Tauster's Mother (well, not really...)

[tauster]

To put it straight before going into the details: This is not about my mother.

I'm crafting a monster called 'Mother' by it's ...well, let's call them 'children'. This will be a huge beast - I envision it being roughly egg-shaped with te long diameter being approx. 15 cm. Add to that several tentacles and other appendages and put a standard dnd miniature beside it for scale.

I had written about this project already in my Tiles thread, so I just quote that below:

Next flesh project:
(...)

2) The Mother ...yes, with a capital 'M'.
My main motivation (and concern) at the moment is the centerpiece for this theme set: I want to do something like a deepspawn* that is about 10x20 cm large and at least 5 cm high. With multiple eyes and mouths and removable tentacles.

* Basicaly a monster that can create multiple clone of creatures it eats. The clones are intelligent, indistinguishable from their original and totally loyal to the deepspawn. Click here and here for more information.

Background story (not relevant for crafting)
It will be the mother of all the lizard tribes the party will have meet (and probably battled) in the sessions before. These lizardmen will be backed up by improbable allies: kobolds, even one or two svirfneblin (good or neutrally aligned deep gnomes), one or two giants, perhaps even some real monsters like ropers. As far as I know my players, they will already suspect that there is some unifying figure behind these combos.

My  players will be led to think that all this festering flesh growing in the tunnels and caverns is the ancient remnant from Torog's travels. After all, this is what they know as common underdark history. But Mother lairs in a cave set wherethe aboleths dumped ((i.e. teleported away from their laboratory, just to get rid of it) a failed summoning circle centuries ago (see 2nd posting of this thread, plus future updates). The arcane & psionic 'residual radiation' of the still-not-completely-inactive arcane circle (artifact-level power at the time of it's creation), combined with the longterm influence of Torog's residues on living beings, has created this monster. Mother has been down here for centuries. 'She' is very intelligent but with a healthy(?) touch of madness, unable to grasp or acknowledge her origins. However madness means that even if she is evil, she won't immediately attack the party. If they behave, they might even be able to forge a perverted alliance of some kind with her. After all, this thing can spawn creatures that are totally loyal to her... Sure, this alliance will end at the absolute worst possible moment (for the players of course), but that's exactly what I want.


..anyways, back to topic: I need to practice making maws and more important, eyes. The eyes really intimidate me - I still have an unfinished beholder waiting to be assembled and having it's central eye painted...

I have found a solution for the eyes: Teddybears. I got several glass eyes for teddybears and puppets which I hotglued on tentacles (thread with hotglue). I really need to get more organised - I had bought them months ago and stored them in on of my cardboard boxes. The problem with collecting crafting materials is that you absolutely need to have an overview: If you forget what you have, you won't use it...

The tentacles will get painted with the same flesh color scheme as the tiles. I don't want to permanently glue them to the main monster body, so I'll probably work with metal strips and neodyms again. The challenge will be designing the places where the appendages connect to the main body so that it still looks organically grown and not just added on... This is my main headache a the moment. I thing some kind of round, shallow dimples in the body will work best, but for that I need to know the diameter of the appendages foirst, so they sit more or less flush.

Long story short, here are the first pictures from the eye and maw tentacles, plus the main maw that will be incorporated into the monster body.





The minis in the plastic box behind the tentacles will be scavenged for parts and added to the body. I want Mother's skin to stretch in some places by faces below the skin, driving home the point that this creature has some not yet grown-up clones inside it.



Finally some use for the beechnuts!

The pink maw was moulded out of hotglue: I squirted a good amount of hotglue in a folded-up 'bag' of baking parchment, waited for the glue to cool down until it was still mouldable but not sticky anymore and pressed a small rock in it to form the mouth cavity. Then I glued little rock chips in for teeth and basepainted it. The tonge is a small wooden chip from a pine cone.

[tauster]

I hadn't thought that I would get that far today, but I did... So here's how the story continues.



This is about the amount of clay I used. The thing at the lower part of the picture is the core of the main body. I just crumpled paper together to form a rough egg-shape, wrapped it in one layer of kitchen paper and 'sealed' it with sticky tape to stabilise it. The reason is that I want to avoid cracks when the clay dries (lesson learned from the idol thread).

Don't forget wrapping the rolling pin in cling film to avoid the clay coming in contact with the wood.you save yourself much time & effort cleaning it later on, plus it's easier to roll out the clay.




The clay rolled out. The black thing is a piece of bark (painted like a rock, but used for the flesh texture).



Just roll the piece of bark over your clay until you are satisfied with the texture. Don't press to much or you'll rip holes in the clay.




Texturing finished. You will later on do this step again when you have your desired shape done, but it's good to texture already now the complete clay because when you have folded it the desired shape, some nooks might be difficult to reach.



The clay wrapped around the paper body. You can see that from handling it, the texture is worn away in many places, sometimes it is barely visible at all. Just roll the bark again over the complete tile. Do it carefully or you might rip the clay, which is weakened in some places from being folded.




I inserted the maw at what will be the front of the creature. There are some cracks around it, bot I hope that the shrinking will at least reduce some of them. The remaining cracks will be filled with hotglue or modeling paste.



I didn't put much effort into making the dimples where the tentacles will connect later. I just pressed some of them gently into the clay wherever I thought would be a good place for an appendix.



I moulded the leftover clay into a large irregular flesh-textured terrain tile. In the encounter, it will be placed in the middle of Mother's lair when the party enters her cave. Mother will rise up from the ground (i.e. I just place the critter in the middle of the large tile. I can't wait to see my player's faces!




So that's it. It was way easier than I had feared - in fact, I had staved off this project for several weeks because it kind of intimidated me. Lesson learned: Don't procrastinate! Just start, and if it goes wrong, learn your lesson and start again. Only that this is sometimes easier said than done...

[DMScotty]

Very mythosy.

[tauster]

Nov 25, 2013 14:39:58 GMT DMScotty said:

Very mythosy.

Yes, the outer appearance will probably remind the players on that (some of them have already played Cthulhu rpg's in the past), but I want to give Mother a personality where a touch of Torog's madness (i.e. rage), an unhealthy dose of megalomania and a bit of humor is blended in. Basically what I'm aiming for is Marjory the Trash Heap from Fraggles.



I'm still looking for something to fill the roles of her two rat heralds, Philo and Gunge.

[onethatwas]

There was a monster in second edition called the "deep spawn" that nearly fits your description of mother. The difference was it could make perfect, but loyal copies of anything it consumed. Even Alignment was copied (to fool those who could detect alignment).

The thing was a roundish heap of flesh that could sprout eye and mouth tentacles at will. It liked to bury itself in treasure (to lure in potential victims).

In anycase, awesome project man

[tauster]

Nov 25, 2013 16:46:42 GMT onethatwas said:

There was a monster in second edition called the "deep spawn" that nearly fits your description of mother. The difference was it could make perfect, but loyal copies of anything it consumed. Even Alignment was copied (to fool those who could detect alignment).

The thing was a roundish heap of flesh that could sprout eye and mouth tentacles at will. It liked to bury itself in treasure (to lure in potential victims).

In anycase, awesome project man

Mother IS a deepspawn (see the 2 links in the 1st post).

[onethatwas]

Ah...wow, I read that but it didn't click. I transposed "Deepspawn" with "mother" as I read it for some reason.

[tauster]

Mother's doing really well. Which means that she is growing uglier every day.


I applied round neodym magnets to appendages and the dimples I had made in the clay. As expected hotglue doesn't bond with my airdry clay, so I had to find a way around that problem. The solution is acrylic varnish: coat or double-coat the places you want to hotglue later with it, wait a few minutes to let it dry and then apply the hotglue.




Important lesson: Take care for polarity! You want all magnets to have the same polarity, so each of the appendages can be stuck on each of the magnets. Even one inverse pair (pair = appendage and dimple in the main body) will cause delays at the gaming table as you grope for the correct one... My solution was having one magnet glued on, putting another one on top and color-marking it - the colored side will point up when glued to a dimple. And if it is meant for an appendage, it will be the one that touches the glue.


I also added to more details: I sawed two faces off from otherwise unwanted miniatures and glued them directly to the main body. They look like stretching out from below the skin of the beast, or at least I hope they will when they are painted up. Both faces, the arms and the red eye-tentacle are from WotC's 'Creepy Freaks' series.




The football in the hand will be painted up as an eye. I figured that eyes on tentacles are well and good, but an arm extending from the main body holding an oversized eye in it's hand is a nice touch.




The main body has 13 dimples and I have 10 appendages, leaving me with 3 more to craft. Alternatively I can use some of my blood tentacles, or just pop some toadstools or other fungi on.
Note that this is just one possible configuration: Thanks to the magnets I can move each appendage wherever I want it. This will probably prove invaluable during combat, at least I hope so.

Front view:




Side view:

[DMScotty]

That is one crazy beastie.

[tauster]

Nov 27, 2013 22:41:54 GMT DMScotty said:

That is one crazy beastie.

Thanks! I can't wait until this is painted up. This will probably be the ugliest thing I've done so far, and the one I will be most proud on for some time. I can't wait to see my players faces when Mother rises from the flesh-covered cave floor...

The funny thing is that I have been procrastinating this project for what feels like eternities becasue I was intimidated by it's imagined complexity - I thought this would be too difficult to make. It turned out that not only was it (so far) very easy and fast to make but also a total fun project, even more than other works. Lesson learned.

Another thing: It jsut crossed my mind that this could not only be used as a deepspawn but equally well as a beholder hive mother... Plus some mythos / far realm monsters of course.

[tauster]

Basepaint is finished, mostly. There are still a few spots I have to paint again*, but the first flesh-color is almost dry.
* Clay is literally soaking up the color, but  if you use acrylic colors on hotglue, don't water the color down too much or it will pool and leave some spots uncolored.



Colors also drie faster on clay than on hotglue, so I could already give the terrain piece it's purple washing. Please excuse the bad lighting (neon light and one bulb plus not-to-great camera = color distortion), I will take shots in daylight when all is finished.




The main body and the appendages drying:

 


The faces are the most difficult to paint. I had to add at least three layers of color and might still add some more because it the original miniature's paint and the hotglue are still shining through. Still, even now they look disturbing. I plan to treat them with thes ame washing I'll apply to the rest of the main body (see the large terrain tile above), so that they appear to be below the skin.

  



[edit]
I had planned to do the washing(s) tomorrow, but I couldn't wait - so I applied the purple wash the second the basecoat was dry (gently helped by the warmth of my desk lamp). I watered down my wash color a bit too much so it got extremely thin and even more runny than usual, but I think I'll simply apply a 2nd layer of wash tomorrow if required. So here's some pics from Mother's wet flesh. ...urgh, did I just say that?


  

As hoped, the faces are looking scary. Especially the one at the back with it's eery smile!




I simply love this monster... You know what'll be even worse than the ugly shape & look of this creature? The worst thing for my players will be that they don't necessarilyhave to fight this monster - it's a potential ally, one powerful enough that they will seriously have to consider making a pact with it. Man, I really can't wait to put this one on the gaming table...

[leolad72]

Brutal, but to be honest, your "Mother" looks more like my Mother-In-Law......lol! Regardless, great job!

[tauster]

Not yet finished, but I couldn't resist the temptation and built a teensy, weensy encounter scene with some tiles of this theme...



Detail shots:

 

 

Just varnished the appendages and the large terrain tile. I still don't know hot I should paint the 'beechnut-maws', the teeth of the main maw, the 'eye' held in that short arm and the main body. Also, I'm considering adding purple veins to the main body like the worm/pseudopod.

I got Army Panter's Quickshae (Soft Tone), so I will experiment with this before I varnish the rest.

[leolad72]

I stand by my previous comment. That encounter is gonna be brutal. Excellent set up!

[skunkape]

That's just, well, creepy! Great job!

[monkeywithtacos]

That would give me nightmares! Damn nice!

[dmjonny]

Wow thats very scary! The encounter would be brutal and so muchh fun! Gd job :-))

[dmdubbledee]

These are the first eyestalks I've seen that really make me want to puke. Umm, congratulations?

[tauster]

Another two pieces for Mother's lair are done:

1) Hive piece
Don't know a better name for that stuff... It's Scotty's Gorgon Mud painted in my fleshy color scheme, plus a few intentional hotglue strands. I don't have daylight right now (maybe I'll remember tomorrow to take some shots), so the colors are a bit off. The colors are however identical to the other tiles shown before. I'll use them for breeding creatures, so I'll probably need to do some 'mounds' with about the same height but still closed.

Shot taken with flashlight: i.imgur.com/GM5rFNq.jpg
and without flash (only neon light): i.imgur.com/Xf7c63a.jpg



the other sides
i.imgur.com/estk40J.jpg
i.imgur.com/ESVTDg9.jpg
i.imgur.com/zvRyWx0.jpg


2) Large floor tile
I saved a piece of wood from an elderberry tree because I liked the bark texture. The piece is perfectly round, so I had the idea of using it as a rolling stamp.





It worked quite well, and I rolled it in several directions, plus made a bit of an long, curvy indentation to add some interest.

i.imgur.com/W0JY4Zy.jpg

A few weeks ago, I found a cheap pot of flesh color on ebay (500 mg for 4,95 €) that I wanted to try out. I can easily blend it myself, but every time the color is a bit different. I used it as basepaint...
i.imgur.com/n3jy8yg.jpg


...after drying, I washed it with a kind of purple and added an acrylic gloss varnish.
i.imgur.com/xkUwrKn.jpg
i.imgur.com/fTeOfVR.jpg




It's ridicuoulsy easy to make this kind of terrain. I guess that I can do these kind of pieces in about 10 minutes or less - if I would do several of them together. Question is, what would I do with so many flesh pieces? I have all I need for my encounters. Maybe I'd try selling them on ebay as warhammer terrain?

[tauster]

I finally got to use Mother, the Torog fleshy terrain and the abolethic summoning circle in play!

I originally intended to give only a brief abstract, but then it got longwinded again...


This was an introduction/character formation solo adventure for a new PC who will join the party very soon. Thorrag Trübschädel (rough translation of Trübschädel: dim-/dull-/drear- skull) is mostly a derro (3/4 derro; only his grandfather is ...something not quite derro) druid with a strong affiliation towards slimes and oozes.

We’re playing ADND 2nd edition, so we partially adapted the Slime Lord prestige class from 3E’s Underdark book. The original party is by now at lvl 11 and this guy will be at lvl 8, playing the role of a secondary player character. The campaign is centered around the storyline of the Night Below boxed set, with tons of sidetrecks. We started playing this campaign about 12 years ago, due to people moving and other real live factors we’re playing only one or two times a year (though I hope this will change with video conferencing).

Some more background:
Thorrag has left his home city of Dag Morra (see WotC’s 4E Underdark book) where Derro and Dwarves live side by side and even marry each other, while all praying to Moradin. Suffice to say that this is unheard of anywhere else and a blasphemy in the eyes of all other dwarven clans. I wonder what the two dwarf in our party will say... *grin* He wandered for months through the underdark, braving it’s dangers (single-handedly killing a basilisk, bashing a grell’s skull in and surviving a daring raid of Hraak Azul (again, see WotC’s 4E Underdark book) where he was finally discovered by a lizardmen patrol that hunted him through the lightless tunnels for days.

His goal is finding a powerful magic circle of unknown origin somewhere in the deeper down where he can complete a ritual described in a book stolen from his grandfather (the only person in his life he actually liked... he spontaneous stole the book when the opportunity was good, just before leaving his home. That’s derro for you. The ritual will allow him to use a spell that would otherwise be far too powerful for him, one that will summon a small purple worm.

After finally killing the lizardman patrol, he found access to the King’s Highway, a legendary system of tunnels that crisscross throughout the Underdark (WotC’s 4E Underdark book) created by Torog, The Crawling King, in times before the sentient races populated the world.

Long story short, he finally found the cave with the ancient circle.




It was surrounded by a small lake, resting in the waters at a slanted angle. Beside was a hexagonal stone structure of obviously artificial origin which emanated a sick golden-green glow through cracks in the old stone. Both were thrumming with arcane power, but otherwise the cave was empty. Only the large patches of Torog’s remnants worried him a bit.



Thorrag executed the ritual. Flawlessly. No results. Nothing.

After a while, he walked back on land (thank the gods for waterwalk spells!), where he heard two little voices cackling: Goblins. ...goblins?

Two maimed goblins stood in the cavern, each missing an arm from the elbow down, white bone and red flesh showing. They seemed to feel no pain, as they were mercilessly teasing the equally frustrated and flabbergasted derro with his obviously failed ritual. Other figures joined them: two large goblinoid beings with dislocated extremities, a humanoid figure of an unknown race with tentacles sprouting from all kinds of places on its body, even a hill giant, each bearing some deformation or the mutation. All were teasing Thorrag – and almost casually denying him to leave the cavern.

After this game went on for a few minutes, one of the fleshy parts of the ground began to heave, and the ugliest thing the derro had ever seen rose from it. It was greeted by reverent shouts of “Mother!” from the monsters.




Thorrag tried to swallow his panic and tried to keep a calm appearance. “This is something my grandfather didn’t mention in his book...” he said to nobody in particular. “Of course not, little derro.”came the kind reply from the being’s countless mouths. He tried to ignore the sniggering of the others, concentrating on the obscenity before him and trying to buy time.

“I have executed the ritual flawlessly, but it didn’t work.” he continued. “Of course you have. And of course it failed.” The majority of it’s eyes (he couldn’t bring to think of the monster as a ‘her’) were on him. Many of them winked, and some mouths grinned. No matter how long he would live – and he didn’t think it would be especially long – he would never forget this sight.

“Why?”

“Because something was missing.”

“But I think nothing was wrong? I followed each of his instructions. Why did it work with my grandfather and not with me?”

The monsters gradually became more excited, and the goblins grinned from ear to ear. Thorrag sure they would be rubbing their hands if they each had more than one.

“Because you are NOT MY CHILD!” The last part of the reply was screamed by a hellish choir of a dozen mismatched, hoarse voices. One of the tentacles shot towards him. Thorrag had positioned himself in a distance he thought longer than the tentacles, but he hadn’t counted with these things being able to stretch so far. It grabbed him and held him in an iron grip, lifting him high up in the air and towards the creature.

Panic welled up. From his vantage point he could see that on the back the body, faces stretched under the monster’s skin, trying to break free.

“Mother, Mother, Mother!” He barely heard the voices of her children.

“But we can talk about everything!”

It was the last sentence of Thorrag’s life. While her children were hooting and cheering, the tentacle swayed towards the large front maw and stuffed the derro in. The stink was unimaginable, but Thorrag didn’t even notice it. Rows of jagged teeth ripped at his flesh and crushed his bones. The pain was unbearable, but after a few moments it gave way to darkness.


And with that, Thorrag died.

The first character in over 15 years of roleplaying that was eaten. Not to mention that it happened during it’s introductional solo adventure – Thorrag hadn’t even met the party. He hadn’t achieved some epic feat, he didn’t sacrificed himself for some greater good. He just died alone, in the endless dark tunnels. No one would be coming to ressurect him.

You should have seen my player’s face.

The story was over before it began.

I let it sink in for a few moments.

Then I continued with a “but...”:

“...the story is not over, not yet.”

Raised eyebrows, and hope...

"Thorrag somehow regains consciousness. It is warm and wet and tight, and you fight free of whatever constricts him. Something rips, and cool air surrounds you. You fall out of wherever you were in, and land hard on the rocky ground. Slowly your senses return, and with them, the memories: The pain. The teeth. Being eaten alive. The monster. Mother! A quick glance to the left and you shudder as it is still sitting there. The others, mother’s children, are standing around you and look at you with smiling expectation. But there is no evil in their eyes..."




We had been roleplaying longer than expected and both of us had to get up early, so I told him the rest of the story shorter than I had intended: Thorrag was indeed dead, of that there was no doubt. But even so, he was Thorrag: An identical clone with all his knowledge, memories, abilities and skills. Even his magical equipment had survived. Of course some mundane stuff like clothes had to be replaced, but that was not important.

The only difference was that he was now completely, utterly, unfailingly loyal to Mother. His Mother. Their mother.

The next weeks were spent learning. For the first time in his live, Thorrag Trübschädel experienced first hand what a true family meant. There was not exactly love between Mother’s children, but the sense of loyality was something completely unknown to derro. For the first time, Thorrag felt being home.

He repeated the ritual, and it was a success. Two successes actually, for he could not only summon a small purple worm to do his bidding, but chose between it and a wormy thing made of Torog’s flesh that was even bigger and more powerful. The purple worm was hard to control, and it took the derro druid all of his willpower and concentration to force his will upon it. One tiny distraction and it could break free. The other ...thing was pliant to his will, but it was only easily summoned when Thorrag was near the King’s Highway. With either monster, each moment of their presence leached at his life force. He would never be able to summon them for more than a short time, but this might be enough in a battle.





This is where we ended the session. The player, who is himself a DM and is known for stunning story twists, was happily grinning. Both the idea of killing a PC before he entered play and the crafted terrain & Mother were a total success. I can’t wait to introduce this guy to the complete party, and to see their faces when I place Mother on the table.