A Review of MALUSTRIOUS BROOD

 A book of monsters, of visions. A 102-page pure art book with “12 iconic monsters from the pastiche swirl of d&d's fantasy pool ….

“Gnome, Nereid, Salamander, Sylph. Ogres, Hags, Dragons, Basilisk/Cockatrice, Orc, Manticore. And two Very Much d&d , the Catawhere and Eye Tyrant.";

Art, and Expressionist art in particular, is hard to review and think about, so instead I forced the artist to do that, by interviewing them! What follows is a pretty wide-ranging interview gathered roughly into the following general subjects;

• Texture
• Colour
• Composition
• Form
• Orcs
• Big Ideas

There are lots of close-ups of fragments of the pages, used when talking about specific elements, and because I didn’t want to try replicating any of the full illustrations other than those already included in the promotional text. I wouldn’t want you to take the impression of these fragments as the impression of the works as a whole, let along when held in hand, which creates a much stronger impression.

Texture

pjamesstuart; ok so a huge amount of the book seems to be its textures. Are these different on every single page?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Yup different on every page, each was hand layed (with the cut out images on top) out on a piece of real estate sign for ease in scanning. This actually turned out to have some problems later because I didn't cut the real estate signage to consistent size.

pjamesstuart; Did you have any particular plan for these?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; That each monster section should have its own unique background texture. That's about it

 

this is printed on the paper (my photo isn’t very good)

pjamesstuart; They seem to be made up of complex layers of actual physical materials treated in various ways, and maybe of some deliberate use of digital scanning errors? What else went into these?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; I'm not sure about deliberate scanning errors..oh wait no yeah the Catawhere has some . Oh and the Orc and Eye Tyrant chapter heads.

Done by dragging or moving an image while it was mid-scan.

One of the Catawhere was done with photocopy fuckery.

Some of the process for the textures involved digging through a box of ink and texture experiments and seeing if anything was suitable.

Or just messing around with whatever paints/oils/spraypaint/ink/paper I had lying around and then letting it dry outside, and then sometimes using it but often reworking it or not using it at all.

90% blind experimentation and then selective curating the results.

Though wanting each chapter texture to have its own feel meant sometimes I went "okay no more ink shennigans , going to have find something else"

John Blanche once said that with a really good picture,
even the smallest part of it, when examined in isolation,
should be interesting to look at, which I think is true of this book.

pjamesstuart; How did working on the textures intermix with choosing and making the figures? Did it happen in parallel? In Sequence?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; For the vast bulk of it the pictures were done first, then textures created and pictures arranged as the textures were done.

However the decision to create a chapter head meant needing to create a extra page (as to keep the page count divisible by 4) , and sometimes that meant creating more drawings for the extra texture page.

pjamesstuart; Whats a 'standard' (if any could be), workflow for making a page of Malustrious Brood?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Um.. once the drawings were "done" (i.e I thought I had roughly enough be doing a crude layout) , I'd dig through my old projects and experiments and see if there was something. If nothing , try and think of something I hadn't messed around before with and if it felt appropriate to the vibe of the creature.

Then once this , sometimes considerably back and forth, process had created a use texture page , I'd then try and arrange some of the drawings on it.

This usually resulted in frustrations that I was going to have to cover up the most interesting bits of the texture, as none of the texture pages were created with that much considerable with where anything would go on top.

Sometimes the drawings would get swapped between pages as space and overall context demanded. I tried to get all the loose sketches together and also give the more developed ones space to breathe (often giving them their own page just for them)

So yeah it was a whole process of curation , reacting and adjustment , to get the drawings to work with each textured page, there wasn't just in the way of a deliberate plan.

 

The Orc probably had the most planning as I wanted to have them "echo" through the background of subsquent Orc pages by photocopying and repeating some of the drawings (sometimes on transparency film).

Plus trying to get a "very angry school boy creating a scrap book of murderers , weapons and world war 2 facts" feel to it

A quick video of the boards;

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Incomplete list of things used in the textures:

Rags, stained rags, old singlet, old t-shirt, design on old singlet blown up with photocopier to giant size, lace, glue, grease, baking soda, rust, blood, ink , spraypaint, butchers paper, vinegar, pva, spray varnish , water colour, ohp transparency , sewing diagrams, house paint, translucent paper, real estate sign imagery

Colour

pjamesstuart; There are many colours in this book. Did you have any kind of conscious plan or intended method, or did you just do everything based on VIBES?

 

Many forms are almost like beer tankards filled with a thick cloudy brew slowly mixing into something else

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Nothing super conscious , other than seeking a more diverse palette as the project went on

If I had planned it out more , I would of made more an effort to have the Nerieds be more greens and the Sylphs be more blues. As it was they ended up blending into each a little too much.

As a fix for that I post scan adjusted the Nereids colours a little and arranged the elementals by the name <Element> Elemental <Name> so the Sylph and Nereid wouldn't be right beside each other.

pjamesstuart; Most creature-types have a main dominant colour that appears in a variety of forms, and maybe one or two other spot colours. What tells you what colours something is meant to be?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Again just vibes. Some got a bigger range of colour experimentation (ogres) , others arguable got too little (Salamander, Gnome) . I think the monsters that already had a strong consistent design, that I myself wanted to redefine (Orcs, the Elemental Spirits) , I ended up sticking to a narrow focused palette , while the ones were it was already wide open (dragon , ogre) I just went with whatever. I'm not 100% sure why though

(Eye Tyrant might be an exception here)

Basilisks got a lot sickly colours , and I wanted to really have some jaundice yellows, bruise purples , infected pus greens in there. Anything to make this thing look dangerous.

 

closeup of a highly polychromatic beast

pjamesstuart; What did you use? I see pens like biros, felt tip pens? Some things look like watercolours but could be created some other way.

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Yeah good old biros, felt tip pens of a variety of quality , ethanol to bleed inks out, water colours, water colour crayons, regular crayons, twink, charcoal , ink , acrylic paint, house paint, pencils, photocopy toner

 

pjamesstuart; Some colouring follows the shading a form might have, other colouring is more like you poured thick liquid into a glass the shape of the creature and shined light through it. Other is like lines of energy within a beast. Do you know when you start out what you are going to do?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; I think I always start with the "line" and add lines until it's done or it needs something else , then hit it with colour using whatever medium.

Then it's a case of adding more colour or line to fix whatever just went wrong and it either working out or turning shit , in which case start again.

I heavily favour mediums that can put on top of each in any order , as I don't think I've ever successfully done the old "little pencil, colour blocking, final inking" method. I've tried it , but it looks so lobotomized when I do it, I've all but abandoned that approach.

Crayons are a pain as you can't really go over them that well but can successfully go pretty much anything else, and allow colours that lack innate opacity to go over darks.

Back to the question: I have "hunches" and "itches" but every step is a surprise and something like a friendly but heated argument .

I've got a maxim about "an Okay drawing is useless" , so if a drawing feels like it's "okay" (as in I can reliably create something with that amount of Good) , I'll keep experimenting until it hits a "high tide mark" or otherwise rare quality I'm not sure I could get again. (this might not mean it's a final drawing, it might instead be saved to serve as guidance )

Or it's completely destroyed , but valuable data and inspiration is generated.

I think of this as sacrifices to Tiamat; and sometimes you just lose a drawing that seemed to have potential , and sometimes you get a happy accident.

Speaking of which:

pjamesstuart; This isn't really about colour but; some places monster faces & other things are scratched through, or blasted over, so it feels like the page was a screen and was glitching or a photograph that was overexposed. How did you do this?

 

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; This is the whole "keeping going until the drawing is destroyed or brilliant" thing. Sometimes the page actually rips , requiring sticking additional paper underneath. Actually sometimes something on the other side ends perfectly fitting and getting used. The eye on the Antiphoenix from Veins of The Earth is actually a mark on a piece of paper that was beneath the initial drawing . It was revealed when a hole was torn from working on too wet ink and then permanent attached to the drawing when it perfectly fit.

This is Tiamat throwing me the occasional blessing for everything in art and life that I've inadvertently sacrificed on her altar .

One of the Manticore's has a similar effect , but I think it was me scrapping back layered crayon to rework something and the underlying effect was really good so kept it. I think I added a pupil though?

Composition

pjamesstuart; Thanks for the responses! Next I want to talk about COMPOSITION, (after that will be 'form' which will be the last one).

Do you know there is a kind of natural curl to a lot of your single-page compositions? Especially for the more lithe & loopy monsters? I will try to make a little image of this.

 

It begins at the top left, curves into the centre or lower right, forms a pool there and spirals out into the lower left again, often as a tail or limb

Other compositions are 'blot' or 'block' monsters which are placed like they were poured into the belly of the page and then slowly spread out.

The 'loop' in particular reminds me a lot of the Z shape Frazetta often worked into his painting.

Did you have any particular plan for composing the one page and two page images, or any effect you wanted to achieve?

What was the methodology?

How do you know if a page 'looks wrong' or 'feels wrong'?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; HUH

I did not know there was this SECRET SIGIL

Out of all the haphazard intuitive processes that went into this book, composition is probably the most haphazard of all.

The considerations are mainly so each drawing gets enough "space" and doesn't too greatly mirror or be similar to the surrounding drawings (including any on a opposite page)

EXCEPT when its a collection of "concept" drawings, where I thought it grand to show or suggestion the developing of the process and the various alternative possibilities that rapidly fire off in my brain

Other considerations is to with the gutter and place the monsters, were possible , so they don't look like they are running away into the gutter (so heads to the edge, tails to the spine)

Form

pjamesstuart; Edge Detection - does your brain have this? Because the vision of the world one often gets from your work is that things often just don't have boundaries, but kind of vibrate like quantum particles, or blur like a time-lapse map of the borders of eastern europe. I mean, are edges a thing in your reality?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Yes But No. Like there's this deep deep deep contrary instinct in me that always seeks out contradictions, exceptions, inconsistencies, stray threads and just Points Them Out. I think it manifests in art (somewhat) by a resistance to going "yes this definitely the Limits Of This Things" , and a desire to portray the buzzing border of potential movement, past movement, spiritual intensity, failure of perception, stink, noise, unclarity

So it's like Post Modernism going "look at all these things obstacles that prevent us from seeing truth"

but unlike.. whatever strain of post-modernism is that kinda goes "so..guess truth isn't really thing", instead we must see The Noise as well as The Signal

like understanding the limits of truth should make us appreciate the effort for truth and not dismiss it to seek solipsism

pjamesstuart; dang you actually have a philosophy behind this

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; It's more I getting philosophy from it if I look at it and think about Why, but ultimately I do it because it's my nature

pjamesstuart; Is a body for you just a carrier for eyes and teeth? The toothed grin is like a signature for your work. (Also, did you know in miniature painting some painters emphasise 'eyes and teeth', because they seem to play some dominant role in helping people perceive and organise a facial form?) If you have EYES plus TEETH, what is the third or fourth thing you need to show what something is?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; I think they are just really good at giving a coherence to something incoherent and because my drawings risk/are total incoherent explosion , slapping the teeth and eyes in there really gives it a hook.

The spine or jawline tends to be the first thing I draw

pjamesstuart; Do you study anatomy? Some images strongly suggest yes, but it is as if there are two spirits fighting inside much of your art, one trying to locate actual things in space, with muscles and gravity and skin and stuff, and the other being more like 'wait what if there was none of that and things were basically energy and not 'things' at all'

 

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; yeah but badly? I'm terrible at drawing things in front of me , I don't have very clear "mental images" , drawing almost feels like sculpting with twitchy ambulatory wire to me? Like the pen starts making marks and I battle with it to get it to do something I want.

But spending frustrating time trying to draw accurate from a reference does help inform this "sculpting". To that end , I've attended life drawing books, have several (Probably over half a dozen?) anatomy books (human and other animals) and spend time and effort learning about the muscles and the bones etc.

I also find it really interesting because I Too Have Bones and Muscles and The Desire To Improve Them.

But I think it's know how impactful departure from plausibility is when it comes to monster design

pjamesstuart; Do you have preferred shapes? (A slight teardrop shape seems to come up quite a bit in a lot of your art.)

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; I try and avoid falling into patterns too much , but the most consistent shapes that show up when I start scribbling are:

Long shapes like snakes, eels, sharks

Beaked shapes or triangle head shapes

Ambiguous quadrupeds

Hunched over big limbed bipeds

pjamesstuart; Do you know when a form is right? How do you know?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; It's like.. when someone tells a joke and the when you realize that you think its funny? In fact laughter is sometimes my reaction to when I get a form or expression right. There's a sense of both surprise and recognition ?

When a form is wrong.. it's either because it's obvious and absent of energy (something can be obvious and Have Energy though) or like something about it interferes with its own dynamic and needs The Energy Bolded or The Blockage Destroyed . Or I guess it's just gone completely wrong and its not even recognizable.

Orcs

pjamesstuart — How on earth did you come up with so many good pictures of fucking Salamanders? 😂 There's like three bangers in a row here.

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD — Lizards is a good shape

Think the palette there is a bit monotonous but the expressions are really good

Conceptual I'm most pleased with my riff on the orc

pjamesstuart — Tell me what you like about the Orc concept you came up with.

 

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD — That it riffs off the old use of it meaning "spirits of the dead", Tolkiens use of as the spectre of industrialized warfare, and dehumanization monstrosity cycles.

Plus having a fancy angle in suggesting they are a memetic virus that co-opts the " immunisation" response ( the fear of the enemy becoming or being orcs is a vector for infection as people justify their increase in brutality and ruthlessness)

But also can work as a pure game utility "it's okay to kill these guys because they are distilled war criminals"

Visually I tried to get some of the Orcs to have this ambiguous mix of panic, hate , anger, fear

While others are pure hell bastards

But yeah one of the nasty things about war propaganda that is tapping into the legimately fear that any human population has a capacity for brutality, and that brutality is easily expressed on outsider groups

And by exploiting that fear , it then feeds and utilizies that capacity

To be honest my original motivation for putting design notes in between the chapters was do a bit how fucking weird dominant voices solution to "fixing" orcs was to lean hard for into "we are 1000% here all our fans making their sexy noble savage baddie OC 😍😍😍"

But nah didn't think it was worth the page space doing a The Kids Aren't Right bit

The only bit I left in like that was mentioning the extra limbs on the Catawhere

I also had a bit about manticores getting wings from Gygaxian shenanigans idk just seems like filler

Ditto some early waffle about the origins of some of these, like fuck I just wikipediaring, people can do that themselves

Big Ideas

pjamesstuart; That was all I could think of to ask about the art in a 'pure art' sense, like about the acts of creation and construction, but I haven't asked any like 'meta level' questions, (which I tend to avoid), but you did have a fair amount of complex ideas about Orcs, so;

• Are there any 'big ideas' you had about the monsters?
• Anything you discovered or thought you understood more?
• Anything you were trying to get across?
• Is there..... a SUBTEXTS???? or like a metaphor or meaning or whatever, in these images?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Yeah any "big ideas" I tried to include in the chapter heads.

While the initial idea was "do a bunch of versions of that monster" , the process involved exploring both what is the essence of that monster both visually and conceptually/psychologically.

With both very intertwined and probably inseparable, but still distinct somehow.

think exploring the concept-essence of each monster was far more of a reductive process; like is a hag a hag because she lives in a hut in the wilderness? Or is a hag likely to be in the wilderness because she's feared ? And then why is she feared? It's her power, and what are her powers etc?

Compare a manticore being in the wilderness , to me you start losing something of the manticore if you take it out of the wilderness, there's something about the manticore that is a manifestation of an unknown wilderness and the wild stories that start coming from it.

Actually as an aside here these are actually different wildernesses. A wilderness with a hag in it , is the wilderness "beyond the hedge" , a wildness just outside your lights and most tread paths. (so could be remote villages, sewers , slums, ruins, back roads, islands etc).

While manticore wilderness is "here be dragons" wilderness; blasted nigh untamable terrains and desolate vistas.

Having a "here be hags" on very remote area of the map or a manticore living in a forest a hour away from a city , creates interesting questions but I think both are subversions or deconstructions.

As in doing something interesting with a disconnection or conceptual jolt, which only happens if something about it doesn't quite make sense.

While exploring the visual essence of each monster was (mainly) and expansive process; seeing how far I could push it basically.

But note when I talk about any of this I want to be clear it's not the "ideas, theory, then art" that art academic likes to present as The Only True Path. All this is stuff I think about in retrospect or sometimes as a weird chattering aside in my brain as I work on something; it's commentary but it's not the navigator or captain

I think ultimately art is the space the between words, if its completely reducible in words then you should just use words

Good art often makes you be able to think about stuff and come up with big strings of words and ideas , but it's a terrible mistake to think that's ultimately Is The Work

 

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; To use a tree metaphor , it's like a fruit tree. The art is both the tree and the soil and the mycoline web and whatever else . The words you can say about it is the fruit. Fruit is portable, countable, immediately digestible and a trade good. But to think only of the fruit and the not the tree (and everything connected to the tree) is a deep and profound foolishness .

As is dismissing any fruit tree not currently having pickable fruit as basically not existing

EDIT: Though this metaphor suggests as we only plant fruit trees for fruit , we only should create art to talk about it, but I reject both of these concepts, but must acknowledge that people could think that a) That's the only reason to plant fruit trees therefore the metaphor says..

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Wait one more thing and jumping back , with a couple of the monsters (gnomes, orcs) there's like a cluster of different big tangled concepts and my reduction process would be a deliberate rejection of basically alot of the most popular , but arguably essential concepts, that exist in current culture.

Orcs I guess digs deeper into the psychological underpinnings of the "barbarians at the gates" and brings in some of the Tolkien fear of industrialization, so that's still engaging with the popular view.

While gnomes basically rejects everything anyone has done in the last 100 years and tries to include knockers and kobold mythology as gnomishiness

 

FINAL STATEMENT 

pjamesstuart; Excellent. Finally, would you like to end the interview by saying anything grand, insane, overwrought and/or megalomaniacal? (Purely in order to maintain SCRAP WORLD brand coherence.)

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; THERE'S ALWAYS FREE CHEDDAR IN A MOUSETRAP BABY

Behold; monstrum

A book of Others. A book of visions. A book where every night for a month, or a year, someone slept and deliberately had nightmares, or at least, deeply hallucinations, and each morning they woke up and drew pictures of those nightmares. (And then narrowed them down to the best.)

Every sophont dwells within a necessary cage of thought, one concept piled upon another, growing in slurries and small leaps, but only ever from one central point. Yet, in every case, the boundaries of expansion, of what can be comprehended, and of what can be imagined as comprehended, must be challenged; such is the flame of life and mind.

Thence; the Other, the known but un-known, a beast woven from what is and what may be.

The meaning of this is always discussed; mapped one way, the book of Others is just a map of self, for where else can the Other be conceived, so that, in roving further and imagining deeper, seen as a whole, the conception of self becomes more clear.

Others say 'no shut up this is actually a book of monsters' - a searchlight pointing outwards, illuminating the storm-wracked unknown, and the metaphor of a searchlight is perhaps the best; for those at one end, an honest attempt to pierce the dark, attention pointing out, but for those watching from the silence, a statement saying 'here am I'.

As critiques of course, we consider both at once.

All I dislike about it is the glued spine but book production and distribution from New Zealand is fucking nutty so take what you can get frankly.

You can buy ‘Malustrious Brood’

HERE

Opal-Winged Chiropterae - VotE Remastered Development

Wraiths with opal wings. Messengers, dipolmats and chatterers. Navigators of realities. Hunters, predators. Gas-addicts and maximal guano-pollutors. The Bat-Men, or Opal Winged Chiropterae. Subtle, vulnerable, savage and discursive creatures.

The White-Winged Bat-Men hunt the grand vaults of the Veins; supermassive chasms or oceanic holes in the stone. Think the Grand Canyon, with a roof. Only here can their inherent advantage of natural flight be exploited to the full. If brought to ground, or confined above, they are slight creatures, their slender wingfingers simple to snap, and when that happens its over for a Chiropterae, dying by their own hand, or ritually un-personed and extinguished by their kin.

When Opal-Winged Chiropterae hunt for food, they focus first on small, airborne prey, which they catch in-flight. With ground animals they focus on smaller creatures which can bring down in a group and cut to pieces before winging away with the nutritious bits. A second tactic is to parasitise titanic beasts, creatures large enough for the Chiropterae to nestle into, latching to their flanks in groups, subtly sucking the Titans blood while it carries them along.

They rarely hunt anything man-sized and simple combat encounters with the Chiropterae are rare; they are more likely to descend in on travellers in packs demanding newspapers, but they do happen. Chiropterae may be starving from one of their transversal migrations, might be carrying out some complex black-operation, could be criminals exiled from their Cauldron, or low-status males acting outside cultural norms.

The Chiropterae hunt Olm, and are hunted in return, for the peoples loathe each other, though they find it hard to actually get at one another, each occupying realms near-intangible to the other, the one water, the other, air.

A (Rare) Feral Chiropterean Attack

Wind on wings. Shifts in the piling mass of air above. The gentle taps of phalange-tips meeting as wings beat. A little keening. Up in the far reaches of the lanterns light; flitting glimpses of a white-winged bat. It’s not small, just far away. Focus closer on that momentary glimpse; it carries javelins in its gnarled dexterous feet. It may be wearing spectacles. Is that a pipe?

Smithsonian

Dropping Scorpions, Dousing Lights

Chiropterae can see, though not exceptionally well. In darkness they echolocate. If they hunt a sighted group, the Chiropterae will begin combat by flinging Scorpions amongst their foe, making sure they are seen before the lights go out, to ensure the greatest confusion. Then they shit on lanterns from above, squirting Alkali guano from a great hight, with surprising accuracy.

The Bone Flutes Play

From their perspective, sound is a form of sight, and their magic is all done by a musician/hunter class, who play their ultrasonic spells through pipes of slender bone. (Often made by the femurs of Olm). A Chiropterean Piper will need to perch or land to cast a complex spell, making them the only member of their group not a-wing, (and therefore easier to target).

A Piper can only cast a single effect at a time;

Hyperborean-Owl

Creates the vivid sense that in the air above the targets, of a gigantic, even demonic, prehistoric Owl. Though most targets are not especially afraid of Owls, Chiropterae are, and this fear will communicate itself to their targets in a rough equivalence to the spell 'Fear'. This will drive off and scatter any beasts of burden, uncertain allies, or weak group members.

False Wall

Creates the tactile illusion of a stone wall which cuts off roughly a third of the battlefield. This can divide groups or bottle them in. If perceived by the eyes, the illusion disappears.

Hail Spears.

A rain of spears over the battlefield. Not especially accurate but can sometimes kill, and supress groups if not. This effect works only in the dark, if perceived by sight, it disappears.

Shatter

If concentrated upon a single, drawn weapon which is exposed to the air, and is made of a brittle material, over two rounds this will shatter that weapon. The vibrations in the blade build over the first round and if the weapons is stowed, dampened, or otherwise hidden, the effect will end.

Armour of Smoke, Knives like Leaves

Rick the Demogorgon

Hunting Chiropterae are armoured in marvellous kind. Like no other craft known below, this armour is made from the lightest substances imaginable; from spiderwebs linked by mist, or feathers bound by smoke*. This armour is always fitted to the Bat in question. It can be removed and crudely adapted to some uses, but it will not fit a non-Bat frame.

Once the foe are divided and demoralised, the Chiropterae will use their flight and mobility to focus on one target after another, beginning with spellcasters, healers or the most vulnerable. They hurl light javelins from the air. But each Chiropterae only has one or two of these, and a hit is not guaranteed.

If they think they have downed or suppressed a target, they will descend to finish the job with flint and obsidian blades of incredible sharpness, slenderness and workmanship. As sharp as scalpels and nearly as light as paper, they are honed and polished till the light, (if there were any), glows through them like leaves. With these they descend to earth and, hopping closer, try to cut the throat, or to hamstring or finish prey

Vulnerable

Chiropterae are about the size of twelve year-olds, with slender limbs. They have only wings and dexterous feet, with no third set of limbs. Knife-Killing is done with a foot-hand while they hop closer on the other, balancing and supporting themselves with their marvellous wings.

But they are light creatures, and their wing-bones are horrifically vulnerable, easily snapped by simple blows, after which a still-living Chiropterae will often fall into despair and kill themselves. They will no longer be considered a 'true' member of their species and may be killed on sight if they encounter a non-related Cauldron of their kin, or even by their own immediate family.

Therefore they are careful, for the careless do not live long. This attitude to risk carries over to their culture which, despite its apparent verbosity, is calculating, observant and never commits everything. The Bat-Men are no fanatics.

Their Opal Wings

The Opal Wings of the Bat-Men reflect magic and fly upon dimensional winds.

Spells fired directly at Chiropterae will usually bounce off their wings. Area-effect spells might refract, depending on their nature. Those that produce a clearly physical second order effect, (i.e. a blast of rock chips from a concussive spell), will usually have some result.

They are hunted for them. Olm braves claim cloaks of Opal wing, just as Chiropterae make their greatest pipes and flutes from an Olms femurs and ribs. Lords of the Aelf-Adal wear beautiful capes of layered opal wings. They wear them even in front of their Chiropterean heralds and messengers. It’s not even clear that they are trying to frighten them, that’s just how the Aelf-Adal roll.

Theory; because the wings feel extra-natural force, this allows the Chiropterae to 'fly twice', using the resistance of both ordinary air, and also whatever winds of magic may be blowing in the local zone.

Their opal wings protect them from abyssal and aberrant effects, from the winds of chaos and the storms of heaven, from demonic glance and magicians orb. By these they fly the winds empyric, heralds of strangeness and woe that pass between real and unreal realms. Near these gates they roost their Cauldrons; protected by the gift of flight, but also because most creatures from both sides of such marginal zones can't live there - the emissions and reality of one place being lethal to the creatures of the other, except for the bats, who hang happily wrapped in opal cloaks, dwellers in polluted zones.

Roosts

Scientific American Vampire Bats

High up in the stone sky hang the lamplit multicoloured tents of the Chiropterean Cauldron. Wreathed in smoke they are, and surrounded by spiderwebs. The greatest hang the lowest and irritate their kin with the smoke which rises upward from their pipes. Nearby may be a hell-gate, or something similar. The Bats always know where they are.

Not that you will have much time to look, as, right under the roost, you will be up to your knees, maybe even your waist, in brutal acrid alkali batshit. The wet layers sticking to you, the composted underlayer sending up puffs of horrifically infectious dust and spores, the whole thing riddled with violent myconids and poisonous scorpions.

Guano Pollution

'The gift of life', as the Bat-Men would put it, and also the gift of polluting runoff, as many others would.

Fertiliser is rare in the Veins and many Coagulations (Townships and Villages), benefit from regular access to batshit, which fuels their fungal farms. On this basis the Chiropterae regard themselves as gift-givers, bringers of life, and make their guano deposition part of their negotiations for roosting rights in volumes near Coagulations and farms.

Yet the Veins are curiously environmentalist. At least, cultures tend to loathe 'mess' and adulteration. Active weather underground is rare and environmental systems are closely interrelated. It’s a zero-sum kind of place. What is left behind remains in place - not washed or worn away. If it is washed away, the river-dwellers and water-drinkers will soon know about it. Which usually means the Olm.

The Chiropterae themselves are eternal migrants, only staying in one roost for a certain time before the Cauldron moves on. Or, in the opinion of the Olm, until they have totally fucked up the local volume with Guano and Smoke emissions, making it un-liveable, when they then escape into holes in the air.

Web Dogs

The Bats have a cultivated relationship with specialised semi-tame, co-evolved spiderkin. The Web-Dogs build fences, or gardens, of web on the cavern roof around the Cauldrons Roost. There is no 'way in', the Bats fly in and out and the webs exist to stop, or impede, spider-climbing roof-raiders from clambering inverse and upside-down to invade and murder the otherwise ill-defended bats. Successfully performing such a raid can catapult an Olm into high status within their tribe.

The Web Dogs are fed directly by the Bats and feed also on the insects which rise from the Guano pile below. Each settlements sub-species is a bit different; they are often altered and mutated by the energies of strange realities which the Chiropterae fly through and over in their great migrations, carrying the next generation of Web Dogs as eggs in their armpits. Some may be a little bit intelligent, others a little demonic, or a little whatever.

(Feral populations of Web-Dogs left behind by the Cauldron as they migrate are another reason the Chiropterae are despised by many. Of course the Bat-Men only carry eggs between realms. They have to travel light.)

Cauldron and Moieties

They move and migrate in 'Cauldrons', extended semi-tribal mixed-kin groups made up of families and organisations. Not everyone is interrelated and a Cauldron will always be gaining and losing Bats from various places and for various reasons.

The Cauldrons hang together in 'Roosts', and not every bat in a Roost is always part of the Cauldron. Smaller visiting groups, traders, travellers, male kin-bands, perhaps wreaca or outlaws. There is always a degree of deniability as to who is or is not present and who is responsible for what, for reasons we shall see.

Cauldrons are governed by twin Moieties; Talkers and Movers, or we might say, Diplomats and Navigators. Talkers are the high-status public face of Chiropterae society and are what most think of when someone talks about the Bat-Men. Civilised, chatty, spectacle-wearing, multi-lingual, Pipe-Smoking, (possibly gas addicted), ambassadors, messengers, translators, occasional traders, middle-men and cosmopolitans. These are the bats that have their tents at the lowest part of the roost, right in the middle. (Their pungent pipe smoke rises up and makes their inferiors cough, and their pipe music drowns out the others).

The Movers are Navigators of realities. For the Chiropterae live on the boundaries of the Real, and migrate through the tears and gateways between realms, ghosting over burning cities, elysian fields and impossible arcologies alike. The Veins are one of many places that they dwell. The Movers are taciturn, intelligent and obsessed with maintaining the Chiropteraes' complex multi-dimensional maps of stacked and shifting realities, these things maintained largely as an intensive oral culture, with tools and "maps" so strange, abstruse and dependant on context that most would take them for art-pieces or decoration.

Quiet as they are, once a Cauldron reaches its Roost, and settles in, the 'Movers' fade into the background, recovering, learning what they can from pilgrims and travellers, and planning the next great migration. When the Cauldron does move, it will be they, and not the Talkers, who decide who lives and dies.

There are lesser informal groupings. Most Bats have some skill with gathering, hunting and Pipe-Music Spellcraft, but these, though utterly vital, are low-status occupations and older Bats who specialise in them and teach others will only ever be a low professional class. Likewise there are specialised traders and various clades of medium to high status long-distance messengers, as well as bands of young males, and 'Wreaca', outsider Bats who may be one thing or another.

A Roost will usually hang around long enough for a new generation of Bats to 'get their wings'; be capable of the next long-distance transversal migration under their own power. (While mother Bats can fly a little with small children attached, trying a long distance flight like this, or while heavily pregnant, would kill mother and young together.) Some Roosts, often those near major Coagulations, or substantial Lords, who must be served, are semi-permanent, though these Super-Roosts usually hold two or more Cauldrons, each of which is in a different stage of preparation to move on, and which will be replaced when they do.

Civilised Encounters

Civilised Bat by poordogfarm from etsy

Vulnerable as they are, Chiropterae prefer to meet others in Coagulations, under the protection of some Lord, (Knotsmen, Aelf-Adal or Deep Janeen, all reliable in their own way). In the wilds they will carefully scout and observe before making contact. They cannot risk their wings. And their wings are much desired.

Once they have confidence in their safety, they are utterly civilised, verbose, cultured and mildly eldritch creatures. (Of course, the 'face' of Chiropterae society is the 'Talkers', which is who PC's are likely to be speaking to.) They love to chat, smoke, exchange news and gossip, complain about Olm, inquire, snoop etc.

The Chiropterae travel light and carry messages. Their reliability as a long-distance, (sometimes very long distance, for the right price they can sometimes carry messages to the dead, or to beings from other realities), messengers is absolute. Their prices are high, their discretion total. They may blather overmuch but they do not read or ever disclose the content of their bestowed messages.

(In fact the highest ranked Talker will read all the messages they can, but to be fair, almost never actually uses this knowledge for anything other than to very gently strategically locate their Cauldron in positions of relative safety and security between major power groups, and perhaps if there was some great threat to the whole Chiropterean race. So it’s not like they really read the messages, only that the messages may have been read.)

Sometimes the Bat-Men must transit the 'low ways'; the 'normal' paths of the Veins outside or between the Great Chasms; low-roofed, complex caves where flight is a danger. In this case they will pay well for reliable mercenary guides and protectors. (And will relentlessly avenge any betrayal by such protectors.) When the great spaces are reached once again, the Bat simply flies away, with a promise of payment in credit with a nearby Knotesman, Soft-Head or a Deep Janeens Vizier.

Their credit is always good and payment will be waiting. The financial promises and exactitude of the Bat-Men are well known. They maintain financial flows within the Veins, and beyond, and form the informational sub-strata of its economy.

Gas Addicts

Terminal smokers and low-key depraved gas addicts, the Bat-Men cannot say no to a strange inhalation. Or the Talker class can't at least. Being light, winged creatures who must fly unspeakably long distances, this addiction to smoking is incredibly, unbelievably, bad for them and utterly ruins their lungs. (It also generally pisses off Veins residents as moving without a trace is a polite cultural norm and reasonable method of self protection, while the Bat-Men flap about leaving stinking smoke behind them.)

The (very tragic, but continual), deaths from the combination of smoking, inhaling things they shouldn't, and having to fly long distance marathons, are a main form of social advancement in Chiropterean society. Gaps in the Hierarchy are always opening up.

Role-Play Guidance

Encountered either in the Great Vaults, or in a Coagulation, in which case they will be an advisor, translator, merchant or middle-man.

Civilised, cosmopolitan, high-pitched hobbits. Pipe-Smokers. May be there to deliver a message, or translate. An advisor or hanger on. Careful in the wilds. Keeps their distance.

Looking to manoeuvre some advantage from this interaction.

If the PC’s are involved in intra-planar politics, or a travellers between realities, the Chiropterae will be surprisingly well-informed about this.

Low-key, bourgeoise drug addicts, (vapours only). Racist against Olm.

The Shadow Speaks

 LATEST IN THE LONG-RUNNING SLOW-RUNNING SERIES

(I lost track of whatever our format was meant to be and have started just rambling about these guys)

Abhorrer & Aeskithetes

Anemone Men & Ants Of Neutrality

Atrocious Crows & Azul

Bedlam Birds & The Blathering Bird

Boa Boy & Boa Constructor

Brainstormer & Capitulators

Colour Monster & Corbeau

Crimson Contrarodron & Cryptospider

Curselings and Discretion Bugs

The Ungulix!

Vore Bull & Vitillary

Whirlwind Wurm!

Wound Whisp

Xaxavraznazak

Yam-Man

Zen Beast

Zug-Zug

THE UMBRA-TECHNICAL ELEMENTAL

God damn this was a good entry. Old Patrick, how do I get that energy back?

Honestly this reads more like a Neil Gaiman story or an eldritch episode of Cadfael than something you could put in a proper adventurer. Nevertheless- all of this is related to huge buildings, specifically; ancient buildings, which are places we might expect adventurers to spend a lot of time. So there must be something I can do with it.

Agnes Miler-Parker

TOP OF THE HEAD IDEAS

A umbra-technical of ruins who remembers the old building and tries to re-create it through seduction and shadow powers - assembling lesser spirits in mimicry of old ways, maybe even a relatively safe space for small beings of less power as being part of this mummery brings you under the aegis of that potent but disordered spirit - could easily imagine a fey seduction situation where moony individuals summoned away to the ruins.

To be in love with the shadow of a place is something we would expect from poets, in fact probably a fashion - but what would it be like if the shadow of a place was in love with you? Would it try to trap you there? Maybe it doesn't care if you live or die since time means little to it and it can love your bones just as well.

(Trying to remove bones from an ancient place angers the shadow of the place which then sets its shadowy history against you).

Powers - so begin with shapechanging - a huge raptorial creature, perhaps as big and dangerous as a dragon or a wyvern, but capable of melding in and out of space according to the umbral nature of it, but add to this a kind of power of illusion, an ability to warp the vision - but let’s say also to warp the mind - to bring scenes and elements of the past to life, but only those bound to this place, and not directly from life but from their description in stone - a replication of a record of history, rather than a fresh re-creation. So perhaps the character and nature of the *artist" and the _age_ will show through in these illusions. Do you need an art historian to decipher/fight them?

Franz Schwimbeck

THEY DON'T KNOW THEY ARE ILLUSIONS

The not-knowing of self could be extended to the elemental and all its creations. Like there is something shadowy about its consciousness as well as its powers, not just a ghost or entity lurking in a place but a power that does not know it is a power - that does not know it *is* at all, with each expression believing that it is what it seems to be and is doing whatever it does for its own imagined reasons, and all of this is influenced by the contents and nature of the building - its record in stone and what the elemental knows about that record.

This perhaps explains why it can be such a seductive lover for some people, it almost has no "self" or no awareness of such, so it is totally focused on, absorbed by, the object of its attention. 

Richard Tennant-Cooper

SOME IDEAS

> Ruin the Relationship!. Hot poetic heiress "in love" with the Elemental - they want to be together so to break up the relationship you need to make them no longer in love with the building.

> Seduce that Shadow!. Someone looking for ruins or has already fond them, says they want to study the ancient carvings, paintings etc. These are long-gone but if they can find a way to summon out the elemental of that place they hope to seduce it - but it is fractured and a bit nuts.

> The Lover Without a Self. Most shadow believes it is light - is there an adventure in that? It runs towards the sun and dies. The idea of a shadow that wants to die - lets say someone either is in love with the shadow or wants it to be more stable and needs to find a way to stop it running towards the sun each morning, so you have to persuade the shadow that it is not light, but it has no name or selfhood and takes on different forms depending on the situation. Ok this was a difficult idea to put in an adventure.

> Skeletons Up To Something. There are ghostly undead knocking around the cathedral at night, walking corpses and liches doing dark rituals, but hat disappear to nothing, but it turns out that its just the elemental, but then it turns out that there are actually evil undead doing conspiracies in the crypts and the elemental was inchoately trying to let people know.

> Rambo vs the Protestants. Have to defend a Cathedral or ancient temple from religious radicals who want to smash up its images for being heretical - PCs are massively outnumbered but if they are clever they can gain the aid of the elemental which inhabits this place and it will aid them with shadowy illusions drawn from its deep memories (but they can't communicate directly, and must do so by inference with its conjured selves).

> Its a cult!. A group charmed to the service of the elemental but they think its something else (and so does it) like a mysterious goth cult or something.

> Child of Stone - or more really child of the memory of stone. Some.one born of the union between an elemental and a woman - they have nebulous but highly situational shadow abilities, are massively drawn towards this particular place and strange dream-memories of being a building for 5,000 years. They actually know quite a lot of history though they don't understand it. The Hook? Maybe they are a noble, a future King or Queen and them being a massive wierdo is going to cause problems for the Nation. Can the PCs do something about it?

> There's a ghost of some old dude, we can't banish it, please investigate. [It’s the Elemental who in that form, _thinks_ it is the man, or even the ghost of the man], to get rid of it will you play along or do something else?

> The shadow that fled to the night and returned. The Shadow elemental of a place suffered somehow, or its building was changed, so it fled into the night and changed, becoming something more aggressive, savage, consuming and powerful, now it returns to the bones of the place that was changed and this now-modernised building is draped in the shadows of its ancient past, even silhouettes of things that are no longer there - people being taken in the half-dark, others being seduced and compelled, epidemics of blindness, only the undead in the walled-off crypt actually remember or understand what the threat is.

> Art Crime. The shadows that loved beauty - some building or place where its said to favour the beautiful and make them even more so, like if you are a hotty then if you go there you will be well-favoured, a fashion for high status women to be painted in this place, even though its not really for that - whole deal where you have to break into this cathedral, get this fancy woman and the artist in (maintaining their dignity, you can't just cart her over the wall), and distract the guardians of the building for as long as it takes the artist to paint her face at least - but you have to do all this non lethally, harming no-one, not offending the spirit of the place and also not irritating or annoying the principal, a kind of highly specific art-crime if you will.

> The Invisible Man - they want cycles of things repeated - perhaps one actually has a formal role within the maintenance of a great temple, and the hierarchy even knows they are a shadow elemental, though they do not - there is an office, an expected series of responses and interactions with others during certain hours but the rest of the time they simply 'don't exist' - in fact they become, and are, the shadows of the place and so in a sense know all that the shadows see - the enemy of the PCS is an "invisible man" who isn't even real and doesn't know that - or maybe that's the quest giver and the rest of the clergy know but they themselves don't - the missions are all about preserving the cathedral but "in disguise" so that’s not always obvious.

The Ungulix!

What are these posts even? They started out as Scrap doing reasonably sensible hooks and have decayed into me just ranting about the monster in question...

Abhorrer & Aeskithetes

Anemone Men & Ants Of Neutrality

Atrocious Crows & Azul

Bedlam Birds & The Blathering Bird

Boa Boy & Boa Constructor

Brainstormer & Capitualtors

Colour Monster & Corbeau

Crimson Contrarodron & Cryptospider

Curselings and Discretion Bugs

Vore Bull & Vitillary

Whirlwind Wurm!

Wound Whisp

Xaxavraznazak

Yam-Man

Zen Beast

Zug-Zug

Never mind, whatever I am doing, I shall do. let us move on to... the;

hre

What qualities are mentioned in their description;

- No-one believes they are real, (only the writer of the text, Juglangsing Leptoblast, believes in them).

- There is no record of them anywhere.

- They are compressible winding creatures, tractomorphic, about a wolfhounds size in strength.

- Like a big lizard plus a rabid dog.

- Sharp spines, but these also bend.

- They have clawed feet - these extend and rasp when hungry, they also grasp the ground to keep the Ungulix attached.

- The Ungulix has a maddening crazed head, its eyes are oddly coloured pearls.

- They are coloured like a diseased dirty dove.

- Their presence brings a ruined air blotchiness or spattering of space, with inversions of light/

- THEY COME FROM BELOW. Specifically, from under beds and wardrobes, bookcases, things like that. Reading into it, it seems like there needs to be at least some space for them to come from, its not clear they could come from beneath a carpet or a dropped sheet of paper. And the thing they are coming below seems to need to be some kind of discreet object, or at least not something utterly huge, amorphous or super-small.

- They exist under inverted gravity, their up is our down etc. If they fall up into the sky they disappear.

- They come when you are drunk (or perhaps otherwise disordered).

- "imagine secret wolves"

- If they miss you once, they come back.

Whatever reality powers they have, they know when and how to attack only those who will not be believed, (maybe this is a quantum entanglement attention thing). They need prey, and they can go anywhere, so long as they come "from below".

so the qualities they need to "find" are

1. Prey, (preferably human it seems though who knows)

2. Plenty of accessible 'below spaces'.

3. A roof or something to stop them falling into the sky.

4. A "lack of attention". This could mean drink or drugs or witlessness

could it mean sleep, this is a difficult question. Maybe they need some specific brain activity - so if you fall dead asleep, into REM sleep, they can't do anything, they need you in the "in-between" world.

5. A clear fate line. As they are outside time and space, maybe they can only enter timelines or fate lines, strands of causality where they can be certain they are never confirmed to exist... (Yet if they can perceive timelines from the outside its clearly not well enough to be certain they will catch their prey, unless they are playing very five-dimensional chess every time they hunt.

BEARING THIS IN MIND

- Taming the Ungluix

What properties might a captured, tamed ungulix have? Could they even be tamed in any way which make sense to us? Trapped in a glass sphere perhaps? If they can't be known to exist what does a "Tame Ungluix" even mean? An imaginary hunting dog "owned" by a half-mad drunk who wanders the roads, and no-one has ever seen his "dog" but anyone who messes with him tends to go missing.

- The Parts of the Ungulix

What if you get a tooth, some bones, those strange eyes - they are wonderous things. By their very nature the world cannot accept that they are pieces of 'The Ungluix' because the Ungluix cannot be known to certainly exist) - so perhaps they are permanent zeros in the world, JOKERS IN THE PACK, and if you get your hands on some you can almost force them to be what you need, so long as it makes sense. I'm imagining here something like a PT Barnum Exhibit, but its actually from a real impossible interdimensional predator but it seems to be almost anything, or everything else, including a ginned-up fake, but perhaps whatever you can persuade people it is.

- Those being Hunted by the Ungulix

What could be done with someone being hunted by the Unglulix? The only way to save them is to get them off the sauce - or drug they are on, or heal their mind, in which case they may well decide that they were imagining the Ungluix all along.

People don't believe the Unglulix is real. That doesn't necessarily mean they don't know about the Ungulix at all. Perhaps the culture has adapted and regurgitated the Unglulix concept, the idea of them was immediately absorbed from Leptoblast and turned into a 'meme', being - the Unglix is the monster that old drunks think they are being hunted by when they fall over or go into rages - like a version of 'pink elephants', so that if someone turns up and says they encountered the Ungulix, well its ridiculous, sad and a little pitiful and look at the mess they made of their walls.

There are a range of ways the PCs might encounter them;

> They guard an old drunk, but stay aware, they never encounter the Unglix themselves but hear the sounds of crashing and banging and see the old fool running from the house - very sad!

> They are guarding an old drunk but they do *not* stay aware, they get drunk or high and... THE UNGULIX ATTACK! a battle is on and if the old fool gets dragged away then the PCs have to answer for it, all they can say is that the Unglix took them, so they are arraigned for murder and conspiracy. (Also they themselves are not really sure what really happened. Strange wolves? Bandits wearing masks?

> The PCs are hired to protect an old drunk but get them off the sauce and behold - the Unglix is gone.

> The very sad and horrible idea of the Ungulix hunting old people with dementia - is there even a way to permanently defeat or ward against it? 

> Can you get real wasted and follow the Unglix into the topsy turvy world - I mean that sounds utterly reasonable to me, maybe you can make some kind of drunk bargain with the Unglulix toothed goddess 

- The Wards of the Ungulix

Lets say that, like sharks, getting bits and pieces of the Ungulix can ward against them, they don't want t go too near the bodies of their own kin. Of course no-one really knows what these strange doodads are and they seem like the leavings of a carnival curio cabinet or the back room of a shop that sells incense. But the effect is good, fill your house with bonkers curious and mad taxidermy and the Ungulix will stay away.

Building models or fetishes of them - and leaving them upside down in the ceiling or under furniture - if the Ungluix sees another Ungluix from a different pack it will assume they are already hunting here. 

- Treasures of the Ungulix

- The knobbly scaled skin. Make leather of this and you won't be see, and if you are see, you won't be believed. Write your conspiracy theory on this and you will be believed, at least from those who read it from your own hand.

- The funky teeth. A necklace of these delirious fangs would be good protection from Witches and madmen. You won't lose your head in dreams or astral projections and your memories cannot be read.

- The terrible eyes. Children using these as marbles will give correct divinations, but only if the questions are phrased in terms that make sense to the childs world-view. Children lose interest quickly and once given an Ungulix eye cannot be repossessed. If one rolls a bunch of Ungulix eyes down stairs they continue past the lowest floor and if you chase them you can gain access to the "other floors".

- The warped spines. More like most of its bendy skeleton. Baffle audiences! Use it as an 'Oddity Hook' - a pseudo-grapple that gives you access to unlikely spaces. Use it to escape those guards chasing you! Where will you end up? Anywhere in the Multiverse! It’s worth a try maybe?

- Post-Ungulix Comedown

Even after you have an adventure with the Ungulix you are so fucked up from it that you can't really decide if it was real or not - was that a drunken dream you had, were you all wandering around wasted and not really knowing what you were doing? 

An ungulix adventure should be like strange violent dream, things should fade into each other, you don't quite know how you got places - rapid scene changes, things cutting out in the middle, not saying or doing quite what you intend the way you intend it - roll a fumble - scene change! roll a crit? flashback?

- Ungulix City

A place where everywhere is nowhere, where the Ungulix live and eat people with knives and forks, here they are fine fine gentlemen and we are beasts who crawl upon the walls. Why would you go there and can anyone ever get back?