The Living Spell, like the Vortex, is a rather unusual miniature. It appears to be a misty mass with a semi-skull and eyes in one direction. It’s a one-piece sculpture of resin for $6.95. Included with the miniature is a round base suitable for making the creature ‘large’ in d20 games.

Because of its simplicity, this is a miniature that’s easy to paint. It consists mostly of bands of air twirling swirling about one another. The ‘front’ of the model has a skull like feature similar to an ‘Alien’ from the movies with an elongated skull and eyes.

There’s a minimum amount of flash on the model so preparation is easy. There were no extra bits needing removal on the Living Spell. Because it’s one-piece, the figure is easy to prime and paint right out of the box. It’s also a light piece thanks to its resin origin. The base is a little disappointing. Since it’s a flat circular base, it’s completely up to the painted to give the base character, unlike the Vortex which is built into it’s own base. The Vortex benefited by this because it allowed the base to mimic the state of the miniature. The flat nature of the round base here means that the user is either going to have to get creative or like myself, get lazy.

About the only thing that might prove problematic, is figuring out why you’d need apiece like this. Outside of the Eberron setting by Wizards of the Coast, I don’t know of any other campaign that would have a creature like this. It appears to me, to be similar in style to the Living Cloudkill from the Eberron core book.

Thankfully though, due to it’s shifting nature, the miniature would make a great stand in for any type of pudding or ooze and could easily be painted up to resemble a black pudding or a gray ooze.

Sponsored by the Ennies. http://www.enworld.org/ennies/index.html