Kh'tall saw them coming easily. The rather typical adventuring group, no doubt; human fighter, halfling rogue, elven wizard, dwarven cleric. All set to go with leather armor and high quality swords. It wouldn't be enough, though.

"I can't stand this forest." The fighter said, hacking his way through the underbrush. "All these burrs and thorns keep sticking me, so many trees I could barely swing my sword if I had to."

"Just remember the payoff!" The chipper halfling said, scouting ahead. "That's a fine sum of money just to take out one lizard."

"Yeah, she must be a real problem for them to want to pay -that- much." The fighter mused as his sword cleaved off part of a thorny bush. "But four against one, we'll be fine, right?"

Kh'tall stayed hidden behind her tree, letting them pass. Notching a trio of arrows and pulling the stright lightly taut, she waited for the right moment...

As soon as they had passed, she silently turned around the tree, using all of her strength to pull back the string of her longbow. Only a light 'twang' was heard as she let it go, the three arrows sailing forward and meeting their mark, trails of ice flowing from them; two piercing the fighter's armor and another going straight through his heart. He crumpled forward onto the ground without so much as a groan.

The rest of the group turned to try and spot their hidden assailant; only the halfling noticed and fired her crossbow, the bolt sticking into the tree beside Kh'tall. With a low growl, Kh'tall notched another pair of arrows, letting them fly and watchin them punch straight through the wizard's robes, bringing the frail elf down.

Another crossbow bolt sailed for her, but her tough scales and magical bracers made it simply snap against her shoulder. The dwarf charged at her, swinging his mace, hitting only air as she moved to the side. Stepping back a few feet and notching more arrows, she sunk them into the dwarf. He remained standing, but just barely, the freezing bolts hampering the short-legged man's movement even further.

Unfortunately for him, Kh'tall had more arrows, having already notched one more as soon as she had released the other two. The last one brought down the dwarf too as it sunk into his body, the lizard's glare turning to the halfling.

She tried to turn and flee, but she wasn't as skilled at moving through the thick undergrowth as the lizard ranger. Kh'tall ran swiftly after her, grabbing for the halfing; she managed to duck the swipe and continue. Not so the second time, Kh'tall's clawed hand grabbing her shoulder firmly.

The halfling gave a brave but fruitless struggle against the strong lizard who was twice as tall as she was, but she was forced down onto the ground and pinned with little effort. Snarling broadly, Kh'tall brought her weapons to bare; her sharpened yellow claws. Tearing into the halfling with them, even biting at her with her many canine teeth, it wasn't long before the short rogue's flailing and screaming died away, the trees and ground around her splattered with her own blood.

Standing up and catching her breath, Kh'tall picked up her longbow - ironically named "Bounty", since no bounty hunter wanted to find it - and strode back into the depths of the forest, leaving the unfortunate adventurers behind to feed the animals of the forest.

---

Part two of a mini-series of Kh'tall's incarnations. I took the base of the modern Kh'tall and made a Medieval version of her. She's still a human killer for sure, but I've styled the medieval version as a bounty hunter hunter. She's a very light traveller; just her equipment (most of which is not shown in the picture because I'm lazy), her bow, and a compass to find her way. Her only melee weapons are her claws and teeth, made deadlier by some of her items and feats. (Unfortunately every Monk feat ever only applied to unarmed strikes, not natural weapons, so all she has to go on are Monster feats.) That said, I couldn't help but imagine Kh'tall doing the Hunter Pounce from Left 4 Dead. |3

Also I had no idea how damn big longbows were until I looked up reference material for this picture.

Also, her bow has a weapon crystal on of Cold Assault; it deals an extra 1d6 cold damage and slows the target's movement by 10' for 1 round when hit, just to make extra sure they can't escape. While she doesn't have the 8 attacks of the Modern Kh'tall, she's got 4 attacks and has also got Manyshot to fire multiple arrows at once.

Whereas the modern Kh'tall's abilities were trained specifically on humans, this version of Kh'tall uses a ranger variant that loses its animal companion and instead applies -all- of its Favoured Enemy bonuses to hit rolls, not just damage, so she's not bad at hunting animals and halflings in addition to humans.

The short story is that each arrow does 1d6[cold]+2d6+1d8+19 damage, which adds up fast.

Her equipment, most of which I didn't draw, includes:
- Boots of Elvenkind (great for sneaking around)
- Gloves of Dexterity +6 (fingerless, since she makes good use of her claws)
- Cloak of Resistance +4
- +4 Bracers of ARmor, with a Lesser Crystal of Arrow Deflection (A delicious +5 AC on ranged attacks)
- +2 Ring of Protection
- Ring of Sustenance (never needing to eat and only having to sleep 2 hours is great for travelling)
- +2 Amulty of Mighty Fists (basically makes her claws and teeth +2 claws and teeth if such things could exist)

Character and art © me.