As my players progressed in the story of the HotDQ adventure, they met one of the cult’s leaders. Talis the White is a great NPC, being a priestress of Tiamat and wearing a white dragonscale armor. There’s a miniature from GaleForce9 for her I used.

GaleForce9 produces specific D&D collector’s series miniatues. Because of their partnership with Wizards of the Coast, they release miniatures for each major storyline/adventure. They have minis for the Tyranny of Dragons and Elemental Evil storylines as well as for the new Rage of Demons storyline. They also produced miniatures for some DNDNext adventures some time ago.

I got my hands on the Dragon Cultists, because I wanted my players to face these important bad guys as they should look like in the pictures of the adventure. Besides Talis the White, the box contains the minis for Severin, Varram, and Rezmir. You will see them painted sometime this year ;)This is Talis the White as she appears in the adventure, drawn by the talented Bryan Syme. Of course I would try to imitate the colors in picture as best as possbible for the miniature.

Basing and Priming

The miniatures came in plastic blisters. I assembled them and primed them black and white.

Painting

First, I painted and drybrushed the base. I used a mix of blue and grey for the stones.

Then, I painted all the purple parts of the miniature. The highlights were made with several very thin layers of white in the mix, the shadows with black, accordingly. For the skin tone, I used Vallejo Game Color Elf Flesh, a very pale skin tone. It got a little darker and warmer with the Vallejo Skin Wash.

Talis’ armor is made of white dragonscales and has a blue-ish tint in the source picture. I first gave the armor two basecoats of Vallejo Model Color Foundation White, then washed it wish a 10:1 mix of water and Vallejo Model Colors Sky Blue. I wanted the furry backside of the cloak to have a different white tone, so I used Vallejo Model Color Offwhite for that. It’s a bit warmer and looks more like a natural fur of some white bear, wolf or whatever.

The spear was painted in VMC Chocolate Brown with a bronze spear tip. Talis’ wand is also detailed in the adventure book and was painted in white/grey with a blue sapphire at the tip. Finally, there are some gold ornaments in Talis’ brown hair and on her belt, for which I used Vallejo Model Color Polished Gold. And then, after six hours, I called her done.