Warm Ale and Mud

Wife to Count Halven, the Countess Carmilla Halven is the apple of the counts eye and as pretty as they day they were wed. With the Count spending time in the capital, patrolling the locale and otherwise keeping the area safe (and partially in some measure to him not being that way minded) , the Countess looks after the Halven estate. From the day to day running, including but not limited to book-keeping, magisterial duties, tax setting and collection, inspections, hearing petitions etc, to also marshalling and inspecting the garrison in times of conflict. She is a mostly content woman and has no desire to increase the Halven lands. Like the Count she follows the old faith of The Mother (Rhya) and The Father (Taal). Here we can see her with a small doll stuffed with herbs and seeds and so on, which is to be placed in one the villages many small shrines. Heiligsheld has a number of shrines dotted around and these are kept to help ensure a good harvest and ward off blight. T...

Heiligsheld has always been near a river and I wanted to model the river in a single section as I thought it would be nicer to look at than a river in bits with joins. The perfect way would be to have it sunk into tiles as I always used to do, but that would mean making tiles and I am already well into this project and can't be bothered with starting a new table. Now, I have made a river before, for my 15mm fantasy games and I wanted to try and get my river to look as nice as that: However I mucked it up. :( I won't bore you with the details here, but poor planning lead me to making a mistake which I hurridly tried to fix but made it worse. I then had to wait for the 'fix' to dry and then essentially start again with inferior products. The end result is not a million miles away from what I intended, though the mistakes are visible and it also took a whole weekend to do the water effects rather than about 3 hours.. IF you are interested, you can read about the journey HE...

Blimey, it has been about 2 months since I painted a model. It has been a stressy few months, but even so I had not realised it had been that long. Anyway, it is super hot so I did not spend overly long on this chap, the building I had done a good few weeks back when the weather was milder. Next up on our tour of Heiligsheld, the blacksmith's. The second building proper in Heiligsheld is the blacksmiths workshop of Hans Eisen. When the inn, The Wicker Man was first made, the then smith worked from the inns yard. However as the inn grew the smith decided it prudent to build a small workshop not far from the inn. It is this building in which Hans Eisen now ply's his trade as his fathers’ did before him. Where once the smithy mostly fixed the wheels of wagons and shod the hooves of the the visitors of the inn, it now makes weapons and armour for the Counts men. That is not to say Hans will not sharpen knives and fix pots and pans, but the real money lies in work for the Count. As ...

  Heiligsheld was not always called such. In 2155 Imre Jenz a veteran of the battle of Hel Fenn, died defending the sacred stone circle off in the forest from followers of chaos. Imre was already well respected in the village but when he managed to kill Grazak The Unclean a champion of Nurgle and later died of his wounds, the villagers, so grateful for his sacrifice at both Hel Fenn and right here in the village decided to rename the village in his honour. Since this renaming was never sanctioned by the Emperor, it is not official which no doubt goes some way to explaining why Imperial cartographers have not placed it on any maps. The stone circle is a site holy to Rhya, or as the villagers refer to her, The Mother. Rhya is the wife of Taal, (another of the villagers favoured deities) mother of Manann, Morr, and Verena.   Those who worship her view Rhya as the deity of fertility, childbirth and the family. The Stone Circle predates the village and not much is known about it. W...

I think for me with most oldhammery type stuff, it is the buy in factor, which in turn is influenced by the look/style. I want to believe the things I see, they should make sense and have a logical purpose. There needs to be internal consistency with any setting or the setting itself is not to be believed.  The Townscape buildings being a perfect example, I can very easily believe that people would build them: The fortified manor is just a bit too toy like and too high fantasy for me. This Skull Tower model; no chance: Yet this Skull Hill; yes: But why, they both have mad big skullz?! I think I like a feel of WFRP 1st edition to my WFB. WFRP really brought the world to life and I prefer that version to the WFB take on it. I find it to be more about context. Quality over quantity. The Skull Tower and The Skull Hill to me appear as two very different ideas, executed in two different styles. For me it comes down to buy in, if someone asked me to place the models ...

My next build will be a sacred grove/stone circle, so in readiness for that; a holy man. I did use a different flesh for this chap, which I am not sold on so will go back to my regular formula. Also I am still in my quick WECW painting mode it is not as good a paintjob as I would have liked, I will try and get back into my regular oldhammer painting style and get smoother work. Colour wise, not what I would have thought of, but I was stuck for ideas so just copied the colours from the official Talisman card

  Sabine and Mikael Stockhausen purchased the inn when they moved to the village just over a decade ago. Sabine was employed by one of the larger moneylenders in Nuln and Mikael was a former trader, they decided they wanted a simpler quieter life for them and their daughter Lottie. They had enough funds to go pretty much anywhere in the Empire and when they heard about an innkeeper wanting to sell up and retire they leapt at the chance. The Stocks Inn however is not its original name. It was since its building over 200 years ago known as The Wicker Man. For the longest time, the yard in the inn was where criminals were held in stocks until a roadwarden came to take them away to Leicheberg to face trial. However when the barracks for the Counts men was built in the village proper, criminals were held there instead as they seemed to miraculously escape less frequently. (some say vanish is a better word) As such the stocks became unused and languished propped up against the ...