Primeval Thule Concept Art

Hi, everybody!

This week I wanted to share some pretty pictures. First of all, you may have noticed the hairy fellow in the image on this page. (I’m talking about the logo, not my portrait.) That’s the Sasquatch Game Studio logo, and I’m hoping you’ll see some more of this guy in the near future. As soon as we get the chance, we’ll switch him in to our website and our social media. The Sasquatch logo and the Primeval Thule logo are by Mackenzie Schubert of Strip Search fame, so if you followed that show, you know the guy behind these great logos!

We also have a small selection of concept art for our upcoming Primeval Thule Campaign Setting posted on our website at this link:

http://www.sasquatchgamestudio.com/products/primeval-thule-concept-art-gallery/

Klaus Pillon put together a great action scene of a barbarian warrior encountering a shoggoth in the Temple of the Black Beast. As you can see, the barbarian’s wisely executing a minor tactical withdrawal to give himself a little space to fight. The other pieces include character sketches by Justin Mayhew (the thief of Quodeth, the Thulean dwarf, and the Dwari hunter), and some landscapes by Klaus. We’ll have some more art to show off soon—in fact, it’s already in my inbox!

I love all of these pieces, but I’m going to wax eloquent about just a couple of them, since it’s late and I need to get to bed soon.

First, the dwarf of Thule: I love this guy. As you can probably tell by now, Thule has a strong ancient world theme going along with savagery and barbarism. Justin picked up elements of Assyrian beards and garb to give the Thulean dwarf a unique new feel in costume and culture. We’ve all seen dwarves as short Vikings a hundred times in mainstream D&D settings, but in Thule, some of the common cultural tropes get turned a little sideways. Like dwarves in many settings, Thule’s dwarves are fierce warriors and master smiths. They’re city-builders and civilized, after a fashion, but they don’t welcome visitors and they jealously guard the secret of ironworking.

The thief of Quodeth is a look at a civilized human hero in this savage setting. She’s a great example of the classic sword-and-sandal fantasy character. In a lot of recent 3e and 4e art, D&D has been moving toward showing characters who are armed and armored with quite a lot of pragmatic and practical gear choices. That’s sensible, I suppose, but it’s sort of a shame to lose the Frazetta-esque artistic influence that we used to see on the covers of old Dragon magazines or modules. The world of Thule is a place where you’ll find a brawny shirtless barbarian or an agile thief in a short skirt. Our female thief is an athletic burglar and cutpurse from the alleyways of Quodeth, City of Merchants, which is Thule’s richest and most corrupt city—an Ice Age Lankhmar, if you will.

Finally, the Land of the Long Shadow is another striking piece from Klaus Pillon. This shows the desolate region in the shadow of the relentless glaciers slowly encroaching on the jungles and city-states of Thule. A century ago, this was a rich and prosperous land, but with every winter the ice drew a little nearer, slowly killing the boreal forest and turning the lush plains into windswept tundra. Few people live here now—only the hardiest of nomadic hunters follow the musk-oxen and giant elk into these trackless plains, for it is said around the campfires of the tribes that evil spirits dwell within the ice, and they sometimes roam the lands in the glacier’s shadow in search of human prey.

 

OK, that's all for this week. I'll be back in a few days to share some more about what us Sasquatches are up to!