The Origin of the Naz-Said
I’ve been working on a series of short stories called the Iron Ridge Chronicle. The stories take place in an emerging steampunk society. The setting is on a world called Agea in the Barnard’s Star System (and relatively close to Earth). A few hundred thousand years ago, a massive meteor struck the planet and created a vast crater in the mountainous northern hemisphere. A massive inland sea modern people call the Henna Shores fills the deepest part of the crater. The Plains Dancer, one of the rivers feeding the Henna Shores, flows through a lake, called the Deep Dancer. All of the Iron Ridge Chronicle stories take place in the Deep Dancer Region.
While developing the world, I thought I’d throw a few cheesy plugs towards the History Channel’s “Ancient Aliens” – A show from which I drew a lot of (in most cases, humorous) inspiration for the development of the ancient history of Agea. The technology that is developed in the region is based on archeological discoveries from “ancient alien” civilizations that once inhabited Agea.
One of these “ancient alien” civilizations are the Naziri. The Naziri are a particularly nasty civilization of capitalists with morals that are suspect at best. The Naziri civilization exists as a hundreds of corporations that have evolved profiteering into an art form over several millennia. These corporations are also highly militant, and have no qualms about taking objectives by force – as long as the profit margin is high enough.
The Naziri, created a wide variety of hunter-killer automated robots that could operate for sustained periods of time with no need for resupply in hostile combat environments. However, these automata were often used as much for exploration and resource surveys.
In the case of Agea, the Naziri Mohenjo-Daro corporation (one Ancient Alien theorist thinks they built a city on Earth), dropped several hundred Naz-Said in the planet’s Deep Dancer region to locate and survey mineral and gem deposits in a vast cave network under the planet.
After the Mohenjo-Daro abandoned its colony on Agea, the Naz-Said were left behind. Thousands of years later, several of the robots have been discovered by the Company of the Curious Apparatus. The company houses the automata for study in workshops in Nebuchadnezzar’s Arcanium in the port city of Nissa.
The Prototypes
I was sketching out some ideas for the Naz-Said and I decided it would be pretty fun to build a few of them to sit on the shelf. I started watching some videos on YouTube to get some ideas from scratch builders on different ways to construct toy robots. I stumbled across something called a “Bead Bot” on Bill Making Stuff. He was making 28mm robots from wood beads and other junk he pulled out of a seemingly unlimited supply of tackle boxes full of junk.
I had a bunch of wood beads left over from a knotting project, so I pulled them out and started randomly fitting beads together with other junk until I had something that pretty closely resembled my sketches. However, I didn’t adhere to the 28mm requirement.
I made five prototypes from wood beads, a few different types of beads made from various unknown of materials, 26-gauge floral wire, 20-gauge jewelry wire and some zip ties. I also tried a few different paint brands (Naz-Said P-005 got scrapped because the cheap craft paint, well, the paint … it just sucked). I also tried some different techniques on bases made from the lids of Yum Yum Sauce.
Overall, the Type Is came out pretty well – except for poor P-005. However, they’re pretty plain and lack a lot of detail – I didn’t use any Greeblies in their construction. But, the construction method I came up with is pretty solid and easy to duplicate. So, I can make a lot of these pretty quickly.
I’m also going to have to come up with a better base than the Yum Yum lids. I dropped P-003 when I was painting it and a huge chunk of gravel and sand just popped off the base. I had a few extra Yum Yum lids (that’s some great sauce), so I did some durability testing. I tried a lot of sanding and different types and brands of glue, but I didn’t have to put a lot of effort into breaking anything off the plastic lids.
Advanced Naz-Said
Right now, I’m sketching out more detailed versions of the Naz-Said. I’ve also picked up a wider variety of beads that will allow me to add more variety and texture to the models. I’m working to strike a balance between the level of detail and the amount of time it takes to construct each model. I’m thinking about making a large batch of these down the road, so I want a construction and painting method that will be fast and efficient, but produce a display quality model.
The next generation will be the Naz-Said Type II, which is the basic combat model. The Type IIs will also get an upgrade from medieval weaponry wielded by the prototypes to more advanced weaponry – or as Simon Phoenix says, phaser guns.
Stay tuned for developments on the Naz-Said Type II.
Boondock Bight 