My DM Project: The 7th Sphere: Book One, The Secret Of The Laughing Cobra: The Prologue: The Wasp

In case someone recalls, I once mentioned working on DMing a AD&D 2nd ed. Spelljammer campaign. Well, it took a while, with real life, as usual, interfering with important stuff like pretending to be on a wooden sailship in space.

But now we have been able to play a couple of sessions, and I think it is now safe to post some of the stuff I have done spelljammer-wise, without giving away spoilers to my players.

The first session was going to be plain and simple about the players, sailing their space ship, getting attacked by space pirates and having to fight them off.

What happened is described in detail in this pdf. It's in finnish because it's here first and foremost for the benefit of my players. But go ahead and run it through a translator or embrace this wonderful opportunity to start studying the veritable lingua franca that is the finnish language..

But in short:

We had rolled up the characters earlier, and my players came up with background for their characters on the premise that they would be commanding a small merchant vessel.

The stuff they came up with was pure gold, and with just little bit of elaboration on my part, it was established that one of the characters had inhereted the ship that her grandfather had used for piracy, and then her father had to turned to peaceful commerce when law and order had made piracy a less popular option in their corner of space.

The other characters had either inherited shares from the aforementioned grandfather's crew members or had bought a share after the first characters family had run into financial trouble when the father lost a valuable cargo, his crew and his health to starvation when the ship was trapped in a sargasso, an area of space void of magic, where faster-than-light travel (at the speed of magic, naturally) was impossible.

Now returning from their first mercantile voyage of acquiring goods to sell on, they were returning to their home city on one of the asteroids in the asteroid field trailing the moon of their solar system's main planet. As the game opened, their ship was fired upon by a pirate ship and struck by a D.E.M.* -class magical shot, setting their cargo hold on fire.
*Deus Ex Machina

After an intense dogfight the players drove off the pirates. Being PCs, they used tactics I could never have anticipated. In this case, dropping their burning cargo on the pirates through a dimension door and augmenting the effect with an illusion spell of  even more flames, shattering the spacehighwaymen's morale.

A bit of a cheap shot, destroying their cargo arbitrarily, but it established the set-up I was going for: A group of low-level characters, slightly more likely to barter with people instead of just robbing everyone, in possession of a exceedingly valuable, magical transport but still in urgent need of cash.

But enough about the story and on with the minis, this being primarily a miniature blog. The PCs were going to meet a groundling cog, outfitted for magical space travel and out of the choice of suitably sized ships I had presented, my players had opted for the wasp (which they named Blackie Lawless):

From The Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures In Space Boxed Set, TSR 1989

From The War Captain's Companion, TSR 1992

The Spelljammer boxed set came with cardboard cut-out ships to use for ship-to-ship combat, but I, being me, just had make some minis out of greenstuff, wire and paper.

The colours are blank, still waiting for a design.

A battle among the asteroids (just bits of gravel slightly shaded).

The biggest regular ships in the game have a keel lenght of 300', and the hex map from the boxed set has hexes of 25mm, edge to edge. To fit even the bigger ships on the map, I originally aimed for a scale of 10':1 mm. The wasp has a keel lenght of 80' so it would have been 8 mm long. Needless to say, that is way too tiny for my sculpting skills, and it is now 16 mm long. I reckon my boats aren't going to be to scale. Especially when the smallest ship in the canon, the elven flitter, has a keel length of 20', translating to a 2 mm speck. Here is a comparison shot with a 28 mm scale human:

Bartolomeu had managed to stay sober for two whole days. But when the little ships came, he decided it was time to jump off the wagon again.

It was a fun night of gaming, giving me a feel for the personalities of the PCs and a chance to try out the changes I've made to the ship rules, on which I shall elaborate in future posts.

The Flight Of The Deathsquealer!

The eight and final of my space penguins is another heavily armoured warrior bird. Combined with one of the flying space swine the combination is just..just.. just press play and scroll down.

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Again, some WIP pics.

And finally, a group show that concludes My Penguin Project. But my love affair with Spelljammer is far from over. I am working on DMing a 2e AD&D Spelljammer campaign which will take up quite a lot of my hobby time, which hasn't been too plentiful lately anyway. But there might be some spillover into miniatures down that path..

The President

Dohwar higher up in the space penguin hierarchy have titles like manager and executive board member, with the president running a cartel of dohwar. These management level birds tend to have magical powers as demonstrated by this normally flightless feathery fellow levitating here.

And again some greenstuff-stage pics. This guy was the other sliding-on-their-bellies pose.

Stay tuned for the final, exciting episode of My Penguin Project, titled "The Flight Of The Deathsquealer!"

The Shadow Warrior

Rumours tell of a dohwar ship that made an emergency landing on the top of the hidden mountain of Hiketsuyama in the island nation of Wa on the world of Toril. There the beleagured space penguins found refuge in a temple of Chisaru, the goddess of stealth. There, under the guidance of the monks, the previously mercilessly mercantile birds found enlightenment and learned the ancient secrets of the temple.

Now these legendary birds, bound by a strict code of honor, are highly sought after for missions requiring their mastery of espionage, infiltration and hand-to-beak combat.

Pictured below is one of these shinobi-no-tori, leaping to attack with a sword in  their beak.

Some WIP pics. In the pack of 8 penguins there were two posed sliding on their bellies. After a bit of thinking about what to make of them, this was one of the possibilities that sprang to my mind.

The Freebooters

As with any race and species, there are always the misfits who don't follow the expectations in career choice. So too, the space penguin race of dohwar have their share of black sheep. (Or should that be white sheep? Polychrome sheep?) Here are two such individuals who, instead of trying to make a profit through trade have chosen the life of an adventurer and treasure hunter. This is evident in their adoption of clothes and equipment popular among spacefaring humans.

Some WIP shots in greenstuff.

Next time, the shadow warrior..

The Protector

The Monstrous Compendium describes the dohwar as being either businessmen (businessbirds), with higher hit die waddlers sometimes having wizardly or priestly powers, or protectors, professional soldiers clad in cumbersome armour, wielding lances and beak-held swords called "weega".

This is not the whole picture of space penguin career choices, as I shall demonstrate in upcoming posts. But this time, a winged, yet flightless warrior:

I scratched my head a bit in choosing the heraldic animal for the flag. I got to thinking that humans are fond of lions and bears, so a fierce, penguin-eating sea leopard seemed perfect.

Finally, a WIP shot of the green stuffed mini next to the original. There so much putty, I might as well have built the guy from scratch. But then I probably would have messed up the proportions.

Space Swine

What do entrepreneurial space penguins raise for livestock? Boars with pigeon wings of course. I had to do some them as well.

Wargames Foundry has a nice selection of wild life, including wild boars which I used.

So here we have a finished space sow and a space piglet flapping about:

A note on the bases: I felt that the subject matter of Weird Fantasy Space required some glowing crystals / odd space flora, so that's what the blue blobs are supposed to be.

The Dohwar

Space, the final frontier? Not in the Spelljammer setting. Beyond space there is the crystal shell surrounding the solar system, outside which is the swirling and glowing Phlogiston in which other Crystal Spheres containing suns and planets and weirder things float.

Going through my old RPG books I came across the AD&D Spelljammer stuff, a true fantasy space setting where anything resembling our laws of physics need not apply, thank you very much. I love the over the top weirdness of Spelljammer and the fact that it doesn't even try to be realistic in any sense. Anything big enough to fly at the speed of magic also generates an Earth-standard gravity field that brings along a bubble of air that lasts for months. That way your half-elf multi-class paladin-bard can walk on the deck of their pirate ship in space quite comfortably. Why? That's just the way the world is built. Just about any fantasy or sci-fi idea could be used in Spelljammer, with humans, elves, illithids, beholders and stranger things swashing their bucklers and flying around between planets in ships shaped like fish, octopuses (octopi?), butterflies or, well, ships.

Copyright TSR 1989, used without permission for educative purposes.

Among the spacefaring races there are the dohwar, a race of intelligence, telepathic penguin merchants. After seeing that Copplestone Castings provides penguins in their arctic adventures range, I just had to show the bird folk some love and start converting.

So, dear reader, if like me you have been saddened by the lack of trippy space penguin content in 28mm on the Blogosphere of today, you have surely come to the right place! For today I kick off the chronicles of:

(The penguin stands for "penguin".)

Antarctic avians after acquiring appropriate accoutrements.

Plutocratic penguin people painstakingly painted.

Scale shot of a synchronized sales speech.

Next up: Pigs will fly .. IN SPACE!

A Half-elf

We're starting a mini-campaign of 2nd edition AD&D in the Forgotten Realms. Classic!

I rushed to make a mini for my (counts as) half-elf bard (at a more leisurely pace the campaign would be over before I got him done).

After creating the characters he played a quick 15 minute introduction scene, during which I described my character more or less along these lines:

• A young, slender man of medium height with long, braided hair and golden eyes.
• Dressed in fine clothes, but they have a few tears and some dirt on them.
• A dark green cape, a wide brimmed hat with feathers.
• Wearing leather armour, carrying a fine sword with a gilded basket hilt and a musket.

I had this Reaper swordsman lying around I used.

Added some modelling putty for the cloak, the hat and the swords basket to replace the cut off handle. For the braid I simply braided some string and glued it on and the firearm and the hat's feathers came from the Warlord Games box of ECW pike and shot which has proved to be a very useful purchase for spare parts.

Getting the cloak to cure billowing in the wind was a bit of a challenge because without support, the putty bends down and I thought I didn't have anything at hand that I could shape that wouldn't stick to the putty. But then I thought to use a rolled up ball of cling film, which worked a treat.

Hastily painted everything in dark tones:

Then the usual midtone-highlight routine:

To speed thing up, instead of painting the base I just glued some model railroad sand and flock on it for a quick finish.

A must admit, I have close to zero knowledge of the geography, history or politics of the Realms, having mostly played other settings. It seems the adventures will be mostly set in and around Waterdeep which, as I understand, is a major metropolis in a world filled with advanced dungeons and advanced dragons. With this starting point I wrote the first draft of my character's backstory, still subject to the DM's approval, of course.

Our protagonist's father was lord Gwinau, a minor noble of an old family ruling an out of the way piece of land where his subjects mostly made their living from raising sheep, logging and some dealing in mined ores and metals. 

As a young man, the future lord Gwinau was a keen hunter and on one of his hunting trips deep in the woods he came across a spirit of the forests, a female creature of unearthly beauty. Obsessed, the man searched the woods for weeks, occasionally glimpsing the object of his desire, finally getting close enough to address her. 

With time the meetings under the trees turned in to a romance and finally the fairy asked young Gwinau to join her in the forest's court. His family duties and the fear of the unknown made the human hesitant to accept, which angered the capricious spirit, for it was no small offer for a mere mortal.

After this, young Gwinau could not find his love no matter how hard he tried, until one last time, one year later, just before daybreak, the forest spirit appeared at the family castle, leaving an infant boy in a basket she named Cumagor and a warning that the family Gwinau were no longer welcome on the lands.

From there on, leaf blight and foot and mouth disease ran rampant and wild beasts preyed upon the ore merchants passing through, packs of wolfs attacking the beasts of burden and troupes of rust monsters devouring their loads. Finally the Gwinau family were forced to pack up and leave their ancestral lands.

All this was too much for Cumagor's grandfather's health and it was Cumagor's father, now lord Gwinau, who settled the family and their retinue in the city of Waterdeep. His father soon married and other children followed, but Cumagor was raised as the lord's son learning court manners as well as horsemanship and swordplay.

Without much political influence, the family eventually made a good living through trade, having connections with previous immigrants from their homeland, now mostly working on the docks and in the warehouses. The Gwinau traded spices, furs and clothes, weapons, books and works of art, some of which were even genuine.

As Cumagor grew, he showed a gift for many talents, singing, feats of dexterity and charming people came to him as easily as breathing. Even as a young child Cumagor proved useful for the family business where much was achieved by keeping up appearances and entertaining other nobles and merchants. 

The family priest  adept at transcription and illustration of tomes had followed the Gwinaus and he also taught Cumagor. These skills were often in demand whenever the necessary documents and permits were delayed, inconveniently mislaid or otherwise unavailable just at the moment. There is a certain high ranking official who earned his spurs as a privateer, whose letter of marque was penned and signed by Cumagor at the age of twelve instead of the scribes and Lords of Waterdeep.

Cumagor's slightly inhuman features always led to odd glances and at times comments about his heritage and even a few fisticuffs. But that would change at least when Cumagor would be lord Gwinau. 

Then one day, not long ago, lord Gwinau took his son aside made absolutely certain that which Cumagor had deep down feared, the title and command of the family fortunes would not go to the first-born, but to his half-brother, the lord's first legitimate and fully human son.

Soon after, the said brother made a joke about Cumagor, which earlier would have had them both laughing now resulted in Cumagor punching his brother, grabbing a considerable sum of money and some choice items and disappearing to the streets of Waterdeep.

Being used to a high standard of living, Cumagor had soon spent the riches on food, wine, fine clothes and gambling. He doesn't know how his father would receive him, should he return home. But as of yet Cumagor's pride will not allow that. To make ends meet Cumagor has been involved in all sorts of semi-legal business and  has now joined a group of other misfits in the city, a band of demi-humans running errands for a mysterious patron.