THE MODERN WORLD IS FULL OF DANGEROUS PEOPLE

Mercenaries. Priests. Psychics. Killers. Spies. Bikers. Cultists. Sinister businessmen.

And, occasionally, something much harder to classify.

Brad McDevitt Stock Art – Modern Collection 3 provides 25 TIFF image files representing 23 distinct subjects for publishers, writers, game designers and Games Masters who need characterful contemporary artwork without commissioning every illustration separately.

The collection ranges across modern crime, espionage, military action, occult investigation, urban fantasy and horror. It includes armed professionals, supernatural figures, criminals, ordinary people and atmospheric scenes capable of supporting anything from a short investigation to an entire contemporary campaign.

Most of the artwork is presented in Brad McDevitt’s distinctive black-and-white style, with selected colour and greyscale alternatives providing additional flexibility for print and digital layouts.

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

INSIDE THE COLLECTION

The 25 supplied files depict:

• Drifter

• Goth Pearls in black and white

• Goth Pearls in colour

• Hardcore Priest

• Haunted House

• Meat Cleaver

• Modern Tank

• Panther

• Panzer

• Punk Psychic Investigator

• Scarred Mercenary

• Sinister Shaman

• Sinister Museum Curator

• Sultry Siren

• Tattooed Bad-Ass

• Tattooed Bad-Ass in greyscale

• Tough Biker Chica

• Trucker in Bar

• Wistful Beauty

• Aliens

• Axe Murderer

• Bad-Ass Priest

• Clergy in colour

• Espionage Guy in black and white

• Evil Businessman

That gives you soldiers, investigators, religious figures, travellers, criminals, supernatural characters, vehicles, locations and several people whose presence should cause any sensible protagonist to reconsider entering the room.

CRIME, VIOLENCE AND BAD COMPANY

Modern games need dangerous people.

Not necessarily supervillains, alien warlords or immortal sorcerers—just ordinary human beings with weapons, motives and an unfortunate willingness to use both.

The collection’s Drifter, Scarred Mercenary, Tattooed Bad-Ass, Tough Biker Chica, Trucker in Bar, Axe Murderer and Meat Cleaver artwork can support:

• Crime thrillers

• Mercenary campaigns

• Urban action

• Road adventures

• Survival horror

• Criminal investigations

• Post-apocalyptic games

• Slasher scenarios

• Espionage

• Modern pulp adventure

The Drifter might be a wanderer, fugitive, veteran or stranger who knows more about the local trouble than he initially admits.

The Scarred Mercenary can serve as hired muscle, military contractor, bodyguard or survivor of an operation nobody officially acknowledges.

Tattooed Bad-Ass is supplied in standard and greyscale forms, giving you an adaptable figure for action, crime, cyberpunk or street-level gaming.

The Tough Biker Chica might be a gang member, courier, hunter, mechanic or entirely independent operator who has learned never to rely upon somebody else for protection.

The Trucker in Bar provides an immediately useful supporting character: a traveller, freight driver, witness, smuggler or source of rumours encountered in a roadside establishment where everyone is pretending not to listen.

Even the more explicitly threatening images remain adaptable. An Axe Murderer may be precisely what the title suggests—or a frightened survivor who has grabbed the nearest available weapon.

Context changes everything.

Usually just before the initiative roll.

PRIESTS WITH PRACTICAL SKILLS

Modern horror and occult games often involve religious organisations confronting problems considerably more immediate than declining attendance.

This collection includes:

• Hardcore Priest

• Bad-Ass Priest

• Clergy in colour

These figures can represent:

• Exorcists

• Militant clergy

• Occult investigators

• Members of secret religious orders

• Hunters of supernatural creatures

• Chaplains attached to military or intelligence units

• Priests protecting communities from hidden threats

• Fanatics whose methods have become more dangerous than their enemies

The Hardcore Priest and Bad-Ass Priest suggest religious characters prepared to take direct action when prayer alone has failed to produce satisfactory results.

They may be allies, player characters, rivals or members of an organisation whose theology includes a surprisingly extensive weapons budget.

The colour Clergy illustration provides another option for religious characters, supernatural factions or stories involving belief, authority and the uncomfortable possibility that somebody’s prophecies are coming true.

Faith can provide courage.

It can also provide certainty.

Only one of those things is reliably helpful.

PSYCHICS, SHAMANS AND THE OCCULT

The Punk Psychic Investigator and Sinister Shaman offer strong material for paranormal investigations, urban fantasy and contemporary occult campaigns.

The Punk Psychic Investigator might be:

• A medium

• A clairvoyant detective

• A reluctant supernatural consultant

• A psychic bounty hunter

• A survivor of occult experimentation

• A player character

• The only witness able to perceive what really happened

Psychic characters occupy an awkward position in investigative games. They can see what others cannot—but what they perceive may be incomplete, symbolic or actively misleading.

The dead may provide answers.

They rarely provide them in a convenient order.

The Sinister Shaman can serve as a spiritual practitioner, cult leader, occult antagonist or intermediary between the ordinary world and powers that do not recognise human law.

He might possess genuine wisdom.

He might be exploiting the desperate.

He might be doing both.

These images suit stories involving:

• Curses

• Spirit communication

• Haunted locations

• Psychic conspiracies

• Secret traditions

• Supernatural crimes

• Magical communities hidden within modern society

• Ancient powers adapting to contemporary life

The modern world has not eliminated magic.

It has merely given the magician access to public transport and online banking.

THE SINISTER MUSEUM CURATOR

Museums are full of things taken from tombs, ruins, battlefields and cultures whose warnings were translated, catalogued and promptly ignored.

The Sinister Museum Curator is therefore an extremely practical addition to any modern mystery, occult adventure or pulp campaign.

The curator might be:

• An expert in forbidden antiquities

• The custodian of a dangerous collection

• A member of an occult conspiracy

• A thief replacing genuine artefacts with replicas

• A scholar transformed by prolonged exposure to something unnatural

• A patron hiring the characters for a recovery operation

• The only person who knows why a particular exhibit must never be opened

• The person who opened it

Museums make excellent adventure locations.

They contain valuable objects, obscure knowledge, restricted areas, security systems and enough historical baggage to ensure that almost any supernatural disaster can be made somebody else’s fault.

The curator may help the characters identify an artefact.

He may try to purchase it.

He may insist it was never removed from its case—even while something wearing his face walks through the locked galleries after midnight.

SPIES, BUSINESSMEN AND RESPECTABLE VILLAINS

The Espionage Guy and Evil Businessman provide material for conspiracies, intelligence operations, corporate thrillers and campaigns where the most dangerous characters possess excellent tailoring.

The Espionage Guy might be:

• A field agent

• An intelligence handler

• A double agent

• A corporate operative

• A government assassin

• A retired spy dragged back into service

• A source whose information is accurate but incomplete

• Somebody carrying several passports and no convincing explanation

The Evil Businessman may represent a corrupt executive, political donor, criminal financier, cult sponsor or entrepreneur whose commercial empire depends upon activities absent from the annual report.

He may never carry a weapon.

He employs people for that.

Modern villains frequently possess legal departments, public-relations teams and enough institutional respectability to make accusing them of supernatural conspiracy seem unreasonable.

That is how they like it.

Use these figures for:

• Corporate espionage

• Political conspiracy

• Covert operations

• International thrillers

• Organised crime

• Investigative horror

• Rival intelligence agencies

• Secret programmes

• Missions where nobody has been told the complete objective

A street thug threatens the characters with a gun.

A businessman threatens their homes, employment, reputation and legal existence.

Civilisation has provided villainy with more sophisticated tools.

MILITARY HARDWARE

The Modern Tank and Panzer provide vehicle artwork for military adventures, historical-modern crossover material, alternate history and campaigns involving heavy armour.

They can illustrate:

• Military sourcebooks

• Battlefield encounters

• Armoured units

• Invasions

• Mercenary operations

• Alternate-history campaigns

• Wartime flashbacks

• Government responses to supernatural threats

• Situations in which negotiations have failed comprehensively

The Modern Tank suits contemporary warfare, near-future conflict and military scenarios.

The Panzer can support historical material, wartime horror, alternate history or stories involving machinery surviving long past the conflict for which it was built.

A tank changes the nature of an encounter.

It is not merely another opponent with more hit points.

It controls movement, destroys cover and forces characters to solve problems through planning, specialised equipment or an extremely convincing explanation of why they are authorised to be there.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

The Haunted House provides an atmospheric location for modern horror, supernatural investigation and gothic material.

It might be:

• An abandoned family home

• The scene of an unresolved murder

• A building trapped in a repeating event

• The headquarters of a cult

• A property nobody can sell

• A house appearing in several cities at once

• A place whose former occupants have not left

• An entirely normal house containing one deeply abnormal room

Haunted houses remain effective because they corrupt somewhere that should be safe.

A dungeon is expected to contain danger.

A home is supposed to keep it outside.

Use the image as a chapter opening, adventure location or visual handout shown to players when they first arrive.

Then ask the important questions.

Why are the windows dark?

Who maintains the grounds?

Why does the upper floor contain one more window than the interior contains rooms?

And why does somebody appear to be standing behind the glass?

THE PANTHER

The Panther can be used as an ordinary animal, supernatural predator, shapeshifter, guardian or experimental creature.

It might belong in:

• Wilderness adventures

• Urban-fantasy campaigns

• Crime stories involving exotic animals

• Occult rituals

• Post-apocalyptic environments

• Hidden supernatural communities

• Zoos, private collections or research facilities

• Stories where something large and silent is stalking the characters

Perhaps it is an escaped animal.

Perhaps it is hunting a particular person.

Perhaps it becomes human during daylight.

Perhaps the authorities have already killed three ordinary animals while the real creature continues moving through the city.

A predator does not require human intelligence to be frightening.

Human intelligence merely allows it to hold a grudge.

ALIENS AMONG US

The Aliens illustration opens the collection to science fiction, conspiracy and paranormal gaming.

The figures could be:

• Extraterrestrial visitors

• Experimental beings

• Interdimensional entities

• Mutants

• Survivors of a hidden civilisation

• Evidence concealed by a government agency

• Participants in a first-contact scenario

• Creatures who have been living among humanity for generations

Modern and science-fiction gaming overlap naturally whenever the strange arrives in an otherwise recognisable world.

The player characters might be investigators following reports of unusual lights, agents attempting to contain evidence or ordinary people who have discovered that their neighbours are not merely eccentric.

The aliens may be invaders.

They may be refugees.

They may be waiting for humanity to become interesting enough to contact.

That could take some time.

BEAUTY, SIRENS AND GOTHIC STYLE

The collection includes Goth Pearls, Sultry Siren and Wistful Beauty, providing more atmospheric and character-focused female illustrations.

Goth Pearls is supplied in both black-and-white and colour versions.

These images can represent:

• Socialites

• Performers

• Vampires

• Occultists

• Femme fatales

• Supernatural beings

• Witnesses or suspects

• Important supporting characters

• People whose appearance encourages dangerous assumptions

The Sultry Siren may be literally supernatural or simply dangerously persuasive.

The Wistful Beauty might illustrate grief, memory, longing or a quiet moment within a darker story.

Goth Pearls can suit modern gothic, vampire fiction, urban fantasy or any project requiring a striking alternative character.

Not every illustration needs to depict action.

Mood matters.

A portrait can establish the emotional direction of an entire scene before the first line of dialogue.

PROFESSIONAL ART FOR INDEPENDENT CREATORS

Original commissions remain the best way to obtain precisely the artwork a project requires.

They are also expensive.

Independent publishers generally have to divide limited funds between writing, editing, layout, printing, promotion and the radical aspiration that the creator should eventually be paid.

Stock art provides a practical alternative.

It can help you:

• Illustrate characters, vehicles and locations

• Break up dense sections of text

• Establish the tone of a modern setting

• Complete adventures and smaller supplements

• Add impact to chapter openings

• Create player handouts

• Populate non-player-character sections

• Build a reusable art library

• Reserve commission funds for essential bespoke pieces

• Replace the boxes labelled ART GOES HERE

One strong image can transform a page.

Twenty-three distinct subjects can provide a substantial supporting cast for an entire campaign.

ART THAT CREATES STORIES

Good stock art does more than occupy an empty space.

It asks questions.

Why is the Drifter passing through town?

Who scarred the mercenary?

What does the psychic investigator see?

Who owns the haunted house?

Why is the museum curator smiling?

What does the Evil Businessman want?

Who is the Espionage Guy following?

Why are armed priests involved?

Where is the tank going?

What are the aliens waiting for?

Choose an illustration.

Decide what its subject wants.

Place something inconvenient in the way.

Connect the resulting trouble to the player characters.

That is often enough to begin an encounter, investigation or complete campaign.

FILES AND VARIANTS

The preview shows 25 TIFF files representing 23 distinct subjects.

Two pieces are supplied in alternate forms:

• Goth Pearls: black-and-white and colour versions

• Tattooed Bad-Ass: standard and greyscale versions

The remaining files are distinct illustrations covering modern characters, criminal figures, occult subjects, clergy, vehicles, locations and creatures.

READ THE LICENCE

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

Read the licence before publication and ensure that your intended use, alterations and attribution comply with its requirements.

Some pieces may also appear in other Brad McDevitt collections where they suit more than one genre. Modern material naturally overlaps with horror, science fiction, military gaming and urban fantasy.

You can explore the complete Brad McDevitt Stock Art range or browse the other modern stock-art collections.

The spy is watching.

The priest is armed.

The house is occupied.

Your manuscript still needs pictures.

Deal with the problem you can solve.