The Scroll of Titan Summoning

Ok, I just HAD to make this

The Scroll of Titan Summoning, a powerful Dungeons and Dragons artifact allowing the caster to summon an Colossus, a Blob of Annihilation, or a literal Tarrasque to the land. A written scroll held between dark brown dowels with black beads, a truly powerful, terrifying spell scroll.

The legendary Scroll of Titan Summoning! I mean... this had to happen, there's no way I couldn't make this thing. I need a scroll case, and a scroll to go with it. Man, the second this rattled into my head, I was already building it in the ol' sponge up there. I need plastic bottle tops, I need a sheet of plastic to roll up, I need wooden dowels, and I need my good ol' waterproof paper. The rest can come into play as I go, but I'm thinking sparkly nailpolish painted over the clear plastic tube for the holder, so it's sparkly on the inside, possibly the same treatment on the wooden dowels that will make up the scroll itself, darken the wood with a soak in tea, some fancy outer painting on the scroll case, aw yus it's half-built already!

And with that the building process began in earnest. Powerade bottles were obtained for their black lid, the handles from those cheap sponge paintbrushes were used for the dowels of the scroll itself, and wooden beads, though too small initially, were wrapped in glue-coated string to keep a somewhat spirally appearance and make them larger, which will be attached to the wooden dowels. How? I drilled fairly deep holes into the ends of the dowels, which conveniently just perfectly fit the same coathanger wire being used to make the wand of wonder and the mouth ring of my dragons, which also just perfectly fit inside the beads, so once we get everything finalised with those parts, the beads will be glued to the ends of the dowels with a length of that wire running through them. We cut a slot into each of the dowels for the (strong, waterproof) paper scroll to be glued into, and then attempted to dye the dowels in some strong black tea. However, the dowels didn't darken nearly as much as I was hoping they would, so I used the same dark wash used in painting the minis (the ones that I used a wash on, it came with the paint set), and that gave it a wonderful darker wood appearance. The edges of the paper were perforated with my carving tools to give the glue extra grip on the paper, the dowels were covered with painters tape, and then the slot cut into the tape to allow access, and glue squeezed into the slot and crammed into there with a fishing line held in a coathanger bow. It worked incredibly, and pieces of coathanger were inserted into the ends of the dowels for the beads at the same time as the paper was worked into the slot. As well, we pushed a length of string up into the slot on the back side of the scroll, to keep the paper held tight against the front of the slot, giving it a clean appearance, both front and back, so I'm very pleased with that idea. The beads, in the midst of making the dowels and case, were finished, paint primered, and then painted black and allowed to dry in a bizarre way of holding up the beads on pieces of coathanger I had laying around from all of this, all being held up by... yah, you see that very tangly looking photo to the right. It worked though!

The case! The case started with widemouth bottle openings and bottle plastic cut to length between them, though glue had a hard time sticking to that even sanded, so we swapped to plastic used in the covers of my hand-bound books), which stuck better. The cap was made by using expanding foam, carved into a rounded top, then covered with layers of glue-fabric to give it strength, and the scraggly ends hidden with a hair band, that itself has an extra two twists in it, to make for three twists equidistant from eachother around the outside. Also, the twists all go in opposite directions from the other cap (which we also did with the wand of wonder case), to make it symmetrical from side to side. The same opposite-twisting was done on the ends of the cases after enough layers of fabric were added to the tube to make it strong enough, which was wrapped around either side of that plastic lip there, to make a nice rounded end to the tube, just below the cap threads. Yes, I tested that it still fits, and it hides all but about one millimeter of the clear plastic nicely :D

The center of the tube was given a design with shoelace string, a criss-cross pattern of diamonds that should look good after it's finished and painted, and in the meantime, the scroll itself has fully dried from the layer of varnish given to the dowels and beads! OH that looks amazing! Once again, painters tape was put on the paper this time, and the sides were varnished one at a time to make it easier to work with and not bump a drying end into anything. The holes on the ends of the beads were filled in and painted black as well, and oh, I forgot to mention up there, I added a locking pin into the bead and dowel to keep the beads from being capable of twisting on the wire. All of that was glued in firmly, the coathanger posts and pins inside being sanded to add grip. Anyways, I made that as strong as humanly possible (with an incredibly strong glue), and am very pleased with how that turned out. I guess I should mention, if you want the instructions, there you are, and as well, of course you can randomly summon a titan below :D

Back to the scroll case! We held the crisscrossed string in place with hot glue, which we also decided to generally coat the entire case in. The main reason for that is because the gluefabric would have, well, a fabric texture, and the glue holding the string to the case would be smooth, so we needed a way of matching that. I made the hot glue as smooth as possible, but well, given it isn't machine-made, it's had natural irregularities from even slight ripples in the fabric that showed up during drying. So it's hand-smooth so to speak, which gives it a hand-crafted feel, which fits with the Dungeons & Dragons theme too, so that's all fine and good. Also with a coat of wood glue overtop since the paint adheres better to that. We gave it a dark blue primary colour for darkness, spritzed it with matte varnish spray to lock in the colours, then painted it with an additional coat of liquid gloss varnish (I didn't want it TOO too glossy). As a final little *pop*, we added a red ring of chaos to the inside of the caps, because that just looks awesome. We used little tiny scrap pieces from the excess drawstring from making the Raven mini pouch, spreading that fabric just a little bit further!

And with that, our glorious and immensely powerful Scroll of Titan Summoning (and case) is complete!

Finished February 5, 2025




Did you want to summon a Titan?!?
 A photo of the starting point, the tops from two powerade bottles, and two wooden handled sponge paint brushes, where the handles are conveniently just straight dowels of wood and not tapered at all, sitting on Kabutroids work table.The scroll written out, with the base instructions, followed by a short summoning spell that Kabs came up with so that the player can read something aloud to summon the titan. Summon oh great fury, deliver unto us your wrath, destroyer of worlds, bringer of death, I summon thee, with beside it a rather angry looking symbol of a horozontal progress line with large crossed lines going through it. Beside the scroll are the samples of the crossy symbol, and the initial writing out of the summon text on green post it note paper.The beads that will make up the sides of the scroll itself, too small initially, long, dark brown wooden dowels with deep grooves going around them, and a second bead that has been thickened up by wrapping glue-soaked string around it several times to keep a grooved appearance, but make it much thicker to match the dowels.

The top dowel of the scroll, now with a stained wooden dowel glued to the top of it, with string pushed into the cut slot as well to keep a tight grip on the paper inside the slot, sitting on a table with other parts of the builds and tools.The other dowel, with tapered ends and a slot cut down the length of it. It's covered in green painters tape around the slot to protect the surface of the wood from the glue, and also being held is the tool to get the glue down into the slot, a stretch of fishing line held taut between a wire coathanger bent into a bow. The scroll with the top dowel, now stained darker, is on the table in the background.An amalgamation of coathanger wire and pliers and scissors being used to jankily hold up the four beads after they've been primed and painted black, sitting on the back of an 80 grit sheet of sandpaper, with a ton of tools and various pieces of these builds behind it.

A closeup of one of the beads held above the scroll dowel, showing that an extra hole has been drilled in both to allow for a locking pin, to keep the bead from being able to twist on the piece of coathanger that will hold the bead onto the dowel.The first stage of the scroll case, two widemouth bottle openings on either end of a clear plastic tube, with various tools and tape behind it.The cap in it's more or less finished design, a rounded top of the cap, covered in glued stretchy fabric, held in place by a dark brown hair band.

The first stage of finishing off the case, which has now been coated in layers of black glue fabric, and the rough end where the fabric meets the cap covered in a green spongy material, followed by it being wrapped over with glue string to round it out.The second stage of the case ends, where the other side of the lip that the string reached up to also covered with a rounded, smooth hill of glue string, to make for a nice rounded hump just past the threads of the bottle opening, curving overtop of that now hidden plastic lip, and down to the black, soon to be painted fabric of the tube.The design of the scroll case now set, with a back and forth diamond type pattern around the tube, with the computer behind it with this page opened on the screen for updating.

The scroll case with the strings hot glued into place, and hot glue being pressed between all of the diamonds that the strings created to smooth the surface, being held by Kabutroid.Kabutroid holding the case, now painted nearly black, a deep, dark, misty blue, with black ends, and a dark wash applied between the diamond patterns on the side.The case now shiny and glossy, with green painters tape wrapped around the threads of the opening, the light better showing the dark blue linework of the diamonds, and the muddier dark between, and one of the lids laying beside, still on its painting and drying stem, a thread spool that has been double-sided taped to the inside of the lid. The caps have black tips, with the ridged lines around the opening being the same dark blue with a wash applied to create a darker line between the lines.

The finished scroll of titan summoning, with varnished dowels and beads at either end of the scroll, sitting majestically on a wooden table.
The scroll, mostly rolled up still, sitting beside the scroll case with one cap removed. The dark blue lines down the sides of the case can be seen, and the black on the remainder of the case matches the beads on the ends of the scroll dowels nicely. The Scroll of Titan Summoning awaits discovery!