More Alien Landscapes

Every few months or so -- as I proved last year, I cannot be pinned to a precise schedule when it comes to updating my Web page -- I'll upload some of my photorealist art pieces to this page. I make these as notes for my own reference during my writing and sometimes pass them on to the publishers as sketches for their art departments when the book is complete. Images will include the aliens I'm working with in the current book, as well as spacecraft designs, equipment, and worlds.

This time, we have a panorama set on the world called Storm, the setting for a book just completed for Wizards of the Coast with the working title of Two of Minds.

Storm

Storm

Two of Minds is set in the early 26th century, in the Star*Drive universe of a new SF role-playing game from Wizards of the Coast. Storm is a somewhat Earth-like moon of the gas giant Salamanca in the region known as The Verge. Subject to severe tidal stresses, cyclic climactic variations, and the effects of plunging through the gas giant's hydrogen-plasma "tail" during each orbit, Storm is a study in meteorological extremes. The life there has adapted to local conditions.

The panorama shows "The Stone Ring," an artifact possibly raised by Storm's natives under the influence of an off-world intelligence. Also visible are several of the plant species native to Storm--the sail-like catcher plant, and a number of lightning-rod plants which store electrical energy from the air in organic underground batteries. The gas giant Salamanca is visible in the distance at left.


The illo above shows one of the more enigmatic artifacts on Storm, a glowing archway composed of thousands of rare fulgerite crystals, constructed over a period of centuries by the Storm natives, again under the influnce of an off-world intelligence. Somehow tapping the energy of the world of Storm itself, the archway proves to be a kind of gateway to . . . someplace else.

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