Our next contestant is Iron Wind Metals. Rising from the ashes of the fallen Ral Partha Miniatures, Iron Wind first began cranking out miniatures in 1999. Since then they’ve attempted to resurrect many of the figures for which they became famous in the 1980s and 90s, but have so far found little success getting their re-tooled fantasy lines into stores. Ordering online might be your only option to acquire these beauties, but check your favourite local game store first; they may be willing to special order Iron Wind Metals miniatures for you.

The miniatures we’ll be looking at come from several different product lines. As usual, I will list the miniatures by name, stock code, and by MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price). I try to include the sculptor’s name whenever possible; credit where credit is due, after all.

White Wolf Publishing has all kinds of new books in the horizon, be sure to pre-order your copies today!

World of Darkness: Slasher

Blood Splatter

There’s a different breed of killer out there. They aren’t driven by the need to drink blood or the pulse of the full moon. They kill because they have to, because murder is the only thing they know. Will you hunt the slashers — or join their ranks?

A Chronicle Book for World of Darkness and Hunter: The Vigil

Pre-Order World of Darkness: Slasher today at Amazon.com.

The Card Game of Monster Movie Mayhem!

This is a funny card game from Green Ronin with spoofs on various horror classics ranging from Frankenstein to Dracula with ghosts, beasts and other monsters mixed in to keep things interesting. The local townsfolk team up to destroy these monsters and deal with mayhem along the way.

There are three decks in this game, Townsfolk (representing the local “citizens” that are battling the monsters), Mob (including weapons, actions and other enhancements) and Monster (which also includes events that are often detrimental to the heroes).

What do a deep sea beast, a lizardman and a flying cat have in common? Well, if you say they are all monsters you’d be right!

Dubbed the “Monsters Magnetic Action Figures,” this set of over forty magnets and four background scenes is perfect for the monster lover in you. Illustrated by Justin Parpan, these Monsters magnets come in a decorated tin with two, reversible backgrounds. I really enjoy the artwork of these magnets because it’s a nice blend of traditional Halloween monsters with new, more imaginative beasties like the two-horned, one-eyed furry redhead. The technique used is pretty interesting because the Monsters body language is very cheery, but there’s just enough creepy to make it work without appearing overly “campy.”

Today’s new monster in the Halloween Horror series is brought to us by author and game designer Matt Forbeck (Mutant Chronicles, Ghost Stories). Matt knows a thing or two about little “trick-or-treaters” and adds a twist to a common Halloween night activity. Artist Aaron Acevedo adds a bit of gruesome horror to this entry in his own style.

Just what kind of horror is under the cute little costume?

The Hollow Wee ’Un

Created By Matt Forbeck

“Trick or treat!”

“Oh! Don’t you just look incredible! What a wonderful costume!”

“Trick or treat!”

“Hold a moment, honey. I don’t see your parents. Aren’t you a little young to be wandering around out here on your own?”

“Trick or treat!”

Freelance writer and reviewer Bill Bodden has taken a classic Halloween entity and given a new twisted presence in our Halloween Horror series. Artist Jeff Preston helped bring this creature to life with some of his darkest art.

Scarecrows are a staple image of Halloween, but when was the last time you found a scarecrow even slightly scary?

Scarecrows

Created by Bill Bodden

Scarecrows are merely discarded clothing stuffed with straw and stuck on a pole to simulate a human presence in farm fields to keep larger pests, like deer and crows, away from food crops. Ancient ritual demands that the scarecrows be ceremonially burned just after the harvest — around the time of Samhain, or Halloween – and added to celebratory bonfires as an offering to traditions we no longer remember. If the scarecrows aren’t burned, wandering spirits might decide to move into one, animating it and causing all sorts of mischief. Some spirits just like to play pranks, while others have a less well-developed sense of humor….

Freelance writer John D. Kennedy (Shadow Nations) and artist Jeff Preston have a new monster for the Halloween Horror series today.

When fighting the undead, be extra careful around the zombies making buzzing noises…

Corpse Bug

Created by John D. Kennedy
With art by Jeff Preston

“I seen a bug that’ll sting a man. Seen plenty that’ll eat one…first time I ever seen one live in a man though.” – Jerry Bowell, exterminator.

Resembling a cross between a centipede and a beetle, the Corpse Bug is a creature often found living at the edge of towns and cities. A dark brown color, the bug is between two to three inches in length and possesses two pincers on it’s body, one at the mouth with the other at the end of the thorax. These pincers aid in chewing through muscles and skin, while it’s eight legs end in small hooks to aid in climbing and gathering materials.

The latest addition to the Halloween Horror series is from game designer and author, Monte Cook (Worlds of Their Own, Ptolus). Monte took a short break from researching his latest project for this bit of horror.

There are things in the deep best left alone, things that are very hungry…

The Kragethogil and the Reapers

Created by Monte Cook

Sometimes, the most terrible thing is that which you never see. The kragethogil dwells deep underwater, a monstrously vast, ghastly abomination of spiny tendrils and sightless eyes. No one knows precisely what it looks like, because the creature never comes to the surface, and never confronts its prey.

That’s for the reapers to do.

Through a horrific psychic intrusion, the kragethogil spawns tiny extensions of itself within the minds of swimmers and fishermen straying into waters they should have avoided. After a brief and bloody gestation, the telepathically implanted larva takes control of the host and transforms it from within, assimilating its flesh into its own. The result is a reaper.

Horror author and game designer Richard Dansky (Firefly Rain, Worlds of Their Own) has offered up a new monster for the Halloween Horror collection here at Flames Rising.

Jeff Preston adds a little horror of his own with a stunning visual of this rarely seen but always felt creature…

The House Spider

Created by Rich Dansky
With Art by Jeff Preston

The House Spider does not feed on blood, or flesh, or anything so messy and gory as that. It lives in the dwelling places of the timid, the fearful, the cluttered and the cautious. It finds them by their tell-tale signs, their overloaded bookshelves and their disorganized collections, their piles of papers and dimly lit rooms, and there it settles, invisibly. In olden days, many lived in reading rooms, on top of green-shaded desk lamps or in the rare empty spaces on bookshelves. These days, they settle more beneath the computer desk, or near the television, or in amongst the video game consoles and their surrounding debris.

This new twist on the legend of the werewolf is brought to us by author and game designer Jason L Blair (The Long Count, Little Fears).

Beware the Beast of Bedburg, it has a hunger that is never satisfied…

The Werewolf of Bedburg

Created by Jason L Blair

Under a pregnant summer moon, a boy named Peter Stübbe, followed a trail that led down to the creek that marked the boundary of his family’s farm. Lying in the muddy water was the body of a brown wolf cub. As its life escaped further with every breath, its lupine features faded and slowly Peter realized that it was no cub at all—but the body of a boy no older than he was. Against his better sense, he picked up a long thin stick and prodded the wolfboy with it. With its last raspy breath, it lunged at Peter, biting him on his arm. Peter’s parents found their son the next day, laying unconscious beside the body of a dead boy. Swearing never to speak of the incident again, the father went about burying the deceased child immediately while his wife tended to their son.

Our latest addition to the Halloween Horror series comes from author Jensen Toperzer.

This creature could be found in any number of fantasy or post-apocalyptic worlds, so be careful where you go exploring…

Wastelands Stalker

Created by Jensen Toperzer

A wasteland stalker (or Khyr-garuke, as the natives call them) is a terrible behemoth generally found in areas destroyed by some horrible disaster. As the name implies, they favor wastelands, though some have said that they lair in the shells of ruined cities. Some say that they are given rise by the maddened and terrified spirits of those killed in disasters; others that they are disaster made flesh, the very incarnations of the forces of destruction.

Stalkers are strange beasts, being huge in size (the largest known specimen is thought to have been fifty feet long, as judged by the distance between its tracks) yet silent of step.

A new monster in the Halloween Horror series today from game designer Gregor Hutton (3:16, a|state) with art from Bradley K. McDevitt (Blood!).

The Heamogoblin is a mischievous little beast. You have to wonder if they are related to Gremlins or something far, far worse…

The Heamogoblin

Created by Gregor Hutton
With Art by Bradley K. McDevitt

Brad put Tara on the hallway stairs, she was a bloodied mess. He made his way in to the kitchen to see what she’d done to herself. Bloody footprints, like those of a rat, led from a smashed tumbler to under the sink. A tumbler? All the blood that only moments ago must have jetted from Tara’s arm was gone. It looked like it had been licked clean from the slate floor. Rats?

Brad looked around and saw a knife. It lay conveniently nearby, sharp and cool, and he reached for it with his hand. Suddenly and unexpectedly there was a scuttling beneath the sink, and he took his eye off the knife. A sharp pain and he felt blood squirting out his hand.

We’ve got a new monster to add to the Halloween Horror collection today from creator Joe Rixman.

Joe brings us a new twist on an existing creature, turning a dangerous predator into a fearsome monster…

Tear-Drop Rattler

Created by Joe Rixman

Tear-Drop Rattler: This creature is native to desert valleys where the sun’s heat is greatest. It appears as a rust colored, ten-foot long rattlesnake, with a diamond-shaped head, a cobra-like cloak that expands when it feels threatened and blood-red tear drop patterns that give this creature its name lining the entire length of the body. Its primary weapon is a pair of foot-long, venom-tipped, needle-sharp fangs that unfurl when it opens its jaws, but it has a secondary weapon that is much more dangerous to prey that might not want to get too close. Nature has given the tear-dropped rattler a wonderful way to adapt to those more cautious animals. Glands beneath its forked-tongue allow the beast to spit venom up to a distance of fifty feet. The venom acts as a paralytic acid and is absorbed through a victim’s skin where it collects in the muscles and forces them to lock up. The snake will attempt to get to its paralyzed victim before death occurs, however, as it usually prefers to eat its prey whole and, hopefully, still alive.

More monsters everyday in October here at Flames Rising. Today we’ve got a tale from Jason Morningstar, creator of the Grey Ranks RPG and other games.

The name Massapoag comes from the Algonquian for “Bad Place”, which Jason grabbed from R.A. Douglas-Lithgow’s Native American Place Names of Massachusetts.

The Massapoag

Created by Jason Morningstar

THE WINTER CAMP OF THE PENACOOK, NORTHWESTERN MASSACHUSSETTS, 1680

“We left to become Christians”, she said, as if explanation were needed.

Today’s monster is brought to us by author Jess Hartley (Hunter: the Vigil) and artist Jeff Preston (Key20 Games). This tale brings us a new twist on the legend of the succubus.

She just might steal your heart…

Falling for Her

Created by Jess Hartley
With Art by Jeff Preston

“Call it a birth defect,” she’d said, the first night they’d been together. He’d not stopped to ask more, too hungry for what she offered. And in the morning, she was gone.

Every night, he tried to ask her about it, that raw-tipped stub at the base of her spine. It seemed somehow important that he ask. But, although he knew everything else about her, every time he raised that topic she managed to change it, so swiftly and gracefully that it was the next morning before he realized he’d once again been distracted.

The Monster Madness begins here at Flames Rising with a new creature from author E. E. Knight (Fall with Honor, Dragon Strike). Knight brings us a nasty little creature called Cob’s Ladder, quite the scary parasite.

Stay tuned for more monsters from your favorite creators everyday this month here at Flames Rising.

Cob’s Ladder

Created by E.E. Knight

This dreadful little body-snatcher starts out as a spore form resembling a dandelion tuft with jellyfish-like tendrils that look as though they’re made out of spider-web. It will float on a breeze until it lands on vegetation, then wait for something to pass beneath or eat it vegetation. It seeks out brain tissue and nerve ganglia for food and camouflage. Early in its development, it relies on gravity or wind to move and find a host. If the spore doesn’t find a host in two to three days, depending on moisture, it shrivels and dies.

Get your jack o’ lanterns ready and turn out your lights, Flames Rising has reached into the haunted minds of some very creative folk with monstrous results. We’re going to scare you, thrill you and chill you with a daily monster dose that ranges from E.E. Knight‘s Cob’s Ladder to Todd Cash’s Jimmy Sparks. Some […]

A Candle in the Darkness The scales have fallen from your eyes. A fire is lit: is it a lamp perched over the inscription upon an ancient blade? Or a roaring conflagration consuming the house in which the howling fiends wait? Things will never be the same after this. You’ve set forth on a damning […]

J is for Jungle

A few weeks ago we brought you a preview of Don’t Lose Your Mind called A is for Ants. Now the folks at Evil Hat Productions have offered up a second look at this new book.

From author Benjamin Baugh (Monsters & Other Childish Things) comes Don’t Lose Your Mind, a Don’t Rest Your Head supplement that explores the darkest depths of Madness for your game.

Download the preview pdf: Don’t Lose Your Mind Preview “J”

In this prequel issue, the story is about the contrast between the harm people cause to other people, and the harm that comes from evil beyond our understanding. Told in a very cinematic style with artwork to match, we first meet Danielle, a strong female character who works with Malcolm and Michael for the Organization.

Sent to “take care of business,” they hunt down a man named Peter Moore. In a typical suspense-filled mob movie, you might expect that Peter had already met an untimely death.