DOWN IN THE DARK, SOMETHING IS CASTING SPELLS

There is a great deal going on in Brad McDevitt Stock Art – Fantasy Collection 10.

Cultists have gathered underground. A thief is fooling about with poison. Trolls are causing the usual civic difficulties. Vampires fly, stare and embrace; none of these activities is likely to end well for the person standing nearest. Elsewhere, a wizard is working, another spellcaster is withering something unfortunate, and a halfling remains inexplicably cheerful despite the company he keeps.

The collection contains 25 TIFF files covering 23 distinct subjects. Its emphasis falls on strange characters, subterranean encounters, vampires, monsters and magic rather than the usual parade of interchangeable knights.

There is enough here to furnish a bestiary, support an adventure or scatter throughout several different books. The selection has a pleasingly grubby, old-school fantasy character: crooked thieves, lurking rat-men, odd shamans, deep citadels and sorcery conducted without the benefit of modern health-and-safety legislation.

THE ACTUAL CONTENTS

The supplied files are:

• Spellcasting Wizard

• Spike Demon

• Statuette

• Subterranean Cultists

• Tattooed Bad-Ass

• Tattooed Bad-Ass – greyscale

• The Weird-West Troll

• Thief – Poison

• Troll Encounter

• Underground Citadel

• Underworld Mutant – greyscale

• Vampire Hunter

• Vampires Flight – greyscale

• Vampiric Stare

• Vampire Embrace

• Viking – colour

• Viking – greyscale

• Warrior Angel

• Warthog Shaman

• Wererat Lurker

• Wild Wyvern

• Withering Spell

• Wizard’s Study

• Classic Halfling

• Clip Art Critters

The names are cleaned versions of the supplied filenames. They provide a useful description of the artwork, but they do not have to become official terminology in your setting.

Call the Spike Demon a thorn devil, abyssal brute or irritated hedge spirit. Turn the Warthog Shaman into a priest, witch-doctor, spirit-talker or player character. The files will not object.

BELOW THE SURFACE

Several illustrations belong in caves, dungeons, underground kingdoms and other places where daylight has been rejected as an affectation.

Subterranean Cultists gives you a full scene of ritual activity rather than another solitary figure standing against white space. It can introduce a hidden religion, secret gathering, summoning or the deeply awkward moment when adventurers interrupt a ceremony without first determining what the ceremony is intended to prevent.

The Underground Citadel supplies somewhere for them to live.

It could be a dwarven fortress, ruined city, sealed prison, subterranean temple or the stronghold of a civilisation that decided the surface world was altogether too noisy. A location piece immediately gives an adventure some scale. There are walls to breach, towers to climb, gates to circumvent and inhabitants who have spent generations preparing for visitors.

The Underworld Mutant is a separate character piece, supplied in greyscale. It might be a native of the depths, altered human, escaped experimental subject or survivor of whatever contaminates the lower tunnels.

Then there is the Troll Encounter, which appears to show adventurers facing a large and traditionally uncooperative opponent. It can carry an encounter page, scenario opening or bestiary section without needing much explanation.

The troll is there.

The characters are there.

Diplomacy has probably already had its chance.

MAGIC, WIZARDS AND OBJECTS WITH AGENCY

Fantasy Collection 10 contains a small but useful magical department.

The Spellcasting Wizard can serve as a player character, court magician, ritualist or antagonist caught in the middle of producing an effect the reader can actually see. That makes the piece more useful than the familiar portrait of a wizard merely holding a staff and hoping the hat does the work.

Withering Spell gives you another magical incident. It could illustrate necromancy, ageing, decay, a curse or an attack that leaves rather more permanent evidence than a fireball.

The Wizard’s Study supplies the necessary books, apparatus and architectural clutter. It may be the workplace of a respected scholar, hedge magician, alchemist or dangerous lunatic whose neighbours have grown accustomed to flashes beneath the door.

A wizard’s study is also an excellent place to search. It contains clues, valuables, unfinished experiments and objects whose labels have been written by somebody with an infuriating fondness for metaphor.

The Statuette can become one of those objects. It might be a minor treasure, religious image, magical focus, prison for a spirit or small decorative nuisance that turns out to be responsible for most of the plot.

There is enough here for a short magical investigation without importing anything else:

A statuette disappears from the study. The wizard is found injured by a withering curse. A poisoned thief has escaped into the lower city. The trail ends beneath the citadel, where cultists are trying to put the stolen object back before something notices it is missing.

A perfectly respectable evening’s gaming.

POISON: THE QUIET ALTERNATIVE

The file titled Thief – Poison depicts a furtive character working with a container and weapon.

It can be used for an assassin, thief, apothecary, spy or adventurer who has concluded that fair combat is an expensive habit maintained chiefly by people with better armour.

Poison has plenty of uses in a fantasy publication:

• Equipment and alchemy chapters

• Assassin or rogue character material

• Court intrigue

• Murder investigations

• Traps

• Encounters requiring discretion rather than frontal assault

The image need not depict a villain. A monster hunter might prepare venom for a specific creature. A healer may be measuring a dangerous medicine. A player character may simply be doing exactly what the other players expected when they invited somebody called “Knives” into the party.

VAMPIRES AT WORK

Four separate illustrations concern vampires and those who make the sensible decision to hunt them.

The Vampire Hunter is armed and dressed for a grim sort of business. He can become a player character, professional monster-killer, religious agent, obsessive survivor or recurring figure whose methods create almost as many problems as his prey.

The other three pieces approach vampirism from different angles.

Vampires Flight, supplied in greyscale, brings movement and supernatural spectacle. It can depict transformation, escape, attack or a creature descending upon someone who had wrongly assumed the upper windows were safe.

Vampiric Stare is intimate and confrontational. It suits mesmerism, psychic control, predatory hunger or the moment when a victim realises that looking away is no longer an available choice.

Vampire Embrace presents a close encounter between predator and victim. It can accompany seduction, feeding, transformation or the complicated territory in which attraction and danger have become inconveniently entangled.

Together, the four pieces could furnish an entire vampire chapter without repeating one static portrait. There is a hunter, an aerial image, a close-up and a narrative scene. That variety helps a section look designed rather than assembled from the same headshot copied across several pages.

TROLLS WITH EXPANDING CAREER OPTIONS

Fantasy Collection 10 contains two different troll pieces.

The Troll Encounter belongs to traditional dungeon or wilderness fantasy: a large creature confronted by considerably smaller people who have nevertheless decided to continue advancing.

The Weird-West Troll takes the species somewhere less predictable. It can serve in frontier fantasy, black-powder adventure or a setting where monstrous peoples have discovered hats, firearms and the economic possibilities of an insufficiently regulated border.

He might be:

• An outlaw

• A bounty hunter

• A prospector

• A hired gun

• A bridge owner who has modernised his collection methods

• A local lawman whose appointment has substantially reduced arguments

The two trolls need not belong to the same world. One can enter a conventional bestiary while the other waits for a weird-west supplement.

Stock art does not become less valuable because its inhabitants have never met.

THE BESTIARY SHELF

The Spike Demon, Wild Wyvern, Wererat Lurker, Warthog Shaman and Clip Art Critters provide a useful range of creatures.

The Spike Demon is a heavy, hostile-looking brute covered in protrusions. It can become an infernal creature, mutant, summoned guardian or monster that has evolved an admirably direct response to grappling attacks.

The Wild Wyvern belongs in wilderness encounters, aerial bestiaries, mountain regions and the skies above settlements that have neglected to maintain a sufficiently large ballista. It could be a solitary predator, trained mount or the smallest member of a far more alarming brood.

The Wererat Lurker is a dark, close character portrait. Use it for sewer-dwellers, thieves’ guilds, plague cults, urban monsters or a hidden people living beneath a city and quietly acquiring everything the surface loses down drains.

Warthog Shaman has considerably more personality than another generic robed priest. The figure could be wise, dangerous, comic, imposing or all four depending upon the writing around it. Give him fetishes, spirits, ancestral obligations or a maddening habit of answering straightforward questions through animal noises and parables.

The file titled Clip Art Critters appears to be a group illustration containing several small fantasy creatures. It can break up a bestiary, decorate a lighter section or provide a cluster of incidental inhabitants without demanding a separate full-page entry for each.

Its filename also specifies 300 DPI. That detail belongs to this file specifically and should not be assumed for every other image without checking the originals.

VIKINGS, ANGELS AND A TATTOOED FELLOW

Not everything here is a monster or magician.

The Viking is supplied in colour and greyscale. The figure can serve as a raider, warrior, mercenary, sailor or fantasy adventurer from a culture that regards shields as both protection and portable scenery.

The Tattooed Bad-Ass also appears in a standard treatment and a greyscale version. He could become a gladiator, barbarian, pit-fighter, criminal, warrior-priest or character whose body carries a map, oath, spell or regrettable sequence of drunken decisions.

The Warrior Angel provides a more exalted combatant. It might represent a celestial soldier, divine messenger, winged species or supernatural champion who has arrived to help humanity after first establishing precisely which humans are considered acceptable.

There is also a Classic Halfling, a cheerful-looking adventurer useful for old-school fantasy, character sections, tavern scenes and any party requiring someone short enough to reach the trap mechanism but optimistic enough to volunteer.

These figures give the collection some player-character possibilities among the creatures and scenes. They can populate archetype sections, pregenerated characters or the odd chapter in which somebody needs to survive long enough to become important.

WHY THIS PARTICULAR MIX WORKS

The strength of Fantasy Collection 10 lies in its balance.

There are character portraits, but the folder is not dominated by them. There are monsters, but they are not twenty-five minor variations upon the same snarling humanoid. Scenes such as the Troll Encounter, Subterranean Cultists and Withering Spell give movement to a layout, while the Underground Citadel and Wizard’s Study establish places.

That allows the collection to cover several different publishing jobs:

• Bestiary entries

• Adventure scenes

• Character portraits

• Magic and poison sections

• Faction illustrations

• Chapter openings

• Locations

• Decorative or group artwork

Bespoke commissions remain the right answer for signature characters, exact costumes and creatures unique to your setting.

Stock art handles the rest. It fills the supporting cast, gives incidental encounters some visual weight and stops a finished manuscript resembling a tax return with hit points.

Use the whole pack in one broad fantasy book, or divide it between projects. The vampire pieces may go into a gothic supplement; the Viking and wyvern into a wilderness adventure; the troll into a weird-west ’zine; the underground material into a dungeon release.

The cost does not increase each time an owned illustration solves another problem.

EXACT FILE BREAKDOWN

The collection contains:

• 25 TIFF files

• 23 distinct subjects

• Tattooed Bad-Ass: standard and greyscale versions

• Viking: colour and greyscale versions

• 21 other subjects supplied as single TIFF illustrations

Two of those single illustrations—Underworld Mutant and Vampires Flight—are identified as greyscale in their filenames, but no alternative versions of either appear in this collection.

All visible files use .tif or .TIF extensions.

Some pieces may also occur in other Brad McDevitt collections where they suit more than one genre.

LICENCE

The artwork is supplied for personal and professional projects under the terms of the attached licence.

Read those terms before publication, especially the provisions covering credit, alteration and redistribution. The artwork is intended for incorporation into finished books and products, not for repackaging as a competing folder of raw images accompanied by an adventurous interpretation of intellectual property law.

More monsters, heroes, sorcerers and people behaving suspiciously in caves can be found in the wider Brad McDevitt Stock Art range.

The cultists are gathering.

The poison is ready.

The wererat has found a very good hiding place.

Your layout no longer has an excuse.