Hey. We don’t know one another. And I don’t want to tell you what to do. But… you should read the beautiful and surreal monster manual “Fire On The Velvet Horizon”. Cover to cover.
Why? Let me tell you…
FOTVH is a system agnostic, stat-less monster manual. More than 100 monsters? No stats? What’s this all about?
Well, first and foremost, it is an art book. Each monster in this 120+ page book has been illustrated by the delirious mind and twisted hand of OSR legend Scrap Princess (best known for work in this book and other OSR masterpieces such as Deep Carbon Observatory, and Veins of the Earth.
The art came first. And it’s good. These monsters scream, grin, stare, leap, burrow and howl. They are sad, funny, enraged and laughing. Scrap Princess’ art is beautiful and grotesque, and I can’t get enough of it.
Once the image existed, Patrick Stuart went to work. Stuart, author of the False Machine blog and a number of warped and fantastic adventures, (Deep Carbon Observatory and Demon-Bone Sarcophagus, among others) used these images to craft the monsters that live in this book.
And what you get from this mystic and trans dimensional slurry are monsters whose alien biology, otherworldly ecology and strange and esoteric desires require players to do something other than hit them repeatedly. For example…
The first entry in FOTVH is the Abhorrer, a slug creature whose existence forces the people around it to obey laws. It lives in cities, gains power, and legally destroys everyone it hates, and it hates everyone.
Dreamons visit in dreams and barter, a thing for a thing. If you take their gift, you must retrieve one for them in return. If you do not, they haunt you. If they can make it into this world, they will pull you through to theirs.
The hostage frog will ambush you, and swallow a character whole. But it does not want to eat the character. It will hold its hostage alive, and barter for what it cannot have. Strange and beautiful foods from all over the world. Let the negotiations begin.
The Lunaraptor not only acts chaotically, but intention cannot harm it. The aimed arrow, fireball or sword blow does nothing. It can seemingly only be harmed accidentally.
Veterans from the faerie wars, scarred, forgotten, with all their trauma and weapons intact
These monsters create scenarios, sessions… in some cases even campaigns. And just reading them sends my mind off into strange directions and dimensions. And that translates into a delicious weirdness to add to any home campaign. Try it. It’s different than every other Monster Manual I’ve ever read.
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