Crawling Chaos!

Yes, yes, I know, I should be Ogreing away, but when Cory showed me this RAFM miniature of that old H.P. Lovecraft fave Nyarlathotep, aka The Crawling Chaos, and asked if I'd give it a bash, it looked too good to refuse.

Now descriptions of this guy are, by necessity, fairly thin on the ground; these things are scarier if they're only half-described, after all. The human imagination is quite capable of filling in the blanks. So while there's a version out there described as having a red tentacle for a face and which spends a fair bit of time howling at the moon, that's pretty much it.

So here he is; yep, the red tentacle is very much in evidence, but I thought I'd go for something a bit more otherworldly for the rest of the fig, shading up from blue through purple and on to red. Big learning curve on this one! I hope I've carried it off.

A couple of work in progress shots;

I debated the pros and cons of either a molten rock base or an icebound base (he's come in from the cosmic void, so either he's carrying a lot of heat from re-entry, or he's just manifested from the absolute zero of the interstellar gulf... yeah, a bit too much thought went into this aspect of the project), but I had a word with Cory and he suggested a glistening slime finish. OK, so what do I use to depict the slime? Cory recommends 5-minute Araldite with a couple of drops of ink added.

Well, it's worth a try, so I mix up a batch and add purple ink. Hey, not bad... then I get a brainstorm. I get a couple of inches of 20lb nylon fishing line and dip it in the purple epoxy glue, leaving either end free of the goop. I leave it to dry, secured in the claws of the hobby magnifier (finally! found a use for this thing).

When it's dried, I have a rigid loop of shiny slime waiting to be applied to the glistening form of the Outer God. Trim the ends, apply some clear epoxy, make a SAN roll, and stick it to the hellbeast!

Emboldened by my success, I mix up a red batch and repeat the procedure with the nylon line, and throw a few spare blobs around for good measure, on the ends of claws or tentacles.

So here he is in his finished state.

I'm quite pleased with the ropy slime effect, but its applicability is limited largely to eldritch/squamous/rugose/gibbering/blasphemous creatures (strike out that Lovecraftian adjective which does not apply).

And I have an Ogre army to finish, so no more slime for the time being! WHY am I so easily distracted...?