More illustration work for Pernicious Albion, the ancient war witch, dissipated divinity, majordomo of the House of Death; The Morrigan.
An Array of Specimens Tagged as Playing With Someone Else’s Toys
Show Me Where The Angel Touched You
November 24, 2014
I’ve been doing some illustration work for Mateo Diaz’s absurdly lovely Pernicious Albion, and so far it’s producing some of my favourite things I’ve ever drawn, so I’m looking forward to it being an actual thing that I can hold and play and you should be too.
The link above goes to Mateo’s initial concept and content rundown, but follow the label at the bottom of that post to see all the other things he’s posted on the subject.
The illustrations:
Penemue, Mad Angel of Secrets, who taught people writing before it was meant to, and will say hello to you via personally-addressed thousand-year-old dungeon graffiti carved into the walls.
And the Incubus, which is fairly self-explanatory.
Bring Me the Head of Zachariah Crooks
August 20, 2014
Another character sheet commission for the adorable Wil McKinnee, Hakaak the half-orc who carries his halfling lady friend around on his back for “combat maneuvers”.
Did you know that I played a game with Wil where he jumped on a Pterodactyl being ridden by a javelin-thrower, stabbed it in the side, then used the sword as a rudder to make it crash dead into the ocean, backflipping away from it in the nick of time? Well I did, it was epic.
The Apposite Pariahs of Creation
July 25, 2014
Here have some art, originally drawn for Patrick Stuart’s Veins of the Earth.
Now that it has an actual publishing deal these will probably never appear in the actual book because aesthetic consistency, with the whole thing likely to be illustrated by Scrap Princess (who is a brilliant machine).
Nevertheless I’m glad they happened, the Alkalion is one of my favourite things I’ve ever, ever drawn, and they all forced my fingies to keep working and working and now starting a new drawing isn’t the struggletown it was at the start of the year.
Unsolicited life lesson: THE MORE YOU STOP DOING THINGS OUT OF FRUSTRATION AT YOUR OWN INEPTITUDE THE LONGER YOU WILL BE TERRIBLE AT THEM. Push through the pain cupcake.
The Alkalion
The ToRaptoise
(still not really what I pictured when I first read about them and got all light-headed and dreamy,
but the design goal that Scrap and I ended up coming to was “a carnivorous penis spilling out of the worst vulva”, so I think I can lay some claim to success)
Sonic Pigs: the pigs that make you shit yourself and weep
BENEATH BLACK FROST DREAD SANTICORE WAITS
February 18, 2014
I was a handler for last year’s Secret Santicore, and in the spirit of the terror season offered prizes to those whose entries gave me the most joy.
After making Santicore’s vast belly shake M. Diaz of Gloomtrain requested that Rose draw him a Lamia, refined and wicked, so here she is in all her plump glory:
And because he’s an absolute sweetheart he insisted that he complete an extra request for me in return, so I asked for some predictions you might get from a Soothsayer Sophisticate and holy shit.
| THE MANNER OF DELIVERANCE | |
| d8 | The Soothsayer Sophisticate... |
| 1 | Slices a lamb open with a gloved hand and inspects its viscera as they tumble to the floor. |
| 2 | Examines a flock of birds through an apparatus with many lenses and mirrors. |
| 3 | Delivers their pronouncement while reading the newspaper. You cannot see their face. |
| 4 | Inhales a bright red powder from a carved silver box and shrieks their prediction as they whirl around the room, arms outstretched, eyes vacant. |
| 5 | Screams as their head snaps back and their back arches, then whispers a prophecy. |
| 6 | Cuts a hole in your palm and peers inside for strange truths. |
| 7 | Is eating breakfast and describes your future with a spray of crumbs. |
| 8 | Dies, thrashing and bleeding from the mouth, even as their peals of laughter fill the chamber. |
| THE VATIC UTTERANCE ITSELF | |
| d30 | |
| 1 | You will perish in your moment of most awful triumph. |
| 2 | Yellow is the colour of madness, and red is the colour of fear. |
| 3 | Something ancient and strange from beyond the horizon has learned your name. |
| 4 | Your enemies will come bearing weapons of bronze. |
| 5 | Dolls signal calamity, while spiders are harbingers of good fortune. |
| 6 | You will go to the house without doors. |
| 7 | Dusk is the most dangerous hour, while midnight is the safest. |
| 8 | Do not trust men with dogs, women with birds, or children with snakes. |
| 9 | Never dance in the light of the full moon or sleep under the light of the sun. |
| 10 | You will one day be trapped between fire and sea. |
| 11 | Death wears tattered silk. |
| 12 | Calamity is the child of hesitation and the mother of rectitude. |
| 13 | Only foul things wear more than one face. |
| 14 | Great fortune sleeps beneath cloven feet. |
| 15 | Something has awakened beneath the city. It is hungry and evil and very, very old. |
| 16 | Never eat the flesh of dogs. |
| 17 | You have been the victim of a great deception. |
| 18 | Trust in the keen perspicacity of mothers. |
| 19 | Goats are bearers of evil. |
| 20 | Your salvation lies in the hands of a child bearing a spindle. |
| 21 | Kings and councillors plot your end in hidden chambers. |
| 22 | Something foul stirs itself in the sea. |
| 23 | Even as we speak, fools and thieves disturb the old barrows. |
| 24 | You will acquire the enmity of a herald. |
| 25 | The Red Eye Star shines brightly and hungrily over your head. |
| 26 | A wild queen seeks to strike you down, and her children wish to eat you. |
| 27 | You will reap great profit from a scene of terrible bloodshed. |
| 28 | The guardian grows feeble, even as the beast gnaws at its chains. |
| 29 | Soon, a harvest will yield dangerous fruit. |
| 30 | Run. |
M. Diaz writes like nobody’s business.
Hott Halfling Hermaphrodite Action
February 7, 2014
The plausibly brilliant Wil McKinee commissioned me to draw a character sheet for him and I did because who could say no to that face.
Description by Wil:
BLABERUS
Is a 28 year old Hermaphroditic Halfling (About 3′ tall) with short blonde hair and an untrusting face. She wears a leather chest and backplate of dark brown. There is nothing underneath this. Her pants are baggy but tapered. Upon the head and down over the shoulders sits a chainmail cowl, held tightly in place by a Crown of Ears, collected from an array of beasts and humanoids. They listen to and transmit to BLABERUS the thoughts of a single individual/entity once per day. She carries a Potion of Spore Blast (2 hours after drinking, the potion will cause the consumer to projectile vomit forth (15 feet) fungal spores with a 40% chance of infecting any target on her person.
Her primary weapon is Scrap’s
MERCYS SHADE:
It’s a weaponized umbrella, made out of fancy arcane metals. It can be a shield or a staff, you can deflect one projectile with a successful dex save by open it quickly. It also arrest a fall to a gentle descent if held aloft open.
Except for there is an evil looking dagger tip at the hilt on this one.
There’s a shortbow in there too.
Actually, replace the eyes with the crown of ears. 5in6 to search regarding hyper-hearing (otherwise 1insix par usual), though if the environment is near-silent movement slows to 5′, unless she makes vocalized sounds which would make it 10′. The Umbrella does 1d6 DMG. The bow as well.
Between the Sheets
January 17, 2014
Drawing character sheets on blank pieces of paper is fun as hell, but I figured it was time I got back to the template character sheets I’ve been working on.
So, here they are.
This one’s for straight-up by the book Lamentations of the Flame Princess, including the new firearms rules. Brendan has a good quick-reference for them here.
Click the image for a PDF that allows for printing a single A4 size sheet, or two A5 size sheets.
If you download it you’ll notice green writing all over the place absolutely everywhere. Jeff Rients wrote an article about, among other things, character sheets being poor at communicating with new players, and I said that you couldn’t design a character sheet that explained everything about itself without making it an abomination.
Well, I was right, it’s an abomination, and it doesn’t entirely explain itself, but from my own experience introducing new players to not only LotFP but RPGs as a whole, I think the notes written all over it should make explaining things in that first session a whole lot easier.
Of course if you know what you’re doing just turn off that layer.
And this one is a fold-0ver A5 sheet for Cörpathium.
If you’re familiar with my house rules you might notice that the new sheet doesn’t have anywhere to note Cataclysm or Faith. That’s because I want to avoid having things on the sheet that would be irrelevant for some players as much as possible, and I make little spellbooks for my Maleficar/Mystic players anyway so they can note it there. And if you don’t make little spellbooks for your players what are you doing?
There’s also a bunch of new or tweaked house rules on it, most of them are pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll collect them up in another post later.
Tomorrow is adventure/John Waters day with Rose though, so you’ll have to wait.
Playing With Someone Else’s Toys: Monsterparts
August 22, 2013
Pearce Shea of Games With Others has been known to blurt out pretty, clever little things that make me squeal with glee.
The latest is Monsterparts, a game of children facing down the nightmare apocalypse while their parents fuss over toast and the morning paper.
Yes, I know you want to play it, we all do. Here are some extra Special Things and Secrets.
| Special Things | |
| 1d20 | (d4 uses each) |
| 1 | Box with the Body of your Goldfish (One Use Only) Its ghost can swim through the streams of time, up to 5 days into the past or future. If you whisper a 3 word message into its mouth, when the ghost arrives it will flop to the floor and blow a big wet bubble that releases the message when it pops. |
| 2 | Mum's Perfume Spraying it in a bad thing's face will paralyse them for d2 Turns with a coughing fit. |
| 3 | Cousin Judith's Crayons Judith is such a good drawer, she told you if you use these crayons maybe you'll be as good as her some day. Anything drawn with the crayons lifts itself up and becomes real for a Turn. |
| 4 | Old Yo-Yo When you're lost will lead you in the right direction if you Walk the Dog. |
| 5 | Ugly Knitted Sweater from Grandma Will absorb an attack and wound the bad thing that tried to hurt you. |
| 6 | Grandpa's Flashlight Will punch a hole right through the blackest nightmare. |
| 7 | Battered old Blankie +3 AC when wrapped around you. |
| 8 | Nudie Magazine from Dad's Shed (Truant Only) Can be used to bribe tough/cool/bad kids for information or help. |
| 9 | Baby Winklefoot's Book of Bedtime Stories (Studious Only) When read, will force any bad thing that hears it to sink back into the earth to sleep for a Turn. |
| 10 | Tin Soldier Will defend you with the strength of a Tough kid to the death or the end of 3 Rounds, whichever comes first. |
| 11 | Dead Girl's Diary If you say nice things about the girl who owned it, will reveal helpful information. |
| 12 | Magic Decoder Ring Helps you read things you can't understand. |
| 13 | Ninja Mask When worn, you roll two damage dice. |
| 14 | Tarnished Spyglass Reveals the true form of anything you look at. |
| 15 | Busted Walkie-Talkie Hisses and spits with static when bad things are near. Can be used to shout a single word at one of your friends wherever they are d4 times before it stops working altogether. |
| 16 | Big Fat Wad of Trading Cards You've been collecting these things forever. When laid out on the ground they form a barrier that bad things can't cross. 30' worth. |
| 17 | Lucky Underpants It's hard to bring someone down when they're wearing their lucky underpants. When you're in a bad place or being chased, there's a 50% chance each Round that your EP aren't reduced. |
| 18 | Imaginary Friend They can get into places you can't to unlock doors or steal things or scope it out. How? Uh, because they're imaginary? |
| 19 | Ballerina Music Box While it's playing, bad things can't come within 30' of you for a Turn. During that time you can't lose EP and can rest or eat if you need to. |
| 20 | Cereal Box Harmonica Calls any neighbourhood dogs in the area to come to your aid. |
| Secrets | |
| 1d20 | |
| 1 | When you look at your shadow it seems to run in the direction of old Mr. Broomhower's house. He used to be an explorer or a doctor or a librarian or something and he never opens the gate that surrounds his huge dilapidated home. |
| 2 | You've seen that kid Dale from Mrs. Corrigan's class eating dirt and bugs. He keeps getting fatter and fatter, no one else seems to notice. |
| 3 | The run-down Joke Shop in town has been doing a lot more business lately, but children never go there, only adults. It stays open at all hours of the night. |
| 4 | Old Mrs. Rumfeld never closes her doors or windows anymore, and at night the house is full of green light. |
| 5 | The Principal is organising a school excursion to the abandoned coal mine, but it's been boarded up for years. Your mum just told you she sent in your permission slip. |
| 6 | Mrs. Russell hasn't stopped smiling since her husband died. Even while she's crying, she never stops smiling. |
| 7 | Plain Jane Richards brought a box of kittens to school for show-and-tell, she says her cat Miffy gave birth to them last night. Your dad ran over Miffy last week. |
| 8 | Words form in your cereal every morning. You've been writing them down and they seem to be a warning about something that is going to happen today, but it won't say what until tomorrow. |
| 9 | Birds have stopped perching in the big tree in the middle of the park. The old men that feed the ducks just stand there staring up at the tree. |
| 10 | Pink fungus is growing around the janitor's closet at school. The janitor hasn't been to work in a week and the fungus is starting to spread. |
| 11 | The Haversham's have no eyes, just bored out holes where they ought to be. They've been hosting dinner parties all week and their guests always leave without eyes. Your mum just got off the phone to Mrs. Haversham, you've all been invited over for dinner. |
| 12 | All the people eating at the diner have grey oily bubbles that curve out from the back of their heads. Soon you can see the bubbles all the time. Soon they never leave the diner. |
| 13 | Joey McNeil keeps telling everyone about the presents his grandfather has been bringing him, but Joey's grandfather died three years ago.. |
| 14 | Amy's parents send her to school with nothing but jelly cups for lunch. She always has more than she can eat and is happy to share. She's starting to look a bit like jelly herself. |
| 15 | The Peterson's dog looks more scruffy than it used to, like its fur doesn't fit right, and during the day it's always sitting in the middle of their porch. It looks like it's smiling. |
| 16 | Chris Matthews has always been a big mouth liar but he says he was hiding in the park and saw Alice's dad swallow Doctor Phillips then lie there like a huge pregnant lady. But you saw both of them today and they didn't look swallowed or pregnant to you. They do seem weird though, and your dad says you have to see Doctor Phillips this weekend to get a tetanus shot. |
| 17 | The church is having extra services on Tuesdays now, but they don't allow kids. The old ladies glare at you as they leave. |
| 18 | Your dad has been staying up all night at his computer. When you watch him strange colours dance all over his face while he stares at the screen, not even typing. If you move to look at the monitor it's just a blue screen. |
| 19 | While you're watching TV the weatherman starts to cry and outside it starts to rain. |
| 20 | Black frogs keep swimming up from the pipes and into the toilet whenever you try to go to the bathroom. When you went over to Tim's house they nearly filled the bowl. |