The Mouldering Trappings of Kings: Building a Barrow Mound

"Cold be heart and hand and bone

And cold be sleep  under stone

Nevermore to wake on stony bed

Never til, til the Sun and the Moon is dead

In the black wind the stars shall die

And still be gold here let them lie

Til the Dark Lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land"

Chant of the Barrow Wight, Fellowship of the Ring

Hey nonny, What a dingus!

First, a confession.  I can't stand Tom Bombadil.  Every time I've tried to read Fellowship of the Ring his inane jabbering has resulted in me abandoning ship in disgust.  As much as I loved The Hobbit and the lore of Middle Earth I never saw Fellowship through to the end until recently.  Once I pressed on I was in for a treat.  Not only did I enjoy a story I'd long neglected, I also experienced the sequence with the barrow wights.

Reaper's Barrow Warden Lord makes a fine Wight.

Middle Earth's wights are rooted in Tolkien's study of Norse saga Gripssonar and old English.  The aspect of his hoary, damned kings are the product of the former while the names owe their origins to the latter.  To me the horror of the Barrow Wights is their pathos.  Though demon spirits they are slaves to the will of Sauron.  When they capture their victims and arraign them gold it seems they are recreating the fate of the First Age kings.  Not only do I feel some sympathy for these bound spirits, the scene is also a powerful Memento mori.  I'm only rambling about the Barrow Wights because I managed to find a suitable model for Blood Eagle games.  For the Lord of the Rings setting I still have to order some but they are on the list because I like the sculpts quite a bit.  Right.  This is actually an article about building a barrow.

Bryn Cellie Ddu on Anglesey Island, Wales

Before starting my barrow project I had to get a feel for what I was trying to recreate.  My goal with all my terrain building projects is versatility.  As someone who's interests lack focus I prefer building stuff that can be used in more than one genre.  I opted for a reasonably realistic interpretation of a barrow mound that could be used in Dark Age or Low Fantasy settings.  The piece will also serve well enough in High Fantasy settings but covering it in skulls and sigils would limit it's, "downward mobility".  For some guidance I googled up some barrow sites in the UK and drew most of my inspiration for the project from Bryn Celli Ddu in Wales.  I was taken by the image because the forboding entrance and  the mix of stone and greenery made for an interesting composition.  From a practical perspective the vegetation made it an easy blend into the typical grassland board or mat that I am currently constructing.  Boards are a larger undertaking than I like so I started with this barrow to reduce the scale and go into the undertaking with a win for my team.

Yuck!  That doesn't look like much.

The first stage of the build was roughing out the shape of the mound with layered XPS foam.  I also had a white foam dome kicking around I'd forgotten the intended purpose of so I grabbed that too.  I also mounted the shape on an MDF base.  I allowed a fair amount of room for the footprint because I was going to be adding material and didn't want to run out of space or leave myself with a ridiculous slope if I couldn't stretch it out enough.

Eadwulf inspects the plaster rocks.

I was intent on using plaster cast rock on the face of the mound with the entrance.  I'd watched a railroading video and was impressed by the techniques so I had a go at it rather than using carved foam.  I was impressed by the realistic results and found it a very intuitive process; Almost like building a puzzle.  I added the rock castings from the ground up sanding here and there to improve fits.  All rocks were secured with a glue gun.  Once everything was in place I filled gaps in the rocks and contoured the rest of the slope with joint compound.  It was the first time I used plaster rocks in a project so I may have got carried away with the pile that accumulated.  I may have been overzealous but like the way the rock balances with the earth.

Surfaced and basecoated.

I skipped adding a naked celluclay picture since the base coat of paint does nothing to hide the excellent texture.  Like the plaster this was my first use of the material.  I haven't sculpted with clay in ages but the material was far more like that than the paper mache I remember.  Like the joint compound I had to temper my impatience and leave the project alone for a couple days before I could move on to painting it.  Celluclay can hold a lot of water if you are too generous adding it to the mixture to watch out for warping if you are covering light materials.  I added water sparingly as I worked when Ifound a consistency I liked working with.  The MDF and layered XPS was strong like bull so it didn't bend.  I sprayed the dry hill with a black primer then painted the rock in a dark grey and the groundwork in a brown I like for base painting.

Those rude draugr moved right in.  This is for Barrow Wights bitches.

From there to some overbrushing followed by progressively lighter drybrushing on earth and stone.  I placed a some stands of static grass plugs, then painted the project with PVA where I wanted greenery and applied loose static grass.  After the grass had dried I went back and built up some areas with fine clump foliage and shrubs.  I wanted to mimic the photos I'd seen as well as make the piece look wild and overgrown.  After so many additions I was worried about things falling off.  As a final security measure I sprayed the green areas with isopropyl and misted it with diluted glue. I'm ecstatic about the results of this project.  I usually walk away from projects OK with them but, this was a bit out of what I'd considered my wheelhouse so a positive result felt great.  Getting this one up and running gave me the confidence to get around to those game boards I'd been meaning to get on with for years.  The two coast modules are at the painting stage as I write this so hopefully I can post another happy terrain ending here fairly soon.  It was nice to play with paint.net and get off of my Prisma crutch for title cards.  I made up another for my last article I really liked the feel of this one because it reminded me of a picture from the old Advanced Dungeons and Dragons hardbacks.