A Gathering for Necropolis

This past February I attended Leaving Asphodel, a Necropolis event and part of the annual Black Queen Hobby and Miniature Painting Competition held by UMS “Agram” in Zagreb. Just for the occasion I wanted to craft a sick Grillet box to house and transport my Gathering and gaming implements.

My starting Gathering consisted of a single large model: the Vampire Queen (using the Ascended Undead profile in the Necropolis rules). I used my own sculpt, but made a few changes to customise her. The wings got extended slightly down the back. The head got some work with greenstuff and Milliput, changing the features to make her unique. I also added a bit of flight membrane between the arms and the body. Finally, I decked her out with rings, bracelets, and earrings.

Right around that time I happened to pick up some oil paints, and decided to use this project as an opportunity to experiment. I had never had a fully serious attempt at painting minis with oil paints before that. Turns out I enjoyed painting with these. It’s a whole new thing to get the hang of. I was reminded of the time I first tried polymer clays after sculpting exclusively with epoxy putties for years. Anyway, these paints take forever to dry (a blessing and a curse), I must be extra careful not to touch or drop the mini, there are fumes, it’s glossy as hell… The differences are something to get used to. I don’t see myself ever replacing water based acrylics with oils, but I’m hoping to use them on more future projects and learn to exploit their advantages.

The carry case was a far more ambitious project than the model. I purchased an empty wooden box at a local arts&crafts shop, and got to sketching. It soon crystalised into a plan: a cabinet with a diorama compartment housing the mini, a drawer and boxes for gaming accessories, and a booklet with stats to reference during the game. The whole thing would be blinged up and made to look like a cross between a faux vampire hunting kit and the Dybbuk box. The build included cutting and gluing MDF for compartments, crafting a drawer from scratch, a bit of light bookbinding, whole miniature environment build, and more.

Crypt environment before paint. The base structure is foam, and then I assembled the walls out of plaster elements from Rotten Factory’s Rotten City moulds. The gate is balsa wood.

Inside of the cabinet door. Photocopied a small pile of cool paper things: an Ian Miller tarock card; a pair of Moritz Krebs’ cards; stickers from In Rust We Trust, Colecifer, Blial Cabal; and pages from books and articles from my personal library that say something about vampire lore. Stained the lot with coffee, and glued it all inside the cabinet door with PVA. At this point I also stained and distressed a tiny softback notebook that would hold my game notes, as well as the kraft boxes for dice and tokens. I pulled out an assortment of crosses, painted them all black, and fixed them inside the door to help contain the bloodsucking beast.

 I carefully collected colour-coded dice and mana tokens for Necropolis’ three mana types: Blood, Bone, and Plasm. The sigil on the box lids and the notebook cover is lino print.

That’s it about my Necropolis Gathering project. Next time I’ll tell you a bit about my time at the Leaving Asphodel event.