PHoD Things

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

In a hurry. Stuff happening.

But here are those Elephant Statues I mentioned...

Note matching Elephant Design on bases... Darn pachyderms get everywhere...

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Back to proper architecture, as distinct from gelatinously unrealistic elephants...

Lakshadi temple is cursed. Or at very least haunted.

It wasn't cursed to begin with, but a dirty cabal of evilists attacked it, massacred all the worshippers within and desecrated all the hallowed symbols of the Devatha on the filthy order of the mad tyrant Ravana (available in the earlier Maldrapur Chronicles box - like anyone would want him).

The tormented ghosts of the slaughtered faithful are still bound to the stones of the temple by a malign Asura curse and their dismal moans echo more or less constantly, despite the best efforts of a small group of devoted Brahmin who tend the now sad and lonely place. Kali has pledged to free the suffering spirits - which entails facing an entire Asura empire, but, you know, she's not one to take much notice of little things like numerical statistics...

Of course, there's no specific reason you have to use this temple as a cursed, haunted place. There's no reason it can't be a nice, happy place... and theoretically it will one day again be happy and no longer shunned in Maldrapur by the time Kali's sorted everything out... but you can't use it as a Woolly Mammoth. Not believably anyway.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Here are those Indian Pots I mentioned a few posts back, when I wasn't dribbling on about cane baskets...

A semi-random selection of designs that suit Maldrapur. The decoration suggests they're pretty much all pots from reasonably affluent places, but as there are already basic clay pots and things in NWN and as a basic clay pot essentially just looks like a basic clay pot, it didn't seem worthwhile to add to the already VAST list of new Maldrapur stuff some additional basic clay pots just like a billion other basic clay pots. So I just did the nice, expensive (and definably Indian) sort of pots.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Sorry - getting increasingly caught up in STUFF at the moment... Will soon be heading off to India, properly, with Fifi and Vineeta, to work with lots and lots of Venomous Snakes. Should be interesting... Anyway, I WILL get the second pile of Maldrapur Chronicles rubbish on the Vault before I vanish.

Bhandasura - yes, another Obvious Spleen...

When the god Kemdev got himself vapourized by Shiva, there was, naturally, little left but a heap of ash... The child Ganesha found this ash and sculpted it into the likeness of a new playmate, hoping for a fine friend. But, the figure lumped together out of ash rapidly proved to be a Reeking Evilist. This saddened Ganesha. The sadness became outright alarm when the new evilist, calling itself Bhandasura, went down the old "raise formidable demon army, destroy everything in your path, attempt to conquer the universe" road.

Naturally, with this ashen Spleen marauding about the place, coming on all evil at everyone and putting the boot in on Ganesha, Kali was roused to fury (actually, that doesn't take much) and instantly attacked Bhandasura's army, mushing it into pieces. Bhandasura, showing a remarkable degree of astuteness, immediately hid behind an impenetrable forcefield and refused to come out. Kali was unimpressed by the sickening polyp's nauseating cowardice and just waited menacingly for him to emerge. When he finally did, she killed him very firmly and resoundingly into a sort of squashed paste.

Despite all that had happened, Ganesha was saddened and shed tears for the playmate that might have been...

Kali wasn't sorry at all. But a simple gift of a flower did calm her down again.

The appearance of my NWN Bhandasura is by no means the traditional one.

In the specific Maldrapur Chronicles chapter he turns up in, I've used quite a bit of Buddhism as well as Hindu tales and there are repeated uses of cubes of clay, ash, etc, of varying sizes in assorted puzzles and events in the Module. Wanting a different sort of look for Bhandasura, to set him apart from some of the other characters and to enhance the fact that he's essentially a "construct", I decided to try and make him look as if he had been entirely formed from these cubes of ash, rather like children's toy blocks... except his head; he just looked bloody daft with a cuboid head... The cubes have then taken on a strange appearance as he has infused himself with nasty warding magics, Spleen fashion.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Nandi, the sacred bull, acts as vahana (steed) to Lord Shiva and also assumes the role of his doorkeeper. Statues of Nandi are commonly found all over India, often guarding the door to shrines in temples devoted to Shiva. There are also temples dedicated to Nandi alone. Given that this seated bull figure turns up so profusely in India, naturally I have to have it in Maldrapur too...

But, in Maldrapur, nobody is worshipped more highly than Kali herself. So, to go with her new, personalized temple and the old statues, I've also added these decorative pillar stones with the lady in question painted on them. These look nice flanking gates and that sort of stuff.

"Is there no end to all this Indian stuff?" you ask... Well, leaving soon for India, as mentioned above, so I'm not going to get some of the farcically large and ambitious list done before departure and thus, yes, there will be an end soon and it'll have been tested to perdition and thrown on Kali's page on the Vault where you can go and examine it and poke it cautiously with sticks in case a Timingila bursts out and bites you...

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Carpets! I got Carpets here and I'm not afraid to use them!

Yes, I know all the Maldrapuri Carpets I did last time were circular. Yes, I know these ones are all circular too... Yes, I have seen numerous examples of Carpets in India that are not circular - as well as many that were... but for some reason known only to one of my comprehensive collection of aberrant mental quirks, I have a rabid, zealous belief that every single Carpet on the entire island continent of Maldrapur is circular, probably for theological reasons. So they're circular.

You want PHoD Indian Carpets, then you have to have circular ones; this is not a democracy. This is Absolute Carpet Totalitarianism. (This is dribbling insanity, you mean; Fifi).

Technically, not all these Carpets are actually Carpets... No! It's the Feared CARPET MIMIC! You walk on it and it engulfs you and you die and... No, sorry, ignore me, I became momentarily strange. (Momentarily?! Fifi)

In fact, amongst the Carpets are a few Diwali Rangoli designs which are traditional circular patterns painted, chalked, etc on the ground - sometimes of amazing complexity. Diya lamps (see earlier post) are then placed at symbolically significant parts of the patterns.

But as they were circular I just threw them in with the Carpets - and anyway, there's no reason they can't be used as Carpets... though one or two might look a bit painted for Carpets... but... I suppose if Moths ate your Carpet and you couldn't find a replacement, you could just paint a Fake Carpet on the floor - and watch with glee as the irksome and malodorous Moths hurtle down to eat it and thus pan into the floor something chronic and mush! (Obviously I'm talking about nasty little Spleen Clothes Moth type Moths that devour fabrics, not nice, proper, Nectar-Sucking Moths which bounce off your lightbulbs if you let them against whom I have precisely no ill feelings at all... I'll just shut up now. (Not before time; Fifi).

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_CaveGnome]

               Oooh.... Carpets ! Little underground people love carpets ! So comfy... And you get them with those colorful mandala patterns ! And, these are really, totally, wonderfully, ROUND !!!! CaveGnome thanks PHOD with an improvised Kosakchok danse. This will be a good day, we got ROUND carpets...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

I know they are a bit mundane but any plans for including any ordinary Indian monkeys? BTW have a great time when you go, watch out for the wildlife, some of those monkeys are thieves! Oh, and don't forget to come back.

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Mecheon]

               

Hope the whole India thing goes good! Mind this is coming from me who, y'know, occasionally just goes out into the backyard, sees a venomous snake and shrugs. Australia for ya.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_DM Frayne]

               

Hope the whole India thing goes good! Mind this is coming from me who, y'know, occasionally just goes out into the backyard, sees a venomous snake and shrugs. Australia for ya.

 

Are you sure that's what you really said?  '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_kamal_]

               

Hope the whole India thing goes good! Mind this is coming from me who, y'know, occasionally just goes out into the backyard, sees a venomous snake and shrugs. Australia for ya.

Below is the list of all the things in Australia that won't kill you:

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Grymlorde]

               

Are you going to any of the Kali temples in Kolkata (Calcutta)? I also have a great appreciation for Kali and have wanted to go there but for some reason the wife insists on seeing her family (Delhi, Allahabad, Varanasi, Mumbai, Pune, Goa, and Bengaluru) instead. Something about the halflings who live with us and the importance of them meeting their cousins or some such nonsense. Oh well. Bon voyage.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

IIRC Australia is the only continent where the number of Venomous snakes outnumbers the non-venomous ones, on the whole planet.

 

TR 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Grymlorde:-

Been to those temples in Kolkata on previous stays in India, but probably won't have the chance this time since we're going to be in the middle of nowhere...

We'll be way out in the Narayanpur part of the Abujmarh hill forests, pretty much the most wild and remote bit of Chhattisgarh, maybe all India... There's a reason Abujmarh translates in the local Gondi as "Unknown Hills". We'll primarily be looking for King Cobras - you'd be amazed how well an eighteen foot long snake that can rear up to be taller than a man can hide - since there's been very little done in the way of population studies in this area - since no sod ever goes there...

(That said, the museum have now told us that there might be armed groups of militant Maoist insurgents hiding in these forests, not to mention Indian Army units looking for them, so the local snakes, tigers, spiders, leopards and occasional crocodiles may be the least of our problems... Wouldn't be the first time we've been shot at in the field. Still, so long as we're allowed to shoot back... The people we're supposed to be working with in India are saying we should make maximum effort to show ourselves to be a scientific party and in no way military or political. WE, however, favour the stealthy approach of not being bloody seen in the first place. Also this doesn't scare off the animals we're supposedly looking for...)

Ho-hum.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Speaking of animals...

 

Tarot:- No monkeys here. The Kali Hak is primarily cultural stuff, so I'm not including any of the new Maldrapuri trees and flower bushes, nor any plain, ordinary animals - just Spleen Monster type things.

Besides, Maldrapur's wildlife is somewhat wilder than India's has been for the last few million years. I've added the Rajasaurus, now that I've finally got him done, as a sort of Royal Beast, with trained examples guarding the gates of Rajatnur. Also nearly finished a giant Gharial (think Rhamphosuchus) as well as a smaller, ordinary Gharial... I do have a couple of monkeys somewhere, improved and retextured from the existing monkey model... Eventually I'll probably do a PHoD More Or Less Completely Normal Animals Hak, just to balance all the assorted Weirdo - Mechanical - Mummified - Undead - Etc Animals I've done over the years.