The initial pass of editing is complete, and I'm happy to release all 336 pages of the newest draft, codenamed JADE IBIS, to you today. Click here to download this latest version.
What's New?
Even though I said we were text complete last time, we do have a few new additions to the draft that I'd be remiss if I failed to mention them. They are:
The contents page. We now have a contents page. The page numbers are yet to be instituted though (more on this below).
The Equipment page (p.33) now has instructions! No more players generating their gear wrong, I hope.
The Referee's Toolkit now has an introduction (p.81). Hopefully this helps would-be referees get oriented a bit easier in the text.
The Vault Creation chapter now boasts some expanded room details, including room shapes and floor types. It also has some new Hallway Obstacles (p.112).
The Settlements chapter now includes expanded settlement creation at the map level, including 12 new d20 tables of buildings (p.139-140). This has diversified settlement creation a lot and has been really fun to use so far.
The Region Generation chapter now has completed Place Names (p.165).
The Monster Generator now has instructions for use (p.223).
The Influences Appendix is now complete (p.321), with some thoughts about the most influential works of art and literature that helped me create Vaarn.
We have several Indexes although the main proper Index is yet to be compiled. (p331 onwards).
What's Changed?
There have been innumerable changes and fixes thanks to Christian's editing pen. Honestly there are too many to exhaustively list, but I want to highlight a few of the main fixes.
Moved the Armour Bonus optional rule from Character Creation to the main Rules text.
Combat Rules now contain definitions of Blind and Entangled conditions.
Faa Nomad PCs now have altered special rules. Their worm summoning rule has been reworded and clarified.
Replaced the 'Strange Hued Eyes/skin/Hair' mutations with more impactful results.
Altered and clarified several Bloomboons.
Poisons now properly explain their effects.
Several Major Factions have had their missing faction text added, and reputation tables updated.
Disease Virulence is now measured differently, to make the Saves required more readable.
What's Next?
Christian is now going to run through the text a second time, after which we will begin the long and tedious job of cross-referencing, indexing, and hyperlinking the PDF. All of this will make the book significantly more usable and easy to reference, we hope.
If you run into any errors, mistakes, unclear language, or similar while reading the JADE IBIS draft, please hit the tipline. Either post about it on our Discord Server or email me directly at graculusdroog (a t ) gmail dot com and include JADE IBIS in the subject line. I may not respond to all these messages directly but I will add your comments to the master list for action.
When Will 1.0 Be Released?
The next document made public will be the completed 1.0 release, which may be a few months away. Those of you with calendar-savvy minds may have noticed that we are now only two weeks away from October 2026, which was the original estimated release date. I'm sorry to say that this is now impossible. I still have more than 70 pieces of artwork to complete, and I need to finish the layout (some pages are still rougher than others).
I'm now eyeing January 2027 as the date to get the files to the printers, after which I will be able to give a clearer timeline of printing and shipping your books and add ons. I do apologise for the delays, but I'm dedicated to making this project as good as it can possibly be. With the text locked in and edits underway, I can now focus all of my time and energy on getting the artwork finished and into the book. Thank you all for your continued support, more updates soon!
Greetings all, hope everyone's having a lovely summer. Another art update today to show off some of the new illustrations and talk about where we're at with the overall project.
Colossus
This was one of the hardest designs to get right so far, as you can see from the number of sketches. The problem here was I wanted a really specific look and feel, not just generic mech robot. There are uncountable mecha designs out there and I rarely like them. The Colossi's description states that it is in the image of a warrior saint, so I wanted to explore what that could mean. Various attempts at a mech in bronze age armour ensued.
None of this was quite working until I turned to the Colossus of Nero, a demolished statue that once stood in front of Rome's coliseum. Making the Colossus lither and less bulky fit with my image of the construct as a sacred being as well as a war machine.
The final design is a combination of the Colossus of Nero and Robot Maria from Metropolis. I enjoy how eerie this ended up being, a lot less brutal and heavy than the original concepts but no less dangerous.
Wind Barge
Vaarn's Wind Barges are a direct homage to the Sky Ships from the Edge Chronicles, memorably illustrated by Chris Riddell. In this instance the task was not to design from scratch but rather explore the outlines of my homage to Chris's awesome designs.
As you can see, the final design doesn't stray very far from the Chris Riddell vision. The Edge Chronicles were a huge series for me as a young lad and I really wanted to pay tribute in Vaarn 2E.
Touring Orb
Another design that didn't require lots of exploratory work, as the vehicle is a tribute to another artist - in this case the great Moebius. The master included many variants of these spherical glass craft in his art over the decades, most notably in the Edena series. The Vaarn version is four seater to accommodate whole families, but aside from that small change this design is a tribute act.
Vimana
The Vimana is a hyper-powerful crystalline throne, which once conveyed the Autarchs of Urth from place to place. This is a high level vehicle, and I went through a few different concepts. The look that won out was a peacock-tail inspired design, which I felt conveyed the majesty and vanity the Autarchs were capable of.
Editing Progress
I am please to report that Christian has finished the initial edit of the manuscript. I am currently engaged with reviewing his suggested changes, after which I will finalise the page layout and we will being indexing and bookmarking the text for ease of use. I anticipate this will take another month or so.
When I have finished reviewing the suggested changes, I will release a new working draft for backers, likely at the end of this month or early September. This will probably be the final working draft before we lock in for printing. I will open a channel for typo hunting at this stage so look out for that soon.
work on the illustrations continues apace. I'm feeling a lot more confident in my abilities again and the number of false starts and sketches required before each final piece has decreased. I'll take you through the design process for each.
Destrier
Destriers are creatures from Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, steeds which we at first assume to be analogous to warhorses (New Sun forces a lot of gap-filling on the part of the reader). In the fourth volume we meet some Destriers up close and it becomes clear that these are not the animals we assumed them to be(they're described as having spiked feet and fangs, and can run at speeds exceeding 100mph).
I am very fond of this aspect of the book, and wanted Vaarn to have its own destriers. Given the extreme overland speeds they're capable of, I felt that a traditional horse body wasn't suitable, and looked instead at greyhounds and cheetahs for the general body shape. Destriers are bred and trained exclusively for military use, so I knew I would draw one in full armour.
As with many things in Vaarn, I wanted to mix antiquity with the far future, so I looked at horse armour both historically and in modern times, especially riot armour designed for horses and police dogs. The destriers are going to be charging directly at artillery emplacements and gunmen, using their speed to close the gap and inflict devastating losses. I assumed they need blast and shock protection, so the final drawing has a mixture of plated and quilted armour (before anyone asks, these are far-future materials that offer considerably greater protection from bullets than contemporary fabrics). The helmet features closable eye-blinkers, as the destrier does not need to use its visual senses once a charge has been engaged.
Skunkey
In contrast to the Destrier, a rather silly creature. I drew exactly one sketch which is maybe the most perfect drawing committed to paper. The final piece doesn't quite live up to that brilliant expression.
Mycomastiff
An undead dog, reanimated by mycomorphic fungus. I quite enjoy that the 'pets' you can recruit are still mostly quite creepy and could easily be monsters instead.
It's pretty difficult to escape the shadow of The Last of Us when drawing these fungal creatures so I didn't really try.
Synthhound
When it comes to Vaarn's synths, I really want them to seem almost alive rather than tin-can robots, but equally they're uncanny and in no way mistakable for flesh and blood people or animals. I ended up going for a greyhound-esque silhouette again, then abstracting the shape by subtracting areas where organs and tendons would usually reside. I added some logos and graphics to suggest manufacturer's marks, inspired by the art of Bungie's Marathon.
Glue Worm
Last but not least, the humble Glue Worm. These critters are smaller relatives of the large predatory Leopard Worms and Amaranthine Death-Worms. I looked at deep-sea invertebrates for this one. They're often quite 'hairy' for lack of a better term, which I used for this design. I would sleep soundly knowing this handsome fella is on guard duty.
Hello wanderers, thought I'd take a moment to update you on progress with the artwork. We now have some finished pieces to discuss, so I'll take you through concept work and then show the final inks for each.
I decided to start with the steeds section, for no other reason than I felt like drawing some animals.
Zorse
You have actually seen these sketches last month, but they're relevant to this creature so I'm sharing them again. Zorses are the dominant equine strain still surviving on Urth. Since most of Vaarn's animals have gone through some process of gene-sculpting, I want them to look familiar but not quite what you'd see outside your window. The Zorse is obviously derived from zebras, but I didn't want to just draw a zebra and call it good. My initial sketches here are of okapis, a relative of the giraffe which boast a similar stripe pattern to zebras on their rumps.
The final piece ended up being more zebra-like again. I didn't actually end up doing lots of preliminary drawings for this one, I just went for it. The patterning is based on a quagga, an extinct subspecies of zebra that was hunted to extinction in the 1900s. I just think they're neat!
Regarding genetic modification, note the long tongue that can feed on insect protein and the running spikes instead of hooves, something Zorses share with the Destrier (on which more in a later update).
Stridingfool
Stridingfools seem completely logical to me in context of the wider Vaarn setting but present some unique challenges in portraying. They are human-derived burden beasts, lacking sapience but having grown much stronger. Vaarn features many creatures that have gained human-like sapience, so it feels appropriate to also feature some post-human creatures that have moved the other way. Dougal Dixon's Man After Man and the truly grotesque creatures in All Tomorrows cover this territory in more depth. I did some initial explorations that I wasn't entirely happy with. The figure on the left is clearly gorilla-derived, but I ended up feeling that 'gorilla' wasn't really the vibe I wanted here, as it doesn't really give the unnverving impression of a human form twisted back into something it isn't meant to be. Gorillas are after all meant to be themselves! Walking on all fours isn't uncomfortable for them.
The right hand sketch shows an upright posture, but I wasn't super happy with this either. It looks too generically ogre-ish. I think you could explore this one further by making his back more shelf-like and contorted, but I needed another source of reference.
My partner suggested a truly quadrupedal pose, as it's really unnatural and uncomfortable for humans to walk this way. I ended up looking at some stills of Ayla Kirstine, a Norwegian woman who for reasons known only to her has learned to walk and run like a horse. The footage is deeply uncomfortable to watch but provided some great references, as you can see above.
I refined the look further, moving away from a lithe female form to something even more primal - a kind of hairless quasi-neonate morphology. The rounded head and staring wide eyes speak of vulnerability while the hairless muscular body communicates the opposite. The final piece was hard to settle on, but I'm pleased with the effect. A truly upsetting creation. If your friends aren't sure if Vaarn is for them, show them this picture and only this picture.
Burden Bird
Bird steeds have been a science fantasy mainstay for decades, presumably based on the horseclaws from Nausicaa. Accordingly I did very few sketches for the Burden Bird, as the basic design work was already done for me. I did consider a Terror Bird-like profile, as you can see bottom right, but it looks too predatory and aggressive. I wanted these guys to seem more docile. The final piece came together pretty easily. I'm finding my stride again with the illustrations and looking forward to showing you more in a few weeks time.
Hello wanderers, hope you're all enjoying some summer weather wherever on Urth you are! Just a little community plug, I'm hosting a game jam over the summer on itch.io.
The returning Vaarn Summer Jam is a non-ranked game jam, where entrants are invited to contribute submissions relating to Vaults of Vaarn, and science-fantasy roleplaying games in general.
Entries can be adventures, maps, artefacts, NPCs, art packs, or anything else you can dream up. I have a very loose content policy but please don't submit stuff that has no relation whatsoever to science-fantasy. I would like all entries to be conceptually compatible with Vaults of Vaarn, even if they're not actually written for the setting or system. To see last year's submissions click here.
All Vaults of Vaarn material presented in the original three zines and the drafts of the Second Edition rulebook are covered by a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution license, and you are free to use it however you want in your submissions to this jam or other projects. The artwork and adventure locations I produced for the Deluxe Edition are copyright to Games Omnivorous and can't be reused.
