Vastarian: Using the Trench Crusade ruleset

Inheritance.

It is hard to fathom, but it has been almost a year since we hosted, with the help of Bill Ford, our first Inq28 narrative event: Vastarian - Dreams of the Pious! We have written about the first two days of the event so far (one, two), sharing the participants and the rules we used. While we used a modified version of Necromuda for the event, we have encouraged people to use any ruleset they enjoy to play games in the setting. Ultimately, it is more important to use a ruleset you are familiar with, as the games will flow more smoothly and allow you to focus on narrative elements. It is our hope that people will not be chained to rules-as-written and will be willing to modify things to better suit the narrative as cool moments unfold. With this in mind, I had been meaning to use the Trench Crusade rules for some Vastarian games, primarily because they streamline many mechanics and because the religious setting of the game parallels Vastarian's. To my good fortune, work brought Bill to Baltimore recently, and when he suggested we play a game with some of our Vastarian warbands, I suggested we give the Trench Crusade rules a try.

Flames of Orion: Dark Spirit artwork and lore

“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.” ― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

Flames of Orion, a mech combat game designed by Steve (sovthofheaven) of Under the Dice/Hive Scum, is officially out in the world in its finalized form! The physical rulebook is still forthcoming, but you can buy a digital version of the book here. Furthermore, you can download a streamlined version of the book with the complete rules for free (so you have no excuse not to check it out)! I took part in a playtest session of the game in the autumn of 2023, and developed an enigmatic character and their mech, known as Dark Spirit. At the time, Dark Spirit was just a minimally equipped mech with a light weapon which managed to do really well in a handful of games. Since then, my brothers and I have been playing the game intermittently over the years at different events, and Dark Spirit’s legend has continued to grow. I am very happy to say that Dark Spirit was included in the Flames of Orion rulebook as a mercenary that you can use in your own games. Beyond just having in-game rules, Martin McCoy created two pieces of artwork of Dark Spirit that are included in the rulebook, as well. I wrote some background lore for Dark Spirit which I wanted to share, along with Martin’s wonderful artwork, and some photographs of the model that Adam converted and painted to represent Dark Spirit.

Photography: Developing C41 color film

Rotunda.

Earlier this year, I started developing my own black and white film. It is a straightforward procedure that allows me to control the entire photography process, from taking the photos to developing the film and finally scanning it. This pushed me to shoot a lot of black and white film, largely ignoring color film. Eventually, I got the urge to go back to color, but I used a local lab to develop the film. It was only a matter of time before I started thinking about developing color film, namely the C41 process, which is the standard for color negative film. I had avoided it before because I was told it is more temperature sensitive than black and white, which can be done at room temperature. After some research, I learned that many people use a sous vide immersion circulator to create and maintain a water bath to achieve the needed temperature. This sounded like a fun experiment, and I quickly got myself an immersion circulator and some CineStill C41 chemicals and developed my first color film!

Conversion Corner: Bolt Pistol

"We fell into it; like a daydream, or a fever."

It has been a few years since I converted a smaller firearm on this blog for a tutorial or otherwise. While I have converted a variety of boltguns in the past, I never made a smaller bolt pistol. The newer plastic Sisters of Battle have a smaller pistol design than the typical Space Marine one, so I decided it would allow me to convert a smaller pistol for subsequent Space Marine conversions. I could also create a silicone model to create casts of the final creation, so I would not have to convert it each time I wanted one. When working on it, I also made a separate hand with their finger off the trigger, holding onto the pistol grip of a firearm. By making this a separate piece from the pistol, I could create a mold of it, allowing me to use it for future firearm conversions.