Painflail Quest: a Mörk Borg Dungeon Crawl

[tikitang]

After drifting about aimlessly for a while I've settled onto a new project for the remainder of the year: Painflail Quest!

Painflail Quest is a module written for the TTRPG Mörk Borg which distills the open-ended role-playing experience into a grid-based miniatures dungeon-crawl—more akin to a board game—with exact rules to cover every aspect of movement, initiative, room content generation and combat.

Think of Painflail Quest being to Mörk Borg what Advanced Hero Quest is to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

Painflail Quest takes all the monsters from the core MB rulebook and has them as potential denizens for randomly-generated dungeons. My goal in this project is to find suitable miniatures to represent them all.

While I'm aware that Westfalia Miniatures have made a series of official MB miniatures, they're not to my tastes and likewise with the Faces of the Dying World series by Flesh of Gods. I prefer old-school miniatures from the 80s and 90s (and their modern-day kin), and so that's what I'm doing here.

First up, and probably because it's the easiest to paint, is the creature called the Grotesque (a gargoyle by another name):




(image from the Mörk Borg rulebook)


This is a Ral Partha gargoyle perched atop a mound-shaped metal base designed for a 54mm La Fortezza figure, supplemented with sand and glued to a 50mm x 4mm round base, with a Reaper Miniatures skull for decoration. The tail has been extended with the use of a Heresy Miniatures Minor Fallen One's tail.

While I wasn't able to replicate the canine snout (and I didn't want to try in case I ruined it), I'm pretty happy with this representation and think it captures the general spirit of the Johan Nohr artwork sufficiently.

More miniatures will be joining the project shortly, but as ever my painting is glacial-paced and ever-beset by real-life commitments!

[Daeothar]

Nice; that represents the artwork really well I'd say

I must agree with your view on the MB miniatures and overall style; I never warmed up to it either. But I think this has partially to do with the fact that the first (demo) game I saw of the system was on very stylized terrain (with bright (mostly yellow) colours starkly contrasting with black, and this shaped my view of the game as 'not for me'.

Also; I'm not in the market for yet another (dark) fantasy skirmish game, so I never really familiarized myself further.

How many monsters are there in the Mork Borg bestiary?

[tikitang]

Nice; that represents the artwork really well I'd say

Thanks!

How many monsters are there in the Mork Borg bestiary?

In the core book there are twelve, but there's a few additional ones included in the example adventure (included in the book) called 'Rotblack Sludge'. Painflail Quest makes use of all of these, so there's a 2d12 table to generate monsters for the dungeon.

[Hobgoblin]

Looks great!

I think capturing the spirit of the illustrations is a much better approach than trying to replicate the image exactly. Nicely done here!

[Sleepy Snoozy Skeletons]

You definitely caught the vibe of the illustration I'd say.

Looking forward to seeing more

[Kanto]

Your painting and choice of mini (not to forget conversions) fit really nicely with the artwork and its mood. Well done.
What a cool, simple little mini that is. While I do like the style of artwork of Mörk Borg I find the official miniatures a bit too much, so what you're going for here sounds interesting.

[tjgreenway]

Wonderful work on the gargoyle, really nailed the Mork Borg feel.

I'll be following this thread closely as I'm currently assembling warbands and building up a monster stash for a similar project - I'll be playing Forbidden Psalm, the skirmish wargame based on MB, mostly using my collection of 80s goodies from Asgard, Citadel, RP etc. Keen to see which figures you opt for for some of the entries 

I also now need to go and track down Painflail Quest as it sounds like it'd be right up my alley too 

[tikitang]

Thank you all for the kind compliments!

Next up is a Wraith!



In the Mörk Borg rulebook, the image used to represent the Wraith is not an original piece of art by Johan Nohr, but instead this piece of public domain art, created by Harry Clarke in 1919 for a collection of Edgar Allan Poe tales.

The miniature I chose to represent this monster is primarily an EM4 Wraith, which is just a floating robe. To try and bring out some of the 'busyness' of the Clarke image, I wanted to add some more elements to it. Most important of all was a skull, arguably the focal point of the Clarke piece, so I used a Reaper Miniatures skull which I heavily filed around the back and sides to fit inside the hood. The Wraith's primary weapon is a stat-draining touch. To emphasise this, I wanted an outstretched hand. For that I used the forearm of a Eureka Miniatures skeleton. The other hand is a closed skeletal fist, taken from a Forlorn Hope (so, Grenadier?) skeleton. The chains are made from flexible resin and wire, available from Zinge Industries. I added them for three reasons: firstly because I had them spare! Secondly because I wanted to add more overall 'noise' to the model, to reflect the tangle of visual textures in the Clarke image. And thirdly because I had the ghost of Jacob Marley in mind when I was trying to visualise what this piece should look like! I like the idea of restless spirits being bound to haunt the mortal world by the fetters of their sins. Finally, I glued the whole thing to a 25mm x 4mm base.

I couldn't decide whether to paint this like a Nazgûl, with an apparently tangible black robe and metallic chains, or more like a spirit in the traditional pale blue/green commonly used for such things in miniature-painting. In the end, as the creature is described in the book as being comprised of 'ectoplasm', I went for the latter. This was my first time attempting to paint a ghost, so it was something of an experiment for me, but I'm pretty happy with the result.

[Hobgoblin]

Looks great! Really clever conversion, too.

[Gibby]

It looks fantastic! Or phantastic! The conversion work is top notch, really evocative of the artwork and it fits the MB atmosphere perfectly. Nice one!

[Little Odo]

That is a great job on the conversion and some really nice painting

[Kanto]

Very nice looking wraith. Conversion really gives it feel of motion, more points of interest to look at and brings it... alive?
Also liking how you painted it; not with extremely bright final highlights but more dark and dingy looking, again keeping with atmosphere of Mörk Borg. Good job!

Can imagine this wraith appearing from the mist and with a thin, distant voice shriek out the words: "Pleased to meet you mister, may I shake your hand?"

[tikitang]

Thanks all!

Also liking how you painted it; not with extremely bright final highlights but more dark and dingy looking, again keeping with atmosphere of Mörk Borg. Good job!

I have to admit, this is just my regular painting style: drybrushing (in this case, multi-layered) with a final ink wash to 'bring it all together' as a friend described it. Fairly basic and not requiring fine skill. As a consequence, I suspect most of my work is too dingy for most people's tastes, but with MB I think the method actually works, owing to the grim and decaying atmosphere of the game world.

Can imagine this wraith appearing from the mist and with a thin, distant voice shriek out the words: "Pleased to meet you mister, may I shake your hand?"

Ha! Yes, the handshake gesture wasn't lost on me, but I figured it was the best position to place it to enable people to actually see the outstretched fingers from this angle. It doesn't quite have the grasping menace that it would if it were turned around 45° to his left, but then again perhaps the tragic and tortured nature of the Wraith is that he really does just crave some simple physical connection with another living being—a mere handshake—but alas, all he does is drain life and energy in the attempt, resulting in his being attacked or fled from!

Wraiths in MB are said to be completely silent though, so no shrieks or even rattle of chains can be heard as they approach!

[Kanto]

I have to admit, this is just my regular painting style: drybrushing (in this case, multi-layered) with a final ink wash to 'bring it all together' as a friend described it. Fairly basic and not requiring fine skill. As a consequence, I suspect most of my work is too dingy for most people's tastes, but with MB I think the method actually works, owing to the grim and decaying atmosphere of the game world.

Hey, it works so compliments are earned.
To me, it's the shading and in general darker look compared to how people usually seem to paint ghosts that sets this one apart from them.
I thought you might have used oil paints instead of inks, but it's not really techniques used but how results end up looking that matter.

Ha! Yes, the handshake gesture wasn't lost on me, but I figured it was the best position to place it to enable people to actually see the outstretched fingers from this angle. It doesn't quite have the grasping menace that it would if it were turned around 45° to his left, but then again perhaps the tragic and tortured nature of the Wraith is that he really does just crave some simple physical connection with another living being—a mere handshake—but alas, all he does is drain life and energy in the attempt, resulting in his being attacked or fled from!

Dang, love how that turned into tragic backstory for this poor wraith!
Pose actually makes this one different from any old wraith and, I'd imagine, more memorable to encounter - "Hey, remember that game old Handshakes nearly got us just when we thought we were in the clear?"
'Shaking hands with Death' also has poetic ring to it, though probably something adventurers in dungeon crawl would rather avoid.

Wraiths in MB are said to be completely silent though, so no shrieks or even rattle of chains can be heard as they approach!

Aww, that's disappointing. Then again, maybe that is what he'd shriek out if he could? Seriously though, completely silent enemies might be most horrifying - can't even hear them coming at you!

[tikitang]

Next up is an Earthbound!



In Mörk Borg, Earthbound are not 'monsters' as such, but 'outcasts': one of four creature-types in the Dying World who are considered rejects of society and usually available to hire as followers.

However, in Painflail Quest they've been merged into the same 2d12 monster table along with every other non-PC creature in the MB rulebook. They're sub-humans that have been tainted with 1/4 canine blood. How this manifests isn't 100% clear, but the Johan Nohr image has a rather dog-like face:



They're considered "foul, diseased and disloyal" but the "isolation and contempt" they're forced to live in has made them "self-reliant scavengers". They typically wear leather armour and are armed with femur bones.

The model I chose is an Alternative Armies 'Dogman Elite', but I replaced his sword with a Reaper femur. I painted his face to resemble that of a Rottweiler, to enhance the aggressive, snarling expression he wears and to ensure he is definitely seen as a cynocephalus rather than a lycanthrope or a gnoll!

The pink mohawk is a nod to the MB palette employed throughout the rulebook, as well as a nod to the 'punk' aesthetic that might be adopted by social outcasts such as these.