From HerrRobert (Robert H): D'Kuhl and the Pit of the Pendulum (50 points)

 

Lights dancing down the hall ahead of them, the party moved through the chambers with some rapidity. Padded boots softly tapped on the greenish-gray slate, the air stale and musty. Dust, left undisturbed for unknown aeons, or perhaps only days, swirled into the air as they moved. Iolas stifled a cough, brushing dust from the fur lining his bolero jacket. He wished he'd thought to bring a cloak, or at least something with sleeves. Maybe one of those waistcoats halflings were so fond of.

He opened the door and moved into the chamber. Two wooden posts rose from what looked to be a bare wooden bed, perhaps the most uncomfortable bed Iolas had seen since that Orcish lass and her boudoir made from what had to be concrete. The two poles rose to a crosspiece, where a roughhewn iron blade hung from two pulleys. Dark though the iron be, the edge glinted in the purple light.

A figure in a pink cloak spoke. "At last, you have arrived at the Pit of the Pendulum . . . "

 

My next entry for Challenge XI is for the Pit of the Pendulum:

Paint something torturous, terrifying - or just something with a slowly descending pendulum-blade… swoosh… swoooooshhhh….. arrrghhhh!! 

I give you both: A not so slowly descending blade, and probably the most terrifying villain the D&D world can muster!

First up, I have the Reaper Bones Bathalian D'Khul. While Reaper calls him a Bathalian, we all know what he is, a mind flayer, or Illithid.

I picked up this figure sometime in 2019 and prepared him for the 2019 challenge, though he sat primed for a long time. For some reason, the primer ended up super sticky, and that probably contributed to not wanting to paint him for a while. I'm generally not a fan of the Reaper Bones, preferring the metals, and the cast was still somewhat bendy.

However, I needed a suitably terrifying figure, and, well, there's not much more terrifying than a mind flayer. Unless of course you don't mind your brains being eaten. 

 

Oddly enough, I picked the same color scheme - pink, blue and yellow - that I used for Iolas. Sometimes mind flayers retain vestigal memories and bits of personality from the host whose brain they ate as a tadpole. Maybe D'Kuhl had been an illusionist prior to changing his life priorities?

I painted D'Kuhl first, and so experimented with the yellows and pinks. I think they turned out okay. I used Games Workshop contrast paints, and really wasn't too fond of the yellow. I salvaged it by drybrushing Delta Ceramcoat Sunburst Yellow over the contrast. That did bring out a lot of details in his collar. 

 The robe is GW Volupus Pink over Vallejo Old Rose, and the long tunic is GW Terradon Turquoise. The absolute success was recreating the iconic mind flayer skin. I used Army Painter Gorgon Hide as the base, and then hit it with GW's Magos Purple. It really did the trick.

 The other bit for this submission is a Wizkids guillotine on a Renedra cobblestone base. A quick glance through the challenge archives indicates this is only the second guillotine submitted for the Pit of the Pendulum, so it's not as copycat as I thought. I saw it in my LGS and snapped it up, along with some other kinds of furniture. 

Painting went really quick, since it was pre-primed. All I had to do was glue it to the base and get cracking. I initially hit it with Vallejo German Dark Camouflage Brown, then a 4:2:2 mix of Charred Brown, Neutral Gray and Vallejo Dark German Camouflage Brown to give it a grayish tint. Finally, I washed it with Army Painter Strong Tone to bring out the woodgrain. The ropes were GW Skeleton  Horde contrast over Delta Ceramcoat Bamboo. The stone cobbles are my usual Hippo Grey, but I washed it over Charcoal Gray instead of dry brushing. 

Yes, I hear you fellow DMs wondering why the Big Bad reveals himself to the party so early. Well, mind flayers are right sadistic little gits, so they like toying with their food.

So, there we go. I am offering D'Kuhl as my Curtgeld for Challenge XI, so snap him up in the comments. With that, It's five points for D'Kuhl. I'm rating the guillotine five as well, since it's roughly 25mm figure sized. With the bonus points for chamber and Curtgeld, that's a total of 50 points.