Requirements: Nwnv1.69, SoU, and HoTU plus CEPv2.2c3
Within a dark and foreboding forest, behind a wall of human bones, the walking hut of the witch known as Baba Yaga sits perched in a tree in the middle of a poisonous bog, its' legs dangling down at rest. Perhaps you should not have come to this place... but now, here you are. There can be no turning back! This prefab can be used as the dwelling place of a witch or any other evil being who makes his or her home in a forest. Ideal for getting into the Halloween spirit! :)
Included is a demo module and an .erf file for importing this prefab area into your own module.
Posted by vball5 at 2009-11-09 06:02:51 Voted 10.00 on 11/09/09
Please make Mithral Hall and I will so give you a dollar...
Posted by jdeavila at 2009-10-31 19:06:04 Voted 8.50 on 10/29/09
Fair enough...thanks for your comments too. I do appreciate all your hard work on these. Your are truly an artist when it comes to making these. _________________________ Imtherealthing
jdeavila, worry not! Your vote and the reasons for it was more than fair. :)
I probably should explain here why it looks a bit different than you might have been expecting it to by the name. My experience with the legend of Baba Yaga stems from my recent study of Russian Folklore and Fairy Tales, so I was unfamiliar with the official D&D version from Dragon Magazine, as well as unaware that such a thing existed. While a palisade all of bones would be ideal, this is the closest we can get to that look within the limitation of Nwn's current tilesets. Also... the reason for my having not detailed the interior of the hut was that in the stories I read... the interior of Baba Yaga's hut often changes to suit who is visiting her. So, to make it true to the legend, one would have to have a random crop of rooms for the hut's door to switch between for the PC to be transitioned to. While not at all impossible, I found it best to leave it up to the individual mod builder to decide how they'd like to interpret the hut's magical interior. Perhaps one fellow might prefer to have it big on the inside, small on the outside, or some other unique interpretation. Whilst another may prefer the random rooms idea. As for the reason why I placed the pumpkins; this was actually to make the prefab into a Halloween setting, appropriate to the season. It is simple enough for builders to take those out, for use in a non-Halloween capacity. ;) As for the legs, what you see in the prefab is the closest one can come to chicken-like legs without creating something that would require a unique Hak Pak. While there is a hut in the standard Mines/Caversn set that has literal chicken legs, I have yet to see it ported to the forest set. I also liked the idea of the hut hopping up into a tree and staying there, so I went with that. It makes Baba Yaga a foe that is that much harder to get to. Finally, the reason I placed it in a bog (as opposed to a clearing) was a bit of poetic license on my part. I'd always liked the imagery of the ghosts in Disney's Fantasia (A Night on Bald Mountain sequence), and that too was based on Russian folklore. So, I had imagined Baba Yaga having power over the dead (the bone palisade always had me picture her as a necromancer to a certain degree) and this image came to mind of a gaseous bog where sprits of the dead could rise up at her command. Placing her hut up high over this spot was inspired by the image in Fantasia of the dark god Chernobog looming over his summoned spirits. So, although it did not come from any Baba Yaga tales, this idea did still come from Russian folklore, to a certain degree. There you have the method to my madness! :D
I am glad you liked the detail anyway, and I have many more prefabs coming up soon. As I used to say: "Stay tuned... same Orc time, same Orc channel!"
Posted by Graymaster at 2009-10-30 07:09:22 Voted 10.00 on 10/30/09
Nice departure for you in some ways - i.e. not historical - and well worth the download.
Posted by jdeavila at 2009-10-29 16:22:55 Voted 8.50 on 10/29/09
Very nice detail. One nice rendering of this, but I would say not the way I remember reading about it and the pics and other stuff I saw on this in the old DRAGON magazines.
The hut was not even developed (the inside) - I disliked the pumpkin on the outside as well as the stone fence. You got the skull poles right though and the mood and I seriously like the water..I like this mod and will use it for something else since it is very good, but it is not the visual I had in mind for Baga Yaga's Hut. Someone needs to make a placeable or tilset with the hut on chicken legs and it should be surrounded with a wooden fence with poles with bones on it or (some versions) a fence made out of bones. It should be in a forest clearing. SO thus I gave you the vote I did...please don't let that deter you from making more of these really great prefabs!!! _________________________ Imtherealthing
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at 2009-10-30 22:04:25
