Apsect of Eilistraee

I just finished my scratchbuilt Aspect of Eilistraee, the dancing woodland goddess of goodly drow.

It was a pretty simple modification from the Urban Legends Sophie available at Reaper Miniatures.
I looked everywhere for a naked 72mm female elf with a sword, and the Urban Legends Sophie is really the best miniature for the purpose outside of sculpting your own. Once you have the mini, which is a fantastic sculpt by Werner Klocke and under $25, simply don't glue on the wings or the scabbard of the sword.

I then painted her using a black primer. Once the primer was completely dry--so as to avoid getting fingerprints on her smooth features--I worked up a nice length of Brown Stuff, a varient form of the "green stuff" sculpting epoxy from Reaper which I find a little easier to work with because it isn't quite as sticky.

I rolled the brown stuff out into a suitable length and then flattened it out, attaching it to the figure to create the long white locks of the drow goddess. Once the hair was attached and had begun to harden a little, I used one of my dental picks to etch in the hair and smooth the brown stuff into the hair of the original miniature.This inclued a second length of hair that I brought in through the crooked arm to flow down from the wrist. This step wasn't entirely necessary, but I liked the way it looked and it helped create the impression of the crazy long tresses Eilistraee is known for.

It took incredible patience, but then I waited 24 hours for the brown stuff to dry and harden, before putting a coat of white primer over the entire length of hair from the crown of the miniature's pre-sculpted locks down to the end of the hair that I'd added. I wanted to have her hair really shine and be irridescent, and black primer tends to give a ruddy appearance.

After the primer dried, then I began to paint the miniature using Reaper paints. I went with the painting guide of the Sophie as depicted in the website, but with drow coloration. I liked the red leather glove and leggings, because they show up nice on drow skin and reflect the only other color of a black widow spider, one of Lolth's avatars. Then I used true silver instead of gold.

The hair was done in Reaper Pearl White, so that it was shiny and opalescent. I used Storm Grey for the lips and breast accents, and emerald green for her eyes.



I'm not a particularly gifted sculptor or painter, but I'm quite pleased with my efforts and very happy to have another god to put on my shelf.

Scratchbuilding is going to be increasingly important as 4E has radically changed the pantheons of existing worlds and most of the gods have been eliminated. I'm sorry to say that Eilistraee does not fare well in the Lisa Smedman books and WOTC isn't likely to do a lot of miniatures of deities who are not current.