GIANT BAT WITH FLAMENCO BIRD HANDS

I am blogging about Peter Mullens art until we attain his skills for my KICKSTARTER.

This is DAY TWO!

Firstly, this is a lovely image. I am not sure if it has been published anywhere but if it has my apologies. You can see the original at Peter Mullens site here.

Will Peter do anything nearly as amazing for my book? There is only one way to find out; BACK IT!!!
For todays PeterOddessy I will take us deep, DEEP into this image by naming and describing the background of EVERY living thing in it!

From the top left, moving counterclockwise to the bottom right

STAGE BEETLE

Wihlem Thrice, the only sentient and transformed insect in the image. Formerly a composer. Until now the slow integration with his insect life, the simple and binary pleasures of its existence and limited capacity for self-expression had dulled him into a dreamlike state, but now, with this incredible confabulation of events, he feels within himself the awakening of his muse, but how to record the symphony he feels inside his mind?!!?

FLAPPING BAT

Grimbles, formerly a witches familiar but was fired from that employment for eating the wrong child’s eyes. Now haunts the underworld, likes to eat spiders and is looking at (sensing) the large one on  the mushrooms just across the way.

GIANT BAT WITH FLAMENCO BIRD HANDS

The GRABULISER! Magnificent experiment of the Mage ZUCODU who fell under the spell of the CUBIC DEVIL FACE (see below). The Grabuliser wants only love but understands only desire, the desire to grabulise things. The Flamenco heads are true pseudopods with no separate brain structure, the eyes simply those of the bat enlarged and relocated.

MUSHROOMS

The mushrooms are indeed alive and one day may be more than alive. Fat with seeping visions dripping seams of the potions of the lost Alchemist Zircon, they throb with dark passions they are unable to express. Thank the gods it is so for their sheer inventive malignancy, if every given voice, would be enough to corrode the sky to tin and invert the stars!

SPIDER ON THE MUSHROOMS

This spider, which, if it were sentient and had a name, that name would be Steve, has seeks only a moment of peace and perhaps a steady draughtles spot to begin the construction of a web. Fate decrees Steve shall have neither, within a very trice he will be fighting for his life.



GIANT SLUG!

Flubbobo, monster of the trolls has haunted the infinite darkness for ages beyond counting. Once he was just a normal slug! He just kept eating! He doesn't even have a plan, nor is he aware that he counts as a near-supernatural devil and/or demon figure in no less that five undeworld mythologies, one of which is that of the hairy men he is about to eat, another of which belongs to the gargantuan snake-man, who recalls him of older times, tough Flubbobo himself remembers naught.

LITTLE HAIRY GUYS RUNNING FROM THE GIANT SLUG  (AND THE ONE HIDING)

The Theeble Kin make their living underground by shaping and painting solid rocks to look like tents from a distance and then clouding people over the head when they come close to investigate. They have never actually seen a real tent and have inferred its shape through an automatic evolutionary process. Here they have been foiled and made themselves accidental prey for the demon of their dreams, Flubbobo the Annihilator. The three running are Flix, Bix and Trix, the one cleverly hiding while they run away is Grabs, the only clan member with a double digit IQ.

THE THREE ADVENTUERS ROBBING THAT SHIT!

SPIKED HELM GUY

'Chunks'O'Keefe, former bartender (possibly current bartender as he never formally resigned). Was invited on the expedition last minute as he was the only one with a crowbar. It was his idea to crowbar open this chunk of stone but he knows he will get no credit for it.

COIFFE LADY

Tzina Szzrakk an incompetent thief from the bottle district. Instead of picking locks she made friends with a bouncer with a crowbar, instead of searching for traps she employs a mute Dwarf in a parka and instead of sneaking she just runs away. Still, she has at least discovered the alchemists stash she came looking for, but how much of that tuff is even still active? And how will she even recognise the Potion of Infallibility she was hired to retrieve?

SHIELD GUY

Orik Nailfyst, a mute, poor, white-trash Dwarf who grew up in a tent city and, despite knowing almost nothing of dwarfish, can still spot a stone out of place in the dark. Only 15 years old, he suffers from the cold and wears a quilted parka in all weathers. His shield was the results board for a darts tournament and the results can still be seen on the inside surface





THE TWO GIANTS LOOMING OVER THEM

Actualy the transformed bodies of the Mage Zucodu, accidental creator of the Grabuliser, and the Alchemist Zircon.

Zucodu came in search of the cubic devil faces but after his mind was blasted by its magics he wandered as little more than a troglodyte until he found Zircon secretly stashing his hyper-valuable Potion of Infallibility. Though understanding little Zucodu had vague memories of magic and threatened Zircon with a stone, believing he might return the mage to his near-forgotten state of sanity. Zircon attempted to trick the giant with poison but in the confusion and being threatened to drink along side him as secuity, both drank half a potion of Giantification and were thus transformed. Both too big now to leave, Zircon knows there is an old potion of de-gigantification in his stash which his fingers were too big to reach, he has awaited only the properly sized fools to threaten and beguile and now waits carefully, planning his plans.

CENTIPEDE

An occupant of the black pillar the Centipede is the reincarnation of a munificent Raja who once had his wife trampled to death by ten elephants. Banished from  swarga upon his death he was reincarnated in this many-footed form. Little has been learned from this.

THE MYSTERIOUS SPEAR-ARMED MAN

The dark and mysterious warrior is named Parakeet. Secretly a master of the dagger he carries the spear for show, pretending to be a fighter of much lower ability than he actually is. His "failures" in combat serve to lure an opponent to commit themselves and reach his inner ring of defence where any of a dozen daggers will annihilate them. Pretending to act as a mere bodyguard, in truth he seeks the Super-Serpent of the underverse and is one of the few here who could defeat it.

STAG BEETLE! 

This beetle once saw a horse explode, other than that little distinguishes the simplistic and barely-sentient creature.

DWARF WITH AXE

Max Brix, actually just a short man with a false beard but he plays the role well enough. Was hired as a bodyguard by the Sorcerer Lamular Grotte (see below) on his quest to find the Cubic Devil Face. On discovering the thing itself and witnessing Grottes horrid response he is about to cut the Wizards dick off.

TWO BEETLES CHILLING ON THE GIANT PAIR OF STONE FEET

All beetles are predatory by nature but these two alone, perhaps of all beetles, have developed between them a philosophy of non-violence. They are un-named but in order to record their achievement in history’s great book let us refer to them as Pax and Trax. 


GUY WITH COOL ROUNDEL SHIELD

Winston (von) Choom, his wife was once poisoned by the Alchemist Zircon and he attached himself to this expedition as a bodyguard for the Sorcerer Lamular Grotte IN FACT so he could observe Tzina Szzrakk and her two companions on their search for the Alchemists loot, which he intends to smash. Has no idea that the Alchemist survives in giant form down here. 

GUY WITH BLAZING STAFF!

Sir Vomulous of the Crumbling Keep. The wizard knight has no understanding of his own metatexuality but in fact he has been played in a wide variety of rulesets yet has maintained continuity of self and memory, this is the reason for his mixture of magic and swordplay. He sometimes worries about the episodic nature of his life. Of all the bodyguards Lamular Grotte hired in his search for the Cubic Devil Face, Vomulous is the only one who actually intended to act as a bodyguard.

GIANT LIZARD! IS HE A STATUE? WHO KNOWS?

The incredible Super-Serpant of the Hidden World! A creature too vast and magisterial for this situation or this adventure. He is only on his way between vastly more important cosmic assignations using the blackways of the Underverse as we might use a country road. It is not even clear if the Super-Serpant has noticed the eldtrich events taking place and it certaily has no idea that the vengance of Parakeet is close.

THAT DEVIL FACE LOOKS ALIVE, HOW ABOUT IT?

An utterly evil idol containing poisonous ideas. Like a kind of satanic rubics cube, the sections of the face can be slid about and anyone who can reformat the face into its unknown secondary shape shall gain the powers of a Devil. But the tiles inevitably move with a mind of their own and slip back into their assumed form, leaving the foolish individual who made the attempt to be reduced to either thrall or slave-prophet of the face.

GUY PRAYING TO THE DEVIL FACE

Lamular Grotte an inferior Sorcerer and lately a cultist of Choom (Coom, name of a town, home of Winston, see above). Grotte fled Choom with a pig-bound book containing rumours of the Cubic Devil Face and threw together all his funds to assemble this party, (only as cheap as it was as almost everyone in it had a hidden reason for being there). On reaching the devil face he rapidly fell under its spell and after feeding two of his bodyguards to eldritch fire, began hopelessly worshipping the face to the disgust of all.

TWO PEOPLE LEVITTING IN PILLARS OF ELDRITCH FIRE!

ONE A KNIGHT

The Holy Paladin Sir Dawningstar Faux, attached himself to Grotte expedition as, like everyone else, a bodyguard. of course he had his own designs on the Cubic Devil Face, to whit, its destruction! The Knight was a painfully bad liar and this is one of the few deceptions Grotte actually saw through. Grotte played the fool and used Faux to cut his way through the underworld but on encountering the Cubic Devil Face IMMEDIATELY sacrificed the knight and his squire without even really asking for much in return.


ONE LOOKS LIKE A FEMALE KNIGHT

Sir Biscuit Pen, the Squire of Sir Dawningstar Faux the lack of imagination in her (false) name is a quality of her own paucity of creativity, not mine, though I am actually not going to tell you her real name as I sense that you doubt me on this. Anyway she is secretly in love with Sir Faux, disguised as man, actually more competent, he can't see through disguise, you know the drill.


BARNACLES

The only indication of our real enemy here - THE SEA! Yes the Sea is a surprise visitor to this underground cave which is in fact a SEA CAVE.  Because.. the SEA is in one of Zircons hidden potions and if it is opened here they will all drown. Surprise last minute change! Subverting expectations!

CRABE!

A normal crab and decent crab but not a good crab for none are.

ISOPOD CHILLING ON THE PILLAR!

Next to the Crab but in no sense associated with it this Isopod, named 'Flux-of-the-Whale-Dream is in fact the Squire of a Trilobite Knight sent here to earn his or her 'Spurs' by the final defeat of Flubbobo!