Saruman’s Stronghold

The Making of Orthanc

© Lotrscenerybuilder 2010

We paid special attention to the upper windows. Placed all around upon an oversized cornice, this series of twelve + four arches forms a distinguishing feature of the tower. We didn’t want to muck them up. There happened to be an article in The White Dwarf (WD 292, April 2004) about this guy, Doug Bachelor, who did an awesome job by building his own bigature of Orthanc at GW scale – he even built it twice! As far as we’re concerned, his 5.2feet tall tower stands unsurpassed to this day except for one small shortcoming: its upper windows, although accurate to the last bar, are a bit unobtrusive to our taste.

So we made sure that ours would make gaping, dark holes in the walls. As for the window framing and decorations, we thankfully followed Doug’s lead.

By turning the cardboard window bars 90 degrees, sides up, we managed to show a lot of the emptiness behind. Later on, we would add a few more details to the windows.

As the faces of MDF got smaller and smaller near the summit, the number of ornaments decreased.

For the present, our journey up ended at these four tiny horns that mark the transition to the pinnacle. All thoughts about the tower’s summit were invariably pushed aside; in due time, our Cunning Mind would hopefully come up with some keen-edged answers.

… And Then There Were Four…