The Enemy Within - Session 117

 17/04/2025

Good Fortune and Prosperity

In the evening Amos goes to the smithy to clean up the warplock. Norgrim in the bar tells tales of killing the Brood Horror in the mine (mentions the remains found, but not the warpstone or items). Etelka, Axel's widow begs him to bring up his remains - he says he will (though failing to persuade the party in the end to re-enter the lower tunnels he will retrieve only an arm). 

Farfordda hides up a tree near Wullies hut before moving inside the hut itself. It is early morning when old Wullie enters. Farfordda says he doesn't think him mad and questions about his trip in the ratmen tunnels - did he see the Horned Rat? He was a horned rat, a one-eyed, white furred rat. It is clear from what he says that he was in the same lair as Farfordda had been. Farfordda says his warpstone chip may have served as a beacon. It was an heirloom from his father he says, the greatest miner of the Middle Mountains. 

Amos wakes from a dream in which he sees green lightning flashing from Karak Skygg at Morrsleib, on which a face splits open to swallow him whole and he gains 5 corruption… he then spends the morning working on the warplock, viewing it through Karlinsel's spectacles he can sees traces of Dhar. He helps Josef create a fuse then visits the bar to give Lucas' wife his wolf skins and asks her to fashion an outfit of sorts with a wolfs head. 

Magdalena spends her morning showing the gaffer how they might set up defenses for the village. Farfordda gets some rest while Josef the smith mends his bow. At midday a posse of riders arrive, 2 knights with Ullman the Holzbek's huntsman. They have come for Ada. Magdalena distrusts them and asks many questions. The others gather and they tell the Knight the whole story of how Ada was abducted and stress to be wary of her aunt. 

Finally they hand Ada over, dressed in chain, with helm, toy sword, stuffed toy from the steward and dog. She leaves happy and makes Magdalena promise she'll come visit. They ride for Holzbek aiming to get there that night. 

Ullman stays behind, he tells them Von Reiter interceded in a fight at the Inn between Martina and Axel junior who'd just heard his father had died down the mine. They tell Ullman about the Brood Horror and show him the skull boiling in the pot. He is impressed. Wait till I tell Meyer he says. The Baron owes you. He tells them the Baron is in Holzbek and his injury inflicted by Gazrin Onehorn is serious, that there are many noble parties headed for Holzbek, and also that a monocle wearing scholar dropped by the castle the night after they were there, and left with Lady Eisenhal for Holzbek the following day. 

He heads for Dunfurter and the party head down the mine shortly after (2pm) with Josef and a wheelbarrow loaded with gunpowder. The locals wait outside with bated breath. 

They descend to the lower caves and Amos and Josef plant their charges in the steep tunnel down. They all leave the mine except Farfordda who stays behind to light The 100’ fuse. Boom. Two other cave-ins are caused but Farfordda gets out unscathed. Note originally Amos fumbled and took on corruption to reroll. 

Martina, now returned, joins them to do some work fixing up the mines. She tells them more of her run in with Axel junior and plan to leave for Gladbeich (she tells the PCs she heard Etelka’s brother-in-law was hung in Lindenheim being mistaken for Heinz Gerber). Soon there will be no real engineers for the mine, hopefully some dwarves will answer Norgrims call. 

Amos suggests that the Brood Horror skull be mounted above the mine entrance with a dwarf rune carved in it. The gaffer tells them about an old dwarf temple he found when he was young on the mountain south of Karak Skygg, in a hidden valley. He tells them the rune and Amos recognizes it as Gazul, but thinks better of it and in the end carves 'Good fortune and Prosperity'. Josef offers them 5GC of glimmerlead for a sun stone, but none of them are interested. 

We end on the evening of 32nd, with the party planning to ride for Holzbek the following day… oh and Magdalena having failed a Toughness test knowing that more infection related fun is on the way...

The Enemy Within - Session 116

 05/04/2025

Filthy Lucre

They search the Brood Horror's lair finding human and skaven remains and a tunnel leading steeply down into the depths, which Farfordda knows is blocked. Farfordda finds a Cathyan sword and sling bag, containing, among other things steel calipers which magdalena uses to search through the big piles of shit. Amos and Norgrim search them regardless. A ring, some pennies and a shit encrusted Warplock pistol are found. 

Farfordda cuts the head off the Brood Horror and they bind it to Magdalena's spear which Amos and Norgrim use to carry it. It is after 4am by the time they exit the mine into a damp night. Magdalena spots old Willie watching them, he scurries away shouting demons when she gestures in his direction.

They wake Martina, she is horrified and nervous about Axel being killed - Etelka will murder me! She asks them to hold off telling anyone until Johann has left for the Inn, but no they insist on going to the Gaffer now, but tell her they wont dob her in it. 

Johann is already up and prepping to leave. They show him the great rat head and tell him they went to the mine looking for Axel and found his and other corpses down in tunnels below the mine proper dug by this monstrosity they killed. They say he should blow the mine up. He says this is how they make a living. Can the party not sort it out - he'll pay them. Amos says you need to pay us for what we did already. 

As with Martina he says - so mad old Wullie was right - its ratmen and devils. He tells them how Old Wullie only started saying all this after the Glimmerlead was revealed - that he had been caught skulking about the village one night and next day he showed up maintaining to remember nothing of it and that he'd been to the ratmen tunnels. 

They tell him about the warpstone caves, but he knows nothing of warpstone. Also this is the first time he met the elf, which he is not entirely happy about. Johann decides to send Martina to the Inn instead of himself (which she is eager to do), he will stay and try calm his people - he asks the party if they will deal with the situation - spend a day blowing the entry to the lower tunnels to show his people they need not be scared. In future they will set a guard at night, and yes they will build fortifications as soon as they can. He offers them 10kg of Glimmerlead.

They crash out, waking at 2pm then head to the Pit Prop - (almost) the whole community is here eager to hear the details. Norgrim tells the tale, stressing Farfordda's role to make them less hostile to the elf. Amos asks if anyone saw the green flashes last Grunsnacht and hears yes - it was like green lightning above the broken mountain. Magdalena goes to see Ada, she is distressed by all the tales about some monster in the mines. 

Farfordda goes looking for Old Wullie, but theres no sign of him - he pays closer attention to the signs in his hut, asking if the sign on the Brood Horror's broken manacle is there - yes it is, but the main symbol is this other one. It is about 5pm, 31st Vorgeheim...
 

The Enemy Within - Sesion 115

 28/03/2025

The Horror in the Darkness

They explore the lower mine. It doesn't take them long to discover the recent tunnels dug by the Brood Horror. Farfordda finds Karlinsel's dark spectacles and they methodically investigate each chamber on the lower level before heading into the tunnels. 

It is a real fumble session for Farfordda - he stumbles and cries out while navigating the tunnels. They follow them down into the caverns below where the passages lead between natural caverns shot through with warpstone chips. 

Finally they enter the small cave below the Horror's lair. Magdalena smells it as it smells them. Its bloody slobbering snout pokes over the edge of the cavern above and the party flee. It chases them down the corridor, easily catching up with the 2 dwarves. 

 

Illo from The Horned Rat Companion - copyright Cubicle 7

Norgrim turns to face it with his pick and Amos lets loose with his crossbow. Magdalena and Farfordda join the fray and they have it on the run before anyone is injured. It scrambles back to its lair. Farfordda fumbles again taking a shot and damages his bow. Magdalena smells the gas above and Farfordda lets loose with a fire arrow. Kaboom. 

Amos scrambles up the slope and puts another bolt into the burning beast - but its the fire that does for it... its just after 3am, 31st Vorgeheim

The Horror in the Darkness

It was probably inevitable that once I got back into playing tabletop RPGs I'd take up collecting and painting minis again. I'm sure the magical allure of these detailed little critters was a crucial part of what drew me into the hobby in the first place. 

After my first year or so of rediscovering this nostalgic joy I found myself increasingly customizing the models. Back in the day it was all lead or white metal, so the only modelling I ever did was the bases and that was usually with a tub of my dad's Polyfilla. But the plastic minis of today are easy enough to rework with a scalpel, a file and a pack of Green Stuff. 

I started to wonder if I could model something from scratch, inspired by articles in (the brilliant and totally free) 28 magazine and awesome content on YouTube like this video here. But what to make?

The game gave me the answer. I had dropped the WFRP adventure The Horror in the Darkness into our play through of The Enemy Within, it features a mine with this huge, vicious monstrosity called a Brood Horror lurking in its depths. After one gaming session in March I realised the Player Characters would encounter it at the next one in ten days. 

We usually play with minis, though it being a fairly low combat game there is rarely much call for them, so its always novel and fun to use them when we can. However I didn't really have anything appropriate for the Brood Horror, I mean it is pretty big. I thought maybe with ten days I could have a go at making one?

 

Illo from The Horned Rat Companion, copyright Cubicle 7

The illustration in The Horned Rat book seemed like a good place to start - I like the pose. A quick trawl on Artstation turned up some pics useful for thinking about other angles. I did a few tiny pencil sketches to get my head around the leg positions then got to work...

Plasticine

I started out by making a simple, very rough model in Plasticine. This was really just to get a sense for what size the underlying wire skeleton would have to be. It had no detail at all and lacked the solidity to even really stand up, but it totally worked for what I needed. I used another mini in a fairly neutral pose for scale reference. 

Wire

I actually ordered 2 lots of wire from Amazon, but I know nothing about wire gauges so both were essentially unusable, one far too thick and the other too thin. In the end I used a small roll of steel wire I had laying in a tool box. I cut one long piece which I shaped into the spine, going from end of the nose to tip of the tail. I then took another piece and wound it round where the hips would be to form the legs. Tying them clearly wouldn't be enough to hold them in place, especially when I started shaping them into the leg pose so I dropped a splat of super glue on the join. 

Its worth mentioning at this point that I used a longer piece of wire than I thought I'd need, so I could cut it down to size once shaped. I couldn't get a sharp enough bend at the knees just using my fingers so I tried combining the use of a pair of multi-tool pliers I had with a pair of (just googled the name) Pump Pliers. That obviously wasn't going to work so I ordered a 'mini pliers set' from Amazon for about £19 - I could have got something cheaper, I mean its not like I'm applying a lot of pressure or serious wear to them. There are 5 pieces in the set though and they are perfect for what I wanted - especially the bent ones.

After the legs I added another long piece wound around the spine to make the arms and fixed with superglue then twisted these into rough shape with my new pliers. 

Shaping and trimming the final pose didn't take place until I bound the skeleton on to some kind of base. Without the feet being pinned in place it would too easy lose the pose. This was where I started using cut up sprue. I have been keeping offcuts for a while now in case they could be used as bricks, shaped into small objects or just to bulk out minis or their bases. 

Often once I've remove all the minis from a sprue I will take a pair of clippers and snip the sprue up into strips. These are easy to store and make a great modelling material. So I took a strip and using my too-thin-for-skeleton brass wire I bound what will become the feet on to a piece of sprue. Then I drenched that in superglue.

Sprue 

Other articles I've read recommend padding out from the skeleton with more wire, crumpled tin foil or some other malleable material before applying modelling clay. I decided to go with sprue.  This was definitely slower than many other approaches would be, but it was a satisfying way to work, and I felt confident about building up the form this way. Cutting, gluing, sanding, trimming. It took a wee while but eventually I had a solid framework which admittedly at this point looked more like it belonged to Horizon Zero Dawn than the Old World. 

The final step before moving to clay was adding the only details I did not make myself - an upside down jawbone to frame the top of the mouth from a Citadel box of Skulls and the tongue from a Demon of Khorne. I thought the shape and detail of these would be too tricky to do. In the end the actual teeth were just little shards of plastic whittled with a scalpel.

 

Milliput

 The biggest quantity of modelling clay I used was Milliput, a 2 part epoxy putty - 'moulds like putty sets like rock'. Its not great on the hands and it makes a real mess, but it adheres to plastic well. It takes hours to dry, and once dry it can be shaped with a scalpel or file. I think I bought my first pack of it ages ago for modelling bases for which it is perfect. 

I apply it in little lumps and push these into place, then mold and scrape with a set of stainless steel tools which look like dentist's implements. With the lumps I try to follow the underlying structure, big clumps of muscle mass or prominent bones. The Brood Horror also features a lot of gross pustules and tumors, these were added once the main form had hardened. I save all the little hardened crumbs of Milliput for applying as base details.

Green Stuff 

After the Milliput comes the Green Stuff. When you pull a piece of Milliput apart it tears like a kind of crumbly clay, there is almost a moistness to it. Green Stuff like Milliput is a 2 part epoxy (one strip blue, the other yellow) but it doesn't so much tear when you pull it apart as stretch. It is like a sort of super malleable plastic. 

It is great for details, you can roll out thin shapes and spread them on, then push them with a knife to create hard edges. It stays in this pliable state for a half hour or so after its mixed and takes hours to fully dry. I bought a cheap set of silicone and plastic modelling tools for working it which proved invaluable, especially for spreading the material and eliminating fingerprints. You can cut and mold Green Stuff, but not really sand it.  

 

Hopefully you can see from the pics that the tail was created by rolling out thin strips then wrapping them around the rough Milliput form. Its a bit much, I'd try do something more subtle if I was to do it all again. 

 

Details & Zenithal

I stuck the model to the unused oval base from a larger Citadel mini, smothered it in Milliput then encrusted it with sprinklings from my bag of scraps. 

The final gross details for the Brood Horror were warts created by gluing on some of the tiny beads you find inside plastic water filter cartridges, a tip I picked up from one of the insanely talented Roman Lappat's pdfs. I applied some Liquid Green Stuff over these to better merge them with the body - that's the dark green on the back on the picture on the left.

Then it was time for a quick Zenithal pass - i.e. spray the miniature black, then white from above. And that was as close as it got to finished before being used in the game. All in it took 10 days to model from scratch, doing at most a couple of hours a day. 

 

 

Painting

I did the painting at a more leisurely pace, it took less time to paint than make and those hours were spread out over a month. I started out by working up the zenithal coat until I had a complete monochrome version of the mini. Then a thin coat of flesh colour, followed by dry brushed white and successive washes of contrast paints, applying reds, purples and yellows in localised areas.

I'm fairly pleased with the finished result. The tail could be a lot better and those folds of skin around the neck could be better integrated with the muscles writhing up across the throat, the hands are ugh and half the face a bit meh, but for a first effort at modelling a mini from scratch I'm pretty happy. It was a satisfying project to undertake, even if the Player Characters did dispense with it in one session. Might try a Troll next.