The Troll Slayer - Borek Rognisson

Tales told of a wandering Dwarf, from Karak Hirn to High pass. Sightings of which people claim he is so tall that he stands taller than any man. Almost a myth amongst the high mountains where few dare to tread, there has been witness from travelling merchants, miners and roaming war bands where tales of this mountainous dwarf have spread amongst the taverns littered around the feet of the black mountains "He's as big as a bear!", "I thought he was an ogre", "we only saw him stalking through the trees but he was monstrous and flames were leaping from his head", "I saw him, chasing after two of them chaos scum".

Any Dwarf when asked just shrugged their shoulders "Tall tales for stupid human folk!" they would say with a shrug of the shoulders or a dismissive grunt.

For years the outcast Borek Rognisson wandered the mountains of the Old World in fulfilment of his sworn slayers oath, to seek a great worthy death. Unfortunately for him, half of the tales that spread of his existence were and still are true. For Borek is a mountain of a man, for a Dwarf!

Having sworn his oath to become a slayer from a very young age, he was exiled by many of the Dwarven clans. No Dwarf ever mentions his name or even acknowledges that this young Dwarf, who even from a young age stood taller than most of the battle hardened Dwarven warriors even exists.

The tales drifted from town to town yet few ever saw this dwarf. Those that did and those that met him were ridiculed for spreading such stupid tales. "A tall dwarf?" often met with a raucous of laughter amongst many inns and taverns.

Until one day that is, Growing bored of not finding his true death amongst the mountains, Borek decided that down on the flat lands might bring him his true death.

A dark rowdy night at the Crooked Arrow. Sitting on the outskirts of Nuln, Traders, Hired swords, Nobles and Adventurers alike had gathered away from the cold blistering winds coming in from the grey mountains. Much ale and wine had passed the mouths of the patrons inside the tavern. Singing, debating, scuffles and flirting from the tavern girls all joining up into a mixture of noise that could be heard through the walls outside.

The door opens. To which nobody notices. Until one of the nobles sitting by the door stares silently at the doorway as this hugely muscled dwarf adorned with tattoos and the normal fiery headed Mohawk of a slayer steps through the door. A huge double bladed axe slung in his ham fisted hand. Another smaller throwing axe glistened in the light as it hung from his belt. The noble quickly grabbing the nearest persons arm in order to alert them to the presence of the dwarf. Quickly the tavern falls silent all but for a few whispers as all eyes remained focused on the broad frame of the Dwarf as he lumbered through the crowd silently. Patrons stepping back in awe to allow the dwarf to walk wherever he wished. Trudging up towards the bar, people step aside to allow him access to the innkeeper. Reaching down as he pulls a glistening gold coin from his purse and slapping it down on the wooden bar, "BEST ALE!" he says in a simplistic deep voiced tone. The barkeep nervously pours the dwarf a beer into a large wooden tankard. Silently the dwarf picks it up, glugging it back in one. Slamming down the mug with a thud. "ANOTHER", again the dwarf slams back the drink. "Weak man beer" he thinks to himself.

The tavern was still silent as the whispers bounced amongst the groups sat around the tables. Nobody wanting to make eye contact with the dwarf. Was he a dwarf? The rumour may not have been true. But he surely was the biggest dwarf anyone had ever set their eyes on. His shoulders as broad as two men. His arms thicker than most tavern wenches thighs. His huge hands dwarfing the empty tankard as he asks once more for ale. His tattoos reminiscent of that seen on many other slayers. His axe glinted in the dim tavern light as it rested against the bar.

"Is that the bear man?" they said. "He’s not that big" was whispered nervously so to not be heard.

The dwarf smirked to himself, for dwarfs ears are much keener that humans.

Turning around quickly to look around the tavern, instantly all eyes avert away from him nervously. Nobody would want to upset a dwarf that big!

"Go ask him" the dwarfs head turned to look where the words were coming from, huddled around a table sat a large muscular human, a fellow dwarf, an elf and a young wizard, the wizard was urging the dwarf to go speak with Borek. "Here we go" though Borek as he decided to save the party a journey, picking up his axe and ale he walked over to the group sat around the table..........................

the rest as they say. is history.
and we have also just cleared up. that i will never be a writer lol but thats the story of 'Big' Borek Rognisson

OK so I've gotten the fluff out of the way. I've spent a few weeks on this guy. and i like to kind of kick out a back story when i do anything i do. the doors, the furniture. i always tried to show some sort of extra life was going on there.
here. the fluff was to actually get around the fact that the scale of Scibor miniatures is a little...well lets talk about that later on....

Having read a lot of the Gotrek and Felix novels over the last year or so. i was obviously influenced by the Gotrek character. being the stereotypical grumpy slayer type. I wanted to somehow pay homage to that. but at the same time give him personality of his own.

these two images below are probably the best representations of Gotrek based on my own imagination from reading the books.

so i know i wanted something that represented the sheer bulk of the character as per the 2nd image.
a short solid built beast of a dwarf.
having searched all around i landed at scibor miniatures door.

searching through some of their ranges i finally settled on the following mini

he carries the same amount of bulk that i wanted from my slayer. A mixture of muscle and fat somehwhat like the build of a power lifter or a strong man. a pure bulked up strength to the character.

i didn't want a dwarf with 2 axes. but this mini carries a pose that had potential for adjustment.
so i ordered this guy and about a week later he turned up in the post (not too bad for international shipping)

now back to the scale. Adverstised as a 28mm/30mm miniature was always going to be a gamble.
if they don't know what scale it was made to. then god knows how big he was going to be.
i would say the average 28mm dwarf stand at around the 22mm mark or there about.
this guy stands at 31mm in total height. 26mm excluding the mohawk.
so thats where my "biggest dwarf" story came from.
i think its probably safer for Scibor to advertise at 30/32mm rather than 28/30mm
as i would imagine some people may be slightly pee'd off at spending their hard earned cash on something that doesn't fit into their games.

that aside. its a great miniature. it did require quite a bit of shaving and filling to get rid of the mould lines, but i can live with that.

so now i had the mini in my hands. i could finally decide what i wanted to do.
i always intended on him only having one axe. so i had to decide which was going and which was staying. also i didn't like the axe to decided i would be making my own.
finally i settled on keeping the right handed axe.
the left arm i chopped away the axe and drilled a hole through his hand then heated the mini slightly to squeeze into a fist. trimmed the arm a bit and fitted it in place so i could give him a "pull down the sky" 80's rock ballad power fist.


i then snipped away the axe from the right hand to leave just the handle. after digging through my bits box i found an adequate axe head. to which i then decided to sculpt a star design onto to give it more of a troll slayers axe look.

a few more bits to attach to his belt to give him that 'adventurer' look
a gold pouch and throwing axe and a small satchel. as well as a dwarf emblem as his belt buckle

then trimmed and re-sculpted his moustache as i didn't like that curly moustache of the original.

now more recently i have been wanting to do more free hand designs and well i always intended that this guy was going to have tattoos, he's a troll slayer after all. the final result i wasn't that happy with, but im going to blame my shaky hands mixed with the necessity to actually go out and buy some new brushes. but all in all. it didn't turn out too bad.

you may notice he is on a custom 'lower' base. an obvious compensation for the large scale. but he doesnt look too outlandish in comparison to these rather short goblins.

so all in all i think ive wound up with a pretty bad ass troll slayer.


based on my severe lack of posts i will wish you all a very merry xmas. as my next post will no doubt be in about 3 months time :)

next batch of dungeon doors

so whilst ive already shown my first testers and then a handful of doors. all of which i made the intention and commitment of making every single one unique......WHYYYYYYYYYYY?
lol honestly im fairly certain i am not the only one within this crazy little hobby world that simply just makes too much work for themselves.
i see the oldhammer sights floating around showing freshly painted 30 year old miniature. and im fairly certain its not the nostalgia, but moreso the fact that its been sitting in the painting queue that long. look at that minotaur lord i posted a few months back. thats been sitting waiting to be painted since about 1991 lol

so whilst ive progressed a little with my doors ive also hit a bit of a brick wall. because again whilst i made them all unique. it feels like im paiting units again. so the below  6 are the next off the the list. totting up 14 doors so far and needing to complete a further 8 and then im done.

 i made some simple press molds from those goblin spider bases GW kicked out. they make some nice little touches to all of the dungeon furniture ive done so far. if you ask me its the little details that make all the difference.

and ive tried to show that in all of the doors. another skaven themed door here making fairly good use of that cute little rat that sits ontop of the clanrats standard bearer.

 

 another delve into the bits box and i was able to do a sort of chaos themed door. not sure where the main skull comes from as i couldnt find it on any chaos standard bearer by GW. but nonetheless it helps as a centre piece to a pretty cool looking door i think.

 another skaven one here. either i was running out of bits or i was running out of ideas on this one. not even the sculpted little smudge of a rat makes this one stand out much. but its unique. and that was the quest.

 the plan here was for some other sort of chaos based door. nice and simple. and i even tried out a new paint i had bought for the blood..but then sealed the model with some spray and lost the wet blood shine of it lol. didnt turn out too bad though.

another simple door. making use of my press moulds some skull thing from my bits box and some mushrooms i had made. again. another different looking one. so alls good.
you may notice a lot of these doors have dwarven runes on them. like everything i make. i like to add character and details that might go unnoticed. im sure im not the only one that makes up an origin to a character when painting them up. so i like to do the same whenever i create custom stuff. back stories help with ideas for those subtle little details. and the whole point of the dwarven runes are quite simple. the dungeons were once dwarven strongholds, mines or whatever. and have since been overrun by the beasties of the old world. each of the runes are correct from the dwarf WFB book and all have a meaning. so i guess its a nice little touch to add.

so ive got 8 more to do. but think im going to sit on those for a while and work on some other stuff until i can find the inspiration to dive back in and finish these doors off.
ive been working on quite a few other things recently and hope to have plenty more to show soon enough.

enjoy!

giant rats

taken a break from doors as i have way too many to get through (i do have a few more completed ones to post up)
so i thought i would tackle something simple and easy. so fleshing out the skaven bestiary i managed to pick up a plague monk sprue and a slaver sprue for pretty cheap. from this i was able to throw together a total of 12 giant rats (slavers and plague monks to come later)
nice simple paint job on these of base colours and a devlan mud wash and they are ready to go.

ive come to the conclusion also that i absolutely hate unit painting. i really cant bring myself to put a good paint job onto a unit anymore without the fear its going to end up taking me 12 months to finish.
so ive decided that any unit types i do from now on are going to be table top standard at very best. and spend more time on characters. i mean really. 12 giant rats? they are just cannon fodder right? im never going to win a golden demon award for even my best jobs. so why waste so much time.
anyways im currently stocking up all the skaven ive done thus far. and the shelf they are sitting on is getting pretty full. so maybe ill be able to throw some full clan screenshots into the mix pretty soon.

anyways until the next time
happy exploring dungeoneers!!

First Few Custom Doors

So as you may of seen in my last few posts, I've shifted attention towards getting my zealot double doors painted up. and to make it a little more interesting for myself and the overall dungeony feel I decided i was going to customize them ALL!

Be it very minor customisations to slightly more flamboyant themed doors. so with the help of a little greenstuff and a route through my bits box ive finally managed to get them all customised and have now finished my first 4.

DWARF TOMB

The idea here was that with a very little bit of change i could make something somewhat slightly resemble a dwarven doorway. adding some hammers to the base of the arch and a dwarven rune (master rune of kingship) would be a nice little touch too. as you see a simple change. but still something different. 

ORC THEME

The idea behind this one was to have something resemble that of some orcish lair or throne room to a warlord. again pretty simple to achieve. as you will see with this one. i attempted some light sourcing. as a few of these doors have torches on to light the way. this being the first attempt..a little bit of a fail as i dont feel i got it quite right, but brush down and better the next one with light sourcing and all will be good .

 VINES

Got to have something overgrown right?

making all of these i tried something new ive not done before, the mushrooms on the base was my attempt to show the dark dampness of the dungeon. im quite happy how they turned out. the vines...well they add more, but not brilliant. again I added a dwarf rune as the idea in my head is that most dungeons were once dwarven  strongholds or at least dwarven built. even sewers of the old world were built by dwarves.

 WARPSTONE

Another very simple one where i attempted a little less subtle light glow.

another dwarven rune and a few chunks of warpstone set this one off quite nicely

So thats my first 4 if you exclude my 4 earlier testers. another 14 to go and ill be all finished.
im just in the painting process with the remaining ones now so hope to have more to show soon.
so until then!! :)

Doors colour test

now ive got a ruck load of doors to start making my dungeon look the part.
however i have 2 dilemmas on this front.

now anyone that paints have certain things they paint that they know they are good at. and to follow that up. there are certain things that some are not so comfortable with. and for me...doors have 2 things ive never been very confident in painting. and this might sound stupid but ive never really been able to paint wood or rock to a standard i like.
ive never been able to lock down a solid colour formula that when i sit back and look at i am happy with. so it made perfect sense that i attempted some colour tests before really laying into the doorways.

so here we have them

 first up the portcullis' (portculli? portcullises?) i dunno.
anyways as i only had 2 of these i just painted both of them in these scheme. for me the real tests were to attack the rock work and wood. this is no wood on this so i simply went for a brown dark rusted type of old metal.

 the rock work...ive gotta say im about 75% happy with my attempts and will carry forwards the method i used on these for all of the other doors. was rather simple really.
-Mid tone grey basecoat(in this case i used some cheap acrylic i picked up from a hobby store)
- Thin washes with 4 colours to break up the solid grey colour and hopefully gain some sort of realistic weathered look the 4 colours being. Agrax Earthshade, Athonian Camoshade, Seraphim Sepia and Reikland Fleshshade
-Dry brush with base colour.
- Light dry brush to pick out edges using Screaming skull

so with the rockwork nailed down it was the wood to concentrate on.
here....i wasnt to happy so will be trying a new formula on the wood as i want to get a much older dark and dampened look for the wood. but all in all it was a worth while attempt.
im happy with the rock. now i just need to go scouting around for the wood colour i would prefer to have and take it from there :)

so yup the dungeon is slowly getting there. a quick little mock up is showing how things are starting to look pretty nifty indeed.

i have much more plans for these doors as well. trying to add some character to them rather than them just being standard.
maybe some themed ones for the open doors(skaven themed - undead themed and so on)
and some ivy or cobwebs and such for the closed ones. skulls (gotta have skulls) rats, cobwebs and that sort of thing.
i just want them to end up looking great and not so standard.
i know most dont care about these little details. but we would all chose to have them if they were easy to have right?

anyways until next time :)