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Thursday, June 14, 2018

Skull Mountain Variant by Darlene



At North Texas RPG Con last weekend I had the pleasure of meeting Darlene, an artist for TSR who did the original World of Greyhawk maps in the 1983 boxed set. I asked her to sign my original copy of the WoG Glossography, one of the books from the set. I picked this because part of her beautiful map is shown on the cover, but she relayed that she had also designed the graphics. She stared at title page for a few seconds, remembering her work.

In addition I bought a copy of her 1982 card game, Jasmine: The Battle for the Mid-Realm, which you can see here on BGG. On the bottom side of the clear box for the game I spied a Skull Mountain-esque picture I'd never seen before on one of the cards. See above.

Darlene has a page about Idshoii on her blog, which verifies that it's not just a castle, but a carving at the top of a mountain:

"Ildshoii Castle, carved from shiny black obsidian rock, rose high above a crown of volcanos. The dark castle was the domain of Melantha, the ruler of Medrylthorn ..."

Update: Here is Darlene's own intro page for the game:

JASMINE: The Battle for the Mid-Realm Collector Card Game


5 comments:

  1. So is this Skull Mountain placed in what is now called Perrenland?

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  2. Or is the Mid-Realm another world different from Oerth, Middle-Earth, The Realm, etc.?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I believe it is Darlene's own creation. It was the setting for her comic strip that ran in Dragon magazine for one year starting with issue #37. I've added a link to an intro page by Darlene above.

      Delete
  3. It's awesome that you posted this. Don't forget that Darlene was also one of the illustrators for the 1st Edition AD&D DM's Guide. When you open the book the first illustration is a unicorn that she did, for example.

    ReplyDelete