It will still be a couple of weeks before we do the Wild Sheep Chase session, and while waiting I ended up doing some more crafting on my “finished” project.

Two of the three large tree platforms in the adventure are described as enclosed in the trees’ own wood, magically shaped around each platform and featuring doors and windows. I initially didn’t even consider making these, but the lull between crafting and running the adventure lured me back in and I decided to try it.

I ran through and dismissed a bunch of ideas for how to ago about creating what looked like branches extending from the base of each platform to create a curving exterior wall and round roof. Actual twigs? Tedious and hard to shape. Some kind of air dry clay, rolled in to log shapes? That would take a lot of clay at more cost than I wanted to put into a build that was essentially an experiment. I also toyed with ideas like mounting some flocked tree pieces on top to create a look like still-growing branches were protruding from it – but that would be delicate and make the piece even less likely to be re-usable for anything else after the initial adventure.

The compromise I went with was to build foam-and-cardboard structures to form the basic shapes of the “domes”, then coat them with a sand, glue, and spackle mix which I would try to texture and paint to look wood-like enough to pass for their intended purpose. This way the smaller of the two could be pressed into service in the future as a hut, and the larger as, for example, an orc captain’s yurt/hut home.

The basic building blocks were just some circles cut from XPS and stacked, with some cardboard cut from a Bisquick box glued around the outside. I mixed some spackle slurry and started applying it all over the pieces.

I did a full coating to shape the pieces and patched here and there as needed. When all was dried, I sanded down some of the less woody-looking protrusions. I used a razor knife to cut doors where needed and a drill to punch window holes. Then with a Dremel tool I carved some vertical lines extending out from the top center and curving around windows and doors to try for the appearance that wood had been shaped around them.

Paint was done similarly to the bark on the tree bases from earlier in the project. The photo makes them look lighter than they are in person. Doors were made from foamcore and glued into place. I decided they needed some green but didn’t want anything too complex or fragile, so I dribbled some PVA/water mix near the middle of each piece and sprinkled some grass onto wherever it trickled down.