Welcome to Khaliat Min Bus!

(A small village in a desolate land)

I finally finished one of my most challenging projects of the year. 

This North African village was one of the largest items I purchased during my Enfilade! "fly-by."

Available from Ray Sam's Fine Architecture, via Monday Knight Productions, the resin-made village consists of six buildings on a large base.

(A top-down view of the village)

After spraying on the primer, I painted the entire model brown.  Then came the challenging part:  painting the doors and windows on the individual buildings, some of them set maddeningly close to each other.  There were some spots I ended up re-doing three or four times.

Once I got to the point where I was satisfied with the paint job, I was more than happy to start the flocking.

I stumbled across some very fine sand among my stash of flocking and used that for most of the base to represent the streets and alleys.  To represent adverse terrain, especially on and around the hill, I used a variety Gale Force Nine's small, medium and large sand flocking.

(A look at the hill an the various grades of sand flocking)

I wanted to add a splash of color other than various shades of brown and khaki, so I added grass to represent weeds clinging to the shaded areas of the village, along with a walled garden using meadow grass.

(A garden among weeds, sand and rocks)

 Since this was an involved project, I wanted to give my new-found village a name. 

Originally, I was going to go with a "dung theme," like I did for SAGA Welsh warband, which became the centerpiece for The Chronicles of Culhwch y Drewllyd.

Using Google to translate words and terms, the village was initially going to be Jamal Hall Qry, or Camel Dung Village in Arabic.

But after reading some Star Wars related material, and thinking of a desert setting, I was reminded of Obi Wan Kenobi's comment about Mos Eisley in Star Wars:

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

So my village went from being Jamal Hall to Radi Khalia, or Wretched Hive.

But I didn't like how it sounded.  I thought it would sound better if "Khalia" came first.

When I plugged the word order change into Google, I came up with something slightly different:

Khaliat Min Bus, or Hive of Wretchedness.

I liked how this sounded, both in Arabic and English.

(An Israeli squad enters the village.  What will they encounter?)

 Now that my village is painted, flocked and "properly named," I like the versatility of Ray Sam's work. 

Khaliat Min Bus could conceivably be found in any era, or on any desolate world--maybe even in a galaxy far, far away...

(Reinforcements arrive to investigate Khaliat Min Bus)