Train Tuesday Part 94: This One’s a Hoot

We decided to take the scenic route for this weekly edition of our beloved Train Tuesday! Passengers always want to gaze out their Hovertrain windows and see the “natural” beauty of The High Forest as they hum towards their final destination.

There’s just one small problem with this rolling-hills theory. The Forgotten Rails’ engines are loud and kick up quite the dirt devils as they rumble along their new routes. That’s not exactly what the local wildlife are drawn to, and Omin Dran knows that swirling chaos is bad for business. So, he asked local Gnome Tinkerers to solve his wildlife scenery conundrum.

Waterdeep’s best businessman needs some lifelike mechanicals to catch passengers’ eyes as they race along these new rail routes. With the right placements, he’ll create a PR buzz and make some memories for the common folk. Think of it like a pimped-out animaltronics ride at the Disney parks.

Good ol’ mz4250 has a whole series of steel-forged woodland beasts that are free for all to download. We’ve been slowly slicing and dicing these beauties so we can eventually whip up some DnD one-shots. These gear bundles won’t always function as the railway execs had hoped.

These mechanized 3D-prints have some heft to ’em and typically span 2×2 or 3×3 d20 squares, so DM Ben doesn’t mind coloring these TTRPG miniatures in a pinch for the good of our humble DnD blog. Thankfully, mz4250’s STLs are very forgiving and easy to hold onto while your Speedpaints take care of business.

As longtime readers know, we adore Army Painter’s Metallic Speedpaint set and use it allllll the time in our weekend coloration jam sessions. DM Ben likes to keep the clockwork series paint steps nice and simple:

• Prime Flat Black.
• Body: ASP Polished Silver.
• Feathers: ASP Hoard Bronze.
• Feet/Claws: FAN Dark Emerald.
• Eyes: FAN Elven Armour.

The Hoard Bronze just sings here, as you can tell, the makers were like, “How the heck do we fake feathers?” Well, all the Tinkerers needed to do was bolt on some rustic metal here and there.

We’ve been hesitant to add the FAN Softwash to these metal monstrosity models because Omin Dran wants the sun to reflect off their metallic bodies and draw as many eyes to them as possible.

You can see our new Clockwork Owlbear pairs nicely with our other gear-centric beasts, like our recent robotic panther. Typical Hovertrains rumble along their routes at approximately twenty mph-ish, so all our passengers need to bellow is, “Hey! Did you see that?!!” Waterdeep practically lives off rumors, and Omin Dran knows it.

A quick Google DnD search revealed a pretty decent 5e stat block for our steampunk owlbear in the somewhat likely event it suddenly malfunctions and goes on a rampage: AC 14, HP 61, Beak +7/1d20+5, and Claws: +7/2d8+5. We also love WorldAnvil’s Self-repair trait. We just disagree with the armor class here as it’s one big ol’ hunk of metal, so we’re going to bump all our Clockwork animals to ACs of 18-20.

Until next time!