Pendragon Diorama-rama (Again)

[This was my eighth entry for the Fifth Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, reposted here for folks not following that blog.]

In between painting my Epic Orks, I took the time to bang out a small diorama.

This is a project for a tabletop role-playing game campaign I'm currently running, the Great Pendragon Campaign for the King Arthur Pendragon RPG. This is a massive adventure that takes players through the entire sweep of the Arthurian saga, from Uther's downfall to the final battle between Arthur and Mordred. Along the way, the campaign follows the timespan of the Middle Ages, such that Uther's reign is similar to the 11th century while at Camlann the troops are accoutered in a manner reminiscent of the War of the Roses.

As a visual aide, I've been making these little dioramas to show the players as different types of arms and armor appear. Likewise, outside of enchanted Britain, the world goes along much as it did in our own 6th century, and whenever that element intrudes into the mythic timeline, I'll include a bit of it in the diorama.

Right now, we're in the "Conquest Phase", which takes its cues from Malory's and Geoffrey of Monmouth's descriptions of young Arthur's wars against the "Roman Empire" and the Irish. To reflect this age of war, this diorama features only military men (I usually try and include some civilians and ladies in the set pieces). I crafted a base divided into three parts, an homage to medieval maps that showed continental divisions with narrow little waterways.

On the "Britain" portion, we have Arthur's men, sporting their "early-13th-century" (the point where the campaign is currently at) arms and armor. Miniatures are primarily Curteys (as are the transfers), with the herald, er, heralding from Barony Miniatures.

On the "Ireland" portion, we have tribal Irish (from Crusader). This was my first go at painting plaid patterns, and I just had to muddle through as best I could.

And on the "continental" portion, we have late-Roman infantry (also from Crusader) ready to defend their crumbled empire.

A fun little project, and one that particularly emphasizes the at-times rather gonzo nature of the Great Pendragon Campaign - this is sort of the medievalist equivalent of mixing cavemen and dinosaurs! But that's what's in the literature, and we're having great fun with it. We've been playing for a year of real time and still have about nine months (and 40 game years!) left to complete...

[Pendragon] Diorama-rama

I'm currently running The Great Pendragon Campaign for one of my tabletop RPG groups (which you can listen to here, if you're so inclined as to listen to RPG actual-plays). For those of you not in the know, this is an epic campaign for the King Arthur Pendragon game that takes players from the rule of Uther all the way through to the death of Arthur.

Part of the conceit of the game's framework is that as you move through the Arthurian saga, you move through the history of the Middle Ages. When you start out, technology and social mores are equivalent to the time of William the Conqueror; by the end, everyone's running around in Gothic armor and there's chivalry and chaste amor and all that stuff.

The campaign is divided up into Phases, and with the advent of a new Phase generally comes a shift in technology and fashion. The Great Pendragon Campaign features little vignettes at the beginning of each chapter showing a typical knight, squire, and lady of the Phase. As this venture represents a significant investment of time on my part, I decided to do the thing properly and take that vignette idea and turn it into little three-dimensional dioramas.

At present, I've so far made two dioramas: one for the Uther/Anarchy Phase, and one for the Boy King Phase. There are four more remaining to be made, and I'll post them on this blog as they come along.

First up, then, is the Uther/Anarchy diorama. These phases are not only evocative of the Norman period, but also feature some elements of the historical late-5th/early-6th century time that the phases nominally take place in, so I had fun researching Dark Age fabric dyes and colors. This is a time of pugnacious knights, Saxon invaders, and high social mobility.

Next up is the Boy King Phase. As the name implies, this is the period of King Arthur's appearance and  subsequent consolidation of his rule, and this is when the Medieval gloss fully overtakes the Dark Age period. It reflects the time of Henry II in England and the appearance of concepts of chivalry and tournaments. Hand-painting those chekers was fun!