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After reading Dead Sky, Black Sun for the fifth time, I've decided to try and build some of the terrain described in the story. Inside Honsou's fortress of Khalan-Ghol, the story describes "monstrous engines, impossibly huge pillar-like pistons, iron bridges supported by chains with links thick as a mans torso, etc..
I think that this would be a departure from the "normal ?" chaos terrain we've all seen (the massive/almost unbelieveable scale of it really appeals to me), but I would really like to try. My question is if it were you doing the building, how would you go about it? What materials would be used, etc.?

Well, first of all, I'd use plastic garden chain...it's probably exactly the right size. Drybrush some boltgun as a base and then go to town. I'd also explore the plumbing section of the local hardware store, I'd imagine that you'd have a good time with the PVC pipes...there are countless varieties of shapes and diameters.

You have to be careful with scale like this because of how relatively small an area 6' X 4" represents in the 40k world.

durrr.... i uh, went to my local hobby shop and bought an assorted bag of plasticard bits and things. And there were gorgeous things in there.

Your best bet would be to create machinery, or create something in the image of a machine. For instance my friends are tempted to create one of two things; a. titan-based board where the battle is fought on its back and b. a war thats going on around a titans feet. Lesson is if you do anything massive, don't have more than two of it. Iron warriors also bring to mind the idea of engineers, so you might have alot of equipment as well as a foundry, ruined or wrecked vehicles on the way to repair, assembly lines, etc. You might also want to consider incorporating the "platformer" terrain kit. There are hundreds of gizmodos and lovely bitsies that will make it easier, and give you a conceptual lead in. If you can still get access to kinder-egg plastic shells, you can use those as a springboard for boilers and mechanical parts, just add straws to and through them. The heineken mini-keg cans are also pretty after they've been given some TLC.

I would sugest two options eithea
A go Buy an asortment or plumbing stuff and random crap and then see what you can make of it or
B design first create a machine sketch the hell out of it get all your ideas together then go in search of the materials.



Maybe something stupidly powerful like the Chaos marines are trying to drain the core of the planet because they believe there is some wierd chaos deamon prince trapped down there and untill they drain off all the energy they can't tunnel down to retrieve him