But there is no warmth in Winter Forest anymore.

Two hundred years ago, a deadly blizzard swept down from the northern wastes, expanding the reach of the Frost Gods and dooming hundreds of thousands of innocent souls to death by freezing and starvation. Entire towns were buried in ice, and what few villages remained were isolated, forced to fight for scraps of dry timber or bits of food. Even women and children were not safe from the hands and axes of men desperate to stay alive, to consume anything of flesh, to burn anything that could take a flame. Evil took deep root in the heart of Winter Forest, a black blood pumped by the icy heart of terror. Pacts were made, dark bargains that invited yet more evil. In the end, not a single human survived the winter . . . But the dark gods they called upon, stayed.

Even in summertime, when the rivers sparkle again, and the snows recede, there is an unnatural chill here. The thousands who froze, eager to possess warm bodies again, haunt the woods. The woods are home, too, to monsters, outcasts, warlords of evil, and more, fighting over hiding-places and caches of old treasure, deep in the rich timberland. Winter Forest is a place of icy evil, vast potential, and the legions of the wicked.

The denizens of this frosty playground of death are now available as paper miniatures for your fantasy gaming pleasure. If you desire trolls and dark sorcery, brigands and vermin, and legions of the damned, this set is for you. Illustrated by talented fantasy artist T. Jordan Peacock, Legend of Winter Forest is a magical – and decidedly deadly – complete set of Sparks: paper miniatures in font form!

Try SPARKS For Free!

Want to see what Sparks are like? Download and enjoy the Sparks: Free For All set at no charge! It includes Sparks from several of our earlier sets, to prepare you for what you'll find in this one! Give it a test drive, and you'll like what you see!

Character Roster

What kind of miniatures do you get? There are 26 in all, one for each letter of the alphabet!

• Carapax (A/a): A Carapax empire lies to the east of the Moonspires - a vast, subsurface realm of industrious, but not notably violent, insect men. The Carapax tribes of Winter Forest, though, are touched by dark forces, and their tunnel-villages are well-defended, hidden lairs where the screams of their victims are muffled beneath packed earth and snow.
• Bean Sidhe (B/b): This particular wailing harbinger of death is the "Ghost of Acorn Hill," a ridge of twisted oaks near Blood Creek. Among the oaks, who many claim can walk like a man and kill like a hundred, predicting the demise of hapless travelers is easy work.
• Hergott (C/c): The Centaur tribes along the southern edge of the winterwood (as they call it) are vassals of the Kingdom of Ulgrey, or at least enough to keep the peace. They aren't evil, but in these deadly environs, they are sensibly distrustful of strangers. They don't hesitate to kill what they don't trust, as a precaution. Hergott runs tracks deep into the central basin, keeping a wary eye for the Shard Sisters, who enjoy the pelts of his kind.
• Jeinan (D/d): Self-described "Mage Prince" of the Shard Elves, Jeinan serves the priestesses of the moon's shadow with a cultured wit and a romantic soul . . . But while he speaks and sings pleasantly, evoking beauty as only an Elf can, his allegiance is to the night, and his motives should be ever suspect. His armor and uniform is that of a Shard Soldier, the elite guard of the Winter Forest Elves.
• Efrit (E/e): When summoned here, these spirits burn magnesium-white. They are the favored "special job" brutes of the White Warlord, master of the valleys north of Acorn Hill, and commander of the Legions of Thanos.
• Grey Ghoul (F/f): These shriveled beasts run in huge packs under cover of darkness, a soft rustling of bare, clawed feet on the snow. They dine on carrion when they can find it, and fresh rats and voles when times are lean. Times are seldom lean, here.
• Gorgon (G/g): These serpent-coiffed aberrations live in triplets, making lairs on haunted hills where even Timber Tolls avoid the sense of dread. The petrified forms of their victims are collected in vast cellars - a stone army awaiting orders from the gorgons' unseen masters.
• Harpy (H/h): Flocks of these spirits maraud the skies, agents of a twisted kind of justice. They don't kill at random; they attack only those who have broken their word in some way, violated a trust. Of course, that often applies to the heroic as well as the villainous, so the rush of wings and the terrible nagging voices of the harpies puts the fear of death in anyone. Nettles rubbed on the skin repel them.
• Imp (I/i): The White Warlord commands hundreds of these creatures, who fight like screeching lunatics but are capable of incredible stealth when need be - even in large numbers. While the Thanos Legionnaires regard the imps as whipping-boy underlings (and the Warlord lets them) they are, in truth, every bit as valuable to the Warlord's cause as their larger, clunkier brethren - and some day the Legionnaires may awaken to find that the "funny little demons" aren't so funny after all.
• The Great Ooze (J/j): If you're a trapper brave enough to venture into the western edge of the wood, you might know him as "Carter's Lake" - cold and placid and curiously devoid of fish. But the Great Ooze is a thinking, moving thing that knows how to play possum in a way that only a few million tons of haunted muck really can, and it sends pools of itself out hunting for stray meat and shiny treasures. When the White Warlord attempted to conquer the Temple of Dawn's Demise, the Great Ooze, inexplicably, formed an army to defend it.
• Thanos Legionnaire (K/k): The elite servants of the White Warlord bear arms forged from haunted steel: iron imbued with the spirits of slain foes, eager for the company of more. With each new victim, the armor, shield, and weapon of a Legionnaire gains new powers, and a sensitive mage can squint and see each soldier as a violent cyclone of tormented souls, bound into the cold prison of their tools of war.
• Saurid Grunt (L/l): The pale, physically-powerful Saurids are the allies of the Night Priestesses . . . Not out of any great love of the Goddess of Stars or disdain for the Shard Elves, but because the Priestesses alone treated them with respect when they came into the forest as mercenary bands, years ago. They'd rather be respected, supported allies than anyone's flunkies, and their sure-footed leaps across icy hilltops make for a terrifying shock-attack.
• Imrahoratep (M/m): The Winter Forest Elves found Imrahoratep and two hundred like him in a tomb beneath a tomb - a ruin that predates even the "civilized" era of the forest, by unguessable centuries. With the proper incantations, the mummies were awakened and animated, and stand as a powerful inner line of defense for the Moon Shadow Stones.
• Zora-Sa (N/n): He came here with a band of serpent-men raiders, following tales of easy riches and plentiful foes. They had the second part right, and while the riches haven't come easy, the fighting has. Now his band is down to fewer than two-dozen, but their mastery of both wizardry and swordplay may turn them into a greater success story than the orcs or the followers of Throng have managed to become.
• Ichor-Clan Orc (O/o): They served the White Warlord until he became frustrated with their stupidity. They served the Shard Elves until the acolytes complained about the smell. They jumped the fence to the Temple of Dawn's Demise and were offered jobs as sacrifices to fuel spells. Most of them were clever enough to decline, and they wander Winter Forest, now, hungry and greedy and eager to sharpen their axe on the bones of the unwary.
• Demoncoil (P/p): The foliage of Winter Forest is as haunted as its hidden tombs, and even the humblest leaf of clover may be an accursed creature of some kind. Most of the spirit-saturated plant life is harmless, but the thick, woody vines that grow near Acorn Hill sprout ice-blue flowers large enough to devour a pony, and can drag even a Yeti to immobility.
• Night Priestess (Q/q): She is Narnee, one of the servants of the Temple of Dawn's Demise, devoted to the Goddess of Stars and the sworn enemy of the Goddess of the Shadow of the Moon, her elvish "counterpart" in the dominion of the night. Both temples work for the destruction of the sun gods, but here, racial hatreds run deep in the vein, and battle lines are drawn for the forest's resources and the servitude of the barbaric races.
• Brigand (R/r): Handark The Unwholesome is a raider from the Snakepit Hills in distant Yangolin, and one of the "bandit army" of the mighty Throng The Laconic, barbarian entrepreneur. They've become so cocky that they robbed a small army in midsummer, an honor-guard for a traveling prince from the city-state of Voian. The prince's corpse brought a much smaller ransom than a live prince would have, but it screamed for Mommy less.
• Bone Ogre (S/s): In the year before the White Warlord slaughtered the wizard Bormok and stole his citadel, Bormok did battle with the entire Ogre population of the wood, who had risen against him. They numbered nearly two thousand, a snarling mass of malicious brute strength . . . But Bormok was mighty in magic when given sufficient warning, and two thousands Ogres lack stealth. He froze them solid in sheets of deadly light, but ten years later, when their flesh thawed and fell off in the strange heatwave that consumed the wood for a month, the bones stood and walked! Now the Bone Ogres are a threat to everyone in the wood, and a greater thorn in the Warlord's side than they had ever been to Bormok.
• Timber Troll (T/t): Timber Trolls owe allegiance to no one, although some take on work as mercenaries if they're fed enough deer. When they aren't cracking open fresh venison on the hoof, they're known to distract themselves with horses, humans, and (especially) dwarves. Apparently the beards help them digest.
• Verminite (U/u): Slowly, without anyone really taking care to notice, these small but resourceful rat-men have become the dominant species of Winter Forest, at least as far as numbers are concerned. There are Verminite soldiers fighting for every faction in the forest, and rumors are circulating that some have even built large towns in the far northern highlands, under the shadows of the Moonspires.
• War Wight (V/v): They first appeared on the battlefield just seven years ago - a mysterious new undead ally of the Shard elves, accompanied by rust-red hounds that breathed frost. No one knew where the Elves found them, or what dark rituals were used to raise them, but whatever it was went horribly wrong. When the battle seemed to end with the Elves in victory, the War Wights turned on their "masters" with a chilling screech of liberty, and half the Elves were slaughtered, the rest routed. The Wights and their dogs marched into the deep woods, alone and triumphant, and have not yet re-emerged.
• Shard Sister (W/w): The female counterparts to the Shard Soldiers, the sisters are master equestrians and equipped with enchanted crossbows, their signature weapon. The high priestesses of the moon's shadow travel among their followers disguised as these revered snipers, to learn of conspiracies and dissension within their ranks.
• Yeti (X/x): These fanged, clawed, white-furred demons of the snows are native to the Moonspires, but they roam down into the upper reaches of Winter Forest out of curiosity or hunger, sometimes in hunting-groups of three or four. While only half as massive as a Timber Troll, a Yeti has sharper talons and is blindingly fast, fighting like a blur of ripping teeth and rending claws. They run on all fours, and can outrace any horse, even on flat terrain (which they shun when possible).
• Restless Dead (Y/y): Following cycles understood by few, even the ancient villagers of the forest, long dead, sometimes rise to wreak havoc. Often, entire lost villages rise at once. Some believe that their ghosts wander for years before returning "home" to their place of death, but when a "zombie season" hits the forest, it can sometimes fill the woods with the desperate shuffle of the deceased for several weeks, moving as corpses preserved frozen for centuries.
• Zombie Soldier (Z/z): Oh, and some of them have swords!

20 Bonus Flats!

In addition to the Sparks themselves, this set includes twenty flats (seven are shown below). The flats aren't scaled any particular way - they're all the same glyph-height; just print them out at any scale that seems useful. It's best to print them relatively large, for clarity.

• Trees (!, both parentheses, 5): A decidous (leafy) tree, a bare stump, a pine tree half-covered with fresh snow, and a tree with all the leaves fallen off, seen from above.
• Magic Symbols and an Amulet (@,%, 1): A high-contrast magic circle, and an unusual square design, for decorating the floors of unholy places. The amulet at 1 matches the floor symbol at @
• Puddle or Ooze (#): It's a puddle either way; the only question is: will it kill you?
• Footprints ($,^): Boot-tracks in snow, and animal tracks.
• Standing Stones (&): For that classy Stonehenge-Look all the hip druids are sporting these days!
• Trapdoor (*): Wooden, probably locked. Where's it go?
• Weapons (2,3,9): An arrow, an axe, and a dagger.
• Pouch (4): A fallen purse from a slain foe, perhaps!
• Piles (6,7): A pile of bones, and a pile of wood ready to be a campfire.
• Treasure Chest (8) and the Key (0) to open it.

For Windows

The Legend of Winter Forest is a Windows TrueType font. It works on any modern Windows system, and on up-to-date versions of the Macintosh OS (Mac began supporting Windows fonts in OS X). If you have any doubts whether Sparks will work on your system (especially if you're a Mac user), please download the Sparks: Free-for-All sample font and test it on your computer. If the Free-for-All works, this set will too.

How to Order