Cthulhu in Ebony

Samudra Art brings us this Cthulhu figurine hand-carved from ebony.  I would lose my mind trying to do something this delicate.

 

 

Quick and Dirty Dossiers

The novelty site PhotoFunia has a pretty nifty "Spy Dossier" generator.  Fill in the blanks, upload a photo, and you can download a great handout for a character or NPC.

 

 

The Sunsword

Akoloutheo77 brings us this recreation of the Sunsword from the "Curse of Strahd" Dungeons and Dragons campaign.  He downloaded the basic form from Thingiverse (I think he used this model from screenowl), tweaked the shape and added more details, printed it out in a combination of PLA and resin, then finished it off with paint and a pair of inset faux gems.

 

The Devil's Dowry

This over-the-top handout for a tabletop Dungeons and Dragons game comes to us from professional graphic designer Stormageadon.  A fantastic piece of work, both in the aesthetic and plot-supporting sense.

 

I was asked to design a libretto to accompany a theater heist that's happening in Waterdeep in my girlfriend's campaign. 

I styled it off of late 19th century showbills, borrowing the art of the devil from a 1930s pulp novel. It was built entirely in Photoshop, in my experience in graphic design, finding a good font is 80% of the battle and I relied heavily on Hermann Ihlenburg’s typefaces for inspiration. 

One of the biggest challenges with designing something like this is that a lot of the very fun and engaging titles were all drawn by hand, which meant me doing a similar thing, drawing everything with Sharpie and scanning it and then tweaking it to make it look more contemporary. All in all, this is the result of about five and a half hours of work, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

 

 

 

Great Cthulhu

I'm normally not a fan of Cthulhu toys, but this idol from Altar Toys is an exception.  Despite the color scheme (and it's available in even more finishes best described as "eye-catching"), I really like the sculpt. 

 

 

Shaman's Belt

Ordacraft of Brutal Workshop returns to our pages with this WIP shaman's belt.  I love the wonderful blend of textures between the soft textile elements and the bones and teeth.

 

 

Carved Cthulhu

This carved wooden Cthulhu idol comes to us from Ukrainian artist Luna Wood Workshop.  It's rare indeed that we get an idol that doesn't have a stone or metal finish.  Ones made from actual wood are few and far between.

 

 

Traveller Campaign Medals

Chris Heisman is getting ready to wrap up his current Traveller campaign, and he's doing it in style.  Each of the players will be getting one of these custom-made "Grand Star of the Directorate" medals.  It's a brilliant idea, and the kind of prop that players will remember for years. 

 

Cthulhu in Stone

This is pretty cool.  Yaox Tribal Arts brings us their take on Cthulhu, hand-carved from chalk. 

 

 

Grimoire of Cthulhu

Master tomecrafter MilleCuirs returns to our pages with this Grimoire of Cthulhu.  I love the custom embossment design.

 

Cthulhu in Copper

Artist Michael Broom brings us this nicely done Cthulhu idol in a patinated copper finish.

 

The Margate Mystery

Oh, my.  What strange and mysterious creature could have washed up on shore in Kent?

Beachgoers have found a "strange skeleton-like" figure which washed up on the shore at a British beach and left them puzzled over what it could be.

Paula Regan stumbled across the eerie object while enjoying a seaside walk with her husband Dave in Margate, Kent, on Monday, March 10, and a crowd gathered to look at it. Photos show what looks like a skeleton and mermaid hybrid, partially buried in sand and surrounded by seaweed- with a skeletal head and tail-like structure.

Followers of the blog will immediately recognize the creature as a traditional sideshow-style Fiji Mermaid.  It's hard not to congratulate the Regans for a hoax well played, but I really wish the reporter hadn't played along quite so enthusiastically.

 

 

Worshipper of Dagon

Richard Svensson is a dedicated amateur filmmaker who specializes in hand-animated fantasy.  Over the years he's produced dozens of short films, including a number of Mythos-inspired works.  He created this puppet to appear as the creature at the climax of his adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's "Dagon".  It's a fantastic sculpt, built using techniques that Ray Harryhausen would be familiar with.  Click through the link for a detailed look at the film, and the puppet's construction.

 

Cthulhu Fhtagn! Welch Edition.

Sculptor Luke Welch brings us his take on the traditional Cthulhu idol, heavily influenced by Lovecraft's own sketch.

 

Double Bracers

These beautiful Aragorn-inspired leather bracers come to us from Outcast Props.  What makes them unusual, other than the level of craftsmanship, is that a gambeson-style bracer nests inside the ornate outer armor.  Click through to see a full gallery, including some cool color variants.

 

Ebonized Wand

McCormick Wands returns to our pages with this wonderful tableau featuring one of their ebonized master wand designs.

 

Like a Hole in the Head

Spooky Jack returns to our pages with a pair of prop skulls bearing the distinctive signs of trepanation.  The practice is surprisingly ancient, with skulls dating back almost ten thousand years showing signs of the procedure.  Even more amazing, we have hundreds of examples with new bone growth around the excised area.  The patient not only survived the operation, but lived long enough for the years-long process of healing.

 

Death Maggot

The talented Patrick Magee returns to our pages with this delightfully awful death maggot.  Click through to see the full video posted on Instagram.

 

Beethoven Letterlock

Letterlocking Videos brings us this recreation of the pentagonal folding technique Ludwig van Beethoven used in as 1814 letter to Johann Rupprecht.  If you're not familiar with letterlocking, it was the technique used to keep correspondence private before the widespread adoption of postal envelopes.  It's a great way to kick up the immersiveness of any pre-modern era written messages.

Reliquary

The gifted Ugo Serrano returns to our pages with this ornate reliquary.  The chasse was made with an off the shelf wooden niche that was leafed in real gold and then flame aged.

 

 

Lord of the Forge

Slagovir returns to our pages with another idol for the gods of old.  This time it's Svarog, the Slavic deity of fire and blacksmithing.  

Handout Help

Check out this video from the appropriately named Eldritch Tabletop.  On the surface, it's a look at his system for creating "Call of Cthulhu" tabletop handouts using Canva, ChatGPT, and AI generated art.  The rundown of how to use the template system in Canva for creating documents from faux newspaper articles to letters is worth a look by itself, but he also touches on some of the issues with AI use.

Personally, I think generated text and art is an incredibly valuable tool for individuals.  I've previously raved about the imagery from Midjourney.  With the proper prompts you can quickly generate some impressive artwork for all sorts of handouts.  What I'm definitely not crazy about is the massive proliferation of AI generated slop.  There was a time, and it wasn't that long ago, that you could ask a search engine for "cthulhu idol" images and see the latest sculpts posted to the internet.  Now?  Those works are buried under a tidal wave of AI images.

It's an issue that hits close to home for me, since it's become increasingly difficult to find work I want to feature here on Propnomicon.  Things were just about perfect right before COVID hit.  Now the rising tide of visual noise and the intentional de-optimization of Google makes actually discovering new things an order of magnitude more difficult. 

Unicorn Horn

I love fantasy specimens, and this unicorn horn from Burned Raven Tales is right up my ally.  The subtle pearlescent finish is perfect.

 

Celtic LARP Spear

Sander Propworx returns to our pages with another one of their amazing foam LARP weapons.  This time it's a full-sized Celtic-themed spear.

 

 

A Light Shining in Darkness

Fallout: New Vegas is the greatest video game of all time thanks, in no small part, to the incredible worldbuilding.  That includes the detailed backstory for Joshua Graham, a one-time monster seeking redemption for his evil deeds.  His character arc is deeply dependent on being Mormon.  That extends to his signature weapon "A Light Shining in Darkness".  

"l1b3rtypr1m3" brings us his recreation of the gun, a custom .45 M1911 featuring snakeskin grips and engraved with the biblical passage John 1:5 ("The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it") in Greek.

 

 

Little Devil

Spooky Jack returns to our pages with this creepy little horned fetal skull.

 

Waterdeep Receipt

Stormageadon's girlfriend tasked him with creating handouts for her Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

It’s difficult to figure out what exactly the visual style of a city like Waterdeep would be. I know fantasy tends to live in the 16th century or so, but I figure mass printing is already out and about so I based most of my work off of 19th century invoices. Please let me know if you think this fits the vibe of Waterdeep or how I can improve the next handouts. 

The longest part of the project was just getting fonts to look right. Next up is a few leaflets for some kind of opera and some posters for a sea maiden’s festival. 

It was about five hours of meticulous work on Photoshop, and then printing it in high fidelity on handmade paper. 

He's on-target with his design process.  Faerun, and Waterdeep in particular, has canonically had printing press technology since the setting was first published.   At the same time, you can still find professional scribes copying tomes by hand.  That's the legacy of a world shaped by the need to give gamemasters a place where they could set any kind of adventure.

The only thing I'm not crazy about is the deckled edge.  That's the hallmark of hand-laid, uncut paper, an artisan product.  Good for correspondence, but not the best fit for a pre-printed receipt.  

 

 

Great Cthulhu

Incredible depiction of Cthulhu and his minions from artist Vague Sadan.  Click through to see a complete gallery of pictures highlighting the amazing level of detail.

 

 

Dagon

This WIP look at an intriguing idol of Dagon comes to us from artist Jason Pfeifer.

 

 

 

Mummified Fairy Specimens

Umbratheca returns to our pages with this collection of mummified fairy specimens.  I really like their sculpting on these.  Most of the mounted fairies for sale these days are repurposed novelty toy skeletons.  Nothing wrong with that, but they look like...repurposed novelty toy skeletons.

 

The Wendigo

We've featured Wendigo masks before, but the latest from Francesco Sanseverino is easily one of the creepiest.  There's just so much wrong here, from the antlers jutting out from the eye sockets to the exposed rictus.

 

 

Daedric Dagger

This excellent recreation of the daedric dagger from Skyrim comes to us from Metal Made Crafts.  3D printed in resin and then hand painted.

 

 

Tools of the Trade

I just love this kind of stuff.  Slooth849 brings us a collection of props from their tabletop Dungeons and Dragons game.  The only thing I'm not crazy about is the futuristic grenade, which apparently is used by an artificer character.  

 

Not So Lucky Leprechaun

Caleb Volek of Outcast Props returns to our pages with this preserved leprechaun head.  Just the thing for that special someone on St. Patrick's Day.

 

Skull of the Third Eye

Another impressive piece from sculptor Ebrahel Lurci.  The skull adorned with the third eye is available in a variety of finishes.

 

Cthulhu in Ivory

This faux ivory Cthulhu idol comes to us from the talented Alberto Camargo.

 

Fallout: New Vegas Rose of Sharon Cassidy Necklace

Chris of "l1b3rtypr1m3" is a huge fan of the Fallout franchise, in particular Fallout: New Vegas.  Over the years he's amassed what's probably the largest collection of props based on the games, many of them crafted by his own hand.  His latest piece is one of those wonderfully obscure video game items I love- the necklace worn by "Whiskey" Rose of Sharon Cassidy.