PULP HISTORY, BAD MAGIC AND A ROBOT THAT HAS NO BUSINESS BEING HERE

Brad McDevitt Stock Art – Historical Collection 2 takes a broad and cheerfully disreputable view of history.

There are Roman riots and frightened peasants, naturally, but also a jungle adventurer, a cackling witch, a pagan idol, noir nightmares, savaged remains and a retro robot who appears to have wandered in from a future imagined somewhere around 1936.

This is not a narrowly researched collection devoted to one battle, dynasty or precise variety of trouser. It is made for pulp history, historical fantasy, weird archaeology, lost worlds, occult investigation and retro adventure—the parts of the past where the tomb is cursed, the wizard is busy and somebody has just discovered that the statue was not entirely decorative.

The download contains 25 image files representing 18 distinct subjects, with several pieces supplied in alternate formats or treatments. Use them across adventures, sourcebooks, fiction, ’zines, handouts and other personal or professional projects, subject to the attached licence.

WHAT IS ACTUALLY IN THE FOLDER

The supplied files are:

• Film Noir Nightclub

• Slightly NSFW Cavewoman

• Retro Robot

• Savaged Remains

• Riot in Rome

• Frightened Peasant

• Royalty and Peasantry

• Jungle Girl

• Jungle Girl – greyscale

• Fu Manchu

• Fu Manchu – greyscale

• Fantasy Treasure Pile

• Pagan Goddess Statue – PNG

• Pagan Goddess Statue – TIFF

• Pagan Goddess Statue – greyscale TIFF

• Cackling Witch

• Fantasy Banner

• Fantasy Banner – greyscale

• Insane Hippie

• Insane Hippie – colour

• Noir Nightmare

• Falling Death

• Wizard at Work

• Old Books

• Old Books – greyscale

That is 25 usable files, rather than 25 unrelated illustrations. Alternative versions account for the difference between the number of files and the number of distinct subjects.

The filenames are labels, not commandments. Rename the characters, alter the context and fit them to the book you are making.

RIOTS, PEASANTS AND THE GREAT HISTORICAL HIERARCHY

The most straightforwardly historical pieces are Riot in Rome, Frightened Peasant and Royalty and Peasantry.

Riot in Rome gives you a proper scene rather than another isolated portrait: bodies in motion, civil unrest and the sense that whatever political problem started the trouble has already escaped the control of the people responsible.

It can accompany:

• Urban disorder

• Political upheaval

• Food riots

• Rebellion

• A mob encounter

• The collapse of public authority

• An adventure in which the characters have chosen a very poor day to visit the Forum

The Frightened Peasant is useful precisely because he is not a warrior, ruler or glamorous adventurer. Historical and fantasy settings need ordinary people who can witness horrors, bring warnings, recognise local dangers and suffer the consequences when armed strangers arrive with a plan.

Perhaps he has seen soldiers on the road. Perhaps something has been taking livestock. Perhaps he has just met the player characters.

Royalty and Peasantry deals with status rather than individual heroics. It can illustrate hierarchy, privilege, obligation, feudal power or the ancient social arrangement in which one group does the work while another receives a flattering portrait of the occasion.

These pieces give a setting some society. History was not populated entirely by professional killers wandering between ruins.

PREHISTORY BY WAY OF THE PULP RACK

The Slightly NSFW Cavewoman belongs to pulp prehistory, lost-world fiction and sword-and-sandal fantasy rather than sober archaeological reconstruction.

That is the point.

Use her in games involving:

• Prehistoric survival

• Time travel

• Lost valleys

• Primitive fantasy

• Pulp exploration

• Ancient civilisations sharing the scenery with very large reptiles

• Adult material that has no interest in pretending early humanity possessed modern standards of modesty

The original filename makes the revealing nature of the image clear, allowing publishers to judge where it suits their audience.

It is lurid genre art, not a museum exhibit. Most museums would be improved by the occasional sabretooth tiger, but funding committees remain timid.

JUNGLE ADVENTURE AND THE OLD PULP MASTERMIND

The Jungle Girl is supplied in standard and greyscale PNG versions.

She can serve as an explorer, survivor, guardian, local heroine, castaway or lost-world adventurer. She might know the wilderness better than the expedition supposedly sent to rescue her, which would hardly be a startling development in pulp fiction.

The image belongs comfortably beside the Fantasy Treasure Pile, Pagan Goddess Statue and the figure filed under the old pulp name Fu Manchu.

That latter title carries the baggage of a racialised villain archetype. There is no need to retain it in your project. The illustration can become a criminal mastermind, occult scholar, court adviser, sorcerer, collector or conspirator of your own invention.

Two versions are supplied: standard and greyscale.

The useful part is the character art. The name can remain in the filename where it belongs.

Taken together, these pieces could support an entire serial:

An expedition follows stolen documents into the jungle. A rival treasure hunter has already located the idol. The local guardian warns that the statue must never be separated from the books found beside it. The villain does so immediately.

End of episode one.

TREASURE, IDOLS AND BOOKS THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN LEFT CLOSED

Historical adventure thrives upon objects that everyone has been explicitly warned not to touch.

This collection supplies three dependable examples.

The Fantasy Treasure Pile is ready for tombs, hidden vaults, dragon hoards, royal treasuries or the dazzling moment when a party’s unity begins to crumble under the weight of basic arithmetic.

The Pagan Goddess Statue comes in three forms:

• PNG

• TIFF

• Greyscale TIFF

It might be a temple idol, archaeological find, ritual focus, cult object or beautiful nuisance dragged home by somebody who regards inscriptions reading DO NOT REMOVE as evidence of value.

The Old Books appear in standard and greyscale forms. They can stand in for grimoires, expedition journals, monastic records, family histories, occult texts or the private research of somebody whose death has recently become relevant.

The books identify the statue.

The statue indicates the treasure.

The treasure finances the expedition.

The expedition releases something hideous.

Adventure design need not always be complicated.

WITCHCRAFT AND THE WORKING WIZARD

The Cackling Witch and Wizard at Work bring magic openly into the collection.

The witch could be a curse-giver, village practitioner, occult antagonist or misunderstood old woman who has finally been vindicated in the least helpful manner possible.

“Cackling” suggests that she is enjoying herself, though not necessarily why.

The Wizard at Work gives you a fuller scene of magical activity. It can illustrate:

• Ritual

• Alchemy

• Astrology

• Research

• Enchantment

• Summoning

• The dangerous interval between starting an experiment and admitting that control has been lost

Neither piece forces magic to be objectively real. They work just as well for period superstition, fraudulent occultism or accusations of witchcraft.

What happens after the scene determines whether the characters have discovered a sorcerer, a charlatan or somebody who was pretending to be a charlatan because the truth attracts mobs.

CORPSES AND THE ABRUPT END OF GRAVITY

Savaged Remains and Falling Death provide the aftermath and action that historical books often lack.

Savaged Remains could introduce a monster hunt, murder inquiry, battlefield discovery or wilderness encounter. The title establishes violence but leaves the cause open.

An animal may have done it.

A monster may have done it.

A human killer may wish everyone to believe an animal did it.

The illustration gives the investigators something to examine and the writer several routes towards the truth.

Falling Death captures catastrophe in progress. It might show an accident, execution, attack, battlefield casualty or unfortunate disagreement with architecture.

Scenes like these give a publication movement. Portraits tell the reader who inhabits the setting; action tells them what sort of day those people are having.

Not a good one, generally.

NOIR AFTER DARK

The Film Noir Nightclub and Noir Nightmare extend the pack into twentieth-century crime, pulp and psychological horror.

The nightclub can host detectives, gangsters, singers, spies, criminals or occultists who have sensibly chosen somewhere with low lighting and several exits.

It can work as:

• A meeting place

• A criminal front

• A performance venue

• An espionage location

• The scene of a betrayal

• Somewhere everybody is pretending not to watch the same table

Noir Nightmare is less literal and more atmospheric. It can accompany dreams, madness, fractured memories, psychic attack or a city beginning to behave like somebody else’s subconscious.

These pieces are particularly useful for period games set between the wars, pulp crime and twentieth-century occult horror. Not all history needs swords. Sometimes it needs whisky, cigarette smoke and a detective who has already made two mistakes before the chapter begins.

THE INSANE HIPPIE

Two files carry the original title Insane Hippie, one standard and one colour.

The name is a period caricature rather than a diagnosis you need to preserve. The figure could become a countercultural mystic, cultist, protestor, visionary, drug casualty, occult researcher or witness nobody in authority takes seriously.

He belongs in material set around the 1960s or 1970s, psychedelic horror, conspiracy gaming and stories where respectable society has mistaken unconventional appearance for unreliability.

He may be incoherent.

He may also be the only person who has correctly identified what the statue is doing.

Those conditions are not mutually exclusive.

THE RETRO ROBOT

The Retro Robot is not historical in the conventional sense.

It is historical science fiction: the future as imagined by the past, complete with rounded metalwork, improbable engineering and the confidence of an age that believed atomic power would eventually operate the kettle.

Use it for:

• Dieselpunk

• Retro-futurism

• Alternate history

• A forgotten wartime project

• An inventor’s mechanical servant

• A film prop that has begun functioning

• An automaton discovered in an old laboratory

• Evidence that the official history of technology has omitted something substantial

It may be the least historically accurate piece in the folder and one of the most useful.

Put it in ancient Rome and you have a time-travel adventure.

Put it in a noir nightclub and you have a mystery.

Put it beside the pagan idol and somebody has clearly been combining technologies without adequate supervision.

THE FANTASY BANNER

The Fantasy Banner is supplied in standard and greyscale TIFF versions.

Unlike the character and scene illustrations, this is a decorative layout element. It can be used for headings, chapter titles, sidebars, handouts and recurring page furniture.

That may sound less exciting than witches and robots, but decorative stock art solves a real production problem. A repeated banner can give a book some visual continuity, frame section titles and keep the interior from looking like a Word document with occasional corpses.

The monsters attract the reader’s attention.

The layout persuades them that the book was finished deliberately.

A COLLECTION TO RAID, RATHER THAN OBEY

Historical Collection 2 is broad by design.

It is suited to:

• Historical fantasy

• Pulp adventure

• Weird history

• Lost-world games

• Sword-and-sorcery

• Retro science fiction

• Noir and period crime

• Occult horror

• Time travel

• Adult or exploitation-style gaming material

Some of the pictures can carry a single eccentric campaign. Others will earn their keep across several unrelated publications.

The Roman riot does not need to share a book with the hippie.

The cavewoman does not need to meet the robot.

The witch probably ought to meet the robot, but that is now your problem.

For independent publishers, this sort of mixed collection is useful because it covers the illustrations that rarely justify individual commissions: supporting figures, decorative elements, incidental scenes, treasure, documents and secondary encounters.

Save the bespoke-art budget for the cover and the handful of images unique to your setting. Let stock art deal with the rest of the manuscript’s empty spaces.

EXACT FILE BREAKDOWN

The collection contains:

• 25 image files

• 18 distinct subjects

• 21 TIFF files

• 4 PNG files

Alternative files are supplied for:

• Jungle Girl: standard and greyscale PNG

• Fu Manchu: standard and greyscale TIFF

• Pagan Goddess Statue: PNG, TIFF and greyscale TIFF

• Fantasy Banner: standard and greyscale TIFF

• Insane Hippie: standard and colour TIFF

• Old Books: standard and greyscale TIFF

The other twelve subjects are supplied as individual TIFF files.

Some illustrations may also appear 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 that licence before publication and check its requirements concerning credit, alteration and redistribution. Stock artwork is intended for incorporation into finished work, not for repackaging as raw files beneath a hastily designed new logo.

More characters, creatures, props and dubious historical incidents can be found in the wider Brad McDevitt Stock Art range.

Rome is rioting.

The idol has been removed.

The robot has begun asking questions.

At least the artwork is sorted.