Ladders from the sky?

[Tom Reed]

I am working on a Pulp game for my local con at the end of the month. The premise is a lot of factions fighting on a "sky fortress", for possession/destruction of a giant ray gun. I want the Sky Pirates to drop onto the fortress from their dirigible which is hovering overhead. To facilitate this I want to simulate a ladder dropping out of a cloud onto the fortress. I know that I have seen this done before but i don't remember how it was done. I will also build a "platform" suspended by a cable, that the ray gun can be loaded onto.

[DD-Chris]

i would do 2 metal coathanger wire wrapped in string and covered in watered down white glue as the outer 'rope' and then string rope 'stairs' between the 2.
I had built one of these about 3 years ago, and have since misplaced it, so sorry no pictures.
On top of the coathanger rope, i placed a piece of plasticard covered in the fake snow cotton like stuff and given a mist of grey spray paint.

[Tom Reed]

Ah, excellent! I knew if I asked here that someone would have either done something similar or would have a good idea of how to accomplish this. Thanks a lot!

[Wirelizard]

I did one of these a couple of years ago. (my original build thread is here)

Mine's about 7 or so inches tall, with two pieces of steel piano wire as the verticals, greenstuff for the rope rungs, and instead of a cloud, I did a strip of girder across the top, to suggest the hatchway of an airship. The base is a 1.5" washer, and the final version had a boulder and tuft of grass hiding the ends of the steel wire near the ground.



Not the best photo, but it should give you an idea. It's a fun piece, it's served as a spawn point for sky pirates in several games now and always gets comments!