The Monastery of the Benevolent Listeners

Only a few short weeks ago I made a nice new piece of terrain in the form of a fringe-world homestead. I happened to suggest it might also make a suitable Astropathic Monastery.

And then it just so happened that Asslessman was writing a scenario for a game between my friend Graham and myself. "An astropath temple would be cool to have" he says, "your dome/temple with statues and other things around would be grand".

Now I happened to have some statues already that I've used in the odd scenic set-up:

But they hadn't really been properly finished off. Time to sort out the statues and "other things" and turn the homestead into a temple.


My starting premise was this: everything had to be freestanding and/or removable. I still wanted to use the building as a homestead, as well as a temple. So I did some fiddling with bits and bobs. Some cutting of plasticard and some repainting of statues, and here's the results:

The Astropathic temple 'add-on kit'.

The large statue is from the Lord of the Rings plastic terrain. I've carved away his beard, added an astropath's cane, and mounted him on a pair of round bases. The portico is made from two toy arches joined by plasticard walls and roof.

The golden dome/minaret is simply half of a metal Christmas bauble (the kind you get sweets in). The symbol on top is lasercut acrylic, custom made for me by Chimeric Designs. The two banners are rectangles of plasticard mounted in a pair of old-school Blood Bowl slottabases (from the time when players were made of cardboard!).

My two favourite elements - I think they look rather art deco! They're a pair of columns from Rackham (I forget the exact names), sourced for me by the excellent Asslessman, topped with lights cut from GW 40k buildings.

I forgot to put this in the picture at the start, but this is the piece that hopefully joins everything else together. It's simply plasticard, scored to look like a tiled walkway.

So, what does this lot look like when you add it to the homestead? I'm glad you asked! Pretty cool, I think!

The added bonus, is that I can still use all the elements in scenic shots. For example, perhaps inside a different astropathic building:

One day, I hope to have a fully exclusive temple for my astropaths, but for the meantime, this little accessory set will keep me going!

As a final note, here's the temple itself being used in-game (Arbites are attempting to protect the Astropaths from the clutches of a menacing Genestealer cult):