Stone carving!

Among other resources at Strange Aeons homepage are beta rules for a game called (let me copy that :D) Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten. It is a game that uses Strange Aeons mechanics, profiles and much of everything else, but instead of the fight of good versus evil (like in SA game), evil fights evil here. There is a certain scenario in the book, where you put 3 obelisks on a table, to form a triangle of death and destruction. The miniatures that die in that triangle count as sacrificed for the certain gods and let you summon the daemons. Those 3 obelisks seemed as a good way to start working on scenery for the game. They will be used as a random scenery in all the games that don't use special rules for them, obviously.

I've made them out of blue foam. I had a little piece of it laying around for few years now. It's really a nice material! I've started by cutting 3 3x10 cm blocks and then rounded them a bit. When they seemed okay, I've sanded them and used a blunt pencil to draw the "sculptures". I went for basic protagonists; Cthulhu, Dagon (as my cult will probably be Dagonites, as in story The shadows over Inssmouth) and I was breaking my head for the third....I'd want to go with some of the real gods, but it would be hard to represent a galactic mist on a stone, hehe. I then went with an image of a Serpentman. There is a third cult archetype in the game, called the Serpentmen worshipers and it made sense to give them a stone of worship, as well.


Here are the 3 stones. First, dedicated to Cthulhu, has his profile on it. Second has a profile of Dagon, a fish-and-frog like humanoid (it is supposed to be a bigger Deep one). Third represents a Serpentman. I wanted to go with Mother Hydra, to make the water trio of the entities, but I couldn't figure of a good way to portrait it. Mostly, because I've heared she's supposed to look like Dagon, but mostly people portray it as a mythical creature of the same name...and that'd be just too onesided. I ma add, I quite like how the Serpentman came out, Dagon is way too boring and Cthulhu could always be better.

I've cut the edges of the plasticard I've based them on, because ordinary squares simply look boring and I can't cut a round shape out of so thick plasticard. I've added a bit od pavement details on the serpentman's obelisk, but I am not satisfied. I will add some grass and sand to hide the ugly shapes and I will use miliput on the other ones. I went with greenstuff because I wanted to keep texture as low as possible, but thicker brick would bring out texture way better.

 Here is a back shot:
On Cthulhu's obelisk, I've made a little "story", from top down: the stars are "right" on the sky, then you got an island with 2 palms (dont ask :D), water, and deep below there is an ancien city of R'lyeh, where Cthulhu was dreaming, waiting for that exact moment. Dagon, again, has the boring one. I've just made another image of him, even worse this time, wrote Father Dagon on it and cut the N away,  to make it look like it was written. I've started too wide and I couldn't fit a whole name on it :P. Below are 3 weird things that look like boiled eggs, but its supposed to be a fish...use your imagination! On third, again, I was pretty much without any good ideas, and I've just made a desert sun shinning on the ancient arab city of Valusia, where Serpentmen are supposed to be from.

Here they are painted this time, but still WIP, as Ihave to work on their bases:

 They're simply primed black, drybrushed grey. But I am horrible at it (don't know what i do wrong, really :D), so I had to wash them, drybrush them some more.Then I've washed the "carved" space around the monster's profiles to make them stand out more. For the final touch, I've painted their eyes to give them some constrast. Dagon is still meh, Cthulhu is okay and I'm really happy how Serpentman's profile came out.

Here are the boring backsides, I was actually sorry I haven't left them blank a bit :P

On the SA front, I am still sculpting that Shantak. His legs are giving me problems, as does his face. And when I get there, as will little fingers on his wings. But I've made him a cool custom base and well, working on it slowly. I am also working on some other monster, but I will show you the sculpts in my next post. I am really trying to give out one thing a t a time, hehe.

On the NMRIH front, I'm painting my bodies now. For a teaser, here's a pic of them still green, but taken off their bases. Bases were too thick and when I tried carving around them, they were just silly, so I took them of and some of the minies broke:

To be honest, they're kinda awful, but I figured I should call them finished and work on other things. They look as they look so I'll be able to say "damn I made some progress!" next time I'll work on some! :P


Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo