AWOL

I'm away for a week. There's an outside chance I'll find time to do some stuff while we're gone - I'll post when I'm back

Rune Escape

The first of the "translation" pages is done. These pages will ultimately litter the book, giving Cale a chance at translating any runes he finds in game that he doesnt know already. Here are some pics:

That's the hard bit done...

Maybe not...

It came out ok, although the enlarged characters at the top look a bit odd. With the amount I need to do by September though, I'm not really in the position to re-do it. When the book's done, I'll probably burn some of the edges off.

The insect design in the middle is inspired by the works of Zarano. You should check out his stuff on ebay if you're remotely into Cthulhu

Yet more runes

Two more down, although I have to apologise for the quality of the pictures - I'll post better ones later.

Shais' Rune - Darkness

The Heralds' Rune: Shroud

The rune of darkness came out way better than I expected, given that I'd pretty much nailed it first time. I'm less keen on the Herald's rune, but it does the job I guess.

The backstory for these two runes isn't written yet, but I'm not expecting much too trouble with it. Both the Herald and Shai are significant plot people in the Spearhead campaign so I plan to lean on that.

I've also started work on the first (of many) "Rosetta Stone" devices for translating runes. Pictures later.

First impressions

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Well, so they say. Anyway, I've been giving a lot of thought to the first page of the Calenomicon. It's got to be the right words, the right design, the right layout in order to set the right tone for readers other than Cale. In other words, pretty much perfect.

Because the first section of the book is a journal and contains a wall of text, I dont want the front page to be too wordy. Book one contained a verse from the Dwale of Avaggadhu:

And that's pretty cool (the words, not my implementation), even if I do say so myself


 


I also had the Cthulhu Aquiddigay (or whatever its called, most Lovecraft contains too many consonents) elsewhere in the book, which I thought with a bit of adaptation might make a good front page:

"Rise, o namless runes!
That in thine own season,
Through thy spells and enchantry
May know of thy coming
And rush to thy pleasure
For the love of our master
Deep slumberer in green"

The only part I don't think quite fits is the last line. I'll have to give it some thought.

Best and worst

I've completed two more runes.

The Rune Of Mind

The Rune of Break

I love the picture of the Hanging Man which "Mind" is based on and the imagery sort of fits with how Cale uses the Rune in the game. It also contains lots of tentacle looking shapes which you can never have too many of.

Break was harder and this is my third attempt. Bottom right I mucked up one of the sky lines and it looks... horrible. I've managed to supress my perfection gene which is telling me to rip it out and start over...for now.

The original art is by ~xochicalco which you can find on deviantArt. I don't know what the copyright position is, but I'm going to buy the digital images from his website - it seems the right thing to do and they're only 2 bucks each.

Bleeding Disaster

The calligraphy pens I ordered finally turned up. Having done some research, I settled on the disposable type over little bottles of ink and all that other faffing. As a backup, I ordered a medium nib fountain pen.

Now, given that I deliberately bought different paper that was supposed to take fountain pen ink, you can imagine my disappointment to find that both pens - disposable and fountain - bleed on the paper:

You can see it clearest on the version of "arise" I started at the bottom of the image.




This is quite a set back. I was hoping to do some pages at least with fancy handwriting as a replacement of my unruly scrawl and now I'm left with using rollerballs again.

Ah well. Back to the ole' drawing board.

Dem Runes.. Dem Runes



So I've decided to divide the Caleonomicon into four sections, which will hopefully facilitate Cale finding stuff when he needs to. Section one will be the journal, two will be spell verbals, three will be runes and four rituals.

In the Spearhead game system, Wyrd magic is cast through runes - shapes - that are found through playing events. There are lots and keeping track can be a challenge, hence having a section on them in the book. In Book 1, the rune section also appeared, but the pictures were basically the rune shape in a circle and then some words. For book 2, I wanted to do something different

While the background to the various gods in the system is well known, there's little on the runes, which gives me a little licence to come up with stuff. Cale has the view that some of the runes are beneath him, while some have taken on an almost godlike status, which he calls "The Incana"



For these "Incana" I wanted to have pictures that represent their importance to Cale or rather to explain it. They needed to be psuedo-religious in some context but also not game breaking. I found some images of hand drawn tarot cards on the net, which I really liked the look of, so I've started trying to recreate them.

I've had some successes and some.. well, not. But that's the perfectionist in me. It's a hard attribute to have when you have zero artistic ability. Anyway, here are the first three:



I'm pretty pleased about how they came out. Once I've sorted out how to write, each page will have a mini-story about the rune wrapped around it. I have Wyrd and Harm sorted already, just practicing the words and waiting on pens.  



The rune of Wyrd



The Rune of Command









The rune of Harm.



The Goldilocks Book

For book one I spent a lot of time finding the right kind of book. It's not as easy as you'd think. It has to be flexible, hard wearing, not too heavy but heavy enough, realistic but dramatic. In short, it has to be "just right"

In the end, I went with a book from these people. And very happy I was too - great handmade product, fast reliable service.

So this time around, it was a no brainer. Same supplier. But I wanted a different look for the book. More imposing.

In the end, having considered many options, I chose this one

Black buffalo hide, with leather straps across the front. Inside, hand made cartridge paper of a heavy enough weight for the ink not to bleed through when I screw up a drawing and press too hard.

Job done. No worries.

Then it turned up. And after I got over the frankly awesomeness of how it looked, I got this, well I can only describe it as the icy fingers of doom crawling up my spine. Something was wrong... but what?

Then I placed the two books side to side:

Yes, it's bigger. And it may not look it from the picture, but it's a lot bigger. And heavier. Which means dragging around more kit and needing to get a custom pouch made for it to fit in. Worse than that, it means more content, which means (shudder) more drawing. And I think we all know how that will work out.

Sigh.

Still, it is freaking awesome though.

Ars Disclaimer

Before we get much further into this, I should point out that I am, by no stretch of anyones imagination, any kind of an artist - not the drawing kind anyway. I enjoy writing fiction and can do so, I'm told, to a relatively engaging level. But drawing is definately in my "too hard" pile, along with watching soap operas and this thing you call "soccer".

So most of the drawings, assuming I consider them to be good enough to take pictures of, will be taken from the net, printed out and then hand inked into the book. For this purpose I draw heavily (pardon the pun) on the works of the most excellent Zarano, although my works pale so far into insignificance in comparison as to be transparant.

I'll also rape and pillage the Chaosium back catalog (most of which I own) and a variety of web based sources that can be found on the Holy Grail of Cthulhu-esque prop making: propnomicon (which incidently, if you've not checked it out, you should - it's chock full of proper artists who make stunning props, not half baked copyists like me)

I'll do my very best to name check whenever I can.

Seconds out, book 2

"This the book of black ash. With it I have summoned Demons and raised the Undead" Al Azherad

While I can't deny that making the first version of Cales' book, ready for the launch of the very excellent Spearhead LRP system wasn't fun, it certainly was a lot of work, most of which was research.

 

It's been on my list to re-do pretty much ever since I finished it and showed it to the guy who runs Spearhead. He looked at the cover and said "You didn't copy Harry Potter did you?". Deflated after my months of hard work retorted with a broadside of sarcasm which was probably misplaced: "No. It's a mix of Charmed and Buffy". He smiled faintly and handed it back without opening it. I think he believed me at the time although we laugh about it now.

 

To be fair and while this version has in the end, served me (Cale) well, there are quite a few things I'd like to change. Mostly it's presentation stuff, since I was trying to come up with a lot of written content and pictures to go in it all at the same time.

I've written a list of changes, which include

• The old Cthulhu rune system is out, replaced by the Wyrd rune system from Spearhead.
• The old handwriting is out - mostly - and I'm going to learn some sort of Caligraphy, dammit. This will also cut down on the amount of copy I need since the letters will be bigger
• The new spell verbals are in
• Old rune pictures (basically circles) are out, replaced by some kind of Tarot related stuff
• The old handmade paper is out and new handmade catridge paper is in. It opens up the option for different pens
• Passages from the Simon and Tyson are in, but heavily censored so they fit in the game world.
• Some kind of sensible order to find pages. I can't count the number of times I needed a certain set of words or pictures and been totally unable to find them.

Of course, it didn't help that with book one, I was sporting a rather fetching broken wrist at the time and knew next to nothing about the system supporting Cale's Wyrd (spell casting) abilities. Neither of which is (currently) true this time around.

You might almost say that the stars are now right for me to start over.

 

I think I'm 80% looking forward to it, 20% dreading it. Actually, maybe it's the other way around.