The Best Dungeon Crawler That Never Existed and some news
Sleepdrifter's Newsletter #6 📜
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Deep forests, giant mountains & weird dungeons. I speak about TTRPGs, video games, music and what I like.
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Summary
☠️The Best Dungeon Crawler That Never Existed
🧙🏼♂️What I’m Up To
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy
☠️The Best Dungeon Crawler That Never Existed
Coldness...
Emptiness...
Silence... dissolves....
A whisper... a murmur that grows louder... sounds of the world... songs chanted by the wind, the mountains, the living, and the dead.
This text came as an intro for a special tape I received this week: Vermis - Sounds Of The World - Vol.1 // Melodies Of The Unknown by Radagast.
When you receive a package from Hollow Press you know it’ll be good stuff. This one is no exception. Even more so, if you are familiar with Dungeon Synth label Heimat Der Katastrophe (HDK) you know this will be a well-made tape. So having a combination of the two is probably the best crossover you can get for a special eerie project.
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| Plastiboo’s Vermis I & II and Radagast’s tape |
Vermis - Sound Of The World by Radagast (Josua Karlson) is a special kind of Dungeon Synth, with an eerie vibe, yet beautiful textures added on top of a well made Fantasy Ambient.
I love how you can feel some hope in the dark padded sound, given by some beautiful synth melody.
Joshua Karlson is truly a great Ambient composer. I was already in love with his short music video on Instagram, where he plays live synth music with the book he is inspired by at his side.. I wasn’t surprised but very happy that he came with a Vermis soundtrack.
It was created as an audio illustration of the amazing Vermis I by Plastiboo.
If you are not already familiar with Plastiboo’s works, expect grim artwork, haunted words and eerie worlds.
Vermis is his most known work and it’s a special series of books (2 volumes at the moment) that came as “A pure act of world-building inspired by old dungeon crawler games.
It could be considered an official guide of a game that doesn't exist, since it's not a game at all!”
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| One of Plastiboo’s Vermis I illustration The Stench Champion @Hollow Press |
Vermis makes you choose a character with special weird abilities, encounter unsettling creatures, delve into grotesque ruins and visit the most gloomy places you can think of.
And, oh boy, the arts are amazing! They get this crunchy noisy feel, like an old scan of a book full of weird CRT screenshots displaying the most gruesome thing you ever saw.
It’s one of the most inspiring books I ever read, as a video game enthusiast and as a TTRPG one. Imagine being lost in some Dark Souls game with a more eerie and grotesque vibe.
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| One of Plastiboo’s Vermis I illustration A Corpse Beside A Well @Hollow Press |
As you can get a lot of ideas reading those books, there’s a whole scene of people blending Vermis stuff into their own video game and TTRPG now.
Doing minis inspired by its lore and playing Mörk Borg campaign out of it.
There’s also a whole OSR / Mörk Borg campaign book with Plastiboo’s artwork (among other amazing artists), called Ungodz, proof that the two projects share a lot of similar vibes.
Truly a masterpiece!
You can find all Plastiboo products here, and they are often re-printed.
Which flesh is your flesh?
🧙🏼♂️What I’m Up To
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| Our homemade bonfire |
As I was saying in my last newsletter, I'm on holiday for 2 weeks and I have been very very busy with housework and home improvements and that's leaving me pretty tired with no time to play and create at all 😕
That’s why this week’s newsletter is so short.
Expect something a bit longer next week, as we are going to a live show tonight then we are going to visit an awesome castle on Sunday 😛
But at least, we have a very cool bonfire at home now, to rest, heal our souls and to burn things.
We made it with some concrete at the bottom for security reasons and we covered the whole thing with stones that came from a very old wall we got in our garden (probably 19th-century stones), which is now crumbling. But don’t worry, a good part of the wall is still here 😉
This Saturday, with my brothers, we showed our father a video we made for his retirement party. It was a blend of comic stuff inspired by some french humorist, funny green screen scenes and more.
We took one month and a half to make it, that’s why I paused my Youtube’s video creation.
He was more than happy, and the whole crowd was laughing (then crying because of some “We love you” stuff at the end) 😛
Otherwise, I’m still reading Conan at a slow rate, when I get the time before going to bed. I love how the fighting scenes are written, it’s so easy to understand what exactly happened during the fight, each movement, every little detail.
The whole book is very well written with an amazing Sword & Fantasy vibe (well, yeah, it’s Conan after all). On top of that, my edition came with some stunning artwork by Mark Schultz!
That’s it for this week!
Let me know if you enjoyed this article, if you played/read/watch any of the stuff I mentioned this week 😀
See you next Friday!
Cheers !
Sleepdrifter
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