Rmoahal Bodies

Ghenim

So large, and yet so ignored, so silent. The shackled giants who stand in the corners and alcoves of every Atlantean city, who toil in the fields, mines and factories, who fight in the slave battalions, who huddle in the shanty towns that the Atlanteans insist so hard do not exist.

Muvian Bodies

Page of Cups

They look like Atlanteans, the Muvians; at least at first glance.

Illustrating Tarot Cards

 Tarot update: 39 cards finished out of 78, although I may add a couple of cheeky extra cards. I'm varying in how close I get to Rider Waite, and the symbolism in some places, which is personal to me, may in some places seem off or even broken to a more adept reader (images after the cut, one of which is NSFW).

Tlavatli Bodies

Queen of Wands

The Atlanteans are, although they would deny it openly, always somewhat afraid of the Tlavatlis. Part of that must be because of their size which, unlike the generally cowed Rmoahals, couples itself with a restless energy.

Atlantean Bodies

Knight of Wands

It can only make sense that the Atlanteans, rich, widespread and populous, display more variation in their appearance than any of the other cultures of the Twin Continents.

Knight of Cups, Queen of Swords

All of the courts are done now (although there are three nude ones, so you'll have to  wait to see those). 

Two of Swords, Ace of Cups

The Lovers

Aside from a few cards which I've done with digital media, most of my mooted deck have been drawn by hand. Then the process is that they're cleaned up a bit digitally, printed out on art paper, coloured and then scanned in again. Which is a pretty roundabout system, but it works. I find that colouring digitally doesn't actually create the effect I want, and it isn't any less work. I'm enjoying the cards so far... But then I've only done a dozen and I'm sure that come card 78 I'll be sick of them.

The Hermit

Ok, so if the updates slow down from their frenetic pace, it's because I am actually writing and illustrating Chariot now, with a view to getting it out there by May. I'll still post stuff, but I might (gasp) miss the occasional say. Just saying.

Your Direction to a World of Miracles

How many maps of Atlantis are there? Loads, that's how many. 

Everyone who writes about Atlantis has their own map: Lewis Spence, Ignatius Donnelly, Graham Hancock, Charles Berlitz, Otto Muck, all different (Murry Hope uses other people's). Scott-Elliot has six of them, all at different stages, each superimposed on a map of the present world. I'm drawing my own, which loosely draws on the form of Scott-Elliot's map of Atlantis at its height, the third one.

It's liberating in a way, finding places to put a mythology. Putting names for people who never really existed in a context. For a project like this, maps matter.

In a lot of ways more work has to be done setting up cultures and conflicts than in the sorts of games I'm used to writing, the modern day horror, the near-future stuff, since the world needs a sense of place. It's going to take a while, the map.

The Chariot

Just some art today.

Pren

Pren, the Hermit

How exactly can you summarise a five million year history? How do you preserve the history of a people who write no books?

Pren the Elder knows how impossible this is. Pren knows what might be lost.

Work in Progress

All the cards will be based on characters and images from the game. 

Just a rundown of where we are, what the plan is:

The Akâsha

Written on water, written on air, the Akâsha is not only the repository of all human race-memory but is also the morphic field that encapsulates the evolutionary potential of all living things.

All psychic development depends upon how one interacts with it. The clairvoyant reads it and discovers all potential presents, futures and pasts. The extraction of vril, the life-energy, from redwood seeds or blood is achieved by accessing the Akâsha.

Atlantean Priest-Eugenicists create the Thinking-Engines that govern Atlantean Noble marriages and Citizen education using the Akâsha as a source of data; Priest-Engineers  create vimanas that draw energy from the Akâsha, the engines that power their sky-chariots. The Throng of Bestials is the result of a violation of the Akâshic interfaces of transforming and perverting soul-destinies of already living beings.

By changing the Akâsha, one can alter destinies, change beings. All magic is the result of an attack on the Akâsha. 

The Lemurians wrote upon the Akâsha, writing detailed histories, moving vast rocks with their wills alone. The great cloud-monoliths are Akâshic miracles. 

The Rmoahals' Speech-Words are vocalisations of the Akâshic language.

And the most powerful psychics, the godlike Manus, the Siriuns, the Lhas, can alter the course of evolution itself, past, present and future.

Competing forces aim to direct human history, and have the power to make new futures, new histories. The Akâsha is at stake, and the Akâsha is everything.

The one who controls the Akâsha when the Catastrophe descends controls the future of humanity.

Lawkeepers of the Akâshic Colleges

Another phone photo, yeah. But all of this is a draft, so it'll do.

The sky glowers over this village's Open Place today, and the crowd is subdued. Four stakes stand in a row, to each riveted a pair of metal loops. To each the priestess's pair of silent, chained Rmoahals shackle, almost apologetically, one of the poor of the region. 

Envoys from Sirius

Look, I'm doing this on my phone, ok.

Are the beings that claim responsibility for the evolutionary course of mankind as benevolent as they claim?

Sky Chariots

An illustration from my dad's Atlantis book, by Chris Foss.

No demonstration of the power of Atlantis's three great empires is as eloquent, as brutal, as complete, as the sky chariot.

Bibliography Problems

The passage above is from my dad's copy of the 1928 edition of the Chambers Encyclopaedia. The entry headed "Race" in volume 8, R-T.

Yes, it really says black people are smelly, stupid and overemotional. You didn't imagine it.

Magic in the Twin Lands

My favourite Prediction ad ever.

Magic. The role-playing game writer's dread.

Ok, then. This is how.

Labours of Love

My friend Rob, who I've known for about twenty years, is more into gaming than anyone I know. He knows what he likes (GURPS, Savage Worlds, BRP, any number of OSR games), but the highest praise he can bestow upon something is that it's "a labour of love."

Atlanteans, the Third People

Kuiorih ka Akhantuih, Black Atlantean priest

What is there to say? The Atlanteans, for good and ill, are arbiters of all there is. They are the explorers, scientists,  philosopher, discoverers. No one is close to them in wealth and achievement.

Clean water. Healthy people who can read and write. Lights on the streets at night. Peace, for the Atlanteans at any rate.

Abominations of the Black Sun #2: The Thralls of Leagh

Thralls of Leagh: A Decorative and an Educative

Travellers in the desert surrounding the city of Leagh should be careful of the huge carnivorous insects and blazing heat, but should take especial care when hunting for meat. An animal that makes no attempt to escape a hunter's blade may carry with it a horrific infestation.

Muvians, the Fourth People

Pharomenes, a Muvian Captain.

According to the diplomats and travellers of the Atlanteans, no culture offers as much threat to the rest of the world as the Justified Children of Mu, the Fourth People.

Your Fate

You learned that you are fated to die, but not now. 

You know innately that the Catastrophe, age of fire, wave and stone, is coming and - crucially - you will live to see it, before it takes you.

Character Creation

All this stuff about characters. All these stat blocks. No mention of how to make one.

Ok, so let's fix that.