"Horrors of the Steel Hills"

“This railroad will be built, and on its tracks fortunes are going to be made. But me? Well as for me friend, I’ll be the first person making a damned red cent off those rails, and I’ll do it before a single hammer hits steel.” Johanssen Cutter was always a man with no compunction about profiteering where others might deem it indecorous. When the Union Pacific Railroad company approached him to clear out a run through the heart of the Steel Hills, he pounced. He’d charge them by the mile to lumber the woods, then sell the iron pine wood for 10 dollars a board foot. Get ’em coming and going. But if Cutter had one talent, it was squeezing coins out of his own empty fist.

The steel hills were no man's land, an impenetrable forest filled with beasts and monstrosities as of yet undocumented by man. Some even ventured to say that it was one of the last bastions of the occult and arcane. But the year was 1869, and Cutter was a man of science.

He had hired himself a security team to keep watch over his lumberers, and had them outfitted with the latest model winchester’s he could afford. If he was going to carve a swath out of the wildest place in the world, he was going to do it with his men armed to the death. But with a force this big, he saw yet another opportunity, he was going to sell tickets across the country, running people safely from Boston to San Francisco. They’d be responsible for their own food and transportation of course, but can you really put a price on safety?

So it was to be that on the very first day of June in the year of 1869, The Cutter and Sons lumbering company sent out a couple hundred lumberjacks, half as many heavily armed soldiers, a full saw mill, damn near half the US armory, 3 farms worth of livestock, and the civilian population of your average American town, dragging all of them through the a couple hundred miles of the most dangerous forests, hillsides, and canyons this side of the Mississippi. As long as everything went according to plan, they’d meet up with the S.F. Sweet Lumberers in the center of the forest, join their routes, and then telegram for the Union Pacific company to begin laying rail. Our adventure however starts in the Small Town of Santa Muerte, a parish built just on the side of the Steel Hills, populated exclusively by those driven mad within the forest’s boundaries.

Their last stop before the many month journey ahead, our crew of lumberjacks, soldiers, and those just looking for a new life, take a last moment to stew on the coming hardships..."

Spencer Eliot Alton is a friend of mine, and also a talented local Dungeon Master in the Boston Area. A few months back he reached out to me to sculpt and convert characters for his upcoming campaign, "The Horrors of the Steel Hills," and given how closely wore its influences of Appalachian Folklore I was instantly smitten with the idea.

When I'm sculpting, I generally use a 1:1 ratio of Procreate and Green Stuff sculpting putties, as I find them to have a firmer and less tacky consistency. In the case of this series, I made use of tinfoil to help bulk out some of the larger figures, as well as bits from the Perry's Confederates sprue to help keep cost low, or to serve as armatures when I'm not using thin wire. A really good resource for learning how to make proper armatures is Tom Mason's Youtube Channel, and that's where I began when I first started learning miniature sculpting in earnest.

For tools I use some synthetic clay shapers and dull exacto blades that do the bulk of my pushing and pulling, and when those fail I fall back on fingernails and regular old dexterity. I keep everything a little damp with water, but I've heard some folks use vaseline as well. 

Tiefling and Fortune Teller

The fortune teller has a full wire armature underneath, save for some arms I stole from another kit. As seen in the previous process image, her shoes and dress were where I started off, as it's important to work from the bottom up. Building up the shape and bulk of her dress in the earlier stages meant that later on I wouldn't be worried about the outermost layers of putty sagging into gaps in the armature. 

The tiefling conversion focuses on weight, as I wanted to make sure he felt otherworldly in the way he held himself. I used a pair of legs that both seemed to be kicking off from the ground, but not in a way that would actually work with the physics we humans adhere to, making him seem light and bouncy. A fun fact about this fellah is that I chopped his face out several times because I just couldn't avoid giving him a rough case of pizza face. I've learned not to treat anything as too precious, so cutting off several hours of failed face sculpting for the greater good doesn't feel like so much of a disappointment, especially if by the end you wind up with a mug you actually like.

Gunslinger and Drunken Master Gun-barian

Some less fantastical lads, this dirty pair needed some costuming and faces to get into character. I'm not a portaitist by any stretch of the imagination, but I was asked to give them Buster Keaton and Han Solo vibes, but not actually either of them, so here's what we wound up with; shoulder caped gun sniffer, and bald boy from the badlands.

Doctor and Washed-up Oil Baron

These guys were particularly fun to work on, as I picked my own actor references for them. J.K. Simmons and Kurt Russell have never acted together (as far as I know) but I felt like they'd have some chemistry. I'm especially pleased with the mustache and the duster coat.

Lumberjill and Faithful Bear Companion

The Lumberjill here is based off of the plastic Lenny model from Malifaux's Somerteeth Jones starter box. It already had the log and the pose I wanted, not to mention the stature. The bear is entirely scratch built and uses a fair bit of tin foil to get its rotund shape hammered home. Again, starting from the bottom is super important when sculpting from scratch so that you don't smush any details when working on harder-to-reach places

The Hide-Behind

Golly, what isn't there to say about this beastie? Its a giant bear skull atop a Siren-Head-esque body, with antlers and claws and branches coming out in every direction. Coming in at over 5" tall, I used a thicker grade wire than with the fortune teller, and plenty of tinfoil to make sure it wouldn't be obnoxiously heavy. Unlike the rest of the minis in this collection, this model is formed mostly with Apoxie Sculpt and Greenstuff, which behaves more like clay when applying wet tools to it. It reminded me of sculpting with a Miliput/Greenstuff combo that I used to make my pugs and was definitely the right choice for a behemoth of this scale. 

 

Also, this miniature has been prepped with some of my favorite little textures to give it that Hide-Behind vibe: basing materials on the model itself (for bark and skin) and superglue droplets to make drippy bits for the antlers.

some miners for scale

And so there you have it! Nine new minis waiting for a splash of paint! It was really a treat getting to build for Spencer's setting and getting a bit more EXP under my own belt. Speaking of which, if you're looking to level up your games, Spencer happens to be a DM for hire, as well as for sport. You can find him over on his Instagram, (he's also really handsome so you can go there for a few reasons really,) or email him at spencerltn@gmail.com

As for me, if you're here you already know where I am. Keep it spooky y'all and thanks for reading <3