Cover Babe

I think we can all agree that Hârn has been in need of the stereotypical high-fantasy, hot chain-mail clad babe on a cover a long time. Well, I have finally made all your dreams come true -Sort of.

Bestiary of Harn, Copyright © 2015, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

There has never been a Bestiary for Harn. We have a lot of separate beast articles but there has never been a starter product or a binder to hold them. I will admit the selection of articles in the current starter bundle needs work and will probably change (for one, Garguns are not in the bundle), but we got one ready for GenCon and sold all we had.
I wanted this cover to be similar to the HarnWorld and HarnDex covers. So I started with that as a base.
Of course a Bestiary needs a dragon on the front so I thought a St. George and the Dragon type image would be cool. I decided to not be sexist and go with a female knight. A knight from the Order of the Crimson Dancer located at Quimen in Orbaal was the obvious choice. I like the idea of an Agrikan being a hero of the story.

Bestiary of Harn- Early version, Copyright © 2015, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

As these things tend to develop and change as I work them up, here is a very early version of the cover. I initially had a more typical, knight saving a damsel in distress thing going on but decided it would be more Agrikan like if the knight used a slave tied to a tree as bait for the heroic hunting of the beast. I imagine that slave will be abused and burned at the stake in celebration of the kill.
The HarnDex cover did have some beasts already though it needed some adjustments.  The Kuboran warrior need to be changed, I tried adding a bear in that spot but thought it would be more cool to make the Kuboran undead. The Aklash was added in the top with the stinking breath decorating the corner. I adjusted the castle to look a bit more like Quimen and changed the shield to a generic Agrikan symbol.
I tend to shy away from true accuracy in these medieval manuscript images and make sure the image is pleasing and decorative. I find the mistakes and odd interpretations in medieval manuscripts fascinating.
On my To-Do list is to get all the beasts colored, at least the first page of every article. I did 10 for this release, including the Yelgri and the Old Ones.

Yelgri Attack, Copyright © 2015, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

 It is not up yet, but for those of you who have all the articles already, the covers for this and the barbarians covers should be available for sale from Columbia Games soon. Or you could just ask for one now.