Ekphrastic Beasts

Ekphrastic writing is vivid, often dramatic description of visual art. A compendium of stunningly illustrated creatures, spirits, and demons which have never seen the light of day or dark of dungeon before!

The project is an illustrated bestiary for 5e, which—rather than revisit known fantasy tropes—begins with four established illustrators each creating 10 striking, startling, original artworks straight from the abyssal depths of the subconscious. Each piece is then given to the author to reverse engineer creature names, back-stories, and stats for them all!

When not sitting at a table, ravenously devouring junk food with your friends and rolling polyhedral die to determine heroic successes or tragic failures, some of the most fun we had growing up with RPGs was browsing the fantastic compendiums of monsters which provided the countless deadly antagonists for our dungeon crawls and other-planar encounters. These phantasmagoria of fiends, ghosts, fae folk, and mythic figures fed our imaginations while the accompanying illustrations—sometimes crude and sometimes masterful—brought them vividly to life.

Decades later, we still love to browse these volumes and it's clear that all those years of monster immersion have shaped (or, twisted) our creative identities as artists. Now we're ready to call forth new monsters from the fertile grounds of our imagination—using the artistic talents we've cultivated over the years to share them with you. But this time, instead of illustrating the monsters we are monsterizing the illustrations!  

The result: a compendium of stunningly illustrated creatures, spirits, and demons which have never seen the light of day or dark of dungeon before!

Written by Janaka Stucky, with illustrations by Jeremy Hush, Joe Keinberger, Ellie Livingston, Nathan Reidt, Arik Roper, and Skinner.

148 pages, 8.5"x11", hardcover book, smythe sewn bound, wrapped in black linen with gold foil stamping, full color on premium 80lb gloss paper. PDF not included.