wargames

Occasionally as we build out the Salt Mystic universe, some spooky new threats pop into existence that surprise even us. Right now, I’m 23k words into a standalone novel set in this world that will shake it like an earthquake, introducing new weaponry and technology, several exciting new locations, and a host of new terrors!

Enter the Day Giant.

If you’re new here, let me back up a bit. The Salt Mystic setting is an experiment in immersive storytelling that fuses art, fiction, and games into a unique and thrilling experience. Right now, it’s a novel that introduces the main narrative, a terrain-based trading card wargame that expands and breathes life into that narrative, a growing line of branded merchandise (including our first art print!) and freely downloadable illustrated flash fiction called Lore Cards.

Click the wings to learn more:

We’ve been hard at work dropping new Lore Cards over the past few weeks, so make sure you stop by every once in a while to see what’s new. The Story Arcade is what we call the repository of cards, and it’s a place to get inspired for your own games of Salt Mystic or to fuel elements in the Roleplaying Game system of your choice.

Click the medallion to see all the current Lore Cards:

Although Salt Mystic is at heart a western-inspired science fiction setting, with a theme of exploring lost and hidden worlds, I feel like no adventure stories are complete without a terror that sticks in your mind and creeps around there. In the Work In Progress novel, to be called Mazewater: Master Of Airships, you’ll be introduced to a scrappy, gangly fellow named Lamberghast Mazewater, who faces such a threat with a quivering voice, a shaking hand, and armed with only his big heart. More to come on that as it develops.

The artwork

The art for the new Lore Card was produced combining elements from two AI art generators, then painting over them and completing the composition and adjustments in Photoshop. This approach is a real game changer for small indie publishing companies like us! Sometimes, the image comes first and then the story. It was the reverse this time – I knew the giant’s general appearance and that I wanted a gunslinger facing off with him. That’s all I knew though.

The giant: It took many, many iterations with Codeway’s Wonder app using text prompts like “enormous thin giant in rags with oxygen mask and exoskeleton” till I got something vaguely like what I had in my head. The color was wrong, as was the perspective, the tone, and it had bits and bobs all over it that were unwanted. I cut it out, trimmed the odd bits, then altered the perspective so his top half was smaller.

The canyon: The canyon was another round of iterations, in both Stable Diffusion and Wonder, till I got a mashup composition of rocks and lighting that generally gave me something to trigger the eyes to see the giant as huge. I wanted light coming from behind it, so I juiced that with a Color Dodge and soft brush.

The gunslinger: The gunslinger was a third round of iterations, in Wonder. The text prompts were things like “fantasy gunfighter in long coat holding his arm out”. This one had bits and bobs coming off it as well, and the coloring was terrible. He also had weird holes and discolorations all over him, which I had to correct.

The weapon: The ball lightning carbine is a long-standing custom item I use all the time. I built and textured it in Blender. This time, I cut out parts of it to show it partially concealed by his sleeve and brightened the barrel’s tip (with the Dodge tool) to show it glowing from the heat inside the barrel.

There’s a company called Nucly that offers various overlays for Photoshop – I included a ‘god ray’ overlay and morphed it to emit from the gunslinger’s weapon. That looked cool already, but something unanticipated happened once I started making adjustments.

The lighting: I superimposed a grunge texture over the entire image in Screen mode, which roughed up the look of it in a way I really liked. However, I noticed the Color Dodge blur coming from behind the giant as well as the charge firing out his weapon reacted with the grunge overlay for even cooler lighting effects than I’d planned. I really liked how that turned out, honestly.

Color grading: I tried various warming and cooling filters over the entire image, and tried adjusting its color grading to various images whose color schemes I liked. This warming filter (an evening sun shade of orange) won me over because of what it did to the canyon rock.

Here’s the final image, which will also eventually appear (in altered form) on an upcoming Volume Two game card next year (click on the image to see the Lore Card and read the associated story):

I hope you like the art and the story, guys. Let me know what you think! Till next time,

Salt Mystic is our signature property here at Grailrunner, a science fiction setting with a western flair that aspires to break your mind with its innovation and immersion. No modern politics or agenda, just intrigue, action, dialogue that pops, and crazy-cool technology, and at heart inspired by Frank Herbert’s Dune, Asimov’s Foundation series, and Stephen King’s Dark Tower books. Click the title banner below if you’re new to this and want to learn more:

First, a little history. You see there was this book…

The kickoff novel introducing the Salt Mystic universe is called Tearing Down The Statues, and was published in 2015.

This one goes for blood, diving straight into the heart of the rise of this generation’s guardian. Maybe. Hard to say. Anyway, it’s the core story around which much of the rest of all this is orbiting. I tell the tale of where this came from here if you’re interested.

…which led to a game…

We published a terrain-based trading card wargame in 2021 set in the Salt Mystic universe, both advancing the story and providing incredibly immersive ways of exploring it.

The Sourcebook And Core Rules is a one-stop shop with everything needed to play a basic game. Two complete battle decks (Karak: Hammer Of The Red Witch and Segmond: The Loreblade) were also made available, sold individually but collectively referred to as Volume One.

**…then the merch.**
We found people liked the iconic Skull & Carbines logo and slapped it on a laptop decal and coffee mug. The gunslinger logo is a new one, just added to a white t-shirt. A Canadian artist named David Paul concocted the basis for that image. We’re looking into custom gaming mats with narrative-based terrain printed on them. But anyway, that all started with the publication of the game.

Bringing it all to life!

And we’ve just gone live this past month with a place we call The Story Arcade, where you can download (for free) unique one-page pdf’s with original art and short fiction set in the Salt Mystic universe.

This is where you can dip into elements of the grand narrative, and get previews of locations and characters that will appear in upcoming novels and game elements.

And all that took an incredible amount of work. Exciting, life-changing, adrenalin-fueled work requiring new skills and unholy amounts of frustration, but we can handle it!

So what’s coming in Volume Two?

Ahhh, glad you asked. One question that comes up a lot is why aren’t there airplanes or spaceships in Salt Mystic. To be honest, keeping the action on the ground was a design decision back when I wrote the first novel, to keep the action tight and different.

But it’s time.

In the Story Arcade (lore card 008), you’ll meet a fellow named Lamberghast Mazewater.

Mazewater is the subject of an upcoming novel (I’m only three chapters in, give me a break!). He hails from a place called The Jagganatheum (lore card 006) and is known as ‘master of airships’. He’s a War Marshal, expert sniper, and telepathically commands a golem glider that circles overhead till he needs to take flight.

His card mechanics will entail airships only he or his designates can fly, as well as incredible speed and unpredictable movements. Mazewater is why we will have aerial dogfights in Salt Mystic games.

We also get asked about the Salt Mystic’s mysterious calculus of history, the weird runes and manipulation she used to predict events and harness the forces that drive people.

Shiloh Taprobane will appear in the upcoming Mazewater novel, but she’ll have her own Lore Card in the next couple of months. Shiloh has mastered the Salt Mystic’s calculus and the mystifying ways of the extinct order of The Malthus who could tear down nations with ideas.

Her card mechanics will involve secret pacts and corruptions of her opponent’s forces, driving unpredictability and madness on the battlefield. She’s why we will learn just how those rune manipulations work and what they can do.

Maybe the fan-favorite and most unique element in Salt Mystic is the system of oriel gateways to pockets of artificial space, built in the old Republic and so many abandoned. Behind those gates could be treasure or doom.

Born Ash Madra (see Lore Card 012), our final new War Marshal calls himself FireSermon. He’s the son of the devious and mysterious engineer that managed to pull of the most amazing stunt of his time and created the nation-state called The Seven Oriels. Many of those secrets went to the grave with him, but Ash knows a few tricks of his own with oriel gates.

His card mechanics will center around innovative use of Inflation Engines, Dirt Wraiths, and Wraithbusters.

And finally, a seemingly very popular request is to have characters that can play on multiple factions. So far in Volume One, there have been special faction icons on the character cards allowing their use only with their assigned War Marshal. But…

Auroch:

That’s Auroch in Lore Card 017, a wandering gunslinger and treasure hunter. He’ll appear in a game scenario for Volume One later this year. I particularly like him because he’s got an on-and-off romance going with one of my faves, a lady called The Wake who works for Karak on the Mountains faction. And because he talks to his rifle, and it talks back.

Madessa:

Madessa has appeared in a lot of our art, and in Lore Cards 001 and 013. She introduces herself as ‘surveyor and cartographer for the Reignition Society: sisters and brothers for the free and open mapping of the oriel webway’, right before stealing somebody’s maps or some coins to pay her way. She’s awesome because I love the idea of exploring all those oriel worlds where people have forgotten they live in an artificial world.

Grebel:

Grebel is a key character in Tearing Down The Statues and played a major role in events after The War Of The Rupture. He’s also a genius with guided tornadoes and ephemeral torpedoes, able to do things on the battlefield he shouldn’t be able to do. Honestly, when I wrote him, I had Morgan Freeman’s face and voice in mind, but we can’t afford him so the imagery we went with will have to do.

And that’s the roundup!

This preview article has to be just a teaser because of how much work is left to do. If you’re a freelance artist and interested in commissions, reply here with a link to your work. Not a lot of the guys we’re contacting are responding, so we’re doing a lot of the art in-house, which is slow.

I hope you enjoyed the peeks and appreciate the direction we’re going in. It’s super exciting to help build this world out and tell incredible stories both in art and print, and to immerse into them on a gaming table.

Let us know what you think. Till next time.

Dreams are engines. Be fuel.