Tomb Thursday P51: The Writings on the Wall

Greetings, fellow buried treasure seekers! Tomb Thursday hitting your digital screens for some more mysterious scatter terrain to fill your desert dwellings.

One thing that’s always amazed us about historic Egyptian tombs is all the captivating hieroglyphics on the walls and pillars, often still in surprisingly good condition. So, DM Ben thinks it’s an important immersion point to include these mysterious ruins within our sacred resting places beneath the sands.

And if it’s one thing you don’t have to search too far for, it’s these types of word-stuffed scatter terrain. Aether Studios is still the Pharaoh of all Pharoes for its hieroglyphic pieces, but we wanted to share some others as well.

So, let’s start with Cast n Play and their fun collection of Temple pillars from their sick Interiors Vol II Kickstarter. We’re showing off the middle one as we love those little shelves within the pillar. Sorta reminds us of Game of Thrones’ House of Black and White, the temple of the Faceless Man.

We also wanted to try our earlier ivory color scheme on something bigger than statues. These steps are easy-breezy, and we wanted a few columns in our scatter terrain desert arsenal to be of the fanciest kind.

• Prime Flat White.
• Layer ASP Ashen Stone.
• Heavy Drybrush of FAN Brainmatter Beige (or FAN Ancient Stone).
• Wavy Edging Lines of Ash Grey 1:3 parts water (on flat parts).
• Light White Drybrush.
• Inset Figurines: FAN Greedy Gold.

If your first pass ends up too light or too dark, you just re-apply one of those steps til your DnD 3D print is just right. We did this one in FDM, and there was a little inadvertent stringing but no big whoop.

Next up is this mighty Egyptian monument by Iain Lovecraft. This ode to the Gods is from his wonderful Desert Adventures Kickstarter. This one is just a treasure trove of large and small scatter terrain as well as unique miniatures for your sand-themed campaign.

For the history buffs, the god in this statue is Lamassu (or Shedu) from Assyrian and Mesopotamian mythology. In ancient Mesopotamian culture, colossal stone statues of Lamassu were placed at palace gates and city entrances to ward off evil. Wicked cool.

The default size of this STL is insane in the membrane. Like many in our beloved hobby, we are always fighting for storage space, so to keep things manageable, we went with a 2-wide by 4-long d20 squares. DM Ben sees the party discover this one, half-buried in sand, as the group gets closer to the actual tomb.

The party wizard could use comprehend languages to reveal an ominous warning from the stone inscription. DM Ben could print this out, and then if they decipher the ancient hieroglyphics, the group could read this stone-cold warning. Fun, right?!

Lastly, here’s a quick shot of each completed piece next to a traditional d20 miniature. Imposing without being too obnoxious, yet still making a statement to the group.

Until next time!