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.

Lighting Fires

 So this is Reaper's large fire elemental that I got in the first Bones Kickstarter.

Turns out the bottom part is hollow.  Hollow enough for the LED from a tea light, anyway.

 This is a D&D Miniatures fire elemental, probably listed as some synonym for "really big fire elemental".  Unbasing this guy was a pain - there are several pegs involved.  Easiest way is to drill several holes in the bottom and break the base in half.  He isn't as nice a technical sculpt as the Reaper model. but the light can go a lot further up and the orange is more convincing than the Reaper red.

With The Lady in Red for scale.  They're not little in comparison, but the table footprint is the same as it would be without me hiding lighting infrastructure in a juice lid.  These are from the Simply brand.  Their Apple juice is really tasty if you like that sort of thing.

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.

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.

Man's Best Friend

Julie Guthrie is a better sculptor than me.

Meh.  I've drunk out of worse.

So I went to the trouble of making this dog out of Fimo.  And I figured that maybe an adventurer's best friend deserves better than to be a 25 gp bit of disposable equipment.  Plus this. So here's an NPC class, ala Swords & Wizardry:
Faithful Hound: NPC only, XP and Saves as Fighter, HP and Tracking as Ranger, only surprised on a 1, doubled movement rate, all armor (natural AC 7/13), no shield, no weapons, cannot use magic items.  +1 to hit, damage, and AC per level (the last one only when fighting in a fur coat, i.e. sans armor).  Always does full damage to skeletons, bone devils, etc. because it's funny.  This is a Lassie/Rin Tin Tin type henchdog, so he can pull levers, open unlocked doors, laboriously climb ladders, etc.

It seems a little overpowered, but henchmen are running on half XP.  He can't activate magic items, although if he came across a passive item like a collar of fire resistance, or if someone let him lap a potion out of their helmet, I'd allow it.  There could also be a Paladin's Hound, as an alternative to the Paladin's Mount.

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.