Just finished a project I started last June, briefly touched in August ...and now throw it in the ring of the January Craftwar:
The living bridges of NihilathTutorial:
See
here and
here for the first two parts.
I had most of the work already done, just had to add a second wash (dark magenta or dark red) and then apply a glossy varnish to give it that nasty, wet sheen.
Now I know that I can't possibly win the contest against the other entries by just painting a few blobs of construction foam. Even with the high 'yuck!' factor, this was just playing with foam and color - the difficulty level of crafting this project was ridiculously low. And to be honest, I don't even care about winning because I prefer cooperation over competition, even if it is a friendly one (I suspect I've said that before, so please excuse the possible repeat of my micro-rant
).
So to make this entry a little better, I've broken out a few boxes with projects I had long since finished, stuff that is in no way related to this months theme of bridges - so it should not be considered in the voting. It's just window-dressing and me having fun playing around with the stuff I made.
The last discovery of Sir Gneld of the Four ScalesSir Gneld of the Four Scales looked around the cavern. This was the most unusual underdark location he had ever found, and he was at home in these tunnels ever since he fled the Mother of the three dragons he killed. That was decades back, and the rock gnome had taken very well to the darkness below the world. The strange sights he had found down here were only matched by the constant dangers of the underdark. He had become something of a legend among the tighly knit community of the underdark explorers. Many of them had seem things that surfacers couldn't even begin do have nightmares about, because imagination can only come up with a certain amount of weirdness.
The distorted growths of Shrieking Pipers were something of a novelty - even in the most intense Faerzress radiation he had ever seen them that much warped. Their forms expressed their pain quite adequately, but these specimen seemed to have aquired a limited form of telepathic ability: They were mind-screaming out their constant pain, sharing it with all poor souls who found their way down here. Sir Gneld considered himself lucky to have aquired a protective ring against the mindflayer's psionic attacks - it seemed to dull the Piper's painful screams to a low throbbing inside his mind.
But there was something far worse in this cavern, and he struggled to keep his eyes from watering just looking at it: A pair of giant, glistening, fleshy bridges spanned the pitch-black abyss before him, from where roaring winds swept up, carrying shreds of pure shadow with them. He stood in front of a shadow rift, a place where the borders between the material plane and the plane of shadow had been worn thin enough to become permeable. Whatever laid on the other side of the abyss was obscured in the darkness.
The curious gnome carefully climbed down towards the cliff and cast a strong
light spell and a
wizard's eye to get a better view of whatever these things were.
My, these things are huge. And the stink, oh by the gods!
Try as he might, his
light sphere couldn't illuminate anything on the other side. Still his underdark senses told him beyond a doubt that there was a huge cavern on the other side...
'I must be crazy'... He sighted, but anyways crawled on all four over the slick bridge, always in danger of being pushed over and into the bottomless abyss by the shadow-infused galeforce winds. Slowly the black veil parted. With every step, more details of what came after the bridge were unveiled.
Sir Gneld didn't like any of them. He couldn't even
understand what he saw there.
The closest term his mind could come up with was 'living architecture'. Broken pillars protruded from the rocky ground, pillars made of what looked like bone and flesh and pulsing veins. Egg-like shriveled things here and there. Did some of them move ever so slightly when he wasn't directly looking at them, or was that his imagination? And what in the Crawling King's name was that mountain of flesh over there? It was pierced by a rough, black spike of what seemed to be dulled obsidian... Were these black spheres eyes? Other organs? Or eggs of something from the plane of shadow?
The cavern and it's contents went on, beyond the reach of his floating
light spell. He send it together with his
wizard eye flying deeper in the cavern, always keeping an eye on himself so that he could himself from above, warning him of any danger that might come his way.
Not that he was afraid of monsters, not even in this strangest of caverns. He had some very powerful means of arcane destruction and defense, legacy of a long adventuring live. He had battled and won against three dragons - fighting him together. He was there when the largest roper colony known in centuries had been cleared. He had encountered mindflayers that teleported away the moment they recognised him, remembering him from earlier battles.
And still Sir Gneld of the Four Scales was more nervous than he had been in years. These things ...
weren't right. Wherever they had come from, they had no right to exist in this plane!
Then his
light spell expired.
Still the cavern wasn't completely dark. A sick, violet light flickered through the cave.
It originated from a giant contraption deeper in, and it's flashes made it difficult to recognise what moved and what stood still. That's why Sir Gneld saw the creature almost too late.
A giant fleshy ...
thing with claws and a stinger swooped down ad closed in on him. He readied a
fireball spell, but suddenly felt himself lifted a few feet from the ground and being turned around in the air, facing away from the creature.
He couldn't possibly end his casting and throw the
fireball towards the flyer, but it wasn't all bad that it had turned him around: From what had been behind him moments ago, a trio of strange creatures came flying towards him: Three-pointed, fleshy, star-shaped beings ...or objects? Where these things even alive?
Sir Gneld didn't dwell long on these questions. He threw the
fireball in their midst, toasting all three of them. Then he activated a certain bracelet and freed himself from the telekinetic embrace of the first creature. He fell to the floor, quickly turned around ...and found the creature gone.
His
wizard eye showed him a second flyer, slightly different from the first specimen. Sir Gneld killed it with a thin grey ray of raw necrotic energy. It simply turned to dust.
He didn't like necromantic spells, especially so close to the plane of shadow...
A huge bulbous creature came slowly staggering on three strong tentacles towards him, finding a way between the larger ...
structures? Things that were larger than a small castle, yet they seemed to be made of flesh and bone and skin and veins. Some of them heaved almost imperceptibly slow. Did they breath?
Sir Gneld cloaked himself with an
invisibility mantle-spell. The giant walking thing still came towards him, even after he change his position. And there were smaller creatures behind him, snake-like things with what might have been cyclopean eyes. He suspected that they used other senses than the ones known to him. He aimed a wand towards the large walking thing. It took four direct hits to stop the beast. He killed the snake-like things with
magic missiles. No use wasting precious recources.
Then he saw the giant heap of flesh, deeper in the cave. It had a network of purple-blueish veins all over it's ...
body? Yes, 'body' seemed to be right. This thing was definitively alive. He could feel it. He could hear it.
He didn't need his ears to hear it, as it spoke directly inside his mind, shatting his powerful psionic ward at once. The thoughts of the thing were like poison. They were anathema to this reality. The concepts spreading in his mind shattered his sanity in an instant, leaving behind only shards of consciousness.
Even with his mind dead, the gnome's body was kept alive far beyond that day. The being took it's time, sifting through Sir Gneld's memories for several years until it had absorbed and interpreted the information.
Then, slowly, it started to reawaken the others.
After eons, a small part of very first Illithid empire cycled back to live. Soon the denizens of the underdark would learn that Nihilath hadn't been completely lost after all.
Setting explanation: Nihilath, the lost underdark empire of the mindflayersdmscraft.proboards.com/post/15495/threadOrganic bridges (links already posted in tutorial part above)
dmscraft.proboards.com/post/15497/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/21842/threadCavern and stalagmitesdmscraft.proboards.com/post/14525/thread dmscraft.proboards.com/post/14863/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/25263/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/27820/thread Nihilath buildingsdmscraft.proboards.com/post/15439/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/15406/threadBlue-veined buildingdmscraft.proboards.com/post/24700/thread dmscraft.proboards.com/post/24701/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/24762/threadFlesh and bone pillardmscraft.proboards.com/post/25187/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/25710/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/25797/threadOrganic brick pillarsdmscraft.proboards.com/post/25663/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/26569/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/26652/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/26711/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/26865/thread
Generator and other coppery machinesdmscraft.proboards.com/post/25585/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/26102/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/26205/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/26261/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/26459/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/26769/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/27323/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/27337/thread
Monsters and other stuff dmscraft.proboards.com/post/22887/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/22909/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/23096/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/21580/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/21687/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/21926/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/21827/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/22004/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/22431/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/15357/threaddmscraft.proboards.com/post/15445/thread
