselves, who could heal Nathaire as quickly as he took damage. Plainly, the first step was to destroy them while the Colossus was distracted. Using spells, they severed the straps and blasted the wizards within. Meanwhile, the knight Navarre, using the Hammer of Hermes, launched himself at the monster’s shoulder, hoping to grab hold and cast his pouch of powder into the monster’s nose!

Didn’t quite work that way. Lacking any practice with the Hammer, he successfully thwacked himself into the monster’s back, and got its attention. The horror turned, and found the remainder of the party barbecuing his pupils!
Scott and Nathan narrowly avoided being hammered flat with the mighty pine club (tokens were spent). Meanwhile, Navarre clambered higher on the monster’s back, using tent pegs to crawl onto the monster’s shoulder… (he can be seen, wearing green armor and green shield, in the picture below; the purple caped figure wielding green fire is Nathan.)

"Draw nearer, Nathaire, if indeed it be you, foul robber of tombs and charnels," he taunted. "Come close, for I would hold speech with you." ---Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus Of Ylourgne

…and it was then that the monster finally realized someone was on his back. He seized Navarre and began to squeeeeeeeze!

Nathan summoned the Hammer of Hermes to his hand! The weapon lay forgotten at the base of the city walls! It leapt to the air, and tore back to its master’s hand…. punching straight through the monster’s thigh! The monster screamed… and began to draw breath…

…and the party flung their pouches of powder into the monster’s face! Scott immediately triggered the spell designed to return the souls of the dead to their stolen bodies – and then, inspired…. Blessed the creature!

The monster stopped. It looked confused. It dropped the near-dead Navarre from a twenty-foot height, doing him no good at all.

“The anger was erased from the mighty, contorted mask, as if from the face of a dead man; the great cudgel fell with a crash to the empty street; and with drowsy, lurching steps, and listless, hanging arms, the giant turned his back to the cathedral and retraced his way through the devastated city."

"He muttered dreamily to himself as he went; and people who heard him swore that the voice was no longer the awful, thunderswollen voice of Nathaire, but the tones and accents of a multitude of men, amid which the voices of certain of the ravished dead were recognizable. And the voice of Nathaire himself, no louder now than in life, was heard at intervals through the manifold mutterings, as if protesting angrily."

"Climbing the eastern wall as it had come, the colossus went to and fro for many hours, no longer wreaking a hellish wrath and rancour, but searching, as people thought, for the various tombs and graves from which the hundreds of bodies that composed it had been so foully reft. From charnel to charnel, from cemetery to cemetery it went, through all the land; but there was no grave anywhere in which the dead colossus could lie down."

"Then, towards evening, men saw it from afar on the red rim of the sky, digging with its hands in the soft, loamy plain beside the river Isoile. There, in a monstrous and self-made grave, the colossus laid itself down, and did not rise again. “ ---- Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne

The adventure ended with a crazed three-day party, the payment of a substantial reward from the grateful populace of Ylourgne, and (as the party was leaving), the apparent construction of a statue of the three of them in the town square… the Saviours of Ylourgne!

“Of Gaspard du Nord, who had been the saviour of the province, it was related that he lived in much honour to a ripe age, being the one sorcerer of that region who at no time incurred the disapprobation of the Church.” – Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/27/the-colossus-of-ylourgne for the whole text of the original story!

The Battle Of Bulette Pass: An Exercise in Group Storytelling

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

TODD THE BARBARIAN, half-orc. Still getting the hang of this "magic axe that comes back when you throw it" thing.

IXCHEL THE MAGE: No armor whatsoever. Eek.

SNIG THE GOBLIN: Why should adventurers have all the fun?

FATHER ANDERSON: Cleric and den mother.

MISER THE MINSTREL: Bard and seduction machine.

MEREDITH: Druid and animal lover. This does not include bulettes.

REDGAR: A fighter. A BIG fighter. A very STRONG fighter. But not a very high LEVEL fighter...

TIZERK OF THE GOLDEN BOW: Elf. Archer. And not present for this session, regrettably.

Part One. The bulette has attacked the group while traveling through the mountain pass out of the Battle of Bones, en route to a treasure site somewhere in the Anauroch Desert. Miser the Minstrel has had the crap beat out of him, and has retreated back into the wagon. Todd the Barbarian has had the crap beat out of him, and is on the ground in front of the wagon, barely alive (behind the bulette).

Yes, Tizerk, your horse is fine.

Meanwhile, Redgar sneaked out of the back of the wagon, flanked the beast, and whacked it a good one, getting its attention. Father Anderson, holding the torch, is seen to the left of the wagon, having had the crap beat out of him, too. Meredith the Druid is visible at far left, using her Bag of Boulders to pelt the beast with mega-sling-stones. Ixchel the Mage is not visible, as he is hidden in the wagon, poking his head and arm out every turn to launch a spell at the monster, then quickly withdrawing to safety.

Part Two. After having the crap beat out of him, Redgar is swallowed whole on a natural twenty. The monster then goes after the source of pain in his left buttock (Father Anderson and Meredith); Anderson is closest, and gets attacked. Ixchel continues to pop out, launch spells, and pop back inside, like a demented Whack-A-Mole that shoots back. It is somewhere around this time that Snig the Goblin is seen, hanging onto the monster’s underbelly and trying to hack through its armor. The group yells at him to get out from under the thing, which he does.
Part Three. The group disperses to raid assorted fast food joints, regrouping a half hour or so later.

Part Four. Snig does a Legolas Maneuver, charging up the monster’s tail onto its back, drops prone, and begins using his daggers as pitons, to move forward onto the monster’s face, closer to its vulnerable eyes. Redgar is taking heavy damage from the monster’s digestive juices and constricting stomach. He solves this by tearing open a bag of caltrops, hoping to give the monster indigestion. This works, but also has the effect of turning the monster’s guts into something resembling a cheese grater, in which Redgar is now being abraded and squeezed to death. Meanwhile, angry and in great pain, the monster attacks Father Anderson, bulldozing Todd and knocking the wagon aside, nearly onto Miser (seen at right). Critically injured, Father Anderson desperately looks for a way out – and notices Todd’s battleaxe, which is still embedded in the monster’s armored forehead…

… and Father Anderson leaps onto the monster’s head, seizing the axe, nearly losing a foot when he uses the thing’s lower lip as a springboard. He is now in one of the few places on the map where the thing cannot bite him… but he’s in deep trouble if it decides to start burrowing again!
Meanwhile, Snig claws his way closer, closer, to the monster’s eye – STRIKES – misses, and promptly fails his reflex save. He’s sliding forward, right toward’s the angry beast’s mouth! Fortunately, Father Anderson is in the way, and his ears provide fine safety handles. He finds himself nose to nose with Anderson, terrifiedly clutching the cleric’s head for dear life. Anderson is just as terrifiedly clutching the axehandle. Redgar, dying, begins frantically kicking the monster’s tonsils around with his heavy boots---

---and Todd, still axeless, charges around behind the monster and whacks it in the butt as hard as he can with his mighty Gauntlet of Fury!

---and the mortally wounded (and VERY nauseous) bulette projectile-vomits Redgar some thirty or forty feet (far right). Redgar takes serious damage from this; imagine a flexible cheese grater suddenly and violently giving birth to a large fully armored fighter, and you’ll have a clue.
The monster collapses, convulsing, dying, heaving its last.

Miser turns and runs towards Redgar, beginning a healing spell under his breath. The monster gags and coughs, one last time. A blast of blood and phlegm, studded with a great many iron caltrops, erupts with the monster’s dying breath.

Miser catches the edge of the moist shotgun-blast, and is knocked ass over teakettle, although his injuries are minor.

Todd, feeling very pleased with himself, roars the Name, to summon his mighty magical axe back to his hand… having completely forgotten the purpose it serves at the moment.

The axe ploughs a trench up the dying monster’s forehead, up and over its back, down its spine, and right at Todd’s face, taking Father Anderson and Snig with it. Todd glances up and sees his axe, with a goblin’s butt poised right above it, screaming right for his face.

Todd blinks twice, and promptly flings himself on his back, using his Uncanny Dodge.

The axe plows into the ground above Todd’s head, stopping cold. The axe haft catches the plummeting Father Anderson in the belly, stunning him badly. He falls on the unfortunate Snig.

And lo, there is much rejoicing.

Left to Right: Todd, Ixchel, Snig, Fr. Anderson, Meredith, Redgar, Miser, and a raccoon.

The OMG post!

I monitor and post on several miniatures related sites. A regular feature of nearly all of these sites is the "OMG I FOUND!" post.

I hate these posts. I hate them somewhat less when they have pictures, but I hate them nonetheless, because they make my heart burn white hot with envy.

These posts often have "OMG" in the title, or in the post itself. They invariably detail some fantastic find on the part of the poster. "OMG," one will say, "I found a copy of First Edition Space Hulk at a garage sale for five bucks! And it still has all the pieces!"

And I seethe. Why couldn't it have been me?

"OMG!" will cry another. "I was at Goodwill, and I found a second edition boxed Talisman set, with all the plastic minis, and the first two expansion sets included, for ten bucks!"

Hiss, I hiss. May your offspring be born one-eyed mutants.

But I understand why they do what they do and howl like they howl. Game geeks LIVE for finds like this. Awesome stuff from yesteryear that we should have bought while we had the chance... but didn't, for one reason or another. Or worse, we HAD it, but we loaned it out... or sold it... or it just vanished during a move... or something. And now, here it is, a bit scuffed, but no worse than it would have been in my closet, at the Salvation Army for a buck. Who wouldn't crow over a find like this?

Today, it's my turn.


I did not buy Battle Masters when it came out. I was poorer then than now, and since it was available at Wal-Mart, of all places, it never occurred to me that it might perhaps not be there if I waited too long. So I waited too long, I was a responsible adult, I paid my bills, and the chance came and went. Sigh.

Many times since then, I wished I'd been more impulsive and perhaps a week late with the rent. Battle Masters was the mass market version of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, released by Milton Bradley, but with 100-odd miniatures made by our old friends at Games Workshop/Citadel Miniatures, suitable for any number of fantasy skirmish games or RPGs. For twenty bucks! What, I couldn't spare twenty bucks? IDIOT! (whacks self on head repeatedly).

From time to time, I would encounter some of the plastic miniatures. A friend once gave me a handful of orcs he found at a garage sale, and I'm not sure how I came across the ogre, but I got him somewhere.

But I never so much as saw the box again. Except on line, of course. Ebay, Amazon, and other dealers in new and used dreams. They want HOW much? Eeesh. And that doesn't even include SHIPPING?


Until today.

Wife and I went Rumpusing, which is a strange and arcane ritual we undertake periodically when we have a couple bucks and life is dull. It involves eating out at a restaurant we don't normally patronize, and then going and poking our noses into places like used book stores, consignment stores, garage sales, antique stores... anywhere the merch is likely to be varied, eclectic, and unpredictable.

Oh, yeah, and preferably cheap.

Who knows? We've found quite a bit of furniture that way, and sometimes I find toys I can kitbash, or -- glory of glories! -- a gently used game I can restore. Found a milk crate full of Car Wars books and maps and stuff, once, for five bucks!

But today... today was magic.

After a leisurely browse at a really good used book store, we noticed a resale store downtown, one that had to be FAIRLY new -- we'd never seen it before. So we stopped to look. And at this resale store, amidst longboxes of old X-Men and vintage loose Star Wars figures carefully locked in little transparent card boxes for ten bucks each ... sat a copy of Battle Masters.

I snatched it up. It was heavy. Heavy enough? It's been twenty years. How likely is it that all the parts are in there? It was taped shut, so I couldn't check. I looked it over. Box was a LITTLE rough -- it had obviously spent many years on a closet shelf or in the garage. Still, what's a few scuffs on the box? I turned it over. It wasn't priced. I took it to the clerk and asked "How much is this?"

"I don't know," she said. "We just bought that from a walk-in, a couple days ago. Let me go and see if it's entered in inventory, yet." And she did. And she (rrarrgh!) checked it on Ebay as well, to get a clue as to value and price. On the other hand, she also plainly wanted to move the merch, as opposed to stand on the awesome value of the find. She quoted me a price.

I stopped and thought. It wasn't a bad price, but it was way above what I would have liked to have paid. This was a resale store, after all. Then again, it was hella cheaper than any price I'd seen online. "Can I have a look in the box, make sure all the pieces are in there?" I said, ready to stick my nose in the air and take a hike if she said no.

She looked around, found a knife, cut the tape, and opened the box.


The box was full. There didn't seem to be any loose pieces. Everything seemed... to still be on the sprues!!!

I looked closer.

The movement trays were still in the baggie. The DICE were still wrapped. NOTHING was punched off the sprues. The counters were still in the cardboard.

My mind about shorted out on me. The rubber bands around the cards were ancient, and about ready to break. Every card, sticker, token, counter, EVERYTHING, was... untouched. The game had been purchased... but never played.

Becca picked up some bumper stickers, and I agreed the deal was good. We paid, and after more rumpusing, went home, where I unpacked my treasures on the dinner table. Mighod, I'd never realized how MANY miniatures came with this thing! You could put together a whole Warhammer army -- no, TWO armies, Orcs and Empire, out of this box! What, a plastic KEEP comes with it?


I spread things out on the table to get a better look.

And I marveled. Man, there didn't seem to be any END to this game. Well, they did say "more than a hundred miniatures," right there on the box...

I gloated and reveled in my find. Wow. Did I dare pop anything off the sprues? I mean, it's practically MINT... and it's MINE!

But, then, I should have known. The omens were right. The signs were there. Earlier, at the used book store, I'd found a book I didn't even know EXISTED, based on one of the more hilariously twisted movies I've ever seen. And this should have tipped me off, right there.





Any day you run across the novelization of the only movie Sean Connery has ever starred in while wearing a diaper, you HAVE to know that as far as miniatures go, this day is going to be SPECIAL...

ReaperCon, Part 4

Sandra Garrity again, demonstrating the uses of the Dremel. I felt redeemed for years of being looked down on by people who use pin vices... So... where'd the copy of "Dungeons and Dragons, Original Basic" come from? And how much did it go for at auction?

"My preciousssss......" Michael contemplates his Boneyard treasures Saturday night at the hotel...

ReaperBryan meets two other ReaperBryans.

Bryan probably thought I was kidding when I said I wanted to buy some of the ReaperBryan miniatures. I wasn't. "Generic twentieth century guy without a gun" miniatures are actually kind of hard to come by, and one of my votes for "Chronoscope Figures I'd Like To See" was for "generic gamer dude." Admittedly, Bryan ain't bald or fat enough to make a good Dr. Bedlam conversion, but with time and effort... (and hey, I DID learn some neat tricks from Sandra Garrity...)

ReaperCon Part 3

Sandra Garrity at a conversion class. She made manhandling the Green Stuff look so easy, I wanted to cry. Since I did not, I learned a thing or two... Upstairs in the Artists Room. Beautiful work and use of color and light. Things like this make me despair that I didn't think of 'em... and inspire me to do better.

I have no idea what kind of game this was, but I kind of wished I'd stopped to play it.

Does EVERY hotel in the DFW area have Texas-shaped waffle makers? Someone's making a mint, selling these waffle makers.

Open painting, again. Man, I could just LIVE here...

ReaperCon '10 Part Two

And so, we arrived at ReaperCon.

This is my second year to attend ReaperCon, and I think it's a fine con for a guy my age. It's about the minis and the games, not so much about "how much money can we extract from the paying public?"


The speed crawl. The object: To hunt and kill a dragon in the surroundings shown, using 4E rules. They were paying bounties in ReaperBucks, usable in the auction at the end of the con. I would have loved to play, but I was afraid I'd infect the other players with whatever variety of creeping crud I seem to have this year...

The Zombie Crawl: where one must deal with the Zombie Apocalypse in a scale model of the Reaper facility, complete with models representative of the Reaper employees. I can't help but think Reaper must be a hell of a place to work, where they have to deal with things like this. Where's OSHA when you need it?

Now, THAT's a dungeon crawl!

Other cons have "open gaming." Reaper has "open painting..."

ReaperCon '10 Part One

Part One: The Trip Getting to ReaperCon this year took the usual four and a half hours. We passed the time in conversation and stopping to observe the usual bizarre things we found along the way...

Near Waxahachie, as many Texans know, are a variety of odd structures visible from the road. This was the first time I'd noticed the starship, though...
Standard Starfleet design, although I notice it lacks a registration number. What the hell?

Plainly visible from the highway, the signs below the nacelles promise food, fun and games... so we stopped to check it out! Regrettably, whatever business was there had closed quite some time ago; there's a tiny flea market going on in their parking lot on weekends, now. So we said the heck with it and went to one of the few remaining Stuckey's in Texas. While they no longer carry the ancient and beloved rubber doggy doodle, giant plastic houseflies, and so forth, they do still have their excellent pecan candy and fondant. Even if they have to share a building with a McDonald's, a Grandy's, and the only hotel in Italy, Texas...
To Be Continued....