After helping the villagers of Greenest through a tough night, my players faced Langdedrosa Cyanwrath – a blue half-dragon champion of the Cult of the Dragon. I used Gulark, the Reptus Lord from Reaper as a miniature for him.

In the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Cyanwrath is some kind of bodyguard of Frulam Mondath, the wearer of purple (aka officer) of the cult cell attacking the village at the beginning of the adventure path. After a long night of fighting in the village, he challanges the PCs to a duel. This is a very cool storytelling device, but it seems kind of wasted for a bodyguard of the local cell. So I decided to promote my Cyanwrath to the leader of his own cell. He’s a blue half-dragon, so he’s leading an elite warrior band of The Cobalt Claw. He and four of his dragonborn warriors came all the way down from Leilon (located between Neverwinter and Waterdeep) to train Frulam’s war band, as they are mainly comprised of mercenaries, cultist aspirants and low-ranking cultist dragonclaws. So when he’s duelling a PC in Greenest, they will surely hate him. They will face him again later in the campaign – and when they do, he’ll be too important to avoid.

Obviously, I needed a miniature that closely resembles the art in the book. I found that miniature in Reapers Gulark, one of their Reptus Dragonmen (SKU 03442). I also tried some new bases from Tabletop Art for this figure. I really like their range of bases. It’s a german company, so it was easy to get hands on the bases. The ancestral ruins (25mm bases) seemed like a nice choice.

The miniature itself is very nice. It was sculpted by Gene Van Horne and there are great paint jobs all over the internet. I especially like two of them: This one by Anne Foerster and this version from Jen’s Mini Painting.

Preparation

The miniature was a little deformed and had to be assembled and straightend, first. After that, I removed mold lines and cleaned the whole thing with soap water. To use the base, I cut off the standard base and drilled holes for pinning the mini with pieces of a paper clip. Unfortunately, the mini stood a little crooked. I picked a base with a small slope to adjust for that.

Basing and Priming

The figure and the base were primed with my usual method: Airbrushing black Vallejo primer and then dusting it with white primer for shading.

Painting

Again, no work-in-progress pictures, sorry. I basically started with the blue skin and went on to the armor. I used washed and some drybrushing as well as layering to build up highlights and achieve some shadows.

I tried to stay as close to the source image as possible, but I could not for the life of me paint the small details on his robes. I tried, but failed miserably. I repainted the cloth with purple and decided on a very simple pattern of golden stripes. I also had problems painting his very small eyes under the helmet.

After I thought I was finished, I glued him onto the base and decorated the base with tufts of grass and a couple of brown plastic leaves. But after I took pictures of him and looking at the mini on my computer display, I realized I had to rework some of the contrasts. I didn’t do any dark lining between colored areas, so I used a micron pen to draw some dark lines as the last step. As a result, the contrasts are pretty strong. But they work on the gaming table!

Here are pictures of the finished miniature:

I’m lagging behind my D&D campaign quite a bit. My players are in episode 6 right now (21 sessions since their confrontation with Langdedrosa Cynwrath in Greenest). I’m finishing miniatures just in time to use them in my game and don’t find enough time to take pictures and posting them.

Chronologically, my player met with the leader of the Cult of the Dragon cell in the Greenfields, next: Frulam Mondath. So the next post will feature Frulam and her Dragon Claw elite guards.