Showing posts with label Dollar store. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dollar store. Show all posts

Friday, April 21, 2023

Gronk

"Look, if you put your teddy bear at the bottom of the bag you're just going to have to wait until we stop to get it out."



Number Appearing:  1 to lots

Size: Giraffe

Armor: Pack saddle

Resilience: As large herd beast

Intelligence: Questionable

Communication: "Gronk!"

Disposition: Domesticated

Violence: Variations of "trample"

Enemies:  Large predators, bandits, gopher holes

Aims:  Keep moving forward

Peculiarities: Dwarf sauropods are peculiar in the same way as jumbo shrimp

Treasure: As caravan

"Picked 'em up in Damascene.  Salt was cheap and almonds were dear and we needed extra beasts to haul it all home.  The man that sold them to us said that the merchant he acquired them from claimed they were from somewhere around Akka Arrh, but that doesn't make any sense.  That place has been lost for centuries, if it ever existed."

Gronks are "dwarf" sauropods used as beasts of burden.  They're fairly unusual outside their home range of "not here".

Format cheerfully swiped from They Stalk the Underworld

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Mreen

Original recipe next to very mild conversion.


"We're not sure about the new guy."
25mm Ouvre-boĆ®te (MegaMiniatures OOP), Cheap Chinese knock-off of Bandai "Gouf" (Rhode Island Novelty Company "Battle Space Robot"), Reaper Bones 77047 Goldar the Barbarian
Number Appearing: Never more than 4, usually just one, probably no more than a dozen exist at all

Size:  Ten feet tall and bullet-proof

Armor:  Nth generation self-repairing variable-albedo laminate

Resilience: That which does not kill them makes them stronger.

Intelligence:  Artificial

Communication:  Abrupt and lacking in tact.

Disposition:  Militant

Violence:  In spades.  Also *with* spades.

Enemies:  All who hinder the completion of their mission.

Aims:  Return the Crown Princess to the Capitol for Coronation.  There are unforeseen transportation issues.

Peculiarities:  Might be sort of dead.  Doesn't slow them down much.

Treasure:  Owed a budget-annihilating level of back pay.
Format cheerfully swiped from They Stalk the Underworld


Children are told ridiculous tales for their amusement about silly creatures known as the Mreen (one of the quirkier aspects is that the word "Mreen" is always capitalized).  Absurd constructs with necks of leather and jars for heads, a bizarre code of honor (including an annual requirement for cake), and what seems, at first glance, to be a decided lack of critical thinking skills.  Many of the tales are about a Mreen named Privet Shmucktelly and his hilarious misunderstandings and mishaps with assorted magical tools ("Privet Shmucktelly and the box of Grid Squares" is a perennial favorite).  These aren't like those creatures of legend.  They are the self-same creatures - older, possibly wiser, and definitely free of tale-tellers' distortions.  They are the surviving(?) Marine Contingent of the Imperial Cruiser Pandora, and they have been on duty for a very long time.

On the Island of Knossos, there is only one suitable place for boats to make landfall, inside a natural harbor on the southern side.  On the wall of the harbor is a message, carved in the stone of the cliff in characters a yard high and a hand deep, and rendered with precision that would not be credible if it were not also demonstrable.  The characters are readable to any scholar, over four hundred years old, and don't make much sense.  They are a distance, a direction, a date in the near future, and twelve words that most scholars assume to be names.  They are directions to find where the escape pod containing the Crown Princess will make landfall due to orbital decay.  That's when the trouble starts.  As Presumptive Empress, the Crown Princess can override any and all military orders and directives.

The Marines are trapped in their suits due to a Coronation Directive.  The suit AI is to keep them on duty until they can deliver their charge to the place of coronation or are relieved by an appropriately sized force of body guards.  The previous record for being under Coronation Directive is 273 hours.  Pandora's Leathernecks have been on duty for over 423 years.  Between their advanced age, suit AI, nanotech repairs to their failing bodies, and the fact that nobody has opened a suit in centuries, even the Marines aren't entirely certain if they're still alive in a strictly biological sense.  It doesn't matter.  What does matter are the factors that hamstring their mission: namely the need to barracks lawyer the suit AI to get anything done, and reliance on field expedient power supplies.  The first is what's kept them from building an empire and starting a space program (Coronation Directive is intended to be a short term emergency protocol).  The second is why they ride in wagons or on boats and whack hostiles with shovels instead of accelerated particles.  It's also why they sometimes take up causes with locals that can get them necessary supplies.



The outlaw Sergei d'Gisbourne was judged to be dangerous enough to require several Mreen for his extraction from Quaker Tower.  He ended up leaving through an arrow slit - involuntarily. 

Friday, December 29, 2017

A Bit of Culture (it grows on you)

"William", courtesy of The Met
This is a 3,800-year-old knick-knack from an Egyptian tomb. Over the last hundred years, it's become a mascot of sorts for The Met.  If you take a close look at the lotus markings, they're really just made out of triangles and dots.

Painting by Charles R. Knight
These things said "Hong Kong" when I was a kid.



Uintatheriums are a somewhat odd extinct mammal.  The tusks give them a certain resemblance to hippos (they're not meaningfully related to any modern mammal).  Uintatheriums started popping up in bags of chinasaurs around the time that Gary Gygax was playing with other cheap plastic critters in his basement, but never got turned into anything iconic, D&D-wise.

Reaper 77144: Mummy for scale.

This sort of thing is what happens when I play with cheap plastic critters in my man-cave.  Acrylic paint, an alcohol pen, and a paperclip used to wire him to the Magic-Sculpt base.  The biggest time consumption came from the cleanup stage - the molds have not aged well.  One big advantage over doing this in the '70s is that I can pull up a 3-d view of the original hippo's markings while I've got the pen in hand.  He's deliberately glossy because "William" was originally glazed with blue glass.  He seems to be perfectly serviceable as a statue, living construct, or magical critter.  I kind of picture him as an immobile oracle that speaks with a lisp due to the tusks.



Friday, March 11, 2016

The Immortal Heroes of Summat

There's a Frostgrave scenario with statues that these might be handy for.
I bought a bag of 2" "Army Man" knights.  Painting one of each pose as statues leaves me with 30 more for whatever nefarious purpose strikes my fancy.  Mostly attempting to rehabilitate my fine motor skills, truth be told.  I'm not really up to painting 25mm figures again just yet.  Raw Umber damp brushed with Robin's Egg Blue drybrushed with Seafoam Green yields a reasonable facsimile of a patina on bronze.

 Normally I don't like cast on shield heraldry, but the drybrushing works pretty well with these to bring out the designs.

Larger than life, but not into colossus territory.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Kitten Sphinx

The Lady in Red is confronted by a dessicated guardian by moonlight.  "Come back when we're open..."
So I picked this up from Goodwill for a couple of bucks while She Who Must Be Obeyed was foraging for handbag parts.  It was covered in white texture paint, the occasional brush bristle, and appropriately enough, cat hair.  I gave it a sandstone paintjob in homage to the ruins of the Kitten Kingdom from Epic Battle Fantasy 3, starting with a medium brown and drybrushing 3 subsequently more beige shades with a larger-than-usual brush.  Sealed with Ceramcoat Matte Interior Varnish.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Stone Lions

 So I went to the dollar store to buy toys again.  The thing about dollar store toys is that they often weren't schlock before the production team's bean counters got a crack at them.  This tigger appears to be a direct casting of a 3-up wax sculpture intended for a pantograph.  At a guess.  Added a beard and tail tuft before I remembered the camera.
 Covering up that nasty join line at the neck.  Using a foil filler because Magic Sculpt ain't cheap.
 Magic Sculpt mane.  Basically do a pattern of flowing locks, then add the grain.
 Looks a lot more like a lion with the stripes covered.  Folk Art "Wrought Iron" for the base coat.
 Finished painting using the same technique as the stone columns.

"Grr.  Aargh."

Fang and Claw, guardians of the Gate of Sorrows

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Idol of the The Keeper of Portals

So Dollar Tree had "Monsters, Inc." figurines.  I figured it was worth a buck to give the group a giggle, although the technique would be entirely valid if I'd wanted to throw Cthulhu or something on top of the juice lid.  If I had it to do over I would have put a fake emerald where his iris goes, because Edwardian doggerel is fun:

The Green Eye of the Yellow God

by J. Milton Hayes

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

He was known as "Mad Carew" by the subs at Khatmandu,
He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell;
But for all his foolish pranks, he was worshipped in the ranks,
And the Colonel's daughter smiled on him as well.

He had loved her all along, with a passion of the strong,
The fact that she loved him was plain to all.
She was nearly twenty-one and arrangements had begun
To celebrate her birthday with a ball.

He wrote to ask what present she would like from Mad Carew;
They met next day as he dismissed a squad;
And jestingly she told him then that nothing else would do
But the green eye of the little Yellow God.

On the night before the dance, Mad Carew seemed in a trance,
And they chaffed him as they puffed at their cigars:
But for once he failed to smile, and he sat alone awhile,
Then went out into the night beneath the stars.

He returned before the dawn, with his shirt and tunic torn,
And a gash across his temple dripping red;
He was patched up right away, and he slept through all the day,
And the Colonel's daughter watched beside his bed.

He woke at last and asked if they could send his tunic through;
She brought it, and he thanked her with a nod;
He bade her search the pocket saying "That's from Mad Carew,"
And she found the little green eye of the god.

She upbraided poor Carew in the way that women do,
Though both her eyes were strangely hot and wet;
But she wouldn't take the stone and Mad Carew was left alone
With the jewel that he'd chanced his life to get.

When the ball was at its height, on that still and tropic night,
She thought of him and hurried to his room;
As she crossed the barrack square she could hear the dreamy air
Of a waltz tune softly stealing thro' the gloom.

His door was open wide, with silver moonlight shining through;
The place was wet and slipp'ry where she trod;
An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew,
'Twas the "Vengeance of the Little Yellow God."

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Fluffy Rex



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So I have some thoughts on feathered dinosaurs.  The ones that come to the backyard feeder are considerably more temping to the cat.  But the environments that they can live in are pretty much anywhere that you'd find a mammal.

 Weirdly, these Dollar Store toys are about the right scale for D&D type miniatures (25-32mm):

Tyrannosaur scale chart

They're also absolutely fabulous armatures for the money.  I had to do a couple of unsavory things with a knife and a couple of wedges to get him to stand like a proper theropod,  but otherwise that's just a texture layer.  Y'know, the fun part.  Well, besides plunking him down on the game table.




Sunday, August 31, 2014

Dracolich on a budget






So I picked up a 3-pack of dinosaur skeletons at some dollar store or other.  Turns out that they're made of the same type of PVC plastic as the Reaper Bones miniatures.  Thought I'd do some pinning just to test out the material.  Those are the pterosaur wings on the dimetrodon  body (yeah, I know, the upright knees aren't right for dimetrodon).  The neat thing about this stuff is that works sort of like the rubber in self-sealing tanks.  So when you pin it it tries to clamp back down around the hole  Which is a whole lot of words to say that you just need to sharpen the ends of a bit of florist wire and shove the whole thing together and you're done.