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(I've had these finished for a while and THOUGHT I'd posted them already, but the search engine can't find them.) In the ancient days when the Solar System was young, the Martian Empire spread far and wide through the local outer spiral arm before the Veiled Catastrophe ended their hegemony. They built miracles and left behind marvels. Sometimes they left behind colonies. A few of these, such as the ancestors of the Andromedan Dominion, flourished. Others saw the colonists die off, to be replaced aeons later by evolved descendants of flora and fauna brought along during the terraforming (Martiaforming?) process. Still others suffered resource collapse, and the colonists relapsed into centuries of barbarism. Witness one such case. Here are representatives of the Skull-Fang tribe, wielders of the sacred xolchu knife-axe (similar to our huckable Earth mambele knives): And here their great rivals, the spear-wielding Moonspike tribe. Skirmishes between the two are a way of life since time immemorial. Only the greatest warriors go without a shield, preferring instead to dual-wield their own weapons and those taken from the enemy. Even in their reduced state, though, they have not lost the Martian intellect. Between clashes their bards create great sagas and carvings of incredibly advanced mathematics. Their shamans have deduced nuclear and relativistic physics from first principles. There simply isn't enough smeltable metal left to put their designs to use. Three local years after the disastrous First Contact with outward-expanding Earth forces, a temporary alliance of the tribes managed to build a working hyperdrive out of scrap metal bits and a stolen ray gun. Since then, their ballooning fleet of pirated ships has been kept in check only by internal struggles. Kinetic projectiles on gravity-slingshot orbits are their specialty, and the shock of having your ship depressurized by a knife thrown from several light-seconds away is one few spacers are prepared to deal with.

The ship I built with one of my daughters needed a crew. And for the girls I needed a female crew of course. Fortunately there existed a set of four females for Ghost Archipelago, the warmer version auf Frostgrave. The minis are metal instead of the plastic box for the male crew. And of course this way they are more expensive than their male counterparts. We need more girls in miniature games. One was painted bei the middle-aged. Another one did my youngest daughter. Two more In finished after they started. Maybe I will have photos of them on the ship another time.

Assembled my crew and prepped and primed them. Two clopsen troopers, a lizardman recruit, sniper and another recruit/ chisler. A gnoll commando, medic and recruit, and a cultist recruit/hacker and trooper. Edit: It is a bit funny that My crew isn't using much of the actual Stargrave miniatures other than a few arms and guns, but then this is just the first crew, and I'll need some ruffians and pirates as well.

Now THIS is a Pulp Hero! An incredibly burly, fiercely-mustached Sikh with a chain-fed brass-jacketed machine gun. NorthStar UK lists him as Gagan Kayal; the American outlet Brigade Games lists him as Mohan Singh in their "Lord Curr's Company" set. Either way, a powerhouse with incredible style and devastating firepower. I roughed up the barrel of the gun with some Typhus Corrosion before painting it; the original sculpt is smoother. His arm hair is sculpted on, and after that, I'd be remiss not to give him some good chest and shoulder hair. The time period is fairly ambiguous to one who, like me, is not a firearms historian, so the good Mr. Kayal can work from the turn of the previous century... to the middle of said century. Special guest appearances by 50029, British Colonial Riflemen, 50193, Thuggee Cultist, and 50221, Nazi Zombie Officer (and his Artizan co-workers).

I like Northstar's plastic fantasy figs because they have a Dark Age, Tolkienesque feel. I've decided to paint up my dwarves so that I can more easy justify buying the elves that are coming out soon. So far I've put three shades of metalic paint all the minis but I'll be painting each unit of 6 or 12 on their own. First up are some speardwarves . I'm thinking that the beards should lean towards blonde to complement the blue cloth. Maybe some pale yellow spear shafts? Oh, and I also need to order some transfers for their shields. Eventually the whole army will all get some Polyshades brushed on to pick out the details.

Time to get the crew together, starting with the Heritor and Warden! Tonight was all about cleaning flash and mold lines, and there was a fair bit to do on both of these ladies. Also the Heritors swords were both really bent. They'll both be cut from their bases tomorrow and attached to new textured bases that all of the crew will be using. More on that tomorrow!

These three are from the Northstar Military Figures Skeleton Set, meant for the D&D game I found myself DM'ing after 10 years, lol. My photo skillz are suffering more than ever it seems.. Here is another try with different lighting: They are very finely detailed and great fun to paint. Thanks for looking and C&C is as always very much appreciated.