Lone Wolf or Strider - Citadel Strider from BME1

This is a fairly common miniature on eBay, but a nice one: it's the Aragorn - or, as the tag on the miniature says, Strider - from the Fellowship of the Ring set made by Citadel in 1986.

Image courtesy of Solegends

The sculptor seems to be unknown but it looks to me as something made by Aly or Trish Morrison. Does anybody have better information?

Strider represents an archetype - just like the Evil Warrior and the Necromancer, the Ranger appears in countless stories. Strider is possibly the first of its kind, the one who established the stereotype separating it from the Hunter: the Ranger is something more, a true hero of good with supernatural powers linked to his harmony with nature and the world. D&D classified the Ranger as a class, and so many other RPGs. In Dragonlance Tanis Half-elven was a ranger and in the Forgotten Realms Drizzt Do'Urden was. But one of the most famous, and personally my favourite, is Lone Wolf.

Lone Wolf is in many ways similar to Strider: he belongs to a small, secretive and selected group of individuals, the Kai Lords and the Rangers of the North. He is special and unique even among them: he is either the last survivor of a purge or the last heir to a line of Kings. He has a mission: defeat the Dark Lord or the Dark Lords. He has supernatural powers derived part from training and part from his predestination to be a hero, but he is not a spellcaster. He has a magic sword that flames with golden light and burns evil creatures. 

The two are in fact so similar that this miniature can represent both of them, and it will in my games. About this miniature, I really like the dynamic pose: the character is advancing, possibly running, and he holds his sword forward: his back is covered in a flowing cloak and it looks like he has just unsheathed his weapon and he is holding it like a talisman, both as protection and challenge against his enemies. The sword is clearly the focus of the whole miniature and the source of power of the character - call it Andúril or Sommerswerd, that is an archetype, too, and a very good one.