Monster Gallery

[Chris Johnstone]

Just some images for Spellwoven. I'm not in any way a professional illustrator but one of my goals for Spellwoven was to try and add enough illustrations for the game to feel a bit more 'solid' in terms of world and imagry.

Some of the scans need some tidying up, looking at them now. That will have to wait for another day though I'm afraid.

Cold-drake


Fire-drake


Winged dragon


Sea Worm


Hill troll


Crag troll


Cave troll


Snow troll


Mountain giant


Boggle


Bodach


Bugbear


High Guard of Skorn


Warlock of Goragath


Svart



Gark


Mountain orc


Forest orc


Shale orc


Grey orc


Hole orc


Great orc


Lyblac


Shadow-wraith


Witch-wight


Barrow-wight


Vampire


Wraith-lord

[Rob Lang]

A veritable cornucopia! Keep it coming Chris!

[Groffa]

I like them! They look far more professional than some of the other things I've seen, actually.

The barrow-wight gives me nice old-school vibes, just like the old covers.

I also like the shading on the shadow-wraith.

The monster called "Svart" caught my eye; did you name it at random, or was there a some other thought behind it?

[Chris Johnstone]

Thanks. I have an odd personal theory that illustrations (even bad ones) make a big difference to whether a free game ever gets played as opposed to just being read for ideas.

The Svart is an attempt to capture the Svart Alfar (literally, swart elf) in Alan Garner's Weirdstone of Brisingamen. Garner of course based his notion of Svart Alfar on the svartalfr/dockalfr of Norse Myth (dark elves = dwarves) though he twisted the concept a bit to make the svart (black) and the dock (dark) separate races of dwarfish things (evil and good respectively).

The Lyblac are from Garner as well. The word means 'witchcraft, poisoning, crafts using potions' in Anglo Saxon. The idea (though it isn't clear from the illustration) is that Lyblac are half-way between something undead and something golem, they have elements of bone, scraps, armour, sticks and iron hung together and animated with witchcraft.

The Shadow-wraith is my own vague recollection of the shadow-wraith in the (now ancient) MacAdventure game Shadowgate. Ah, those were the days--when graphics were black and white, stationary, 2D and sometimes both inspired and inspiring.

I put a bit more effort into the player race illustrations () and think they worked a bit better. I'll add images as I produce them and will get into some landscape illos too eventually.

Chris