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Also featuring another sci-fi mechanic from CP, this one painted up in the grey jumpsuit and yellow boots of my Moon Communists. He's the one with the sledgehammer. I love this old retro tech! Easy-to-assemble MDF from Crooked Dice, and a bargain at that. (We've already seen Janey of Crooked Dice's Paranormal Exterminators and Bombshell's Helen Salinger before)

The Protectorate demands mineral resources! We've seen the work their employees do in the asteroid belt before. Welcome to Xipetotec, in the Huitzilopochtli system. It sucks here! A Mole Person could get along here, but humans who get sent here must have gotten in the Protectorate's bad books. Hey, look, it's those two guys again! Survival on such an awful sphere is hard, so the Company pumps its workers full of Brute Juice. ("Brute Juice: You Know It's Healthy 'Cause It Glows!") Crosswire (50018) is a prime example of what Brute Juice does to a body--he's a burly specimen. But Oleg here makes him look positively puny. Oleg is an Ogryn Heavy Trooper from CP's alien line. The mask, armor, and Brute Juice tubes make him fit in perfectly with the other Space Roughnecks. The girder-sized object he totes had a flat end, so I tacked a GW greeble on it to make some sort of futuristic space welder or gauss-field gizmo. Also gave him a GW Ork knife, which would be a machete in a smaller figure's hands. Anyway, for impressionable readers I should mention that Brute Juice is habit-forming, and the Company will deduct it from your paycheck, and no it is not cheap. Anyhow, these shock-troops of labor will work like hell until they have got the mining and smelting processes automated. Once the machinery is set up, it's a few days off-planet R&R and then on to the next site. The pension for this kind of labor is very generous indeed--it's not like most of the workers will collect. But perhaps that's spoilers for another post! The Ore Orb is a 'moon ball' bouncy toy with a touch of paint. The apparatus in the last picture is a partly-finished GW Ferratonic Furnace; more of that to come. Remember, cadets! Brute Juice--Not Even Once!

One thing about SPACE: it's a bad place to have a breakdown. Spaceships are expensive and complicated; they are your entire world and means of survival out in the black. Lucky for you, the Zap Bros are here! Danny, Joe, and Grexlar founded an interplanetary franchise of mobile repair stations. Danny is an Earth-human businessman, formerly ran a shipyard parts supply store. First-rate at logistics. Joe is an uplifted gorilla, a mechanical genius. If it can be taken apart and put back together, Joe is the ape for the job. If it can't, that just takes him a bit longer. Grexlar is a Martian engineer and physicist, a master diagnostician. Mass-drive, fusion, fission, gravitronics, hyperdrive manifold, warp modulator--no matter what should make the ship go, he can figure out why it won't. After going into business in the Asteroid Belt and making a pile (credits, friends, and favors) the three started expanding the business into a chain. You could populate a small moon with the beings who owe their life to a Zap Bros Rescue & Tow. In fact, the O'Neill cylinder "Long Day's Journey Into Night" did just that. More angles of the three: The Zap Bros have very high standards for whom they hire, but pay excellent wages and have no species restrictions. Robots welcome! *** Specifics: Danny is a mechanic from CP's Sci-fi Civilians line. Joe is Crooked Dice's Starport Fueler modified with Green Stuff. Grexlar is Reaper's Alien Tracker--I can't find the SKU for the metal guy but he's part of the Bones 49001, Alien Overlords set. The desk is also Crooked Dice, and the big-screen monitor is from Bombshell's galley and rec area set. The simpler robot is also Bombshell, MaCbot. The repair specialist bot is a Warmachines Convergence fella bought secondhand. The asteroid ship is a bunch of kitbashed junk, mostly Christmas ornaments and several GW greebles. Stay safe out there, cadets!

First come the green meteors. They come from a particular region in space, and a given year may see anywhere from one or two events to a dazzling display that outshines fireworks. (Do not look at a shower event without adequate eye protection!) A meteor that lands without burning up completely is like to see peculiar plants grow near it. They share some qualities with normal plants like the bird-of-paradise plant, the sundew, or the genus Nepenthes but otherwise differ markedly from standard Earth flora. A remarkable mobility and incredible response-patterns to local environmental stimuli are among the most notable. They have a specialized organ, a lash extending from their central bloom, coated in a sticky, debilitatingly painful neuroactive compound. Do not let this touch your skin. Do NOT let it get in your eyes! They are also very fast-growing. And aggressive--they actively fling the lash at nearby sources of (heat? vibration? some combination of the two? Research is ongoing). Infestation is common in tropical and subtropical regions if the population is unchecked. Multiple subspecies have been distinguished within the original Trifidus tripes, from the temperate-zone and unpredictable T. t. wyndhami, to the monstrous tropical T. t. horribilis. It is sometimes hypothesized, usually by sweaty and unreliable cryptobotanists, that rapid evolution is on the cusp of producing speciation events, including the proposed classifications Trifidus ambulans and the conjectural T. anthropomimus. Fortunately, this remains the province of wild-eyed crackpots and can safely dismissed as the rantings of an overactive imagination. Guest appearances by Artizan's Miss Greentree, Antediluvian's Professor, a Creeper from Crooked Dice, and Reaper's own Dragon Plant (77505) and Occult Detective (59039).

At last, a return to Berton and Bradbury's Magic Circus! Send in the CLOWNS! These are a pack of four untrustworthy chucklemongers from CP Miniatures, plus a fifth CP harlequin done by a different sculptor and sold separately. The special one I painted using inspiration from a Joseph Grimaldi poster. He's got a monkey! I painted that as a golden snub-nosed monkey, as those are among the most clown-faced of the monkeys. This is a clearly a clown in command, second only to the ringmaster. Other clowns will jump through hoops for him, sometimes even metaphorically. Next up, Fumbo! This clown may (MAY) actually have no other motive than entertaining children. Cheerful and bearing a honkable horn. On the other hand, those teeth look awfully sharp. We also have great clown Pagliacci, very funny clown. If you suffer from depression and want to end it all, Pagliacci can help. Bumpus the Stooge! Bumpus was inspired by Ed Kelly's hobo-clown look, dialed up a bit. Carries a shovel at the end of the parade. Astute observers will note that Bumpus's pink complexion is all makeup. He is a true clown, not just pretending. And here's Bogo! Inspiration should be obvious for this one. I might modify that upraised hand with some balloons. A group shot of the whole carload: And with all the clowns, including Reaper and Brigade Games: More angles:

All Martians have psionic powers to some extent, for telepathic communication at the very least. A few possess talents far beyond the Martian norm. Undisciplined use of these powers could cause disruptions to the usually orderly Martian society, but a species learns a thing or two over the course of a million years. A rigorous program of focus, meditation, and training out in the Crystal Wastes will hone those wild talents to a suite of keen, well-directed tools. This fellow, from CP Miniatures (Sci-fi, Non-Commissioned, Alien Sensei) is one such psionic anchorite, learning proper and responsible use of telekinesis, remote viewing, illusion, and mental manipulation. Please do not call them a "space wizard" even though it seems quite accurate by Earth standards; the Martian academicians insist it is very different altogether from space wizardry and very disrespectful to confuse the two. The nuances of the distinction are lost on Earthlings, but then so very few of us have psionic talent in the first place. Here's the Anchorite with a few other Martians, including 50197, whose paintjob got a touch-up. Keep watching the skies, cadets!

Let's talk about monsters for a bit. The name comes from the same root word as "demonstrate" and "monstrance"--attention-grabbing things that draw the mind to greater matters. Like comets, in ancient times, they were seen as more than just malformed dangerous beasts, but as a sign that something was deeply wrong in the world, or a portent of a great evil drawing near. Offenses against the gods, offenses against nature, great upheavals to the realms. It is unclear to me how TSR conflated the Gorgons (women with petrifying glances and snakes for hair; Medusa was only the most famous) with the man-eating red-hot brazen bull of King Phalaris (or perhaps of the cruel engineer Perilaus, depending on how you read the story). But they did! And now there are minis of scutigerous metallic bulls snorting noxious gases. Now, let's talk about the colonial American West. The interior of the country is vast and rugged. Overland journeys by wagon were grueling and dangerous--especially when traveling through the land of people who definitely did not want you around. The advent of the steam locomotive and the railroad was meant to expedite travel. And it did! Ponderous iron-clad engines, belching smoke and steam, whistling like the screams of the damned. On rails laid by slave labor, expendable labor, immigrant labor, cheap labor worked to death, the railways wormed into the interior and crept across the Great Plains. Again, I have to stress the Plains were already occupied, and the inhabitants were not happy to become casualties of Industrial Progress or Manifest Destiny. They were already using those plains! And at full strength they were a terrifying threat, incredible riders and archers who knew the land well. To be specific, the Plains tribes mostly depended on herds of the bison, whose flesh, sinew, hide, hair, and horns provided them with their necessities. And when settler businessmen and governments realized this, they hatched a wicked plan. To aid and unify the genocidal little wars and massacres already ongoing, the colonists would exterminate the bison, and thus starve the indigenous peoples. Mountains of buffalo skulls soared to the sky. The buzzards gorged themselves on the bullet-ridden flesh of enormous beasts left to rot. Displaced and starving, the dispossessed natives were forced off their land or killed in battle. Deep-rooted prairie grasses were replaced by wheat and corn monocultures, undoing the knotted mesh keeping the soil from blowing away. And the iron railroads and their riders advanced on, branching tendrils North and South. This is the sort of cruel and egregious upheaval that creates monsters. And in the Weird West setting of my Bandits and Badlands game, the monster that came forth to demonstrate here is the P'izen Bison. A steel-plated beast of immense size and strength, fueled by an unholy fire, spewing choking gases, bellowing from a rusted throat. It tramples and devours and poisons. It renders the land waste around it, like Catoblepas and Bonnacon both. It destroys the works of man without discrimination. It reeks of sulfur and low-grade coal, burns to the touch, abrades the skin with steel wool. Its gaze paralyzes with dread. It eats men alive. In short, it is a manifestation of all the externalities of Industrial Progress with none of the good parts. Various votaries of the Spirit of the Age, gadgeted up, encased in stoveplate armor and armed with steam-powered fists, have tried to stop it. But that's like trying to stop a spirit of vengeance with bullets, ain't it, pardner? Might as well try to make Old Man Buzzard gag, or try to out-lawyer Old Scratch. *** Nolzur's Gorgon with some green stuff added to make it look more like a bison, plus a couple of smokestacks left over from VROOMgear and some cotton batting. The statuesque lady with the Arkansas toothpick is an Indian Princess from CP's Weird West line, while her elderly companion is their 28mm Victoriana Plains Indian Girl, aged up a bit. Guest appearances from Hellstromme, 91002; Raven 59002, Shaman 59010, Chieftain 50113, and a couple Apaches from Artizan. Also the signpost from Western Sophie. The cacti were just on sale at a hobby store fake plants aisle.

Irresistible fellows, these. Shaggy, bulky bodies like a ROBOT MONSTER or a moa; long, bendy necks; beaks somewhere in the hornbill-flamingo-shoebill-Skeksis-vulture range. From CP miniatures. They came in 3 packs: Soldiers (4 riflebirds plus a squad leader), Diplomats (3), and Auxiliaries (3 riflebirds with hats). The skin color scheme was based on blue, red, and yellow boobies; the beaks were inspired by a number of large birds. I added some headgear for fun and in homage to the dandelion-headed Looney Tunes "Instant Martians." I get the idea they are of a highly organized bureaucratic culture with expansionist tendencies, unlike the tribal Venerian Amazons (Hydra Valkeeri). The Hydra Imperials, below, are also from an expansionist imperial culture, but the Terror Birds are less centralized and more impersonal in their cruelty. They get around. Seen here with Hydra's Slishans, who have little culture and almost no technology but DO know from mineral resources. And seen here engaged in diplomatic negotiations with the highly-cultured Andromedans/Neirans. Both species have a great appreciation for the arts and for manipulation. You wouldn't call either culture "decadent," because of the railguns, but 'Baroque' might be appropriate. Notice that the Bombshell Neirans are towering statuesque specimens. Vavoom to a point that makes the Venerians look puny. Trade talks with a chieftain of the Mole People from Sirius B. and theological disputation with an Exalted Proselyte of the Yoggs. The Brain Squids are an esoteric lot and require a delicate touch.] A disputed claim of precious nuclear resources on the border of the Robot Hegemony. The Robots are prohibited by First Law to harm humans, but your beaky bois here do NOT qualify. A Martian delegation, bearing the wisdom of aeons of progress and aeons of rust. A culture this antique requires more than one specialist. The Krodox are one of the few spacefaring species to outmass a Terror Bird, They are willing to trade ceramic goods for new and exotic meats, and respect bigness in a fellow-sentient. Humans are not known for their bigness, but are slippery customers. Tricksters and clever dodgers. Lastly, a diplomatic summit with representatives from most sentient, spacefaring species. As always, C&C welcome! What do you think their alien avian civilization is like?