The Nefarious Schemes of One Fram Framson (update 6/2 - Awooga)

[FramFramson]

Hooray!

[FramFramson]

Still plodding along with the painting. Almost have enough sacrificial victims... er, uh, I mean test subjects to tempt fate with the varnish gods.

In the meantime, I finished the backstory for another league, my Russians The Special Support Battalion of the 88th Technical Rifle Division, a.k.a. The Bogatyrs. Like any good Russian story, it's overwrought and far too long.

There is no 88th Technical Rifle Division, but paperwork in a dusty Kremlin filing cabinet describes a support battallion of unrecorded purpose and strange requirements for just such a division. None of the unit's members - all seconded from elsewhere - are sure which generals are aware of their existence or who is is that sends the cryptic, irregular orders that always find them, no matter where they are. Only grandmother Muromets seems to have any idea as to the unit's true purpose.

Google doc: The Bogatyrs

Also, for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogatyr

Not all my leagues will get fully fleshed-out backstories, in fact I expect most won't (cultists, gangs of thugs, my own version of a Tintin league, etc.). I'd prefer to spend hobby time painting or making terrain and let games tell the story, but I may do one or two more - albeit not so bloody long!

[Mad Lord Snapcase]

FramFramson,

I have just read through the Bogatyrs, it's brilliant! Now I can't wait to see this league, particularly Ekaterina Mikhailovna Nikitich.

Like any good Russian story, it's overwrought and far too long.

Actually, I didn't find it too long at all, a very evocative back story, I think and very intriguing. I followed the Wiki link and have been Googling Viktor Vasnetsov, some very interesting paintings. Are the paintings part of your inspiration?

[FramFramson]

Vasnetsov does have some very evocative work and I like his style. Reminds me in some ways of other artists like the Pre-Raphaelites or Arthur Rackham as being part of a popular wave of art in the mid-Victorian era that was associated with a general rise in interest in medieval legends and fairy-stories at the time.

As for Major Nikitich, I picked a rocket girl simply to use a fantastic figure made by Studio McVey (most of my leagues start out with the scientific approach of "Geez this figure looks cool. How can I use him/her/it?"). The Bogatyrs gave me the family name and the first name came from the Katyusha rocket launchers used by the Russians in WWII:

Because they were marked with the letter K (for Voronezh Komintern Factory), Red Army troops adopted a nickname from Mikhail Isakovsky's popular wartime song, "Katyusha", about a girl longing for her absent beloved, who has gone away on military service.[4] Katyusha is the Russian equivalent of Katie, an endearing diminutive form of the name Katherine: Yekaterina →Katya →Katyusha.

I mean really, if I was going to make a Russian rocket girl, there was no other name to use. Maybe we will discover that there was actually another origin for the wartime name

[Mad Lord Snapcase]

"Geez this figure looks cool. How can I use him/her/it?"

I'm very familiar with this branch of science, being an adherent myself! Yekaterina, Katya, Katyusha Jetgirl will look superb in a Pulp game. Is Mrs Donerwetter  on her way to Russia?

[FramFramson]

Possibly!

I have a pitifully woeful lack of terrain, which will constrain our choice of planetary venue for a while. The wilds of Russia may turn out to be one of my few options to get things rolling ealier rather than later.

[d phipps]

A wonderful read! 

If you ever land in OKC, the following passage perfectly describes the arduous jouney north to our secret volcano lair, a couple blocks from downtown Enid, Oklahoma...

"We passed a few small villages whose inhabitants had little for us besides curiosity, but after a week we
saw no other humans, continuing along nothing more than a thin trapper’s track, straying haphazardly
northward. Now the mules proved their worth, where horses would have had a much tougher time of
things."

[FramFramson]

 

As for the story, I was basically trying to go for that old Lovecraft angle of "Scientist who gradually finds themselves out of their depth."

Uh, only with a Russian flavour and without the traditional Lovecraft "fail your SAN check" bit at the end. 

[Amalric]

....most of my leagues start out with the scientific approach of "Geez this figure looks cool. How can I use him/her/it?"....

So I'm not the only one who uses this approach huh? 

Fun stuff, please keep it coming!

[FramFramson]

Just applied gloss varnish to 31 figures (no, not using ALL of them for the first game, ). Now I get to pray I didn't just ruin 'em all!   Wish me luck... 

[Mason]

Looking forward to seeing the results.
 

[FramFramson]

Will absolutely be posting pics once they've got the matte coat and base flock/tufts on.

It's four leagues plus a whole carload of extras to be used as league filler/backup/plot points/etc. Well, five leagues, really (there's a brace of generic thugs and toughs who'll probably be lumped together a lot of the time).

Oh, and a 76mm field gun. 

[d phipps]

Just applied gloss varnish to 31 figures (no, not using ALL of them for the first game, ). Now I get to pray I didn't just ruin 'em all!   Wish me luck... 

YIKES! Good luck. 

[Mad Lord Snapcase]

Will absolutely be posting pics once they've got the matte coat and base flock/tufts on.

It's four leagues plus a whole carload of extras to be used as league filler/backup/plot points/etc. Well, five leagues, really (there's a brace of generic thugs and toughs who'll probably be lumped together a lot of the time).

Oh, and a 76mm field gun. 

Really looking forward to seeing these photos. The 'sneak peek' I had, showed some beautiful miniatures painted to a very high standard and I loved the back-story. This is going to be great, hope the varnishing went OK?

[FramFramson]

Gloss looks fine... 8 hours later and no frosting. Guess we'll see how they look after I do the matte coat tomorrow night!

In the meantime, here's a small teaser: