This guy is a Russian painter who draws paintings of how he believes ancient Russia really was, with tame mammoths, bears, and Atlantean ships, among many other things.
youtube.com
I am not sure whether he is pitching this all unironically, but the paintings he does are awesome. I want to play a campaign in a setting based around them.
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I've seen many of these paintings before, but I didn't know the artist. Good thread idea OP.
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Thanks man.
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monitoring, enjoying, not contributing.
prolly gonna turn that jungle ship into an encounter someday.
Anyway, I guess that's enough for now. I think Russian and Slavic mythology and fairy tale often gets overlooked, despite how unique and weird it is. The best setting for a genuine Russian fantasy I know of is Mythic Russia, which is pretty good, but it stays more in the realm of low fantasy than epic or high fantasy.
I'll come back and post more pictures tomorrow if the thread is still here.
Whats the deal with the animal trees? Like, the scorpion tree, and those purple arms, and the snake head? Is this some Russian mythology thing or is the artist just a loony?
Well the only thing I can remember is about Slavic shamans doing backflips after stabbing oak trees to shapeshift.
This is excellent. I desperately want to play a game in this setting now, but where is this guy getting his slavic mythology from cause this is outta this world
Gyeh, gyeh! I bet they still think I'm in Scotland.
Just step in the water.
Fantasy MGS campaign when?
pic related
For a split second I thought you were my DM who had his own pantheon of stuff like Uruk. But then I saw the need for advice, so I feel fine.
(still gonna check the thread for a bit *advantage*-I just wanna roleplay better)
I can say without a trace of sarcasm that if I don't get to run a campaign in a setting like this soon, I'll be making a character from this setting.
Alright, that look cozy as balls
bump for this.
I kinda want to believe that this world exists alongside a Trudvang inspired Scandinavia.
The tree dude looks like a poorly disguised leshy which is a thing in Slavic mythology. No idea about the others.
Awfuck I had completely forgotten about this guy
His stuff is great
It's glorious
Just going to leave it out there that reverse image searching can get you some higher res versions of these.
monitoring.
>it stays more in the realm of low fantasy than epic or high fantasy
How is that? Looks quite high fantasy.
There are no animal trees in the myhology.
By the way, the Baba Yaga's mortar being jet powered was in some Soviet kids' movie parodying/deconstructing fairy tales.
>I swear to god if that fucking tree waves his arms around and goes ooga booga one more time I'll bury him in horse apples
I'm running a campaign set in Vsevolod's fantasy world, or rather a version of it I made up based on the pictures. It's glorious.
The overarching conflict is that of human space farers who crashed on a magical world. Now ages have passed, empires risen and fallen, and humanity lives in a state of medieval technology. Beset on all sides by mythical creatures who try and keep humanity down so they can easily feed of their souls, the humans have to rediscover the miraculous technology of their past as space farers to fight back. Kind of Numenera with a slavic vibe.
I don't know if it's high or low fantasy but I know the ancient greeks would have written a billion plays and poems in that setting if they had been shown those pictures, as it's quite in line with their sensibilities.
Got a link, source, anything? I'm very interested in adding stuff like this to my campaign.
I think it's Vsevolod's own invention. His ideas mix ancient aliens, myth and his own inventions. That's why it's so awesome!
I'm referring to the actual rpg Mythic Russia, not these pictures themselves. You ought to check it out, it's pretty amazing.
That sounds pretty amazing.
So he's basically a mixture of a Mormon and an ANCIENT ALYUMS GUISE?
Yes. Yes he is.
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Thank you! It really is. There's so much weird slavic stuff to draw on!
See pic related. That's a Todorac. Balkan monster that's like a centaur, expect it's a horrible demon that will rip you apart if you go out on the wrong night of the year, motherfucker. Probably some ancient memory of the mounted hordes that would regularly swing by and fuck up civilization.
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Thank you!
>Todorac
That's pretty metal, I had never heard of that before. Reminds me a little bit of the nuckelavee but less disgusting.
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Would you care to share more?
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>ye ancient Heybotte
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The face on that cliff is how bigfoot feels, I guess? Dude's just trying to hand that guy some wood an shit and he's like WOAAAAH IMMA GETTIN TFOTTA HERE
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The leap from fantasy to ancient aliens was really fast.
Alright, that's it for now. I have to go and get ready for work, hopefully this is enough to get some discussion going.
>I am not sure whether he is pitching this all unironically
Is all fiction divided into ironic and serious for you? This is, plain and simple, fantasy.
Is it? Because some of it seems like genuine ancient aliens stuff, which some people believe whole heartedly.
I don't know if he has written up commentary for each piece, but from what I have pieced together, it seems to start with ancient aliens creating the first civilizations, followed by the rise of Hyperborea and Atlantis, the fall of both, and the retreat of Hyperborea into what is now ancient Russia and the creation of an age of myths, gods, and magic, which eventually fades away into the modern world.
I don't know if there is some rationalization in his mythos of the coexistence of super-advanced aliens and supernatural forces like gods, but I would guess he does not really care about details like that.
No, I mean that I don't know if he actually seriously believes this stuff or not. From what I've read, it seems like that might be the case. Either way it is cool shit.
That's what I'm talking about.
There's a wealth of artists illustrating Slavic legends, many of them superior to Ivanov. You owe it to yourself to check them out if you like this topic.
For instance, Igor Ojiganov
Alexander Uglanov
Konstantin Vasiliev - a legitimately great and influential artist
Victor Kryjanovsky
Victor Korolkov
Thanks man, these are great. I think the main appeal of Ivanov is the added Tolkien-esque, Ancient Aliens elements and other weird stuff on top of the mythic Russian imagery.
This looks a lot like a f2p MMO named Allods Online I used to play. Made by russian devs ofc, kinda had the same vibe - russian culture... in SPACE FANTASY!!! Two factions - one was Tsarist Rus, the other was space Commies. Also drew quite a bit from 40k, undeads that were necron lookalikes, commies were basically Imperium, elves were decadent nerds famous for being either vampiric warlocks or strippers. Or both.
Shame the russian devs went full retard with pay 2 win stuff, krokodil addiction is expensive. Would love to convert some 40k stuff into this.
Psoglav: Freaky Serbian version of ghouls. They have dog heads, human bodies, horse legs and iron teeth and like to sneak about eating corpses, but are not above ambushing and eating people. Their name literally means 'dog head', and they have only one eye. They live in deep caves protected from the sun but with plenty of gemstones.
Now if that's not a great alternative to regular ghouls I don't know what is.
The story is more complicated than that. It was originally developed by the team that made HoMM V because they didn't want to be bought by Ubisoft. It's based on their old series called Rage of Mages (known as Allods in its home country). It was really a labour of love, you could tell that they poured themselves into the game. But in the end, they still needed a publisher, and they were dumb enough to sign a deal with Mail.ru, a Russian corporation known for ripping people off and providing terrible service. Basically, Activision, but without all the high quality and good games. Due to corporate shenanigans, they ended up in debt to the publisher and had to sell the unfinished game to them. And the publisher turned it into the most shameless pay to win shit ever known to the history of mankind. The game fucking failed in the global market, which you got to be an idiot not to have foreseen, but it's still alive in Russia, because the Russians are morons who can't comprehend the concept of fighting for their rights. The original developers haven't made a proper game ever since, by the way.
I meant another one if I recall correctly.
>one was Tsarist Rus, the other was space Commies
The correct term is Muscovy. Tsarist Russia usually refers to Russian Empire.
Just got done watching the video, have to say the music is as inspiring as the artwork. Thank you OP, for sharing this, and I hope you have a wonderful day/night.
I kinda knew all that, just didn't want to sperg even more. Truth be told, I'd play the shit out of that game because the scenery is amazing and the rule of cool just strikes a chord with me. I love sci-fi/fantasy mixes like that, I love the 40k shit they nicked, I love the white guard vs red army shit going on and the 40k stuff they nicked. Don't even get me started on the concept of shards and 'Treasure Planet' style starships. Basically I love every single thing about it apart from the abhorrent pay2win.
Interestingly enough, a friend of mine roped our gaming circle into trying their newest MMO, skyforge and it's more of the same p2win faggotry but with even less flavor in order to pander to the westerner whales. Man, just talking about that shit hurts. I wish all that cash goes into a sequel that keeps the aesthetic. If only all the soccer moms that forgot Blizzard are billing them monthly instead donated their disposable income towards funding my dream of being a space Commissar on a dreadnaught propelled by magic and enslaved elves instead of Vivendi's greedy little mitts.
TL;DR even the best of intentions and genius level creativity can't compensate for a shitty marketing strategy.
I fucking LOVE Russian Firebirds, one of the most powerful magic wielding shapeshifters in any lore, and no one ever takes them seriously.
Doesn't the word "shaman" originate from Russian folklore? And didn't they have the ability to force other people/creatures to change shape/species? Like turning people into animals, and animals into trees?
I know that they at least had the ability to talk to animals/grant other people the ability to talk to animals.
Thanks for introducing me to this. Lots of good lore ideas to steal from.
It's a shame pay2win ruins everything.
>some people
Shit used to be almost a religious movement in Europe.
>Doesn't the word "shaman" originate from Russian folklore?
No, it's some siberian stuff. They are essentially letting spirits posess them and act through them, or something like that.
I don't know, so much of this imagery feels like a gaudy knockoff of germanic/nordic/scandinavian stuff.
Yeah, it was awesome when it started, so many cool ideas they had. Ancient Egyptian undead cyborgs, funny little furry vikings, goblin football, Soviet fantasy, astral ships.
I've seen paintings from this artist before, that girl looks exactly like my ex, to the point of it being absolutely eerie when I pointed it out to someone else.
to be fair these cultures share common ancestors (tho they date far back) and have shared territories, especialy in russia, so thats probably the reason, Yugoslavs are way different of course.
This thread is giving me a really strong Viking vibe, and I'm not sure why. As far as I know, the Vikings never had any contact with people living in Russia in that time period.
Did they?
I'll post some older paintings featuring Russian/Slavic mythology and fairy tales.
The legend of the city of Kitezh tells about a city that was miraculously saved from the Mongols by becoming an invisible city under the waters of the lake Kitezh. The legend doesn't say anything about the ship like in this painting though.
>Great Spirit of Earth and Sky!!!
>It is time of four twenties!!!
>Bless me with the dankest of your herbs!!!
Um... Yeah. They essentially founded the state of Rus, when Slavs invited Rurik to rule them. The very word "rus" actually refers to Vikings. The Vikings living on the territory of modern Russia were called Varangians, they were traders and mercenaries.
The Vikings WERE the people living in Russia.
Your knowledge is shit then. Varangians, read about them.
There is theory according to which protorussian elites were either full viking or heavily blanda upped with vikings. Whole baltic sea was a place of extensive cultural and political exchange between slavs and scandis
Vasilissa the Beautiful by Bilibin.
The frog Princess by Vasnetsov.