Lich Survivors · round 46 · the burned mask: what real fire does

2026-10-04. References only: nothing is built yet. Real photographs of real fire damage (no burned masks exist among sources; these are the nearest things).

You said the mask looks artificial, as if the damage was not real. The current one is a drawn idea of burning: an even black, soot tongues, blisters. Real burning follows the object: soot climbs from where the flame was, thin edges go first, wood breaks into cracked char, paint lifts. Before rebuilding it, which material is it, and which kind of damage? Pick a direction (A, B, C or D), and point at any photos you want it to look like. The claw gashes and the pierced left eye from your drawing stay unless you say otherwise. They match the lore now: the giant creature's claw and the flying insect that went through the prince's head.

Now

the mask now — the mask as it is (round 35), in the viewer

A · SOOTED WHITE

The mask stays a white mask; the fire was below it and to one side. Soot climbs from where the flame was and thins out upward in streaks, ending in a ragged tide line over clean white. Thin edges and raised features catch more than the hollows. Nothing burns through. It would read as his mask, the lich's white one, with something terrible having happened near it.

ref 03 — 03 soot over the head fading downward in streaks to clean white
Crop of the previous photo (same source file) on the statue: black soot over the hooded head and face with the features still readable, ragged boundary down the chest, white robe below with grey streaks [420x680] · source · Photo: Lucas Phillips / The Boston Globe, rights reserved; reference use only

ref 07 — 07 half the face black, half clean, a soft ragged boundary
Crop of the case photo: small ceramic child figure with one side of the head and face blackened with soot/char, the other half clean terracotta, soft ragged boundary between them (low resolution crop) [442x374] · source · CC BY-SA 4.0, Malaiya (Commons)

ref 18 — 18 white paint through grey haze and brown tide lines to black
White enamelled clothes dryer after a fire: white paint grades through grey haze and brown tide lines to black soot with rust breaking through along the side, and a V-shaped burn plume rising up the door [612x612] · source · CC BY-SA 2.0, Jerry (Flickr via Commons)

ref 01 — 01 a black crust on the face, pale where the eyes were shielded
Real practice-hairdressing doll head (vinyl face, nylon hair) burned by fireworks: black carbon crust over cheeks, nose and mouth, bare pale skin where the eyes were shielded by safety glasses, scorched clumped hair, soot rising up the neck; the pink skin tone survives under the char [1400x1400] · source · (c) 2008 Theodore W. Gray, all rights reserved (watermark in image); reference use only

B · CHARRED

The mask was wood and it burned: carbon, black and dull, broken into the cracked blocks of charred wood (the crocodile skin), smaller and glossier where it burned hottest. The thin parts go first: the rim, the edges of the eye slits and the gashes eaten back ragged. Carved relief melts into lumps. The current mask is closest to this, but has no real char pattern and no eaten edges.

ref 10 — 10 the same carving clean and burned: relief melted into lumps
Two ends of a carved church pew: one clean brown oak with saints in relief, the other burned to black char with the carved figures (hooded saint and bishop) melted down into lumpy shapes and ragged tops; shows how carved faces and edges burn first [1920x2560] · source · CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikitarisch (Commons)

ref 09 — 09 a carved figure burned away to a ragged end
Carved wooden crucifix figure (legs only) from a church fire: the upper body burned away leaving a ragged broken edge with a thick black char crust on the cross behind; below it the paint-and-gesso skin has lifted into flakes with dry grey-yellow wood showing through, scorch marks on the feet [1920x2560] · source · CC0, Edelmauswaldgeist (Commons)

ref 11 — 11 blocky char wrapping round a patch of unburned wood
Close-up of a burned log: coarse blocky alligator char (matte black rectangular cells with deep cracks) wrapping around a patch of clean weathered grey wood; sharp boundary between char and unburned grain [1920x1280] · source · CC BY-SA 4.0, Thomas Fuhrmann (Commons)

ref 12 — 12 glossy polygonal char cells, each split again by finer cracks
Extreme close-up of charred wood: glossy black polygonal cells (crocodile-skin pattern) each subdivided by finer secondary cracks, cell edges slightly curled [1024x1001] · source · CC BY-SA 2.0, dotun55 (Commons)

ref 13 — 13 char creeping in from the ends and edges of thin boards
Stack of thin boards from a burned church steeple: char creeps in from the ends and edges of each board with fine checking, ragged crumbling edges and burned-through ends, centre of the faces only browned and scorched, nail holes survive [1920x1280] · source · Public domain, NPS Photo (Commons)

C · PAINT OVER CHAR

A white painted (gesso or lacquer) mask over wood: the white layer blisters, browns, lifts and flakes off, and under it the wood is charred black. Patches of white survive where the heat was least, with scorched brown frills round them. Between A and B: it keeps some white, and the burned parts are real char.

ref 16 — 16 a painted panel burned from the top: paint and gilding scorched off into char at the edge
Gilded painted wooden icon of the Virgin recovered from the ruins of the Dormition Church, Kyiv (1941): top edge burned to black char with a ragged lip, gold and paint lifting near the edge, face and robes below still intact (only 400 px wide) [400x495] · source · CC BY-SA 2.5, Vodnik (Commons)

ref 17 — 17 white burned in from its edges, a brown scorched frill before the black
Text sheet in a charred wooden frame that survived the 1944 Munich firestorm: white paper scorched from the edges inward, brown scorch frill along the bottom, black soot patches at corners and edges, cracked glass, frame wood black and flaking [1920x2622] · source · CC BY-SA 4.0, Sol Octobris (Commons)

ref 15 — 15 a whole painted surface under a grey-black skin, the face still showing
Max Slevogt portrait of Max Erler after a fire: whole canvas under a matte grey-black soot/char skin, face and spectacles just emerging, a few patches of original red-brown paint where the skin has flaked off on the forehead and collar, vertical heat-run streaks in the background [1920x2200] · source · Public domain (Commons)

ref 14 — 14 wood turned to charcoal, its carving still there in black
Two carbonised wooden shutters from Herculaneum (AD 79): wood turned to matte black charcoal, layered splintery surface with long vertical cracks and ragged crumbled edges, grain still readable [1920x2251] · source · CC0, Jebulon (Commons)

D · MELTED

The mask was something that melts (resin, glaze, plastic): it sags and drips, bubbles and pits. Probably not this mask, but here so the choice is seen.

ref 19 — 19 glaze still white inside, the rim slumped and crusted
White blue-and-white porcelain bowl from Hiroshima 1945: inside glaze still glossy white but the rim has slumped into a wavy heart shape, outside glaze melted and fused with sand, stones and brick into a rough grey-green crust [1536x1249] · source · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, Science Museum Group Collection (object 1984-663)

ref 21 — 21 a pitted, blistered crust
Extreme close-up of plastic melted in a vehicle fire: blue-grey pitted crust with small blowholes, wrinkled folds and bubbled skin, matte, with lighter powdery patches [1920x1440] · source · CC BY-SA 4.0, Lamiot (Commons)

ref 22 — 22 a sheet sagged into long drapes
Translucent plastic panelling after the Black Saturday bushfire: sheet sagged in long vertical drapes, thinned into stringy webs around a burnt-through oval hole, thick wrinkled puddles along the lower edge, smoky brown-grey tint [1765x2657] · source · CC BY 3.0, Nick Pitsas, CSIRO (Commons)

Also found

ref 04 — 04 a stone face spalled and blackened
Sandstone Buddha head found 450 m from the Hiroshima hypocentre: face surface spalled and blackened over nose, cheek and chin, the rest oxidised rusty brown, serene features still readable through the damage [1536x2048] · source · Public domain (as stated on Commons)

ref 05 — 05 a figure in the ruins, its face blackened
1945 US Marine photo of a charred Buddha-type figure in the Nagasaki ruins: face and headdress blackened, the white cloth-wrapped body below untouched, so a white body under a black head [575x823] · source · Public domain (Cpl. Lynn P. Walker Jr., US Marine Corps, 1945; per Commons)

ref 06 — 06 the case the child figure (07) is from
Museum case of figurines and statues recovered from the Hiroshima ruins: ceramic child figure with half its face sooted black, seated figure with melted drooping face, standing statue with pitted crust, slumped glass bottles; many real heat textures on face-shaped objects [3264x2448] · source · CC BY-SA 4.0, Malaiya (Commons)

ref 08 — 08 a burnt gas mask (rubber)
Burnt gas mask (rubber face piece, filter hose, metal strap) left on a car hubcap at the Mount Carmel fire memorial: rubber slumped and fused into a grey-black lump, folds sagging, strap blackened and warped; a real melted face mask, grey rather than white [1920x1440] · source · CC BY 3.0, Avi1111 dr. avishai teicher (Commons)

ref 02 — 02 the statue of 03, whole
White painted Virgin Mary garden statue set alight via plastic flowers in its hands: face, veil and upper chest blackened with soot/char, black fading downward into streaky drips over the clean white robe with a sharp tide line at the chest; closest match to a white face-like object burned from one side [2880x1620] · source · Photo: Lucas Phillips / The Boston Globe, rights reserved; reference use only

ref 20 — 20 glaze boiled into glassy blobs
Fused mass of glazed roof tiles from Hiroshima: glaze boiled into dark brown glassy blobs, bubbles and foamy ridges, tile bodies slumped together; shows glaze blistering into froth [1920x1285] · source · CC BY 2.0, Maarten Heerlien (Commons)

ref 23 — 23 a table sagged over a fire
Grey molded-plastic picnic table partly melted by a fire underneath: one edge of the tabletop has sagged and torn into a ragged drooping lip with a blackened bubbling rim, frame beneath soot-black, ash patch on the ground; the rest stays clean pale grey [1920x1440] · source · CC BY-SA 4.0, Benjamin P (Commons)