In the campaign that I previously ran with @brittneystucklessart, there was an urban legend on the world of Strix’s northernmost human territories of a creature that roamed in the thick jungles that terrorized lost settlers and their caravans, and which left a deeply-carved trail of destruction into its landscape. Defeating the Bullywog and presenting its carcass to the Lord-Regent was a tremendous show of force and prowess, but the Bullywog was not a creature that was ever going to make that an easy victory. This creature was a blend of borrowed folkloric elements from outside Dungeons and Dragons, but as a physical template I relied on the Blood Slaad from Demonweb.

As silly as the miniature might look now, I think the Blood Slaad from the Demonweb set has a lot of character and a lot of presence as a one-off boss mini, and I wanted to try and pick something out that was going to replicate that. I thought Nolzur’s Red Slaad was a little too lanky, but the Blue Slaad’s bulk was something I could really work with, and so it’s the one that I picked up and ran with, and it let me add some neat elements like more detailed spikes and claws that built on the original monster and take it to the next level in my revived Demonweb assortment.

This one came together pretty quickly and smoothly – thanks to Fire Dragons I’ve had plenty of practice doing a sort of reddish-orange, leathery sort of surface before. This meant a bit of a departure from the “belly” contrast color on the original which was a bit of a shame but I think all around I’m still happy with the glow-up that this model got from its Demonweb counterpart. I’ll have to see at some point if I can get a hold of Demonweb’s Green Slaad or some of the other reptilian models from this set because I think they’d be fun to try and revive as well, though the set is certainly hard to come by now.