Once again, it isn’t Monday, sigh. We had two more snow days last week and I’m still working on A Long Night At The Yawning Portal for Winter Fantasy. I should be able to blog more often and in greater depth after that.

Meanwhile, on Hot Springs Island: (Spoilers abound!) It’s a good thing I barely prep for this game (thanks to the strength of the source material) because on Sunday, my players didn’t do anything I anticipated. We started with the reunion of Meltalia and Oolah, and then they explored more of the bathhouse. I think they visited the bathhouse in our first session on the island, but much of it was inaccessible due to a magical trap. Freeing Meltalia ended the enchantment, so they were free to explore the rest of the bathhouse. They even ventured down to the basement where they found a giant carnivorous plant. A fight was had, and Poppy the gnome was swallowed (again, seems to be a thing) but saved just in time. A mysterious equine statue was found under the plant. What could it be?? The group poured holy water on it and then bunkered down for the night.

I finally got to use the Glamourleaf from Dwarven Forge’s Wildlands campaign. It has fiber optic lights in the center that shift between colors. Pretty neat.

Back to the action: the group was harassed by lizardfolk in the night and found some more who had pinned down a few Martel folks upstairs in the theater. What’s their problem? Maybe we’ll find out! Or maybe not. Could go either way. The party set out for Svarku’s volcano and we ended with the classic Two Towers “Mordor tourism” shot as they gazed on the shouldering mountain from atop the ancient ziggurat. Next time: It all goes down! Probably. They’re going to reconnoiter and then decide if they have time to call in their nereid and ogre allies. Distance and time are real, tough choices abound.

Work in Progress: You may have noticed the goofy WizKids sahuagin accompanying the group in the picture above. That’s our present stand-in for the beautiful marid, Meltalia. Pretty bad, I know. I have a mini I’m working on, but I printed it with clear resin and I’m trying to maintain some of the transparency, so it’s a delicate paint job and I didn’t get it done in time.

I did get some work done on these corner pieces, though. Only the dry brush remains and then I will have doubled my available vaulted corners. Corners are the most important part of a room, after all. I’ve taken to just throwing down corners and doors to bound rooms when I don’t have time to do a full build. It’s a good quick and dirty solution.

And Bats: There’s a level of the Scarlet Citadel that’s full of bats, but you might not believe how hard it is to find bat minis. They’re bats! Everyone needs bats! Where are they?? I got some cheap swarms off eBay but I still needed some big fellas. Artisan Guild to the rescue, yet again. I think I had to scale these down to 66% as they were made to have riders, but they still printed perfectly. They came out really well, if I may say so. That’s the thing with painting minis, sometimes I finish something and can’t believe I painted it, and other times I make garbage. I should paint more frequently to try and improve my consistency.