Rifle Infantry

(198X) Factbook serialization, part 3

Continued from the second part.

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CYDOLAND, continued.

FOREVER SOUP

Ever made a forever soup? Throw ...

2025-10-02 01:03:01 +0000 UTC View Post

(198X WIP) Railshaker

Little preview of a rather larger-than-usual factbook piece.

(198X) Factbook serialization, part 2

Continued from the first part.

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VANSA, continued.

BUILDING TO LAST

“Built Petty”/”Petty make�...

2025-09-21 01:17:02 +0000 UTC View Post

(198X) Factbook serialization, part 1

I figure a good way of kicking myself in the ass on the factbook is "serializing" it here. Not quite the whole thing, since this is only lore entries and illustrations (the main part, but not the whole, of the book). There will be CIA World Factbook-style raw nerd data on factions and subfactions (population, industry, arms, development, so on), map cutouts and other sundries to accompany these.

You may have seen a couple of these entries before as excerpts. This is the book's entries f...

(Firelock Fantasy) Confederate Arms

A progression of infantry equipment over nearly two centuries.

If I did a black powder Firelock wargame, I'd divide factional rosters into smaller era-subsets. Think Medieval 2: Total War; depending on the year of your campaign your available pool of units radically differs, as do your tactics.

The above trio depicts the Confederate rank-and-file in about 1700, 1850, and 1890 or so: the end of pike and shot, the high water mark of caplock linear warfare, and the onset of open or...

(Reupload) Gate Guard Sketch

Apparently I am developing schizophrenia because I swore this uploaded last month as usual.

Here's a pen sketch I did on gate guard in July during AT. Little hairy working straight from pen instead of starting with pencil, but it turned out pretty nicely. The clouds are rather rushed and I ought to have left that space blank.

The sketch depicts a Confederate musketeer and a clan lupar warrior advancing on some undefined target through the country--during that era in which they w...

(198X) Short-Timer

A little something to tide you over while I'm away doing tank gunnery. This piece has been posted for a little while, but I figured I'd discuss it in some detail.

The depicted man is a "short-timer": an enlisted naval cosmonaut of the Federal States-Navy Space Corps (ФЕДЕРААЛ СТАТЕН-МАРИНЕ РУИМТЕКОРПС, in the Calekrossan prestige script semi-adopted for Federal institutional titles). The Federals are the dominant space power on Oid, maintaining a large or...

(198X) Factbook entries, pt. 2

More from the factbook. These are without illustrations for now; that's been on the backburner in favor of writing. (Not quite three-quarters done and it's already more than a hundred pages of entries; expect more posts like this.)

Below is one entry from each subfaction (state, prefecture, etc.) in each of the four factions: a small slice of each part of the book. (Kindly forgive the fewer number of Rygo and Santi entries: those are still being written!) What's presented below doesn't ...

(198X) Hi-Lo Mix

A brief interlude from writing factbook entries.

You may be wondering where I've been this month--well, 85 pages into the factbook, and something like two-thirds done with the text (illustrations, graphic design, etc. notwithstanding). Suffice to say there's a small mountain of lore awaiting you with 1.0. I've balked at posting another run of excerpts without illustrations to accompany them (since those have been on the backburner while the writing happens), but I may well do it anyways...

(WIP) Federal factbook header

While it's raining here, I've been working on art for the factbook: visual headers for each faction capturing some essential moment in life in a "photographic" format. Here, John Federalman walks down the platform after a long journey by atom-fired railshaker.

This one was a little interesting to plan out with nothing on hand to use as a ruler but the pencil itself. I agonized a lot over the exact design of the railshaker (being that I do want to depict it in full later); the objective...

Pen tests and photography

May has been a pretty productive month for me thus far. Lots of new factbook entries and some more illustrations for them, mostly. For the time being I'm holding off on showing you those; my scanner is on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

For my trip to Romania (from where I'm currently posting) I did bring some Bristol board and my usual pens. I figured I would put them through their paces with some Landsknecht; one with my dip pen, one with my fineliners. Overall I prefer the dip pen (...

(198X Update) 0.9.5 and Rygo/Santi books

The man-machines of the New Rygolic Host and the nuclear knights of the Atom Barons of Santagria are now ready for play in Firelock 198X.

Find the books and material here: https://drekfortmdc.itch.io/firelock-198x-09-public

(198X) Factbook entries

I've mentioned a few times before that one of the things I want to bundle alongside the army books, for 1.0, is a CIA World Atlas-style publication full of lore entries: a sort of catchall for anything not relevant to the army books, with a general focus on civilian affairs; somewhat of a justification of why you're fighting, as well as a wellspring for creative work like custom scenarios. It currently lacks a proper name; so far my collaborators and I have been calling it the "factb...

(Firelock Fantasy) Dip Pens, continued

More fun with a dip pen. I'm getting a little better at these; for starters, I stopped spilling blobs of ink off the nib onto nearly-finished pieces. Compared to the first lupar I drew last month, I've eased off on thick outlines, probably by fineliner habit. I'll do some more with those in the future.

The first drawing is of a "herald" construct, dating from the time of the Master Brain's rule. All constructs, then, were imperial middlemen: receiving, in some way, the Brain's directive...

(Firelock Fantasy) Dip Pen Dogface

Trying out a dip pen for the first time with my usual subject matter.

Using an extra fine tip on a random Speedball pen I picked up from Michael's earlier today. No real idea what I'm doing* (nor is this my best hatching or anatomy) but I'm quite pleased with how this turned out. It's a lot more effort to work with a dip pen but I much prefer the variable thickness to my regular Staedtler fineliners.

*Note to self: about that much ink is too much.2025-03-29 05:05:38 +0000 UTC View Post

(198X) Tenant Officers

The last scenario unit for the Santagrines: just before the book is out.

With all of the major writing, art assets, and structural work already done on the next two army books I figured I'd even out the number of Santagrine scenario units with the rest of the factions. Here's a zero point TACOM for them, and something unusual by the standards of the entire (150+ unit) game roster: a unit with two standees and two "modes", depending on what it's to represent.

Tenant officers, in bo...

(WIP) World Map

"All of Oid by force of arms..."

Blank work in progress. If you've been hanging around on Discord you may well know that I'm busy writing a sort of CIA World Atlas-style setting factbook to go with the released game; essentially a vehicle for lots of civilian-side lore entries and sketches to help paint a picture of the warring cultures' home fronts. Naturally this will require an idea of where places look like. Here is a "blank" map--it will, in time, be painted over with various perti...

(198X) Santagrine Scenario Units

Yet more release bonuses, this time for the Santagrines.

You may notice there are only two here (compared to the three for Feds and Lupes): I haven't quite settled on the third yet, truthfully. That one will be figured out by release, but for now it will remain a secret even to you.

Commonwealth Rifles are, like Petty Stater infantry, an attempt to touch on a significant aspect of their faction's society that the majority of the army book doesn't cover. Santagria may be a mad land...

(198X) Federal Scenario Unit Standees

Standees for the prior-posted Federal scenario units (armed citizens, private security, and the civilian Veldjen). In case you missed those, here's the post.

Compare and contrast the civilian Veldjen to those retrofitted models de-mothballed by the States-Army:

2025-03-07 08:12:34 +0000 UTC View Post

(198X) Corpses and Husks

Replacements for the TTS module's placeholder corpse and vehicle/aircraft husk tokens. These are used as markers for dead units, serving a mainly aesthetic purpose with the occasional mechanical implications (e.g. lupar bloodlust and available corpses).

I wanted corpse tokens to be reflective of the personalities of each faction and to tell a little story of what's happened to your troops: after all, a "killed" squad may not necessarily have died to the last man. An uninjured Federal ca...

(198X) Federal Scenario Units

Some more release bonuses, this time for the Feds.

No standees for these--haven't gotten to them yet, but I figured I'd post the inkwork for the time being.

(N.B. -- miswrote HEAT in the civilian Veldjen as 8/12 non-Shaped Charge: as you might've guessed, it was originally meant to be an APHE round lol)

(Firelock Fantasy) Santagrine Grenadier

The Army of the Commonwealth, while composed of hardened veterans and professionals, was by the time of the Secession an antiquated force; still reliant on a core of armored pikemen and heavy cavalry, supported by comparatively-limited numbers of musketeers and artillery. Incremental advances in technology and (more begrudgingly) drill failed to upend its basic arrangement. Once, it was said, hard-nosed pikemen had brought about the Commonwealth; and so they would remain integral to its defen...

(WIP) Rygo standees

New Rygolic Host standees pre-scanning.

Not everything is ready for direct scanning and coloring. Some vehicles (e.g. the Candor and X-Ray) are presented in pieces, to be digitally reassembled into their variants (Cabal, Chorus, etc.) for consistency's sake. Others will need minor retouching (most notably the Node Team, owing to the remnants of a spill--I am disgusting, undisciplined and repulsive before the eyes of God, and will probably need to redo it altogether). Infantry weapon tea...

(198X) Lupar Scenario Units

Here's some that I don't intend to post in advance; if you're not here, they'll be a surprise inclusion come 1.0.

As you may already know, the New Rygolic Host's army book includes three "bonus" units, in the form of human auxiliaries from the Petty States: 

2025-02-07 22:01:50 +0000 UTC View Post

(198X) Santagrine Vehicle Standees

All the armor, support vehicles, and towed guns of the Atom Barons of Santagria. Aircraft to follow.

(198X) Santagrine Infantry Standees

All the dismounted troops of the Atom Barons of Santagria. Vehicles and aircraft to follow.

(198X) Full-Color Splashes

Every factional army book in Firelock 198X has splash art pages interspersed throughout--around four or five per book, complementing the text-based supplementary lore pages and minor illustrations here and there. Generally these splash pages are done in the same style as the rest of the army book art. One per faction, though, is rendered in a different style and in full color, and is an effort at indirectly portraying the faction's culture rather than simply depicting their forces in the fiel...

(WIP) Painting Guide Guys

All of the four army books will include, as an appendix, a painting guide depicting some of their forces in full color and advising on small details. The intent is to aid in painting kitbashed miniatures. I haven't yet colorized the Rygo example grunt; the other three are already finished.

Originally, the plan was to simply pick some unit art from each class (infantry, vehicle and aircraft) to colorize. This was doable for aircraft and vehicles:

2025-01-16 07:15:35 +0000 UTC View Post