The Deadly, Cute and Fuzzy- Harnic Weasel

I primarily illustrate for the "Fantasy" RPG published by Columbia Games called Harn. It is a realistic fantasy world roughly modelled off medieval 12th century England. There are some Viking like elements, Kingdoms with Roman like political areas, and add a bit of fantasy creatures and monster reminiscent of Tolkien.
While most of the illustrations needed for Harn are realistic and mundane medieval images, I love it when I get to draw creatures. The bigger, uglier, and scarier the better. They should be covered in scales, bony protrusions, breathing fire and dripping with slime.
So, when I was asked to illustrate Weasels, I can't say I was terribly excited. But, it is a good article and has serious game play uses for the imaginative GM.
While I am not a writer, I like tell my own stories through the art in these articles. I try to not just illustrate, but enhance the article. You know what they say, "a picture is worth a 1000 words", which is a good thing- unless you are getting a text message from Anthony Weiner.
I thought I would offer some insight to the stories I drew for the Weasel article.

Stoat and Wolverine with Sarajin, Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

The above image is a winter scene, which I rarely if ever have done for Harn articles. This camouflaged stoat is scampering past an Ivinian stone illustrating the myth of Sarajin fighting a wolverine. I was thinking this beast could be one of the lesser known Pradeyalkri and may even have many myths associated with it. The Runic is translatable if you want to give it try. The runes at the top are some added graffiti, by some visiting warrior that wanted to leave his mark. 

Peoni Protects, Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

I was not familiar with the horrible blood sport of badger baiting. If you are not either, don't look it up-it is pretty terrible. It is a real "sport" and has been illegal since 1835, though it is apparently making a comeback.
Shown in the illustration is a young Peoni priestess smuggling away a badger to safety before it is thrown to the dogs. I could easily see this being a adventure hook for a GM. -The Lia-Kavair has hired the PC's to find out why their badgers keep disappearing. or-The fleeing, priestess runs into the arms of the PCs asking for assistance. or -A PC has trapped some Badgers and would like to sell them at the market, but is approached by a seedy underworld type with an offer. 
Maybe Harn even has it's own version of Weasel Stomping Day.
There are tons of possibilities. Throw in the fact that the badger itself may not make its rescue easy and you have the makings of an interesting game session.

I would love to hear some stories of GMs using these beasts in their game sessions.

Thay Jeweler

The next HarnQuest is done and should be shipping very soon. I thought I would post a few screen shots of the Sketchup models I made as reference for the articles, the first oddly was a model I ended up not even using. I was going to do an exterior view of the building, but ended up doing an interior personality shot instead.
But since I did the work, here are the models for the Jeweler [B9] located right outside the castle gates in Thay. 
Here is a view from the castle wall.

Thay sketchup model
Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

Here are two other views.

Thay sketchup model- Jeweler
Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

Thay sketchup model- Jeweler
Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

The illustration I ended up doing shows the assistants dumping out the blank coins from the mold and the other stamping the designs into the silver.

Thay Jeweler, the assistants, Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

Having read the article there are a few adventure hooks that could be taking in a few directions. I added a touch of emotion to the image. The assistant on the right seems a bit worried. What is that about? Well, let's leave that up to the game master.

Barbarian & Friend in 2 pages

The next HarnQuest will contain the first of a new series of articles that I am pretty excited about. These 2 page locations will be short articles on specific location through out Harn. We have a long list of them on our To-Do list, and a pile of them developed to some degree.
Basic idea of these two pagers is to develop specific sites in already published material. These will develop guilded occupations(Apothecary, Weaponcrafters, etc.) , non guilded (Artist, Baker, Fisherman,etc.), Religious sites (Temples, shrines, and graveyards), Wilderness locations (Caves, Trader huts, and barbarian sites), and Lairs for any manner of beasts.

The next HQ will have 3 of these sites: a Thay Jeweler, Clord Woodcrafter and the Seven Brothers site in Taelda territory in the Sorkin mountains.
The front page of these articles will have a portrait, information about the location and the individual, The back will have plans, location information and some adventure hooks. Below is the the Taelda guardian of the Seven Brothers. Also in this upcoming HQ is the article on Weasels of Harn, so I gave this barbarian a badger friend.

Tluk, Taelda guardian of the Seven Brothers,
Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

Torchbearer

I have always enjoyed doing work for Luke Crane's Burning Wheel game books. He recently contacted me to do 3 spot illustrations for his newest project Torchbearer with game designer Thor Olavsrud. It is a throw back game to old fashion dungeon crawl, Dungeons and Dragons type games.
They are funding the project on Kickstarter which still has 4 days left as I type this blog post. It is doing very well, so far attracting enough supporters to take it to $40,000 over the initial funding goal. Serious KickStart! I probably should have charged about $10,000 more than I did, but I suppose that is not really fair.

Varg Submerged
Copyright © 2013, Burning Wheel and Richard Luschek

The format for each of these illustrations was a challenge, at 2" X 7". Most of the illustration requests were tough as well- the description for that shown above being:

 "Varg submerged, holding breath and swimming into a secret tunnel at the bottom of a natural cistern while insectile legs probe the water behind".  

I was not sure if I could do vertical or horizontal, so I tried both at first and sent Luke the following quick sketches.

Studies for Varg Submerged
Copyright © 2013, Burning Wheel and Richard Luschek 

I was initially more excited about the vertical image, as I thought it showed the depth and space I needed. But the format of the books required horizontal so I had to push that one to finish. In the end I think it made for a much better image, I has better lines and is a simple design.
I sketched the final design out in pencil, inked it, and scanned it into Photoshop to paint in the the values. This project was unlike my typical work, but the challenge was quite fun.

View from the Docks

The recent Cherafir publication by Columbia Games offered me the opportunity to draw a misty afternoon scene. As has been my recent way of working, I take the maps into Google Sketchup and do a quick model (not really, but lets pretend I do this fast)- especially with some of these complicated views.Actually, luckily for me a few fans had modeled some of these areas already, so I just had to tweak and adjust.

Cherafir Alienage, foggy morning
Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

I thought it would be interesting to paint a view with the docks veiled in thick fog. I knew I wanted the Palace of the Golden Dome in the background- a corner of the docks with traders and fishermen unloading their wares.
Here is the model I used as reference. The great thing about sketchup is the warehouse of models already made. So I can search for a medieval barn and find a few to load into the model. While it may not be exactly what I want, it is probably close enough.

 Below is the basic view-point used for the image. The one thing I was worried about was that from this view the space of water between the dock and the Seaman's guild disappears, making it almost look as though the building is right off the docks- but of course it just looks that way, especially if the water is a few feet below the dock.

I also got to draw a little Sarajin Shrine set up outside The Bronze Anchor. I tried a few sketches do decide on a look.

I thought it would make the most sense to have it be a wooden totem, with a shelter. I liked the idea of it having a roof over head. I really liked the idea of it being a boat part, so I settled on a totem with a piece of a damaged ship overhead. The writer suggested the female Elkyri called Alaryr, to whom the drunken sailors would pray to before their journey.
Here is the final image. There is a small prayer and even some graffiti carved near the altar. Translate it if you you are interested. Could even be a clue for your players to find.

Prayers to Alaryr
Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

Building a Better Mouse Trap

A while ago, about 3 years in fact, an article was written on the Small Mammals of Harn. It was to be released with the Hunting and Trapping article rules. Well, CGI decided it wanted the article expanded, and the groups of animals to be fleshed out a bit more.
I like drawing beasts and creatures, but usually prefer that they be snarling, nasty, and huge. Also, it would be nice if they are firebreathing.
So, with a list of animals that one would consider pretty mundane, my job was to come up with interesting images, that are useful for game play and are fun for me to do.
When it came to the intro page for Rodents, I got the idea that it would be fun to paint a medieval manuscript page image as it might appear in a Peoni illuminated manuscript on the saints. Just so you know, I will be doing these instead of the woodblock images I have done in the past for Harn articles.

St. Vusa and the Mice
Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

I chose a peaceful religious image of a saint dealing with a plague of rodents damaging crops (I know, it has been done). I got to thinking, this could be a miracle or even an example of a Peoni invocation at work. Maybe a prayer is said that will drive out pests from a field saving the villages crops. For the text I chose, "Saint Vusa of the Garden Drives out the Mice". We looked at the Harn Religion Team page for info on the Saints and I thought St. Vusa fit the best. Special thanks to  Rob Barnes, who I have do all my translating into Harnic. I  use the Harnic Font to type the text and then draw over, twist and pull it to give it a more natural look.
Fanon Opportunity!
(first a definition of Fanon for those that may not be sure what that means- Canon is the conceptual material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe's fan base. Fanon is any material written that is not accepted as official, basically fan fiction based on canon)
 I want to offer this image up for use in any fanon Peoni invocation article that someone may want to write for this illustration. The image is a story all its own that could use a good imagination and some text to flesh out. Anyone? Comment or email me if you are interested in using this image in your fanon article. I thought a single page invocation on this, the saint and possibly the book it is found in would make a good little fanon addition. Could even be used for a Peoni temple article if the manuscript is in the library. Maybe this invocation is on a scroll found stored away that is found by the players. Anyway, someone do something with this image?

The other image in that article I was particularly proud of was the Harnic Squirrel. The text was changed after I drew the image to include info about them being 'pack rats' that collected shinny things. This little gray squirrel could result in an entire adventure hook. Say a player spotted a squirrel in a tree with something that looked like a gold coin. Or.... if a party buried a chest of coins in the woods only to come back to a dug up and nearly empty box, as a PC sees a squirrel scamper up a tree with coin in its mouth. What fun having to scour the woods for your hard earned treasure. What a great way for a game master to torture their players.

The Hoarder
Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

I hope you enjoy this article and can find some interesting ways to incorporate it into your game- even though rodents are not your typical fantasy game beasts.

Moving Brick and Mortar

For the recent HarnQuest release for Columbia Games, I had to color a very old illustration of Kiban. I believe this was first published in the original HarnView in 1983. Wow, 30 years ago!
Here is the original image as it appeared then.

Kiban
Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc.

I had to color the image and update it for the recent expansion of this Harnic Castle. The original is by Eric Hotz and I believe the inspiration is taken from a real world castle in England called Bodiam Castle. 
 Along  the way, a map was drawn for the fictional Harnic version. As I started updating the image, I realized that the mapped castle and the image did not quite match up. So I started tweaking it. Also I thought some of the castle above looked a bit like a building in ruins rather than a living breathing fortress.

Kiban
Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc.

If you compare you can see, towers were moved and adjusted. The tops of the castle were cleaned up, and a lot of the windows had to be shifted around to match the floor plans in the article. Once everyone agreed on the adjustments I started in on color. I try to use digital coloring like water colors, doing washes over the line work- well, technically in photoshop, the color is done under the line layer.

Kiban
Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc.

I usually erase any lines in the sky and just paint the clouds in. After I was done one of the writers pointed out that the front window was still wrong. It was not one big single window on the floor plan, but two smaller ones.
The same eagle eyed writer also commented that on the map the bar of land in front of the castle was mostly stone and would not have grass on it. I of course ignored this comment as we all know rocks in a stream can and will accumulate silt and allow river plants to grow at the edges of the rocks- So Shut The Hell Up!

But in order to try to appease I offered this image as a possible solution. The knight covered the window and takes care of the grass.

Kiban
Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc.

This image was rejected for some reason by Tom at Columbia Games as being "inaccurate".