Natural Wild Woman Bivouac

This was made in three hours as a quick table top prop.  I wanted a place for the wild woman to live, she was described as having a ‘dwelling’ in a dungeon room that has a mud floor and swirling mists.

In the garden I found some dead passion fruit vines and brought them in, sterilised them in the oven and decided to try to form a bivouac.  The material was not ideal as it was not young and springy, rather dead and likely to break with too much pressure.  However, because they are passion vines there is a lot of natural curvature in them already.

I also had a bunch of dried lavender in the kitchen and thought this would look reasonable when added in for bulk, texture and colour.  I wanted a curved structure like a cave mouth and just high enough for a 28mm mini to stand in.

Initially I formed a semicircle with one branch and glued it into some XPS foam with hot glue for the beginning anchor structure.  I wound more branches into a structure based around the first curve and just kept adding to this.  Eventually to hold it together I needed to use some jute string on each ‘corner’ where it attached to the foam.

Once the structure was forming i started to weave in stems of lavender which added to the form and built the shape.  Once the sticks had been added I worked at covering the two corners of jute with lavender, almost like a thatched roof.

Finally to add in a bit more texture I added some moss tufts and wild flowers to give the impression that the bivouac was still living and changing with the seasons.  To set it and make the pieces more likely to stay together I gave a good coating of Geek Gaming Scenics matt scenic sealant.  Finally I pulled the structure from the temporary square of foam it was being built on so it will stand 'baseless'.

‌‌I was quite happy with the finished item which I displayed on the mud tile that it will be used with in the next game.