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Mirror, Scrying Orb, and Pentagram

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These 3 pieces are a set from Scotia Grendel entitled “Magician's Accessories” and find various uses in my dungeon games.

First up – The Mirror ...

Yes it really does reflect! When I began painting the mirror I was wondering how I would make the glass look like mirror glass - I'd seen other people paint it with a sort of NMM effect but I've never been keen on that sort of style, I also considered painting it silver and coating it in gloss varnish but I wasn't convinced it would work. So I decided the way to go about it would be to use mirror-card, I looked around all the local craft stores … but to no avail. Then Madam M remembered that Superdrugs (a pharmacy/cosmetics store here in the UK) had loyalty card scheme called 'Beauty Card' and the card for it had a mirror on one side! – the card's were free to pick up in store so Madam M went in and picked one us as we passed the store. The most difficult bit was trimming the card to the correct shape to fit neatly into the mirror's frame and took a while to get right.

^ Superdrugs Beauty Card

Painting wise there's nothing much to write about for the mirror, but it's worth noting that although the piece looks quite plain from the front the back it's packed with detail in the form of a stack of books, a chest and some bottles and skulls, (this could be some good treasure if characters think to look behind the mirror!) plus the back of the mirror's frame has an intricate design on it - when I looked at the pictures on the website I had no idea any of this was there on the back. The piece also has a few smooth areas between the mirror and surrounding objects (both front and back) which I painted to look like cobwebs by doing 2 layers of progressively lighter fine grey lines crossing over each other randomly. The more observant among you will notice that there are a few casting bubbles in the resin on the left hand side of the piece (I must point out that this is quite a rare occurrence on Grendel Pieces)– normally I'd take some thinned down Mililput and fill this sort of thing in but in this case I left them as I thought it lent a old-battered look to the piece (things that have been sitting around in a dungeon for hundreds of years are bound to have taken knock or 2 in their time)

^ Shit! That's 7 years bad luck for that poor Fimir!

Instead of gluing in the mirror-card once I had cut it to size I left it loose and I used some of the left over bits of the mirror-card to make an alternate insert with the glass broken (some of our player characters like breaking things) I also glued a few smaller off-cuts to a separate base to represent shards of mirror glass on the floor. Having the option to swap out the intact mirror glass for a broken one and vice-versa, means that not only can the mirror be broken as part of a quest, but an adventure could also be based around trying restore a shattered magic mirror.

and the rest ...

Although the mirror is probably the most impressive piece my favourite would have to be the Pentagram/Magic Circle. The stone was painted in much the same way as I normally do stone, starting out with Citadel Adeptus Battlegrey and then dry brushing Codex Grey and Fortress Grey, the rich red of the inner stone was achieved by glazing the dry brushed greys with 2 layers of Baal Red. The metal was painted using MP Copper and Bronze shaded with watered down Citadel Devlan Mud and the highlighted with Dwarf Bronze. The runes were picked out in Blood Angels Red and Blazing Orange.
The stone part of the Scrying Orb's support got the same treatment as above, but with a little Citadel Bubonic Brown thrown in for fun and variety in colour. The gems were painted Blood Red, highlighted Ruby Red, given an extreme highlight of Skull White and then a coat of Gloss Varnish. I wasn't sure what material the clasping part of the Orb's support was intended to be, but I went for bone/ivory look to it. I started out with Citadel Graveyard Earth and highlighted up through Komando Karki to Bleached Bone. I had lots of different plans for the Orb itself originally, but part way through painting I thought it looked quite stunning just pure black, so I gave it a thin layer of Black Ink to make it look glassy and left it at that.

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MortiS-the-Lost

Re: Mirror, Scrying Orb, and Pentagram

Opps! Almost forgot to include a bonus picture – here, to prove to mirror really does reflect and it's not just some photoshop trickery I've taken a picture of myself in the mirror in the horrid traditions of FaceBook and the like

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~The ravings of a single mad Goblin is bad enough, but such a power-hungry, malice-filled creature as Mortis can never hope to be understood~