Brambleroot Cleaver & The Dranik (Collaboration with Ori the Cartographer & Ivan Duch) (Patreon)

Greetings everyone!

This is a very exciting release indeed. We’re so happy to bring you something that we’ve been working hard on this month in the form of an encounter pack for the feared Dranik.  We were lucky enough to work with the wonderful Ori the Cartographer and Ivan Duch to put together this pack for you all and I couldn’t be happier with the result. . I recommend you check both of them out. Ori's map will be added later to this post, but we wanted to make sure to get the release out in time for you all! 

Ivan Duch is a fantasy nerd and as a composer he dedicates his waking hours to write, produce, and record fantasy music for the tabletop community.

Learn more about his work and his fantasy music library at

https://patreon.com/ivanduch

https://ivanduch.com

https://open.spotify.com/artist/05ePZqCxPqNy7VZfDpwTgi?si=ynrX5V-_Q72ZkuYdekXbDA 

Our patrons get early access to all of these items as well as additional formats that are easily usable in both physical and online play. Additionally they get high-res art exports, easy to use text exports, behind the scenes updates, and a lot more.

If that strikes your fancy, consider becoming a Patron 

Design notes from Matthew:

Okay this one was a bit of a big boy from the start. I had the idea for a mythical cryptid that oversaw a pin forest. One of the very first things we keyed on in this collaboration was that we all had a love of the Witcher and wanted to create something that felt like it could belong in that universe. My thought of an ancient being that was both a creature of the woods and also vampiric just seemed to fit right into it.

The actual design of the monster was based on one of my favorite creatures, the Aboleth. I really loved a lot of what it had to offer and wanted to make something that felt like it could stand up to a party on its own in the same way an Aboleth can. I also want to give it the ability to stalk people and create a more cerebral encounter of some measure. I wanted to give it tools that could potentially put players on their back foot from the time they encountered it. The grasping roots was an early idea and something I really wanted to keep in. The idea of it pulling prey close in order to drain them is really emblematic of the type of encounter players should expect.

I also wanted to make sure it felt like the Dranik could be a part of the woods it was in, thus the interactions with trees, the ability to use the root network to identify people, and the ability to summon those roots into patches. My entire goal was to make it feel like the woods were part of the Dranik as much as the Dranik was part of the woods.

The axe, we had a concept for a logging camp pretty early in this collaboration. It made sense that we should go with perhaps a mundane item from that camp that was twisted by the Dranik’s magic.

One of my big problems with handaxes in 5E as a throwable is that they’re spent once you throw them. I know that’s part of the balance of a ranged attack, but I’ve always wanted the opportunity to have a character that just continually worked with throwables and that’s how the idea for the cleaver came about. Giving a throwable the property to return to the player, even at the cost of a bonus action, feels like a fun method of play.

Also who doesn’t love the idea of shoving around an enemy?

Illustration notes from Fernando:

This is our first group collaboration and it was really interesting and fun to work on it! Ori and Ivan are a dream team! Ivan’s music is phenomenal, the tracks he made for this project haven’t stopped blowing my mind since he sent them over.  Ori’s maps are both epic and gorgeous, and her art style pairs very well with mine.

The Dranik was the most challenging part of this assignment, I had an idea in my head but it just wasn’t working when put down on paper, it went through several iterations and concepts before we settled on that final one.  It has a very creepy feel and incorporates one element I always intended to include which is the evergreen growing from its body in order to blend seemingless with the forest.  Since it drains its subjects from their blood I gave it a mosquito-like proboscis but in the end I gave it a regular mouth as well so it looks more menacing so the proboscis ended up looking more like a nose.

The illustration for its portrait was also extremely challenging, I just couldn’t come up with an interesting angle for it, giving it an interesting composition was a massive struggle.  I ended up having to consult Tyler Edlin for composition ideas and as always he knocked it out of the park in 20 minutes.  He also made a speed painting in 20 minutes that had more character than anything I’ve done in the last 20 years, in fact, his abundant talent angered me to the point that it made me reconsider my whole workflow and thanks to his inspiration I have now cut down my art production time by more than half…who knew spite could be such a strong motivational feeling?! (Spite towards my lack of talent compared to his, not to him, Tyler is an absolute treasure and unbelievably generous to help out rookies like me!)

Once I was finished with the portrait I had to redo the Dranik token from scratch, my entry point into TTRPGs was painting and selling tokens on Roll20 so there’s a happy feeling of familiarity and “homecoming” when I do a token for AB now.  I’m also glad I had to redo it because the 2nd version was more dynamic and interesting than the first anyway.

The axe was a lot easier to do, maybe because we’ve been doing items for a while and creatures are a relatively new frontier but I didn’t even do concepts for it; I pretty much just drew what Matt and I had briefly discussed and we were both happy with the result.  Nailed it in one! I love the art for the cleaver, but holy crap Matt outdid himself with the mechanics! I LOVE the return mechanic, and I’m going to be bugging Matt to include it with basically every weapon we make now.  MJOLNIR ALL THE THINGS! Hey Billy, get back here!

We’re really proud of this release and I hope you enjoy it as well. A lot of work went into it on the part of all of the folks involved and I couldn’t be happier with the fact that we were able to put together something that feels very cohesive and complete. Our next item will be another collab with the wonderful folks at Questiary. We can’t wait to share it and the creature that goes with it with you.

We highly encourage you to join our Discord server where you’ll get access to exclusive channels that have sneak peeks, behind the scenes chatter, and more.

Rewards for Patrons!

Kraken's Kohorts ($3 tier)

Kraken's Kompanions ($6 tier)

Kraken's Kollaborators ($10 Tier)

We’re ROOTing for you!

- Fernando & Matthew