A DISREPUTABLE TOUR THROUGH HISTORY

History is not merely kings, dates and impressively dull arguments about grain tariffs.

It is assassins tightening a cord, soldiers staring down tanks, occultists sacrificing people to things best left unnamed, samurai, Puritans, aristocrats, beggars, explorers and sinister museum curators standing beside objects they should never have unpacked.

Brad McDevitt Stock Art – Historical Collection 4 contains 25 TIFF files covering 24 distinct subjects. It is a broad collection rather than a narrowly focused period set, wandering through military history, Victorian streets, feudal Japan, early-modern Europe, pulp archaeology and historical horror.

That makes it rather useful. A tightly themed pack may serve one book perfectly; this one can be raided repeatedly for adventures, sourcebooks, historical fantasy, alternate history, pulp, occult investigation and anything else requiring people who look as though they existed before hoodies and mobile telephones.

The artwork may be used in personal and professional projects, subject to the attached licence.

THE INVENTORY

The files are:

• Ghostly Visitor

• Great Old Ones Cultist

• Human Sacrifice

• Illinois Jackson

• Oh Those Knotty Assassins

• Panther

• Panzer

• Shrunken Head

• Sinister Armour

• Sinister Museum Curator

• Statuette

• Tattooed Bad-Ass

• Tattooed Bad-Ass – greyscale

• The Weird West Troll

• Victorian Street Person

• Wizard’s Study

• Female Samurai

• Malevolent Princess

• Martial Arts

• Nobleman

• Primitive

• Puritan Warrior

• Sinister Spinster

• Survivor

• Vood Mask

The repeated Tattooed Bad-Ass illustration accounts for the difference between 25 files and 24 distinct subjects. It appears in both colour and greyscale.

Everything is supplied in TIFF format.

FROM THE DRAWING ROOM TO THE BATTLEFIELD

There is no single historical period tying this collection together. That is not a defect unless your entire publishing career concerns one extremely specific afternoon in 1647.

The Nobleman, Malevolent Princess, Sinister Spinster, Victorian Street Person and Puritan Warrior provide a useful spread of social rank and character.

The Nobleman can be a patron, suspect, courtier, landowner, magistrate or the sort of man who insists that the law cannot possibly apply to his family. Put him at the head of a faction, behind a desk or beside a recently altered will.

The Malevolent Princess is more pointedly dramatic. She could be a scheming royal, dark-fantasy antagonist, political hostage or perfectly innocent woman saddled with an unnecessarily judgemental filename. Stock-art titles are suggestions, not sworn testimony.

The Sinister Spinster belongs in gothic mystery, domestic intrigue or any setting where an apparently respectable household conceals decades of resentment. She might own the house, know the family secret or be the only person in the village whose alarming account of events is entirely accurate.

The Victorian Street Person gives you somebody from the other end of the social order: a beggar, labourer, informant, witness, displaced veteran or overlooked observer. Historical streets were not populated entirely by officers, gentlemen and women in expensive dresses. Someone had to know which alley the murderer used.

The Puritan Warrior can serve civil-war gaming, colonial history, religious conflict, historical fantasy or grim adventures involving severe hats and even severer convictions.

None of these figures arrives with prescribed statistics, loyalties or morals. They are faces waiting for a name and a reason to become involved.

MUSEUM PIECES THAT SHOULD HAVE REMAINED CRATED

The Sinister Museum Curator, Shrunken Head, Statuette, Vood Mask and Wizard’s Study provide a compact stock of occult objects, scholarly spaces and suspicious expertise.

The curator could be a genuine authority, thief, cultist, collector or scholar who has spent too long alone with the exhibits. Perhaps he is protecting dangerous objects from the public. Perhaps he is protecting the objects from the public. The distinction may not become apparent until after closing time.

The Shrunken Head and Vood Mask can sit in museum cases, private collections, ritual chambers or evidence photographs. They might be ordinary artefacts burdened by human superstition, genuinely magical objects or props placed to distract attention from something less picturesque.

The Statuette is another splendidly adaptable object. It could be valuable, sacred, cursed, fraudulent or concealing something inside its base. Give it an inscription, remove it from a sealed tomb and wait for the supporting cast to begin dying in the order they handled it.

The Wizard’s Study pushes the material towards historical fantasy and occult scholarship. It can introduce a chapter, establish a location or serve as the workplace of an astrologer, alchemist, magician, natural philosopher or professional fraud whose experiments have accidentally started working.

These five pieces could furnish most of a pulp-horror scenario:

An explorer returns with a statuette and a preserved head. A museum curator identifies the mask found beside the body. The dead man’s papers lead to a private study, where the investigators discover that the artefacts were never intended to be displayed separately.

The rest is screams and invoicing.

ILLINOIS JACKSON

The figure filed as Illinois Jackson is an obvious affectionate nod towards pulp archaeology and cinematic treasure-hunting without requiring your project to use any particular existing character.

He can be an explorer, antiquarian, adventurer, tomb robber, university lecturer or man whose research methods rely heavily upon firearms and structural damage.

Historical and pulp games often need somebody who can bridge polite society and physical adventure. Illinois Jackson looks ready to argue with a curator in the morning, decipher an inscription after lunch and flee a collapsing ruin before dinner.

He could be:

• A player-character portrait

• A rival treasure hunter

• The expedition leader

• An academic with field experience

• A collector who knows exactly where the object came from

• The man who brought the curse home in the first place

Pair him with the Statuette, Shrunken Head, museum material or Great Old Ones Cultist and a serviceable adventure begins assembling itself.

KNOTTY ASSASSINS

Oh Those Knotty Assassins is both a scene and a dreadful pun, which immediately gives it more personality than another static portrait of a man holding a sword.

It appears to show an assassination by strangulation and can accompany political murder, criminal conspiracy, court intrigue or an account of historical killing methods.

The victim may be a nobleman, diplomat, heretic, witness or fellow assassin whose retirement package has been administered somewhat abruptly.

It can also serve as the incident that begins an adventure. A prominent figure is murdered despite guards, locked doors and no obvious weapon. The cord, technique or choice of victim points towards a particular faction. Unfortunately, several groups have excellent reasons to imitate one another.

Historical intrigue thrives on methods that are personal, quiet and difficult to explain away as battlefield misfortune.

Guns draw attention.

Knots are patient.

SACRIFICE, CULTS AND OTHER FORMS OF COMMUNITY ACTIVITY

The Great Old Ones Cultist, Human Sacrifice and Ghostly Visitor bring open horror into the historical material.

A Great Old Ones Cultist can be placed almost anywhere history left darkness, isolation and unrecorded deaths—which is to say, almost anywhere. The figure could represent a lone worshipper, the leader of a hidden society or somebody initiated into a tradition much older than the civilisation surrounding it.

Human Sacrifice is a complete scene rather than a mere portrait. It can illustrate an interrupted ritual, historical atrocity, dark religion or the moment when the expedition discovers what the missing servants were being used for.

The Ghostly Visitor is quieter and perhaps more versatile. Use it for a haunting, warning, revenant, prophetic dream or visitation from somebody killed before revealing the truth.

These images allow a historical book to move into the uncanny without suddenly changing its visual language. The horror grows out of the period rather than arriving from a completely different art pack wearing modern clothes.

A Victorian ghost story, colonial occult mystery or Puritan confrontation with witchcraft can all draw upon the same selection.

WAR, MACHINERY AND THE PEOPLE UNDERNEATH IT

The Panzer, Survivor and some of the harder-looking character portraits can support wartime or military material.

The Panzer is useful for twentieth-century history, alternate war, dieselpunk, military horror and adventures involving armour substantial enough to make personal bravery feel slightly theoretical.

It can be shown as a vehicle, threat, unit illustration or part of a battlefield scene. Historical vehicle art is particularly handy because a generic armed man can be repurposed easily; a tank is a tank, and drawing one convincingly requires more than giving a rectangle a cannon.

The Survivor can be military or civilian. The filename says nothing about what has been survived: battle, massacre, imprisonment, shipwreck, plague or something less natural. That breadth is useful in historical books, where one weathered face may carry more emotional weight than another illustration of men charging heroically through smoke.

The Tattooed Bad-Ass appears in colour and greyscale. Though not tied to one obvious period, he could serve colonial adventure, martial fiction, prison stories, gladiatorial material or historical fantasy. Use the version that sits best with the surrounding layout.

War produces heroes, villains, refugees, wreckage and people too busy surviving to fit tidily into any of those categories.

Good historical art should leave room for all of them.

SAMURAI, MARTIAL ARTISTS AND PEOPLE WHO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING

The collection includes a Female Samurai and a separate Martial Arts scene.

The samurai can be used for historical Japan, chanbara-inspired adventure, alternate history or fantasy rooted in Japanese warrior culture. She might be a retainer, duellist, onna-musha, bodyguard, outlaw or player character.

The martial-arts image can serve training, combat, instruction or confrontation. It is broad enough to fit several Asian settings or any project requiring hand-to-hand action without pretending that every fight in history involved two Europeans waving longswords.

These pieces sit slightly apart from the European and Victorian material, which increases the collection’s usefulness across multiple projects. You are not required to jam a Puritan, a samurai and a Panzer into one coherent timeline.

Although that book would probably sell.

THE WEIRD WEST

The Weird West Troll does precisely what the name promises: introduces a fantasy creature into frontier imagery.

It might be an outlaw, prospector, hired gun, native creature, railway worker or simply an enormous fellow who has discovered that a six-shooter makes traditional bridge-based extortion much easier.

The image belongs in weird-west games, fantasy frontiers, alternate America or pulp settings where folklore and history have been allowed to drink together unsupervised.

This is also where the Panther can find a home—as wildlife, heraldry, transformed human, supernatural predator or something escaped from a travelling exhibition. The image itself need not be historical in a narrow sense to serve a period adventure.

Frontier stories are already filled with isolation, greed, violence and disputed territory. Adding monsters requires surprisingly little alteration.

SINISTER ARMOUR

The Sinister Armour illustration can function as a warrior portrait, cursed suit, historical guardian or animated relic.

It might depict:

• A heavily armoured soldier

• A ceremonial guard

• A dark knight

• An empty suit animated by magic

• Armour displayed in a museum

• The occupant of a tomb

• Something standing in the corridor that was facing the other direction a moment ago

This is another crossover piece, useful in straight history, historical fantasy and horror.

Armour often survives the person who wore it. That makes it a natural object for legends, hauntings and mistaken identity. Who owned it? Why was the visor sealed? Why does the inside contain scratches?

A historian might have sensible answers.

The sensible answers may be wrong.

THE “PRIMITIVE” FILE

One illustration is supplied under the original filename Primitive.

That is the artist’s file label, not a precise cultural or historical identification. The image is best treated as a broadly tribal, ancient or non-industrial figure whose specific culture should be supplied by the writer rather than guessed from a small contact-sheet preview.

It could be used for:

• Prehistoric adventure

• Lost-world material

• Tribal fantasy

• A hunter or warrior

• An isolated community

• A historical reconstruction

• A character from a deliberately invented culture

This is where care is more valuable than confidence. Assign the figure a specific identity only when your own setting or research supports it.

WHY THIS COLLECTION IS USEFUL

Historical publishing has an art problem.

Modern, fantasy and science-fiction characters can often be fudged. Historical imagery carries clothing, weapons, architecture and social signals that readers notice immediately. Bespoke period commissions are valuable, but commissioning every nobleman, street figure, occult object and incidental scene can consume a small book’s entire budget.

This collection supplies a varied bench of supporting imagery.

Some pieces can carry pages: Human Sacrifice, the museum scene, Wizard’s Study, Martial Arts.

Others provide portraits for characters who need a face but not a costly bespoke commission.

The objects and atmospheric images break up dense history or setting material without forcing another full-page action illustration into the layout.

It is particularly suitable for:

• Historical role-playing games

• Alternate history

• Historical fantasy

• Weird west

• Victorian horror

• Pulp archaeology

• Occult investigation

• Military adventures

• Dark fantasy

• Period fiction and gaming ’zines

Use it across one broad project or divide it between several more focused books. The art does not care which century you put it in.

History has already survived worse treatment.

THE EXACT COUNT

The collection contains:

• 25 TIFF files

• 24 distinct subjects

• Two versions of Tattooed Bad-Ass: colour and greyscale

• 23 other separate illustrations

Some pieces also occur in other Brad McDevitt collections where they comfortably cross genre boundaries.

LICENCE

The images are supplied for personal and professional projects under the attached licence.

Read that licence before publication. Check its rules regarding attribution, alteration and redistribution rather than depending upon a vague memory of another stock-art agreement you skimmed three years ago.

The complete Brad McDevitt Stock Art range contains further historical, fantasy, horror, modern, urban-fantasy and science-fiction material.

The assassin has tightened the cord.

The curator has opened the crate.

The Panzer is moving.

Fortunately, the empty spaces in the manuscript are now under control.