Spiros Kanakis - Steve Barber Greek Irregular No. 1 (2014)

I am a man of many interests. Too many, some might say. I am a huge nerd for 10th century Europe. Then I also dig all things Middle-earth. Warhammer (Oldhammer), too. Recently I even started venturing into Warhammer 40K. All of these had (or will have) some degree of space on this blog. 

The thing you didn't know yet is that I'm also a fan of all things Oriental in the Colonial Age. That wonderful time when Europeans were discovering the world was a bigger place than they thought, and were creating a new one by meeting the great civilisations of the East.

 

I even play an RPG set in 1831 Orient. We started several years ago with the PCs (a young and unscrupulous English gambler, an aging and disenchented Scottish war doctor looking for retirement, an ambitious and manipulative Italian Jesuit priest and an ex Turkish Janissary in hiding) meeting in Istanbul. Through haphazard planning and conning whomever they could, they managed to flee the city for Greece, Rome and then Egypt, where they are currently trying to escape once more a long list of enemies they made along the way. Several of them have died gruesomely and have been replaced by new PCs.

One of these is Spiros Kanakis, Greek merchant, sea captain and adventurer, who met the group in the Hellenic capital of Nauplia and was hired to transport them around the Eastern Mediterranean.

Spiros was naive enough to introduce the other PCs to his friends dealing in politics, high ranking members of the English Party. Soon enough their empty promises and clumsy manipulation forced them to leave and Spiros with them - partly because he does not dare to go back to Nauplia, and partly because he is decided to make as much profit as he can from the other PCs. He is a professional looking for profit but most of the time his efforts are directed at staying alive and not being arrested by the local authorities.

Spiros is currently in Alexandria, trying to book a passage for India, and at the same time trying to rescue the Scottish doctor whom, dressed as a Greek and posing as a Frenchman, was captured by the secret police of the khedivé and accused (quite rightly, I might say) to be a spy.

As far as I know, there is only one company manufacturing models of Greeks during the War of Independence period, and this is Steve Barber Models. They were commissioned to do this range by a generous patron in 2014 and they have, in my opinion, done an excellent job. This figure depicts a Greek or Albanian Irregular, with the traditional clothes of these people during the early 19th century. He is armed with a muzzle-loading rifle, a long straight knife and a curved sabre.

The level of detail is good, and painting it was easy and fun. I look forward to do justice to the rest of the range in the months to come!