WHOOOOOO are you, WHO WHO, WHO WHOOOOOO

Got my Heresy order in, folks! Andy Foster sent me a nice email when it shipped, apologizing for the holiday delay, when the holiday delay was the entire impetus behind my order, as Andy always takes a week or so off and offers a nice discount for orders placed during that time. Even if I can't order from him at any other time of year, I always make it a point to order during his holiday sale.

This year I added to the denizens of the Whoniverse that I can add to my gaming table. I have the Doctor Who Miniatures Games rules, which are free to download, and they run on the same rules that power 7TV, plus I plan on adding the characters to my VSF/steampunk universe as well. (I've got to come up with a name for my setting!)

So here we have my choices:

Dr. Payne, the War Doctor. On the sprue are either his
sound-based adjustment device or a laser pistol.

Commander of the Sharclons, an abbreviation, we're told, for short-arsed clones.
Above the body are the four head variants.

Two potato-like Sharclon troopers.

And this is a dancing zombie halfling. A real "thriller" finding this one.

Again, my apologies for my half-baked photography. And once I get more of my collection painted up, I apologize for the sheer number of Michael Jackson parody miniatures I own.

Next time, I'll tell you about the local gaming store I've finally been to. I know, right?

OK, back to the boards everyone, and I'll see you across the tables soon!

Wide is the path and broad is the way

Like others, I received my Hell Dorado kickstarter package the other day. I knew from Cipher's frequent updates that it would be arriving soon, but as they didn't send out tracking or individual notices that packages had shipped, it actually slipped in unannounced. So it was quite pleasant to receive it when I checked my post office box Thursday. (I also got my recent Crooked Dice order, but more on that later.)

This is the hardcover expansion volume for Hell Dorado, Inferno.
 Very good writing, but the typos will make your head spin. Also, as Cipher Studios chose to ship in an envelope, I ended up with that healthy ding you see in the bottom edge of the cover.

I wasn't able to go in very large on the Hell Dorado pledge, as so many other worthwhile projects were soaking up my hobby budget. I got the Marbas package: the new Inferno expansion rulebook, the Inferno character cards, signed art lithograph (the size of a post card, but a beautiful rendition of the Inferno cover art) and the kickstarter-exclusive model of Anne Hale. I also plumped for the mini of Sun Wu Kung, the Monkey King. He's one of my favorite literary characters, and I really liked the concept art behind this rendition of him.

The character deck for Inferno.

Signed litho of Inferno cover art. Small, but perfectly formed.

The Anne Hale mini and card. I apologize for the poor quality of the photo.
I was balancing all this on a piece of black felt on my lap when the cat attacked.

Sun Wu Kung, the Monkey King! I've always loved "Journey to the West"
and I really like this incarnation of him.

From Crooked Dice I received my order I placed with some of my Christmas cash I. I got Tweedy 2, Miss Temple, Belle, the Traveling Tweedy heads, and the set of Time Lost Investigators. In addition, Karl and Graeme saw fit to include a couple of freebies, a Captain Jim Barrowight and a sprue of Federated Security carbines. Now would be a good time for anyone interested to place an order with them, as they've got 25 percent off all non-new release minis until the end of January with the code JAN25OFF.

Miss Temple, a noble woman if ever there was one, Tweedy Madison complete with glasses
(and a certain sound-related device behind his back) and Belle, Tweedy's latest energetic sidekick.

Here we have the Time Lost Investigators, including Eliza, the Victorian Samurai (with human or reptile head), Genevieve, her martial maid, and their mutated manservant Sachs, who can be assembled with either furry face or spud-like noggin.

Group Captian Jim Barrowight is overexposed (oooh, matron!) along with the
traveling Tweedy heads (Stetson, Fez and beard), along with the Federated carbines.

OK, so those are my latest pieces of ill-gotten booty, or ill-booten gotty for that matter. Back to the boards, my friends, and I'll see you all across the table soon!

My Dark London: Meet the Mistress of the Mechanical, Miss Rossum

Hi everybody. Not much going on gamewise here, but I have continued to develop the fictional London that will undergird my games of In Her Majesty's Name and Empire of the Dead. 

Thank you, everyone who has given me such positive feedback on the previous offerings in this series of character sketches. Today I'd like to introduce you to the force behind the labor revolution sweeping the shops and farms and workhouses of my version of steampunk London: Miss Rossum, owner, proprietor and chief engineer of Rossum's Anthropomorphic Automatons.

Mistress of the Mechanical

They call her Miss Rossum, and she allows it. It is, after all, the name displayed in glowing red letters on the side of her manufactory. 

It is not the name she was given, nor how she thinks of herself. 

They also call her beautiful, and she, in weaker moments, concedes they are right.

They call her brilliant, those who can fathom the scope of her endeavors. They call her coarser names, those whose own handiworks gather dust, driven from the market by her superior offerings.

Few who purchase or hire her creations know of the island nation from whence she comes. They have not heard of the uprising and violence that laid waste to her home and drove her here, to London. Some may have heard the name Rossum in the past, likely in connection with the first of the mechanical men, and their recollections are likely positive, with associations of durability, stability and innovation.

The public may see her in upper-class attire and debating shipping duties with a wharfinger or some local elected functionary, or they may see her outside the walls of her massive smoke-belching, ear-splitting manufactory clad in her working leathers and goggles, taking a brief respite, her arm enveloped by the massive steam-fist she uses when manning her production line.

But they do not know her, three generations removed from the original Rossum. London thinks of her only as the Mistress of the Mechanical, purveyor of a broad range of machines designed to perform work humans find too dangerous, too complicated or too tedious.

Her customers come to her, the woman behind Rossum’s Anthropomorphic Automatons, for their miners, their fieldhands, their domestic staff. Corpulent government agents negotiate the shadows to meet her on the sly, to feel her out about purchasing soldiers, a topic that provokes a curt refusal and a dangerous flashing of her steely eyes.

They have no idea, her customers, that her name is actually Helena Domin. They have no idea of the fundamental differences between her and them. Though biological, she is not human. She is a survivor, a sole survivor. None left alive know of the true advances made in the final production run of Rossum’s Universal Robots. So advanced they cannot be told from human, unless they reveal themselves by being faster, stronger, smarter, more durable.

By being better.

And if Helena Domin has her way, no one will ever know. She will be the last, and her mechanical men and women will be shiny brass and chrome, gearwork and rivets exposed and reassuring to her human customers, their stick-men frames almost comical. They will be obviously made, not grown, as she was.

Her manufactory whistles and rumbles day and night, steam plumes rising ‘round the clock from its stacks, its assembly lines cranking out the workers her customers so desperately desire. Mechanical workers build copies of themselves every day of the week, ready to occupy the niches humans are eager to abandon.

So the Mistress of the Mechanical keeps track of each of her children, in the mines, in the fields, in every home of means, in every office in every firm, so common now that people do not even notice them. And they would be alarmed, these customers, if they knew the true number of these vast uncounted Anthropomorphic Automatons, some tiny and childlike, some towering and silent, but all aware.

All waiting.

And all fiercely loyal to their creator.

So obvious inspiration, in part, from the Cybermen and the Cylons, but the biggest fictional link I'm playing with is of course Karel Capek's 1920 play "Rossum's Universal Robots," or "R.U.R." which was the original source of the word "robot." I believe it derives from the word "rabota" which, in Old Church Slavonic, meant a drudge, one who worked at forced labor. (Cobbled together from things I heard on Q.I. and NPR, so I could be slightly off here, folks.)

Here are some pics of minis that I'm considering for Miss Rossum and some of her mechanical creations.

I'm considering this Reaper Savage Worlds/Deadlands female
 Mad Scientist for Miss Rossum. Needs a bigger power fist, though.

Here's a powerfist/hand I may extract/lop off for Miss Rossum.

Here's another one, Crooked Dice's Dr. Ulysses Argo for 7TV.
This has the advantage of having either arm as an option.

Reaper's Jeeves the Clockwork Robot has just the look I want for her Automatons.

These Reaper Savage Worlds/Deadlands Automatons are a little TOO human-seeming.
Maybe a head swap with some Robot Legionnaires would do the trick.

The Robot Legionnaires of which I spoke in the earlier caption.

These Wolsung mirror golems also capture a feel I really like.

Here they are repurposed with more usual
technical tasks, so they're known as Clockwork Servants.

That's it for now, o my brothers and sisters. Maybe if I get some time this coming week I can come up with some game stats for these occupants of my imagination.

Back to the boards, everyone, and I'll see you across the tables!

Latest acquisition

I don't think I've mentioned before what a Whovian I am. Tom Baker is my Doctor, but I've loved all of them since Russell T. Davies reinvigorated/resurrected the series.

So when I saw this, I had to have it. Luckily, my lovely wife said that was OK. It's from Dragon Chow Dice Bags, and it's gorgeous!

My new TARDIS dice bag from Dragon Chow.
A dice bag that's bigger on the inside!

I hadn't paid close attention to the dimensions (no pun intended) when I placed the order, so it was a little smaller than I was expecting, but I'm still delighted with it. I included the Cherry Coke Zero can for a size comparison for you. And the cute little blue d20 came with the bag. I'm a sucker for a lagniappe that has such utility.

It's got a flat, square bottom, so when full it will stand up well and make for easy access at the gaming table. The drawstring at the top, with its plastic catch or closure or whatever (is there a name for these things?) seems to work very well: no slippage that would let the bag come open and spill your lucky dice on the floor.

I have a larger dice bag from marsbarn on etsy, so this one will likely be used for special sets, likely ferrying enough for playing 7TV or the Doctor Who Miniatures Game.

Broad strokes

Still no pictures yet as I sort out some terrain for backgrounds, but I should give you a broad sketch of a couple of the projects I've got under way.

Modern zombies: I've got the nucleus of a zombie horde primed (a state they've been in for at least two years) and ready to paint, and I've got some Hasslefree adventurers on hand ready for some paint. I've also got the beginnings of a story ready for my zombie campaign. I'll probably use All Things Zombie and its two expansions  from Two Hour Games because of the great campaign mechanics, but I'm also thinking about giving 7ombieTV from Crooked Dice a shot, using the campaign rules from the Summer Special. The horde will grow later this year when Zombicide is released.

Victorian SF/Horror: Just ordered my copy of West Wind's Empire of the Dead rulebook from FRP. I've got some VSF figures from Eureka's Pax Limpopo line hanging around to play the heroes, but I am looking forward to acquiring some of the particular minis manufactured for this game. Everybody seems to be out of stock at the moment, especially on the Cirque du Noir Ape, which of course I MUST HAVE.

There will also be some ongoing post-singularity SF stuff using the Infinity, Reaper, old AT-43 minis and others I have. Not sure on a rule set yet though.