Friday Art Attack

I'm going to attempt to make Friday an "Art Attack" day, where I do something like what I did here, post some art from the collection of digital art that I've found over the years online here and there, and then relate it to one of my settings under development.  So, I've tagged this post not only ART, but also DARK•HERITAGE, AD ASTRA and TIMISCHBURG—a new tag for the expanded CULT OF UNDEATH setting as its shaping up.

Of course; right away, I'm going to miss next Friday—I already know that I'll be unavailable to post anything anywhere about anything all next week.  But... after that, I'll try and make it pretty regular.  I do, after all, have an awful lot of digital fantasy and sci-fi art that I've collected over many years of looking around online, thinking; "hey, that's a cool picture" and then right clicking and saving it.  Plus, I'm a fairly visually minded guy, so having pictures is fun—it helps me more than just about anything to get in the mood to develop setting, or anything else for that matter.

So, let's start...

RAWR!  Too big to be a thurse, this is probably going to use the stats for an ettin.  Either that, or I can create another daemon type to represent it.

Maybe the main villain of CULT OF UNDEATH should be a woman!  I like the concept of saving a damsel in distress from a vile man, though—there's an element of sexual threat to that that is an ancient, visceral kind of thing (used to great effect by Edgar Rice Burroughs when John Carter has to save Dejah Thoris from Tal Hajus and then again Sab Than.)  Then again, women with magic and a bad attitude are often scarier than men, who tend to have more straightforward motivations.

I really like my idea of the Death Sages of the Voormellei Confederation; space undead.  Although you've got to admit; I need to be careful to keep them from becoming pedestrian, so there shouldn't be very many of them, nor should they make a lot of appearances.  That said; I've posted a fair number of "undead astronauts" here and there.  I think the idea of them is pretty cool.

AD ASTRA is mostly ersatz Star Wars, but then again, Star Wars is a grab bag of all kinds of influences, and one that fits very well into AD ASTRA is the thoroughly 80s notion of some cyberpunk.

Art originally developed by a Traveller fan, this would be a perfect example of a one-man space-ship—perfect for small freight runs.  This is the equivalent of a space trucker.  I'd imagine that ships like this ply the space lanes of AD ASTRA as often as big rigs ply the interstates of America.

Whereas this, on the other hand, would be the perfect ship for a full party of PCs.  It even looks a lot like the ship from Star Wars: Rebels, although I think the art predates that show.  The only thing about these two pictures, is that they are both way too clean, neat and bright for AD ASTRA.  Grunge them up, making them look dirtier and more run-down; make that docking bay look like the last time you had your car in to a self-employed mechanic.  That's the look, pioneered by Star Wars in many ways, that AD ASTRA also needs to have.

I've never been shy of undead.  In fact, I have to be careful to make sure that I don't use them too much and make them become routine.

What if saber-tooths had leopard-like spots?  Gotta throw a paleontology picture in there from time to time.  Besides, sabertooths have been in DARK•HERITAGE and the FANTASY HACK ruleset from the very beginning.

I used to say that every city in my settings was, by default, a wretched hive of scum and villainy.  This isn't necessarily literally true, but it mostly is.  This might actually be what Grozavest looks like all of the time, considering that the sun never rises on it.