Space Dungeon - Mechannids

These were formerly humanoid creatures that mastered brain transplantation many æons ago, and adapted their forms to those of ultra-brass and orichalcum wormlike chassis

The Mechannids are powerful diggers, swimmers, and can wiggle their longer forms through the aether and the void of space.  They vary from 2 or 3 cubits up to twice the height of a man.

Some have venom injectors in their maws, and some have ferrules in their tail-ends that cause non-healing wounds. They retain expressionless faces on one end, although they do not feed in the usual sense. They may convert radiation or psykick energies for sustenance - proof of this is that they are known to skulk amongst civilized sentient peoples causing distress and alarm. They also bask in and around ley lines and highly charged areas.

Lastly, at least one in every group encountered is a sigil-annelid master. It can cast one magical effect per day by contorting its form into physical shapes that release magical energies.  They enjoy completing simple ones (the Voorish Sign-form, for example) and cantrips but enervating bolts and shrouds of forgetfulness are common dweomers. They enjoy summoning electric void-spiders as a matter of course and sometimes take up with more powerful wizards to siphon energy away parasitically.

Lucky Bin Find

In addition to all kinds of Crossbows and Catapults shit that would probably cost 10K from GW, I found this Necrmunda bulkhead (maybe an old 2nd edition imperial city spruce or something) at the FLGS.  Imperial Assault looks pretty bitchin' BTW but not a good idea right now. Vader!

... a nice happenstance encounter, just when I am reading about casting and mold-making.

I wonder why I wonder if copying this piece would be unethical, somehow?

Archaeodata Scavenging

If you are curious about these matters, as I am, Audacity will import as Raw Data many of the .PCM files of the old 1993 Space Hulk game with the following settings:

Unsigned 

sample rate: 8000 (I think it was a telephony standard at the time)

Default Endianess

I get some better results if I ignore the first 8 bytes of the data, but YMMV

Sadly, they added the echo effect to the Captain's (unnamed, but I think he's a succesor of Dark Angel Deathwing Terminator Captain Lithonius) voice at the data level and not with some effect so you get what you get. The upshot is that once I figure out how to compile audacity with batch-processing, I can rip out all the clips (and other sound effects although they are terrible, mostly) and make my own little debriefing things. I don't know why anyone in their right mind would do this, but there you are.

2 things occurred to me:

1) it's probably easier to get a mic and do the whole thing myself in my bathroom.

B) it's probably easier to hack out the sounds from the new version of Space Hulk on Steam than it is to dicker around with 22 year old DOS files, but hey.  everybody needs a hobby.

I even have this software that will do lip-syncing for animation cells, provided you have the text.  About 5 or 6 years ago (possibly more) I did a quick screen test with an Anime Studio character and a ripped sample of the game and it worked pretty spiffily.  I probably still have it on Snapfish or that other thing, ehh, that site where you keep dead photos from college.  Photobucket.  Ehhh. Whatever it is.

alas poor Yarrick

Nearly finished. I can say I did my duty although it's not a master stroke. I could not be summarily executed for transgression, here.

he is flanked by RT era marines, a librarian and a techmarine with a 5th edition missile loader pack (that fig is unpainted but I got excited about it anyway)

Table/Squads Progress

Painted/Dickered around tonight:

Cut some more foam platforms. That was pretty cool.  I dig hot wire foam cutter and only am I mildly dain bramage from teh fumes. After cutting and the baby went to sleep I slathered some gesso-style acrylic medium gel on them, which has the benefit of maybe forming a protective layer that spray paint won't eat up, and also not running all over the place like water and wood glue soup does...

...and finished a pretty fun objective marker/gang asset from a spare paint pot, turret hatch, and half a mini whiffle ball. I think the other half of the thing will be a portable void shield generator.  Going to put a bunch of Dark Angel/GoTC decals on it so that the locals know not to mess with it.

Glued some Necromunda goliaths to their bases, after all these long years.  These two Juves are practically my favorite sculpts of all time, next to Karloth Valois and my sacred holy grail Vader Librarian (which I can get off of eBay for 20 bucks but Jesus Jones on a pogo stick)

Finished my RT/1st edition Librarian. needs basing.  I got Blood Red paint all over my fingers and need to retouch his pauldrons but he's finish. I debate about the eyes on all my models.  I sort of like the pissholes-in-a-snowbank look.

Finished my 3rd edition Yarrick. needs basing.

Added a servo-arm pack to the RT-era tech marine.

Based but didn't paint the base of my Genestealer brood lord. Kind of a stone/metal/pipes Space Hulk vibe, which ought to go well with my early-industrial Hive World/Librarium table

Finally re-posed and started the bases for my Macragge-era terminator squad. I took their arms off and re-posed with the blob-of-green-stuff-plus-superglue method. I think I probably need to use a great deal less green stuff. The extra green stuff got turned into Helminths that will go on the bases - more granny grating and flagstone and wires and cogs.  I think I am going to dual-prime these guys also.

Next up: more terrain - the before mentioned squatter shacks and townie houses and whatever the hot-glue gun takes a liking to. I have enough foam board and craft sticks to make a couple of pretty nice Inns or way-houses. I'm giving serious thought to some soup can distillation arrays, a gum-box thermo-warp unit, and maybe I ought to stop this madness before I go legit crazy.

Everywhere the subtle signs that your presence is tolerated and we are watching and we won't crush you if you do the chores until you're dead but don't start to think too much and just trust us

Need to take a break from war gaming hobby to write and draw and get HHSOLO2 in medium gear