Thursday 11 December 2014

The beginnings of Altheim...


Or, in other words, what's in the box?



Turns out there's quite a lot!


It's actually the castle set that I pre-ordered from Tabletop Workshop about a year ago! This was the medium set, I believe, and comes with 4 towers, 8 wall sections,  two gated wall sections and a bunch of connector pieces. Each of the wall sections are approximately 6" in length, and the towers are approx 4" in diameter.


The kit itself is really nice, all injection moulded hard plastic, and nicely detailed:



It's also pretty much completely modular and, to a certain degree, click together, so you can build the wall sections and towers higher by combining sets, which is a nice touch. Here's the back of one of the boxes, showing how it all goes together:


So, why did I buy it? well, apart from giving myself a nice xmas present, I bought this as a main part of a project idea I'd had years ago, but never got around to, which I've decided to name 'Altheim'.

Altheim - The City of the Edge of Forever. 

Altheim, I've decided, is a small port town on the Nordland coast, not especially wealthy, but once deemed important enough to have an imposing curtain wall built around it. My plan is to build it by recreating the buildings from the Warhammer Townscape set, but in 3d. In order to do so, I've started to work on some doors, windows, and other architectural details, a few of which can be seen as follows:


The plan is to do a load more, then get some moulds made, and cast them up in resin, to go on foamcore shells based on the original plans. If the resin casts look ok, I may consider selling some on, if there's any interest.

Altheim is also the home of an obscure Sigmarite cult known as 'The Church of St Sigmar At The Crossroads'. The cult is based around an obscure, early text which tells the story of when Sigmar was continually journeying to unite the Tribes, a chaos Daemon, disguised as a beggar, attempted to lead him astray by repeatedly diverting him down the wrong path at each crossroads he came to. Sigmar eventually saw through the Daemon's ploy, destroyed him, and eventually united the Tribes as predestined.

This is The Cult's main Monastery, which is based in Altheim itself:


The Cult tend to set up their small, walled monasteries at important crossroads, providing shelter, and guiding travellers safely to their destinations. They also create and maintain roadsigns at smaller crossroads, so that Daemons can no longer lead travellers astray. Not considered part of the true Sigmarite Canon by the authorities, they have become marginalised, and now only maintain their traditions in the Nordland and Ostland area.

Here are a few of the faithful, though:


Led by Brother Dalziel in the centre. (due to his resemblance to the late Warren Clark!)

My eventual plan is to populate Altheim with characters to go with each of the buildings, so far I've got a couple done, as follows.

This fellow is Olivar Reede, an former solder, and now an inveterate drinker. He's usually to be found in (or slumped outside!) the local inn, the 'Slann in Space'.


This guy is the local butcher, though I've not thought of a witty name for him, yet. Or finished basing him for that matter.


So, there you are, another bloody project on the go!

2 comments:

  1. Excellent stuff, you're going to have have a busy break...

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  2. Well that all looks like jolly fun!

    The monastery is great, so I imagine that a whole town done up to that standard will be fantastic.

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