#Castle of Darkness

[vintagerpg]

While I count Steve Jackson’s Sorcery series as probably the best adventure gamebook series I’ve played and Dave Morris’ Eye of the Dragon my favorite (those Russ Nicholson illustrations!), the series I spent the most time with as a kid was GrailQuest. This is the first one, The Castle of Darkness (1984 for the UK, 1986 for the US edition).

The setup is that upon opening the book, Merlin cast a spell that brings your consciousness into the body of Pip, a lad living during the Arthurian era. With his trusty talking sword, Excalibur Jr., you, Pip and Merlin’s narration go off to save the kingdom. In the first book, that means rescuing Queen Guinevere from the evil wizard Ansalom.

Couple key things. First, these books are chill. The rules get explained along the way and, uh, they kind of encourage cheating. Or at least they go easy on you. For instance, if you die, you start over and everything you already killed is still dead. Second, they’re intentionally funny. There are a number of running gags throughout the series. My favorite is probably the fairly helpful vampire who is a terrible poet. Third, they are less focused on fighting and more on cleverness — there are lots of hidden doors and the games encourage keyed mapping to allow for backtracking (useful, since like Lone Wolf, you can bring items into the next book).

Oh, and the art is great. Like early Warhammer, it is rather grim and gritty, which mixes nicely with the dry, quippy humor. John Higgins (Judge Dredd) does the interiors. Les Edwards is on the cover.

[ralofofriverwoods]

“Is someone there?”

More red velvet :) this time with some funky perspective and background stuff. Took abt 2 hours and 30 minutes, very proud of it

Alt versions and more rambles under the cut

Ok so! The original inspiration for this was a little thing I came up with for my au. I’d say this is about when the nondescript showdown is happening(not quite sure how it would go yet, but there’s some possibilities), In of which red gets called out to check out an intruder alert in the outer wing of the castle. I’d say it’s prolly a kingdom cookie, but depending on how things pan out it may be a character from an ancient kingdom

Either way, red velvet won’t have a good time lol

The

Anyways!! I did a full image and a just background shot because I am unreasonably happy with this background and you all get to see :)

Where his feet meet the floor looks a little weird because he is very not blurred, but the background is. I wasn’t sure how to fix that so I just let it be. It’s certainly not the worst!

The torches are inspired by the light posts that you can get from the Cookies of Darkness deco pack! They’ve both got that same wierd dark-light flame. Ngl they were very fun to design

Both paintings are just things I made up in approximately 20 minutes, however I may make them into their own pieces of art eventually, I’m very proud of both.

I’m definitely gonna do more shots in the dark castle, this was surprisingly fun to make up! The pallet is very nice to work with as well, really just flows together very easily.

Note: something is weird with the images I’m using so if there’s a repeat image I blame that

[the-sp0tless-mind]

the summer ends.

[liivn]

[glossibaby]

[academic-vampire]

𝔞𝔲𝔱𝔲𝔪𝔫 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞

[2000s-angell]

[runawayandhide]

[rienafoutre]

[thedeadpoets-blog]

“honestly, don’t you two read?”

— hermione granger, harry potter and the philosopher’s stone

[batty-n-bratty]

[the-sp0tless-mind]

...𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔶𝔬𝔲'𝔩𝔩 𝔫𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔯 𝔟𝔢 𝔭𝔲𝔯𝔢 𝔞𝔤𝔞𝔦𝔫 ✭*.

[liivn]

[ghirahimbo]

post-totk Link, having just fought his second iteration of Ganon, wandering the tunnels beneath Hyrule Castle banging two sticks together yelling "if there's a third Ganon hiding under this castle you legally have to tell me"

[weirdlookindog]

Jean Danguy (1863-1926) - "Death Appears in the Sky Above a Castle"

Le Château de la mort (The Castle of Death), 1895

[peacefulandcozy]

ig credit: acalmwalk