u/horoscopezine

Blisthrul (blís-trúl) — A winged, insectoid demon said to haunt the southeastern coast of the Island of Demons. Sailors speak of burning eyes in the fog and the sound of chitin scraping against stone before entire crews vanish without a trace.

Illustration created for the Shadowlords 3E TTRPG.

I spent the last few weeks painting a series of watercolor illustrations for A Queda de Udhum ("The Fall Of Udhum"), a Dark Fantasy tale set in the cursed Cidadela dos Demônios ("The Demons' Citadel").

Every piece was painted traditionally in watercolor and later used in a narrated Youtube video (I'm pretty sure Youtube auto-dubbed it into English).

Honestly, the project consumed a huge amount of my free time, i.e., late nights, ruined sketches, reworked compositions, paint stains everywhere, but seeing the final sequence come alive with narration and music made it completely worth it.

I wanted the paintings to feel like fragments of a lost chronicle recovered from a dying empire: cold stone walls, exhausted soldiers, demonic shadows, and the lingering sense that something ancient and terrible was awakening beneath the city.

Here are two of the illustrations from the project. I'd love to know which one captures the atmosphere better.

P.S. If there's interest, I can also share more paintings and talk a bit about the creative process behind the video and the setting itself.

Did a special Shadowlords 3E session in Nimir mixing traditional TTRPG and Solo Mode tools

The hexcrawl map is about A3 in size

The scroll feels heavier than it should.

Not because of its size, but because of what it might reveal.

Matriarch Mirtes of House Ostopolos presses it into the hands of three strangers:

Eryr, a blade-for-hire who trusts coin more than causes.

Ramir, a brigand whose painful past is better left buried.

Irul, a masked wanderer who asks too many questions and answers too few.

"I paid dearly for this", Mirtes says, her voice tight, controlled, almost breaking.

"Whatever happened to my son, this might be the only trace left."

By the time the trio steps into the streets, the city is already swallowed by moonlight. Tashar at night is a different creature: quiet, watchful, and full of things that prefer not to be seen.

Their destination looms in the distance:

The Temple Of Wisdom.

Ancient. Abandoned. Avoided.

Once a place of knowledge, now a husk of secrets and silence.

Somewhere within, they believe they'll find Bhur.

Or at least, an answer to his disappearance.

But the streets twist. The shadows stretch. And the path to the temple is anything but safe.

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I made a dungeon map for the Temple of Wisdom's crypt. Expect collapsing tight corridors, forgotten chambers with secret passages, and things that shouldn't still be alive.

Would love feedback, ideas, or how you would run this scenario at your table.