Meet the PC: Paelias, Eladrin Thief

One of my favorite parts about tabletop roleplaying is finding, modeling, and painting the perfect miniatures for our party PCs. I've been doing this for years now, and thought I'd share some of these characters with you.

So here is my own PC: Paelias, the Eladrin Rogue. 4th edition tried some neat things with the generic D&D setting, and one of the changes I rather liked was splitting High Elves and Wood Elves into somewhat more distinct (and differently named) cousin races: Eladrin (the alien, civilized, and fae-like race) and the Elves (the nomadic, arboreal, more down to earth of the two). Elves retained their skill with bows and their light-footedness, while Eladrin were given an affinity for the more romantic and civilized longsword, as well as a wonderful ability to teleport around the map by briefly stepping between our world and their native dimension, the Feywild. Paelias here was a political exile from his home, a gorgeous but unchanging ivory city where the Duke of Pearls held sway. Finding the chaos of the mortal world to be much preferable to the predictable stasis of his home, Paelias had grand adventures with his companions - his favorite of which were those that involved wine, women, and song.

I started with Reaper's Shad, Mercenaries Rogue as a base for my conversion. The site identities him as human, but I thought he would make a fine example of the slender and impressive Eladrin race. The sword that comes with the mini was rather thick, and not at all the quick, lightweight blade that Paelias would prefer, so I swapped it with a much thinner, pointier plastic bit I had acquired from a box of Warhammer State Troops. Purple is obviously Paelias' color, so I started by painting his leather armor with a straight-forward lift from dark to light. I mixed that same dark purple into every other color that I used on the mini, which is why there is a ghastly tone to his skin and a purplish tone to his hair. The brown leather did not benefit from the process very much, and if I were to do this mini again I would definitely try something different - possibly a more contrasting color. The sword was simply painted using metallic paints, then coated with a purple wash. he base was drybrushed various layers of grey and bone, then washed with the same color as the sword. Overall I am quite pleased with Paelias, though he is not my favorite mini out of the set.