SWORD, SORCERY, SKULLS AND ONE VERY LARGE SLUG

There is something pleasingly unrefined about early fantasy RPG art.

Nobody has spent six meetings defining the visual language of the goblin faction. Nobody has asked whether the necromancer's robes are consistent with the approved brand palette. Somebody wanted a rat chewing on a skull, a horrible thing crawling out of the dark and a barbarian woman who looked as though she had wandered in from a paperback cover, so Brad McDevitt drew them.

Brad McDevitt Stock Art – Fantasy Collection 1 is very much that sort of collection.

It contains 16 TIFF image files representing 14 distinct illustrations, covering monsters, magic, warriors, undead horrors, occult imagery and several pieces which sit comfortably in the fertile territory between traditional fantasy, pulp and horror.

One image—Blood-Crawling Chaos—is supplied in three different treatments. The other thirteen subjects are individual pieces.

The result is a useful little library for old-school fantasy games, dungeon adventures, bestiaries, sword-and-sorcery material and fantasy books that could stand to have a few more teeth.

CONTENTS

The collection contains:

• Blood-Crawling Chaos – black-and-white

• Blood-Crawling Chaos – colour

• Blood-Crawling Chaos – alternate treatment

• Mummy Attack

• Rat and Skull

• Wererat Feeding

• Character Portrait – CAC258

• Barbarian Bimbo

• Gargoyle

• Moon Worshipper

• Primordial Slug

• Sinister Sword

• Bloody Moon

• Dragon Lady

• Undead Wizard

• Massive Spell

That is 16 TIFF files covering 14 distinct subjects.

The titles follow the original working filenames as closely as practical. Some are old pulp labels and need not survive into whatever you publish. Barbarian Bimbo and Dragon Lady, in particular, are source-file names rather than instructions about how those characters must be written.

Likewise, CAC258 has no descriptive filename. Better an honest catalogue number than inventing a monster name and pretending Brad supplied it.

BLOOD-CRAWLING CHAOS

The most extensively supplied piece in the collection is Blood-Crawling Chaos, with black-and-white, colour and alternate treatments.

It is a mass of eyes, mouths, limbs and general anatomical disagreement—the sort of creature which makes taxonomy look like wasted effort.

Call it an aberration, chaos beast, demon, failed summoning, primordial godling or whatever else your bestiary requires. There is no need to carry the original name into the final setting.

The three treatments make it particularly useful for publishers working across different formats. One may suit a monochrome interior, another a colour PDF, while the alternate gives you another visual option without having to modify the source yourself.

The creature itself belongs comfortably in the deeper end of fantasy: forbidden ruins, sorcerous catastrophes, things worshipped beneath cities and the dungeon level where ordinary ecology has packed up and gone home.

There should probably be a warning outside the room.

There will not be.

THE MUMMY HAS STOPPED WAITING

Mummy Attack is action rather than portraiture.

That distinction is useful. Bestiaries need pictures of creatures, but adventures also need pictures of creatures actually ruining somebody's afternoon.

A mummy can be an embalmed ruler, tomb guardian, cursed priest, ancient sorcerer or unfortunate aristocrat whose funerary arrangements proved more durable than expected.

The attack itself can carry an encounter page, tomb adventure, ancient-world fantasy section or the precise moment when archaeology becomes self-defence.

The classic mummy remains an excellent monster because the setup is so efficient.

There is a tomb.

It was sealed.

Somebody opened it.

Everything after that is administration.

RAT AND SKULL

Rat and Skull is a small image with an enormous number of uses.

Dungeon dressing. Plague. Sewers. Necromancy. Battlefield aftermath. Poverty. Abandoned ruins. The cellar underneath an inn whose proprietor insists the scratching is perfectly normal.

It can work as a spot illustration, chapter ornament or little piece of atmosphere between larger blocks of text.

There is also a pleasing economy to the image. You do not need a paragraph explaining that the place is unhealthy.

The rat has reached the skull.

The reader can join the dots.

Fantasy publishing needs these small pieces just as much as it needs full-page dragons. Often more, once layout begins.

WERERAT FEEDING

If Rat and Skull suggests trouble, Wererat Feeding has moved past suggestion.

A wererat is useful because it can be monster and character simultaneously. It may lurk in sewers, infiltrate settlements, run a thieves' guild or simply regard the human population as a combination of camouflage and food supply.

A feeding scene suits horror-leaning fantasy particularly well.

It can accompany a bestiary entry, reveal the truth behind disappearances or provide the unpleasant evidence discovered after following tracks into the cellar.

The creature need not be called a wererat in your own game. Rat-man, plague beast, shapechanger or mutant all work perfectly well.

What matters is that it is doing something unpleasant enough that the players are unlikely to spend long debating its alignment.

CAC258

One illustration is filed simply as CAC258.

No evocative title. No taxonomy. No free paragraph of setting lore hiding in the filename.

That is fine.

It is a monstrous character portrait, and the lack of an imposed identity may actually make it more useful.

Give it a species.

Make it unique.

Turn it into a demon, mutant, goblin-kin, cursed noble or strange denizen of somewhere nobody sensible visits.

This is one of the places where stock art and writing meet properly: the illustration gives you a face and you decide what sort of bastard owns it.

There is no virtue in pretending to know more than the source tells us.

BARBARIAN BIMBO

The original filename Barbarian Bimbo is unmistakably of its pulp era.

The image can be used far more broadly than the name suggests.

She might be a barbarian warrior, gladiator, adventurer, tribal champion, sword-and-sorcery heroine or simply an armed woman who has absolutely no interest in whatever adjective somebody attached to the original file.

For projects leaning into deliberately lurid paperback fantasy, the old label may even fit the joke.

For anything else, rename her.

The artwork does not care.

This is stock art, not witness testimony.

THE GARGOYLE

A Gargoyle is one of those monsters that solves several problems at once.

It can be a creature, statue, guardian, demon, magical construct or architectural feature which the players are going to become extremely suspicious of after the first one attacks.

Put it on a cathedral.

Put it over a tomb.

Put six of them around a courtyard and watch everyone spend twenty minutes prodding stonework with ten-foot poles.

The great pleasure of gargoyles is uncertainty. A motionless creature and an ordinary statue can look much the same until initiative is rolled.

Once the players have encountered one living gargoyle, every decorative building in the campaign becomes psychologically interactive.

Good value.

THE MOON WORSHIPPER

Moon Worshipper provides religious or occult material without demanding a specific fantasy religion.

The figure could belong to a lunar cult, druidic tradition, mystery religion or civilisation whose calendar and rituals revolve around the night sky.

Perhaps the moon is merely symbolic.

Perhaps it controls magic.

Perhaps something on the moon has noticed the attention.

The illustration can accompany cults, religious practices, festivals, prophecy or the background of a character whose beliefs place them outside the dominant faith.

It also pairs naturally with Bloody Moon, giving you ritual and omen without having to commission separate pieces.

PRIMORDIAL SLUG

Somewhere in the evolution of fantasy gaming, somebody looked at a slug and thought:

Yes, but what if it were much worse?

Primordial Slug answers.

It could be an ancient subterranean organism, demon, slime god, degenerate survivor of an earlier age or simply a mollusc which has had several million years too long to grow.

Slugs are excellent dungeon creatures because they imply unpleasant environments: caverns, damp ruins, subterranean lakes, sewers and forgotten places where nobody has been sweeping.

A primordial version can go considerably further.

Perhaps the ordinary slugs are its offspring.

Perhaps alchemists harvest its secretions.

Perhaps the local cult considers it the first living thing.

Perhaps the adventurers merely want to get past it without discovering what happens when several tons of mollusc decides to move quickly.

Not every monster needs wings and horns.

Sometimes wet is enough.

THE SINISTER SWORD

Sinister Sword gives you an object rather than another character.

That is useful immediately.

It might be cursed, intelligent, possessed, ceremonial or entirely mundane while possessing a history unpleasant enough to make everybody think otherwise.

Who owned it?

Who made it?

Why is it sinister?

Does it speak?

Does it merely influence the wielder?

Has everybody carrying it died in suspiciously similar circumstances?

A good fantasy weapon creates stories as readily as it ends them.

Put the image beside a magical-item entry, treasure section or adventure handout and let the players decide how badly they want it.

They will take it.

Obviously.

BLOODY MOON

Bloody Moon is atmosphere condensed into an illustration.

It could be an eclipse, omen, magical event or simply a red moon hanging over a night when something particularly regrettable occurs.

Use it for lycanthropy, prophecy, cult ceremonies, apocalyptic events or the opening of an adventure whose inhabitants have already started barricading their doors.

A moon image has the useful property of establishing tone without assigning a face to anything.

Nobody has attacked yet.

Nobody needs to.

A bloody moon over a village tells the reader that the evening is already going poorly.

It also works particularly well beside Moon Worshipper.

One image establishes belief.

The other suggests somebody may have been right.

DRAGON LADY

Dragon Lady is another original pulp-style filename whose final identity is best left to the publisher using it.

She might become a sorceress, noblewoman, dragon cultist, shapechanger, villain, adventurer or member of a draconic people.

There is no need to inherit the stereotyped baggage of the old phrase simply because it survived as a filename.

Take the character.

Give her a proper name.

Decide what she wants.

That last part matters rather more than whatever somebody called the TIFF file years ago.

THE UNDEAD WIZARD

The Undead Wizard is fantasy efficiency itself.

You already know the broad ingredients.

Magic.

Death.

An unwillingness to accept that the latter should interfere with the former.

The figure might be a lich, revenant mage, resurrected scholar, cursed court wizard or necromancer who discovered immortality but neglected the cosmetic side of the arrangement.

Unlike a mindless undead creature, an undead wizard brings intention.

They remember.

They plan.

They probably own books the player characters want.

They may also have students, enemies, estates, debts and several centuries of unfinished correspondence.

Death does not simplify administration nearly as much as advertised.

MASSIVE SPELL

Massive Spell gives you magic on the scale fantasy occasionally deserves.

This is not somebody lighting a candle with a cantrip.

It can represent a major ritual, battlefield spell, magical catastrophe, divine intervention or the climax of a wizardly plan which began fifty pages earlier.

Large magical effects make excellent chapter art because they communicate scope.

They can illustrate mass combat, high-level sorcery, magical disasters or the historical event that reshaped part of the setting.

Perhaps the spell saved a kingdom.

Perhaps it destroyed one.

Those propositions are not mutually exclusive.

A VERY OLD-SCHOOL MIX

Fantasy Collection 1 feels like an early RPG art folder in the best sense.

The subjects are eclectic.

There is horror mixed into the fantasy.

The imagery moves from tiny atmospheric pieces to full monsters and dramatic magic without worrying too much about whether everything belongs to a single meticulously curated aesthetic.

That makes the collection practical.

Rat and Skull can fill a little hole beside a dungeon sidebar.

The Gargoyle can illustrate a bestiary entry.

Massive Spell can carry a larger spread.

The Sinister Sword fits treasure.

The various characters can populate adventures.

The chaos creature can sit somewhere near the back of the book where the hit dice become unreasonable.

For a small publisher, that variety is worth more than theoretical consistency.

You need art that solves problems.

This does.

THE FILES

Fantasy Collection 1 contains 16 TIFF image files representing 14 distinct illustrations.

The only multi-file subject is Blood-Crawling Chaos, supplied in three treatments: black-and-white, colour and an alternate version.

The remaining thirteen subjects are individual illustrations.

As with the wider Brad McDevitt stock-art range, some individual pieces may also turn up in other themed collections where they cross genre boundaries.

That is especially unsurprising here, since fantasy and horror have spent the last fifty years stealing each other's monsters.

LICENCE

The artwork is intended for use in personal and professional projects, subject to the terms of the licence supplied with the collection.

Read those terms before publication, particularly the sections dealing with credit, alteration and redistribution.

Use the artwork in your game, adventure, novel, supplement or other finished project. Do not simply pass the raw files onwards as another stock-art pack and hope renaming Primordial Slug to Ancient Gastropod constitutes transformative work.

More Brad McDevitt artwork is available through the wider Brad McDevitt Stock Art range.

Sixteen files, fourteen subjects, one sword nobody should pick up and an organism which may be older than vertebrates.

A perfectly reasonable beginning.