Sunday, November 22, 2020

Ghost Archipelago 1 - Undead Deckhands

Yo-ho! Avast ye swabs, the Mumblings be a come over all nautical of late! I've embarked on a new project with some pals, and we are assembling some warbands, terrain, monsters and such for Ghost Archipelago. The plan is to build and paint now, and play later when things allow for it. It keeps us all hobbying, and gives us something cool to look forward to down the road.

As you may have guessed, Ghost Archipelago is all pirates, treasures, strange islands and terrible beasties. I took this as an opportunity to finally paint some undead pirates. As with orcs, everyone gets to pirates sooner or later. 

So, having chosen the crew of the ghostship Kraken as my salty swabs, I picked out a band of ten undead buccaneers. I need at least four crew, so I picked out the first two as testers for the group.


Empty Isaac is a lowly deckhand aboard the Kraken. He is a forgetful fellow, and struggles to find the words to communicate with his shipmates. Happily, Benjamin, his gull, is most articulate and can express what poor Isaac no longer can. This may have something to do with the fact that Benjamin has eaten most of Isaac's brain over the years. Many postulate Ben isn't actually a real gull at all, but some phantasmal flicker of Isaac's persona. Ben ascertains this is nonsense, and he is a perfectly normal talking seagull.


Both the minis here are from a Kickstarter run by Warploque Miniatures for their Arcworlde game some years back. They released an entire crew, so there will be a few more from the range appearing in the band. 


Yardarm Tom has been a deckhand aboard the Kraken ever since he was cut down from the gallows, though he had been left there a little too long in truth, and the crows had had their way with him. The experience has made Tom somewhat grumpy, and he whispers hoarsely to himself constantly. It's better not to listen to what he is saying. There's a lot about crows.

I used a lot of Contrast paint on these two fellows, especially on their skin. Red, green and purple, thinned down with medium makes for fun painting. A round or two of highlights and that was them done. I added some planking to my usual basing technique to give it a more seabed flavour, while still sitting well with my normally based undead. I added some dead lichen, which could be dead grasses, wavy seaweed or dead coral, depending on how you squint at it. I've accrued a few fish and sea creatures from the Idoneth Deepkin range, so I'll be lashing them onto the next bases I do. Some are big enough to make for individual miniatures in their own right. I feel a pet moray eel coming on.

With these two lowlifes done, I'll be moving onto more prestigious members of the crew next.

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Undead - Morglug the Oblivious


Continuing with my current enthusiasm for all things undead, here we have an undead orc, Morglug. He's from Diehard  Miniatures, one of a set of non-human undead. As joining the ranks of my undead host, he will also serve aboard the ghostship as part of my Ghost Archipelago crew as a bit of muscle. 

I have quite a few other undead orcs, so I may build up a warband of former greenskins in time. FOr now though, it's just this lad. Here's his tale:

Morglug is the most unusual of orcs. He has been dead for some time, but for some reason, seems have decided to ignore this fact. One explanation is possibly that most perplexing of orc traits, their belief that is something is, then it is. Morglug believes himself to still be alive, and so despite his internal organs falling out and his skin rotting away, merrily continues on. There is no necromancy that animates Morglug's bones, no master he follows. He insists on continuing on much as he once did, though the grog tends to go to waste as he pours out into his empty throat.

In recent times other undead greenskins have been seen in Morglug's company. Perhaps his power is growing, raising others to follow him in his wanderings across the lands.

So there we are. Next up we have some salty undead crew members for the ghostship. (name to be decided, but it'll be super spooky.) Some regular crew first, then we'll get onto the tasty characters like the captain and the old man of the sea.

Whaddaya mean I smell like old socks filled with hairy cheese?


Wayland Games

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