I’ll be caught up on painting, photos, and posting one of these days – in the meantime, we continue our Dungeons and Dragons adventure into the depths of the swamp! I figured these could all go under a single gallery page since a lot of these boil down to the same thing, that being smaller groups of NPCs or enemy miniatures that could both work in a swamp-themed D&D campaign, but that could also keep adding to my Demonweb (2008) homages. Our poor ogre from last week is having a heck of a time with some squatters on his property, and here’s a look at some of the fantasy creatures that have taken up residence there.

First, in one of my bigger additions to my Demonweb revisited series, I took on the Quickling miniature, the Corruption Corpse miniature, and the Deathlock Wight miniature. These involved a little bit of interpretation since I couldn’t find any miniatures that were exactly what they’re supposed to represent, other than the Quicklings, but apparently Quicklings’ appearance in Dungeons and Dragons has changed pretty drastically since 2008. They look a lot more sprightly and fae-like than they did before, where they just kind of looked like Gollum-esque little gremlins. For the Corruption Corpse, I went with Drowned Ascetic and Drowned Assassin from the Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures line, and went with the Bheur Hag and Swamp Hag miniatures for the Deathlock Wight. The Bheur Hag was the closest one to one match for the Deathlock Wight’s physical appearance that I could find, and the Swamp Hag just fit the sub-theme of this set (that being swamps) too well for me to ignore.

Painting the Quicklings wasn’t much different from painting Halflings a while back, since I wanted to keep the garments and straps in blue and black tones for the most part, with some white, but where this group diverged from our friend Anvorn was in the skin tones, which were all a combination of Thunderhawk Blue and Russ Grey. For the “Corruption Corpses” I went with pretty regular “zombie” colors, including a lot of Rakarth Flesh, Pallid Wych Flesh, and others, but also used more browns than usual since these guys are festooned with old straps. I wanted to make the greens and yellows on the “growths” a little more dynamic than the original Corruption Corpse so they stood out more from the Drowned miniatures’ leather bits, and I think it worked out nicely. Last, for the Bheur Hag and Swamp Hag, I used a lot of the same cloth colors from the Drowned but a lot of the same skin tone colors as with the Quicklings to blend this all into one nice convenient palette for painting, and I was quite happy with how that panned out too. Work smart, not hard!

Last, the “big one” from this set, the Boss(?) of all of these roaming fantasy creatures. One of the things I ended up with tons of out of the original Demonweb set were Troglodytes, namely the Troglodyte Brute and Curse Chanter miniatures. They’ve served me in many an encounter as generic Kobolds, Orks, Lizardmen, and other fantasy creatures over the years, so I wanted to give them their due. Their color schemes are each a little garish on their own, with one being copper over dark gray hide, and the other being purple over dark gray hide. To tackle these, naturally, I took all those whack colors on their own and blended them together, throwing in a little green for flame effects and for the eyes on the big guy as well.

Picking the miniature for this was tricky since, as near as I can gather, D&D has shied away a little from Troglodytes as a named race in the game, in favor of other more original (trademarkable) lizard-man or dragon-man species. The best fit that I found was the Green Slaad miniature, which checked a lot of boxes: It had the bony staff of the Curse Chanter along with the robes and braids, but also had distinct scale armour that could easily be adapted to that of the Troglodyte Brute. All things considered it’s kind of a serendipitous fit for these two and I’m almost as happy just on the choice of miniature as with how the painting all played out.

All things considered I’m very happy with how this group turned out, and I think I might be starting to wind down on the Demonweb set, though I still have a few other additions planned for the near future. There’s a distinct lack of “Web” in this Demonweb set so far, after all! We also have yet to fully solve the mystery of the ogre’s swamp, maybe next week? Something seems to be lumbering this way. Something big. Something 3D printed! Stay tuned.