I may have mentioned once or twice that I use Heroforge to play with design idea for bit players and encountered beings in my tabletop games – and that I also find it a good way to unwind when my brain is going nineteen to the dozen. I can play with settings and pieces like some virtual clay or lego model set and let the worries ease away. That’s why I’ll often do a run of related or similar pieces as I create something I like and then try some variations to see what else I can do.
With the ongoing mix of opposing factions in the Sunday game, I thought I’d create some tokens for more duergar – a set of dwarves who retreated deep underground and became stranger with exposure over the years to oddness down there in the depths. So far the group has only encountered a few in person, but they were allies to the mindflayers that took over the land for a while. They were very much junior partners in the coup, but several got away and have evaded capture as they try to get back to their own territory below the mountains.
So I made some figures that might either be part of some form of raiding party or might become a more detailed antagonist. From left to right we have a sorceror, a scout, and a warlock. The first and last of those wield magic, while the scout is a lightly armoured foot soldier armed with an axe tasked with infiltration and sabotage. The difference between a sorceror and a warlock is that the former has naturally occurring magic due to their bloodline which often traces back to a dragon. A warlock has made a pact with some sort of entity in return for their power. These entities can be forgotten gods, devils, beings from outside time and space, or a creature from the Feywild.
From what I was saying earlier about creating variations on a design to see what changes, you can easily see that the scout and sorceror were made one after the other as the basic pose is the same with just changes in clothing, gear, hairstyle and facial expressions. It just goes to show how effective even minor changes can be to both create a different impression and also create similar looks for affiliated group using a uniform.
As ever, feel free to grab any of these for your own games – as far as I’m concerned I’m using someone else’s tools and efforts to assemble these so I’m pretty sure I’d be breaching terms and conditions to charge for them anyway – and have fun!
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