BLOOD, BANDAGES AND THINGS FROM BEYOND

Brad McDevitt Stock Art – Horror Collection 1 is a properly mixed bag of horrors.

There are corpses and autopsies, naturally. There are mummies, witches, werewolves and a fungal zombie. Then the collection wanders into stranger country: Innsmouth, dimensional intrusion, surreal nightmare imagery and three different treatments of Crawling Chaos.

In other words, it is not twenty-five nearly interchangeable portraits of people looking mildly sinister. There are monsters, scenes, props, victims, occult figures and grisly discoveries—useful material for filling an entire horror supplement rather than decorating one bestiary chapter and running out of steam.

The download contains 25 TIFF files covering 23 distinct subjects, licensed for personal and professional projects under the attached terms.

WHAT YOU GET

The supplied files are:

• Autopsy Cover

• Crawling Chaos – black-and-white

• Crawling Chaos – colour

• Crawling Chaos – alternate version

• Blood and Entrails

• Blood Zombie

• Mummy Attack

• Egyptian Warrior

• Modern Dark Sorcerer

• Modern Mummy

• Rat and Skull

• Werewolf Woman

• Untitled creature portrait – filed as CAC258

• Innsmouth

• Mutilant in a Hoodie

• Surreal Horror

• Fungal-Infected Zombie

• Bloody Moon

• Walled-Up Body

• Sinister Mask – colour

• Dimensional Invader

• Prisoners

• Eyes Without a Face

• Witches Trio

• Corpse on Table

That is 25 usable image files, with the three Crawling Chaos files accounting for the difference between the file count and the number of distinct subjects.

THE MESSY BUSINESS OF DEATH

A fair portion of this collection concerns what happens to the human body when horror has finished with it.

Blood and Entrails, Walled-Up Body, Corpse on Table and Autopsy Cover can furnish crime scenes, medical horror, occult investigations or the unpleasant pages of a bestiary where feeding habits are discussed in practical detail.

The Walled-Up Body is ready-made adventure bait. Renovation work exposes human remains behind the plaster; the police assume an old murder, the historian disputes the age of the wall and somebody quietly removes an object from the corpse before the investigators arrive.

Corpse on Table can sit in a morgue, laboratory, cellar, ritual chamber or back-room surgery. It is broad enough to support straightforward forensic work, grotesque experimentation or that familiar horror-game moment when everybody agrees the body is definitely dead immediately before it proves otherwise.

Autopsy Cover has the scale and composition to work prominently: a chapter opener, title page, scenario frontispiece or striking illustration for a section on medical horror. Stock art is especially valuable when it contains images capable of carrying a page rather than merely filling a corner.

The collection is not coy about blood or decomposition. That makes it useful for books that want horror to have physical consequences instead of reducing every atrocity to a tasteful shadow on the wall.

THREE HELPINGS OF CRAWLING CHAOS

The collection includes three files for Crawling Chaos:

• A black-and-white treatment

• A colour treatment

• A further alternate version

This is one illustration in three usable forms, not three unrelated creatures.

The image is suited to cosmic horror, chaos entities, obscene manifestations, summoned gods or anything else intended to appear less like an animal and more like biology having a public breakdown.

The variants give you some practical freedom. The colour version can carry a digital page, handout or prominent feature; the monochrome treatments can sit more comfortably inside traditional black-and-white interiors.

It could become the central entity of an adventure, the object of a cult’s worship or an illustration reproduced from a forbidden manuscript. A partial glimpse early in the book and the full image later would allow the variants to work together rather than merely giving you a choice between them.

INNSMOUTH AND OTHER UNWELCOME VISITORS

Innsmouth, Dimensional Invader and Surreal Horror push the collection towards cosmic and reality-bending horror.

Innsmouth can drop into maritime horror, degenerate coastal communities, aquatic bloodlines or any setting carrying that particular smell of salt, rot and inherited secrets.

Dimensional Invader offers something less rooted in familiar folklore. It could accompany a breach, summoning, scientific accident or creature that has entered our world without bothering to adapt itself to local geometry.

Surreal Horror is useful for dream sequences, psychic assault, impossible environments and those moments when an investigation stops behaving like an investigation. It need not represent a literal creature. It might be a vision, a contaminated memory or what somebody draws after surviving contact with the incomprehensible.

These are good pieces for writers who prefer horror to retain some mystery. A named vampire comes with expectations. Something crossing through a hole in reality gives the players fewer useful assumptions and the Games Master more room to behave disgracefully.

MUMMIES: ANCIENT AND OTHERWISE

Three files can be pulled into Egyptian or mummy-centred material:

• Mummy Attack

• Egyptian Warrior

• Modern Mummy

Mummy Attack gives you the immediate encounter. Whatever tomb was opened, whatever warning was translated and ignored, the consequences have arrived.

The Egyptian Warrior can support historical scenes, ancient guardians, visions of the past or characters connected to the mummy’s original life. It allows the book to show more of the culture and conflict around the monster rather than presenting Egypt solely as a warehouse full of cursed corpses.

Modern Mummy moves the idea into contemporary horror. That could mean an ancient creature loose in the present, a modern victim subjected to mummification, a preserved occultist or something that has adopted current clothing without making itself markedly less dead.

Together, the three images can carry more than a monster entry. They suggest history, confrontation and survival across different eras.

WITCHES, SORCERERS AND MASKED PEOPLE

The Witches Trio, Modern Dark Sorcerer and Sinister Mask offer figures for occult plots that require more personality than another pentagram scratched on the floor.

A trio of witches immediately suggests relationships. They may be a coven, family, set of rivals or three practitioners temporarily cooperating because something worse has frightened all of them.

The Modern Dark Sorcerer belongs in urban fantasy, contemporary occult horror or any setting where magic has learned to coexist with electric lighting, firearms and suspicious bank transfers. Ancient evil is perfectly capable of using a mobile telephone.

The colour Sinister Mask can represent a killer, cult identity, ritual object, cursed disguise or emblem worn by an organisation. Masks are particularly handy in adventures because they turn an individual villain into a repeatable symbol. Put the same face at several scenes and the players will build half the conspiracy for you.

Whether their conclusions are correct is an entirely separate matter.

ZOMBIES WITH SPECIALIST INTERESTS

There are two distinctly different zombie pieces here.

The Blood Zombie is the more direct, bloody undead figure. It can occupy a bestiary entry, outbreak scene or encounter in which the characters’ previous confidence has proved premature.

The Fungal-Infected Zombie offers a more particular source of reanimation. Fungus introduces spores, environmental spread, altered behaviour and the possibility that killing the host does nothing about the infestation.

That gives you several routes into an adventure: contaminated buildings, infected food supplies, underground growths, compromised survivors or a cure that works beautifully until the fruiting stage begins.

These two files can represent entirely separate forms of undead or different stages of the same condition. One is the corpse everybody recognises. The other provides a reason for the characters to stop touching things with their bare hands.

WEREWOLVES, MUTANTS AND URBAN MONSTERS

The Werewolf Woman, Mutilant in a Hoodie and untitled CAC258 creature portrait provide three very different faces for transformation and monstrosity.

The Werewolf Woman can illustrate lycanthropy, shapeshifting or a character caught between human and animal forms. She may be predator, victim, investigator or player character. A transformation does not come with a compulsory moral alignment.

Mutilant in a Hoodie brings mutation down to street level. The figure could inhabit a modern city, post-apocalyptic settlement, hidden community or research programme that has begun losing track of its subjects. The ordinary clothing makes the character easier to place among contemporary people rather than isolating them as a specimen against an empty background.

The file labelled CAC258 has no descriptive name. It appears to be a monstrous or non-human portrait, but the collection supplies no official identity for it. That ambiguity is useful. Name it according to the project rather than inheriting a taxonomy that does not exist.

It could become a demon, mutant, alien, goblin, revenant or one particularly unfortunate local councillor.

BLOODY MOONS, RATS AND OTHER USEFUL OMENS

Bloody Moon and Rat and Skull are atmospheric rather than straightforward character portraits.

That makes them valuable for chapter openings, section breaks, sidebars and recurring motifs.

Bloody Moon can introduce werecreatures, prophecy, ritual nights, supernatural outbreaks or a setting in which the sky itself has begun advertising that something is wrong.

Rat and Skull speaks more quietly of plague, ruins, death, scavenging or places abandoned by everyone except vermin. It could sit beside rules for disease, an account of a massacre or a location description where the food chain has become alarmingly efficient.

Neither needs half a page of accompanying lore. Sometimes a good horror image should simply sit there and make the surrounding text feel less safe.

PRISONERS AND EYES WITHOUT FACES

The Prisoners scene can serve horror, crime, war, cult or captivity scenarios. It raises immediate questions without settling them.

Who imprisoned them? Why are they still alive? Are they victims awaiting rescue, infected subjects under quarantine or people confined because releasing them would be worse?

Eyes Without a Face is more ambiguous and more intimate. It can support identity horror, disfigurement, masks, surgery, stolen features, psychic fragmentation or a character who no longer recognises the person in the mirror.

These are the sort of images that can inspire writing rather than merely illustrate it. A monster portrait answers the question of what the creature looks like. A disturbing scene or face creates several more questions and leaves you to decide which answer will do the most damage.

PUTTING THE COLLECTION TO WORK

The range here makes Horror Collection 1 useful beyond a single monster book.

You could use the mummies and Egyptian warrior in a pulp-horror adventure; reserve the cosmic pieces for a separate investigative supplement; place the witches, sorcerer and mask in urban fantasy; then scatter the corpses and ominous objects through all three.

Alternatively, there is enough connective tissue to build one thoroughly overloaded campaign:

A walled-up body is discovered wearing an ancient funerary charm. The autopsy reveals fungal growth unlike any terrestrial species. Three witches insist the infection entered through a dimensional breach. A masked sorcerer has been supplying prisoners to something worshipped under the name Crawling Chaos. Meanwhile, the dead have begun moving and the moon has turned red.

Subtle? No.

Playable? Absolutely.

For independent publishers, stock art allows the budget to be concentrated where bespoke work matters most: the cover, signature creatures and anything tightly tied to your setting. Ready-made imagery can carry the supporting cast, incidental horrors, chapter furniture and secondary scenes without making the book look starved of illustration.

Twenty-five separate commissions would cost rather more than this collection.

That money can now be spent on editing, printing, promotion or the outrageous luxury of paying the writer.

EXACT FILE COUNT

The download contains:

• 25 TIFF files

• 23 distinct subjects

• Three supplied versions of Crawling Chaos

• No other duplicate subjects apparent in the contact sheet

All twenty-five files use the TIFF format, although their filename extensions vary between .tif and .TIF.

Some illustrations may also appear in other Brad McDevitt collections where they fit more than one genre.

LICENCE

The artwork is licensed for personal and professional projects under the attached terms.

Read the licence before publication, particularly the requirements concerning credit, modification and redistribution. Licensed stock art can be incorporated into your work; the raw files should not be treated as something to repackage and pass around like a folder of holiday photographs.

More creatures, victims and regrettable discoveries can be found in the wider Brad McDevitt Stock Art range and the other horror stock-art collections.

There are bodies in the walls, fungus in the dead and something vast attempting to enter our dimension.

Still, the art budget is looking healthier.