Greetings all, hope everyone's having a lovely summer. Another art update today to show off some of the new illustrations and talk about where we're at with the overall project.
Colossus
This was one of the hardest designs to get right so far, as you can see from the number of sketches. The problem here was I wanted a really specific look and feel, not just generic mech robot. There are uncountable mecha designs out there and I rarely like them. The Colossi's description states that it is in the image of a warrior saint, so I wanted to explore what that could mean. Various attempts at a mech in bronze age armour ensued.
None of this was quite working until I turned to the Colossus of Nero, a demolished statue that once stood in front of Rome's coliseum. Making the Colossus lither and less bulky fit with my image of the construct as a sacred being as well as a war machine.
The final design is a combination of the Colossus of Nero and Robot Maria from Metropolis. I enjoy how eerie this ended up being, a lot less brutal and heavy than the original concepts but no less dangerous.
Wind Barge
Vaarn's Wind Barges are a direct homage to the Sky Ships from the Edge Chronicles, memorably illustrated by Chris Riddell. In this instance the task was not to design from scratch but rather explore the outlines of my homage to Chris's awesome designs.
As you can see, the final design doesn't stray very far from the Chris Riddell vision. The Edge Chronicles were a huge series for me as a young lad and I really wanted to pay tribute in Vaarn 2E.
Touring Orb
Another design that didn't require lots of exploratory work, as the vehicle is a tribute to another artist - in this case the great Moebius. The master included many variants of these spherical glass craft in his art over the decades, most notably in the Edena series. The Vaarn version is four seater to accommodate whole families, but aside from that small change this design is a tribute act.
Vimana
The Vimana is a hyper-powerful crystalline throne, which once conveyed the Autarchs of Urth from place to place. This is a high level vehicle, and I went through a few different concepts. The look that won out was a peacock-tail inspired design, which I felt conveyed the majesty and vanity the Autarchs were capable of.
Editing Progress
I am please to report that Christian has finished the initial edit of the manuscript. I am currently engaged with reviewing his suggested changes, after which I will finalise the page layout and we will being indexing and bookmarking the text for ease of use. I anticipate this will take another month or so.
When I have finished reviewing the suggested changes, I will release a new working draft for backers, likely at the end of this month or early September. This will probably be the final working draft before we lock in for printing. I will open a channel for typo hunting at this stage so look out for that soon.
work on the illustrations continues apace. I'm feeling a lot more confident in my abilities again and the number of false starts and sketches required before each final piece has decreased. I'll take you through the design process for each.
Destrier
Destriers are creatures from Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, steeds which we at first assume to be analogous to warhorses (New Sun forces a lot of gap-filling on the part of the reader). In the fourth volume we meet some Destriers up close and it becomes clear that these are not the animals we assumed them to be(they're described as having spiked feet and fangs, and can run at speeds exceeding 100mph).
I am very fond of this aspect of the book, and wanted Vaarn to have its own destriers. Given the extreme overland speeds they're capable of, I felt that a traditional horse body wasn't suitable, and looked instead at greyhounds and cheetahs for the general body shape. Destriers are bred and trained exclusively for military use, so I knew I would draw one in full armour.
As with many things in Vaarn, I wanted to mix antiquity with the far future, so I looked at horse armour both historically and in modern times, especially riot armour designed for horses and police dogs. The destriers are going to be charging directly at artillery emplacements and gunmen, using their speed to close the gap and inflict devastating losses. I assumed they need blast and shock protection, so the final drawing has a mixture of plated and quilted armour (before anyone asks, these are far-future materials that offer considerably greater protection from bullets than contemporary fabrics). The helmet features closable eye-blinkers, as the destrier does not need to use its visual senses once a charge has been engaged.
Skunkey
In contrast to the Destrier, a rather silly creature. I drew exactly one sketch which is maybe the most perfect drawing committed to paper. The final piece doesn't quite live up to that brilliant expression.
Mycomastiff
An undead dog, reanimated by mycomorphic fungus. I quite enjoy that the 'pets' you can recruit are still mostly quite creepy and could easily be monsters instead.
It's pretty difficult to escape the shadow of The Last of Us when drawing these fungal creatures so I didn't really try.
Synthhound
When it comes to Vaarn's synths, I really want them to seem almost alive rather than tin-can robots, but equally they're uncanny and in no way mistakable for flesh and blood people or animals. I ended up going for a greyhound-esque silhouette again, then abstracting the shape by subtracting areas where organs and tendons would usually reside. I added some logos and graphics to suggest manufacturer's marks, inspired by the art of Bungie's Marathon.
Glue Worm
Last but not least, the humble Glue Worm. These critters are smaller relatives of the large predatory Leopard Worms and Amaranthine Death-Worms. I looked at deep-sea invertebrates for this one. They're often quite 'hairy' for lack of a better term, which I used for this design. I would sleep soundly knowing this handsome fella is on guard duty.
Hello wanderers, thought I'd take a moment to update you on progress with the artwork. We now have some finished pieces to discuss, so I'll take you through concept work and then show the final inks for each.
I decided to start with the steeds section, for no other reason than I felt like drawing some animals.
Zorse
You have actually seen these sketches last month, but they're relevant to this creature so I'm sharing them again. Zorses are the dominant equine strain still surviving on Urth. Since most of Vaarn's animals have gone through some process of gene-sculpting, I want them to look familiar but not quite what you'd see outside your window. The Zorse is obviously derived from zebras, but I didn't want to just draw a zebra and call it good. My initial sketches here are of okapis, a relative of the giraffe which boast a similar stripe pattern to zebras on their rumps.
The final piece ended up being more zebra-like again. I didn't actually end up doing lots of preliminary drawings for this one, I just went for it. The patterning is based on a quagga, an extinct subspecies of zebra that was hunted to extinction in the 1900s. I just think they're neat!
Regarding genetic modification, note the long tongue that can feed on insect protein and the running spikes instead of hooves, something Zorses share with the Destrier (on which more in a later update).
Stridingfool
Stridingfools seem completely logical to me in context of the wider Vaarn setting but present some unique challenges in portraying. They are human-derived burden beasts, lacking sapience but having grown much stronger. Vaarn features many creatures that have gained human-like sapience, so it feels appropriate to also feature some post-human creatures that have moved the other way. Dougal Dixon's Man After Man and the truly grotesque creatures in All Tomorrows cover this territory in more depth. I did some initial explorations that I wasn't entirely happy with. The figure on the left is clearly gorilla-derived, but I ended up feeling that 'gorilla' wasn't really the vibe I wanted here, as it doesn't really give the unnverving impression of a human form twisted back into something it isn't meant to be. Gorillas are after all meant to be themselves! Walking on all fours isn't uncomfortable for them.
The right hand sketch shows an upright posture, but I wasn't super happy with this either. It looks too generically ogre-ish. I think you could explore this one further by making his back more shelf-like and contorted, but I needed another source of reference.
My partner suggested a truly quadrupedal pose, as it's really unnatural and uncomfortable for humans to walk this way. I ended up looking at some stills of Ayla Kirstine, a Norwegian woman who for reasons known only to her has learned to walk and run like a horse. The footage is deeply uncomfortable to watch but provided some great references, as you can see above.
I refined the look further, moving away from a lithe female form to something even more primal - a kind of hairless quasi-neonate morphology. The rounded head and staring wide eyes speak of vulnerability while the hairless muscular body communicates the opposite. The final piece was hard to settle on, but I'm pleased with the effect. A truly upsetting creation. If your friends aren't sure if Vaarn is for them, show them this picture and only this picture.
Burden Bird
Bird steeds have been a science fantasy mainstay for decades, presumably based on the horseclaws from Nausicaa. Accordingly I did very few sketches for the Burden Bird, as the basic design work was already done for me. I did consider a Terror Bird-like profile, as you can see bottom right, but it looks too predatory and aggressive. I wanted these guys to seem more docile. The final piece came together pretty easily. I'm finding my stride again with the illustrations and looking forward to showing you more in a few weeks time.
Hello wanderers, hope you're all enjoying some summer weather wherever on Urth you are! Just a little community plug, I'm hosting a game jam over the summer on itch.io.
The returning Vaarn Summer Jam is a non-ranked game jam, where entrants are invited to contribute submissions relating to Vaults of Vaarn, and science-fantasy roleplaying games in general.
Entries can be adventures, maps, artefacts, NPCs, art packs, or anything else you can dream up. I have a very loose content policy but please don't submit stuff that has no relation whatsoever to science-fantasy. I would like all entries to be conceptually compatible with Vaults of Vaarn, even if they're not actually written for the setting or system. To see last year's submissions click here.
All Vaults of Vaarn material presented in the original three zines and the drafts of the Second Edition rulebook are covered by a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution license, and you are free to use it however you want in your submissions to this jam or other projects. The artwork and adventure locations I produced for the Deluxe Edition are copyright to Games Omnivorous and can't be reused.
as promised I'm going to be switching to a different update format over the summer. My big job now is to complete 81 outstanding illustrations for the core rulebook, so I'd like to post every few weeks with some news about how that's progressing.
I haven't yet completed any final pieces, but I have been filling sketchbooks with preliminary work. This stage of creating is really fun and vital for me - although I have some ideas about what the final illustrations will look like, the sketching stage is a good time to start exploring forms and composition. I sometimes wish my final illustrations could look as fresh and spontaneous as the sketches do.
The Sketches
A quick study from Moebius. He has a lot of signature quirks in his SFF illustrations, one of them being these dome-like buildings that seem almost moulded into the landscape.
An Autarch. My take on these vanished God-Kings is they're a little bit Bablyonian, a little bit Hindu god, with some Space Pharoah in there as well.
A neobloom smoking a cigarette.
More neoblooms and line testing.
An okapi, being used as inspiration for Vaarn's Zorses (which aren't quite horses and aren't quite zebras despite the name).
More okapi studies.
Some ray cat explorations. Drawing from real world Sphynx cats.
A beefy ape and some more cat studies.
A bit of inking. I'm quite out of practise with the brushes and dip pen so there's a lot of this stuff - mark making and trying to reignite the neural pathways that operate my drawing hand.
I hope this was fun and informative! There should be some final inked pieces to look at in the next update.
Currently CRIMSON HOUND is the most recent draft. If you have comments/questions/typos/suggestions on content, please try to identify which draft you're reading from! It makes it much easier for me to keep track.
What's new in CRIMSON HOUND?
I am pleased to announce that we are content complete, and only one spread remains unfinished. Amongst the additions this month:
Expanded the list of Elixirs (p.53-54). There are now 40, 8 of each potency level.
Expanded the list of Hypergeometric Equations (p.59-60). There are now 40.
Added a new type of Vault room: Treasure Rooms (p.111). These replace the old Exotica room types, and now scale with vault depth to provide greater and more varied rewards on deeper floors.
Expanded the Vault Hazards (p.113-114) to be a double page spread. It's now easier to read and includes clues for each hazard type.
New Exotica Generator (p.125-126). This is a 4d100 table, which gives inspiration for random items of Exotica (in case the d100 pre-written Exotica aren't enough). You do need to interpret the results yourself however.
You can now generate Place Names (p.159-160) during region creation. This spread is not quite finished yet! It is harder than it seems to come up with the themed place names.
New monster: the Kalopede (p.198). I promised myself I wouldn't add any more but here we are. I regret nothing.
Eigin Oasis (p.289-290) now finally has location text like it should have since the first draft of this book.
Patch Notes
Removed a few monsters from Lair generation that no longer appear in the Bestiary.
Moved the Treasure chapter to follow the Creating Vaults material, since those tables are referenced repeatedly during vault creation.
Moved the Drugs and Musical Instruments to the Equipment chapter, since both tables can be referenced during PC creation.
Added stat blocks for the Spawn of An-Rah's Guts and Brain, which were missing from Tomb of Nassak An-Rah.
What's Next?
You'll be excited to learn that we are now going into editing! I have engaged the services of Christian Sorrell who previously acted as copyeditor and proofreader for my award-winning adventure module The Shrike.Christian will be helping me edit, proof-read, and index Vaults of Vaarn 2E over the summer, so hopefully we can remove a lot of the typos and unclear language.
I anticipate this work will take us through to September. In the meantime I will be full-steam ahead on the artwork and fine-tuning the layout. It is likely that I will be updating you all with monthly artwork previews instead of updates to the rulebook, as we're content complete with this rough draft.
Greetings all, hope everyone's having a lovely summer. Another art update today to show off some of the new illustrations and talk about where we're at with the overall project.
Colossus
This was one of the hardest designs to get right so far, as you can see from the number of sketches. The problem here was I wanted a really specific look and feel, not just generic mech robot. There are uncountable mecha designs out there and I rarely like them. The Colossi's description states that it is in the image of a warrior saint, so I wanted to explore what that could mean. Various attempts at a mech in bronze age armour ensued.
None of this was quite working until I turned to the Colossus of Nero, a demolished statue that once stood in front of Rome's coliseum. Making the Colossus lither and less bulky fit with my image of the construct as a sacred being as well as a war machine.
The final design is a combination of the Colossus of Nero and Robot Maria from Metropolis. I enjoy how eerie this ended up being, a lot less brutal and heavy than the original concepts but no less dangerous.
Wind Barge
Vaarn's Wind Barges are a direct homage to the Sky Ships from the Edge Chronicles, memorably illustrated by Chris Riddell. In this instance the task was not to design from scratch but rather explore the outlines of my homage to Chris's awesome designs.
As you can see, the final design doesn't stray very far from the Chris Riddell vision. The Edge Chronicles were a huge series for me as a young lad and I really wanted to pay tribute in Vaarn 2E.
Touring Orb
Another design that didn't require lots of exploratory work, as the vehicle is a tribute to another artist - in this case the great Moebius. The master included many variants of these spherical glass craft in his art over the decades, most notably in the Edena series. The Vaarn version is four seater to accommodate whole families, but aside from that small change this design is a tribute act.
Vimana
The Vimana is a hyper-powerful crystalline throne, which once conveyed the Autarchs of Urth from place to place. This is a high level vehicle, and I went through a few different concepts. The look that won out was a peacock-tail inspired design, which I felt conveyed the majesty and vanity the Autarchs were capable of.
Editing Progress
I am please to report that Christian has finished the initial edit of the manuscript. I am currently engaged with reviewing his suggested changes, after which I will finalise the page layout and we will being indexing and bookmarking the text for ease of use. I anticipate this will take another month or so.
When I have finished reviewing the suggested changes, I will release a new working draft for backers, likely at the end of this month or early September. This will probably be the final working draft before we lock in for printing. I will open a channel for typo hunting at this stage so look out for that soon.
work on the illustrations continues apace. I'm feeling a lot more confident in my abilities again and the number of false starts and sketches required before each final piece has decreased. I'll take you through the design process for each.
Destrier
Destriers are creatures from Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, steeds which we at first assume to be analogous to warhorses (New Sun forces a lot of gap-filling on the part of the reader). In the fourth volume we meet some Destriers up close and it becomes clear that these are not the animals we assumed them to be(they're described as having spiked feet and fangs, and can run at speeds exceeding 100mph).
I am very fond of this aspect of the book, and wanted Vaarn to have its own destriers. Given the extreme overland speeds they're capable of, I felt that a traditional horse body wasn't suitable, and looked instead at greyhounds and cheetahs for the general body shape. Destriers are bred and trained exclusively for military use, so I knew I would draw one in full armour.
As with many things in Vaarn, I wanted to mix antiquity with the far future, so I looked at horse armour both historically and in modern times, especially riot armour designed for horses and police dogs. The destriers are going to be charging directly at artillery emplacements and gunmen, using their speed to close the gap and inflict devastating losses. I assumed they need blast and shock protection, so the final drawing has a mixture of plated and quilted armour (before anyone asks, these are far-future materials that offer considerably greater protection from bullets than contemporary fabrics). The helmet features closable eye-blinkers, as the destrier does not need to use its visual senses once a charge has been engaged.
Skunkey
In contrast to the Destrier, a rather silly creature. I drew exactly one sketch which is maybe the most perfect drawing committed to paper. The final piece doesn't quite live up to that brilliant expression.
Mycomastiff
An undead dog, reanimated by mycomorphic fungus. I quite enjoy that the 'pets' you can recruit are still mostly quite creepy and could easily be monsters instead.
It's pretty difficult to escape the shadow of The Last of Us when drawing these fungal creatures so I didn't really try.
Synthhound
When it comes to Vaarn's synths, I really want them to seem almost alive rather than tin-can robots, but equally they're uncanny and in no way mistakable for flesh and blood people or animals. I ended up going for a greyhound-esque silhouette again, then abstracting the shape by subtracting areas where organs and tendons would usually reside. I added some logos and graphics to suggest manufacturer's marks, inspired by the art of Bungie's Marathon.
Glue Worm
Last but not least, the humble Glue Worm. These critters are smaller relatives of the large predatory Leopard Worms and Amaranthine Death-Worms. I looked at deep-sea invertebrates for this one. They're often quite 'hairy' for lack of a better term, which I used for this design. I would sleep soundly knowing this handsome fella is on guard duty.
Hello wanderers, thought I'd take a moment to update you on progress with the artwork. We now have some finished pieces to discuss, so I'll take you through concept work and then show the final inks for each.
I decided to start with the steeds section, for no other reason than I felt like drawing some animals.
Zorse
You have actually seen these sketches last month, but they're relevant to this creature so I'm sharing them again. Zorses are the dominant equine strain still surviving on Urth. Since most of Vaarn's animals have gone through some process of gene-sculpting, I want them to look familiar but not quite what you'd see outside your window. The Zorse is obviously derived from zebras, but I didn't want to just draw a zebra and call it good. My initial sketches here are of okapis, a relative of the giraffe which boast a similar stripe pattern to zebras on their rumps.
The final piece ended up being more zebra-like again. I didn't actually end up doing lots of preliminary drawings for this one, I just went for it. The patterning is based on a quagga, an extinct subspecies of zebra that was hunted to extinction in the 1900s. I just think they're neat!
Regarding genetic modification, note the long tongue that can feed on insect protein and the running spikes instead of hooves, something Zorses share with the Destrier (on which more in a later update).
Stridingfool
Stridingfools seem completely logical to me in context of the wider Vaarn setting but present some unique challenges in portraying. They are human-derived burden beasts, lacking sapience but having grown much stronger. Vaarn features many creatures that have gained human-like sapience, so it feels appropriate to also feature some post-human creatures that have moved the other way. Dougal Dixon's Man After Man and the truly grotesque creatures in All Tomorrows cover this territory in more depth. I did some initial explorations that I wasn't entirely happy with. The figure on the left is clearly gorilla-derived, but I ended up feeling that 'gorilla' wasn't really the vibe I wanted here, as it doesn't really give the unnverving impression of a human form twisted back into something it isn't meant to be. Gorillas are after all meant to be themselves! Walking on all fours isn't uncomfortable for them.
The right hand sketch shows an upright posture, but I wasn't super happy with this either. It looks too generically ogre-ish. I think you could explore this one further by making his back more shelf-like and contorted, but I needed another source of reference.
My partner suggested a truly quadrupedal pose, as it's really unnatural and uncomfortable for humans to walk this way. I ended up looking at some stills of Ayla Kirstine, a Norwegian woman who for reasons known only to her has learned to walk and run like a horse. The footage is deeply uncomfortable to watch but provided some great references, as you can see above.
I refined the look further, moving away from a lithe female form to something even more primal - a kind of hairless quasi-neonate morphology. The rounded head and staring wide eyes speak of vulnerability while the hairless muscular body communicates the opposite. The final piece was hard to settle on, but I'm pleased with the effect. A truly upsetting creation. If your friends aren't sure if Vaarn is for them, show them this picture and only this picture.
Burden Bird
Bird steeds have been a science fantasy mainstay for decades, presumably based on the horseclaws from Nausicaa. Accordingly I did very few sketches for the Burden Bird, as the basic design work was already done for me. I did consider a Terror Bird-like profile, as you can see bottom right, but it looks too predatory and aggressive. I wanted these guys to seem more docile. The final piece came together pretty easily. I'm finding my stride again with the illustrations and looking forward to showing you more in a few weeks time.
Hello wanderers, hope you're all enjoying some summer weather wherever on Urth you are! Just a little community plug, I'm hosting a game jam over the summer on itch.io.
The returning Vaarn Summer Jam is a non-ranked game jam, where entrants are invited to contribute submissions relating to Vaults of Vaarn, and science-fantasy roleplaying games in general.
Entries can be adventures, maps, artefacts, NPCs, art packs, or anything else you can dream up. I have a very loose content policy but please don't submit stuff that has no relation whatsoever to science-fantasy. I would like all entries to be conceptually compatible with Vaults of Vaarn, even if they're not actually written for the setting or system. To see last year's submissions click here.
All Vaults of Vaarn material presented in the original three zines and the drafts of the Second Edition rulebook are covered by a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution license, and you are free to use it however you want in your submissions to this jam or other projects. The artwork and adventure locations I produced for the Deluxe Edition are copyright to Games Omnivorous and can't be reused.
as promised I'm going to be switching to a different update format over the summer. My big job now is to complete 81 outstanding illustrations for the core rulebook, so I'd like to post every few weeks with some news about how that's progressing.
I haven't yet completed any final pieces, but I have been filling sketchbooks with preliminary work. This stage of creating is really fun and vital for me - although I have some ideas about what the final illustrations will look like, the sketching stage is a good time to start exploring forms and composition. I sometimes wish my final illustrations could look as fresh and spontaneous as the sketches do.
The Sketches
A quick study from Moebius. He has a lot of signature quirks in his SFF illustrations, one of them being these dome-like buildings that seem almost moulded into the landscape.
An Autarch. My take on these vanished God-Kings is they're a little bit Bablyonian, a little bit Hindu god, with some Space Pharoah in there as well.
A neobloom smoking a cigarette.
More neoblooms and line testing.
An okapi, being used as inspiration for Vaarn's Zorses (which aren't quite horses and aren't quite zebras despite the name).
More okapi studies.
Some ray cat explorations. Drawing from real world Sphynx cats.
A beefy ape and some more cat studies.
A bit of inking. I'm quite out of practise with the brushes and dip pen so there's a lot of this stuff - mark making and trying to reignite the neural pathways that operate my drawing hand.
I hope this was fun and informative! There should be some final inked pieces to look at in the next update.
