Not, not that Muriel, though when I looked up the name of this thing, it’s what immediately came to mind and still won’t leave – despite not even having seen the film(!) Anyway, another D&D monster from the board games I’ve got, this time one who is a named character/villain in the lore. Apparently, Murial’s potted backstory is such: “A capable fighter in his youth, Muiral was recruited by Halaster as a bodyguard but soon he started studying under Halaster as a wizard. He learned to magically graft materials together. When Halaster broke off all contact, he descended into madness, grafting his torso onto the body of a giant scorpion to better engage in combat.”
So… okay. The more I see and read about these D&D monsters, the less silly Warhammer lore appears by comparison. Bombastic and overblown, for sure, but wow this D&D stuff is silly.
In the artwork I was able to find of Murial, he appears to be depicted both with green skin/carapace as well as brown. I clearly said “fuck all that” and went for a eye-meltingly bright, boiled-lobster-red. This did leave me with a little obstacle to overcome in that I wanted to make his face pop just a little, and if I’g gone for browns then a blend to flesh tones would have been simple, though it appears to have still come out okay with a red-to-ruddy-fleshtones approach. And with all this red, the eyes just had to be yellowy-green, natch.
This model is actually one of the more recent in my collection, oddly. I only picked up the Dungeon of the Mad Mage box last June, making this model an absolute newbie in terms of how long I’ve had it before adding paint to it, though it’s still long enough to qualify for Ann’s “Neglected But Not Forgotten” painting challenge. One reason it even took this long is because I prefer to sculpt some basic flagstones on the bases of the larger D&D models, but getting in between all those legs…. so instead, it sat on my desk for months, primed. That was until the other day when I got distracted from my previous distraction for Swordmaster’s Monster March painting challenge – so this figure also marks the first of my (hopefully many) submissions for that painting challenge…
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Like the bold colour choice you made, it works well for the model. By the the sounds of the description they were using an Emperor scorpion for the basis, as they turn a bright emerald green when mad, but are normally blacks and browns in colour, but I think your choice beats it
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Thanks Dave – though I think their choices were just two completely different artists’ take on a written character since there’s several other stark differences in them (like his head!)
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Oh come on, who hasn’t parted company with a boss or mentor you respected and then grafted your body to a giant arachnid? Its how I leave all my jobs. I don’t even bother to resign now, I just rock up to the office on eight legs and HR takes it from there. Anyway, great work on him, I certainly wouldn’t fancy meeting him coming the other way through a dungeon!
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Haha! 😀 And thanks Wudu! I’m sure he’ll be an unpleasant foe, at least.
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The boiled lobster look works really well, simple but very effective. If anything he just looks bloody furious and I’d avoid him unless he was served on a plate with lemon butter.
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Hmmm.. I could go some seafood this weekend. Thanks for the idea!
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Very nicely done! 🙂 I think all the colouring works really well!
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Thanks John! I do like to colour in my models! 😉
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Bizarre figure- really like the paint job on it/ him though.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Cheers Pete. I guess it’s just another take on the Centaur trope, just with a very silly backstory.
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Excellent work. That lobster coloration really works well and as you write, that bit of emphasis on the face makes it pop nicely. The backstory seems pretty far fetched and silly. Would work better as a mythical creature or centaur like race, to be honest.
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Thank you! And yeah, I agree. I think Driders are a silly D&D concept as well, but they work better as a racial/magically ascended concept than just something a guy did because of the trauma of his mentor saying FU.
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So strange but so cool.
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Cheers IRO! 🙂
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Very nice – love the bright red!!
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Thanks Alex. A bit of a play around with layers of different contrasts and various washes and glazes.
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That really is a strange and silly concept to my mind anyway. I like the color scheme as in the natural world, dangerous creatures are often brightly colored to intimidate predators away. I don’t see any reason why Murial would be any different! Fortune often favors the bold and it certainly did for you in choosing a lobster-like scheme 🙂
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Well, if you’re going to fuse your torso to the body of a giant scorpion, then why not also colour yourself bright red? It’s not like you’re going to be a stealthy wonder at that size, after all.. 😀
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Dungeon of the Mad Mage is at the whacky end of the D&D scale. I think some people may have gone a bit weird during the writing, as they were trying to write a twenty level mega dungeon.
Encounters include a full musical number pastiche of a Disney Movie, a level that’s a trap-fest game show style encounter complete with annoying announcer voice, and so on . . .
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Ah I see – it’s the Saints Row III of D&D modules in that case! 😀
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Good stuff. Having almost the entire mini in variations on the same colours is a bold choice but I think it pays off nicely here. As for the overblown stories, my much younger self would have loved it, my slightly younger self would have cringed at it and finally now I revel in the sheer silliness.
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Thanks mate – not the sort of thing I’d usually do, but captain arachnid here has carapace-ish plated right up to and including his arms, neck and head, so the model’s not even a good candidate for the usual centaur thing where it’s a brown horse somehow blending into a pale dude’s torso where his pubic hair would begin, so I just added a little bit mroe flesh to the red to make his face a tiny bit more distinct.
As for the lore, I’m not invested enough in D&D to care either way, but I *will* mercilessly take the piss to keep myself amused! 😉
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