Steel Leviathan

Sometimes I still mull over ASE and things like will it ever get more levels, and will I ever write anything more for the setting.

Sometimes this musing goes as far as drawing some stuff for the setting.  Like this Steel Leviathan and Unyielding Fist detachment.  I think this is a bigger and meaner steel Leviathan then the ones described in ASE - I imagine that it is a new creation from the Academy designed for the wars against the Dinosaur Khan and Serpent Men of the Certopsian plains who threaten Denethix's expansion and sovereignty.

It's also a chance to play around with some drawing effects.

Let's take this another step ... here are stats for "Red Ruin" and the unit it's part of.  If you are running ASE, they can flesh out the Unyielding Fist that guards all the other entrances of the megadungeon after it opens

and Again...

HMS Apollyon Art

Lately the HMS Apollyon is drawing me back in, I've started doing some doodles and here are a few.

This first is of the vessel from a birds eye view - not sure it captures scale well, but really there's nothing in the setting to measure it against so it'll have to do.

The second image I think does a better job of implying size, with a 50' yacht in the inset.  The location of the yacht is a similar marina entrance to the one used in my last online game, which I really should post a play report for.

The final two images are of different eras of Steward armor.  The first a steward in the molded garrison plate common when Sterntown still controlled a few heavy industrial factories and could roll and stamp heavy steel as well as mass produce rifles.  It's based on the experimental 'light body armor' prepared for the US army in 1918 - alloy steel over a rubber backing (WW1 armor is fascinating, from the heavy German armor for machine gunners, to the British layered silk stuff.  The US armor that the HMS Apollyon armor is based on was designed by the rather interesting eccentric and renaissance man Bashford Dean who was also a noted collector and expert on early modern and medieval armor. The second steward wears the standard armor of the Stewards (with rather garish parade helmet crest) from the period after "the retreat" which all of my games have taken place in.  Hand forged banded armor modeled after the roman lorica segmentata.  In game terms both are identical suits of AC 17 heavy armor.  I have decided that "Adsmus Custodes Pacis" or "We Assume Guardianship/Custody of the Peace" is an appropriately ironic motto for the stewards (They also have a motto about helping people and such maybe the Latin version of "Your Leisure is my Pleasure" spoken by Spud in "Train Spotting", but I haven't really decided yet.)

Maps maps maps.

So I haven't stopped making stuff for Table top games, I'm working on a few projects these days, and thought I'd share some of the map art I've made for them, and for other purposes of late.

First, A map I drew of the local region the "Master's of Carcosa" game I play in occasionally takes place in.  Run by my friend over at Save Vs. Total Party Kill, it's a pretty fun game.  A very open sandbox, that is becoming the most pro-social and optimistic game I've seen in a while.  Despite, or perhaps because, the GM has given the players a great deal of leeway, and  the setting is so amoral - filled with casual genocide, violence, theft and cartoonish depravity, the characters (a troupe of actors/con artists) have a become heroic civilizing force for peace.  Currently we are operating out of Invak, a Boneman lizard herding village that grudgingly accepts non-Bonemen refugees.  Jahar to the South, a Brownman trading city is on the verge of making an alliance with Invak due to player actions.  Much of the Southern map remains to be explored.

The Second Map here is an unlabelled map of a Fallen Empire river town.  The town (Mire? Rivertown? Tradefork? - Fallen Empire names are descriptive, not fantastical) is built up on sunken Imperial barge hulls, and pilings.  It's all recent wooden construction, wealthy and well protected thanks to the swamp and the grounded hulk of an old monitor which still has some working arcane weapons aboard.  I think this place may be the "point of light" in an adventure I've had brewing in the back of my head for some time. 

A very detailed map - in need of some shading

Also sort of incomplete - needs shading and actual maps.

The last item here is a map illustration/elevation/isometric projection/blah blah/whatever for a location map.  The location being the 'ruins' of a late Imperial era hunting lodge deep within a corrupted wood.  The lodge should be 3-4 levels and present an interesting set of challenges. I still need to draw out the interior maps and key most locations, but the project is going fairly quickly, though I am unsure if I'll PDF it or maybe even publish it somewhere.

HMS Apollyon Maps & Other Things

Some doodling that's gone on in the past few days.  First I got some nice new pens, a very good deal on 24 grey (though several of them tend towards sepia) first rate art markers and need to try them out.

This is an elevation map of the HMS Apollyon, my nautical mega dungeon.  Each square is about 350 feet, so the whole think is approximately 3 miles long.  Decks are broken into hundred foot sections, though there is plenty of space taken up by architectural elements and ship systems between those decks so it's not an exact thing.

5E Character Sheet

So Dungeons & Dragons just released it's 5th edition. I've read the PDF and tried to figure out what people have to say about it.  I have heard some things, people playing it, people being excited.  Mostly though this is drowned out by obnoxious whining about some personalities involved in 5th edition's production.  Blah, seriously this hobby is far far to small for that sort of juvenile stupidity.

So rather then say anymore on the profound amount of stupid I see of late - here's a character sheet that should work for 5e.  It lacks equipment, and the two additional pages, the spell page and the genre fiction about you character page.  Equipment lists can be useful, and I wish I could have fit it, same with a spell list - maybe those should be on a next page if I decide to bother, but I don't need a page of background to run a character - characters develop their stories through play.

I've gone with the most non-5th edition style I could, I've tried to make this look sort of Games Workshop mid-80's to mid-90's.  I think the sheet is moderately functional, but still it's largely a joke - I much prefer this style of sheet but it wouldn't work well with a game as engineered and constrained as 5th edition.

Cartoony Blank B/X or Retroclone Character Sheet

To the right is a quaint little character sheet I drew up.  I suppose it's for ASE or a similar gonzo sort of game, as it includes a Zardoz head atop the character portrait, but really I think it has everything I'd need to run a basic D&D character.   I made it with a 'significant item' sort of encumbrance system in mind but if you need use weights and measures who am I to say that's a bad thing.

I think the hit matrix is largely unnecessary and assumes descending AC, where as I prefer a LOTFP style hit bonus system.

Here's a PDF of the sheet.

Tomb of the Rocketmen - Illustrations

Attached are illustrations prepared for Tomb of the Rocketmen - the project continues apace....

First Feh-Ling the Verdigris Dragon...

A Fungal Rocket Zombie...

Did Someone Call for a Copper Hoarding Rat God?

While I had a hankering to submit my own Rat god, the Mother of Thousands to the DYI attempt to resurrect Petty Gods,  Tenkar of Tenkar's tavern has done one better.  I am not sure where the idea for this patron of giant rat cabals came from, but I went a doodled up Ratacus Gant for him. 

Here's the quick snap version, as I am too lazy to scan a good 300 dpi one right now.

Ratacus Gant - Coin Collector

Mysterious Map of Writing Desk Themed Location

Very hush hush, very on the sneak sneak.

Haven't been writing or playing much lately due to the intrusion of real life upon the fantastical.  I've been drawing a lot though - this one is for a project though.

This one isn't, it's a furred snake - one of the infamous predators
 of Pahvelorn's Crystal Forest. 

Fetid Pit - The Pit and it's History

Inaugural Post in my effort to produce an HMS APOLLYON location.  The Pit has been play-tested by Bumphrey the Mole Man's birthday expedition, and successfully navigated, despite some close calls (closer than the players know).  In writing it up (as evident from the Title Page posted concurrently with this Introduction), I intend to partially eschew the traditional keyed locations technique of dungeon design and use a Monster list, and random table system to generate encounters, treasures and interesting rooms (or tableaux) for descent into the pit as a whole, while keying areas such as the Agricultural Station, Bastion and Angler Fish Holes.

THE FETID PIT HISTORY AND AREA MAP

The Fetid Pit is a great air shaft leading from the weather deck of the Apollyon, deep into the vessel's holds. Air shafts are common on the upper decks, but only a few great shafts reach as deep as the Pit. Philosophers and architectural augers suspect that the Fetid Pit is in fact one of only eight such deep shafts, arranged in pairs along the entire length of the worldship.  Indeed the Pit is over three hundred feet across and thousands of feet deep, running at least to Deck 14, a region known to be flooded before halting at what is presumed to be a a sealed hatch. The Pit makes a poor access shaft to the upper reaches of the ship, as for the first several hundred feet it is frequently blocked by gigantic ventilation blades that slowly rotate turning what little light reaches right hundred feet into the shaft gray and dappled.  Additionally the upper shaft is known to be home to colonies of giant predatory pigeons, Merrow Men, wind elementals, automatons and at least one outsider noble and its entourage.

Megadungeon IV - Nodal Dungeon Tourist Map

Every Megadungeon needs a novelty tourist map.  Here's an attempt at one for Keith's "Nodal Megadungeon" which I've spoken about recently.  I'm not sure the map is helpful, but it took a while to doodle and while it lacks useful information it gives some feel and a sense of location at least - not that Keith's flowcharts didn't do an equally good or better job, but this has a doodles involved.  It's the least I can do to support Keith's great project.

Ultimately it ended up a tourist map like the ones you get for major cities which at best give a vague idea of where neighborhoods are located. I'm tempted to do one for the Apollyon and ASE...

Ogre Replacement - Enfant Terribles

Brutes steeped in madness and violence

ENFANTS TERRIBLES
(Large Monster)

No. App. 1-2 (2-12)
HD: 4
AC: 2
ATK: 1(Armored Fists) 1D8 or by Weapon
Move: 30'
Save: F2
Morale: 10

The Enfant Terribles, also known as a Suckling Homunculus, is neither a child nor a homunculus.  Their origin is unclear, but their appearance suggests they are either the product of outsider entities from one of the less pleasant spheres (Pandemonium most likely) or the result of ancient science perverted by sorcerers.

An Enfant Terribles appears as a bulky suit of encasing plate armor, most often of crude iron, speckled with rust, grim with ichor, old blood, and spittle.  The armor stands seven to nine feet tall and is proportioned to a bulky warrior, except for the helmet (when it is not lacking entirely) which is tiny, often reset between the shoulders or pushed upwards like a thin stalk above the mass of reeking metal.

Snakemen of the Certopsian

Snakemen are something I keep mentioning in my Certopsian Plains stuff, and Serpent Men make up the ultimate opponent in the Certopsian Situation (which I am trying to get back to working on).  Below is a bit of background, a picture (the composition, idea, and style of which was ripped off wholesale from Moebius) and a basic stat-line.

Awakened by strange ritual and dark magics, the Serpent Men have returned to the Certopsian plains after two thousand years of slumber.  Once the blood soaked masters of the Land of Thousand Towers, their monstrous 500 year reign was only put to the end by the advance of the Clockwork Matriarchy and it's automaton armies.

ONE MAP TWO MAP, RED MAP, BLUE MAP

Actually it's four small maps I drew up mostly as a series of tests for new map fills.

MAP 1 - Bugbear Den

(This map relates to ASE goblins - with their strange alien physiology)

In the forest beyond the low road an enterprising band of goblins, led by a fairly intelligent servitor species goblin (though they have no hive mind) have set up a small defensible village using an ancient bunker as a base.  Using this base they've been successful raiders and scavengers.  The key to their success is the use of a huge hollow tree as a spawning shrine for selected goblin sacks that are then heaped with the bodies of victims and animals the goblins hunt.  As goblin specialists know, rich nutrients and forest air result in bugbears.  Now the tribe has several, and with this added muscle expect to raise an even larger crop of bugbears soon.

Not really a fill map, given it's outdoors - I do like the use of the 20% grey (well now orange) for the trees and think it's a nice way to frame a map when one doesn't have real walls.

MAP 2 - Bleached Harbor

The desert beneath the earth was once a salty underground sea, or what was once a sea is now dry an sunk beneath the earth.  Once a proud trading house the Bleached Harbor is now derelict, with the ruins of a smashed cog and a capsized war galley standing sentry below docks that now raise 15' from hard packed salt flats.  Inside the ruin, carved from the rock of a former sea cliff, its interior walls enriched with fossils the trading house is strangely undisturbed.  Perhaps it's ghosts, ghouls or demons.  Certainly denizens of the salt flats find the shelter of the trading post a welcome respite from the dry scouring winds outside.

Used a hatching technique consisting of spirals - Not sure how I feel about it, it's not slow but it's not especially fast either.  I think the effect is pretty good, but it doesn't fit well in narrow spaces.

Some Maps (and thoughts on map fill)

 I was recently happy to get a very flattering comment from Dyson Logos of regarding one of my maps, which got me thinking about Dyson and his maps.  I've always really enjoyed them, they're clean and interesting (especially the way passages cross over each other and they possess a three dimensionality while remaining one level). What I really got to thinking about, because I like drawing maps, is Dyson's crosshatching technique, which even if you have no idea who I'm talking about you will recognize, because almost every map I see (mine included) is using it.

By crosshatching technique I mean the way the one fills space, specifically the space on a map filled with rock, earth or anything else more or less impenetrable. I've been stealing Dyson's great crosshatching, and I want to look into other space filling techniques for maps, because though it's filler, crosshatching adds a lot of character to a map and the character it adds tends to be one of the things that differentiates hand drawn maps from computer drawn.

Here are two filler techniques I thought up yesterday night and have applied to these small temples of evil.

Sinister, vaguely mechanical - block stippling

DER TOTTENWERKS (Das Totenwerk/Temple of Slaughter)

Beneath a stretch of rocky ground and accessed by a narrow stair set within a square pillar in the middle of nowhere, this abandoned temple to a deity of justice gone nasty and draconian served as a prison, ritual torture center and place of sacrificial execution.

It is undoubtedly haunted by the spirits of the victims, but could be used as a lair by just about anything/anyone who doesn't mind grim utilitarian decor designed to inspire hopelessness.  Prison areas are to the North with drainage pits (certainly also filled with bones), a torture theater and a well. To the South is the ritual chamber and quarters for the Carnifex priests.

The fill pattern I used here has a nice effect and is easier than cross hatching, but it is rather time consuming.  I also think it might work better for a map with rounder rooms as smaller spaces can blend into the block fill.  Of course using thick black walls helps keep the negative and positive space separated.

THE TEMPLE OF THE KRAKEN

Buried beneath the salt pan of an ancient dried lake, or the mud of a shallow marsh a sink hole leads to this ancient submersible.  A science-fantasy map depicting a crude temple to some sort of tentacled star god built into the ruins of an advanced technological craft.  The guardians reside in the aft, while the head priest or magician has luxurious quarters in the conning tower.  The temple itself is built in the missile and torpedo room amongst decaying weapons of mass destruction.

I would drop this thing into the Livid Fens South of Denethix in a second packing it with zombie drummers and poison wielding fanatical tribesmen.

This fill worked rather will, it's simply stippling in a more traditional way using a large, blunt sharpie. It's quicker than crosshatching and seems useful on maps with a lot of open space as where a decayed or organic feeling might be useful.

Tempus Gelidum - A Short Location (Map & Monster)

TEMPUS GELIDUM
An ASE Wilderness Encounter Levels 3-6

Deep in the badlands of the Certopsian Plains it is not uncommon to find strange remnants of ancient times.  Tempus Gelidum takes place in one such location, an ancient train station, now buried beneath the cracked earth, except for it's clock tower, which acts as the roost for a terrible creature and her minions.  The clock tower is home to Sthaleno, a winged gorgon, of rust and pitted iron who finds the tower's similar black metal construction the perfect perch from which to hunt.  Around the tower statutes of rusted iron provide a clue to the great gorgon's presence, though travelers and adventurers are a curious lot, and tend to investigate rather than flee.

Map of the Clock Tower

Gorgon

Stahleno herself is an ancient creature, perhaps not as old as the tower, but older than a thousand years.  Her body is made of thick iron plates, streaked with rust, but still incredibly strong and resilient, a combination of the mechanical and magical arts.  Unlike most gorgons, Stahleno does not have a bull's head, but bears the face of a beautiful woman, made from living porcelain, with black iron eyes.  Stahleno's breath is a noxious cloud of rust colored smoke that transforms those caught in it into iron statues, which she places at the base of her tower to savor the last reverberations of their hopelessness and fear.  Indeed, Stahleno lives off of the fear, terror and despair of mortals and will play with her victims to heighten these emotions.

In addition to her own considerable powers Stahleno has been able to reanimate some of her victims by returning a small portion of their life force, creating several iron servitors that act to protect her lair and the various treasures she has scavenged.

More Doodles.

Really I must finish some content here.  It's real life intruding on my active fantasy life I tell you - intruding something brutal.

Here's the last bit of work I did for Patrick over at Henchman Abuse.  I expect there may be some time for posts come mid November, assuming things don't get real scketchy.

ASE II Contains new spells!

Player Handouts for Mysterious Discoveries!

Crude Maps drawn by Other Adventuring Parties!

I have so much else I want to share, and so little time - Well I should be putting up a long overdue Pahvelorn play report, and maybe some thoughts on combat customization and/or random wilderness encounters

Really Busy These Days

Below is a final drawing I prepared for Pat's ASE II, depicting the major factions of ASE Level 3.  Hingehead, Moktar, Gillman and Goblin, taking a break atop a pile of pipes.

I should also note that I am extremely busy with my job these days, so it's unlikely much will be going up in the next week or so.  I'll try to put up a few tables and play reports, but can't promise much.

Also ApisFurioso, from Pilgrim's Guide to Zeitgeist is running a pretty cool sounding ASE campaign using a party of space adventurers from a Sci-Fi future.  What's really cool is that he decided to use my Red Demon small adventure as the jump off point for the world of the Thousand Towers, and got his party to pull sick rock and a map to ASE from the derelict war machine.  Check out his play report here!

Doodles of the Day

Working on Secret Santacore and assorted other things.  Still here's so drawings. very ASE stuff.

Some cave dwelling freaks

Nell assassinates a Moktar