Arty Farty Ramble

I've always liked this picture by Larry Elmore. I love that it not only shows you what dwarves, halflings and elves are like all in one go, but it shows you a glimpse at the emotional dynamic in their little adventuring party.

I always imagine the halfling pointing out that the dwarf has a crush on the elf. The dwarf denies it while blushing, and the elf is amused if somewhat flabbergasted. But that might just be me.

The Corpse Star

The world is dying. As the Corpse Star rises in the black and hopeless sky, no sane creature can truly avoid knowing that the fate of the world is to be pulled into its gaping maw. The gods have long ago averted their gaze, children are born without souls, and corpses lie restless in their shallow graves.

Behold, the dark funeral crypts of the elves, prepared aeons ago to prepare for the prophesy of a dying world. Within their walls, the immortal ones wait, entombed in stone, for their final deaths.

Behold, the noisy feasting halls of the dwarves, gouging themselves to death in a centuries-long wake for the entire world. Hidden in chambers deep beneath the earth, they ignore the madness-inducing sky in favour of the endless feast.

Behold, the great silent horde of the orcs, carving a path across the star-ravaged plains to the very end of the world. Their lips sewn shut, they slaughter and destroy all they encounter in complete silence, to better hear the death throes of the spirits of the world.

Behold, the many empty vales of the halflings, long ago vanished into myth and legend. No man knows to whence they have gone, the only clue being the mad scrawls carved deep into each and every door, speaking of the croatoan.

Behold, the last desperate empire of man, its stepped temples stretching into the sky, a thousand hearts offered into the sky each day in a cruel parody of sacrifice. They hope to appease the maw and stay the death of the world, but their bloody works are all in vain.

The air is stale. Crops rot in the fields and fish float upon the surface of the stinking sea. Each and every sigil and omen and portent and sign points to a single thing: death, to all and everything that will ever be upon this world.

Some few still struggle to avert this terrible fate, but what hope can be held beneath the gaze of a hungry star?

Rolling Stones

Modernity has come to drag the sleepy hills of rain-soaked Llamedos into the Century of the Fruitbat.

Microlithics. It's the word that half the Disc is quickly learning to pronounce - the half that isn't still working on the fine art of pounding stones into each other's heads. In the heady atmosphere of Llamedos's Granite Valley, it seems like anyone can strike it rich. And that's exactly what Nap-y-Styr, druid, clacker, and sometime musician, planned to do.

If only someone had explained to him the finer points of guild law.

Now, he's on the lam from a pack of rabid lawyers, bounty hunters, and worse yet, musicians. He's falling in with entirely the wrong kind of pirate, falling in love with a girl who doesn't really exist, and unless he gets his act together, most likely soon falling down a few very steep flights of stairs.

Can Nap escape the Musician's Guild and keep his body intact? Will the "Musyc Box" destroy the Disc's creative industry? Can a stone circle find love? Who calls themselves Captain Torrent and expects to be taken seriously, anyway? Is there really no such thing as a free lunch?

[Campaign Ammo] Valefarer's Rest

The Valefarer's Rest is a famed tea-house and rest-stop, located deep within the Western Vale. It caters to wayfarers of all shapes and sizes, from the gentle giantkin to the mechanical globons. Run by an old and mysterious wizard, it often reshapes itself to meet the needs of its residents.

The Western Vale is home to dozens of small communities, from Gooseberry Patch to Treetop Village. Each lives in harmony with the forests and with each other. All races work and live in harmony, halflings alongside lizardkin, globons alongside bearkin.

But in recent months, strange and worrying events have started to take place in the Vale. The gooseberry harvest has failed, scouts and wayfarers from Treetop Village have disappeared in the wilderness, and strange black clouds have obscured the horizon to the east.

At the Valefarer's Rest, the traveller's sleep is disrupted by a red ent, a normally peaceful tree-folk, stumbling out of the woods and launching a violent and psychotic attack against the tea-house.

Three of the Rest's regular denizens manage to subdue and slay the mad ent, and discover that the ent's body is burned and covered with strange black soot. Embeddd in its bark is a strange, curved axe - carved with runes from an ancient language not seen in a thousand years: Inglisc.

The three travellers are behooved by the Valefarer himself to travel far into the East and discover the source of the black smoke.

they are:
*- Ssawk, a Saurian hunter from the Southern Village, on the edge of the Open Plains. He is a gruff veteran, suprised by little - and probably the closest thing to a warrior in the Vale.

- Clank Shaft, a young Globot on a vision-quest to find his path in life. He has never ventured beyond his home commune of Radiator Springs before, and is deeply curious about the world around him. He has learned to talk to nature spirits through an ancient device called a "Sylphone".

- Trixy Minx, a drifting Halfling trickster, exiled from her community for one too many cruel pranks and skipped days of labour. She's cleverer than most and quicker than a slippery fish, or at least when she's not smoking riverwort.

Inspirational Images:
Hillcomber Giant
Fantasy Hotel
The Valefarers