Introduction to The Watcher in Ash

I preparing to run a roleplaying game set in the world of Dolmenwood, which is itself an OSR-inspired standalone game by the same author behind Old School Essentials. The game is a mash-up of D&D tropes and dark European fairy tales. So you get, for example, medieval-sized dragons, knights, and ley line alongside your Tolkien-esque goblins. And the entire setting is restricted to a large woodland named, of course, Dolmenwood.

One of the things that attracted me straight away is that fairy tale aesthetic. The strongest source material that inspires my taste in fantasy generally is that which is based in fairy tales, folklore, and the logic of nursery rhymes. Think Disney flavored by way of Jim Henson with a dose of Saturday morning cartoons. That's not to say I don't love Lord of the Rings, but to pretend that it was a seminal influence on my aesthetic preferences over Dark Crystal would be a disservice to my Muppet-filled childhood.

And so I find myself generated material for the upcoming campaign steeped in fairytale vibes. One such creation is a being I'm calling The Watcher in Ash, and I want to take this opportunity to introduce him (it?) now before discussion my brainstorming process. I have been, as you can see from the images on this site's home page, playing around with AI image generation. I do this not because I don't want to pay illustrators, but rather because I'm interested in the ways in which generative AI can push us in creative directions we may not have otherwise considered. In other words, I want to use the AI to define some constraints for me that I can then riff off of. And so I've done that here. By generated a handful of images, and especially by being surprised by the (arguably) mistaken direction the AI took on my final prompt, I was able to come up with something that excites me.

I'll talk more about that creative process later, but for now, here's a couple images generated by ChatGPT. Those images are clearly not my own. But I'm also including the overview of The Watcher that I did in fact create based off those images. Maybe I'll post the adventure I've been fleshing out in full.

The Creature

There is an antlered creature that lives in the deep woods. It goes by many names, and each culture has their own collection. It depends who you talk to, and also what season you talk to them in. For the creature is just one creature, but because it is so elusive, people often assume they are describing many.

It has a life-cycle that makes it very, very ancient. It's survival is tied to the Dolmenwoods' ley lines, from where it derives it's long life. But it is also fundamentally a part of the woodland‑‑-its trees, fungi, and animals.

It most often appears as an elderly, bearded man. it has the face of a human, but the antlers of a stag. Its hands are those of a man, but with long fingers that can be mistake for claws if you are in a mindset of fear. It's legs are also human, but it has hooves like a deer. And while he is naked, his fur creates the sense of clothing. The fur itself varies in texture. It is most often that of an animal. However, in the autumn and winter, it grows long and curly. Then the creature gives the impression it is wearing a coat of leaves to keep warm, but it merely its winter coat coming in thick‑‑-and perhaps matted with twigs and other forest detritus. Whether this debris is picked up by chance or deliberately inserted by the creature is debatable.

The most bizarre aspect of the creature's life cycle comes in the summertime when it temporarily ages in reverse, becoming a 17 year old version of itself. It is always 17 years old in the summer months, always returning to its youth, with all the vigor and ignorance that brings. For it does not keep the memories of its long life; or rather it seems to suppress them altogether until the first leaves begin to fall later in the year. During this time it also takes on the face, not of man, but of a goat. And yet it retains the antlers of a stag. Its eyes become a deep well of black. Its fur become lustrous, soft, and chestnut brown. It hosts all many of tiny creature in its coat. Its antlers team with new fungal growth. All of this life is shed later in the season. The animals and fungus populate the forest. The creature's human face returns. Its fur greys and grows in shaggy and rough.