Kromlech – Wizard’s Workshop Bookpile

While I only have one small thing to show off this week, I traveled back to my hometown over the July 4th holiday which is why I have less done than usual after two weeks. As the title suggests, it is a humble book pile but that doesn’t mean there weren’t plenty of details to work on with this sculpt. Most of the books had bookmarks or gold trim which made the piece of terrain somewhat painstaking to work on. The top book was probably the most fun to work on and I’m really happy with the green colors I used. I haven’t used those shades of green in far too long and I forgot how great they look.

And of course, here is the pile of books near a bookshelf! Things are really coming together in this photo.

At this point, I have the following left to paint for Hellboy terrain:

1 Bookshelf

1 Dresser

3 Book piles

Realistically, if I knock out the Bookshelf and Dresser, I’ll pretty much have everything I need for gaming purposes. So I’m very close to being done with that which is great. I have been unable to stop working on this project since I started earlier this year and at the rate I’m going, I’ll get them all finished in 2026 which would certainly be an accomplishment.

As I previously mentioned, I went back to my hometown and I did pick up a few things while there. The first is not surprising and that is my copy of Persepolis. I’m reading it currently and might elaborate a bit further on the book now that I have a chance to revisit it after many years. I also grabbed my copy of Lord of the Rings which is a brick of a book. I promised Sir Spalanz that I would show pictures of it, so here you go!

This is one book I would never part with as my Grandma and Grandpa gave it to me when I was in late elementary school or maybe early middle school. I had just found out about Tolkien’s work and I was obsessed with it. Both of my grandparents have passed away since then and this is one of the nicest and greatest gifts they ever gave me so its a nice way to remember them. This version of Lord of the Rings is an illustrated copy which was more novel at the time since the movies were quite a long ways off. Each illustration felt like gold because you could see Middle Earth and not just read it. The book was also quite expensive for that time. I’m sure it would be $200 or something crazy like that if it was released now. I don’t have immediate plans to read it but I might give it a go in the next year or so. Its been forever since I’ve read the books so it would be fun to refresh my memory.

Unfortunately, there is some sad news from my visit as well. While most of the video game collection is safely here where I live, the last piece to be brought over was the strategy guides I had bought over the years. I had guides from Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color all the way up to PS3 there. I would guess I had somewhere between 30-50 guides. For those who don’t know, Strategy Guides are both what they sound like and also a kind encyclopedia for popular video games. RPGs in particular would have these thick guides you could buy that would show you all the items, enemies, and sometimes even maps of every area of the game in addition to give you tips for beating the game. There was often art from the games sprinkled throughout as well. For me, it was kind of an essential experience. You get the game and the guide and can reference it as you play and just kind of immerse yourself in that world. Unfortunately, most strategy guides back then were fairly inexpensive paperbacks. They weren’t really built to last and indeed, I didn’t realize it initially but the guides were stored in my childhood home in the basement. In more recent years, the concrete started letting in moisture and mold got on the books and other things sadly. I didn’t realize it until this trip and the vast majority of the guides were moldy. Apparently its really hard to get rid of the mold and it permanently stains the books so they were well and truly ruined. Mold can spread to other things to of course so there is no way I’d bring them with me and risk other stuff getting moldy. I was left with no choice but to let them go.

To say it was deflating and disappointing, doesn’t really fully describe it. I guess I take the archivist/preservation part of video game collecting more seriously than I thought because here was part of my childhood that got ruined and it hurt to see it. Like I already mentioned, these books were paperbacks with cracked spines (you can’t avoid it with a 300 page paperback book!) and there was wear and tear on them. Each one is probably worth somewhere between $5-30, if you can find a buyer, but I still feel really bad and like I let something down by not taking better care of them. It doesn’t make logical sense but sometimes our emotions go that way.

I took home about six or seven that are worth something and/or are untouched by mold and will hang onto those anyway. I’m lucky I got my Grandia and Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines guides out of there a couple of years ago too as those are both ones that I really prize. So pour one out for my strategy guide collection. I didn’t really have room to keep them here and the collection was probably worth something like $300-500 and would have been a huge pain to sell. I wasn’t ready to let them go and had a tough decision in front of me in terms of what to do with them but the mold solved that problem I guess you could say. I will miss owning the guides and I’m sorry to see them go in this manner.

To conclude on a happier note, I’m starting some new projects this week and should have interesting things to share next time so I’m already looking forward to next weekend’s update!