For several years I wanted to do a 1950's B-movie style adventure, complete with plenty of alien invaders, giant insects, and other tropes of the era. But I could never get the story to gel, so I shelved it until a truly coherent story could come together.
Well finally I found my angle a couple of years ago and made it happen. Although I had originally thought of using the Mi-Go as the 'bug-eyed aliens' in the story (they really are the go-to aliens for many of my games,) but in the end I found a better candidate in the Elder Things.
The story served as sort of a sequel to "At the Mountains of Madness." At the end of that story, the Elder Things are awakened (along with their rebellious shoggoth servitors,) but their final fate is never discussed. I figured they would set about to reclaim their dominion over the Earth, and for that they would need a new (more stable and loyal) shoggoth army.
It seemed reasonable that the shoggoths would have been based on an initial prototype (the Ur-Shoggoth, if you will.) This primordial creation, (which may have been at least in part responsible for the development of subsequent life on Earth,) could have been discarded and abandoned after it was used as the basis for the later thralls (who would eventually rebel.) A pair of Elder Things from the awakened contingent set forth to find this abandoned prototype and recover it, so that new servitors could be created (with corrections made to avoid their prior errors.)
So my story revolves around this pair of aliens searching for the remains of the Ur-Shoggoth. They have tracked it to a small town in Midwestern America called Tranquility, where it has been buried for eons. They have come in a hastily cobbled-together aerial craft (saucer-shaped, natch,) and have been scanning the area with their revita-ray to attempt to activate the shoggoth's protoplasm.
Of course, since the shoggoth is buried in the earth, bits of that protoplasm, with its otherworldly properties of vitality, have made their way into the food chain, from earthworms up through larger, predatory insects, through the principle of biological magnification (look it up or marry a scientist like I did.) When the revita-ray hits any bugs that have this protoplasmic matter, it causes a dynamic transformation, causing them to grow to phenomenal proportions!
These giant bugs, (along with flying saucer sightings,) have terrorized the people of Tranquility, and have even brought out the U.S. Army to investigate. And that is where the story begins, as a handful of townsfolk find themselves in the middle of the town, overrun by giant ants. They must make their way to the town hall, which seemed to be the only safe place, since the town air raid siren located there somehow repelled the ants. Once they get there, they can hopefully get some answers, but first they must cross the town square…
The players started on this end of the table, surrounded by giant ants. They had to get to the town hall, which was located here:
This meant avoiding or fighting the ants, who would continue to appear from the side alleys. The table itself is a flocked battle board intended for wargames like Warhammer. To make it compatible with a grid-based game like D20, I used my home made grid board, which is a sheet of plexiglas that I scored (by hand, mind you,) to a 1"grid. 'Cos that's how I roll.
For the ants, I ordered some party favors online for real cheap. Then I sprayed them red with cheap spray paint, and then dipped them in floor varnish (a trick I'd wanted to try on skeleton armies for a while, and finally got around to trying.) They turned out okay I think, and I painted their eyes black to give extra menace.
I also got to modify some Pixar Cars vehicles to fit the time period:
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| A great delivery truck from the "Blast Off" line, and "Brand New mater, which got a new grille and number, as well as some stake sides made from coffee stirrers. |
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| The two on the left are Finn McMissile, with putty modifications, and the Sheriff's car was an M2 1948 Mercury repainted and with a red bead added for the dome light. |
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| I made some big fins for the roadster on the left, while the middle one received more extensive modification (more on that car when I talk about my Fallout vehicles…) |
The characters all started in pairs, and had to work together to survive.
The buildings are all from various sets of a toy line called Farm Country from Ertl. These are remarkable sets, and I got them all on ridiculous markdown at local discount stores and closeout toy stores years ago. They are quite useful as terrain pieces, although they are somewhat baffling as children's toys (what kid wants to play with a John Deere dealership playset?)
The bank and Hotel are from the "Cow Town" set, which features Old West style buildings, but they work well as a 1950's era main street as well, I feel. The eagle on the bank was a wooden decor piece from the craft store, and the signs were simply printed out and stuck on with rubber cement (they are not the neatest, but I ran short on time.)
More Tranquility businesses.
The town hall was modified from a modern dairy barn playset (again, what kids were the target demographic for these?) The doors were stuck on, and the clock is a Heroclix base with the face drawn in pen. I tried to evoke the town hall from Back to the Future with this one.
The movie theater is my favorite piece! It was another copy of the hotel (I have two Cow Town sets,) and I'm really proud of how it turned out. I stuck the fanlight shape above it to look like an old-style marquee, and printed up the now showing list and the posters.
A close-up of the posters, which all contained clues of what the party would face (giant ants, mesmerized townsfolk, aliens in their saucer, and the Ur Shoggoth.) Also? Them! is one of my favorite monster movies of all time. You should really check it out. It is THE 1950's monster movie.
For the minis, I used a lot of Heroclix (no surprise,) as well as some others I had lying around. Let's meet our cast, shall we?
Here is local punk Vinnie Bester, and the bumbling Deputy Anderson (all the characters were given the last names of famous 1950's sci-fi authors.) Vinnie is Rick Jones from Heroclix with a repaint and a switchblade made from putty, and the deputy is from the "Last Night on Earth" board game. There was a smudge on my camera lens for all of these photos, and I'm too lazy to reshoot them. Sorry.
Old Doc Smith (get it?) and Private Sturgeon (the guys all call him Fish.) The doc is an ancient Call of Cthulhu mini from RAFM (in lead, no less!) while the private is a Heroclix Easy Company Medic.
Salesman extraordinaire Frank Kuttner and Professor Matheson of the local university. Both are Heroclix: the professor is Bruce Banner, while Frank is DC villain Bruno Mannheim, with hand-painted atrocious jacket pattern (with 'matching' powder blue slacks, because Frank is a real fashion plate.)
Farmer Clarke and high school good girl Jenny Blish. Since these two had a fair bit of modifications, I thought it would be cool to pose them next to the Heroclix I used. Lex Luthor had his prison jumpsuit turned into overalls by addition of front and back panels, as well as shoulder straps (I'm quite proud of the buckles, particularly,) as well as a straw hat, all out of putty. Lex's bodyguard Mercy Graves had her extremely mini miniskirt lengthened with putty, and her strappy sandals filed and modified into saddle shoes and bobby sox. I added to her shades to make them appropriate for the era, and clipped off her braid and replaced it with a ponytail out of putty. The bow is actually dental tape (a freaky kind of floss alternative) with the wax scraped off (it's good to use for straps and such.)
Once the party made it to the town hall, they learned that the rest of the town was spotted out in a field, doing some kind of excavation and acting like zombies. They knew they had to get out there next. But the ants were now everywhere, and the only thing keeping them at bay was the sound of the air raid siren, which was too big to move. They knew however, that there was a similar siren on the town fire engine, so the only way for them to get out to the field was to make it back across the square to the fire station. But how to avoid all those ants?
This is one of my favorite innovations I have done, and frankly I was amazed at how well it worked. I wanted them to hop from roof to roof, and be attacked by giant spiders along the way. But the roofs of the buildings are all peaked, which would have made grid combat really tough. I spent some time looking at how to makes flat roofs, including just putting Dungeon Tiles down on top, but nothing really worked. Then I remembered the immortal words of the Insane Clown Posse and thought: motherfucking magnets.
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Pictured: motherfucking magnets.
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Then I used a ruler to mark the roof to create a grid and voila!
Now I could have a fully-3D rooftop battle!
The characters and the spiders (from the D&D Castle Ravenloft board game,) stayed put nicely, and the PC's had to fight the arachnids and make multiple jump checks to pass from roof to roof.
The deputy missed one of those jumps, and had to make a climb check to scramble up before he was mobbed by ants.
He failed. The roof of the truck was magnetized as well, by the way.
Finally they made it to the fire station.
Then they hopped on the truck, which had metal plates added so the whole party could be stuck on securely.
The truck was the deluxe version of "Red" from the Cars line, which I've discussed before. I used putty to cover over the eyes, and part of Mater's tow apparatus was turned into a winch to cover the mouth.
I very conveniently had a metal plate the exact color (it came with some rare earth magnets I picked up at Target years ago. Never throw anything away!)
When they got to the field, they found the flying saucer (a Lost in Space model,) guarded by mind-controlled soldiers. After much deliberation over stealth approaches, they finally decided simply to run them all the hell over with the fire truck.
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| Disclaimer: This blogger does not in any way condone vehicular violence against the proud members of our nation's armed forces, even when under alien mind control. |
Now this was a bit of a last minute sculpt, so be kind in your assessment. I sculpted the foot out of putty, which turned out great, and then the head as well. The body was based on an oblong bead with putty over it, forming the ribs. The arms (of which I realize there should be more, but it would have made the mini too big,) were twisted paper clips. The paint job could really use a touch-up…
They defeated the thing, and then headed into the pit that the townsfolk had been forced to dig. The Elder Things had located the resting place of the Ur-Shoggoth, and dug down to it. The other Elder Thing was down there, using the revita-ray to try and awaken it fully. by this time, the party was reduce to the two least combat-effective members; the professor and Jenny.
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| Things don't look too good our heroes... |
The last alien was defeated, but at the cost of the professor's life. Unfortunately, the Ur-Shoggoth was roused, and emerged from its earthen tomb to feed! With only Jenny left, things looked grim.
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| Alas, poor Jenny... |
The Shoggoth itself was made from Crayola Model Magic, with wooden beads of assorted sizes set into it for eyes. Then I covered the whole thing in black Plasti-Dip to give it that perfect slimy sheen. Then I painted the eyes and mounted it on a 3" wooden circle a friend had cut for me.
Luckily, Jenny was actually the host for a member of the Great Race of Yith, who had made a plasma blaster from her hair dryer, and was able to dispatch the half-formed monster. And the day was saved…for now.
