Bodachs, from Alan Garner's YA fantasy book The Moon of Gomrath. They were smaller than Susan, a young adolescent; bald, pointy-eared, covered in flat locks of hair like scales, had the legs of birds and bounded along with an unpleasant pecking motion. They served Morrigan, living only for the scream of blades.
The dwarf Uthecar described them as much like Goblins, but, loath as he was to admit it, braver, more aggressive. They stuck with me from reading that book a long time ago. I remembered their spears and odd legs, but falsely recalled horns and scaled armour, because these things are tricky.
I've settled on some raven or crow forms in their kit, and let them have the lamprey as a favourite animal motif. In the story, they can be eerily still and hard to detect; I decided their fur should accumulate algae and leaf litter like a loth to help them along with this.
I had a lot of fun with these nasty little men, and got to horse around with some new digital tricks. Like them!
