I came across a basecoated Reaper Bones Judas Bloodspire in my box of shame the other day, then I realised why I did not finish him: I did not like his face and didn't care much for the skulls on his armour.
A few minutes later is head was gone and so were the skulls. But what now? While googling I came across a copy of a portrait of Vlad Tepes apparently based on an original made during his lifetime:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Vlad_Tepes_002.jpg He was a Wallachian prince that lived 1428/1431 – 1476/77. Contemporary and later sources describe him as a cruel and ruthless politician, some go so far to paint him as a sadistic monster that reveled in drinking the blood from his impaled enemies. It does not come as a surprise that Bram Stoker got inspired by this historical figure for his Count Dracula novel.
I had this idea of a fictional family graveyard of the Drăculești for the base, going even further back to the House of Basarab. This would allow to depict weathered gravestones that are a hundred years old, some tumbled over and overgrown, the walls of the graveyard in disrepair. I imagine the entire family to be cursed by the gods with vampirism based on Vlad's cruelty. Embracing this curse, or ‘gift' as he likes to refer to it, he may have chosen the graveyard as a resting place. He cares little for its condition and revels in the decay surrounding him.
In my case the miniature's original sword was held at such an odd angle that its point was lower than the cast-on base. Instead of cutting off the arm and adjusting the weapon I kept the angle and decided to put the miniature on the edge of some stone steps. This works also very well with his raised knee and outstretched left arm. In the end I decided to replace his long sword with a Hungarian sabre or szabla, which I carved from a two-handed sword that was part of the Northstar plastic gnolls set using a scalpel. The historical Vlad Țepeș would most likely have used an european style sword, but his immortal counterpart may have adopted a saber when it became more acceptable among the nobility a hundred years after his "death".
To resemble more the portrait of Vlad Țepeș I added a new head and breast armor. Turns out Vlad's hairdo and mo was pretty metal back in the day. Anyhow, I used a head of the Gripping Beast Late Romans for this conversion. One of the soldiers wears a Pannonian cap which provides a perfect base for the Wallachian headdress depicted in the portrait. I still need to add the pearls and maybe a dragon emblem on the chest piece.
There are still some elements missing:
- As you can see the gap on the base will fit the graveyard wall. I think I will use a magnet to attach it to simplify transport.
- I also need to add the bat swarm to the background and another gravestone to the front left. This one was the bottom part of the bat swarm. I cut the Bones version in two pieces to be able to mount the swarm on some clear acrylic rod. Given the gravestone had a skull with batwings on it…*cough* I decided to add some new design with greenstuff. I had a flying dragon in mind to mirror the headstone behind it.
- I also want to add another hanging bat to the lower branch of the tree. This will most likely be the bat from the Reaper familiar set.
- A nice touch could be a tumbled over statuette that was originally placed in the little alcove of the gravestone on the front right. I'll see what my greenstuff skills can produce.
Here are some pictures of the base without WIP Vlad. If you are interested in how it was constructed head over to my blog, where I wrote a detailed step-by-step tutorial:
Unrested souls - How to make a graveyard themed diorama base 
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December 02, 2008, 01:33:05 PM
