[Twilight Terrain] Home of Nisk

[grubman]

Replaced the “tree” I wasn’t satisfied with.  I’m much happier with the new look (although I see I need to touch up a little paint).  Much less like the “diorama” I mentioned before IMHO.

[grubman]

More Ruins…or the big CHEAT!

OK, I know terrain building purists will probably call me a cheese-master, but I saw this aquarium piece at the local dept. store for $8 and saw the potential.

[commissarmoody]

they work for me

[grubman]

Feral Camp

I was on the Forum of Doom this morning and read this little blurb by Mike Thorp, the mastermind behind Twilight:

“The Ferals believe in spirits that keep an eye on them - symbols carved in stones and filled with phosphorescent paint follow their routes.”

This inspired me to make another terrain piece for my game.  I figured since I wouldn’t be doing many more, I’d go ahead and make a sort of step-by-step so interested people can see the kind of crap I do.

At first, I was just going to make a rock with some carvings in.  Then I got all motivated (stupid) and decided to make a little Feral camp with a lean-to (I assume they are sort of nomads). 

So I went about looking for junk to build this with.



First thing was to cut a base out of hardboard and sand it down.  Then I found a scrap chunk of Styrofoam (thank goodness we just purchased a new vacuum cleaner and I had some packing material) for the big rock,  Next, a few stones out of the driveway.  For the lean-to I had some bass wood sticks in my pile.  No animals were hurt (other than their feelings) but, for the leather top I stole a chunk off of my dog’s tattered blanket and for a fur bedroll I stole one of my cats many toys.  In the garage I found a few nails and picture frame wire.  An electric cap and a screw just might be turned into something (?).



First thing first was to carve the main rock out of the chunk of Styrofoam using a hot knife.  Next, I arranged these with some stones to form the back wall with the runes and the fire pit.  Glued it all with old reliable Elmer’s glue.



A quick paint job with some drybrushing and the base is ready to go.



Now to the hard part.  Most of the things I did on the lean-to were experimental, so I fully expected it to turn out like shit.  Fortunately that didn’t happen…well, in my opinion anyway .



I assembled my bits, cut the cloth and cat toy fur to the right size, and forced the screw into the top of the electric cap (filling the Philips head).  I also cut some basswood sticks for the lean-to’s frame.  I cut the wire to about the right size, and rolled one up for a rope.



I saturated the fur in inkwash (not sure how that would turn out).  I knew I was going to want to paint and drybrush the “leather” so I saturated the cloth in Elmer’s glue and let that dry with the frame glued to it as well.



When the lean-to top was dry (with a little help from the hair dryer) I went ahead and painted it, and assembled the lean-to (not an easy task, let me tell you!  The darn thing kept falling over and had to be tweaked a bunch of times before I got it together right.

Then I painted up the remaining lean-to parts (the rope, spikes, ect.) and flocked up the base with my special mix (OK it’s only static grass and earth blend flock…but the static grass is special all the way from Germany).



I finished up the fur by drybrushing it a bit and actually got a pretty good look.  I stained a few scraps of balsa wood I carved up for firewood, and made a spear out of a carved basswood stick and the tip of a spear from a Mageknight Gnoll figure. 



I painted up the water jug with some paint with a little bit of sand in it and the drybrushed it.  It was then that I realized how HUGE it was, probably towering over a Furarniii.  I was going to just scrap it, then I got this image of a Baruk carrying these huge jugs across the Argoran Wastes.  I decided it was a cool idea, so kept it.



Then it was simply a matter of adding some plants and bushes and arranging the bits, and tadaah…

[Hauptgefreiter]

Cool! Great work! 

[grubman]

Well, my 4 day weekend is over…here’s what I have to show for it.  Not to shabby if I say so myself.  I doubt if I’ll use all this terrain in an individual scenario, but this shows how it looks together.

Looks like I’ll still need some water, perhaps a creek and a pond or swamp…we’ll see how long it takes for my miniatures to get here, and how bored I get in the interim.

[cheetor]

Well, my 4 day weekend is over…here’s what I have to show for it.  Not to shabby if I say so myself. 

That table looks great, very consistent. Thats the big advantage of making a whole lot of stuff in a short period, rather than building it up gradually over years I suppose.

It also looks very practical to play on and easy to store (in so far as terrain is ever easy to store...)
Nice work.  I am looking forward to seeing what you do with the Twilight forces

[Gluteus Maximus]

I've no idea what's going on with the background to your game, but the terrain is superb and looks genuinely "alien".

I'll have to do some googling for "Twilight" and see what it's all about 

[Gluteus Maximus]

Well, it's obviously not about teen vampires, so I'll have to dig a bit deeper 

(edit) Oh, I see, it's that cool new range of bizarre aliens from Hasslefree.

Great stuff!