Monday, May 4, 2015

The Firmament

Mole people seem to have been fairly popular in the media of the 1950s (maybe due to the widespread belief that people would be living in underground bunkers in the aftermath of an atomic war).



In more recent times, the term has been applied to the semi-urban myth of underground tunnel dwellers beneath places like Manhattan and Las Vegas.

I envision mole people as being bipedal moles, along the lines of the talking moles of Narnia, or the Diggeries of Amagi Brilliant Park. As such, the perfect representation of these creatures are available from Microworld Games.

There is no particular background given to the Firmament on the Microworld site, but the army consists of molemen and their stoneman allies/minions. The typical pack consists of ~40 figures for US$10, which gives a per figure cost that is probably a bit more than that of a box of 1/72 plastics.

The molemen shown below (from left to right) consist of a mole commander, two geomancers, two moleman drillspears (FIRM01), two moleman delvers (FIRM02), and two moleman scrappers (FIRM03).


When used with 1/72 scale figures, the molemen would be even smaller than hobbits, which is just as I imagine them to be.

The stonemen are what I would term [Paracelsian] gnomes. They come in three sizes: stonemen, greater stonemen, and earth giants. Below are the earth giant (FIRM10), and two poses from the stonemen warriors pack (FIRM05).


The stonemen warriors are too small to be useful combatants in my opinion, so I modified them to be foundry and metal workers by cutting off the shields, and resculpting the left arm. Additional tools and sundries will be added as required. I will order some of the greater stonemen at a later date to serve as auxiliary warriors.


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