What's on the Work Bench

With the holidays and everything I haven't had much time to finish a project. But shinny syndrome being what it is, I've dived into my lead pile with ADD abandon, that is to say I've begun cleaning, basing and painting many figures but I haven't finished any of them. My hope here is by throwing all these half started projects up here I can force myself to focus on finishing them. So here they are:

 Order of the Sacred Blood: London Expedition

The Heresy Miniatures posing vampire and West Wind EOTD brother.

The Wolf Pack

This is the simple name I've chosen for my Lycan faction. I've been adding to the original starter set to flesh out the pack I'm very happy with the extra wolves I've sourced.

Wolves

From right to left. 

OOP Ral Partha Werewolf the Apocalypse wolf, West Wind EOTD wolf.

From right to left. 

OOP Citadel 1980's wolf, West Wind EOTD wolf.

Sourced wolves next to EOTD werewolf for scale.

 Werewolf

 

  From right to left.

OOP Ral Partha (late 80's?) Werewolf, West Wind EOTD werewolf.

Horrorclix

 I have a number of Horrorclix figures I picked up while waiting for my EOTD miniatures to arrive. I apologize for the the very poor picture I didn't have proper lighting. Mr. Fright is mounted on a 40mm base and he is close to being finish though you couldn't tell it from this picture.

Re-purposed Figure

OOP Ral Partha Werewolf the Apocalypse giant wolf.

I had originally intended to use him as a werewolf in my LOTR games when they put out the SBG rules for werewolves. GW never did put out rules for werewolves. I didn't get the Hound of the Baskervilles when I participated in the Requiem KS it was a separate figure not part of the 221 B Baker Street set. But now I discover that the Hound is part of the Great Detective (221 B Baker Street) faction in the new rules as written and I'm without a Hound so guess who's my stand in.

Hound stand in vrs West Wind EOTD werewolf for scale.

In addition I have 3 Lideo carts to convert, base and paint. I've found some brass rod to serve as an axle for the replacement wheels and some chariot bases. I need a driver for the 3rd cart but otherwise I just need to sit down and convert and paint them.

And lets not mention the half painted zombies moaning in the cupboard.

I still don't know which direction to move in first but hopefully if I stare at this mess long enough I will.

Merry Christmas

 

I wish all my readers a fiendishly Merry Christmas this year. To all of you would have taken the time to comment you have kept me at this, this blog has continued entirely do to your to interaction and encouragement. And to you scamps who lurk but do not comment enjoy your visit from the Krampus.

Requiem Burke & Hare

Up the close and doun the stair,
But and ben wi' Burke and Hare.
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
Knox the boy that buys the beef.

—19th-century Edinburgh skipping rhyme

Burke & Hare as they appeared in the EotD Requiem Kickstarter.

Their portraits in the Edinburgh newspapers during their trial.

Backers of the EotD Requiem Kickstarter had the option of selecting this villainous pair as part of their rewards package, But just who are these men? William Burke and William Hare where real persons tried for the murder of 16 people in the city of Edinburgh in 1829. They are popularly know as Resurrectionist or Resurrection Men that is to say grave robbers but they were not strictly speaking robbing graves. They where Irish Immigrant laborers who came to Edinburgh to get work on the canal and remained in Edinburgh after it was completed. Edinburgh was the European center of medical knowledge specifically anatomical knowledge. It was known at the Scottish renascence.  If one wanted to become a renown surgeon then one had to study anatomy at Edinburgh. Now the only real way to learn human anatomy is to dissect a human body but there was only one way to legally obtain anatomical specimens (bodies), executed criminals who consented to having their bodies given over to scientific research. Now there was a religious superstition prevalent in Scotland at this time, that a dissected body would be resurrected in pieces not as a whole person. This idea was so horrific to the common folk that the vast majority of Edinburgh's criminals preferred to have their bodies hung in chains in front of their homes or crime scene and literally rot  to pieces rather than be dissected. This need for bodies created a new line of work grave robbing or "reserecting bodies" for the purpose of dissection. In cities around the world this gruesome task was usually performed by the medical students them selves. In Edinburgh gangs of professional body snatchers sprang up to meet the needs of the medical colleges. At this time diffing up bodies was not illegal anywhere in Western Europe or America but the relatives of the snatched where outraged by it. The wealthy cemeteries built watchtowers and hired armed guards, the poor organized volunteer guards from the relatives of the deceased. Mr. Burke and Mr. Hare tried their hand at grave robbing but where nearly caught by armed guards on their first attempt. Mrs. Burke ran a flophouse and one of her tenants died so Mr. Burke And Mr. Hare took the body to the famous Anatomist Dr. Knox who gave them 8 pounds on account of its freshness. Then Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare got a bright idea murder tramps and vagrants then sell their bodies to Dr. Knox. They would get a mark drunk then suffocate them by holding their nose and mouth shut. After 16 murders they where finally caught by the peelers.

Now Dr. Knox was a brilliant surgeon who's medical lectures where very well attended, near the end of this association with Burke & Hare he had to hold 3 lectures a day to accommodate his 300 students. His medical knowledge enriched Edinburgh and his students enriched him.  The Edinburgh Gentry didn't want his reputation tarnish by the murder of a few tramps. The attitude towards the victims of the Scottish Gentry is embodied in this quote by famed Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott

“Our Irish importation have made a great discovery of Oeconomicks, namely, that a wretch who is not worth a farthing while alive, becomes a valuable article when knockd on the head & carried to an anatomist; and acting on this principle, have cleard the streets of some of those miserable offcasts of society, whom nobody missd because nobody wished to see them again.”

So a deal was struck William Hare would turn crowns evidence and testify that Dr, Knox couldn't possibly have know they where bringing him murdered corpses in exchange for a full pardon. The 1972 British film Burke & Hare portrays the murders very authentically, but be ware this is a 1970's horror flim so there are numerous bare breasted scenes. The full movie can be found on youtube in 9 parts. Below is the theatrical trailer.

The confession and subsequent execution of William Burke became and instant best seller. The common folk of Edinburgh unlike the Gentry of Edinburgh were not content to allow William Hare to escape his crimes unpunished a crowd grabbed hold of him as he tried to leave Edinburgh and throw him into a lime pit. The lime permanently blinded him and he live out the remainder of his days a blind beggar on the streets of London. One would think after all the trouble the Edinburgh Gentry went through to exonerate Dr. Knox in this affair he would emerge unscathed, not so no one believed his claim that he that he didn't know he was paying for murdered corpses. His students abandoned him en mass leaving him impoverished and friendless.

I've noticed that several people wanted "special rules" or "character profiles" for EotD for all the special characters in the Requiem release. The Requiem special character figures are a combination of three groups EotD background specific characters, Victorian literary characters and historical persons like the pair above. The historical persons are Burke & Hare, Nadezhda Duroa, (see her profile here)  John Brown, Queen Victoria and the famous authors set. I'll do a post on each one of this persons and if your interested in a post on the Victorian literary characters in the Requiem KS let me know in the comments.

Technology British Library sticks 1 million pics on Flickr, asks for help making them useful

This is the title of a short article by Peter Bright published on Dec 14 2013 in Ars Technica. 
The article can be found here.

Art departments of major libraries have been maintaining picture galleries; photographs and illustrations cut from newspapers, magazines and damaged books for decades. These are literally thousands of huge folders of  clippings with highly generalized titles like "fashion", "dress", "horse", etc... I remember them fondly when I was an art student. I've now spent some hours going through a very small fraction of the images on the British Library Flicker site there is an amazing amount of materiel which would be of interest to the war gamer. I've taken a number of images of the site for my own personal enjoyment/reference some of which I'll post here below this paragraph. No the problem the library has is that the only information recorded about each individual image is the name of the publication and the page number the image was on nothing more. To make matters worse it that many of these publications are in Dutch, French, German and Russian with untranslated captions. I urge you to browse the collection for yourself and see what you can find. I've collected mostly 19th century images as my blog centers on that period but there is a wealth of 17th and 18th century images in the collection. You can find the collection by following this link.

Pictures have the British Library captions underneath them.

Image taken from page 292 of 'A larger history of the United States of America to the close of President Jackson's administration ... Illustrated, etc'

Image taken from page 411 of 'Across Africa, etc. With a map and plates.'

Image taken from page 265 of 'Onze aarde. Handboek der natuurkundige aardrijkskunde ... Met 150 platen en 20 kaartjes in afzonderlijken Atlas'

Image taken from page 113 of 'Expedición geográficomilitar al interior y costas de Marruecos'

Image taken from page 41 of 'An Archæological Description of Saltwood Castle near Hythe, Kent ... With illustrations ... The historical notes by C. Beeston'

Image taken from page 117 of 'Under the Rays of the Aurora Borealis; in the land of the Lapps and Kvæns ... 

Image taken from page 81 of '[Gordon and the Mahdi, an illustrated narrative of the war in the Soudan, etc.]'

Image taken from page 631 of 'Кавказская война въ отдѣльныхъ очеркахъ, эпизодахъ, легендахъ и біографіяхъ. том. 1-том. 5. вып 3'

Image taken from page 437 of 'Orient Line Guide. Chapters for travellers by sea and by land. Illustrated. A new edition, ... augmented, with maps ... for the voyage between England and Australia. Edited ... by W. J. Loftie'

Image taken from page 288 of 'Orient Line Guide. Chapters for travellers by sea and by land. Illustrated. A new edition, ... augmented, with maps ... for the voyage between England and Australia. Edited ... by W. J. Loftie'

Image taken from page 215 of 'With a Show through Southern Africa ... Second edition. Popular edition'

Image taken from page 1062 of 'Illustreret Norges historie. [With plates.]'

Image taken from page 544 of 'Cassell's History of the War in the Soudan'

Image taken from page 630 of 'Cassell's History of the War in the Soudan'

Image taken from page 223 of 'Kriget mot Danmark 1675-1679 ... Med porträtt, kartor, etc'

Carts of Course

I've been working on carriages for my London board here are some work in progress shots.

Lideo Bakers Van with Recreation Conflict Harness Mule

Here is a period picture of a similar van apart from the wheels which I will replace what do you think?

Here is the Lideo plastic driver. Victorian drivers are proving hard to come by.

Do you guys think the mule is a good size for the baker's van? Please let me know in the comments.
I bought the Lideo vehicle from Recreational Conflict he sold out of this vehicle but has some others. The Mule is also from Recreational Conflict and can be found in the Tiger Miniatures section under colonial Equipment.

Street Clock

 I foolishly ventured out on the day American's call "Black Friday" the Friday after Thanksgiving, given over to special Christmas sales and mall brawls. Why did I do such a dangerous thing you ask well as to that all I can say is that I've become mesmerized by Richard's (of WAR in 15mm fame) 28mm Victorian City. I learned that he had used some Christmas Decorative Village pieces in his wondrous set up so I braved the Manhattan streets in search of usable Christmas decor on the cheap. I returned home tired but otherwise unharmed baring this clock. More of my Black Friday Booty will appear in future posts.

The clock is a solid piece cast in Tuffstone a plaster concatenation mixed with a polymer used in cheap Chinese tourist statuettes. Its light and shatterproof and you can cut it with a hobby saw. It looks to be a useable scale next to the zombies and I got it for $2.

 REAPER MINIATURES
A note on Reaper Miniatures, Reaper makes a number of nicely sculpted figures in their Chronoscope line suitable for Victorian or Pulp gaming (like my nunslinger above) but be warned that Reaper doesn't believe in scale. A figure's size is whatever that particular sculptor feels like, most are "heroic 28mm" (more like 30mm) larger than West Wind or Foundry, a few are true 28mm and some like the Colonial British Soldiers and Zulus are a monstrous 32-34mm tall. They make space marines look sickly. So for all you non-Americans who can't view there figures in person I suggest you ask a friend just how large a particular figure is before you mail order it.

See the nunslinger is a big woman, but she is by no means the biggest Reaper figure.


 I realize that my recent posts have been a bit random my hobby time has been totally helter skelter since the accident. I can however state unequivocally from now one there will be a regular post on Sunday nights. Hopefully one every Wednesday night as well, but Wednesday nights isn't firm yet.

I haven't touched a brush in over a week but Tophat and Mr. Speckles with appear here finished after Christmas.

Ripper Street Cancelled!

This is horrible news I've just heard that the BBC has cancelled RIPPER STREET the only decent show on the BBC. This hard hitting show is the only one I've ever know to delve into the Victorian pornography racket.

A gentlemen by the name of David Saunderson has all ready begun a "Bring Back Ripper Street Petition" I have signed I urge you to sign it as well. You can find it here.