Doctor Who - Sea Devil Invasion!

The Silurians and their Sea Devil allies plan invasion...

Commonly called Silurians, the creatures have also been referred to by other names. The terms "Silurians" and "Eocenes" are human misnomers, as the creatures date from a period between those times.

The Silurians are a race of reptile-like humanoids. The first Silurians introduced are depicted as prehistoric and scientifically advanced sentient humanoids who predate the dawn of man; in their backstory, the Silurians went into self-induced hibernation to survive what they predicted to be a large geological upheaval caused by the Earth capturing the Moon. The Silurians are related to the Sea Devils, though they are genetically divergent enough to create problems for the offspring of such matings.

The Sea Devils are amphibious Earth reptiles. Like their land-based cousins, the Silurians, they lived in prehistoric times in a scientifically-advanced civilisation. As their aquatic colonies awoke from hibernation, these one-time rulers of the Earth attempted to reclaim their planet, usually leading to conflict with the new rulers: humankind.

In some tales, Sea Devils worship the Great Old One Dagon as their god. They are determined to retake the planet from the humans. They hold an unwavering view that, as the original rulers, it would always be their right to do so.

Sea Devils look somewhat like humanoid turtles or plesiosaurus. They have beak-like mouths, large eyes, two fins on their head and long necks. They have three webbed digits on their hands and feet. Their skin tones come in a variety of shades, including green, blue and orange. They are much tougher than humans, since they need to survive the crushing depths of the ocean. Sea Devils communicate in a language like SONAR, but they can speak human languages in a whispering, rasping voice. A Sea Devil's skin is apparently slimy to the touch.

The Sea Devils were more advanced than the humans of the 20th century when they went into hibernation. They had thousands of underwater colonies dotted across the globe, each filled with millions of their kind. These bases were carved out of rocks and were generally covered in algae and seaweed. The colonies could be awoken en masse through the use of a sonic signal.

They used a less effective hibernation technology in these bases, leading to some muscular degradation when they were brought back. They also used special orange capsules to transport land-dwelling creatures.
The Sea Devils had stockpiles of weapons in these bases. They typically used small, round, side arms. During their invasion of Sea Base 4, they made use of a larger version of the device to cut through the doors.

Common Sea Devils wore a blue, gauze-like dress. The elite soldiers in the 2084 invasion wore thick black armour reminiscent of samurai armour.

Figures are from Black Tree and were kindly painted for me by Robafett.

Salute 2014.

Better late than never!

Another good day at Salute - Rob and I managed to actually play a couple of games this year too, rather than just spending too much cash, which I probably did too...

First few shots are from the games we played - "Deads Army" run by the Peterborough Wargames Club and "Hell & High Water" (we called it "Hell Comes to Ducktown") by Fenris Games. Both were great fun.

"Deads Army" featured Otto Skorzeny raising the dead near Walmington on Sea only to be put down by Captain Mainwaring and his trusty Home Guard!

The evil Skorzeny raises the dead...

The unsuspecting sleepy suburb of Walmington.

Home Guard to arms!

"Don't Panic!" Jones is surrounded by the undead at the church!

For more on this and a write up of the game see Robafetts blog.

"Hell & High Water" took place in a Gloranthan style setting where a group of Heroes defend a dam protecting Ducktown from attack by the undead. The unlikely heroes featured two Ducks (one an archer, the other a warrior capable of warping into a Duckotaur) and a group of humans including a druid who could shift into a were-rabbit form upon the eating of magic mushrooms! Nobody said this would be an ordinary game!

The warriors held off the horde of undead, loosing one warrior and Tom 'Ruddy' the Duck archer saved the day on the last turn, taking out the only creature that had reached the dam and was close to pulling it down, just before the sun rose.

This was a superb game, simple to play with loads of character and originality with a beautiful board and wonderful figures.

Tom 'Ruddy' looks out from above the dam.

Tom 'Ruddy' - ace bowman!

The 'Duckotaur' attacks!

The 'Wererabbit' leaps into action.

Lastly, a few pics from some other games on the day. Unfortunately I didn't get too many pics this year, especially of the SEEMS game as I was too busy chatting and playing but hopefully Rob has a load more. 

Pics by wardyla.

Doctor Who - The Master.

The Master — originally called Koschei and known by many other temporary aliases — was a renegade Time Lord and the Doctor's arch-nemesis.

Although they were originally boyhood friends, one of the Master's primary goals was to destroy the Doctor and Earth while acting on a number of schemes, both petty and gross.

The Master - First incarnation.

The Master was referred to as a "jackanapes" and an "unimaginative plodder" by the Third Doctor, the "quintessence of evil" by the Fourth Doctor, "one of the most evil and corrupt beings [the] Time Lord race [had] ever produced" and that his "crimes [were] without number and [his] villainy without end" by High Council President Borusa, "pure evil" by the Eighth Doctor, "stone-cold brilliant" by the Tenth Doctor, and "the Time Lords' most infamous child" by Time Lord founder Rassilon.

The Master - 'Last' incarnation.

It was eventually discovered that the Master's diabolical madness was partially the result of a genuine malady in the form of a never-ending drumming sound that had been retroactively implanted inside his head by the Time Lords on the last day of the Last Great Time War to further their own goals.

Figures by Black Tree and Heresy.

7TV - Agents, Villains & Henchmen.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Colonel Lenya, von Polhmann, Lady Jane Winstanley.

Agent King, Agent 'Ditto' Henderson, Agent Zhirov.

Henry, Count Draskovich, Marvin

Boris, Doctor Wei Mao, Konstantin.

Lucy Lympkiss, Gerhard Severan, Mason Dunn.

Agent Dieter Fink & the Hitlerbot.

General Gordon, Agent Glengetty, Agent Torkildson.

Soul Section - Elwood, Semmes, Gonzalez.

Hoffman, Frady, Jacques.

Maciejewski, Trevisani, Pugh.

Figures are Artizan and Copplestone.

Doctor Who - Friends & Foes!

Friends & Foes...first up is Peri Brown.

Peri Brown, full name Perpugilliam Brown, is an American college student (her passport lists her residence as Pasadena, California) majoring in botany. Peri was a companion of the Fifth and Sixth Doctors.

Peri in less revealing garb.

She first appears in the Fifth Doctor serial Planet of Fire, in which she encounters the Doctor and Turlough on the island of Lanzarote. After an encounter with the Master and the shapechanging android Kamelion (who disguises himself as her stepfather, Professor Howard Foster), Peri asks to join the Fifth Doctor on his travels, while Turlough departs to return to his home planet of Trion.

As they are both suffering from spectrox poisoning on Androzani, the Fifth Doctor decides to give what antidote remains to Peri, sacrificing himself to save her. As she looks on, he regenerates into the Sixth Doctor at the end of The Caves of Androzani and she continues to travel with him, despite the fact that one of the first things the temporarily unstable Sixth Doctor does is try to strangle her.

Peri is a bright, spirited young woman in her early twenties, who travels with the Doctor because, like many of his companions, she wants to see the universe. Although she shares a more abrasive relationship with the Sixth Doctor, there is an undercurrent of affection in their verbal sparring.

Peri travels with the Doctor for an undisclosed period of time; some sources say she travels with him for mere months, while others say years. Between the events of Revelation of the Daleks and the season-long story The Trial of a Time Lord, the character is shown to have matured somewhat and her relationship with the Doctor becomes less combative.

In the second segment of the Trial story arc, Mindwarp, Peri is abducted by an arthropod-like creature named Kiv, who apparently transplants his brain into her body. Soon after, the Doctor is led to believe that Peri is dead, and is severely distressed by this. It is later revealed at the end of The Ultimate Foe (the fourth segment of the arc) that the evidence of Peri's death was faked by the Valeyard. Peri has, in fact, survived, presumably recovered from Kiv's transplant (if it ever actually occurred), and married King Yrcanos of Thoros Alpha, a warrior king who had assisted the Doctor and Peri during the Mindwarp incident. It is not known what happens to Peri after she marries Yrcanos.

Perpugilliam Brown - easy for you to say.

Next up, an 'alternate' Doctor in the form of Peter Cushing...

Accidentally thrown together, Dr. Who, his granddaughters, Susan and Barbara, and their friend Ian cross the universe in Who's new invention, the space and time machine known as "Tardis". When they land on the planet Skaro, the travellers meet the kind and placid Thals, who live in fear of the dreaded Daleks. Somehow, the Doctor and his party must find a way to help the Thals overcome the deadly mutants who live inside impenetrable metal casings.

Dr. Who & Barbara look for the nearest hairdresser.

Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) was the first of two Doctor Who films made by Amicus Productions in the 1960s. It was followed by Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. The film features Peter Cushing as Dr. Who, Roberta Tovey as Susan, Jennie Linden as Barbara, and Roy Castle as Ian.

The film was not intended to form part of the ongoing storylines of the television series. Elements from the programme were used, however, such as various characters, the Daleks and a police box time machine, albeit in re-imagined forms.

Susan, The Dr. & Barbara with colourful Dalek.

Dortmun was a freedom fighter on Earth during the Daleks' invasion and occupation of Earth. He was disabled and for the most part, confined to a wheelchair. Dortmun developed a bomb he hoped would be effective against the Daleks, but it failed. He wanted to set about developing a new bomb, but was forced to go on the run when the Daleks began searching for the rebel hideout. He gave Barbara Wright his notes to give to the First Doctor. He attempted to use his new bomb on a Dalek patrol in London, but was killed in the attempt.

Unlikely allies...

Olive Hawthorne was a white witch who lived in Devil's End. She assisted the Third Doctor, Jo Grant, Mike Yates and John Benton when the Master raised Azal in her town. She may have possessed latent telekinetic abilities.

Dortmun.

The Master, posing as a rural vicar, summons a cloven-hoofed demon in a church basement. Seeking to gain the ancient titan's demonic power, he gathers a cult and then corrupts and contorts the citizens of Devil's End to bow to his will. Dark elemental forces begin to disturb the village on the eve of May Day with unexplained murders, a flesh-smiting gargoyle, and a nigh-impenetrable infernal dome. With the Master fully prepared to rake the Earth apart with hellion agents of lore, the Doctor and UNIT battle against the wicked rites of a forbidden science, aided by the benevolent practitioner of witchcraft.

Miss Hawthorne.

Mortally weakened by the Spider Queen on Metebelis III, the Doctor is forced to regenerate. His recuperation is cut short as UNIT investigates a spate of robberies involving components for a top-secret disintegrator gun. The culprit is quickly identified as a highly sophisticated robot built by Professor Kettlewell, being ordered to act against its Prime Directive. Just how is the robot being used to carry out the sinister agenda of the Scientific Reform Society? Can the Doctor rescue Sarah from the robot's clutches and avert a nuclear war?

Professor Jeremiah P. Kettlewell was a human scientist and member of the Scientific Reform Society. Kettlewell specialised in robotics, and created a robot called "Experimental Prototype Robot K1". He was affiliated with Think Tank, but at some point he turned against conventional science and left Think Tank to work on a alternative energy facility. He allied himself with Hilda Winters in order to have K1 made more powerful. However, he later changed his mind and was killed by his creation.

Professor Kettlewell.

Scaroth, also known as Count Carlos Scarlioni and Captain Tancredi, was the last of the Jagaroth and the saviour of his species. He was also the pilot of the Jagaroth ship that landed on Earth in prehistoric times.

Scaroth the Jageroth

Roughly 400 million years BC, a Jagaroth ship piloted by Scaroth landed on Earth. Despite his ship's advice, he launched at Warp 3; the ship exploded, and in its control cabin, Scaroth was splintered in time.

Twelve fragments of him were scattered across time, though they could communicate through telepathy. The explosion provided the radioactivity that the primordial ooze needed for the human race to exist. Throughout time, his selves pushed the human race forward — showing them fire, inventing the wheel, mapping the stars, and ordering the pyramids built — so that his twelfth self would have the technology to go back in time to the moment of take-off, preventing his splintering in time as well as the death of his race.

All of his selves, except for the Egyptian self, who appeared as a god on one occasion, disguised themselves as humans using a mask and skin into which he was able to fit himself.

Captain Tancredi.

In Florence, Italy in 1505, Scaroth appeared as a human named Captain Tancredi. He convinced Leonardo da Vinci, a human painter, to paint six copies of his famous painting, the Mona Lisa. He stored them away for a later self to find.

Count Scarlioni.

His twelfth self was Count Carlos Scarlioni, a well-known figure in the art world in 1979. Thanks to him, genuine art works that had been missing for centuries, like several Gutenberg Bibles, started showing up. He was married to Countess Scarlioni, who never knew who he really was, thanks to little gifts every now and then and a little "excitement". He also gave her a micromeson scanner and asked her to wear it always.

Count ScarlioniThanks to his other selves, he used the artwork to fund his experiments with time, run by Professor Fyodor Nikolai Kerensky. Having found the other six Mona Lisas, he planned to steal the one in the Louvre.

He would then sell them to the seven people in the world who would pay anything for the Mona Lisa, and since the one from the Louvre would be stolen, each would think he had the original, and Scaroth would make a hundred million dollars off each painting.

"What do I care of the human race? Scum! The tools of my salvation!"

He met the Fourth Doctor and Romana when they tried to find the crack in time that his experiments had caused. Romana was captured and made to build a field interphase stabiliser to make the artificial time field Scaroth had created stable, allowing him to travel back in time.

Having been convinced by the Doctor and by pictures of Scaroth's true self, the Countess turned against Scaroth. He used her bracelet to kill her. Scaroth travelled back in time to try to stop the explosion that splintered him across time.

The Doctor got there first with Romana and Detective Duggan. Duggan knocked Scaroth unconscious. His time came up and he faded back to 1979. When his servant Hermann saw his true form, he attacked Scaroth and he was destroyed along with his time field.

Figures are Black Tree Design and Hasslefree.