Sunday, March 4, 2018

'Monstrous' from NoelW: Who is the monster?

I've this idea of doing a version of Frostgrave Archipelago using miniatures from the Greek myths. Here are my first three attempts: Theseus, Ariadne and The Minotaur. Rather than just arrange them on the table, I wanted to give them a sort of labyrinth diorama setting, so I built this little model, more suggestive of a maze than an actual maze (you don't need the thread, Theseus, just look over the wall!) 




The maze is built from plaster of paris moulded sections. I've had the moulds for years, and never put them to good use, so this was a bit of an experiment. I decided on a ragged base of mdf to fit the idea of a semi-ruined maze, so that the whole model is meant to be evocative of the story, rather than very literal. The walls were assembled from pieces according to a rough plan, then glued into place, undercoated black and then drybrushed and given a little flocking to suggest moss.


Having made this preliminary model, I'm now thinking that at some point I'll build several cells along similar lines, designed to interconnect in different ways, so that the islands in the Archipelago can contain "real" mazes. (Though I understand that a maze and a labyrinth are different things, really. The former is intended as a puzzle, but the later is a meditative or spiritual pattern to be contemplatively experienced. So perhaps The Minotaur was a Cretan god).




The myth of Ariadne helping Theseus slay the Minotaur is well known. In it the Minotaur is clearly the monster. But less well known is the rest of the myth, in which we might well judge Theseus to be a monster, for he grows tired of Ariadne, and abandons her alone on the island of Naxos, where she is prey to the lust of the wild god, Dionysus and eventually bears him twelve children. (She's a little shy, so slightly out of focus here. That's deliberate, of course).




Meanwhile Theseus goes off performing more heroic feats, a bit like Hercules, founds Athens and seems to spend most of his spare time abducting women. So - hero or monster?





I don't know how many points to suggest for the labyrinth model. 




Its base is an irregular triangle, with one side about 8 inches, and the other side of the right angle 6 inches, with its highest point about two inches, so perhaps it occupies about half of a six inch cube? 10 points? 

Plus 15 point for the three figures, which are Wargames Foundry. 

4 comments:

  1. That's really well done. Great result and lots of work gone into this. Looks excellent. Cheers

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  2. Brilliant work Noel. I really like how you did the Labyrinth.

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  3. I didn’t know of Ariadne’s fate- fascinating!

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  4. Nice work, Noel! Both labyrinth and figures came out very well, I really like the minotaur. Theseus is a bad guy! ;)

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