Tales From The Ashen Stair - my invitation to a collaborative group project
A while ago... July of 2018 in fact, I was invited to join a closed group project by Jordon Lee of paintspencilsandplastics. This would be a collaborative setting and narrative building project for The Age of Sigmar in Jordan's own setting which he'd been developing on his blog for a while and this setting was named The Ashen Stair.
Some of the work I've been doing for this project has been posted up on other social platforms here and there, but it really has deserved something more from me here on my own little corner of the internet to document my involvement so far.
We had followed each others blogs for quite some time and it was as we had both gravitated more toward Instagram that I was approached to join in off the back of the Nurgle conversions I had been creating at the time.
He pitched me a few ideas and a rough overview of what he was attempting to make of this collaboration. And the basic themes I gleaned from our first conversations were as follows:
"The Ashen Stair is an ash covered, twilit, nightmarish hellscape, a limbo demi-plane lost between realms and all who find themselves here do not usually do so by choice, cut off from their gods and the rest of the mortal realms, they are left with little but the most basic need to find a way to survive or escape, with little hope but to die forgotten attempting either..."
What can I say? It spoke to me on an almost primal level, this was something I could really get into...
I accepted the invitation and my Maggotkin of Nurgle found a bleak, unwelcoming new home.
Instagram seemed to organically become the main home of #TheAshenStair as we hashed out ideas for the setting in private messages, pitched ideas about our creations to one another and shared works in progress on the platform.
The group is made up of some very talented people and I do urge you to go check out their profiles: @paintspencilsandplastics, @remnante, @exanimusminis, @incronoswake, oh yeah and there's me too @meanderingshade. And if I remember correctly I think that somebody else might be joining...
*EDIT* There was indeed somebody else lined up to join - @weird_witticism
I'll admit I'm being a little oblique with the details, but that's because we've kept much of the work under wraps for quite a while as we worked on other hobby projects, or in other groups, or just had normal life events to attend to; and this has been going on in the background on a slow burn while we ruminated on our many ideas.
We'd talked of the style of games that might take place, whether full scale Age of Sigmar games, skirmish games and other things besides. But the first announcements of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Warcry really piqued interest within the group and with new inspiration we've been getting a little more organised.
Warcry looks like it will be an ideal vehicle for the sort of narrative small scale games we had conversed about. We've been collating all the ideas and setting information we discussed into one place, a "setting and warband narrative guide" if you will, so that we can release it publicly and others can get involved if they wish.
Jordan has already taken the first steps to organising an event in Ireland: Would you like to be part of #TheAshenStair?
It's unlikely that I'll be able to attend unfortunately, but I'm possibly looking to organise something a little more locally that will share the overarching narrative and setting.
There's already a fair amount of work in progress images on Instagram tied to the project. Here's a few of my own:
That's all there is for me to say on it right now, I just wanted to mark what has been going on behind the scenes and what I've been up to for what feels like an age away from the blog now.
As more develops and I complete more of my part of the project I will try to post more here and... elsewhere...
Take care
Some of the work I've been doing for this project has been posted up on other social platforms here and there, but it really has deserved something more from me here on my own little corner of the internet to document my involvement so far.
We had followed each others blogs for quite some time and it was as we had both gravitated more toward Instagram that I was approached to join in off the back of the Nurgle conversions I had been creating at the time.
He pitched me a few ideas and a rough overview of what he was attempting to make of this collaboration. And the basic themes I gleaned from our first conversations were as follows:
"The Ashen Stair is an ash covered, twilit, nightmarish hellscape, a limbo demi-plane lost between realms and all who find themselves here do not usually do so by choice, cut off from their gods and the rest of the mortal realms, they are left with little but the most basic need to find a way to survive or escape, with little hope but to die forgotten attempting either..."
What can I say? It spoke to me on an almost primal level, this was something I could really get into...
I accepted the invitation and my Maggotkin of Nurgle found a bleak, unwelcoming new home.
Instagram seemed to organically become the main home of #TheAshenStair as we hashed out ideas for the setting in private messages, pitched ideas about our creations to one another and shared works in progress on the platform.
The group is made up of some very talented people and I do urge you to go check out their profiles: @paintspencilsandplastics, @remnante, @exanimusminis, @incronoswake, oh yeah and there's me too @meanderingshade. And if I remember correctly I think that somebody else might be joining...
*EDIT* There was indeed somebody else lined up to join - @weird_witticism
I'll admit I'm being a little oblique with the details, but that's because we've kept much of the work under wraps for quite a while as we worked on other hobby projects, or in other groups, or just had normal life events to attend to; and this has been going on in the background on a slow burn while we ruminated on our many ideas.
We'd talked of the style of games that might take place, whether full scale Age of Sigmar games, skirmish games and other things besides. But the first announcements of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Warcry really piqued interest within the group and with new inspiration we've been getting a little more organised.
Warcry looks like it will be an ideal vehicle for the sort of narrative small scale games we had conversed about. We've been collating all the ideas and setting information we discussed into one place, a "setting and warband narrative guide" if you will, so that we can release it publicly and others can get involved if they wish.
Jordan has already taken the first steps to organising an event in Ireland: Would you like to be part of #TheAshenStair?
It's unlikely that I'll be able to attend unfortunately, but I'm possibly looking to organise something a little more locally that will share the overarching narrative and setting.
There's already a fair amount of work in progress images on Instagram tied to the project. Here's a few of my own:
That's all there is for me to say on it right now, I just wanted to mark what has been going on behind the scenes and what I've been up to for what feels like an age away from the blog now.
As more develops and I complete more of my part of the project I will try to post more here and... elsewhere...
Take care
This looks sikk!
ReplyDeleteCheers mate, we've been really enjoying working on it.
DeleteLooking very very smart indeed!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much :)
DeleteApologies for the very tardy response, I must have overlooked the notification.