The Fool and the Mondugoo / Pingerwat Strather - A Tribute to JAGS Wonderland and Lewis Carroll

The Fool and the Mondugoo

(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)

The Fool wound his faffy gauzy wrap betwixt his little hands
And munched a fennig beetle, going over his demands
His sallow skin was all stove in about his bloody heart
Because he’d aimed his verbal bow and fired an artless dart
At Mindlepoo the Mondugoo, who topped the warrior chart.


At this the bold Mindlepoo had florched him round the nips
And given him a mighty bash and punched him in the lips
The Mondugoo do not take light the insult of the Fool
They are honor bound to stand up proud and make a fibber drool
And so the flumpy Fool was whipped at the beginning of the duel.


He florched him once, and florched him twice, and florched him three times well
And all those gathered round the fight saw those nips begin to swell
Unfortunately nothing could be done about the rancid smell
Mindlepoo the Mondugoo was named victrix champeen
He took the proceeds of his win and went to buy some beans.


He chose a fumpy camping site and began to celebrate
He knew that this, his victory, would always mark the date
For years to come, December sixth nineteen and twenty eight
Would be recalled with joy and pride by all the Mondugoo
They’d feast and shout and eat and love, and dance their Vrindle-Voo


None can dance like the Mondugoo, or so the saying goes
They’ve extra muscles in their butts and ballast in their toes
In fact the mumpo martial stance is how they best most foes
So they dance their dance and feast their feast and then lay back to doze
While remembering bold Mindlepoo, and forgetting all their woes.

One of Carroll's original illustrations for the books.  I believe this is the mock Turtle and the Gryphon

If a little song appears in your head when you read this poem, so much the better.

I recently heard about JAGS Wonderland and decided to have a look.  I think Jabberwocky was probably one of the first poems I really enjoyed (along with Alfred, Lord Tennyson's The Eagle).  I've also always been fascinated with the sound of words, and often part of my creative process involves making up words, often with lots of fricatives and plosives, and saying them out loud.  It somehow relieves stress for me - I have wondered if I have an undiagnosed and very mild case of Tourette's or something.  At any rate, it definitely comes from a place that is pre-socialization, and because of that, I very rarely share any of those sounds with anyone - I have a feeling most people wouldn't know what to make of it and would think it was childish or foolish, babble and nonsense.

But I think there is a place for nonsense, and I would like to make a place for it in my games from time to time.  Enter JAGS Wonderland.  The idea here is that just below the surface there are different "chessboards," and as you go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, you pass through different layers - starting in our physical world, and then passing through layers that are cosmological, metaphysical, philosophical, and metaphorical as you go deeper, eventually winding up in a place where the laws of literature and drama determine reality rather than the laws of physics.

But just like the books themselves, there's an undertone there that's really quite frightening.

Another of Carroll's original illustrations

Wonderland is initially presented as a potentially transmissible mental disease, almost like a contagious schizophrenia - when you have an "episode" as a character, you might suddenly be able to walk in to the mirror in the closet, or watch as the graffiti on an abandoned factory comes to life and scurries inside.  Do you want to follow it?  As you get deeper in, you might realize that it's really a predatory dimension trying to infect our own.  This knowledge of the unnatural - what most reasonable people assume are hallucinations at least at first - comes complete with self-help groups that don't help, mental health facilities that are really snake-pits where your worst fears are realized after being involuntarily committed, and of course, government and corporate conspiracies.  Because, you see, Wonderland makes the impossible possible, and what government or corporation wouldn't kill to have that kind of power?  So yes, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  But also, Delta Green.  It's a really compelling mix of moods and ideas.

I would love to play this at some point, but I am honestly also a little scared I might not do it justice.  It would also need players that were going in nearly blind.  But who knows?

Of course, I couldn't leave this one out.  by John Tenniel

One of these days, perhaps I'll see how all my nonsense connects and find that suddenly, I can step right through the mirror in the bedroom....

Pingerwatt Strather

Fernhapper mumpulous bernadan dree,
Harpofuff droomalot mernhauser bee
Fortkrimble muffing stuvs plampulous blee.
Vuckreener jorpulent plithington pree.

Jergmorton thoppingful meetgorbler bun
Jagwali iffingham murtleston krun.
Joopulous wagwallets, fortling fon verp,
Zagwalber blagmallets, zorbwiller merp!

Blodapop zodalmink vumpkrabbit wink?
Prugler von valleywoppits, musfingler dink.
Buffington vrootfinder ubby krun blort
Hoogler vaff gamblebracks, murbling blun hort!

The War of Words - One Possible System for Social Conflict and Combat in D&D

I'm not great at gamemastering social situations, at least ones in which there's a kind of verbal combat taking place.  I have tried, but I'm just not a quick enough social thinker to be really adept with these sorts of scenarios in gamemastering.  I can do ok if it's a pretty simple scenario where the rules of interaction are pretty well-defined, and of course I am better at it in situations where I am thoroughly familiar with the background material and personalities of the players (used in this sense to mean "the people I am trying to instantiate through my gamemastering," rather than the actual players of the game).  But even though I'm not particularly good at role-playing these kinds of verbal altercations, I'd like for them to exist and be enjoyable for my players.  And I would like my players to have options aside from combat that can resolve conflict or determine an outcome.

I jotted some of these ideas down a while back and it came to the fore again as I've been wondering about non-violent conflict resolution.  I've recently been looking at Max Cantor's wonderful Maximum Recursion Depth.  The system presented in that book gives you multiple paths for engaging in and resolving conflict aside from the purely physical, and it's exceptionally intriguing - the idea of propriety in particular as it is presented there is fascinating.  The rules there also solve some problems for me as a GM in that, while it certainly can be enjoyable to role-play the exchange between a snooty, nasty courtier and a PC, sometimes I am simply not up to the verbal challenge.  It's nice to be able to potentially set the tone with role-playing, but then have some mechanics to resolve the conflict!

As a result mostly of my own limitations but also seeing systems like this, I've been thinking about implementing a system for a so-called "war of words."  Here are some rough ideas to be play-tested.  These could be used for anything from determining who is embarrassed at court or to getting information from someone at a party who is resistant by using the rules of propriety to make them look foolish if they don't.

Here are the basics:

A character's Social AC = 10 +/- WIS modifier +/- Defense Mode modifier

A character's Social HP = 10 +/- CHA modifier +/- INT modifier

Social "To Hit" = d20 +/- CHA modifier +/- Attack Mode modifier

At the beginning of a round of social combat, each character secretly selects a target, a defense mode, and an attack mode.  As you can see on the tables below, certain Defense Modes are more effective against certain Attack Modes and vice versa.  So, as one friend pointed out, a bit like Rock Paper Scissors.

At some point I may add some additional "moves" to this - pointed questions (weak against "missing the point"?), twisting words, verbal acrobatics, splitting hairs, etc.

So here's an example of play, let's say Duke Stephen LeStrange the Snooty Noble is trying to embarrass Grimblegorn at the Feast of Kings so that the king provides backing for his plan to send the city guard to quell bugbear attacks.  Grimblegorn has volunteered the services of himself and his adventuring companions for the task.  Stephen doesn't want them to succeed (or even get a chance to succeed) both because there is reward money at stake and because he is in charge of the City Guard and will win influence if they are ultimately the ones who end the threat.  So he begins insulting Grimblegorn's plans while boosting his own...

Stephen has a CHA modifier of +3, a WIS modifier of -1, and an INT modifier of +1

This gives him a base Social AC of 9 and Social HP of 14

Grimblegorn has a CHA modifier of +1, a WIS modifier of +3, and an INT modifier of +2

This gives him a base Social AC of 13 and Social HP of 13

In the first round, Stephen (who has selected Grimblegorn as his target) chooses an attack mode of Cutting Remarks and a Defense Mode of Evasive Answers.

Grimblegorn has chosen an Attack mode of Sharp Tongue and a Defense Mode of Witty Riposte

Stephen rolls d20, getting a 6, adds his CHA bonus (+3) but his attack mode gives him no special additional modifier to hit - his total to hit is 9.  Grimblegorn's Social AC is 13, so the attack fails.

Grimblegorn gets a free second attack because his attacker missed and he chose Witty Riposte as his defense mode.  So he rolls d20 twice, once attacking with his Sharp Tongue, getting a 8 and once with his Witty Riposte, getting a 15.  The roll for his Sharp Tongue attack is modified by his CHA bonus to 9, which would usually just hit, but Stephen has chosen Evasive Answers, which gives him an extra +1 AC versus Sharp Tongue - so the attack misses!  Grimblegorn's second attack fares better, even without the modifier it would hit, so he does d4 damage, rolling a 3, and takes Stephens Social HP from 14 to 11.

In the next round, Stephen has chosen a Barbed Jest as his attack, and Deflecting Blame as his defense mode.  Grimblegorn goes for an all-out Verbal Assault for his attack and choses to Avoid the Issue for his defense mode.

Both roll d20, Stephen scores a modified total of 13 for his attack, hitting Grimblegorn for d4, rolling a 2, reducing Grimblegorn's Social HP to 11.  Grimblegorn, in turn, rolls a 19 on his Verbal Assault, but even with the -2 modifier, it's good enough to hit, and he does d8 damage, rolling a 7 and taking Stephen's HP to 4.

In the next round, Stephen chooses a Tongue Lashing for his attack and Avoiding the Issue for his defense.  Grimblegorn chooses a Blunt Statement for his attack and Thick Skin for his defense.  Stephen rolls a 9, but modifies it - +3 for his CHA and a further +3 against Thick Skin means he gets a 15 which is more than Grimblegorn's Social AC of 13.  Stephen does d6 damage, rolling a 4 and taking Grimblegorn's Social HP from 11 to 7, but Grimblegorn rolls a natural 20 on his blunt statement - even before the modifiers this is a success and a critical hit!  He rolls his d6 damage, scoring 5, then doubles it for the critical, doing 10 points of damage, which takes Stephen from 4 to -6, and so Stephen is defeated and Grimblegorn is granted a chance to end the bugbear dilemma before the King orders Stephen's City Guard to do so.

The Laws of Violence

The first law of violence is continuity. Once you start using violence, you cannot get away from it. Violence expresses the habit of simplification of situations, political, social, or human. And a habit cannot quickly be broken. Once a man has begun to use violence he will never stop using it, for it is so much easier and more practical than any other method. It simplifies relations with the other completely by denying that the other exists. And once you have repudiated the other, you cannot adopt a new attitude – cannot, for example, start rational dialogue with him. Violence has brought so many clear and visible results; how then go back to a way of acting that certainly looks ineffectual and seems to promise only very doubtful results? So you go on using violence, even if at first you had thought that violence would be only a temporary expedient, even if you have achieved thorough change in your own or the general political situation. […]

The second law of violence is reciprocity. It is stated in Jesus’ famous word “All who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). Let me stress two points in connection with this passage. There is the insistence on "all.” There is no distinction between a good and bad use of the sword. The sheer fact of using the sword entails this result. The law of the sword is a total law. Then, Jesus is in no sense making a moral valuation or announcing a divine intervention or a coming judgment; he simply describes the reality of what is happening. He states one of the laws of violence. Violence creates violence, begets and procreates violence. The violence of the colonialists creates the violence of the anticolonialists, which in turn exceeds that of the colonialists. Nor does victory bring any kind of freedom. Always, the victorious side splits up into clans which perpetuate violence. […] 

The man who, in whatever way, uses violence should realize that he is entering into a reciprocal kind of relation capable of being renewed indefinitely. […] The ethic of violence is a truly new ethic, permitting neither peace nor surcease. […] Violence imprisons its practitioners in a circle that cannot be broken by human means. Study of the possible results of violence shows that it will have only one certain result: the reciprocity and the reproduction of violence. Whether any other results are attained – equal rights, legitimate defense, liberation, etc. – is wholly a matter of chance, and all those results, too, are subject to the reciprocity which is one of the laws of violence.

The third law of violence is sameness. Here I shall only say that it is impossible to distinguish between justified and unjustified violence, between violence that enslaves. […] Every violence is identical with every other violence. I maintain that all kinds of violence are the same. And this is true not only of physical violence – the violence of the soldier who kills, the policeman who bludgeons, the rebel who commits arson, the revolutionary who assassinates; it is true also of economic violence – the violence of the privileged proprietor against his workers, of the “haves” against the “have-nots”; the violence done in international economic relations between our own societies and those of the Third World; the violence done through powerful corporations which exploit the resources of a country that is unable to defend itself. […]

Moreover, to say that sameness is one of the laws of violence is to say that, on the one hand, violence has no limits and, on the other, that condoning violence means condoning every kind of violence. Once you choose the way of violence, it is impossible to say, “So far and no further”; for you provoke the victim of your violence to use violence in turn, and that necessarily means using greater violence. We have seen the so-called escalation of war in Vietnam. But, mind, this “escalation” is not a result of chance or of a government’s wickedness; there never are limits to violence. When you begin to employ torture in order to get information, you cannot say: “This bit of torturing is legitimate and not too serious, but I’ll go no further.” The man who starts torturing necessarily goes to the limit; for if he decides to torture in order to get information, that information is very important; and if, having used a “reasonable” kind of torture, he does not get the information he wants, what then? He will use worse torture. The very nature of violence is such that it has no limits. We have seen that it is impossible to set up laws of warfare. Either no war happens to be going on, and then it is easy to make agreements as to the limitations that should be established; or else a war is under way, and then all agreements fall before the imperative of victory. 

Violence is hubris, fury, madness. There are no such things as major and minor violence. Violence is a single thing, and it is always the same. In this respect, too, Jesus saw the reality. He declared that there is no difference between murdering a fellow man and being angry with him or insulting him (Matthew 5:21-22). This passage is no “evangelical counsel for the converted”; it is, purely and simply, a description of the nature of violence.

Now the third aspect of this sameness that characterizes violence: once we consent to use violence ourselves, we have to consent to our adversary’s using it, too. We cannot demand to receive treatment different from that we mete out. We must understand that our own violence necessarily justifies the enemy’s, and we cannot object to his violence. […]

We must recognize, and clearly, that violence begets violence. Does anyone ask, “Who started it?” That is a false question. Since the days of Cain, there has been no beginning of violence, only a continuous process of retaliation. It is childish to suppose that today’s conditions are unprecedented, to say, “There are dangerous communists about, we must be on guard against them,” or, “This government is basely imperialistic and dictatorial, we must overthrow it.” When a man is born, violence is already there, already present in him and around him. […]

Violence begets violence — nothing else. This is the fourth law of violence. Violence is the par excellence method of falsehood. […] Whenever a violent movement has seized power, it has made violence the law of power. The only thing that has changed is the person who exercises violence. […]

Violence can never realize a noble aim, can never create liberty or justice. I repeat once more that the end does not justify the means, that, on the contrary, evil means corrupt good ends. But I repeat also: “Let the man who wants to do violence, do so; let the man who thinks there is no other way, use it; but let him know what he is doing.” That is all the Christian can ask of this man – that he be aware that violence will never establish a just society. Yes, he will get his revenge; yes, he will subdue his “enemy”; yes, he will consummate his hatred. But let him not confuse hate with justice. […]

Finally, the fifth law of violence is this: the man who uses violence always tries to justify both it and himself. Violence is so unappealing that every user of it has produced lengthy apologies to demonstrate to the people that it is just and morally warranted. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Nasser, the guerrillas, the French “paras” of the Algerian war – all tried to vindicate themselves. The plain fact is that violence is never “pure.” Always violence and hatred go together. I spoke above of the rather useless piece of advice once given Christians: that they should make war without hatred. Today it is utterly clear that violence is an expression of hatred, has its source in hatred and signifies hatred. And only a completely heartless person would be capable of simply affirming hatred, without trying to exonerate himself. […]

It is very important to be clear about this persistent longing for justification. I do not say that the practitioner of violence feels uneasy and that therefore he must be experiencing pangs of conscience; but in acting violently he is so unsure of himself that he has to have an ideological construct that will put him at ease intellectually and morally. That is why the person inclined to violence is necessarily the victim propaganda aims at; and, conversely, violence is the theme that above all others lends itself to propaganda. […]

These are the laws of violence, unchanging and inescapable. We must understand them clearly if we are to know what we are doing when we damn violence.

- From Jacques Ellul, Violence: Reflections From a Christian Perspective. New York: The Seabury Press, 1969. Chapter 3: Christian Realism in the Face of Violence.

I encountered a situation in my last game where one of my players said "..well, it's not like we haven't thought about killing babies before.  In fact, we HAVE killed babies before."  And this is true.

It made me think about the nature of violence in RPGs, and in some of my research I stumbled across the above passage, which, though rooted in religious thought, seems like a sound philosophical position to me.  The rebuttal to this position is actually contained within the text above, the idea that, "When a man is born, violence is already there, already present in him [...]"  This is what Cormac McCarthy expresses so artfully through his character of the Judge in Blood Meridian, specifically the passage that begins "Men are made for games."

Speaking of games, it is interesting to me how casually we insert violence into our games, and we do this really from the time we are quite young, before there has been a great deal of socialization.  Even without toy soldiers or guns, there are a lot of games where you might hear one child say to another, "You can't do that!  You're dead!  I killed you!"

The rejection of violence and the notion of grace are really quite new ideas in many ways.  Pre-Christian traditions nearly always had a place for violence in them, and so it is really not surprising that in most of the polytheistic societies we construct in D&D that violence is such a central element - there is nothing to oppose it in most games!  I have not personally played a non-violent RPG, and I would be interested in hearing about any such experiences anyone reading this might have had with such games.  I am also considering inserting a nonviolent mystical tradition in my game to see how my players deal with the notion of someone who is nonviolent but believes utterly that they are morally correct and is determined to carry through on some course detrimental to the PCs.

I think I still have The Book of Exalted Deeds somewhere and that may be worth revisiting.  I do think it would be interesting to run a game where there was a PC or multiple PCs dedicated to the notion of nonviolence in a world where violence is a given.  How might that play out?  It's easy to be cynical and say it ends with the first encounter with footpads the group has, where some thug merrily slits all their throats, but I'm not so sure that has to be true.

Another type of character that has always appealed to me is the "shriven killer."  This is the character who has, at the beginning of the story, recognized all the truths expressed in the passage above and is leading a life of nonviolence, but chooses to return to violence (usually at the climax of the story) with the full philosophical knowledge of what he does.  The dramatic tension and release built in this kind of story is undeniably powerful.  I think of William Munny in Unforgiven, or Nanashi from Sword of the Stranger or Kenshin in Samurai X.  I would be interested to see how this might play out in a game as well, though implementation might be difficult!

Some Thoughts on AI Art and Human Creativity

Made with Midjouney.  Prompt was something along the lines of "Falcon Samurai with intricately etched armor, UHD, 8k, hyperrealism"

Another falcon samurai, this one made with DALL-E 2.  Similar prompt.

I wrote this originally as a response to David McGrogan's post here. I’ve only just started to experiment with these technologies and my own opinion is still nascent and unformed. My instincts run something along these lines: It’s fine to use the output of these technologies, but I would draw the line at charging anyone money for it. For example, if you want to generate a picture to help your players visualize something and you show it to them at your weekly gaming session, I have no issue with that. If you want to release something for free that uses AI generated art, I have no issue with that. You want to put a few pieces of AI art on your blog, that anyone can look at for free and the way I have done several times now and will do in this post as well?  No issue there, really, either. In any event, I think if you use this tech, you should be transparent about its use.

Made with Dream.  I can't remember the prompt but it had something to do with an angel of war.

There are other uses I object to not at all, and in fact think could be a net positive. For example, I think it could be incredibly helpful in commissioning a piece of artwork – you can give the artist something semi-close to what you would like them to do, or vice versa, they could use an AI to generate a few different images to show to you as prototypes for what they actually do.

Midjourney.  Prompt was a mishmash of language about fangs of broken truth in the smiling night, also some language from one of my earlier posts.

But something feels slightly dishonest about putting together a commercial product that relies heavily on AI generated writing or art, in spite of the fact that it may have taken hours of playing with prompts to get something you wanted the same way it would take hours of manual work for a human to produce an image you wanted.

Made with DALL-E 2.Prompt: A sumi-e painting of an ancient blue dragon flying through a thunderstorm.

I don’t know why I feel this way yet – again, I’m still exploring this technology and have not really come down on one “side” or another. A lot of my professional work over the last 15 years has been in the application of machine learning to legal documents, and I wonder how much that influences my thoughts on this topic. I certainly understand some of the concerns that AI art raises, though part of me is saying “well, computers have been changing or removing the need for certain jobs for a long time now, why should creatives be treated as a sacred cow?” I wonder if some of the way we see this may come from whether we approach our own creation of art as amateurs or as professionals. For whatever it is worth, I’ve remained an amateur artist / writer / musician / what have you my entire life. I like to paint, for example, though I’m not very good at it. I will go on painting in spite of the fact that there are machines out there that can make stuff that is technically much more skilled than my creations, and I suspect a lot of other people will do the same – for many of us, we HAVE to do this stuff, there’s such a strong compulsion that it’s not really even a choice. So I don’t think that the advent of AI art is going to stop humans from creating things. But it may put people out of a job, and that does bother me, though I’m not certain why it should bother me more than say, automated check out machines or the phone tree systems you get when you call support, or something like the driverless car.

 

Made with Dream.  I think the prompt was something like "A wandering knight in the far future."

I certainly understand the feeling of being a luddite. I have often thought that the internet has ruined everything, that social media in general is a mistake (I miss antisocial media!), and recently I have been seriously considering throwing my smartphone into the garbage. Sometimes I wish I could take the entire world back a ways technologically and kind of freeze it there, though I’m not sure if that is perhaps pure nostalgia on my part.

 

Made with Dream.  Who IS this dude?  I don't know yet, but him and his hat are going into SOMETHING my players will experience. 

It is a complicated topic.  It deserves careful consideration and thoughtful discussion with one another.

16 triangles.  Made by me, 4" x 6", acrylic on canvas, August-September 2022

I will end with a quote by RACTER, from The Policeman's Beard Is Half-Constructed, a book of poetry written by a computer in 1984.

More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity.
I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber.
I need it for my dreams.

You can find Dream here.

You can find Midjourney here.

You can find DALL-E 2 here.

Adeptus Titanicus - Legio Mortis Battlegroup

Back to titans!

The Legio Mortis is probably my favorite color scheme when it comes to Titans.  It's simple, but incredibly effective at conveying their dark, bloodthirsty nature, even before they were corrupted.

Adeptus Titanicus started off as my "Pandemic Project."  I decided off the bat that if I was going to get other people to play, I'd probably have to offer them a game, so I determined I'd do two legios.  Initially I was going to do a single Grandmaster set and a pair of Horus Heresy starter sets, and give each side a single Warlord, two Reavers, and two Warhounds.  Along the way, the Warbringer was released, and I decided to alter the force composition a bit - Mortis would wind up with heavier titans, and Gryphonicus would have more Reavers and more knight support.  I also wanted Gryphonicus to have more emphasis on melee and Mortis to have more heavy guns.  But still, I was going to "freeze" things at six Titans each side.

You know what they say about plans...they are all good until first contact with the enemy...

I wound up with a LOT more titans than I had originally been considering, but the battlegroups are diversified the way I wanted them to be.  The below doesn't include the homebrew Legio I've been working on!

The breakdown for Gryphonicus is:

• 1 Warmaster
• 1 Warlord
• 4 Reavers
• 3 Warhounds
• 1 Acastus Porphyrion banner (1 knight)
• 2 Cerastus Lancer banners (4 knights)
• 1 Questoris banner (3 knights)

The breakdown for Mortis is:

• 1 Warmaster
• 2 Warlords
• 1 Nemesis Warbringer
• 2 Reavers
• 3 Warhounds
• 1 Acastus Porphyrion banner (1 knight)
• 1 Questoris Banner (3 knights)

I had a points calculator that I made to calculate how even the two groups were.  I can find it again and put it up on Google docs or something if anyone is interested, but honestly you are better off with something like the Titan Tracker or Titerminal.  I think there might have been a 50 point difference depending on what weapons they had (the titans are heavily magnetized, though I got lazy here and there with the smaller weapons).

Anyway on with the show!  First the Warhounds.  I don't actually have many pictures of them, I need more!

Here's one pre-base, with his family:

Next up, the Reavers:

A detail of the carapace.  Happy with the way it turned out.

The Nemesis Warbringer next:

And that's where I was supposed to stop.  At the time the battlegroup looked like this:

But no.  I kept going, adding another Warlord, among other things.  Here are the Warlords:

By the way, when you see extreme shininess, it is because I didn't have the patience to let the final coat of varnish dry before I took the picture.  Spots with transfers get hit with gloss varnish before and after the decal is put on, but then the whole model gets a coat of matte varnish, which brings the shine down to a level I like.  You can see the difference on the shoulders above - that last coast hasn't dried yet on the model on the right.

And also, because Mortis means big engines (and also to keep the overall points values balanced) I did a Warmaster for each side:

This cat was very very good during the build and didn't once scatter pieces or hunt bits.

I also did some House Malinax knights, though I'm not quite as hyped about them.

And last, but certainly not least, the assembled battlegroup!

Dungeons (as yet) Unrealized

These are just a couple of ideas I have had bouncing around in my head but have not yet been able to flesh out.  I don't want to forget about them - but I'm not yet really sure how to execute on them, either.  If anyone who sees this has fooled around with any of these ideas (or has other ideas or feedback), please feel free to leave me a comment or reach out to me over email and let me know what your experience has been like!

Rapture - the underwater dungeon

I gather underwater is the red-headed stepchild of dungeon settings, and I can see why.  There's a huge amount of complication in the mechanics of moving in three dimensions that cannot be easily reproduced with minis (at least until we have anti-gravity).  You might be able to do something with computers, but that sounds like a massive hassle to me, honestly.  Still, I'm kind of attracted to the idea, maybe out of sheer perversity, but I do think it might require some adjustments and mechanics changes to work well and be interesting.

Instead of operating in three dimensions, the dungeon could be mainly vertical with variations in length and very little depth.  So X and Y axis, but almost no Z axis, to keep things fairly simple.  Most dungeons use the X and Z axis, but rarely use Y.  This would give you the ability to still essentially "look down" on the table, it's just that it's using a different pair of axis.

The main idea I think could be interesting/fun for both players and DMs is nitrogen narcosis / Rapture of the Deep type stuff.  This could trigger on a failed saving throw or CON check and do anything from cause confusion to result in a meeting with someone the PC knows to be deceased.  Probably a random table of results is most appropriate (it would need to be progressive based on depth though).  There’s a great chart on the Wikipedia entry which can probably be used to help figure out how goofed up the PCs might be and what the overall impact is.  Of course, this being the world of the imagination, I could certainly take this idea and apply it to a completely different setting if I wanted - at it's heart it's simply, "there's some weird chemical in the dungeon and as you are exposed to more of it, you can no longer completely count on your own perception."

Less fun, but maybe adding to a sense of urgency, I'd like to incorporate mechanisms for compression sickness.  I don't have this fully fleshed out yet.  It could be a set amount of damage per increment the players rise, it could use the existing exhaustion mechanisms in 5e coated with the veneer of the bends.  Another question is how to make this relevant.  In most situations, the PCs will rise through the ocean patiently.  The key here is probably limited air supply, which would require good timekeeping and a few things that might delay the adventurers.  A multi-part resetting puzzle that takes X amount of time to figure out and X amount of time to manipulate once you know HOW to manipulate it could work.  So could delaying encounters, of course.  I've never been great at timekeeping - I manage to do ok, but if I were going to run something like this, I'd probably need to create some sort of aid for myself, something I could tick off and that was visible to the players and myself and simple to use.  Perhaps just something like a series of ten boxes that got ticked off?  It doesn't have to be at exact intervals, but something that gives the players an idea where they stand.  They should know as well how many boxes it takes to surface safely.

The Gates Instantaneous - the time travel dungeon

This is an area of jungle / swamp where there are nine stepped pyramids. These will be in a very, very rough grid – nothing so regular that it is obvious, though. Each pyramid has a single interior room, at the center of which is a stone gate.  When the players arrive, some gates are filled with a shimmering, nacreous energy, and some are not.  That's the way I've conceived it anyway, but it could be any arrangement of nine entryways in a loose grid.

The payoff for the players is in figuring out that the area is one big 3x3 "Lights Out" puzzle. Stepping through a gate transports the players to a different time, when the pattern of active and inactive gates was different. The more active gates there are, the earlier in time they are. Their eventual goal is to reach the end of time, that is, to “douse” all the gates. Getting back to “their time” through the gates is impossible at this point, so it shouldn't be run before the players have some means to do this (a wish, a tear of time from Deep Carbon Observatory, etc).  I'd kind of like for the pattern to be more complex, but the pattern at 4x4 is not always solvable and I'd like to ensure they don't get trapped.

I've been thinking about trying to do geologic time but it's HARD without just killing the PCs outright. I'm picturing something a little like the gate described in the future/perfect mini campaign which can be extraordinarily deadly - putting them into an era where this part of the land was under the ocean, covered with ice, etc, not to mention potentially populated with whoever created the place (probably something or one bespoke).  It also requires some thought of what happens to the site in the future, which is maybe HARDER to pull off.

It's possible this place could be kind of a fulcrum of an entire campaign, wherein the PCs travel to different periods of time in search of xyz, but I've been trying to stay away from the idea that anything has to happen in any particular order in a campaign.

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