I had the privilege not too long ago of running a D&D-adjacent story with @brittneystucklessart where I got to revive an old collecting hobby of mine, and give it a facelift: pre-painted D&D miniatures, namely the Demonweb set. Demonweb, in my opinion, was the last great pre-painted D&D set that Wizards of the Coast produced way back in 2008-ish, and more than once I’ve been known to go into a rant explaining my tinfoil-hat reasonings behind this. One of the iconic miniatures that stood out in this set was the Black Dragon Lurker, and as cool as the original miniature is I wanted to try my own hand at bringing it to life, and this kickstarted a small run of Demonweb-based miniatures that I’ll be showcasing over the next little while.

In-Campaign, the Black Dragon represented through the miniature became a shape-shifting NPC named Urhan who served as an indentured “wizard” and hired magical muscle for a despotic local Lord-Regent. As a character he probably got the best “arc” and growth as an NPC and I was very happy to get to immortalize him. The Young Black Dragon from Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures is what I went with for this piece, and I was thoroughly impressed by the sculpt and just by the sheer size of it. I haven’t attempted a dragon quite this big before and I think, to date, this is probably one of the largest non-Warhammer pieces that I’ve completed. As much practice as I have from my Ulthwe miniatures in painting the black and bone colors, I found detailing the leathery wings with the dark gray green colors a little trickier than what I was accustomed to.

Without getting too sentimental, the Demonweb stuff has collected dust a long time because those miniatures are also a reminder of old campaigns and the uglier version of myself that I was when I first accumulated them. Being able to give something I enjoyed a new, second life, though, and new meaning, and being able to add marvelous new little objects of power like this big black dragon has been a fulfilling and transformative (therapeutic even) experience. I’ve got a stack of these to come – maybe someday I’ll finally even collect the whole set!