Where the Whales Go to Die!

Best. Movie. Ever.

Ok...maybe not "EVER"...but I LOVED this movie as a kid. And it was old when I saw it.
Island at the Top of the World. 1974 I believe. Adventure/steampunk/victorian explorers meet arctic Vikings and a lost colony.

Not sure why this movie captivated me so much. But it do so to the point that even years later, when I was serving in the US Coast Guard, I could not wait to get stationed up in the Arctic. And I loved every minute of it. Around every desolate mountain and snow capped peak was a Viking colony just waiting to be discovered. The "feeling of being watched" was constant in the arctic mountains, and the way the fog rolled in over the snow and tundra made for a mystical, imaginative land.

Now, in the movie poster artwork, notice the "Killer" Whales chomping at the boats in the lower right corner. In the movie, the mythical graveyard of whales, or "the place where the whales go to die" was a mythical boneyard filled with a Victorian era treasure trove of whale oil and ivory. But it was guarded by the Hunters, Orca's that would attack any that attempted to reach it. This scene depicted here actually never even happened, as the heroes ended up floating away on an iceberg not a boat. and of course if you look to your left, you'll see the Walt disney classical depiction of the "horned helm viking with a medieval era hilted sword" yet in the movie itself, the costuming wasn't nearly as grandiose, and actually followed historical Norse clothing much closer.

but until yesterday, I never contemplated throwing these mythical "Hunters" into game play...
I picked up this toy Orca at a thrift store yesterday for $.50. He was just about the right scale for standard table-top RPG 28mm miniatures.

 He showed a good amount of markings, which actually, if you've ever seen Orca's in the wild, they tend to have a lot of. I think with a  bit of work I could make this work to my advantage in increasing the realism here too.

The first step was to cut that fin off. I needed him jumping out and poised for a potential crash down onto either icebergs or a small boat. 

This was actually quite a bit more difficult than one would imagine. Cutting through this thick Sea World Toy rubber was harder than getting their Executives to stop breeding in captivity. Ok, maybe not that hard, but tough. Once I got the rubber cut through, I needed to even out the tail and main body sections to allow even molding with the water base I will be creating.






Nothing a bit of creative fiddling can't clean up. I found a nice sharp exact knife, albeit one with a large enough handle area to really dig into the rubber worked well enough. The Tail would be used in the same way to imply one Orca rising out if the water in attack, and a second, always just right behind as it descended into the depths again. The next part, and possibly the trickiest, would be to get the right size "water base" for him.

I typically use a thick black foam for most of my Dungeoneering work because I tend to acquire a lot of it. I work in a creative field and we utilize a lot of this material for signage, advertising pieces, etc.

Often referred to as "Gatorboard" or "foam-core," this thick, heavy, and durable black foam works outstanding for everything from buildings to boulders to bases.




When it came time to mold the base and model, the heavy weight of the rubber upper body, which makes for a solid, fantastic miniature, was too heavy and too angled as the Orca is rising up and breaching the surface of the water, that heavy weight pieces were used to hold in place.

Two small anvils worked well to allow the model to begin the drying process. The rubber was simply adhered to the foam base with standard black epoxy glue, and allowed to dry overnight. A similar process will take place with the tail.


In Part 2, tail gluing, water surface painting, and texture prep.

Geography & Gods

I read this fantastic post today from Kotaku.com titled  

The 13 Strangest Deities In Dungeons & Dragons 

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/03/the-13-strangest-deities-in-dungeons-dragons/)

This was a hilarious write-up on some of the quirky details of D&D's pantheon of Gods. I can't help but think that coming up with details on the Gods has got to be one of the best writing gigs in the Wizards of the Coast/Dungeons & Dragons real-world. But it made me think a bit deeper too. Like reflecting on how, and why, I have always been apt to use ALL gods from ALL lands in my campaigns.
Yup. All of them.
But here's why....

My first D&D book ever, was not the Players Handbook, the DM's guide, or even the Monster Manual. I checked Deities and Demigods out of the Library when I was probably 9 years old. Maybe even earlier. I, like any kid, picked it up because of the artwork and what details I could make out on each inside. I distinctly remember this first checked-out version containing something I couldn't pronounce either, "Cthulhu Mythos" and had I known then what I know now, I'd have probably stolen it....
But all the way through D&D, AD&D, 1st edition, second edition, 3rd, 3.5, a quick dabbling in 4th, and now, 5th, I have always looked to Deities and Demigods as the standard for all gods and evils in the realms. And thats when things got interesting.

See when I started DM'ing in 1980-something, I wanted it all! Every god, every fable, every mythical land, every weapon...all rolled into one. One gigantic, unfathomably large, realm where all continents connected and sometimes, didn't. Narnia? Yup, far to the northwest of Greyhawk (the Flaness). The Flaness was central, with Faerun (Forgotten Realms) to the South West, Middle Earth to the upper north, Neverland, Nockmar and the Nelwinns, even further east (from the Willow movie), Krull, DragonLance, and even the lands from the D&D Cartoon show...every animated series, every movie, every fantastical fantasy based film (Labyrinth, set in the Flaness in my world) and even the Never Ending Story, Fantasia, had it's own land to the immediate west. Such a vast mass of land that even the people of Fantasia didn't know their borders. I encompassed all fantasy-fiction worlds my little 10 year old brain could comprehend into one major continent.
This way, my players could literally travel to any campaign, any place, any world, and it was somehow, all part of one large, cohesive world, often times each country acting and surviving as if they had no knowledge of the others. But here is where the Gods came in...

In my worlds, all gods are "alive" or until killed in their own realm. Those that die still have ruins, ancient demonic Lich Lords, conniving wizards and followers, and deep, ancient, secretive cults quietly worshipping them in the bowels of the Underdark. But on top of them are new Gods, and they kept coming and coming with each new edition. Unless the Old Gods had been destroyed, just because they ceased to be worshipped on any one given land mass, did not necessitate them "dying." Not only did this allow the constant use of unexplored ancient ruins and temples to long forgotten Gods, but  it kept the doorway open to infinite creative possibilities. Here's a quick example:
As a young teenage DM, I had one player that insisted on worshipping Buddha. Granted, he was a Ninja, who was a paid assassin, who ate meat, but he was still (or so he thought at the time), a worshiping Buddhist. At least his character was. Whatever.
I also had another who wanted to be Christian. But just because he was, doesn't mean everyone else around him was. They all fit like a big puzzle into one eternal cosmology and it was FUN!

The other factor that played heavily into my realms Pantheons was imagery. When I first checked this book out of the library so many years ago, I remember loving all the imagery, the fantasy, and the ideas so much, I could never exclude one.
Before I even knew who "Lolth" was I knew her worshipers were bad news, as evidence by some of the great original AD&D artwork:

   I always loved this artwork. Brutal as it is, the black cloaked priestess sacrificing someone to Lolth through some demonic acidic torture was disturbing in my younger years, and etched itself in my memory but in a dark, and imaginative way. Later images of Lolth showed her as the curvy vixen and the demonic spider as well, but all encompassing that unnatural hint of darkest evil: 

And so it is with the 5th edition now. Of course my official adventurers League Organized play half-Elf Paladin follows the 5th edition guidelines, swearing an Oath to the Ancients and choosing the Emerald Enclave as his faction (as an outsider), but in home-brew campaigns I still like to allow the floodgates of creative worship to rule, allowing players maximum creativity and personal design in their characters. I may get a bit more strict on Buddhism though.

Salt con T-Shirt Design contest 2016

In an effort to push myself to being involved with all things creative, for better or worse, I opted to submit a quickly-sketched logo design for the SaltCon 2016 T-shirt contest.

Now to be fair, it didn't win, and thats ok. I don't think it was my best work, but I tend to go more towards the clean and simple look anyways. Although I have to say, the winning design was fantastic! Retro and yet almost "50's space-age" cool.

SaltCon Miniature creations...

So I love the Saltcon Miniatures contest! But unfortunately this year, I will not be submitting any entires. You can find out more here if your a local and attending this weekend:

http://saltcon.com


I thought since I am not able to enter any new creations this year, it might be best to visit a couple "virtual" entries I wish I had the time to submit.

Large Black Pudding:

This was created from wire, foam core board, and hot glue. then painted to several varying depths, and varnished with a  thick gloss to give it a wet look. the complete original posting can be seen here: http://creativedungeoneering.blogspot.com/2015/04/from-tentacles-to-crystals-to-puddings.html

This was a planned entry for the medium miniature category, and while simple, I think gathers a sense of "depth" and movement. With this iconic creature, the simplicity is often its horror.

For my planned Large entry, I thought I would re-visit the Smaug's Horde treasure pile:
http://creativedungeoneering.blogspot.com/2015/01/smaug-horde-found.html



The Treasure pile is quite large, and unfortunately in these images I do not feature a standard D&D mini for comparison, but I wanted something for players to really see as a massive horde, not just a small treasure pile from a wandering monster that for some unknown reason, seems to always be hoarding gold pieces. No, this needed to be true Dragons Horde. Modular of course, so that in creating future piles I could arrange them into being multiple piles of a grand scale, eventually, resulting in a Smaug size horde.




I am somewhat disappointed in myself for not committing to showcasing some of the DUNGEONEERING! work this year, but perhaps its ok for the focus to be on being the one to actually enjoy another creative Dungeon Masters efforts...not just always making them....maybe...

Gulp.....

So this blog is my own personal avenue of creative journalling one might call it. It is often as I can, updated with the REAL purpose of Dungeoneering, which is to highlight creative tips, tricks, and projects for Dungeons & Dragons and table top roleplaying.

But since re-locating to the Western mountains of the Salt Lake Valley, I have found there are not too many D&D only players nearby. It's proved increasingly difficult to find a group that is not only made  up of consistent adult players, but ones that have a more "old-school" mindset as well. 

I am not a fan of just playing board games for board games sake. Nor am I a huge fan of Roll20 or Virtual Tabletop applications.  I like the idea of old-school, role-playing heavy and miniature tabletop heavy D&D. I'd even be a LARPer too if I thought I could get away with it, but I have a long history of not meshing well with that hobby. I don't see too many adults heavily involved in that past time either, which is somewhat of a deterrent. 

                          

Dungeons & Dragons is truly where my heart is at. 

But I am old. 

I am not a "gamer." I am a "started with B1, The Keep on the Borderlands, Red Box basic set, watched the cartoon when it was still in syndication" player. 1980s....Not a video gamer who dabbles in RPG's. Not a LARPer who dabbles in table top nor a Wargamer that has stepped sideways into D&D. I am a purist. I'm so uncreative in this regard that I do not even play Pathfinder, much to the shock of many. 

Now, there is NOTHING wrong with these other types of gaming nor the people who play them. I just happen to find a sense of simplistic story telling and pleasure from just playing D&D. Now to eb fair, in the past, I have played Star Frontiers, Palladium, Robotech, MERP (Middle Earth Role Playing), 007 James Bond, and Star Wars. And I loved them all. But D&D will always be my first love. 

But because I am old, I have slid into being a bit of a Hermit gamer. I am dabbling in solo Basic D&D gaming, but love a good tabletop session. Tough to do with solo games. As a result, I have taken the leap, and singed up for my first official dabble into D&D 5th edition at my local gaming Con that starts this weekend. Of course my hope is that there is somewhere, a "hidden room" that holds old-school style "play by candlelight" and "cloaks required"type D&D games..aka Mazes & Monsters.....the quintessential image in my mind of a good-old-fashioned "cult-like" D&D game. 

While it may not result in the "cloak wearing play-by-candlelight-type cult gathering" I would love, it will hopefully, at the very least, be a riotous good night of gaming. And who knows, maybe somewhere, hidden in the mist shrouded forested hills of Western Salt Lake cOunty, perhaps there still exists others with this same old-school mindset. 

On a side-note, this is one of the first years I will not be entering any of the Dungeoneering 

Time will tell...

The Continuing Quest

                                         


Most people like the spring.

The thaw of the winter snow, the increase in daylight, the amount of sun. Open water, summer breezes billowing the sails, and the feeling of the warmth upon the skin...

I do too, but it also saddens me a bit. It's like seeing the light at the end of the dark tunnel of winter and knowing that the mystery of that dark will soon be coming to an end. 

The mystery of which I speak is this elusive, quite difficult to describe sense of  esotericism and creative magic that seems more present in the winter than in the spring and summer. Disappearing are the days of mist and fog and stormy skies, the days where there was little else to do than be inside alone with ones imagination. 

And yet each year, like a death toll being sounded to this winter magic, comes the last gathering of the genre I will experience for many months. 

The SaltCon gaming convention. http://saltcon.com

Each year I've gone hoping to find THE game of D&D I've always dreamed of (although to be fair, my expectations are probably far too high ) or a great class or panel to rocket my creative writing to the 'published' level, and each year I find myself not finding either...
I tend to be a hermit D&D player. There are no 5e groups near me, nor 1, 2, or even 3-4e groups for that matter. I somewhat detest Pathfinder, of which there seem to be plenty, and I am not in any way, shape, or form, a LARPer, SCAdian, or even board-game geek. In this respect I am wholly unoriginal and I guess one would say, unimaginative. So I find that  at SaltCon I am often alone, ignored, and disappear in the crowds with little attention paid.

Ahh anonymity... It can often be like a warm blanket, but sometimes leaves me wondering what I am missing just beyond the folds... 

And that is exactly how SaltCon seems to me. I always leave feeling like there is something I am missing. Like there was something else going on that I did not know of, or was not "in the loop on" because of my anonymity. Was that dream D&D game really going on somewhere until the late hours that I simply did not know of? Was there in fact something else to be done than sit in the hallways and watch the myriad of half-hearted cosplayers socialize and flirt to the echoing sounds of poorly executed Filk music?

If it is possible to be a "D&D Snob" then I suppose I qualify. I have nothing against Filkers, or Cosplayers for the matter. Or even Pathfinder players. But perhaps this self-introspection is just the sad fact that while the winter melts away, so does my hopeful expectations of finding like-minded individuals who take their D&D way too seriously and have the constant flow of imagination to see its likeness in nearly everything...
Of course I'll attend, and continue the quest to find that elusive imaginative treasure...one that lasts through he spring and summer heat and sun and into the misty fog of another imaginative dark winter.

A far Green Country...

A while ago I moved west. It's a modest home, nestled overlooking a creek running down from the western mountains outside of Salt Lake City Utah, but it has some great trees, and most importantly, it looks west, into the winding canyons of seldom traveled mountains. 

This small little corner of the Salt Lake Valley to me, always seemed a distant far green country. Often shrouded in mist, higher than the valley below, and less traveled and traversed than that of the more well known Wasatch range to the east. 

Now, Tolkien references aside, the reason for posting this small little diatribe is to examine, if only momentarily and internally, the correlation between those of us who hear the "call" of the fantasy-genre and the geographical location in relation to others who at least seem to as well. 

I long for days of old-school roleplaying, without the need for a Roll20 interface or a "virtual tabletop." And I have no doubt that as suburban sprawl continues to invade west like a festering malignancy, this will be less of an issue than it is now, but  for the time being, the solitude and quiet of the west means solitary Hermit-like fantasy involvement. Especially in relation to gaming. 

And this is the part that always seemed odd to me. Life of course, always gets in the way, but at least here in Utah, there seems to be a correlation between the number of RPG players, and those fans of the Fantasy genre, and the more crowded, urban areas. Why does there seem to be so very many Gaming groups from the East Coast of the US? Why here in Utah, do they all seem to be located in such major urban areas? If the desire to be "in the wild" plays such a crucial role in the genre, and in Fantasy gaming in general, why are so many of my fellow fantasy gaming and genre gamers so bent on being located in such urban areas? 

Would it not be a gaming paradise to be located away from the Urban sprawl? Away from the congestion and modernization of concrete and steel? To be more centralized in an environment that resembles the trees and mountains and misty vistas of the fantasy genre? 

I have no doubt that I could find, on any given Friday night, a  good session of D&D more centrally located in the urban trough of the Salt Lake Valley. But thats not what, Larry Elmore for example, paints in his genre-defining paintings! Sprawl and pavement and constant traffic is not the common vista that we see in any number of the works by Jeff Easley. So why is it so hard to find that distant, secluded, almost sacred and secret gaming club that one would imagine would be the perfect D&D group? 

THIS is what I aim to develop and create outside of Salt Lake City. The small town I live in, only about 20 miles from downtown Salt Lake is a world away, with mountains and vistas and trees, and the feeling of seclusion and privacy. This is what a true D&D and fantasy genre group should be. 

From Gaming to LARP, finding real life environments and a sense of seclusion and mystic imagination is what I hope to convey. Naming this new club has been an arduous task to say the least, but hopefully soon, some sessions can materialize. 

For any readers of this quiet, solitary blog, I would, for the time being, HIGHLY recommend attending SaltCon this next month, the premium small-scale gaming convention for the Wasatch front: http://saltcon.com