Here’s some of the inspiration for the treadmill crane, based on medieval designs. I wanted something slave-powered as opposed to taking shortcuts with just a hand crank wheel or making it even less mechanical and going with ropes or a ladder.
This was version 2. The initial design used a circular wheel, but it was not possible to get it circular enough, so I decided to abandon the wheel and went with a 10-sided wheel instead.
The axle of the treadmill wheel is connected to the winch. The winch is built from two Minotaur shields, carved down so there is just the wood and metal bracing remaining.
Alignment of the components and wheels.
Designing the base
Checking fitting for the rotating shaft
Fitting the design with the sleeve for the rotating shaft
Designing the base for the rotating shaft (large circular base is needed for added stability)
View from the underside
Once the hook and metal chain are added the crane is pretty front-heavy so some counter weight is needed. I want a stone look for the counter weight, but the foam isn’t heavy enough, so I used some tin/lead solder and packed a hollowed-out stone block.
Before and after the counter weight
A Black Orc slave for scale.
Placement of the crane on the Slave Pit board section.
Cutting spacings for the T-junction motif into each tile
The final piece include a full-sized T-junction base, with the cut tiles glued on top, then the motif glued into the space.
Finishing off the T-junction
Adding spikes to the corners of the Slave Pit
Working on some lesser daemons made in Hashut’s image, based on the Daemon Prince model, with a Minotaur head and then some custom weapons. Oh, and I’ve since shaved off those 40K tubes on the daemon prince’s left arm
Adding hooves and some detail to their loin cloth pieces
A detail piece I wanted a bunch of my tiles to have, but that I hadn’t actually implemented yet, is a small 1x1 grating that lets you see a small hint at the otherwise hidden inner workings in the Chaos Dwarf realm… I’ll be adding a few more of these I think.
Close up of the grate and a trapped slave within
And lastly, priming the corridor piece and starting in on the corner piece
Coming along slowly. I realize I’ve done all of the easy tiles and have put the complicated Objective room ones off for the end.
Obsidian Corridor
Fractured Passage
The biggest thing slowing me down on this project is that I don’t have a vision for what I want the Daemonic Forge Objective Room to look like. I have a bunch of different elements I know I want to go into it, but the forge itself I’m lost on…
While this thread started off in the Off-Topic Showcase, it’s becoming decidedly more “on-topic” of late with all of this Warhammer Quest stuff!
New 4x10 Objective Room
I decided to re-purpose the entrance to my temple of Hashut for WHQ instead. I also decided that the Temple needed a statue of Hashut guarding the entrance. I used the 4x8 Idol Chamber from WHQ as the main layout for the piece, leading to the temple entrance.
I decided after this that the lead-up to the entrance wasn’t grand enough and that it needed something more.
I added some steps up to the entrance, worn in one area from a siege on the Temple long ago, an event not spoken of by the Dawi Zharr who inhabit this area of the Underway.
I didn’t like the dwarf head I was initially going with for the main floor so I took inspiration from the skull piece I made for the Temple entrance and enlarged it.
I also realized that the Hashut model was going to be too heavy and unsteady if it got bumped and putting pins down into the foam wasn’t going to hold it, so I cut a block of MDF and secured the model to it and then cut out the space for the MDF in the foam. This will all be hidden by floor tiles later.
After cutting out the main shape and adding the eyebrow ridges I scored a sheet of plastic for the main floor tiles, but before snapping them out I cut out a slightly enlarged space for the skull tile piece to go into.
Priming with black paint and checking the fit of the floor tiles before snapping them out (it was a little extra work to line up the holes for the model to get pinned down into the underlying MDF, but only took about 5 minutes to get it right).
After snapping out all of the tiles I spent a night cutting edges into all of them to give them a broken slate sort of look to them. Then I primed them and secured them down in their proper arrangement using double-sided tape. After this I laid down a coat of gold using the airbrush (first time I had it out in about 4 years!!)
The tiles still need highlighting along the edges, but they’re looking pretty good. I also put some red lava under the central skull tile and will add some highlighting later on with orange and yellow in the gaps.
I also built up a little more around the edges of the metal plate for the Temple entrance as I decided I didn’t like the smooth straight lines all the way around for it.
Still a bit more modeling work to do on Hashut’s beard as well as the pyre in front of him. The LED lights up and the battery supply fits under the floor out of sight. I’m thinking the pyre needs some skulls, maybe a flailing body, and some big curved spikes coming up from around the rim!
That’s all for now… this one has been taking me a while just to get this far!
