When Rangers of the Shadowdeep were released we had an idea with a group of the gaming friends - lets try and do something unique with it - And that is how Ronins of the Shadowdeep was born.
But as my friends are creative so they are lazy and nobody finished anything.. I am gathering and building slowly some Japaneese models in the background. Ive stumbled on the file with enemies in the scenarios from the rulebook list and decided on impulse I want to get me some far Asian styled zombies, but as my knowledge of Japaneese folklore is very weak I decided to go for classic pop culture take. I did not wanted them to be just Asian looking zombies (as I dont like the looks of most of those. According to wiki Asian undead common to China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam are called Jiangshi or Kyonshī in Japanese and "are depicted in popular culture to have a paper talisman (with a sealing spell) attached onto and hanging off the forehead in portrait orientation". Thats exactly what I wanted, although I wll skip mandarin dress (but I will make evil mandarin necromancer in the future).
So I went to look at what I have. only zombies I have laying around were the worst imaginable Wargame Factory Zombies. As pitifull as those models are they take green stuff nicely and work as dollies so I started to work.
First one is vanilla zombie with straw hat and paper talisman
Despite simplicity it should work as poor zombified peasant from some Japanese backwater. But its mostly ugly WF zombie, I wanted to have them more Japaneese (straw hat works wonder but I wanted more. So I checked my living models and decided to mock them in to unliving caricatures.So those guys were made.
Once beautiful ex-Geysha.
A ronin chatracter
Zombie samurai
and some random villager/peasant (that hat with stylised clothing works wonders.)
I am working on servants of the Shogun of Darkness (Shogun of Shadowdeep?) to counts as ghoul (accidental crafting them from another random set of not so hot miniatures - but more on them next time. :)