I did indeed end up burning the evening oil on the last night of the March Might & Magic Painting Challenge though as it turned out I might as well have not bothered. I finished all four dwarves at 11:35 pm local time, took some quick pictures but when I went to my computer that was when I learned that the internet was down!

I think they’d have a fun adventuring party for a D&D dungeon crawl.
That is what I get, I suppose, for cutting it so fine. I was going to leave them out but after several people opined that I should include them in the round-up, that is what I’m going to do.*

I kind of see the graybeard guy as their leader.**
As I mentioned in a post on February 20th, I envision the musket dwarf as some sort of magician, who uses his firearm as a focus for casting (or shooting) his spells or whatever. So it seems fitting to include a picture of him with Cat and Toad.*** Owl, the last of the three pack of familiars, remains sadly unpainted but I hope to remedy that in April.

His profile kind of reminds me of the Old Man in the Mountain before it fell down.
Some Previous Posts Concerning the Four Dwarves
- Feb 12th: Dwarves before priming.
- Mar 7: Progress on the WIP Dwarves.
- March 17: The dwarves’ red cloaks.
- Mar 27: First dwarf finished.
- April 2: Second dwarf finished.
* Four different people told me that I should consider cutting myself (or at least the dwarves) some slack and go ahead and put up the picture. I have a general principle in life that if three or more people tell me they disagree with something I’ve decided, then I need to go back and give my decision more thought. In this case, I’ll go ahead and include them. If someone else had told me they had internet problems, I wouldn’t have hesitated and would have said, “No problem, send them and I’ll happily include them!” After having thought about it, I don’t think anything is served by holding myself to the “higher standard” because I’m running the challenge, which was my initial instinct.
** By virtue of his size, the fact he has the biggest axe and the fanciest shield.
*** In older versions of Dungeons & Dragons, and dare I say most (but not all) literature I’ve read to date, a familiar is the little creature in question, such as a frog or cat, with some flavor of magic thrown in. In the current version of the game, the familiar is a “spirit” that you can summon and dismiss. The familiar to take a different form with each new summoning. So if we go by that, having both a cat and toad painted up is useful for our friend, the dwarf marksman wizard/warlock/whatever.
While I can see the merits of a shapeshifting spirit familiar, I find that I prefer the old comfortable version of Cat and Toad rather than a spirit that can turn into a cat and toad. Either way, I do still have the owl, that came in the package of familiars so I should probably paint it up for the April Challenge whether I plan on using it as another shapeshifting option or to represent a new friend named Owl.