Rise of the Runelords

This massive beast is a beautiful giantess from the waist up and a vicious hunting cat from the waist down. Somehow, the look of abject cruelty in her eyes is more unsettling than the feral claws of her lower half.

All the evil in the universe is seemingly concentrated into this creature’s lean and hungry body. Many-jointed limbs extend from its gaunt, quadrupedal form, each ending in numerous twitching, clawed digits. From between the pallid flesh of its grasping forelimbs protrudes an alien face warped in a perpetual scream, a starved- looking visage where wide, depthless black eyes yawn above a fleshless, shuddering maw. A sharply pointed tongue projects from between its shattered teeth, quivering perversely.

This creature’s appearance is accompanied by the sound of retching and wet, flapping flesh. A thing of corpulent terror, it drags its swollen bulk spastically—a body composed of a sack-like mass of stitched flesh swollen almost to bursting. The iron staples that hold it together strain as if ready to burst asunder. The giant creature’s maw is vast, with a huge, lolling tongue writhing between rows of broken teeth. Its head and torso are a travesty of a humanoid atop a twisted leonine body that is little more than a pulpy mass of shattered limbs and sinew under its monstrously obese upper body. It drags itself along the ground with two clawing forepaws— straining limbs that seemingly struggle to free themselves from beneath the thing’s horrid girth.

Koruvus was a champion of the Seven Tooth tribe, who was as well known for his short temper as he was for his prized possession—a magic longsword sized for a human that the goblin stubbornly kept as his own (despite the fact that it was too large for him to properly wield). Koruvus vanished several months ago after he supposedly discovered a “secret hideout” in a cave along the cliffs, but the Seven Tooth goblins remain convinced that he’s out there still, a ghost or worse, waiting to murder any goblin who tries to discover his hideout.

This foul creature is a disgusting cross between a humanoid and a condor. Almost harpy-like in appearance, it has powerful avian legs ending in wicked talons, and a torso and upper body resembling that of a human, though covered in patches of filthy, blood-crusted hair and feathers. Great feathered wings extend from its shoulders, and a beaked, vulture-like head bobs at the end of a crooked neck.

Half-hidden by rotting vegetation and moldering wood towers a hulking brute, a savage giant the color of stagnant swamp water. Animal bones, filthy skins, and crude wooden fetishes barely cover its brutish frame, and two piercing white eyes stare hungrily from beneath a sloped brow.

A monstrous, undulating tangle of barbed tentacles explodes from the water. Its form spurns definable anatomy, a horror of prehistory atop a writhing mass of rubbery tentacles—some crowned with glaring infernal eyes. Its only recognizable feature is the black reptilian head rising above the morass of tentacles, a maw of flesh-sheering teeth gaping wide before two piercing eyes, smoldering with alien intelligence.

Fleshy and deformed, this man-like cretin hulks far larger and burlier than others of his race. Chunky flesh and overlarge muscles deform his crooked frame, and a dull-witted eagerness shines 8 through jaundiced eyes.

Snarling and spitting, this tiny figure looks like a hateful old man, his face wrinkled like month-old fruit. The bent, three-foot-tall cretin wields a rusted scythe nearly double his size in his gnarled hands, andwearsapairofoverlylargespikedironboots.Uponhisgrizzled head sits a bent hat, gruesomely stained bright crimson.

There is malevolence in the hate-filled eyes of this dead thing. Once a human, yet stripped of pity and remorse along with its life, its body is wasted, staggering in a spastic lope across the ground, as though only its evil intent keeps it walking upright.

This towering muscular giant’s skin is nearly black in color, as if made from pitted iron and then etched with countless complex runes. As the creature moves, the runes flash and ripple, glowing from the strange internal fires that burn within it. The giant wears ornate armor with a grimacing full helm, and wields an immense sword that looks big enough to bisect a house.

This towering muscular giant’s skin is nearly black in color, as if made from pitted iron and then etched with countless complex runes. As the creature moves, the runes flash and ripple, glowing from the strange internal fires that burn within it. The giant wears ornate armor with a grimacing full helm, and wields an immense sword that looks big enough to bisect a house.

Numerous severe-looking runes spark and flicker upon the body of this towering giant, seemingly seared into the creature’s skin. Although its eyes look dull, its muscles bulge grotesquely, as if barely contained by a thin layer of flesh, and it moves unnaturally fast for a creature of such ponderous size. A horrid expression—either rage or pain—contorts the giant’s features as it speeds forward.

A giant of gnashing, predatory fangs and rending limbs crashes forth. Vaguely humanoid, the thing lopes upon massive wolf legs ending in talons the size of short swords. From a chest of corded muscles sprout patches of wiry hair, long arms ending in chitin-covered claws, and the massive, scythe-like forelimbs of some monstrous praying mantis. Behind lashes a prehensile tail bristling with sharp barbs, and atop its bestial trunk thrashes a terrible head, half sharp-toothed canine, half venom-bloated arachnid. Drool flies from its mandible-flanked maw beneath rows of unblinking, insectile eyes.

This creature is almost too bright to gaze upon, its emaciated body sheathed in writhing flames of pure light and supporting a prehensile tail, clawed hands, and a twisted skull projecting beams of fire from its eyes and mouth.