Loopy Tombs

 This poast was inspired partly by reading James Holloways 'Tome of Tombs' - a zine of Tomb creation which you can find here; https://james-holloway.itch.io/

A aid to generating tombs based partially on the creators IRL historical knowledge. 

Reading this I realised that the most interesting thing about most pseudo-real tombs, in terms of exploration and dungeoneering, is the context. 

In real-life tombs, at least anything under a pyramid in size, you go in and come out. the 'flow cart of possible exploration is very linear, though the paths within the tomb might seem winding.

Holloways Zine deals well with the creation of this context, but I was interested in crossing the streams somewhat, and thinking about reasons a pseudo-real Tomb might have the loops and choices we often desire in dungeon design.

What follows starts with pseudo-real reasons a Tomb might 'loop'; 'Living Beings', 'The Touch of Time' and 'Architectural Reasons', but rapidly spirals out of control into the whackiest possible sources for complex tomb layouts.

LIVING BEINGS

Giant Sloth - In an adventure beloved by few, I used the giant south American ground sloth burrowing in and about the tomb, creating a series of alternate passages which wove in and around the 'natural' pathways of the tomb. Many creatures burrow but few IRL creatures make man-sized burrows. If you wish to confine yourself to creatures that have lived, or that do live, I think its either the sloths or the Honey Badgers. (Place your answers in the comments). (Of course one living creature that does produce man-sized burrows, is man, which leads to the next entry.)

Lair of intelligent creatures - Its a classic for a reason. Clever beings lair, or have done, in the tomb, they have expanded the place, putting in their own obvious and hidden routes. 

THE TOUCH OF TIME

Massively overbuilt - Multiple religions or cultures have occupied this site and all built on it, or the same religion over a thousand years, (St Peters in Rome has an insane number of underground levels, each of which used to be the main level). This can also expand the 'tomb' laterally as the buildings placed over it expand.

Built onto, and partially collapsed into, deeper tomb or necropolis - They either didn't know it was there or simply forgot. Now the floors and stuff have fallen through into the deeper levels.

A river ran through it - or a stream really is all that’s necessary, and it may well have dried up since, but at some point during the life of the tomb, a water-course has shifted and run into it, drowning some areas, breaking through some walls, finding its way between places, and leaving unexpected routes.

Banyan forest - tomb is in a tropical environment, huge marvellous trees have infested the place, layering over and around, teasing aside the great stone blocks and opening strange ways between their complex root systems.

ARCHITECTURAL CHOICES

Maintenance Spaces - another thing I tried using in DBS; designer/creator access/trap reset tunnels for the architect themselves. If you want traps or any kind of complex 'effect' you may need complex mechanisms, or at least weights. To organise and set those up, you might need crawlspaces or other access spaces, that let you into the rear or back of rooms or setups.

Escape Route - the classic fear of being buried alive. Leaving an actual potential escape route for the 'corpse' should they be buried alive would effectively make a secondary network of tunnels or paths in the structure, leading directly from the body to the outside, but presumably very well camouflaged and perhaps only openable from within.

Spiritual Labyrinth - either to make sure the dead do not find their way out again or to baffle and disturb any negative spirits who might try to reach them, you build a complex labyrinth between the body and any possible exit. Spiritual - and therefore a bit different from a 'tomb robbers' labyrinth in that there may be no actual lethal traps or mortal deceptions, but may be a lot of complex religious trickery.

Double or triple fakes - I have used this myself previously. Just build a fake tomb, with fake treasures, then for people smart enough to see through that, build ANOTHER tomb, also fake, then an even-more-hidden third tomb, the real one, (this does not guarantee LOOPS though).

Palace for the Dead. It’s not enough to just have, for instance, a room or something, whoever is buried here will need an entire dead palace full of dead luxuries, all mirrored and replicated from the living world, which means their tomb will be a buried palace, with all the corridors and extra ways implied by that.

Mandala Map - the tomb has to be a physical map of the spiritual world as imagined by the deceased, so it’s like a giant mandala, embossed into physical reality. (Having some knowledge of this belief system would really help).

I should be able to think of something better than this, what are the...

VERY STRANGE, UNUSUAL AND MYSTERIOUS REASONS?

Cover to Manor of Infinite Forms by Tomb Mold

Time Loops – it’s a classic. If you die in the tomb you *don't* die in real life you just time loop back to certain 'save points', but some of these are so horrible - bounded on every side with impassable traps and dangers, that being trapped in them is a form of eternal undying madness.

Doors into Dream - certain symbols send you to sleep where you must navigate the tomb in dreams (the dream structure is significantly bigger).

Size Alteration and Rat Tunnels - rats have made their own paths, at the same time, eating the strange flesh of the tomb will shrink you down to their size, for a while. 

The Statues Came Alive -  and, unable to find their own way out, carved their own tunnels in the earth for their own reasons (seeking perhaps to get away from each other). It seems reasonable that the spirit of a god, or part of it, might come to inhabit, for a while, an image made for it, and perhaps it would be really annoyed at being stuck.

Reality-Distorting Artefact -  Sword of Leaves, or similar, is buried with the corpse. In combat and legend it simply cut through the space around it, granting semi-anime powers to its holder. After being stored for a few centuries doing nothing, its nature to warp space around it is creating labyrinthine structures from simple ones, nesting excess space in unobserved corners. Now residents are appealing for someone to actually go and rob the tomb; the extra space is leaking out into the surrounding community and breeding labyrinths and impossible spaces in corners. The sword should be fine so long as someone keeps it on the move, only starts leaking if you leave it in place for a century or more.

Builders Buried Alive - perhaps to keep the tombs location secret, its builders were buried alive within, but they reanimated and, consumed with their last memory, have kept digging and building in ghost and skeleton form, weaving the tomb ever deeper into earth and stone over the centuries.

Hell Itself - the resident was so exceptionally evil that the forces of hell tunnelled directly up from hell to grab their physical remains to which their soul was attached, the tomb is now fully interwoven with the distant outskirts of hell.

Religious Teleport – it’s a linear, maybe EXTREMELY linear, single long straight path with various doors, alcoves and statues along the way. The doors and other stuff can teleport you forward and back along the main route, meaning that 'in effect' the path is looped. We could call it 'The Long, Straight Dungeon', or the 'Five Mile Dungeon'.

Dickhead Teleport - tomb is physically linear though not to such an extreme sense as the five mile dungeon, but various items and interactions teleport you back to the 'starting area', meaning you have to keep transiting the same space trying to work out how to avoid or subvert the teleport effect.

Mirror World - various bronze mirrors in the tomb give access to the 'mirror tomb' which is basically a different (now spooky) version of the same thing, there are always two or more ways of encountering or dealing with everything now. When you leave, try to make sure you are in the actually-real-for-you version of reality.

Cancerous Brick - through curse, fluke or magical overflow, one particular brick or tile used in the construction of the tomb, has meta-cancer, meaning it will just keep replicating itself and the context of its placement over time, this means at a certain point the tomb now just dissolves into an insane mycelium web of brick or tile tunnels. The purpose of these tunnels is to *be tunnels*, simply to hold replications of the brick or tile. Dungeon chemotherapy might involve finding that one cancerous brick and smashing it, or smashing ALL the bricks or tiles - locals may have started invading the tomb to harvest the superfluity of bricks/tiles which now makes up their main local building material. Nothing can or will go wrong with this idea.

Djinn Dumping Ground - for whatever reason, whenever a certain Djinn or family of them are ordered to build or disassemble a castle or something, they need somewhere to store the stone, and have chosen here - they have built huge warrens and caverns of utterly random shit based on building materials from over many millennia covering the whole world, if they are uncorked somewhere and ordered to make something, they may turn up and start disassembling this stuff.

Gravity Shift - the long, spiralling yet linear way has a super-high ceiling and there are certain gravity shifting things in the tomb, or just ladders between the up and down, so that there are in essence two corridors or paths through, with one set of things and challenges on the 'bottom' and one on the 'top', meaning everything is technically looped.

Paths of Memory - various mosaics etc in the tomb represent the memories of the inhabitant and staring at them for a while can drag you into those memories AND - they are made too well so, like real memories, they interact and meet up at points, based on theme, mood, strong emotion or sensory factors (smell especially, which often unites memories), so that you can, deliberately or accidentally, move from one memory to another and emerge somewhere else in the tomb.

Dead-Eyed Dwarves - development for VotE; ReDux

The Dead-Eyed Dwarves are bald and bearded, shorter and stronger than men. They value only work and blood. 

 

Appearance 

STOMP STOMP STOMP – the heavy iron-shod boots of Dwarves passing invisibly but for glaring lamps and lances of light. 

For the Dead-Eyed Dwarves have many magics; cloaks which make the wearer invisible, clicking rings which make their owner large or small, strange insect-lenses which pick up every drop of light and ever stranger eye-wear; pearl-pale cyclopean masks which perceive the flow of ‘dark’ itself and twin-cone faces which turn rebounding clicks and whines into images in the air. Beneath these, often, grills or tubes, breathing apparatus or voice amplifiers, who knows. Beneath those; beards. 

Their lamp are harsh, actinic and directional; itself a near-aggressive act within the Veins. The blinding sharp-edged light turns the Dwarves behind them into silhouettes. The tramping, trudging, armoured and indifferent Dwarves. Few cultures of the Veins dare to wear full-armour underground; none but the Dead-Eyes possess the craft to endlessly clean, amend and fix their metal shell, the brutal endurance to carry metal weight, nor the size-shifting techno-magic which lets them shrink and grow, giving them access to shafts and warrens which others attempt only in extremity. 

They can pass invisibly, but they are loud. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Too big, too small. Disappearing in the blink of an eye. Hooded, armoured, masked, with wild prickling beards. Lights powered by crackling batteries which drip toxic alkali slime. Loaded with crossbow, axe and pick, careful maps and guidance dials, grappling hooks and superlight chains. Walking and moving in unison, grunting to each other in muttered subsonic; a guttural under-speech, as if they resented even, the need to speak, even to each other. 

The most likely encounter is that you are simply ignored. The cost/benefit assessment of enslaving you simply doesn't move the dial. 

 

The Dead Eyes

Things don’t get better when the masks come off. There is just something missing in there; the strange, deep-time, assessing gaze of a Dwarf, but with the humour, honour, boldness; gone, washed away, leaving what? Eyes pale as slate, empty as the letter O. 

They eat, breathe, smell, move like living things, more than many in the Veins, yet a vampire, or a crazed patchwork Gilgamash, can have more 'anima', more individuality, vitality and humour than a Dead-Eye Dwarf. 

They are not pleasant to deal with, but they are reliable, practical and rational, and they think long-term, which makes them an incredible stabilising force. Yet no-one, and nothing 'likes' the Dead-Eyed Dwarves.

 

Abilities

Powerful Lights

Bright white spheres, hanging lanterns and lances of burning white light. Used to blind or disorder seeing foes, or simply to pick out blind enemies.

 

Invisibility Cloaks

Heavy toxic things with pointed hoods, less useful in the Veins than you might think, these are used mainly in raiding other lands. When wrapped around and buttoned up, everything they cover turns translucent. Complex physical movements, like most forms of attack, will make the wearer visible, at least for a moment.

 

Size-Control Rings

Heavy click-clacking bracelets which turn like locks or rings of code. Rapid tactile codes are needed to make use of one, and once that code is known, each ring is still is different, tuned for a particular Dwarf. Worn, usually on the left arm. Move the right hand over and quickly, and loudly, click through the code before carefully carefully carefully clicking through the size-set sequence.

When a Dead-Eyed Dwarf shrinks or grows, its not a smooth transition. Its as if they were an image and each heavy CLACK spun some fresh lens in front of them so that they seemed smaller or larger by leaps. CLACK CLACK CLACK and big, big BIG, as if they were projections, with the ‘real’ dwarf somewhere else.

It takes time and training to accustom oneself to getting bigger and smaller on the regular.

 

Seeing Lenses

They like these, though its questionable how useful they are. Varied masks and lenses, the most common are Light-enhancing eyes, heat-trace Snake-Pit lenses and Sonic Lenses. More rare are the special ‘Dark Vision Lenses’ which literally treat darkness as a substance.

Each Dwarf will only have one set of Lenses, if they have any, and few groups will have more than one set of each kind. They are hard to make, maintain and repair and each Dwarf makes their own.

 

Mouth Masks

The Dead-Eyed Dwarves don’t even use gas that much, purchasing it from the RayMen occasionally, but they like to wear the masks. Some protect from gas, some change the voice to a harsh bark, others alter voices to simulate those heard, still others provide air should the Dwarf go underwater, or into airless spaces.

Again, each Dwarf only has one set and the whole group rarely has more than one of each. Its not a systematised technology.

 

Combat Encounters 

Morale

Morale plays no part in the decisions of the Dead-Eyed Dwarves

Everything is based on their immediate objectives. If violence is required, and they think they will win, it starts at once, without warning.

If victory becomes impossible, or if the situation changes, so that violence no longer serves, they simply stop, again, without warning, usually turning invisible and simply walking away.

If there is no way out, they fight, bitterly, to the emotionless end

 

Combat Tactics

Armoured; the Dwarves can weather most projectiles, and most blows. 

Bright Directional Lights; these can be used to blind many Veins inhabitants. Activating then turning off the lights can be more effective than actual invisibility. 

Invisibility Cloaks; if out-ranged, bottled up or boxed in, a combat team can use their invisibility to close with the enemy, or to escape if needed. 

Size-Change = BIG; The Dwarves can ‘click-click-click’ up to Ogre size. This always takes an action and is loud. All of their equipment changes with them, as if it, too was being projected from somewhere else. A Dwarf might turn huge and fire ballista-sized crossbow bolts, or get close before turning massive and laying into a party from behind its lines. 

Size-Change = small; mainly used for escaping should a situation turn bad, especially by accessing crawl-spaces or similar. Combining this with Invisibility makes them near-impossible to catch. 

The enormous power of their techno-magical abilities, combined with their utter ruthlessness and invincible will, means the Dead-Eyed Dwarves don't need fancy 'tricks', though like many Veins cultures, though they have an expertise in Poison (to which they have a meaningful resistance), and sometimes use various forms of Gas. 

 

Chameleon/Tarantula Cavalry

Mainly used in and around their settlements, due to the enormous costs of keeping them fed, but the Dead-Eyed Dwarves do often use ‘Cavalry’ formations; their favourites are a very chunky form of huge Tarantula, and kind of sticky lizard with some Chameleonic abilities. 

They will usually change size to something smaller in order to comfortably ride these things. The combination of activating their toxic invisibility cloaks, the giant animals, and the glaring lights they carry, creates a truly bizarre appearance. 

 

Non-Combat Encounters

No Pride, No Shame

The Dead-Eyed Dwarves don’t carry resentments around, if they beat you before, or were beaten by you, their attitude will be what it always is - relentlessly practical. 

This makes conflict with them a troubling experience; they will not try violence unless they believe they will win, and they are rarely wrong. 

Non-Combat Encounters

the Dead-Eyed Dwarves will pass invisibly, except for their lanterns. They seem like trudging shadows passing underneath an actinic light which glows like a willow the whisp. 

Did they just walk right past? 

Whatever they are doing, they are doing it. They have a purpose and if the PCs cannot help

or impede them, what do they care? 

 

Goals of the Dead-Eyed Dwarves

[THIS NEEDS WORK BUT HERE IS THE BASIC IDEA 

A simple way to do this might be for there to be three goals; 

One BIG THING that the whole of local Dead-Eye Dwarf culture is currently aiming towards. You roll for this when you are generating the Veins and it remains the same throughout the Campaign. 

Two –a medium scale political or large structural goal that will help them towards the MAIN THING. This can change from session to session and can differ from settlement to settlement. (But it doesn’t have to change). You can roll for this on-encounter, or during the session or just keep it from previous sessions if that make sense. 

 

Three - a current goal for *this particular group*, the mission or thing they are currently trying to fulfil, which will lead towards the second, which will lead towards the third. You roll for this when you encounter these guys. 

Do, whenever you are dealing with Dead-Eyes, just look at this list; they are doing A, to achieve B, to finally achieve C. And all you need to think about, as it is all the Dead-Eyes are thinking about, is ‘how do I achieve the next goal and make sure it connects to the main goal’. ] 

They must always be working 

 

Simple Behaviours For Encounters 

Literal

They do not like metaphor. Things mean one thing. If a thing tries to mean two things then it becomes nothing. 

LITERAL DOESN'T MEAN STUPID  - they do not like metaphors, but they understand them. They know that you or other characters, are not being literal, and they can understand that, but they themselves will do everything they can to avoid it.

 

Taciturn, Concrete, Direct 

Get to the point, get there now and be explicit about what it is. 

Use the minimal number of words to make things clear. 

Do not 'chat'. Every conversation has a clear and concise point towards which they are going.

 

 

Dead-Eye Culture

Long ago the first of them emerged from a distant primal core. He made himself. That work goes on. They believe they are improving. It is their mission to do so. 

Their family trees spring up, not down. Each generation more focused and efficient than the last. This is the Ascent. Dead-Eye heredity. A machine of blood and bone, carrying them into the pre-remembered future. One of only two things in which they truly believe. 

They have statistics, and the graphs all show a clear upward trend. Production, efficiency and development, all increase. 

They imagine the future and the things they will build there. It belongs to them. They want it more. They understand it more. They will become what the future needs them to be. The future is a god to them. A god-above-gods. They know it to be true. 

Even as the race slowly winds itself deeper and deeper into the earth, passing through fretted valves and carved abandoned chambers they have made, falling in its orbit of stone, they map their continual advance. 

Each thing must be built upon another thing. A word, a deed, a thought, each must have its foundation. Arguments over the Ascent are arguments over reality itself. Without its sustaining foundation, the word becomes a gabble of sound, the deed an accident, the thought a dream, the existence a lie.

 

Dull 

One of the most powerful, wide-ranging and transformative of all the cultures of the Veins, the Dead-Eyed Dwarves are dishwater-dull, to deal with. Utterly reliable and quite insane, they are a power second only to the Aelf-Adal, to whom they are almost immune, and with whom they enter irregular war. 

 

Makers Of Ruin

The totality of their physical effect on the Veins of the Earth is enormous. Dead-Eyes never stop working, mining, carving, delving. They are always building, cutting, shaping, and thence always moving. 

They cannot stop working, ever. 

This makes a Dead-Eye city or settlement, more like the cast of a worm than a singular place. They mine and carve EVERYWHERE, continually, they do not stop to inhabit very long. A Dead-Eye settlement is like a time-worm; it’s not located in any particular place but is continually being delved, leaving the carved and developed volumes behind it, like the cast of a worm. 

The Dead-Eyes therefore make the Veins more ‘ruined’ and more ‘empty’ than they would otherwise be, for an empty building can be empty in ways a cave cannot. 

Dead-Eyes do still consider that they 'own' anything that they have worked on, (that they haven't formally agreed to sell or exchange), which means these vast Piranesi-ruins that plunge through the Veins are technically 'theirs'.

 

Neutral, Practical Evil

Dead-Eyes do not torture or psychologically destroy their slaves. Not deliberately at least. They simply kill them when they fail. 

Skilled slaves can appear to rise far in Dead-Eye ownership, and will (any skill at work must be nurtured and sustained so that better work may be done). But it is not the individual that is respected. It is the work. The work passing through the alien flesh. 

They do not really hate their slaves. They do not realise that they are beings at all. Only vectors for work. 

They do not really hate anyone. Because they really don’t know there is anyone there to hate. 

Neutral, ultra-reliable, non-bigoted, they may be the sanest (?) culture in the Veins. 

They are honestly quite boring to encounter and maybe that's ok. Remember it’s not about offending them, it’s unlikely you even could offend them, it’s about getting in their way, and if you do get in their way, they will grind through you and over you with utter ruthless indifference. It’s almost like fighting golem. 

 

Skill Is Meaning

They respect skill. But it is the skill itself they respect, which is work moving through the body, not the body or the person itself, which are just bearers of the skill.

 

Work Is Meaning

The only other thing they understand is work. 

A body and a mind are only useful because of the work they can together do. The soul is the work passing through the flesh. 

No other race grasps this. They might ask “What are the Dead-Eyes working towards? What is their plan?” 

They are working to be working. Work is the plan. Work is the point. 

They will never stop. They can never stop. 

They will cut cities from bare stone, tear up every vein, embellish every surface, then, when there is no unworked spot or unplanned gap, when every single piece and thing has become a channel for planned creation, when even the pebbles stare up from the floor with idly-carved eyes, then they move on. 

Gems mean nothing to them except that they can be cut, or have been cut. 

If one loses the ability to work and if they cannot further the ascent, they simply walk into the dark. Or sit where they are, staring at nothing, waiting to starve. 

if a Dead-Eye is crippled or otherwise prevented from working, they lose any will to live. They must work, they must proceed towards the goal. It is all they are. It is everything they are.

 

Jealous

Yes, ok, perhaps they can be a little irrational. They are still Dwarves after all. They can be jealous of craft and ownership, especially of unique objects and materials. The RayMen and their wonderous tech inspire some of this, but many ethnogroups have a little this or that which really, really, should that not truly belong to the Dwarves?

 

No Dreams

They do not dream, rather they experience a lucid ebony. Its possible they are not even really unconscious, just ‘shut down’. What are the Nightmare-Men going to do? Give them a spook?

 

Fidget Spinners

Since they literally can't stop working, they tend to have a lot of ... odd things they do when they can't physically work, like knitting. If they are waiting, they carve stones or rock where-ever they sit down, leaving tiny faces in pebbles or maps on flat slate. (Although you never actually see them 'waiting’.)

 

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Demon-Bone Sarcophagus = £20 (-£20)

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Silent Titans = £40

Speak, False Machine = £30 (-£20)

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If you are interested contact me anywhere to find out more!

 

“The Map of Five-Times-Five

The paper was flayed skin. Around its borders were these words; “A map of Signs, like those which show the way to Grace or Down to Damnation, through good deeds or bad.” I studied thus and decided that the Great Signs must be the Saints, but of the lesser Signs and lines I knew not, but went in search of one who would speak to me of such, for ‘Five-Times-Five’ had gone.”

I mean how good a map do you expect to get for one tooth?

.....

In this opening part of 'Queen Mab's Palace', our Narrator, the Scribe, has arrived in the Crypt of her Palace, in the shadow of Saint Seven, the Time Saint, and fortunately, on that Saints Holy Day, meaning they arrive in the middle of a Market, and that it would be illegal to hunt and eat them, (at least within the bounds of the Market itself, and at least till the end of this Saints Day).

In attempting to learn more about the strange, dank Fairyland in which they find themselves, they (somehow) end up in position of (someone's) teeth, one of which they trade to 'Five-Times-Five' for a map of the crypt in which they now are set. 

This is that map; 

What we know but they do not, is that the 'Crypt' is the broken, de-powered and/or industrial sections of a gigantic space ship. If you could see ‘the crypt’ in a 3D image of the real-life ‘Queen Mab’, it would be like dark sections, occupying most of the shitty parts of the ship, the stuff around recycling, the ‘lower decks’ main cargo bay etc.

Seen like this, the ‘Crypt’ isn’t just a single blob of contiguous space, it would weave its way through and into the ‘Courts’, like a black dirty Octopus spreading tendrils everywhere.

The division between the ‘Crypt’ and the ‘Courts’ is as much social, political and religious, as it is material and practical. The ‘Crypt’ is dark, often wet, full of naked industrial machinery, often hot, or maybe far too cold. Its population are the ‘Dwellers’ a peasant/untouchable class.

To make some sense of this, consider a Medieval Map like the Hereford ‘Mappa Mundi’, the religious centrality of things is important. Here is a medieval map of the whole world;

As you can see, the whole world is represented. In the middle is Jerusalem, the holy city, and below it is the Mediterranean. I think the UK is bottom left.

The thing in the middle of the Crypt Map is the Court of Melinoe, Queen of the Underworld and beloved by all who Dwell Below.

The Flow

The ‘Flow’ is anything the Courts (above) flush or throw away. This stuff enters pipes, (praise the pipes), unless its isolated and trapped, in which case the Gongfarmers go get it.

Then it flows down the pipes, which merge like the streams leading to a river. All joining together. Then these streams meet at a Saint.

There are Seven Saints, as you know, and these are arranged on the map, each at the centre of their own drainage network.

Finding Your Way in the Crypt

What’s on the map has absolutely no real relationship to actual distances, but does have a good rough representation of relationships, especially the Flow. (The Flow is sacred).

How you might verbally describe a location is based on the Saint, first, then the direction uses the closest other saints as compass points, to tell which way someone is meant to orientate. 

The spaces between the ‘flows’ are deserts, unusually dry and sometimes warm. The more ‘flow’ there is, the more likely it is to be wet, and perhaps cold, until you get real close to the Saint the flow is flowing to, when it may warm up again. There are also more people and stuf happening generally ‘downflow’ (which may be dangerous).

‘Five Turns Sixwards of Five’ is a pretty simple instruction for someone around Saint Five; just turn ‘Sixwards’ (people nearby will probably have a good general idea of which direction ‘Five’ is), and then take five major turns in that direction.

In ‘reality’ any guidance would be way more full of oddness and cryptic stuff that only makes sense when you do it, when you already know about it or just doesn’t make sense. Like;

’when five red gates do pass, 
Courtwards of the merry lass,
Venomwards of Young do mark your measure,
Riddles be sung and drips be treasure’

What the fuck does this even mean? Presumably five rusted (red) gates or portals, then moving ‘Courtwards’, so usually upflow of ‘the merry lass’, whatever the fuck that is, maybe it makes sense when you get there. Then Venomwards (direction of saint Six), of ‘Young’ (Saint five), then riddles be sung, so maybe there is something stopping you, like one of the Pythians Sons (an insane uplifted automatic door), and then ‘drips be treasure’, its really dry and you will need to conserve liquids? But you get the general vibe.

.......................

To explain a little more about the Crypt and the Saints, here is a fragment from one of the several appendicies of 'Queen Mab's Palace' where one of the Endothermic Knights describes the Seven Saints of the Crypt

SAINT ONE - THE RAIN SAINT

"Whose day is called ‘Rainsday’ and who hangs upright in a mighty vault. The Market lies beneath, where the dribs of flow trickle down the great saints side and drip a soft pattering rain. Any drop may be the Vile Flow, or the Pure, and the Many turn upwards, bare their tongues, and risk the Vile that they might taste a Pure Tear of the Rain Saint.

SAINT TWO - THE CHAIN SAINT

The second Saint is mighty, though He sleeps. He is the Chain Saint and Chainsday his day. The pipes of the Flow are fed and laced in below the holy carapace. Flakes of this are treasured. Mab herself is pleased by their colour. (You must never cut or strike them from His shell, for this is Heresy most Foul.) The Market is atop his back and each great chain around him has a small shrine at its base, past which the people climb.

SAINT THREE - THE PILGRIM SAINT

The third is the Pilgrim Saint, for the many which attend him. He is a saint-vertical and clings to His shroud of iron as a maggot clings to flesh. Blessed with a ripeness and roundness, yet also a longness and a greatness of legs, and with Hairs, and the sides of the Saint are marked with gods-eyes. Huge seeds float out from His holy Pores and gust about. They are of worth if caught, and his shed Hairs are of facility. On Pilgrimsday the Market is before his eyes, on a great bridge which crosses a rumbling and jumbling torrent of the impure flow. This he gnaws and makes into bricks of safe, pure flow-stuff which pile beneath him in a spoil, amongst which scavengers reign. Above them, on the bridges edge, Hydraulic Monks meditate by looking into his faceted black eyes.

SAINT FOUR - THE SAINT OF BLOOD

The fourth Saint is the Saint of Blood and stirs, half-sleeping in a chamber of strange waters. Soft and tasty, glossy, pulsing black, fat with blood, with a great ringed maw of infinite teeth which pulses open and closed as if dreaming of a feast. He is like a great raw steak. Rafts set out into the Blood Saints lake and carve off hunks of His rich meat. Thrice-purified blood-pipers drain thick life from within, selling it cold or warmed, by pint and vat. The Bloodsday market lies around the blood-lake rim. ‘Tis deadly land. We walk the circle round to harrow Crimes, but ill is often done, for the market shares a border with the unlit dark and the fat iron reek makes it easy to hide murder thereabout.

SAINT FIVE - THE YOUNG SAINT 

The fifth day is Birthsday and is the Young Saints time. They are propped up as if sitting, with an archway set about them. Less pipemartyred than others, the Young Saint supports Theyself. The Young Saint glows a cool, bright, moonlike light. This blessed luminescence enlightens all who see it. They wriggle freely and are soothed and polished, and anointed with oils, by Hydraulic Monks, collecting Orbs of luminescent liquid pearl which hold the sacred gleam of Their dripping innards. They love the Young Saint, as do we all!

SAINT SIX - THE VENOM SAINT 

The Sixth day is Venomsday and their market is set within the circle of the Saints body with great limbs spread about like the spars of wrecked ships, and we walk along the Saints flank, keeping watch. This very deadly and wonderous saint is curled in a great circle, alike unto a centipede with his martyr-pipes set into his back. The Venom Saint is wrathful and half-sleeps. He dreams of violence! Sacred lances pierce its small mind. When He twitches, the Monks cry out “more power!” and rush to huge wheels which they run inside, which thereby spark the lance of mercy. It is a safe day for all must pass the Toxic Gates, where the Monks collect the Holy Venom, and if the Saint smells blood on any man, He begins to twitch and wake, therefore none dare blood to spill. Even the Drinker of Poison cannot transform all and so deadly poison drips continually from his forcipules. At times toxic fumes mist up from the venom wells and drift across the market.”

SAINT SEVEN - THE TIME SAINT

Here is where we begin, and if you wish to know more, you must wait till the book is ready.

Go Nuts in Veins of the Earth

 A Nut is an hospitable object - a surprisingly useful thing for those who make their concourse in the Veins of the Earth.

First; it keeps for a long time, is singular, storable, divisible and portable.

Second it comes from Above; few nuts grow below, (except perhaps for the equally-distant Isles of the Imprisoned Moon), and therefore it is rare.

Third; it’s hard to adulterate a nut. They can be cursed or poisoned, but that takes a meaningful investment of rare resources. A nut has good security to it.

Fourth; it is a neat compressed source of calories. Not so much as to place a painful debt on the receiver, but more than, for instance, a seed.

Fifth, finally and most important; it is a thing never before seen and which will never be seen again, lending it a certain poetic aspect in the cultures of the Veins, where secrets are adored.

Clara Peeters, Still life with nuts candy and flowers 1611

Rituals of Greeting

This makes a nut a quite generous (but not too generous) gift with which to open negotiations.

Such is the theatre of the Nut; two groups meet beneath the earth. First they scent or hear each other, then see each others light. Each makes signs of peace and the factions approach slowly until the boundary of their lamplight (roughly 30ft) meets.

One from each company is sent forth, each standing directly beneath the lamp-light of the other, proving no ill intent on either side.

Then the lamps are brought together, making a pool of shared and intensified light where the leaders of each group may sit.

Here comes the nut, (if you have one).

"Allow me please, to give a thing never before seen, and once seen, never to be seen again."

Here one displays the nut upon an open palm. The recipient gently takes the nut. Rolls it between their palms, smells it, examines its texture with hand and eye.

"Truly beautiful, a rare and unique gift."

Then the recipient may break open the nut themselves, or hand it over to one stronger of their own side, (which means something, everything said and done in the nut ceremony means something), who breaks it open for them.

The 'secret' is revealed. All present admire this heretofore unseen thing.

The recipient consumes the nut.

It’s a handshake, but a firm one. Those in poverty might offer, at least, a seed. The wealthy might offer meat, (but to offer too much would be to create a debt, almost an aggressive act). An Aelf-Adal Lord might offer a terrifyingly expensive, unique and impractical gift, this is an act of chaotic and charismatic dominance, which creates a link of fealty. Of course you cannot say “no”. A Knotsman might offer exactly what you need, with no immediate price. This is a trap and an attack on you which it may be hard to resist.

A Nut is a pleasingly minor but substantial, yet elegant, gift. It’s hard not to negotiate reasonably and in good faith with someone who has presented you with a nut.

Corporatism and Hospitality In Veins Of The Earth

The Veins could not exist and if they did you certainly could not easily 'adventure' through them.

Therefore, in the imagined world, the small cultures of the Veins; tribes, villages and pilgrims, are calmer and more corporate than many of their real-world equivalents might have been. Here are some examples of how this works in play and both diegetic and game-design reasons why this is so.

Broad Non-Aggression

It’s a war of all against all but not a lawless war of all against all.

There are 'Civilisations' in the volumes, and though their grip is tenuous and vague, it becomes more vital the slighter it becomes. The signs and symbols of power mean less, the closer to its centre one is. Out in the margins, where the power may or may not exist, its signs, symbols and promises become much more important. Exactly which Lord is everyone in fealty too, and which Coagulation do they serve?

People really do not like or want chaos or disorder. It makes it hard to live.

So there are 'Civilised' people who exist largely or nominally under the 'protection' of say a City or a Group, like perhaps they have a Knotsman Contract, and above them perhaps an Aelf-Adal Terror-Lord who rules maybe thousands of nearly-impenetrable kilometres away.

Let’s say the PCs Murder-Hobo a community, take everything they have, then roll into the next Coagulation, or into a Pilgrim People.

These new-encountered people will almost certainly know exactly what the PCs have done. Resources don't come from anywhere and they will recognise whatever has been taken. They were probably well aware of the Group the PCs murderised. They may have even been in conflict with the same group at points.

They will happily trade for these resources, (keeping a close eye and guard on the PCs this whole time). That's just being practical. If there is a real 'evil' in the Veins, it is; wasting resources.

Nevertheless, word will get back. Via Bat and trader, by psychic dream-signal or forgotten hypertechnology, first one group, then another, will discover the PCs reputation. Word will get back to the City, to the Lord, and the Lord must have Order, of a sort, in their realm.

It’s a war of all against all but it can never be allowed to blossom into chaos. There must be some form of retribution, recompense, penance, punishment or service.

The reach of the Lord is long, slow and inconsistent, but memories last down here and nothing the PCs do will be forgotten. And if the Lord is an Aelf-Adal, then their reach pierces darkness, flesh and stone. There is no escape, ever, anywhere.

Hospitality

“I let you share my light.”

No-one has any duty to keep you alive or give you resources.

However, if a deal is to be made, they should at least offer you an acorn of something drinkable, a few seeds worth of food, some light and warmth, at least until you have talked things out.

Of course you will be expected to return this in kind, even if an agreement is not reached.

In 'ideal' circumstances this leads to a cycle of functional giving, starting with letting someone into your circle of light, and ending with a handshake deal for resource exchange.

Even if things don't work out, its considered civilised to give minor gifts equivalent to the cost of the negotiation before you nope out of there.

Just leaving with no exchange at all, really fucks up your reputation.

Equivalent Exchange

If you stay with a Tribe, Coagulation or Group, for a period, benefitting from their light, their warmth, their food and presumably their ears listening for you in the dark, it’s a nearly iron law that you exchange with them resources at least equivalent to the cost of keeping you.

This can lead to different groups, say a Tribe of Once-Men and the travel caravan of a RayMan trader, occupying different sides of a river or cavern, their lights kept separate with a measurable stretch of darkness between.

They are not dicking each other over, just being very very careful about not implying any obligation or debt between them. It’s a way of keeping the peace.

Likewise, if one of these groups is attacked in the night, the other may refuse to intervene, and this would not necessarily be taken as an insult or aggressive action. Intervening in someone else’s battle creates a debt and that debt may be hard to carry.

Waiting for a group to nearly-win a fight, then charging in to help them finish it off, will not be taken as a positive helpful act. They had nearly won anyway and your intervention has created a debt they cannot deny but do not wish to suffer. Assume malicious compliance hereafter.

Game Design Terms

In terms of actually gaming this means Veins populations are actually more 'corporate' minded than many actual populations encountered during, for example, the European Age of Exploration.

A main problem for a Pith-Helmeted European explorer, apart from the environment and massive cultural differences, is simply the number of tribes you have to deal with. Each of these groups will have its own politics, its own relationships with adjacent groups, its own leaders, mood, attitude to foreigners etc etc. Thats twenty, thirty, fifty individual encounters with fifty different tribes with essentially a random generation engine whirring in the background each time, and you (the explorer) can't afford to be taxed that much with each group, and you can't afford for things to spiral out of control even once, or you die.

Empires solve this problem by simply murdering anyone who disagrees and telling whoever is left that yes actually you all live under the same rules now and no you don't get to take individual taxes or even fight each other without permission.

It was easier for a European traveller to move across the whole expanse of Eurasian Islam, (provided they could match the behavioural codes), or across the gigantic steppe empire of the Khans (provided they had the right disc from the Great Khan), than across much of Central Africa (fifty tribes again).

So the Veins are a 'bit' more 'Imperial' than they could reasonably be expected to be. Simply to make it possible to move through them. Though, there are vast areas of 'wilderness stone' where who knows what might happen, as well as disputed areas, actions and polities, reaving borderlands, unexpectedly desperate or shifty populations, general monsters, Olm, and god knows what else.

'Adventure' like 'Exploration' fundamentally requires a boundary between the more-known, more organised, and the lawless unknown. To 'Adventure' is to move back and forth across these zones, usually from a place of law and organisation, into a place with no, or unrecognised law. Resources are gathered from the margins, but they only become resources if there is somewhere else you can take them where their value is renegotiated.

A Review of 'Memoirs of Hadrian'

 (My friend and I did a multi-hour podcast on this. You can listen to it here.)

A slender and capacious book, like the shadow of a flame on sunlit marble.

In the years around the Second World War, Margurite Yourcenar found, through study, obsession and spiritual refinement, a method to travel through time. Thus the book; the mirror of a shadowless man and his true love, and of an Empire, and an Age.

Yourcenars Odyssey

The final part of 'Memoirs of Hadrian', contains a compressed chapter of notes Yourcenar made about, and during, its creation. This alone would make a grand saga, (which is probably why she included it). Here are some very extremely compressed and cut-down highlights;

1924 - Yourcenar concieves of 'Memoirs', gets some way along, then burns the pages as the work isn't good enough. (The first of many such forgettings).

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Next- Flauberts quote is discovered; 

"The melancholy of the antique world seems to me more profound than that of the moderns, all of whom more or less imply that beyond the dark void lies immortality. But for the ancients that “black hole” was infinity itself; their dreams loom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony. No crying out, no convulsions — nothing but the fixity of a pensive gaze. With the gods gone, and Christ not yet come, there was a unique moment, from Cicero to Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone."

Probably not entirely true but sounds cool as shit. Its curious that Flaubert is also someone who re-wrote the same book many many times. He re-did his 'Temptation of St Anthony' before every other major work. 

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1934 to 1936 - Yourcenar re-starts and abandons the project again and again. Only one sentance was retained of the 1934 edition.

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1939 - Project abandoned. Despair. Off to America.

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1947 - In the U.S.. Burn the notes again.

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1948 - a trunk of old possessions and letters arrives from Switzerland. While  going through them, Yourcenar runs into a letter; "My dear Mark...." Who is this 'Mark'? Wait! its the Hadrian book!. Re-commits to writing it (again).

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1848 to 1951 - re-making the book, but also writing vast sections every night 'in almost automatic fashion' and

"the result of those long self-induced visions whereby I could place myself intimately within another period of time. The merest word, the slightest gesture, the least perceptible implications were noted down; scenes now summed up in a line or two, in the book as it is, passed before me in the fullest detail, and as if in slow motion. Added all together, these accounts would have afforded material for a volume of several thousand pages, but each morning I would burn all the work of the night before."

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1951 - 'Memoirs of Hadrian' are published.

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There is much more, in detail, depth, and philosophy, than I have sketched out above. The book that finally was born, is a crystallisation, combination and perhaps last cannibal embryo, of a book that was being researched, written, burnt, re-written, burnt a bit more, forgotten, remembered, re-made, for about 26 years. Consequential years; 1924 to 1951, from the death of an old world through utter catastrophe, to the birth of a new. Triply consequential for Yourcenar; she changed a lot.

This might be what makes 'Memoirs' feel more like a mirror into a living time, and a living soul, than any other book I have read. I feel like I met Hadrian.

(And yes Yourcenar may well have, accidentally or deliberately, crossed paths with those other pre-and-during WWII female historical writers; Rebecca West, (Black Lamb, Grey Falcon), and Naomi Mitcheson, (Corn King and Spring Queen), who were also writing increadible defining works about the same time - what the _hell_ was going on with women in the pre-war world? Was there really such an explosion of talent as it seems to me?)

Hadrian

He is the flame and the shadow of the flame; a god of 'civitas', a bringer of peace, defender of civilisation, reformer, liberaliser, a man who set a boundary to eternal expansion. A compelling, brilliant, charming, dark and self-deceiving man.

So much of what happens around him takes place in a gilded shadow which is in part, simply the darkness of the Ancient world, particularly its sexual politics, and is in much of the rest, the necessary darkness of Imperial power. A truly decent kind, compassionate and forgiving man would not have survived for long as Emperor. You must be half a cunt to do the job.

Really, if you are going to be ruled by a sexually predatory, occasionally mass-murdering (when necessary), assassinating, (minimally, probably), occasionally vindictive, (now and then), terrifying, (in the most gentle, kind and _civilised_ way), highly-intelligent, hyper-manipulative, high-arts loving general (for a Roman Emperor) peacenick, you would really want to be ruled by Hadrian. (At least by this Hadrian). He is sane, rational, reasonable, almost never makes political mistakes, reforms and repairs things everywhere he goes, fixes systems, ensures stability and growth, builds cities, loves poetry and the arts, governs without terror; he is a chill Napoleon.

And yet. The most beautiful darkness wavers around him. 

He is probably lying to us about at least some things; either as a consequence of lying to himself, or a more simple deception. (Yourcenar claims in her notes that there were moments when she 'allowed' the Emperor to lie to her.) A few necessary assassinations here and there, perhaps some intrigue with the late Emperors wife.

It would be wonderful and frightening to meet Hadrian in person, here is a fascinating man who focuses on you utterly, disarms you, charms you, subtly excavates you, makes what use of you he can, gently amends you problems and sets you aside, He has the legal and material power to kill you and everyone you love, and everyone they love, and honestly, you can burn the city too.

He swims in liquid power like a shark in saltwater, but, even for this sensitive and self-aware genius, that power alters him and warps his world, his reality, in ways even the master cannot see.

Its the subtlety of his mind that attracts. A different story would be a more classic, punchy, and obvious fall into decadence, then rage and paranoia, of a man made, (or who made himself), Emperor of the known world. What we get with Hadrian is not that, but an alteration, a shift, as if through a lens warping. The subtlety of the mind experiencing that shift, and the fact that he may be unconsciously and directly lying both to us, but first, himself, is what makes it tantalising. Because, if he were sitting next to you, Hadrian could explain and excuse everything he does, and you would believe him.

What is Reality to such a mind, on such a throne?

The Murder of a Hawk

T.H. White, the writer of 'The Sword in the Stone', wrote a book in which he tries to raise and train an hawk in the medieval style, using the methods of a medieval hawk-raising manual. 

Its something of a horror story. He has no metis, no actual practical experience of the animal he is trying to train, and day by day, piece by piece, things go horribly, utterly wrong - he accidentally destroys the animal behaviourally, creating something that cannot be used for hawking, but that cannot perhaps live in the wild. Even his constant petting of the hawks head rubs away its natural feather-oil and produces an unpleasant mess. The end is a screeching prisoner that must be murdered or kept forever.

The core of the book, and of Hadrians story, is his relationship with Antinous, a greek, boy really, who he meets on the cusp of manhood, and essentially takes, keeping him until Antinous commits suicide before the age of 20.

Hadraian’s relationship with Antinous, the love of his life, reminded me a lot of this book by T.H.White

This gets more and more discomforting the more you think about the actual ages of Antinous and Hadrian when they first met, and about the fact that this is Hadrians One True Love. 

Truly, this exquisitely controlled and comprehensive man, allows no chaos in his life, almost never loses control, except for this one soul, and the event of his death. Here, for the first, last and only time, Hadrian utterly loses his shit, and loses himself. 

Being the Emperor Hadrian, his vast exhalation of grief also takes the form of building an entirely new city named after his beloved where his beloved will be worshipped as a god, creating a Cult of Antinous, a new religion, or aspect of one, in which the deified boy will be worshipped across the empire, ordering statues and presumably paintings of Antinous, making more statues of Antinous, making more statues of Antinous and having those hollowed out so they can be carried around with Hadrian and set up wherever he currently is (the guy travels a lot). Also; more statues of Antinous, maybe some songs and a poem cycle as well. 

there’s always room for another statue of Antinous

What is love then? If the vastness of grief is a true indicator of the depth of love, then Hadrian was certainly in love.

Still, he destroyed that boy. Picked up around 12 or 13 by the ruler of the known world. Carted around with him. Adored. Not that smart, but with a near-religious devotion to his Emperor. His final suicide comes in the form of a magical ritual which, the story suggests, was meant to be a gift of life to the man-god Hadrian. 

Antinous had no way out and perhaps couldn't imagine or conceive of wanting a way out. The psychological, political, intellectual and even spiritual, (Hadrian is a god*), domination of the Emperor is so total that he warps reality around him. But it seems not everything can be so warped without breaking. Even if Antinous is not precisely a victim in the 21C Western sense, he is certainly a sacrifice.

(Hadrian; “Of course I’m not actually a god.. (I kind of am though).

 

Such men we cannot strongly judge, (though I just did). The gap between us, in power, psychology and distant time, is just too great. 

But aren't those gaps exactly what Yourcanar was trying to leap across? She worked 25 years to put is in that room. Why then, if not to judge? Perhaps simply to see, to know. An advanced, expansive, slave-empire, bound, (which may have killed it), a high culture of subtlety and luxury described. 

Just as the Emperor can never know what a slave knows every day, (Hadrian himself tells us this), there must be sights that can only be seen from the pinnacle. 

(The next time someone asks me for my religious/philosophical affiliation I will just say that 'my dreams loom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony').

A Review of MALUSTRIOUS BROOD

 A book of monsters, of visions. A 102-page pure art book with “12 iconic monsters from the pastiche swirl of d&d's fantasy pool ….

“Gnome, Nereid, Salamander, Sylph. Ogres, Hags, Dragons, Basilisk/Cockatrice, Orc, Manticore. And two Very Much d&d , the Catawhere and Eye Tyrant.";

Art, and Expressionist art in particular, is hard to review and think about, so instead I forced the artist to do that, by interviewing them! What follows is a pretty wide-ranging interview gathered roughly into the following general subjects;

• Texture
• Colour
• Composition
• Form
• Orcs
• Big Ideas

There are lots of close-ups of fragments of the pages, used when talking about specific elements, and because I didn’t want to try replicating any of the full illustrations other than those already included in the promotional text. I wouldn’t want you to take the impression of these fragments as the impression of the works as a whole, let along when held in hand, which creates a much stronger impression.

Texture

pjamesstuart; ok so a huge amount of the book seems to be its textures. Are these different on every single page?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Yup different on every page, each was hand layed (with the cut out images on top) out on a piece of real estate sign for ease in scanning. This actually turned out to have some problems later because I didn't cut the real estate signage to consistent size.

pjamesstuart; Did you have any particular plan for these?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; That each monster section should have its own unique background texture. That's about it

 

this is printed on the paper (my photo isn’t very good)

pjamesstuart; They seem to be made up of complex layers of actual physical materials treated in various ways, and maybe of some deliberate use of digital scanning errors? What else went into these?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; I'm not sure about deliberate scanning errors..oh wait no yeah the Catawhere has some . Oh and the Orc and Eye Tyrant chapter heads.

Done by dragging or moving an image while it was mid-scan.

One of the Catawhere was done with photocopy fuckery.

Some of the process for the textures involved digging through a box of ink and texture experiments and seeing if anything was suitable.

Or just messing around with whatever paints/oils/spraypaint/ink/paper I had lying around and then letting it dry outside, and then sometimes using it but often reworking it or not using it at all.

90% blind experimentation and then selective curating the results.

Though wanting each chapter texture to have its own feel meant sometimes I went "okay no more ink shennigans , going to have find something else"

John Blanche once said that with a really good picture,
even the smallest part of it, when examined in isolation,
should be interesting to look at, which I think is true of this book.

pjamesstuart; How did working on the textures intermix with choosing and making the figures? Did it happen in parallel? In Sequence?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; For the vast bulk of it the pictures were done first, then textures created and pictures arranged as the textures were done.

However the decision to create a chapter head meant needing to create a extra page (as to keep the page count divisible by 4) , and sometimes that meant creating more drawings for the extra texture page.

pjamesstuart; Whats a 'standard' (if any could be), workflow for making a page of Malustrious Brood?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Um.. once the drawings were "done" (i.e I thought I had roughly enough be doing a crude layout) , I'd dig through my old projects and experiments and see if there was something. If nothing , try and think of something I hadn't messed around before with and if it felt appropriate to the vibe of the creature.

Then once this , sometimes considerably back and forth, process had created a use texture page , I'd then try and arrange some of the drawings on it.

This usually resulted in frustrations that I was going to have to cover up the most interesting bits of the texture, as none of the texture pages were created with that much considerable with where anything would go on top.

Sometimes the drawings would get swapped between pages as space and overall context demanded. I tried to get all the loose sketches together and also give the more developed ones space to breathe (often giving them their own page just for them)

So yeah it was a whole process of curation , reacting and adjustment , to get the drawings to work with each textured page, there wasn't just in the way of a deliberate plan.

 

The Orc probably had the most planning as I wanted to have them "echo" through the background of subsquent Orc pages by photocopying and repeating some of the drawings (sometimes on transparency film).

Plus trying to get a "very angry school boy creating a scrap book of murderers , weapons and world war 2 facts" feel to it

A quick video of the boards;

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Incomplete list of things used in the textures:

Rags, stained rags, old singlet, old t-shirt, design on old singlet blown up with photocopier to giant size, lace, glue, grease, baking soda, rust, blood, ink , spraypaint, butchers paper, vinegar, pva, spray varnish , water colour, ohp transparency , sewing diagrams, house paint, translucent paper, real estate sign imagery

Colour

pjamesstuart; There are many colours in this book. Did you have any kind of conscious plan or intended method, or did you just do everything based on VIBES?

 

Many forms are almost like beer tankards filled with a thick cloudy brew slowly mixing into something else

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Nothing super conscious , other than seeking a more diverse palette as the project went on

If I had planned it out more , I would of made more an effort to have the Nerieds be more greens and the Sylphs be more blues. As it was they ended up blending into each a little too much.

As a fix for that I post scan adjusted the Nereids colours a little and arranged the elementals by the name <Element> Elemental <Name> so the Sylph and Nereid wouldn't be right beside each other.

pjamesstuart; Most creature-types have a main dominant colour that appears in a variety of forms, and maybe one or two other spot colours. What tells you what colours something is meant to be?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Again just vibes. Some got a bigger range of colour experimentation (ogres) , others arguable got too little (Salamander, Gnome) . I think the monsters that already had a strong consistent design, that I myself wanted to redefine (Orcs, the Elemental Spirits) , I ended up sticking to a narrow focused palette , while the ones were it was already wide open (dragon , ogre) I just went with whatever. I'm not 100% sure why though

(Eye Tyrant might be an exception here)

Basilisks got a lot sickly colours , and I wanted to really have some jaundice yellows, bruise purples , infected pus greens in there. Anything to make this thing look dangerous.

 

closeup of a highly polychromatic beast

pjamesstuart; What did you use? I see pens like biros, felt tip pens? Some things look like watercolours but could be created some other way.

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Yeah good old biros, felt tip pens of a variety of quality , ethanol to bleed inks out, water colours, water colour crayons, regular crayons, twink, charcoal , ink , acrylic paint, house paint, pencils, photocopy toner

 

pjamesstuart; Some colouring follows the shading a form might have, other colouring is more like you poured thick liquid into a glass the shape of the creature and shined light through it. Other is like lines of energy within a beast. Do you know when you start out what you are going to do?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; I think I always start with the "line" and add lines until it's done or it needs something else , then hit it with colour using whatever medium.

Then it's a case of adding more colour or line to fix whatever just went wrong and it either working out or turning shit , in which case start again.

I heavily favour mediums that can put on top of each in any order , as I don't think I've ever successfully done the old "little pencil, colour blocking, final inking" method. I've tried it , but it looks so lobotomized when I do it, I've all but abandoned that approach.

Crayons are a pain as you can't really go over them that well but can successfully go pretty much anything else, and allow colours that lack innate opacity to go over darks.

Back to the question: I have "hunches" and "itches" but every step is a surprise and something like a friendly but heated argument .

I've got a maxim about "an Okay drawing is useless" , so if a drawing feels like it's "okay" (as in I can reliably create something with that amount of Good) , I'll keep experimenting until it hits a "high tide mark" or otherwise rare quality I'm not sure I could get again. (this might not mean it's a final drawing, it might instead be saved to serve as guidance )

Or it's completely destroyed , but valuable data and inspiration is generated.

I think of this as sacrifices to Tiamat; and sometimes you just lose a drawing that seemed to have potential , and sometimes you get a happy accident.

Speaking of which:

pjamesstuart; This isn't really about colour but; some places monster faces & other things are scratched through, or blasted over, so it feels like the page was a screen and was glitching or a photograph that was overexposed. How did you do this?

 

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; This is the whole "keeping going until the drawing is destroyed or brilliant" thing. Sometimes the page actually rips , requiring sticking additional paper underneath. Actually sometimes something on the other side ends perfectly fitting and getting used. The eye on the Antiphoenix from Veins of The Earth is actually a mark on a piece of paper that was beneath the initial drawing . It was revealed when a hole was torn from working on too wet ink and then permanent attached to the drawing when it perfectly fit.

This is Tiamat throwing me the occasional blessing for everything in art and life that I've inadvertently sacrificed on her altar .

One of the Manticore's has a similar effect , but I think it was me scrapping back layered crayon to rework something and the underlying effect was really good so kept it. I think I added a pupil though?

Composition

pjamesstuart; Thanks for the responses! Next I want to talk about COMPOSITION, (after that will be 'form' which will be the last one).

Do you know there is a kind of natural curl to a lot of your single-page compositions? Especially for the more lithe & loopy monsters? I will try to make a little image of this.

 

It begins at the top left, curves into the centre or lower right, forms a pool there and spirals out into the lower left again, often as a tail or limb

Other compositions are 'blot' or 'block' monsters which are placed like they were poured into the belly of the page and then slowly spread out.

The 'loop' in particular reminds me a lot of the Z shape Frazetta often worked into his painting.

Did you have any particular plan for composing the one page and two page images, or any effect you wanted to achieve?

What was the methodology?

How do you know if a page 'looks wrong' or 'feels wrong'?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; HUH

I did not know there was this SECRET SIGIL

Out of all the haphazard intuitive processes that went into this book, composition is probably the most haphazard of all.

The considerations are mainly so each drawing gets enough "space" and doesn't too greatly mirror or be similar to the surrounding drawings (including any on a opposite page)

EXCEPT when its a collection of "concept" drawings, where I thought it grand to show or suggestion the developing of the process and the various alternative possibilities that rapidly fire off in my brain

Other considerations is to with the gutter and place the monsters, were possible , so they don't look like they are running away into the gutter (so heads to the edge, tails to the spine)

Form

pjamesstuart; Edge Detection - does your brain have this? Because the vision of the world one often gets from your work is that things often just don't have boundaries, but kind of vibrate like quantum particles, or blur like a time-lapse map of the borders of eastern europe. I mean, are edges a thing in your reality?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Yes But No. Like there's this deep deep deep contrary instinct in me that always seeks out contradictions, exceptions, inconsistencies, stray threads and just Points Them Out. I think it manifests in art (somewhat) by a resistance to going "yes this definitely the Limits Of This Things" , and a desire to portray the buzzing border of potential movement, past movement, spiritual intensity, failure of perception, stink, noise, unclarity

So it's like Post Modernism going "look at all these things obstacles that prevent us from seeing truth"

but unlike.. whatever strain of post-modernism is that kinda goes "so..guess truth isn't really thing", instead we must see The Noise as well as The Signal

like understanding the limits of truth should make us appreciate the effort for truth and not dismiss it to seek solipsism

pjamesstuart; dang you actually have a philosophy behind this

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; It's more I getting philosophy from it if I look at it and think about Why, but ultimately I do it because it's my nature

pjamesstuart; Is a body for you just a carrier for eyes and teeth? The toothed grin is like a signature for your work. (Also, did you know in miniature painting some painters emphasise 'eyes and teeth', because they seem to play some dominant role in helping people perceive and organise a facial form?) If you have EYES plus TEETH, what is the third or fourth thing you need to show what something is?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; I think they are just really good at giving a coherence to something incoherent and because my drawings risk/are total incoherent explosion , slapping the teeth and eyes in there really gives it a hook.

The spine or jawline tends to be the first thing I draw

pjamesstuart; Do you study anatomy? Some images strongly suggest yes, but it is as if there are two spirits fighting inside much of your art, one trying to locate actual things in space, with muscles and gravity and skin and stuff, and the other being more like 'wait what if there was none of that and things were basically energy and not 'things' at all'

 

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; yeah but badly? I'm terrible at drawing things in front of me , I don't have very clear "mental images" , drawing almost feels like sculpting with twitchy ambulatory wire to me? Like the pen starts making marks and I battle with it to get it to do something I want.

But spending frustrating time trying to draw accurate from a reference does help inform this "sculpting". To that end , I've attended life drawing books, have several (Probably over half a dozen?) anatomy books (human and other animals) and spend time and effort learning about the muscles and the bones etc.

I also find it really interesting because I Too Have Bones and Muscles and The Desire To Improve Them.

But I think it's know how impactful departure from plausibility is when it comes to monster design

pjamesstuart; Do you have preferred shapes? (A slight teardrop shape seems to come up quite a bit in a lot of your art.)

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; I try and avoid falling into patterns too much , but the most consistent shapes that show up when I start scribbling are:

Long shapes like snakes, eels, sharks

Beaked shapes or triangle head shapes

Ambiguous quadrupeds

Hunched over big limbed bipeds

pjamesstuart; Do you know when a form is right? How do you know?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; It's like.. when someone tells a joke and the when you realize that you think its funny? In fact laughter is sometimes my reaction to when I get a form or expression right. There's a sense of both surprise and recognition ?

When a form is wrong.. it's either because it's obvious and absent of energy (something can be obvious and Have Energy though) or like something about it interferes with its own dynamic and needs The Energy Bolded or The Blockage Destroyed . Or I guess it's just gone completely wrong and its not even recognizable.

Orcs

pjamesstuart — How on earth did you come up with so many good pictures of fucking Salamanders? 😂 There's like three bangers in a row here.

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD — Lizards is a good shape

Think the palette there is a bit monotonous but the expressions are really good

Conceptual I'm most pleased with my riff on the orc

pjamesstuart — Tell me what you like about the Orc concept you came up with.

 

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD — That it riffs off the old use of it meaning "spirits of the dead", Tolkiens use of as the spectre of industrialized warfare, and dehumanization monstrosity cycles.

Plus having a fancy angle in suggesting they are a memetic virus that co-opts the " immunisation" response ( the fear of the enemy becoming or being orcs is a vector for infection as people justify their increase in brutality and ruthlessness)

But also can work as a pure game utility "it's okay to kill these guys because they are distilled war criminals"

Visually I tried to get some of the Orcs to have this ambiguous mix of panic, hate , anger, fear

While others are pure hell bastards

But yeah one of the nasty things about war propaganda that is tapping into the legimately fear that any human population has a capacity for brutality, and that brutality is easily expressed on outsider groups

And by exploiting that fear , it then feeds and utilizies that capacity

To be honest my original motivation for putting design notes in between the chapters was do a bit how fucking weird dominant voices solution to "fixing" orcs was to lean hard for into "we are 1000% here all our fans making their sexy noble savage baddie OC 😍😍😍"

But nah didn't think it was worth the page space doing a The Kids Aren't Right bit

The only bit I left in like that was mentioning the extra limbs on the Catawhere

I also had a bit about manticores getting wings from Gygaxian shenanigans idk just seems like filler

Ditto some early waffle about the origins of some of these, like fuck I just wikipediaring, people can do that themselves

Big Ideas

pjamesstuart; That was all I could think of to ask about the art in a 'pure art' sense, like about the acts of creation and construction, but I haven't asked any like 'meta level' questions, (which I tend to avoid), but you did have a fair amount of complex ideas about Orcs, so;

• Are there any 'big ideas' you had about the monsters?
• Anything you discovered or thought you understood more?
• Anything you were trying to get across?
• Is there..... a SUBTEXTS???? or like a metaphor or meaning or whatever, in these images?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Yeah any "big ideas" I tried to include in the chapter heads.

While the initial idea was "do a bunch of versions of that monster" , the process involved exploring both what is the essence of that monster both visually and conceptually/psychologically.

With both very intertwined and probably inseparable, but still distinct somehow.

think exploring the concept-essence of each monster was far more of a reductive process; like is a hag a hag because she lives in a hut in the wilderness? Or is a hag likely to be in the wilderness because she's feared ? And then why is she feared? It's her power, and what are her powers etc?

Compare a manticore being in the wilderness , to me you start losing something of the manticore if you take it out of the wilderness, there's something about the manticore that is a manifestation of an unknown wilderness and the wild stories that start coming from it.

Actually as an aside here these are actually different wildernesses. A wilderness with a hag in it , is the wilderness "beyond the hedge" , a wildness just outside your lights and most tread paths. (so could be remote villages, sewers , slums, ruins, back roads, islands etc).

While manticore wilderness is "here be dragons" wilderness; blasted nigh untamable terrains and desolate vistas.

Having a "here be hags" on very remote area of the map or a manticore living in a forest a hour away from a city , creates interesting questions but I think both are subversions or deconstructions.

As in doing something interesting with a disconnection or conceptual jolt, which only happens if something about it doesn't quite make sense.

While exploring the visual essence of each monster was (mainly) and expansive process; seeing how far I could push it basically.

But note when I talk about any of this I want to be clear it's not the "ideas, theory, then art" that art academic likes to present as The Only True Path. All this is stuff I think about in retrospect or sometimes as a weird chattering aside in my brain as I work on something; it's commentary but it's not the navigator or captain

I think ultimately art is the space the between words, if its completely reducible in words then you should just use words

Good art often makes you be able to think about stuff and come up with big strings of words and ideas , but it's a terrible mistake to think that's ultimately Is The Work

 

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; To use a tree metaphor , it's like a fruit tree. The art is both the tree and the soil and the mycoline web and whatever else . The words you can say about it is the fruit. Fruit is portable, countable, immediately digestible and a trade good. But to think only of the fruit and the not the tree (and everything connected to the tree) is a deep and profound foolishness .

As is dismissing any fruit tree not currently having pickable fruit as basically not existing

EDIT: Though this metaphor suggests as we only plant fruit trees for fruit , we only should create art to talk about it, but I reject both of these concepts, but must acknowledge that people could think that a) That's the only reason to plant fruit trees therefore the metaphor says..

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Wait one more thing and jumping back , with a couple of the monsters (gnomes, orcs) there's like a cluster of different big tangled concepts and my reduction process would be a deliberate rejection of basically alot of the most popular , but arguably essential concepts, that exist in current culture.

Orcs I guess digs deeper into the psychological underpinnings of the "barbarians at the gates" and brings in some of the Tolkien fear of industrialization, so that's still engaging with the popular view.

While gnomes basically rejects everything anyone has done in the last 100 years and tries to include knockers and kobold mythology as gnomishiness

 

FINAL STATEMENT 

pjamesstuart; Excellent. Finally, would you like to end the interview by saying anything grand, insane, overwrought and/or megalomaniacal? (Purely in order to maintain SCRAP WORLD brand coherence.)

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; THERE'S ALWAYS FREE CHEDDAR IN A MOUSETRAP BABY

Behold; monstrum

A book of Others. A book of visions. A book where every night for a month, or a year, someone slept and deliberately had nightmares, or at least, deeply hallucinations, and each morning they woke up and drew pictures of those nightmares. (And then narrowed them down to the best.)

Every sophont dwells within a necessary cage of thought, one concept piled upon another, growing in slurries and small leaps, but only ever from one central point. Yet, in every case, the boundaries of expansion, of what can be comprehended, and of what can be imagined as comprehended, must be challenged; such is the flame of life and mind.

Thence; the Other, the known but un-known, a beast woven from what is and what may be.

The meaning of this is always discussed; mapped one way, the book of Others is just a map of self, for where else can the Other be conceived, so that, in roving further and imagining deeper, seen as a whole, the conception of self becomes more clear.

Others say 'no shut up this is actually a book of monsters' - a searchlight pointing outwards, illuminating the storm-wracked unknown, and the metaphor of a searchlight is perhaps the best; for those at one end, an honest attempt to pierce the dark, attention pointing out, but for those watching from the silence, a statement saying 'here am I'.

As critiques of course, we consider both at once.

All I dislike about it is the glued spine but book production and distribution from New Zealand is fucking nutty so take what you can get frankly.

You can buy ‘Malustrious Brood’

HERE