11) Scud Light: The Rat Daemon We Have At Home

The story of Scud Light begins twenty years ago, in a different game, in the faraway land of Tennessee. 

I was running a tabletop World of Darkness: Werewolf game set in Stalingrad, USSR, during WW2. WoD was an urban fantasy game series about creatures like vampires and werewolves fighting secret supernatural wars, while trying to hide their existence from humanity. I was hosting the RPG at one of the local hobby shops in Clarksville, called the Wargame Room. I was a popular game-master back then, and so many people had signed up to play, that I actually had to split it into two different groups that would meet on different nights of the week. One group was a pack of Soviet werewolves from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. The other group was a pack of Finnish and Polish conscripts who had been press-ganged into fighting for the German Wehrmacht. Again, all of these player-characters were werewolves. The groups started out playing opposite each other on different weeknights, and made the same enemy: Major Unheimleich Brahms, and his Nazi SS werewolves, who were trying to awaken an ancient evil dragon that slumbered beneath the Alekskeeva concentration camp. After a few weeks of game, the two werewolf packs crossed paths, and I announced that we would all need to meet on the weekend for a special crossover episode. The players had a tense standoff, but realized that they shared a common enemy, and decided to join forces to save Europe from the evil Major Brahms and his SS werewolves. For the final battle, we put together two game tables, and had a huge battle, with terrain and miniatures. We had plenty of Russian and German miniatures and vehicles, already, but in order to pull this finale off, I would need as many werewolf miniatures as I could get my hands on. I hit every game store in the region, and scoured ebay for werewolves of any kind. I amassed quite the collection of them from all different manufacturers and game systems.

It was during this time that I acquired the wolf that would someday transition into a rat.

I don't know who made the mini. I don't know what game he was supposed to be for. What I do know, is that he was a muscular, beefy, naked, quadrupedal... ratty looking werewolf. He eventually found his way into my collection of misc D&D monsters. Over the years, he was occasionally used as a wererat, rather than a werewolf, just because he looked... ratty. My friend Mike Kolb commented that the mini looked less like a werewolf, and more like a rat that got into Creatine supplements from Chernobyl. At some point, the Gym Rat Beefcake Werewolf mini got lost in my basement, and nobody saw him for probably ten years. I found him in 2022, while I was cleaning out the workshop, and put him on the shelf with my hobby supplies, where he patiently watched me paint hordes of rats.

A few weeks ago, I had the idea to see if I could use him for my KoW Ratkin army. Out of curiosity, I stuck a pair of wings from a broken goat demon mini onto his back. I thought he might be good for representing the Greater Rat Daemon ScudkuZluk, who I had been considering adding to my army list. The mini looked really cool, but he was comically small compared to the titan sized base that Scud uses. This wasn't going to work. I hopped onto the Army Builder app to see if there were any other characters or units that I could use him in. I didn't really see anything that would work. The Rats don't have any flying units except for Scud himself. I was about to give up and take the wings off, when I remembered a battle report that I had watched on youtube when I was trying to learn the rules. In the video, there was a wizard who could fly because of a magic item that had been equipped. I realized that I could use my Gym Rat as a hero or wizard, and just give him the same magic item. I decided to make him a Warchief, equipped with the magic “Wings of Honeymaze”.

But now I had the opposite problem. The mini is quadrupedal, and designed for a cavalry base. He wouldn't fit on an infantry base, which is what a Warchief needs. He went from the base being too big, to the base being too small. Base size is all important in KoW, because all the measurements and mechanics for movement and combat are dictated by the dimensions of the unit base.

I'm no stranger to conversions, but this was going to be an ambitious one. The only way I could think of to make a four legged mini fit on a infantry base was to have it either rearing up or leaping forward. This was a heavy, solid metal mini, too, which meant that it was probably going to be very tippy. Thankfully, the wings I stuck on him are also metal, so that helped to balance him a little. I started off by cutting off his right hand and his right foot. I bent and re-positioned him so he was leaping, rather than running. I replaced his hand and foot with plastic rat ogre bits from the Mantic mega army box. There was a lot of filing, trimming, drilling, pinning, gluing, and gap filling, but I made it work. I gave him a rat tail from the Mantic box, and sculpted rat testicles out of airplane putty, just to be funny.

After looking at my WIP pictures, my friend Elle suggested a “tactical rock” to help give him some elevation and forward movement, while moving the attachment point to the back of the base. She's no stranger to the dichotomy of form and function, given the fact that she literally sculpts minis for indie games, herself. Her solution was exactly what I needed. The rock served as a great way to move some weight to the back of the base, too, and helped make him less front heavy. I filled the gaps with model airplane putty. There was a bit of drilling and pinning for stability, and once I was happy with the pose and the overall figure, I gave him some shoulder pads, a mace, and a shield, all from the GW Chaos warrior sprue. I let all the glue and putty dry, and then I primed him. While the primer was drying, I finished basing that second unit of clawshots, cooked a pot of spaghetti and meatballs, and put away a couple loads of laundry.

I couldn't wait to paint Scud Light, so I didn't. I painted him that evening before I went to bed. I decided to give him white fur and pink eyes, like a lab rat. I'm very happy with how he turned out. A lone Warchief with wings probably won't win me any battles, but he might make life miserable for enemy artillery crews. It doesn't really matter. I just like Scud Light, and I'm proud of him. He's an old friend. I liked him when he was a funny rat-face beefcake werewolf, and I like him post-transition, too.

“Honey, can we get Rat Daemon?”

“No. We have Rat Daemon at home.”

The Rat Daemon at home: