Innsmouth Bad Boys - Progress

While I'm getting there with my 'Innsmouth Bad Boys' I wanted to show the intermediate progress rather than simply going straight to the completion photos (which are about a day away). That would be a bit too much like those frustrating Blue Peter 'and here is one I made earlier' reveals! 😁

While most of these figures have been pretty straight forward. I have topped the project with some painting that is a little more involved than usual...

In particular, my 'frog-man' has been given a facial that is more detailed than my normal cartoonish peg figures, with some graduated tones and textures.

The reason for this little departure from my usual super-simplified style is that I wanted to emphasise the monstrousness of these characters as compared to the 'normal' human peg characters in the series.

They are still - obviously - not 'realistic' by any means, but it was an interesting small departure for my painting style, if only to see what I could do for fun.

New Project - 'Assault on Innsmouth' Intro

 Just a very quick introduction to my new figure set project (now I've finally gotten my mojo back after my furious Christmas flurry). 😊

Introduction to Innsmouth
For those of you unfamiliar with the Mythos works by H. P . Lovecraft here's a very brief account of the scenario which my new project is based upon:

The Esoteric Order of Dagon was the primary religion in Innsmouth after Marsh returned from the South Seas with the dark religion circa 1838. It quickly took root due to its promises of expensive gold artifacts and fish, which were desired by the primarily-fishing town.

The central beings worshipped by the Order were the Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, and, to a lesser extent, Cthulhu. Dagon and Hydra were seen largely as intermediaries between the various gods rather than as gods themselves. Even so, the cultists sacrificed various locals to the Deep Ones at specific times in exchange for a limitless supply of gold and fish. When they ran out of locals, they would go to other places to kidnap people to be sacrificed. Eventually, things became so bad that the US government sent the police force to apprehend Marsh and his cult. [Wikipedia.]

Above: The raid on Inssmouth from Osprey Publishing's 'The Cthulhu Wars'.

My figure set will include two groups of six figures, one set made up of the 'Federal Forces' who made the assault on Innsmouth and the other representing the citizens of Innsmouth. I hope to use the figures in a tabletop RPG mini-scenario pitting one force against the other.

On With the Good Guys!
As usual there will be figures which might be considered 'the good guys' and those some might consider 'the bad guys'. I leave the matter for others to argue over but for ease let's start with how I intend to make up the 'good guys'!

The first thing to consider is the 'historical' period we are talking about - in the Lovecraft mythology the raid on Innsmouth is said to have been taken place in 1927. This is a rather interesting as I have always wanted to do an 'Inter-War' years project based on H. G. Wells 'Funny Little Wars' rules intermixing historic military with a Science fiction/horror cross-over.

So, all the figures will be of this late 20s pulp style...

The Federal Assualt Team:
- USMC Sergeant armed with a Tommy Gun.
- USN Landing Team seaman armed with a B.A.R.
- FBI/Treasury Agent armed with pump shotgun.
- Photographer/Journalist with camera to record event.
- 'Priest' - though I am still a bit uncertain about this character.
- Lead Investigator - Some sort of professor, again a bit undecided.

For sources from which I can make my scenario I am using Osprey's 'Cthulhu Wars' for background and am trying to local a copy of 1992 Chaosim's 'The Raid on Innsmouth' for hints on how to run the game. But this is a work in progress.

More Lovecraft Characters Completed

 In between Christmas gifts I'm still trying to get some of my own backlog of projects done. Among these were some H.P. Lovecraft RPG characters I was working on. I'm trying to build a varied 'cast' of characters and that means crafting low-level bit-players as well as 'stars'!

So, with each set I'm including either a general NPC (non-player character) or minion, you can never have too many minions. 😄 In this case I made a 'thug' to pit against my heroes...

If you are a Lovecraft movie fan you might appreciate the next character I added in this set, the 'mad surgeon'. Very loosely based on the cult classic 'B' movie 'Reanimator' my ghoulish saw-bones is a bit tongue in cheek - but, then, I had envisioned this figure being a ready for Halloween...

And finally, I've included a good old Lovecraftian stand-by protagonist - a learned university professor, someone steeped in the esoteric and occult. I've 'armed' him with a mystic tome and an amulet of sorts...

And there we go my cast grows ever bigger. The idea will be that as I play different Lovecraftian scenarios I can dip into my collection of figures to create an ensemble of appropriate peg players.

I've plenty more ideas for additional cast, but one this is for sure and that is I'll need a lot more supporting characters than lead roles. This'll be a long project!