Old folklore is great for inspiration! This horrible pair just leapt off the page when I read the story of Maggie Moulach and Broonie Clod and I had to include them in my campaign world

Maggie Moulach was a brownie in the original tale but I’ve decided to make her a nasty little goblin hag of dubious morals. When drawing her I thought it would be interesting if she liked to stay on the move, so her dirty tangled hair is so full of muck and soil that she has a thriving herb garden on her back which is tended to by her rat familiar.

Broonie has also been changed somewhat, while he dies of his injuries in the old tale I decided he managed to survive having his head horrifically stoved in with a boiling kettle, leading to his new name of Broonie Clod the Brainless Sod. Now there’s only enough Broonie left in that mangled cortex to recognise and obey mothers voice and old Meg has found the kettle to be a useful mobile cauldron, he barely even whimpers when she lights candles in his mouth to boil it.

Because in-world rhymes and tales are fun I decided to use Jack and Jill as a base to have a little rhyme of what happened to Broonie:

“Broonie Clod got off his tod
To pinch the liege-lord’s daughter
Filled with dread she stoved his head
With a pot of boiling water

The Brainless Sod then did plod
Over the weeping wold
To old Hag May, who waits for the day
That girl lies dead and cold”

Ever since I read the description of Dark Creepers in the Pathfinder monster manual I loved the idea of these horrible gross and grotty little creatures, wrapped up in filthy rags with only their nose and fingers showing while they sneak around furthering the nasty ends of Dark Stalkers

When I drew them I wanted to take them a step further and make them even more wretched denizens of the Shadowfel. Inspiration came from the Kilmoulis, a brownie with a huge nose and no mouth, so I took this idea and decided my Darklings you only saw a nose poking out because that’s all their faces were, a big nose and some long floppy ears

Now they would be even creepier, snuffling around dark places while leaving a gross snot trail and communicating with each other through sniffs, sighs and whistles like really grotty Clangers