Wyrding Media

Brimstone & Wytchbane: A Very Brief Introduction

30/11/2024 / scott / 0 Comments

Over the past few weeks I have been working on an RPG setting that is in part influenced by folk horror, Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne and Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane stories, Weird Western tales, and goetic demonology.

Some of the elements that I am working on are dark frontier landscapes, magic-wielding wytchfinders, Hell Lords, mad tyrants, cambion changelings, malignant grimoires, evil cults, fey turnskins, and cannibal demoniacs. Some of the themes of the setting concern corruption, madness, entropy and the eternal struggle between Law and Chaos.

I will be making future posts about the setting as things start to mature and take shape.

Diabolus Vult

Brimstone & Wytchbane

20/11/2024 / scott / 0 Comments

I have been feverishly working on a new project and campaign setting that I am very excited about. More to come soon.

Historic Swords of the World

22/10/2024 / scott / 0 Comments

I just found this on the latest post from Lyn Perry’s S&S Roundup. Enjoy.

Krull: the cult classic you didn’t know you needed in your life

23/09/2024 / scott / 1 Comment

In my search for science-fantasy films to watch for Artume inspiration, I revisited Krull, an odd low-budget wonder from 1983.

The weird science-fantasy of it is interesting and really shows how different many works of speculative fiction, no matter the art form, all the way up to and through the 1980s were blurring the sub-genres. There was a real chocolate-in-the-peanut butter blending that often happened, enriching the stories and keeping things from getting too stale and cliché.

If you have seen it, I suggest watching it again to mine for ideas, and if you have never seen it, you are in for a real B-movie blast from the past.

Artume: A Sword & Sorcery RPG Campaign – Part Two

23/09/2024 / scott / 0 Comments

In Part One of my overview of my weird science-fantasy campaign, I highlighted some of my S&S fiction influences of the setting, but not the more pure Sci-Fi and graphic art elements that helped to shape the world.

As you can see in the Artume Campaign Guide from the previous article, the setting takes place in a hollow world created by a chaos godling and has certain features that were inspired by fiction and film.

The idea of a hollow world lit by an internal sun is certainly nothing new in science-fantasy fiction. French author Jules Verne published Journey to the Center of the Earth in English in 1871, Willis George Emerson wrote The Smoky God in 1908 and Edgar Rice Burroughs brought us the world of Pellucidar starting in 1914.

The interior of Artume is divided into different domains that are stages for me to host the sandbox RPG adventures and they each have a distinct environment and “flavor” to them. The Lunar Wastes and the Moondust Sea are influenced by the novels and films of Dune by Frank Herbert, the oddball ’70s film The Boy and His Dog (adapted from a Harlan Ellison story) as well as the anime film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The look and feel of the wastelands was also shaped and influenced by the artwork of Moebius, Philippe Druillet, and Wayne Barlowe.