OGRES, BAT PRIESTS AND THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN CHEWING THE SCENERY

Brad McDevitt Stock Art – Fantasy Collection 6 is a compact collection of fantasy oddities: ogres, serpent men, oversized vermin, sinister clergy, a knife-wielding demoness and the aftermath of something with very strong teeth.

There is also a wizard caught at work, which is seldom a reassuring sight.

The collection contains 16 TIFF files covering 12 distinct illustrations, with several pieces supplied in both colour and greyscale. It is a smaller pack than some of the later Fantasy Collections, but there is little filler here. Monsters, characters, a full combat scene, a decorative border, books and atmospheric material give it enough variety to spread through an adventure or bestiary rather than clustering on one page marked “Things With Claws”.

IN THE FOLDER

The supplied files are:

• Ogre Brothers – greyscale

• Serpent Man

• Wizard at Work

• Old Books

• Giant Rat

• Blind Bat Priest – colour

• Blind Bat Priest – greyscale

• Dejah Thoris

• Graveyard Monster Battle – colour

• Graveyard Monster Battle – greyscale

• Fantasy Border

• Gnawed Bone – 600 DPI

• Demoness with Knives – colour

• Demoness with Knives – greyscale

• Full Moon – colour

• Full Moon – greyscale

That works out to 16 files and 12 genuinely different illustrations.

The filenames are the artist's labels, tidied here for presentation. They are not contractual obligations upon your imagination. Rename the creatures, characters and scenes to fit the world you are building.

TWO OGRES FOR THE PRICE OF ONE ILLUSTRATION

Ogre Brothers gives you a pair of large humanoid monsters rather than the usual solitary brute.

That immediately makes them more interesting.

Brothers argue. Brothers compete. Brothers have grudges going back to childhood and deeply different memories of who broke the cart.

They might guard a bridge, work as mercenaries, run a surprisingly successful extortion racket or simply constitute the first indication that the ogres in this region have social structures rather more complicated than “stand in cave, hit adventurer”.

The illustration could equally represent trolls, giants, mutants or any pair of heavy fantasy bruisers. Stock art is much easier to use when you stop worrying about whether the filename precisely matches the monster statistics.

Give one of them a name.

The players will inevitably try to recruit him.

SERPENT MAN

The Serpent Man sits comfortably in sword-and-sorcery, pulp fantasy, lost civilisations and subterranean kingdoms.

He might be a temple guardian, priest, assassin, nobleman, surviving member of an ancient species or an ordinary citizen of a culture humans have decided to call monstrous because humans are extremely good at that sort of thing.

A serpent person is especially useful when you want something intelligent rather than another wandering bag of hit points.

He can negotiate.

Lie.

Offer employment.

Know exactly what the adventurers have stolen and what it was supposed to be keeping asleep.

The image can go into a bestiary, NPC section or faction chapter without forcing you into a particular mythology.

THE BLIND BAT PRIEST

The Blind Bat Priest comes in both colour and greyscale.

He is one of those pieces that already sounds like somebody you want to know more about.

Priest of what?

Why blind?

Why bat?

Does the blindness indicate sacrifice, initiation or simply the natural condition of his people? Does he worship a subterranean deity, interpret echoes as prophecy, serve an underworld kingdom or administer a perfectly respectable temple which surface-dwellers find unnerving?

Perhaps he is a villain.

Perhaps he is the only cleric in the region who actually understands what is happening underground.

Perhaps the adventurers have just broken into his sanctuary, killed three acolytes and are now very loudly demanding to know why everyone is hostile.

The paired colour and greyscale treatments make the piece easier to fit into different layouts, but it remains one illustration rather than two different subjects.

WIZARD AT WORK

Wizard at Work catches a magician doing something rather than standing around looking vocational.

That gives the image more life.

It could accompany:

• Spell research

• Alchemy

• Summoning

• Enchantment

• Divination

• Ritual magic

• A laboratory accident still technically in progress

The wizard might be an ally interrupted at an inconvenient moment, a villain completing the last stage of a ritual or an eccentric scholar whose experiments have annoyed the local authorities, the local gods and several neighbours.

A working space also tells us something about magic as a profession.

There are books, apparatus, ingredients, preparation.

Magic has paperwork.

Of course it does.

OLD BOOKS

The Old Books illustration is a useful bit of publisher's furniture.

Grimoires, histories, spellbooks, genealogies, forbidden texts, treasure maps and dead men's journals all look substantially more convincing with some actual old books beside them.

Use the piece for research sections, magic chapters, lore, handouts or scenes where somebody has finally discovered the relevant volume after three sessions of searching.

Books are also excellent adventure machinery.

They explain things too late.

They omit the crucial page.

They contain marginal notes written by somebody who understood the danger considerably better than the original author.

And, occasionally, one of them bites.

THE GIANT RAT

Fantasy gaming has spent decades trying to become more sophisticated.

The Giant Rat waits patiently beneath the tavern and refuses to be impressed.

It can inhabit:

• Sewers

• Cellars

• Ruins

• Granaries

• Crypts

• Ships

• Wizard laboratories with inadequate waste disposal

A single giant rat may be a nuisance, familiar or unusually bold specimen.

Several dozen become an ecological problem.

Thousands suggest that perhaps the adventurers should stop asking what the rats are eating and start asking what they are fleeing from.

There is something reassuringly old-school about having a giant rat in an art collection. No complicated cosmology. No six-paragraph origin story.

Rat.

Large.

Proceed accordingly.

A BATTLE IN THE GRAVEYARD

Graveyard Monster Battle is supplied in both colour and greyscale.

This is a full scene rather than an isolated portrait, and that makes it particularly useful.

A graveyard already brings tombstones, confined paths, poor visibility and the possibility that anything knocked over during the fight may contain a previous resident.

Add monsters and you have an encounter that can carry a chapter opening or an entire scenario.

Perhaps the creatures are rising from the graves.

Perhaps they are attacking the cemetery.

Perhaps they are defending it.

That last possibility is worth remembering. Player characters have a powerful tendency to assume anything ugly standing near a crypt must be responsible for the problem.

Occasionally the ghoul is trying to keep the necromancer out.

It is healthy to punish assumptions.

DEJAH THORIS

One illustration carries the supplied filename Dejah Thoris.

The name is an obvious pulp-fantasy reference, and the image can be used more generally as a heroic, exotic or sword-and-planet-style female character.

She could become a princess, warrior, adventurer, noblewoman, captive, diplomat or visitor from some decidedly less muddy part of the setting.

There is no reason your finished book needs to retain the filename or import somebody else's fictional biography. Treat the piece as a pulp-fantasy heroine and give her whatever identity your own project requires.

The picture is the useful bit.

GNAWED BONE

Sometimes an adventure begins with a body.

Sometimes you can economise and begin with a bone.

Gnawed Bone is specifically labelled 600 DPI in the supplied filename and makes an excellent spot illustration, clue or bit of bestiary dressing.

What chewed it?

That is the whole adventure seed.

A wolf leaves one kind of mark.

A giant rat leaves another.

A creature nobody recognises is more troublesome.

The bone might be human, animal or from something that should not exist in the region at all.

Leave it beside a forest path.

Put it in an evidence tray.

Have the village dogs refuse to approach it.

You have spent one illustration and acquired a mystery.

DEMONESS WITH KNIVES

The Demoness with Knives comes in colour and greyscale.

There is very little ambiguity about her immediate professional capabilities.

She can be an infernal assassin, summoned killer, cult champion, rogue demon or member of a species whose diplomatic negotiations simply begin at a more advanced stage than ours.

The knives make her a rather different proposition from the usual enormous horned demon. She suggests speed, precision and intent.

She might stalk an individual target rather than rampage through the town square.

She may work under contract.

She may have been summoned specifically to kill someone.

She may regard the summoner as merely the first name on the list.

Infernal outsourcing has risks.

FULL MOON

The Full Moon is supplied in colour and greyscale.

It is atmosphere in a file.

Use it for lycanthropy, nocturnal travel, omens, calendars, rituals or any chapter where the night matters.

The full moon can be purely decorative or mechanically important in the setting. Perhaps magic strengthens beneath it. Perhaps certain creatures transform. Perhaps the local people simply refuse to leave their homes, and the adventurers are about to learn why.

It is especially handy as a chapter divider or mood piece because it does not tie the page to one particular character.

Sometimes you do not need another monster.

You need the page to feel like a monster is coming.

FANTASY BORDER

The Fantasy Border is decorative art rather than another creature or character.

That gives it a useful job of its own.

It can frame a page, chapter heading, sidebar or boxed section and help pull otherwise unrelated illustrations into a more coherent interior design.

This is the sort of artwork people forget they need until layout.

Then suddenly they need it everywhere.

A recurring border can establish visual identity without consuming the space required by a full illustration. Use it around lore, rules, quotes, bestiary entries or whatever else deserves to look as though somebody designed the page deliberately.

Not glamorous.

Very useful.

Much like editing.

A SMALL COLLECTION THAT COVERS A LOT OF GROUND

Fantasy Collection 6 contains only twelve distinct illustrations, but they are doing different jobs.

You get character art.

Monster art.

A battle scene.

Objects.

Atmosphere.

Decorative material.

That diversity can matter more than sheer quantity.

A sixteen-file folder containing sixteen near-identical sword-wielders would give you fewer actual layout options than this smaller assortment.

A short adventure could quite comfortably use several pieces:

The characters find the Gnawed Bone.

The local wizard identifies the bite marks.

Old Books reveal a forgotten cult beneath the abandoned citadel.

The Blind Bat Priest warns that something has begun moving through the tunnels.

The Ogre Brothers have already fled.

Nobody finds this encouraging.

The graveyard is next.

There you are.

FOR PUBLISHERS WHO HAVE REACHED THE ART BUDGET

Bespoke commissions are wonderful.

Bespoke commissions for every rat, book, bone and minor monster in a forty-page adventure are how a £5 supplement acquires the production budget of a small musical.

Stock art takes care of the supporting material.

Use commissioned work for the cover, signature creatures and anything that has to match your setting precisely. Use stock for the monsters, incidental scenes, NPCs and decorative material that make the book feel properly illustrated without emptying the account.

Fantasy Collection 6 can provide:

• Bestiary artwork

• NPC portraits

• Magical scenes

• Adventure illustrations

• Clues and objects

• Atmospheric art

• Page decoration

Keep what you do not use for another project.

The serpent man will wait.

EXACT FILE BREAKDOWN

The collection contains 16 TIFF files representing 12 distinct illustrations.

Four subjects are supplied in paired treatments:

• Blind Bat Priest: colour and greyscale

• Graveyard Monster Battle: colour and greyscale

• Demoness with Knives: colour and greyscale

• Full Moon: colour and greyscale

The other eight illustrations are supplied individually:

• Ogre Brothers – greyscale

• Serpent Man

• Wizard at Work

• Old Books

• Giant Rat

• Dejah Thoris

• Fantasy Border

• Gnawed Bone – 600 DPI

All supplied files are TIFF images.

Some artwork may also appear in other Brad McDevitt collections where the subject crosses comfortably between genres.

LICENCE

The artwork may be used in personal and professional projects, subject to the terms of the licence included with the collection.

Read those terms before publication, especially the sections covering credit, modification and redistribution.

The basic arrangement is straightforward: put the licensed artwork into your finished work. Do not simply gather the raw files into another archive and discover an unexpected interest in creative interpretations of copyright law.

More creatures, characters and things found unpleasantly chewed can be found in the wider Brad McDevitt Stock Art range.

The ogres have left.

The priest says something is coming.

The wizard has found the relevant book.

It contains teeth marks.