Friday, February 9, 2024

An Excerpt from the Tome of Sable Chains: Creation of Visanguka

 
https://www.deviantart.com/balaa

“Kanego told me that lions of the bush will not attack men without provocation, but will lie in the grass and let one pass. He added that stories of lions breaking down doors to kill people are lies; these are men. Lions have shame, man does not."   - Perfect Lions, Perfect Leaders by Allen F. Roberts

The creation of a visanguka is a mighty feat of sorcery involving perfect timing and self-control. It is a thing a mage may be proud of, for the process is long and fraught.

To begin, the sorcerer should first obtain two animals, a lion and a rat. These are starved to death. Maggots are allowed to gestate in the corpses, and are fed and fattened until they become huge and furry. The maggot of the lion will provide the visanguka with the ability to change shape and wield the weapons at a lion’s disposal. The maggot of the rat will provide the visanguka with a complete lack of shame, so that it will kill without reason or remorse.

While the maggots are grown, the sorcerer shall prepare an amulet. The amulet is to be charged with components that make one invisible: a shard of glass from a smartphone screen, which people stare at to the exclusion of all else around them; the vocal cords of one who has gone unheard – for example, an innocent man who has been hung in spite of protesting his guiltlessness or a victim of rape who screamed for help that never came, or who is disbelieved; an insect of the order hemiptera family reduviidae, who we walk by without noticing. These are the sorts of components that the evocator must charge the amulet with. This will provide the assassin with the ability to walk invisible and soundless, unseen, unheard, and unnoticed, into any compound, no matter how well secured.

The mage meanwhile should also create a child from clay and weave a basket. Let the child be as perfect as the mage can make it, of a size that indicates he is a newborn, and sculpted with his mouth closed. If the child is smaller it is well, but if it is too small, the sorcery will fail.  Let the basket have a lid that can be secured closed, and straps that allow the mage to fasten the basket to his body so that it rests against his stomach. The reeds of the basket must be woven in such a way that the sign of VULDRA VORN ZELAR is clear upon all of its sides.

When all is in readiness, the mage is to place the amulet around the neck of the child of clay. He then places the lion maggot in his mouth and blows it along with his life’s breath into the right nostril of the child. The same is to be done with the rat maggot, saving that the nostril should be the left one.

The child should then be placed into the basket and the basked closed, secured, and sealed with the mage’s emission (hence the sorcerer must be a potent male). The mage must then strap the basket to his belly, never taking it off for any reason for a time of one hundred and eleven days and nights. It is crucial that the cessation of this period of time coincides with the new moon! At the end of this time, upon nightfall and if the moon is new, the mage should open the basket. If the sorcery has been successful, the mouth of the clay child will have opened. If it is closed, no further sorcery can be worked upon this effigy and the mage must begin again! But if the mouth is open, all is well and he may continue.

The sorcerer is then to cut his wrist, giving the child to suck upon the wound. The sorcerer must wait for the child’s eyes to open and ultimately must judge for themselves when the child’s grey flesh has flushed with the color of life. He should then close the lid and fasten it again. Daily, the child will seem to change back into clay, and this feeding must be repeated again at nightfall for another one hundred and eleven days. Again, the wizard must never remove the basket from his body for any reason unless he is willing to begin anew, for removing the basket will cause the spell to fail. This is a time of great peril, for the child is hungry and will need more and more blood to sup upon as it grows! A careless wizard will be drained entirely of his life force and yet if the child is given too little to feed upon, it will die. The mage must wait until the clay child’s chest rises and falls as though it breathes and for its skin to have the hue of vitality before he withholds his blood for the remainder of the day. If the wizard judges well, the child will live and can be removed from the basket at the end of the second one hundred and elven day period. Thus released, it must be fed on the flesh of a human murder victim chosen at random and will then grow quicky, attaining the size and wisdom of an adult (though it will never talk, having been fashioned by necessity with no tongue) in not more than three months.

Once all this has happened, the mage will have a powerful servant; a visanguka lion-man who can spread terror and enact revenge at the sorcerer’s demand.

Sunday, January 28, 2024

Crow

Kris Tsujikawa


For weeks afterwards, Faolán feels like nothing. Not like a Buddhist nothing, which is everything and bullshit and wonderful, but like an American nothing, like the holes in Wonderbread nothing, different and empty and invisible and absent. Hollowed out and left behind, like the shell of a cicada, papery and delicate. A burnt thing, consumed and ashen and scorched. As though he would disintegrate if someone even blew on him.

One morning he wakes and goes to the bathroom and rinses his mouth, spitting several times. He looks at himself in the mirror. He feels shaky. Weak. He feels like a fool.

He makes this accusation as he looks at himself.

“Fool. Idiot,” he says, calmly.

Then the words came in a rush. His voice rises by degrees with each word until he is shouting, and keeps rising until he is screaming.

“Idiot! Fool! Weakling! Coward! You are so fucking stupid, you know that?! Do you get that, you fucking brainless asshole?”

He heaps abuse upon his reflection.

“Trash! Moron! Man, FUCK you! FUCK YOU! I fucking HATE you, you know that? I fucking hate you.”  

The last sentence comes out like a sob and now he’s weeping, the tears running down his cheeks even as he clenches his jaw and growls through his gritted teeth. “You set yourself up for this! You realize that? You did this to yourself! Of COURSE this is how it was going to go. You KNEW it would go this way. You fucking KNEW IT. And you STILL did it, you fucking ASSHOLE!”

He flings the medicine cabinet open and starts pulling things out, hurling shaving cream and ibuprofen and toothpaste around the bathroom until his hand finds the small box of razors. Fingers shaking, he fumbles with it and gets one of them out. Even in the dim light of the bathroom, the edge of it gleams, bright with promise.

There is a sudden tapping at the textured glass of the bathroom window. Faolán registers it but it seems distant. He ignores it and turns the razor back and forth in his hand, watches the light dance across the blade, hypnotized by the idea of the blood against the white porcelain of the bathroom sink, the pale mint tiles.

The tapping sounds again, frantic this time.

“What the FUCK?!” Faolán shouts and, furious at the interruption, he slams the window open.

A sleek black Crow is perched on the outside sill. It releases a bright red berry from its beak and barks out a call, a cackling caw that sounds suspiciously like a laugh to Faolán.

Apoplectic, he eyes it incredulously.

“What the FUCK do you WANT?” he shrieks at it.

“Remember the dream,” Crow says calmly.

The razor falls from his nerveless fingers as Faolán gapes at it. It just talked, he thinks. I don’t think it’s me. I know I’m fucked in the head, but I don’t think it’s me. Suddenly, he cannot make his voice louder than a whisper.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“I am Crow,” croaks Crow, “Keeper of the Law.”

“What do you want?” he asks again, fascinated.

“Remember the dream,” Crow repeats.

Faolán’s mind races to match his heart as he casts desperately through the wreckage of his memory. What dream? he wonders, which one?

And then he knows.

“I was a bird,” says Faolán, “I flew and flew.” The words come out almost like a sigh.

Crow inclines its head slightly.

“I soared over the world,” Faolán continues, his countenance calm, “I caught the wind and rose. I could glide for a time, coasting carelessly on the currents, banking with the breath of the breeze. And I looked down at the world and saw how beautiful it was. How fragile and how beautiful. And I flew. I flew and flew.”

Then anger creases Faolán’s brow. “But I woke up.”

“Such is the way of dreams,” says Crow.

“What did it mean?” asks Faolán, “What do you mean?”

But Crow does not answer. He picks the shiny crimson berry up with his beak, cocks his head at Faolán and fixes a quizzical stare on him with one eye for a moment and then, with no further prelude, takes to the air and flies away.

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Instant Kafka Back Catalog Released

 SO:

I know I promised you guys to stop with the music posts but I'm kind of excited about something that happened a few days ago, so there will be one more music post before I stop for at least a little while.  I have blathered about this here before but one of the old bands I was in reunited recently.  We got picked up by a (very) small label and nearly our entire back catalog (seven albums worth with one more album on the way) is available now on just about every music platform on the internet - Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Pandora, a bunch of others - I've linked several of them (but far from all) on the sidebar and I'll include a link to our page on Spotify at the bottom of this post as well.  If you use something else like Tidal or Boomplay, just search us and we should come up.  If there's a particular platform you use that we don't seem to be on, please let me know and I will look into it.

It's been kind of a nice little boost to see the music out there and generally people seem to have enjoyed it from what I can see (though, granted, most of the folks who I have talked to about this are people I know and am friendly with, so my sample is biased). I have a hard time saying what we sound like - the closest thing I can think of is Faith No More, but we don't sound a lot like them either.

But it does seem like most folks have found something they like.  One of the albums is almost all covers, everything from Bob Dylan to Devo, the Sex Pistols to the Beatles, from David Lynch's Lady in the Radiator from Eraserhead to the Stooges to Neal Diamond to Hüsker Dü.  That should hopefully give you some idea - we are all over the fucking place.

These guys have always been fun to play with.  Our first show was a Halloween gig and someone dressed up as the Baby Jesus dosed the lead singer on stage.  At another, the sound guy was having a lot of problems getting us set up (we were a pain in the ass for sound guys in part just because we had a big band - two keyboards, lead vox, two guitar players, bass, two drummers, three backup vox setups) and four songs in I started smelling something burning only to look up and see that the PA system closest to me had caught on fire (we had no pyrotechnics mind). Though our liability in this incident could have been refuted, we still packed up and absconded pretty hastily.

Good times!

Here is the link to Instant Kafka on Spotify.


Maybe This Is Not Even Earth

Saturday, January 6, 2024

The Armies of Old Night and Blanche's Techno-barbarians




For whatever reason, I found myself going through the Horus Heresy black books again recently - not the novels but the books that were intended for gaming, written mostly by Alan Bligh. It really is a shame he passed away, he's responsible for some of my favorite material to come out of the Warhammer 40k universe, along with Warrick Kinrade over at Move to Contact who wrote some of the early Imperial Armour books. I tend to re-read RPG material when I am going to sleep the way some people watch TV.

Anyway, I found myself thinking about the Unification Wars, and about the possibility of a game set during the Age of Strife, and not for the first time. I can't recall when I first thought about this - probably shortly after I first heard about INQ28 / Inquisimunda, but it might have even been before that.

For the record, I came to 40k late. I remember seeing ads for Rogue Trader in Dragon Magazine when it was brand new (and I was like 13 or 14) and thinking "Fuck that looks awesome," and then, some years later, being in my FLGS and seeing models and books for Warhammer, though I cannot recall if it was 40k or Fantasy or both, and thinking that not only did you have to buy the minis, there were like 20 books you needed (I think I thought you needed ALL the codexes (codicies?) to play) and I sort of immediately went well, I'm never gonna play that shit, it's way too expensive.

And I forgot about Warhammer for a long time. But sometime in about 2013, I found an image of a Necron and out of a vague sense of familiarity and idle curiosity I did a couple of google searches, and the next thing I knew I was on a Warhammer wiki. This particular wiki basically ripped text wholesale from the books, especially the gaming books, and while I don't generally condone this, I think it was probably a net positive financially for the company that makes 40k as it had the same effect on me that bootleg cassette tapes of the Cramps and Crash Worship and the Dead Kennedys had on me when I was 14, and I was digging into the Siege of Vraks and the Badab War and lore on these weird mechs called Titans with something approaching glee. And the art, my god. The art was SO good. John Blanche's artwork in particular just left me kind of gobsmacked, but all of it was good.  I've included a bunch of examples of Blanche's work throughout and at the end of the post.



I had always enjoyed the mini aspect of D&D so I wasn't averse to trying that at a larger scale. I found that in particular I was really intrigued by the Skitarii. There were no models for the Mechanicus at the time, so right from the beginning, conversion was a thing I was considering. But I had no idea how to go about it, so I just sort of digested as much as I could of the lore and looked at models for a few years, trying to get a sense of what might work if I wanted to convert or scratch-build an army of Skitarii. GW came out with a line of plastic Mechanicus dudes in 2015, which was enough to get my to buy in, and I have a pretty decent sized Martian Mechanicus army. I should post pictures sometime.

So those first couple of years, before I knew about ForgeWorld and before there were any plastic AdMech dudes, when I was dreaming of how I might go about scratch building the little guys, left me with a love of conversion, and I am even more amazed when someone sculpts their own stuff, like some of the work on Le Blog des Kouzes (check out Maxime's Plaguebones stuff if you stop by there, it's amazing).

I didn't stop with the AdMech, and among other stuff, I have a Death Guard army where the goal was to ensure that no two models were the same. That was the first army where I started converting some of my own stuff. Again, one of these days, I'll throw some pictures up. I think right around this time period - 2017 or 18, not sure - is also when I found INQ28 and some of the sites kind of dedicated to Blanchitsu, to conversion, sculpting, and darker palettes then what you see in a typical paintjob from the GW professional team.

So the other day while I was going through the Horus Heresy books again, with all this stuff about conversion and whatnot swirling around in my head, I was reminded of the Unification Wars and the Armies of Old Night.

For those that don't know, the Age of Strife or Old Night is kind of a pre-historical era in the 30k/40k universe, the end of which was brought about by the Unification Wars. It's a time period when the Emps was not yet fully dominant, and was going from this power bloc to that and unifying everyone, by force if necessary - hence "The Unification Wars." We get little tidbits about it here and there, but they are very few and far between.  

But the tidbits we DO get are compelling in every sense of the word, at least, it has compelled me to consider creating armies for the various forces of the Unification Wars and Old Night. There's more about the Emperor's forces than anyone else - Thunder Warrior armies have been done, I think - but I'm more interested in the other rulers of the time period - the forces of the Unspeakable King or the Ethnarch of the Caucasus Wastes.

So I am collecting all the details I can about these forces. There are many more than these mentioned on the various wiki pages etc, but for now I am only including those where I have been able to find a bit of additional detail, enough that I could root an army in canonical lore rather than spin it from whole cloth. Most of this can be found on various sites like Lexicanum, but some of it comes from bits of the Horus Heresy gaming books and I've re-organized it to focus mostly on the military tidbits. There's some confusing information (for example, there are two Ethnarchs, and the "Unspeakable King" ruled both Albia and Panpacifica but was then succeeded by Narthan Dune, the Tupelov Lancers served Sheng Kal but then later served the Emperor), but I think I've gotten it mostly right.  

If you have any additional details about any of the states below (the info is pretty well scattered through lots of different books) or enough detail on a state I didn't include to warrant it's inclusion here, please please let me know! 




Akkad

Summary: Akkad was a techno-barbarian state in the Upper Asiatic Basin who fought against the forces of the Emperor.

Leaders: a monarch known as the Great King of Akkad

Troops: genetically-engineered slave soldiers known as the Udug Hul. The Udug Hul's bodies possessed poisoned blood and had a physical strength greater than 10 un-enhanced human warriors. Akkad had approx 200,000 of these gene-forged warriors.


Albia

Summary: Albia, sometimes called "Old Albia," was a techno-barbarian state which bordered Northern Atlan (probably the North Atlantic Basin) and was known for its ancient warlike clans. Albia consisted of towering, soot-blackened castram-cities. Albia is probably located in the area of the British Isles and was also called Britonnica and likely Albyon as well. Albia engaged in frequent wars with the Pan-Pacific Empire.

Leaders: Uilleam the Red (If Albyon is indeed the same region), as well as, at one point, the Unspeakable King of the Pan-Pacific Empire.

Troops: Armored Ironside Clan soldiers and proto-Dreadnoughts


Ethnarchy of the Caucasus Wastes

Summary: The Ethnarchy of the Caucasus Wastes was a techno-barbarian state located in the Caucasus Peninsula of Europa. The Ethnarchy's strongholds were hidden deep beneath the hollowed-out mountains of the Wastes and shielded from attack from above by near-impregnable power-filed webs

Leaders: The Ethnarch of the Caucasus Wastes, “mutated eugenicist-oligarchs”

Troops: many, from "armored, gene-augmented "Ur-Khasis" troops, roughly analogous to the Emperor's Thunder Warriors, to narcotically-enslaved covens of psykers."


Franc

Summary: The lands of Franc were based in the territory of Western Europa, largely in the region of the ancient nation-state once called France. The people of Franc were known as the Frank, a fractious people before the Unification that did not take kindly to invaders.

Leaders: Havuleq D'agross

Troops: a force of 50,000 rebels, which was largely composed of unskilled militia.


Himalazia

Summary: Himalazia was the name given to the mountains of what had been known as the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau, the greatest mountain range on Old Earth. Located well above twenty-thousand feet, the air was too thin to breathe without mechanical aid. The mountains of Himalazia served as the Emperor's original base on Terra. Deep beneath these mountains, the Emperor established a vast number of gene-laboratories and other areas for research. Late in the Unification Wars, the entire chain of great peaks was transformed into the massive fortress and capital city known as the Imperial Palace.

Leaders: The Emperor

Troops: too many to list, but obviously the Thunder Warriors and the Custodes; also the Old One Hundred - a series of one hundred Imperial Army regiments, mostly unaugmented humans, who fought for the Emperor (and apparently pre-unification some of these fought against the Emps as well). This list is not exhaustive but: the Geno Chilliads (Geno Five Two Chilliad being one specific regiment), Geno Spartocid, the Angkorian Dragoons, the Antioch Miles Vesperi, the Catharti Arraigners, the Cordesh Cavalry, the Golden Hegera, the Inferallti Hussars, the Kimmerine Corps Bellum, the Kushtun Naganda, the Lucifer Blacks, the Qui-Helic Guard, and the Tupelov Lancers. Also - the ConFed Gun Brotherhoods, the Thorosian Voltigeurs, Ouranti Drakes, the Lombardi Hort and Zanzibari Hort, and the Outremar (led by a Grand Khedive).  Also the G9k Division Kill.

The Geno Chilliads, or at least Geno 52 Chilliad, was composed of soldiers that were produced via genetic selection to be at the absolute peak of unaltered human performance, while the officer class (called Uxors) was exclusively female, with junior officers being in their teenage years. These officers had a weak psychic power they called Cept that manifested as a "felt" connection to the troops under their command and a higher than normal grasp of the operational situation. This power burnt out usually before the age of thirty. Loss of Cept usually meant removal from command position.

The Geno Seven-Sixty Spartocid, when we see them in Legion, seem somewhat run down from a long war against abhumans on Dycenae and their neglect has led to mismatched plate and carapace armour with threadbare cloaks over them (but we could probably assume that duirng the Unification War era they were well supplied). The crests on their helms seem to indicate rank. They are armed with broadburn lascarbines. Their ranks include a Subalterix officer rank and a Strategarch command rank.


Hy Brasil

Summary: Hy Brasil was a powerful techno-barbarian state centered in the former territory of ancient Brazil on the continent of Sud Merica. Hy Brasil was considered the most powerful of all the Sud Merican cantons.

Leaders: Dalmoth Kyn

Troops: "the Dracos,” who were allowed to maintain their existence even after the establishment of the Imperial government. They wore green, scaled armor. They were exclusively recruited from the desiccated jungle regions of Sud Merica and apparently had scaled cloaks and reptilian-styled helmets.


Maulland Sen Confederacy

Summary: The Maulland Sen Confederacy was a techno-barbarian state based in Nordyc (Scandinavia) that unwittingly served the Dark Gods of Chaos by engaging in cannibalistic Human sacrifice and forbidden genetic manipulation.

Leader: the Tyrant-Prophet of Maulland Sen (also called the Priest King of Mauland Sen)

Troops: A horde of genetically-altered warriors, witch-marked men, and zealots.


Pan-Pacific Empire

Summary: The Pan-Pacific Empire was a techno-barbarian state composed of the Pacific Islands and what had once been the territories of parts of East Asia, Australia and the Japanese islands that flourished during the Age of Strife. Eventually, the empire became one of the most powerful techno-barbarian realms on Pre-Unification Terra.

Leaders: A warlord remembered in legend only as the "Unspeakable King," who is said to have ruled both Albia and the Panpacific Empire at one point.  Later, Narthan Dume, the Tyrant of the Pan-Pacific Empire, “half-mad, half-genius.” The Crimson Walkers in Vhnori, who are likely old generals of Dume and are described as “psykers, gene-splicers, and warlords.”

Troops: Under the Crimson Walkers, the troops are described as “mutant monstrosities,” and “stich-golems who scampered on dozens of hands, ranks of braindead slaves, and demented Psykers.”  The Unspeakable King had the Hollow Ones, an order of pariahs like the the Silent Sisterhood, and was probably a powerful psychic null himself. 


Ursh

Summary: Ursh was a techno-barbarian state that was located in the steppes of what had once been Russia and Central Asia. Ursh was the mightiest of the techno-barbarian empires on Terra before the Unification Wars. It was not as technologically advanced as several of the other techno-barbarian states. For example, the acquisition of superior military machines from the Nordafrik Conclaves was the main reason cited in the Chronicles of Ursh for Ursh's decision to launch that infamous ancient war against its southern neighbor. The Chronicles of Ursh mentions the influence of "primordial gods" upon Kalagann and the Ursh. Also, the sorcerous powers of Kalagann mentioned in the Chronicles of Ursh formed the main part of Ursh's military power.

Leaders: Ursh was ruled by the despot and warlord named Kalagann at the time of the Unification Wars. Kalagann was described as being of cruel character, and commanding vast armies of techno-barbarians. Other high positions within the government of Ursh were all filled by military warlords including Lurtois, Sheng Khal (also known as Shang Khal) and Quallodon.

Troops: The armies of Ursh consisted mostly of unaltered Human soldiers. Kalagann also employed powerful psykers within his armies, using their arcane abilities to unleash the foul powers of the Warp upon his enemies.

Some of Ursh's troops are known by name and include the following units:

The Roma were organized mercenary fliers who fought for the forces of Ursh. Highly-skilled pilots, they were said to never touch the earth beneath them. They were trained to carry out pinpoint aerial attacks, and were therefore of great value to the generals of Ursh.

Both the Red Engines and the Tupelov Lancers followed the command of the Urshian warlord Sheng Khal. The Red Engines were masters of the siege, and possessed siege engines able to raze whole fortresses or hive cities to the ground. The Tupelov Lancers are described as screaming berserkers. These Urshian warriors were trained for close-combat action, and proved ruthless and deadly. They were known also for their use of cybernetic steeds.  They later became one of the "Old One Hundred."

The Oneirocriticks were the personal counsellors of the Ursh warlord Sheng Khal. Their name means "interpreters of dreams," in the ancient Urshian dialect of Low Gothic, but it is likely that they used some kind of Warp sorcery to guide Shang Khal in his actions.

The Wrathsingers were a specialized Urshian military unit that was likely comprised of practitioners of sorcery that bent the powers of the Warp to their will. They were able to use their "magic" as the Chronicles of Ursh names their abilities, to change the environment to their advantage or to kill men from afar with their "spells."


Yndonesic Bloc

Summary: The Yndonesic Bloc was a techno-barbarian state located in what was once Southeast Asia. As late as the time of the Horus Heresy in the early 31st Millennium, the Yndonesic Bloc, though an integral part of the Imperium, still retained a distinct regional identity and culture on Terra. Their ruler, Cardinal Tang, imposed a genocidal policy that consisted of forced breeding between only "genetically compatible" citizens of the Bloc, combined with a eugenics program that aimed for the pursuit of racial hygiene through the use of compulsory sterilization and the genocidal extermination of "undesirables."

Those that defied these enforced edicts were punished brutally. Imperial history would later characterize Tang's rule as one of "bloody pogroms, death camps and genocides."

Leaders: The Yndonesic Bloc was ruled by a man named Cardinal Tang, the tyrannical "Ethnarch," during the closing years of the Age of Strife before the Unification. He wished to "return the world to a pre-technological age," burning "scientists, mathematicians and philosophers" who opposed his church's views.

Troops: The military unit known as the Stormbird was developed by the Yndonesic Bloc and used against the Pan-Pacific tribes during the Unification Wars. The Stormbird was developed from Warhawk and Nephoros class assault craft.




So there's obviously not very much here, but what IS here, especially when combined with Blanche's art, is enough to work with.  A while back I started messing with some bits I had to create a couple of units of chaos cultists, and I think they could work, but when I did that, the parts were taken mainly from a unit of genestealer cultists, a unit of skitarii vanguard, a set of Cadians, the old chaos cultists from Dark Heresy, and the Vraksian militia bits FW used to make.  There are SO many more choices at this stage with the advent of Kill Team, Necromunda, and Warcry, that I am tempted to just start again.

At any rate, I think I may have found my next modeling project - though it's certain I could get pulled back into the world of Titans pretty easily, I'd kind of like to give this a go.  Though, man, it has been so hard to find time to do this stuff recently.  That's not a bad thing, it's mainly just that most of my free time is being eaten up with music. I'm actually getting close to where I was when I stopped playing all those years ago.  And when I am not doing that, I'm trying to sneak in a little writing or work on the not-yet-abandoned dungeon23 project that has spilled over in to 2024 (there's about 160 character sketches and I'd like to get it to 200 before I let it go).  I'm still sort of undecided on wether I want to do Albia, with the proto-dreadnoughts, the Panpacific Empire (the stitch golem might be a lot of fun to make) or Ursh (there's quite a bit to work with there). But I've been itching to paint a bit again, and one of these seems like it might be a worthy project!



































Bonus happy factoid, if you made it this far: the band I've been working with got signed and we're in the process of releasing about six - seven hours worth of material on eight albums (nearly a hundred songs) on Spotify.  So that's coming soon!

Thursday, December 21, 2023

Distinctive Musicians III - Guitarists

OK - I have some ACTUAL useable RPG content boiling through my brain so I'm going to stop obsessing over musicians after this post (probably).   There are way too many fantastic musicians to really do this topic justice in a little pot like this, but here are a few of the folks I think are truly over the top:


Charlie Hunter (GARAGE A TROIS, SUPERBLUE, VARIOUS MUSICIANS)

Charlie Hunter plays an eight string and does basslines and guitar lead simultaneously.  He's insanely talented.  The thing below is really a wonderful example; though both the bassline and guitar work is sparse, every note is in the right place at the right time, and I find the whole incredibly relaxing - the word that comes to mind, if you could shear it of the pretentious overtones it's become associated with, is cool.  Hunter's playing isn't always this mellow - some of his work with Bobby Previte is pretty tense - but it's hard to mistake him for anyone else.  There's a playfulness there that I only ever see in the most technically accomplished musicians - guys like Hunter, Les Claypool, or Buckethead - where they are like "now I'm going to do some silly shit and it's still gonna be amazing."  This one doesn't have too much silly shit, but it makes me untense my shoulders when I didn't even realize how tight I was holding them - it just empties the body of stress in some weird alchemy.

Fine Corinthian Leather, by the way, is purely an advertising gimmick.  Ricardo Montalban called the leather used for the upholstery this in a commercial for the 1975 Chrysler Cordoba.  But if anything sounds like fine Corinthian leather should, this is it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGvMic-ZDE


Adrian Belew (KING CRIMSON, TALKING HEADS, FRANK ZAPPA, DAVID BOWIE)


I really do not understand why Belew isn't more well known, he is so creative and plays with such joy.  

Everyone, EVERYONE on this track is fucking incredible.  Bill Bruford is a legendary drummer, Robert Fripp (the other guitar on this) could easily be featured separately on this list as well, but Adrian Belew plays lead on this and when Belew plays lead, he makes sounds with a guitar that are hard to believe aren't the sky cracking in two.  Lyrically, I think this is about as perfect a description of obsession as I have ever heard.

I do remember one thing.  It took hours and hours, and by the time I was done with it, I was so involved, I didn't know what to think.
I carried it around with me for days and days...playing little games...like, not looking it for a whole day.  And then, looking at it.  To see if I still liked it.

I DID!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc6huqPzerY


Robert Fripp (KING CRIMSON, BRIAN ENO, BLONDIE)

The other guy playing guitar on the track above is every bit as unique.  Fripp is a true innovator, cut from the same cloth as Les Paul, who first brought electricity to guitar.  His innovations are too numerous to list, really, but Frippertronics (the introduction of tape loops to his playing, which he started in the late 1970's) and New Standard Tuning deserve special mentions. Here's a lovely quote from him that I think captures his overall approach to the instrument, which, though it can sound incredibly complex, is at its roots an exercise in intentionality and simplicity:

"With a note of music, one strikes the fundamental, and, in addition to the root note, other notes are generated: these are the harmonic series.... As one fundamental note contains within it other notes in the octave, two fundamentals produce a remarkable array of harmonics, and the number of possible combinations between all the notes increases phenomenally. With a triad, affairs stand a good chance of getting severely out of hand."

There are so many things he's done - Fracture is an amazing piece of music, the guitar solo in Baby's On Fire from Here Come the Warm Jets is mesmerizing, his work on the album above with Adrian Belew - all of it is good.  I nearly chose an early piece where he's using Frippertronics, but ultimately decided on Discipline - the thematic counterpart to Indiscipline, above, and from the same album.  If Belew shines on Indiscipline, then the cerebral, beautiful stasis of Discipline is pure Fripp.  Also, King Crimson is probably the roots of math rock.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en5YRCvppIA


Buckethead (PRAXIS, GUNS AND ROSES)

Buckethead is a once-in-a-generation Mozart level genius at his chosen art.  I listed bands he's been with above, but he is most prolific doing solo work.  Look at this thing - the number of albums he has put out per year since 2010.  In 2015 he put out an album every three or four days.


The thing I like about Buckethead's playing is that it isn't pure shredding for its own sake - he knows how to lay back when he should (listen to Wake the Dead or Whitewash, for example), and even on this track, which is a tour de force of his talent, he takes the time to develop thematic melodies that really push the whole thing to the next level.  I think what I'm trying to say is that he plays with feeling, something I think is missing from some of the other shredders or incredible technical players.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNXwYo-w1HE


James Calvin Wilsey (The Avengers, Chris Isaak)

The King of Slow.  Chris Isaak got the credit for Wicked Game but for my money it is those first two notes from Wilsey and his lead playing that make the song.  Just perfect, haunting, beautiful, the lead floats above the tune like a lonely ghost drifting over the desert. Dude puts his soul out there when he plays like that.  We only got one solo album from this guy, below is the first track from it.  He's already gone, and that sucks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9haU5gu-Ccg

OK, that is that for now then!  Next up - A return to the World With No Extras - I think!

Tuesday, December 5, 2023

Distinctive Musicians II - Bassists

OK, so this is a music blog for the time being. After this, I'll probably only do one more of these on guitar players and then return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

There are so many really good bass players that I almost feel bad with choosing the five below.  That said, I'm trying to highlight folks that have such a distinctive approach to their instruments that you can tell within a few bars that it's them if you are familiar with them.  Still, leaving John Entwhistle, Stanley Clarke, CAROL KAYE holy moly, Tina Weymouth, CHARLIE MINGUS jesus christ, and Ron Carter out was hard!

Brian Gibson (LIGHTNING BOLT)

Lightning Bolt is a two piece - one guy singing and playing drums, and Brian Gibson. Gibson is a fucking lunatic who plays his bass tuned to cello standard (C G D A) and uses a banjo string for the high A, along with a metric shitton of distortion, a Digitech Digital Whammy pedal and god knows what else (probably a Boss Octave) to get an insanely original sound. I saw these guys for the first time at Gabe's Oasis in Iowa City (the only punk-rock dive in that town, really) and I think I went because Don Caballero was playing. I happened to be towards the back of the crowd and I noticed a bunch of musical gear sitting out on the floor back there. I just figured the drum kit and massive amps were there was because the place didn't have a green room or that it was full and that it would all eventually be moved to the stage. I think that's what everyone thought.

We were wrong.

These guys set up in BACK of the crowd, on the floor, before anyone got there, and started to play immediately when the previous band finished their set, almost no pause at all, essentially taking the entire audience on the back foot and playing with such sheer exuberance and energy that at one point I was laughing with delight and I wasn't alone. They were so loud I could feel the shockwaves hitting my chest and stomach and actually see them moving the liquid in my drink (granted, my position in the rear of the crowd had suddenly become a front row seat but still they were SO loud). It was easily one of the best live shows I've ever seen. I love the fact that they did away with the stage and essentially became one thing with the crowd.  I don't know if they still do that, but they did it at every one of the three other shows I saw them play.

This turns into one of the most ferocious things I have ever heard by a minute and a half in - this thing is seven minutes of churning, blistering, relentless, remorseless aggression and it is just beautiful. I don't even know what genre to put it in. No one else plays like these guys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc6IT61FHVg

Bootsy Collins (PARLIMENT FUNKADELIC, PRAXIS, BOOTSY'S RUBBER BAND)

Bootsy, Bootzilla, Boo Man Chu, Captain P-Mo, Fuzzface, the Player, the Zillatron himself. I would not say he's underappreciated, but he's so incredibly distinctive. No one plays like this guy. You can tell when he's playing right away (or that it's someone imitating him, at the very least).

I chose this thing - nearly ten minutes long, with two bass tracks panned extreme left and right (basically one in each ear, headphones recommended). It's long but man is it good, and it really gives you a sense of his range and style. It is not totally indicative of his playing which with P-Funk for example is much more conventional (though only because Bootsy made it conventional), but I think it really showcases his talent. His use of effects here is visionary and really tasteful. He uses an envelope filter quite a lot to get automated wah sounds based on pitch, an expression pedal as a pitch-bender to get up into frequencies the instrument could never reach otherwise, a flanger, at least one kind of delay, and probably a host of other effects, to say nothing of distortion. Sometimes he sounds like the kickback from firing a particle accelerator cannon (or, well, what such a thing should sound like), sometimes he sounds like the trembling digital web of an electronic spider, and sometimes he sounds like the ocean rolling in and then... receding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FgDk5lo-Zs


Brian Ritchie (VIOLENT FEMMES)

I don't think Ritchie is on anyone's list of "greatest bass players" but he has such a unique sound I felt I had to include him.  I am unaware of any other band where the bass sounds like this - almost acoustic, almost like an upright, but not quite.

This song is so goddamn good.  I am surprised it hasn't been pinched by someone like Scorsese or Tarantino for a film.  Generally I love the scores those two directors put together, though often after a movie's success one of those tunes gets picked up by the advertising industry and played ad nauseam in commercials for burgers until the opening chords make me want to vomit red meat in the collective faces of whoever is on the board of directors.  Dick Dale's Miserlou for example was in I think every single fucking commercial for every single product you could buy between 1994 and 1996.  Now, on the one hand, that's great, because I feel like Dick Dale finally got some recognition and probably a decent payout, and I don't begrudge him that at all.  I might very well come back to him when we get to guitarists.  But on the other hand, that process of a song like Miserlou or Tomoyasu Hotei's Battle Without Honor or Humanity being co-opted by the advertising world makes me more than a little sick to my stomach.

Ahem.  I'm way off track here.  This thing will probably get stuck in your head, and it will be almost immediately apparent why it will probably never be used in a commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLHi3wiSuWc


Jaco Pastorius (WEATHER REPORT)

Again, I would say Jaco isn't underappreciated I don't think, but it does seem like he's fading a bit in the collective memory.  What he did for music in general and particularly for the bass guitar is nothing short of monumental.  There are a ton of wonderful apocryphal stories about Jaco, but one of my favorites is that when asked about the future of jazz, he replied "Well, I'll be in Miami next week."
He modified a standard Fender jazz bass to be fretless.  He had different stories about when and how he removed the frets - one of them was that he removed the frets with a butter knife and sealed the fretboard with epoxy resin.

Like so many great musicians, he had serious problems with substance abuse.  I guess he could be a real asshole when he drank (as so many of us can) and he liked to drink (as so many of us do).  He was frequently homeless the last few years of his life.  His death at thirty five was a tragedy of his own making - this is from the Wikipedia entry on Jaco:

On September 11, 1987, Pastorius sneaked onstage at a Santana concert at the Sunrise Musical Theater in Sunrise, Florida. After being ejected from the premises, he made his way to the Midnight Bottle Club in Wilton Manors. After reportedly kicking in a glass door, having been refused entrance to the club, he became involved in a violent confrontation with Luc Havan, a club employee who was a martial arts expert. Pastorius was hospitalized for multiple facial fractures and injuries to his right eye and left arm, and fell into a coma. There were encouraging signs that he would come out of the coma and recover, but they soon faded. A brain hemorrhage a few days later led to brain death. He was taken off life support and died on September 21, 1987, at the age of 35.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc6IT61FHVg


Les Claypool (PRIMUS, LES CLAYPOOL'S FLYING FROG BRIGADE)

OK, once again, not someone who is underappreciated by any means, but I think perhaps the single most distinctive bassist stylistically I have ever heard.  Almost more than Bootsy, you can tell when Les is playing pretty much immediately.  People tend to either love him or hate him.  I love him, but I DO have to be in the mood and I'm not always.  This is a pretty early thing, from the first Primus album, but if you don't know Claypool's playing for some reason, this will give you a really good picture of why he is hailed far and wide as a bass monster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ufAE-skaA4


That's all for now!  There are obviously a lot of other folks who deserve their own showcase, but those are the five I chose in the moment. If there is someone whose lack of inclusion feels to you as though it is an atrocity up there with family annihilation in its stark evil, if you happen to have an opinion about any of this that you'd like to share, or if you would just like to tell me about one of your favorite bass players, please DO!

Guitarists will be next.

Monday, November 27, 2023

How Do You Know it's a Drummer at your Door?

The knock speeds up and he comes in off-time!

Ba-dum tiss?  Ba-dum tiss.

 

I’ve always wanted to do a series on musicians that I think are just fucking amazing.  My criteria for choosing a musician is somewhat fluid, but mostly has to do with how distinctive I think they are stylistically.  It also has to do with guys I think might be slightly underappreciated for what they do. But the main thing is that all of these guys have a really distinctive style – as soon as you hear them you can tell who it is.

Drummers are up first.

 

Andrew Dymond / Andre Diamant (DURACELL)

This British-French kid uses a triggered kit hooked up to a synth and becomes a one man band playing hardcore punk chiptune stuff from video games that were popular when I was a kid.  Which is cool enough, but holy fucking SHIT the energy he brings is just amazing.  This is the first thing I ever saw with him in it, and the sound quality is a little rough, but I love it for so many reasons.  First of all, you can clearly see him playing (for a given value of clearly – he’s often moving so fast that shit’s just a blur).  You also see him adjust his setup from time to time, which I find endearing.

But last and not least, even if you deleted all the triggered stuff, this would be some of the fastest and most intense drumming I think I have ever been exposed to, and I spent large parts of the 90’s at death metal shows.

Seriously, if you can’t be bothered to watch anything else, 8:00 to 8:40.  He just EXPLODES, what he does here is drumming PERFECTION.  It’s better in context and I encourage you to watch the whole fucking thing, but if you don’t listen to anything else from this post, make it that, holy fuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QfwKqy3LyY

 

Billy Cobham (MILES DAVIS, MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA)

Billy has been on too much stuff to list it all here.  He was the drummer for most of Miles Davis’ later stuff and worked with Stanley Clarke (who we might talk about a little when I get to bass players).  Hell he even worked with Peter Gabriel on the soundtrack for The Last Temptation of Christ, so he’s not exactly underappreciated, but he is absolutely worth knowing about.  Again, I’ve chosen something that is incredibly fast – but Billy has a really light touch and it sounds crisp instead of heavy (and I mean that in the best way possible).  There’s a bit at 4:19 where he starts hitting a china cymbal repeatedly and you wonder where the fuck he was keeping the extra arm.  If you like this and want to see him actually play, look up the live version of Awakening, same band – The Mahavishnu Orchestra.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boOu0L45M44


Damon Che (DON CABALLERO)

Damon’s main band is Don Caballero – these are the first guys I ever heard the term “math rock” applied to.  He’s nicknamed the Octopus and it will be easy to see why.  The first time I saw these guys live I was watching him set up.  Almost all drummers have a rug they put their bass drum or drums on, usually with a rubber bottom, to keep them from scooting away (or at least all the drummers I ever played with had something like this).  One of the guys I played with a lot used to weight down the rug with cinderblocks.  He played really hard.  Che is the first drummer I ever saw who nailed his rug to the stage. There are so so many things I could pick from for this band that showcase how insanely talented this guy is.  It is really really hard for me to pick just one.  And I'll probably come back to them when I talk about guitar players - Ian Williams, who went on to play with Battles, is almost as distinctive as Damon is. The ability of these guys to not listen to each other while they listen to each other is amazing. As with all of Che's playing, this is a moving animal, never settled, always twisting and turning and looking about itself for something to sink its teeth into, and I love that about his work. And the intro count in this thing is one of my favorite little moments in rock:

Guitarist: One!

Drummer: One!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPmkQ_heOME

OK, ok one more from Che because he’s that good.  Also the song title is fuckin great and if you get through this you’ll understand the tiss and the ting a little better than you do now, I promise.  The ride cymbal that kicks in around 3:16ish - oof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcb8aov3zt0

 

Joe Warlord (USURPER, BONES)

Last one up for now will be Joe Schafer, also known as Joe Warlord.  I will have to admit a bias here – the guys in this band were a couple of years older than me and most of the folks I hung out with, but they are from the same general area and went to the first high school I got expelled from, and I have very fond memories of hanging out in their jam room and smoking pot at like 14 years old.  They always played an incredibly heavy brand of metal, and as a kid I was really really into aggressive music, metal and punk especially.  They went on to do a kind of semi-pro thing, a lot of touring with bands like Cradle of Filth, Christian Death, and Mercyful Fate, as well as another band that came out of the local scene, Macabre.  Anyway, Joe is a fucking beast.  You could pretty much pick anything they have done and it would be remarkable, but this thing is nuts, especially towards the end.  Even if you don’t care for metal, I encourage you to kind of bite down and listen from 6:30 on, and pay close attention to the change up around 7:20 when it goes double-time.  It is inhumanly fast.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0nTBUFIq0s

That's it for now - not sure whether it'll be bass players or guitarists next.  Probably bass players.

Last Dungeon

A while back, a couple of guys at work approached me one day and basically said “We heard you were a fun DM will you run a game for us?” They wanted to play D&D.  Two of them had played in the past, but were pretty new to it, two had never really played any RPGs.  I thought it would be fun and expected it to last a couple of months.  They wanted to us the newest rules, and I had no major objections.  I didn’t mind giving it a try, especially considering that I really didn’t expect it to last a long time.

That was over four years ago.  At this point the characters are level 15 (some other time I may do a really whiny post about high level play in 5e), and I have got them to what will be the final dungeon in this campaign.  The first adventure was a hire from a pig farmer who had been missing livestock and it turned out he had an orc problem.  Then there was a haunted manse (basically I took the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and changed it quite a bit so that it was more to my taste and fit the 5e ruleset).  A couple of custom dungeons followed that, and then a trip to the Deep Carbon Observatory.  After DCO, I ran two more custom dungeons, a weird one that was a bunch of towers and another one that was an attempt to do horror in D&D and which worked fairly well!  I got my players to buy in, and it was a lot of work, but I split them up and ran one on one sessions for a few weeks until they met up again.  I did a write up on this blog of that one, called Facility Designate 339-19, and posted a link to a google drive folder with all the material in it.  After that I took them through another custom dungeon and then I dumped them into the Maze of the Blue Medusa, which was fun to run.  Then, the dungeon I ran for them just before this was mostly procedurally generated and combat heavy.  It was ok, and I think the players had fun with it, but it was not my finest moment, and I’d like to end things with something much more substantial and memorable.  So I am back to planning and am taking the time to write up the last dungeon.

I have some maps, and the monsters have been more or less determined, but I’d really like to put in some interesting / fun puzzles and traps and encounters that need some thought.  I’ve been scouring the internet in search of stuff like this, but if anyone out there has good resources, or just a favorite trap / encounter / puzzle from an RPG, please tell me about it, either in the comments or you can email me (dsulli42 at geemail dot com).  I’d love to hear about stuff you found particularly memorable.

One idea that I love, (not mine, but I can't recall where I saw it) but will probably not use in this particular dungeon (it’s hard to see how it would fit in) – is a dungeon where the players have the ability to change the seasons to change conditions or where the dungeon is on some sort of accelerated seasonal change (each season is six hours or something).  Changing to winter may freeze a previously uncrossable pool of water, spring may melt ice that was blocking a doorway, summer may allow the “sun’s” rays to be focused to light a fire in a place that cannot otherwise be accessed and which triggers something else to happen, or the autumn may reveal a necessary clue previously hidden by leaves or hanging ice.  I am going to use this SOMEWHERE – probably in one of the next campaigns I run, probably for lower-level characters (no higher than four or so) – but it simply doesn’t fit right now and the PCs have too many alternate ways to solve problems like these.

Anyway, I would like to give this party a memorable last dungeon and I would love love love to hear one or two of your favorite traps, tricks, puzzles, or encounters.

 

It Ain’t Alright

The band I played that gig with back in September has continued to play and it has been really rewarding and honestly a lot of fun.  We did a LOT of recording at one point, more than a hundred songs worth, and one of the guys in the band decided to remaster some of the old stuff.  It’s come out pretty nice! At some point all this stuff will be up on Spotify, but I wanted to share a track and decided on this tune, called It Ain’t Alright, which goes into a cover of Pink Floyd’s Interstellar Overdrive and has a nice period of that funky drug experience music I love so much before resolving in what, to me at least, is an incredibly satisfying way.  I had nothing to do with writing this thing – I think it was composed by the guitar player for Rights of the Accused for a band our keyboard player was in with him called Think Freud (I think – though I could be wrong, and I think the name of the original band was why we added the Interstellar Overdrive cover), and of course Interstellar Overdrive was written by Pink Floyd.  I used to LOVE playing this thing (sans the Floyd cover).  It’s really simple and even drunk it wasn’t that hard and I liked staggering all over the stage while we played this thing (a far cry from my most recent gig where I was still so out of practice all I could do was lock eyes on the fretboard to try to make sure I didn’t screw up – but if we play again, that will have changed, I'm finally starting to get back to where I was).

The beginning of this is almost like Anarchy in the UK, and I think that’s probably intentional.  A few other reasons I always liked this one - first, you can tell it was written by a guitar player.  Being that the guy who sings and plays keys wrote a lot of the material we play, it noticeably lacks things like a fucking E flat (typically I use standard tuning to E and whenever an E flat comes up I have to go up the neck when I want to go down and I often wind up restructuring what I am playing entirely to account for this). Second, you can be as aggressive or as laid back as you want with the picking.  It's hard to hear on the recording because we are using so much distortion, but once the intro walkdown is finished, Leanne (other guitarist at the time) and I are both playing a da-digadiga-da-digadiga-da da pattern that's pretty goddamn vigorous, but it sounds just fine with slower picking if you run outta gas.

https://soundcloud.com/dan-sullivan-977382186/it-aint-alright-interstellar-overdrive

I don't think I can overstate how good it has been for my overall mood and mental health to have this outlet.  We've been working up a bunch of new material, which has been really engaging and satisfying.  We're not at the point where it's worth laying anything down other than on a phone or something just to capture the ideas, but we're getting close with  few things. But if anything is gonna keep me out of the hole I usually find myself in at this time of year, it'll probably be playing stupidly loud rock n roll.

Astrology in RPGs

Has anyone heard of a system that uses astrology to determine character stats and characteristics? Wait.  Let me say first that I think astrology is basically a crock of horseshit.  But it's still kinda fun and interesting, and some systems get really really involved.  A few things converged on this topic recently - Patrick Stuart's announcement of Gackling Moon made me think about this a little, along with a discussion about Tekumel I eavesdropped on (I always think of the planets around Tekumel because the whole arrangement is so weird), and where one of the luminaries was named for Lovecraft / Clark Ashton Smith's Dreamlands reflection of Saturn, Cykranosh (and who runs the Satrap of Saturn blog). I really like the Book of Ebon Bindings, and one of my favorite things about it is the way it links demons with certain stars, and it would be interesting to incorporate that as well.  I started making a generator for heavenly bodies.  At the moment it is pretty basic, just craps out a few details about a star. I'd like to take it a step further maybe and put something together that could create a game world's solar system, major constellations and stars, and a zodiac of sorts, then combine everything into a generator that spit out a character at you, complete with ability scores and a few major personality traits (which the player could chose to lean into or ignore if they wished). Solomon VK did a nice post on star names here.

I think what I want is probably beyond the ability of the HTML template generators I'm capable of using to do - essentially generating a full Astrological system and doing a natal chart designed to give a player a character to work with as well as linking the stars to certain ultra-powerful beings, whether malevolent or benign.

But for what it is worth here's the generator as it stands so far, just a very simple thing that spits out a star, its color, and gives a little factoid about it.  More to come, I hope.




INQ 28


There's been a long lull for me in mini work while GW pulled all the Adeptus Titanicus stuff for reboxing into Legions Imperialis.  The good news there is that there is a lot more terrain to choose from all of a sudden, and some additional tiles for a gameboard that I may pick up at some point (goddamn they are pricey though, for bits of plastic).  Anyway, I haven't played 40k for several years, but I have a pretty decent collection of bits and unbuilt models from when I was playing, and I started messing with some of them one day out of boredom while sitting in yet another online meeting at work.  I've always been kind of fascinated with kitbashing and conversion of minis.  I've started with an inquisitor, built partially from Greyfax, a Skitarii Sicarian, and the Crusader model from one of the Blackstone Fortress expansions, along with some other sundry stuff.  It is an interesting process, and one that can easily get me out of myself, which is valuable in and of itself to me.

If you have not done so, the INQ 28 scene in general is worth checking out.  I have linked it before but in particular the fanzine 28 is really, really good.  If nothing else, the point-counterpoint articles in issue four on whether minis are art or not is kind of fascinating, and brings up the Chapman brothers' Hell (which apparently burned up in a warehouse fire and was replaced by a new diorama they called Fucking Hell) as an example.  It's a fascinating question.  I don't have a definitive opinion on the matter but I think I lean towards the idea, that yes, minis can be art.  For me the really good stuff happens when someone goes off-script a bit and invents their own pieces of lore (or uses the minis in a completely original way, perhaps not for gaming at all), but even seeing an incredibly well-done "textbook" army feels to me as though it might qualify.