Grylli! or Grylluses?

I only recently learned that these odd creatures — which generally look like a head walking on a pair of limbs, sometimes with a tail, fins, or various other things attached to or growing out of them — are called grylli (singular gryllus).* The term seems to go back to Roman times, where it was used to describe various grotesques, usually including one or more “bearded masks” (faces) combined with parts of other animals. A later drawing in that vein is here. More recently it’s been narrowed down to mean grotesques with human faces on legs, as seen in medieval marginalia.

I am not seeing much about them online for D&D — there’s an entry here which may or may not have the same thing in mind, and apparently the Tome of Beasts 3 has an entry for a “gryllus swarm” but I can’t tell if they are insects or Boschian nightmares. Maybe it is similar to the 5eSRD version, which is somewhat meta swarm of enchanted marginalia. I’d rather treat them as independently-existing beings, possibly minor demons.

Here are some figures I finished recently:

Spiked cat, Yelling head on arms, and Giant head on legs

The first three are from the Minifigs “Valley of Four Winds” line — a very early and idiosyncratic fantasy miniatures line from 1978. A fourth is possibly a gryllus too:

Walking lips

I’m not sure if the walking lips is a reference to novelty “chattering teeth,” the Rolling Stone’s logo, or something else — I very vaguely remember something like that in an old Looney Tunes cartoon.

Here are a few more I crafted out of the hindquarters of a plastic lion and some epoxy putty.

Roger G-S’s version has them listed as small creatures, and the drawings show them only slightly larger than a regular human head.

My figures — both the Minifigs and Eureka castings and my crude scratch-builds — are more medium sized. The little I’ve been able to find out about them suggests that the gryllus was either a sort of short-hand caricature that monks could easily doodle, or else that they represent “sinful impulses.”** In the Valley of the Four Winds (the story based on the Minifigs figures; the story in turn inspired a board game of the same name), the grylli are possibly some of the familiars or servants of a wizard. They don’t have any role in the board game, as troops or quest items, from what I’m told.

The walking lips are probably the least medieval of the lot; the spiked cat fits in with other marginalia chimeras I’ve seen. But the walking heads are really the archetypal grylli as far as I’m concerned.

As long as I’m posting some minis, here are some other assemblages in a similar vein — and one more VFW figure. Not quite grylli but definitely odd.

First up, a double lion. Waste not want not.

Medieval heraldry sometimes has a lion with two full bodies attached to one head, but this is more inspired by Catdog.

Next is a sort of “Brown Jenkin” figure. Asgard released a giant rat with a human face as a “wererat,” which is pretty much how HP Lovecraft described the familiar Brown Jenkin in “Dreams in the Witchhouse.” (“Brown Jenkin” seems like a perfect fit with the names of the familiars in an old woodcut showing a witch with a variety of uncanny familiars, though none look quite as chimerical as that.) I made this with more epoxy putty and a rubber rat or mouse from a bag of Halloween toys.

Mine is closer in size to a pony than a rat, though.

The next several assemblages were made from poorly cast chessmen that I bought by the pound for casting my own figures. The pawns (page boys) and bishop (a jester) were interesting, but poorly cast and 54mm scale, so I just used parts of them: the jester’s midsection and arms sawn off and his arms replaced; the pawns chopped up and reassembled with various bits and bobs I had lying around.

Not great photos from my phone but you get the idea. They all have thier torsos truncated and short arms compared to their long legs.

A fourth creature is a sort of walking Bible, assembled from another pawn and a spare dragon claw.

The chessmen were all made from this set of molds. The several pounds of castings I bought included a few figures that were potentially salvageable but nothing near a complete set (for one thing, there were no knights/unicorns). I kept a few towers, kings and queens, and jesters to paint for fun. Someday.

Lastly, a Minifigs “Old woman turning into fire,” another mysterious VFW model.

I tried to suggest a nun’s habit for her, since a burning nun seems a little more freaky than just an old lady. The fire is oddly sculpted, pointing downward, but somehow seems plausible. Maybe there’s a strong wind.

I sculpted a few more grylli out of Super Sculpy, and post them when they are done.

———————-

*I should have known — I was reading Roles, Rules, & Rolls back in 2012 when Roger G-S posted this.

FWIW I think grylli is the correct plural, not grylluses, but I see both.

**Citation needed. Those were two suggestions I saw a while back in earlier searches that I can’t quite find now. They could also be simple cartoons to amuse the scribe, I guess.

A few weirdos

Here a few more things I painted for Ral Partha Legacy, just for fun. Not sure if they’ll ever make it to their web catalog but they were neat minis to paint. They’re from the “Savage and Sparkle” line, originally released by Thunderbolt Mountain. The story appears to be that Tom Meier had his kids design some figures.

First up is “Slug Eat-Your-Face.” I think that’s both his name and what he does. The model is based on an original idea by Meier’s son.

I painted him like a banana slug. They really made an impression on me when I visited Humboldt County, California, years ago.

RPL asks that all their models for the volunteer painting project be undercoated in black. This absolutely improves how they photograph, not least because areas that are inadvertently missed by the paintbrush show as black (rather than white, as is the case with my own figures).

Nest up are a small family of “Woolies.” Unnatural fur colors made sense to me — they remind me a bit of Muppets.

I’m happy with how their eyes turned out, especially the one with an open mouth. Its eyes are kind of rolling back, like a shark’s.

The Chaos Army arrayed

I finally finished my whole collection of the Eureka “Chaos Army.” There are a couple of giants that I don’t have, but otherwise this is the whole range. 

The heavy “cavalry” are these three barrel-riders. The pig-man has a spit-roasted pig, surely some kind of statement. The herald on the far left has an assistant holding a trumpet to his arse, and a curly pig tail peeks out from his tights. The one in the center is the strangest; some sort of demon inside a huge melting helmet, and instead of being on sled, the barrel is propelled by whatever is inside.

The giant, “Little Olaf the Unsteady,” has an assistant to help stabilize his schnozz.

“Emperor Rat robed in meat” rides the “flogged horse,” easily the goriest figure in the bunch.

I posted these five imps or goblins on flayed dogs last time.

Pope Simius provides immoral support.

“Brood Hilda” herds the children of chaos: The Flapper Twins, Ugly Betty, and Chick Lewis.

Kaiser Buddha, the Chaos Lord, watches benevolently.

The more monstrous one serve as light light infantry.

 

The humanoid ruffians serve as heavy infantry with assorted weapons, including an outsized table knife, a feather, a huge spoon, and a brass key. 

 

 

 

 

Bosch in miniature

Eureka Miniatures has a line of figures inspired by Bosch and Brueghel. During the pandemic I’ve been working on some of them.

Some of them are fairly straightforward chaos beastmen–

Most of them have practical weapons, though one just has a head on a stick.

Some of the odder ones include child-mutants and Kaiser Buddha.

Kaiser Buddha is an unsettling mashup of Kaiser Wilhelm and the Buddha, obviously. His buddy the snail-man is harder to explain.

These two mutie kiddos are pretty strange too.

There are a number of armless mutants, ranging from the worm-head (far left) to the walking log.

Some humanoid weirdos: the Baboon Pope, a sort of crab- or spider-man, and Flukey Sue, the Fluke Lady.

Cavalry support is provided by a lance of goblin-types on flayed hounds.

They are somewhat reminiscent of Labyrinth goblins.

More to come.

Big photodump of minis

Here’s some of the minis I’ve finished in the past couple of months.

The smallest one first, a mutated rat that was an extra piece on the sprue for the vampire’s corpse-wagon. Mounted on a penny.

One of Citadel’s stranger mutants were the “Beasts of chaos” series, and none stranger than this “Beast of Nurgle,” which is a sort of giant slug with legs and mass of suckers on its front. In the Warhammer game, the suckers shoot streams of acid. This figure is maybe two inches long.

Here’s the profile.

Nurgle is the chaos god of decay and disease, so he’s all about slime and other fluids gushing or seeping about. Here are two “Nurglings,” imp-like creatures that are tiny images of Nurgle himself. Both are also mounted on pennies.

I especially liked the angry little maggot crawling out of his mouth.

Continuing the demonic theme, here are three Rafm “death angels.”

The “Harbinger of Hell,” which is a bit reminiscent of the flying demon in the movie House. I mounted this one on hexagonal tile I recovered when remodeling the bathroom at my old house. Waste not want not.

The next one is the “Faceless Demon of the Void.” He came with his own pillar to perch on. I went with a more traditional red for this one.

Lastly, the “Specter of Doom.” His base is a bunch of rubble and bones, suggesting a ruined tomb or mausoleum.

Otherworld Miniatures has some great if pricey models. They’re a bit hard to find in the US, at least in my experience. These two are barbed devils, closely modeled on the Trampier illustration in the original AD&D Monster Manual.

And now for something completely different, some Old West figures. These are figures my brother originally painted decades ago, but which had lost a lot of paint to wear and tear, and a couple that were never completed. I tried to retain his original color schemes for the touch-ups, although some were painted with PollyS/Floquil paints that I couldn’t easily match. We’ve been playing a Boot Hill game again, so I was motivated to get our PCs in a finished condition. All are Grenadier “Gunslingers.”

The next group are figures we used in a previous Boot Hill campaign. The two cowboys are from the same Grenadier set while the Native Americans are actually from fantasy ranges: The chap with the big axe and headdress is a Citadel barbarian, and the one with the bow is a Ral Partha ranger. Obviously neither is particularly accurate for any real tribe. Could be worse though.

Back to monsters, here’s one of Julie Guthrie’s trolls from the Grenadier “Fantasy Lords’ line:

These manticores are (l) Maurauder and (r) Ral Partha. A study in scale creep, the once fearsome Ral Partha figure is more of a cub in comparison.

I got the Maruader manticore in a lot of figures sold on eBay as scrap tin! He was missing his wings, so I filled in the sockets with putty and textured them to suggest a continuation of his mane, which was already spreading down his chest anyway.

The oldest figure featured today is this Minifigs fell beast, missing his Nazgul rider:

It was part of their “Mythical Earth” range, absolutely not a ripoff of “Middle Earth.” This figure was actually listed in their catalog as “ME57, Ringwraith and Nazgul.” The publicist must have thought “nazgul” was the name for the beasts they rode. The Mythical Earth range was started in 1972, making this possibly my oldest fantasy figure. It’s hard to say for sure as Minifigs is still in business, and parts of the range are still in production. I think my copy is pretty old though, since it came with a bunch of figures from long-defunct manufacturers.

The last blast from the past are these Ral Partha “trills” — bigger than orcs but smaller than trolls.

The shield design is a total cheat, I cam into some old Citadel shield transfers, which you soak in water and glide onto the surface, where they adhere as they dry. The next two figures are much newer.

The “Umber Cuke, aka Nipper,” a riff on the AD&D Umber Hulk was pretty fun:

This is a much newer figure for the “Lowlife” game designed by Akron artist Andy Hopp.

Slightly less silly is this Wargames Foundry orc mercenary. All business except for the tasseled tail-cap.

Lastly, the largest and most impressive of the bunch. Also by far the biggest pain to finish. I am still noticing details I forgot to paint. Ral Partha’s “The necromancer’s throne of bone.”

A couple of shots taken before I finished the base show some better details.

The skulls and ribcage on the base are spare bits from other kits. The long bones are real bones recovered from an owl pellet I found in my backyard back around the time this model was first produced. Some of the bones from the mole or shrew or whatever was in there grace the bases of several other figures too.

From 1986 or so, and it could be on the cover of any heavy metal album from the period. Bikini-clad chick with a snake, tons of skulls, gross dude in a thong — it’s got it all.

Monsters–another pass at stain painting

I haven’t had a lot of time for painting lately, and the fact that I’m having someeye trouble hasn’t been an incentive either. But I did manage to get a few things painted a couple of weeks ago. The stain-painting technique (prime white, apply thinned paints just pick out details with full-strength paint) has allowed me to be productive in a few minutes here and there.

First up, a Heritage models dragon.

I think this was exclusive to the “Cavern of Doom” boxed game. There were two variants, one with the body cast in two pieces and athis one, with the bod in one piece and just separate head, wings, and tail. I’m not sure which was the first version but imagine they re-tooled it for better casting. If you click on the image, you’ll see just how crude the sculpting is. The scales were probably just the end of a small tube, like the ink reservoir of a pen, and there were lots of joints to fill in with putty. I have another copy of this, from back in the day, but somehow the head, wings, and tail were lost, so I had to reconstruct them with epoxy putty and miscellaneous junk. I was never happy with the result, so I’m glad I was able to trade someone for this complete model.

Next up, a Rafm night gaunt (from their Call of Cthulhu line). I though it would make a passable ice devil for D&D, so I painted it light blue instead of flat black.

Third, Grenadier ghost. This figure came in a small lot of figures I got from a thrift store. There were several recognizable copies of gaming miniatures, including this one. The Grenadier logo and copyright are still partly visible on this one’s base, though the others were Citadel miniatures with square metal bases replacing their “slotta base” tags. So they must be “pirated” copies. There were also a bunch of junky animals I’ll melt down for my own casting operation.

Next up, my favorites of this batch. A pair of Citadel Nurglings, using pennies as bases. I really love the worm emerging from the first one’s mouth. I’m not sure if they had any stats in Warhammer or were just for decorating the bases of larger Nurgle troops. But they make great imps.

Lastly, some zombie dogs from a Zombies!!! game expansion set. I bought a bag with like 100 of these, but only kept a handful. They are mounted on pennies as well. They were a breeze to paint.

 

Beastmen and goatkin

No telling if I’ll be able to follow through with this, but my master plan is to start getting the vast backlog of unpainted miniatures painted by tackling one type at a time. Here is the result of trying to get all my “beastmen” finished. (I do have a bunch of other animal/human hybrids yet to do, but the beastmen are all vaguely goat- or bull- headed humanoids.)

All images are clickable to enlarge.

 

First up: some beastmen from the Battle Masters game (jointly produced by Milton Bradley and Games Workshop back in the early 1990s). The guy on the far left was one I painted years ago. The others were languishing unpainted until I got more inspired and swapped out some of their weapons.

I used a variety of thinned down paints, including some GW “contrast” paints. The idea was to just prime everything white and paint in thinned colors using the old Heritage Models idea of “stain painting.” The GW Contrast paints are simply paints thinned down with some kind of flow enhancer added to help the pigment pool in the recesses of a sculpture and form “shadows” of more intense color, so that you don’t need to shade or highlight. It really speeds things up. Mixing my own cheap craft paints with some water and a couple of drops of Liquitex flow aid gets similar results. I used the stickers that came with the Battle Masters game for their shields.

The next group are Grenadier “goatkin warriors”. They were sculpted by John Dennett, who did some of the best monsters Grenadier produced in my opinion. The white ones were painted at least twenty years ago, so I touched them up a bit to cover spots where the paint had worn off, and also to correct some sloppiness.

The last group are a random collection: a figure from the Descent board game, a satyr (a WizKids recast, for MageKnight, of a Ral Partha design), and a Citadel “ogre.” The citadel model was another I’d painted many years ago, and touched up. I bought him through Wargames West, an mail-order service from the pre-internet days that published huge newsprint catalogs. I bought several figures through them, even though they did not have illustrations, so it was a bit of a surprise.

Finally, another Citadel figure, meant to represent a beastman champion. He came out a little better than this blurry photo suggests.

And here’s the whole set (including a figure I did not photograph separately because he was done a long time ago and needed no work).

I used a lot of beastmen in the D&D campaign I ran a while back, because I wanted something a little different from the usual orcs. More recently they have been standing in for gnolls in a game I play in. I do have a box of gnolls to paint some day too…

Bonus: another Dennett sculpt, the Vi-Perdon!
I like the animation in this one.

Devouring Gourd

This time of year you may be seeing small, ornamental gourds at the grocery store. Get one, carve a maw into it, and voila! A terrible folkloric monster. You’re welcome.

Read all about devouring gourds here: in the Book of Creatures. If you didn’t know about BoC, it’s a great place to visit and will be time well squandered.

Source: Devouring Gourd

Denn die Todten reiten Schnell

Admittedly one of the weirder miniatures now in my collection, this is a “Corpse Cart” from Games Workshop. I found the kit in a discount bin so how could I not? There were a few extra bits for alternative assemblies and customization. It’s not my neatest paint job, but I’m happy with it.

As you can see, it’s a cart pulled by a team of zombies who have apparently been nailed to, or impaled on, the yoke. The corpses in the cart don’t all look dead, and they are being munched on by a handful of giant rats (some of them are tunneling through the bodies).

The ghoulish driver might be a vampire, or some kind of necromancer. I have no idea how this thing functions in a game of Warhammer, but I imagine it either spreads terror through the opponents’ ranks, or rams into them like an Achaemenid Persian scythed chariot. Maybe your necromancers can use it to raise additional zombie forces. In that case it sort of goes with the Skeleton recruiting party.

I do like how the cart mimics a rib cage.

The blood splatter was accomplished by taking an old toothbrush, loading it with a bit of paint, and running my thumb across it so it splattered the model when I nearly finished painting it.

While I was waiting for various parts to dry, I worked on some vampires, which I’ll photograph eventually. Here’s a Grenadier “Blood giant,” which I suppose is what happens when a giant or ogre gets bitten.

I was still having fun with the gore effects. The fuzz near his feet is meant to suggest a cloud of fog or smoke. His left foor was not fully formed and there was a suggestion of liquid or gas welling up around him, so maybe he’s emerging from, or disappearing into, some fog.

Here a few other odds and ends I painted recently.

The first is one of John Dennett’s Grenadier figures from the Monster Manuscript series. Maybe inspired by the Mi-go of H.P. Lovecraft.

Next up, a Superior Models wizard. Very clearly based on the description of Gandalf from the Hobbit; his eyebrows really do come out to the brim of his hat! I like the face in the staff too.

Lastly, three serpent folk.

The oldest is a Grenadier “Wizzards & Warriors” medusa. It’s a rarity, being male. His expression makes me think of “Little” Steven van Zandt. The arms are very disproportionate. It’s obviously one of the very early monsters from that range, when Andrew Chernack was still developing his skills.

The other medusa is from German “Metal Magic” line. It’s pretty standard looking but nicely sculpted.

The last one I’m not sure about. His left arm probably had another “sword” originally, but it had been cut off when I got him. He’s holding a shield from the Zvedza “Orku” set. I got that figure in a lot with a bunch of broken or incomplete figures sold as scrap metal on ebay.

2019? Impossible

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything, and I’ve had a lot going on. I did manage to paint a few more miniatures. Some of the photos include a penny for scale since I posted the pics to social media where not everyone knows what the hell these are.

Click pix to embiggen.

First up, some undead rising. I had a bunch of spare parts from some kits so I cobbled them together with gravestones made of bits of matte board. I’ll need to flock the bases some day.

Next up, some barbarians. The two on the left are plastic, from board games, while the two on the right are metal. The big guy is a spoof of Thrudd the Barbarian (himself a spoof of Conan), while the little guy is a VERY old Ral Partha sculpt from when 25mm scale meant 1/72 scale. He’s now sold as a “young barbarian” and still in production! I had an older casting from a box set but it was one of the many lost in a tragic incident I’ve mentioned before.

Next up a couple of plant monsters from the TSR line of AD&D minis.  I don’t remember what they are called but they sure were easy to paint.

Nextly, some GW Horrors of Tzeentch. They should only be pink or blue per the Warhammer fluff but I thought I’d mix em up. A couple needed tails, which a cheap plastic dinosaur donated (one has the actual tail and the other has a leg as a tail). A WotC “ravening maw” is crashing their party too.

The “musician” is easily my favorite. Very Boschian.

Ole Birdy is cool too.

Gotta love Pinky and his asymmetrical eyes.

The maw was missing an arm, but a plastic dinosaur supplied a replacement.

Finally, some random minis — a Reaper succubus, yet another plastic barbarian, and a really old Ral Partha necromancer.

The ole Schnozzola!