Ianthe IV

Within Segmentum Pacificus, Sabbat Worlds sector, lies a lonely, cold and long forgotten planet. The surface of the planet is ash grey, the soil corrupt and the sky above covered with thick layers of dark and tattered clouds. Two orbiting moons - one red as blood, the other pale as sick skin - float over the sky every two months, bringing havoc on the surface in form of dreadful ash storms.

Religious pilgrims took the planet as their home many thousand years ago. They harnessed the hostile environment, made it tolerable to live and build the first immigration stations (which later became places of religion and worship). After them came the proletarians and their heavy machinery. Cities grew tall, level above level was build. Soon the whole world was tightly wrapped by a web of monumental sky-reaching Hive Cities.

The Hive Cities used to be fairly safe place for man to live, even civilised you could say. But as cities grew taller, so did the greed and corruption. Noble houses used their power ruthlesly, sucking the slim wealth of the planet and spent it in arms race against each other. Soon the tightening and violence became tools of power and rulers used them without hesitation. The walls of the Hive Cities started rotting from within as the gangs of lower class started rebelling against their masters. Humongous wars between gangs and mad tyrants teared the planet's infrastructure to shreds, dragging the planet in an unending civil war.

War dried the wealth of the planet. Wealth was followed by the tithes. The suffering situation of the planet caught the attention of the Administratum and their solution for it was immediate. Imperial Guard, the Anvil of the Emperor, was sent in to solve the vexatious problem. That they did. The raging civil war was over within weeks. But what the guardians of the Emperor left behind could only be described as a total devastation; Staggering piles of corpses, burning remnants of once notable civilization and a dead world where only bandits and criminals dared to wander. Where there once was a spectacular network of monumental Hive Cities, build by the great men of the Imperium, now lied crippled ruins that represented mere shadows of their past.

In the maps of the Imperium, Ianthe IV was no more.

The moons of Ianthe IV

Ianthe IV was classified as a War World before it was wiped off from the books of the Imperium. Even though the long and bloody civil war of the Iatheans ceased long time ago, the Administratum never tried to re-populate the planet. No-one seems to know the reason for this call.

The only ones populating Ianthe IV are the survivors of the Imperial massacre. Bandits. Mercenaries. Murderers. Marauders. They battle for their everyday lives in small gangs, looting, hunting, fighting and surviving. Some of them are lucky enough to get drafted by ferocious space pirates evading the far-reaching law of the Imperium.

+++

This pitiful planet will work as a set for our narrative campaign, Punk Moth. We'll be lifting the lid a little bit at a time to reveal the plot that binds the stories of our rival Inquisitors together.

This is the beginning of the Pupation phase of the campaign...

Inquisitor Isaac Valon

...

"Thank you for joining me, Inquisitor Valon."

"Pleasure, my lord."

"I hope your journey went well, considering the storm that was beating the Warp?"

"The ship lost one of their Navigators when the storm hit. Fortunately the rest of them were able to find a channel to stick in. Now what is it that you had me summoned here for, my lord?"

"Straight to business as always, eh? Very well then, let us not waste the precious little time that we have on our hands and allow me share my headache with you. It was unfortunate that the matter could not be discussed through warp. I have great trust to my Astropaths, but there are spies everywhere."

"That is what I have heard."

"Ah, yes, of course. Then you must know what happened to Inquisitor Cassar?"

"Indeed I have, my lord. Was Inquisitor Pherion the one who was sent to interrogate him?"

"He was, and there lies the problem. We haven't heard from Inquisitor Pherion since he landed to Ianthe IV. The last message with his signature is dated three weeks ago. Now we fear the worst."

"You would wish me to track him down and find out what happened to him?"

"Precisely! The matter is slipping through our hands and it must be dealt with haste. Rigorous act is the key to minimize the damage this insident has already caused. But I must insist that you will keep this in dark from the rest of the counsel."

"Understood, my lord."

"Good, good! Now, do you have your team here with you?"

"Yes I do."

"Excellent. Let us have something to drink before we go any further with the briefing, shall we?"

...

Staging the Set

The Monastery, test layout

Ever since I finished the scenery, I've been arranging all the pieces together on the gaming board with excitement, staging the set like a young lad building his first Lego city, looking for best balance in both gameplay-wise and appearance. The possibilities are endless...

Here's a mock-up layout for a possible Punk Moth scenario, The Monastery. This is just one of the many possibilities that the new scenery grands us. I'm pretty pleased how the set looks as a whole. There are some hue differences in the greys of the ground and the decayed walls, but I think that just gives them more lively look.

Lonely AA-turret and a Paltry Foxhole

Good news everybody! Today I finally finished the Caterpillar phase of the Punk Moth project by putting the foxhole and AA in paint along with all the rest of the ruined walls. All of these objects will play a decisive part in the scenario as some of them will/might be secondary objectives or otherwise placed in strategically important spots.

The end of the Caterpillar phase means that we are free to continue to the next phase of our project - the Pupation. In this phase we will plan, organise and enrich our first game of INQ28 (which, by the way, has been under preparations for almost two years by now). This game will work as a stage for our two rival Inquisitors, Inquisitor Marius Cassar and Inquisitor Pherion of Mars. The hunt is about to begin...

But first, here's some first close-ups from the finished scenery.

The lonely turret guarding the sky, idle.

The terrain will be filled with improvised obstacles for characters to dive behind in a heat of combat.

The Monastery

Slow but Steady

It has been pretty challenging to enter into the crafting mode lately due to the hectic life that has been keeping me busy. My new job as a project manager is something that I've been dreamed of ever since I properly entered in the advertising business. It's been immensely rewarding but also very demanding and time-consuming experience so far. The incoming summer also brings the good weather here in Finland so it means more time outside with the family.

Despite these factors I've been able to push the Caterpillar phase forward by putting the brief moments in use. The process is slow but steady...

The Weeping Walls of the Monastery

It is time to reveal some of the work I've been able to pull out for the Caterpillar phase so far. Without any further words or teasers, here's the first part of the Monastery, beaten by the dust, sand and filth.

As you can see, the yellowish white repeats all around the surfaces of the ruin. Most of the trims have been painted to represent patinated copper. It does give a nice contrast to the dirty white walls, don't you think?

I have also started working on with the taller part of the courthouse and thought to share some WIP shots with you.

The salt weathering effect does work pretty well on the walls. I did learn from the first portion that I need to fix some of the white paint and hide some of the rusty areas to make the walls just a little bit less weathered, as too much rust and weathering effect makes the larger surfaces look too complicated and busy. I think it's a bit more balanced now...

Gloomy Teaser

The first one of the Punk Moth ruins is now almost finished. I still need to add some minor details here and there, but other than that, I'm pretty much finished with it. Here's couple of gloomy teasers...

Lets Paint Weathered Walls

The Caterpillar phase of the Punk Moth scenario is rolling on again. All the buildings are now primed and waiting for the painting phase. There's a lot of surface to cover so I need to plan the whole painting process with care...

Before assailing any of my undercoated structures with paint I decided to make a test piece with the colour scheme that I had thought to use in the Punk Moth scenario. My plan is to paint most of the surfaces with dirty and worn white and coat the trims of the walls with beutifully patinated copper. The ground will have the similar tone with the bases of our gangs.

I picked up one of the extra walls and had the test piece undercoated with a nice layer of dark brown paint that I had mixed with various paints. Anxious as I was, I had to speed up the drying process with a hair drier. My wife looked at me with a hint of an amusement in her eye...

When the undercoat was dry, I applied some water here and there with a paintbrush and sprinkled table salt over the wetted areas. When the water had dried off and there was only salt left, I went outside and gave the test piece a nice layer of white paint with an airbrush. Actually my white paint was so low-quality that I had to give it not just one but three thin layers before all the areas were white. This had a dramatic impact on the salt which decided to stick on the surface even though I soaked the testpiece under warm water for over a minute. I had to help it with the paintbrush and finally got the salt off.

Now the wall had a nice weathered surface that needed to be shaded. I gave the surface a thick layer of brown wash and after it had dried, finished the effect with some minor details. Finally I painted the trim with bronze metallics and added some turquoise to make it look like patinated copper.

here's the finished test piece...

Now I just need to repeat the whole process in much larger scale...

Sector Primed

I've been off-radar for the past couple of weeks. It is the Punk Moth's Caterpillar phase that has been keeping me busy lately. I've been building ruins, bunkers and garbage like a rabid squirrel, getting this project back on track.

While building the scenery I got some neat ideas how to spice up the terrain with little details, giving it some more depth to the surrounding that where Cassar and Pherion will have their confrontation. Here's the primed sector at the moment...

Lonely AA-turret guards the sky silently...

Courthouse's front wall is filled with notes, appeals, notices etc.

"Deep behind the frontline stands an abandoned guardspost. There lies secrets within these ruins..."

Mikko will be bringing his entry to the scenery - a crazy cool loading platform - next weekend to our hometown, where we'll hopefully be able to sit down, catch up and share our latest ideas and visions, regarding both Punk Moth project and our solo projects. I will then get that piece back home, prime it and start to ponder what will the colours of this planet be like...

New Year, Old Tricks

So the year changed.

The past month was pretty quiet in the rat nest, humble apologies for that. But we have not been totally jobless! The Punk Moth project has been taking some small steps forward, even though the Caterpillar stage was yet again restarted. After moving to the new flat I realized that the diorama style gaming board wouldn't have a change to fit in my new space. I had to make a hard decision and toss the almost finished plates away, get back to the drawing board and rethink the whole process from the roots.

Well, I can only hope that third time's the charm. After some pondering we decided to make the scenery to stand on their own shaped bases made out of Forex Classic foam PVC sheets. This way every piece can be made look like an individual building (or a ruined part of one) and together they can be used to form a larger structure. We won't either be tied to use the terrain for just this one scenario but can actually re-use them in our future plans too.

For the board I was thinking of Zuzzy's elastic Terra-Flex Gaming Mat. I ordered couple of speciments from them (cheap as they were) to check out the surface detail and the overall quality of the mat. If any of you have any experience of Zuzzy's Terra-Flex mats, please feel free to share your thoughts with the rest of us!

+++

So that is what I've been able to pull together for the Punk Moth project's Caterpillar stage so far. I still need to add some serious amount of junk and other bits to make the ruins look more lively, like if something had really hit them while bombing the planet.

Mikko will be taking a journey to the Caribbean Seas in the end of the month, so I guess it is up to me to keep this blog alive for the next couple of weeks to follow. Speaking of the Caribbean, I have a little announcement to make that has something to do with my next project - but that can wait 'til the next post...

Stay tuned!

- Kari

Sergi The Slasher

Brother Sergi is the sole survivor of the infamous XVI Penal Battalion. The battalion's last stand was witnessed on the Butcher's Creek, where the convicted troops bought just enough time for the Imperial Navy to make their withdrawal off the Death World known as the Fang, just moments before the whole planet was consumed by the swarming horde of unknown Xenos breed.

After weeks of ineffectual heavy orbital bombarding of the colonized planet in hope of exterminating the unknown alien race, the Imperial Navy made their choice of saving the remnants of the badly beaten colony and evacuating all the personnel off the planet. The XVI Penal Battalion, made-up from the dregs of the Imperial Guard serving the colonization, was sent to shield the Imperial Navy's withdrawal from the harsh planet, while the vile horde of dreadful aliens were over-running the Imperial colony.

It goes without saying that the swarming horde butchered the weakly equipped battalion, who lacked both discipline and courage. While all of his comrades were torn to bloody pieces, Sergi, after being seriously wounded, cunningly played dead in the bottom of pile of his brothers' corpses, hoping that the Xenos wouldn't smell him.

After the slightly succesful withdrawal, the Imperial Navy did their final call and decided to vaporize the thin atmosphere of the small Death World, making sure that the Xenos - and the humans left behind - were to be destroyed.

How Sergi survived the complete destruction of the planet, the records don't tell...

+ Brother Sergi of the XVI Penal Battalion +

"Laurel and Hardy"

Sergi is a cunning personality, whose two-faced nature makes him a very untrusty henchman. But stealthy throatcutter as Sergi is, Inquisitor Cassar has seen much potential in this murderous character, keeping him in a leash of dept.

+++

In Sergi's case I decided to approach the design process more directly than usual, jumping over my traditional sketching and drawing phase, letting the kit-bashing spree go mildly wild. I took my bits box and started fitting the pieces together, having no certain aim in my mind. After a while, bits found each other and the "Spaceman Joe", what Sergi was first called as, was materialized.

Task Force Pherion revisited

Task Force Pherion is now at full strength.

Inquisitor Pherion

Nicodemvs

The Red Priest

0tt0

Arsonya

Twinz

Cherubz

Borvs

Let the hunt begin!

Inquisitional Entourage -

It first appeared to be just another operation to bring down corrupted smuggler. But later, Imperial spies around the near by systems brought new information regarding the suspected Heresy of a high ranking Imperial agent...

The new mission profile demanded new kinds of specialists in order to be successful...

Ready for some seriously dirty painting!!!