Dark Sword Monster

My Fantasy LotR meets Wheel of Time has moved on from the orcs siege of the city they were trapped in. The Fore-Runners attacked the orcs and trollorcs just as they were capturing the city and the players were deciding to cut and run or try and get back to the inn to collect their possessions and the still comatose Isabella Sedi. 

After days of travelling south through ransacked and deserted villages and farms they finally reach a village with occupants. Seems the raiding parties had either missed the village out or had not made it this far south.

Not that the village was without it's own problems, it seemed that someone was holding the village to ransom. It all started with the odd small animal or chicken going missing but soon escalated to cows being taken in the night. Then came demands of money or worse would happen.

The village at first did not pay, they agreed to lay in wait, pretend to make payments but the plans never worked and more animals went missing and the money demands became larger. In the end the village started to pay until they were desperately short of money. The demands continued to be made and then finally people started to go missing though sometimes parts of them were left behind!

This is what the party walked into. At first it was assumed that the party was behind the problems but once the players had convinced the village elder of their trust and helped out with a payment they were taken into the villages confidence. The players managed to track a creature into the woods and had a short but sharp encounter with a humanoid creature with three horns, VERY sharp claws and the ability to speak Westron. Now they have to solve the problem before everyone in the village becomes a victim of the night caller.

I wanted the figure to have more presence than normal so added the tree trunk as the plan was always to have an encounter in the woods and as such I went for a base that was more undergrowth and mulch like. I used teabag leaves (a mix of used and fresh) to layer over the grass and ground and the tufts were the more lifeless types, no bright greens here.

The figure will only be used in this one scenario so once this is over I will have no future use for it so I am offering it to the players to have. If none wanted it then I would sell it on E-bay and use the money to buy future figures but as it stands at least one of the players wants it which is fine by me.

To give an idea of the size the cowboy is a Wargames Foundry 28mm though the difference in base size gives an advantage to the monster. Next session is fairly soon so it's possible it will have a new home soon, on the other hand we could be rolling up new characters.