Illustrated Bestiary
A downloadable book and image pack
A compilation of 145 monster illustrations created by Oozejar, along with their descriptions from the Cairn RPG bestiary written by Yochai Gal.
The Illustrated Bestiary is an independent production by Gourdin Konbo Club (GKC) and is not affiliated with Yochai Gal. Texts and monster images are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 4.0 international (cc by-sa 4.0) license.
Some monster descriptions have been lightly edited to fit the book's format.
Feel free to use the high resolution PNG images of all 145 monsters to spice up your games, or illustrate your own content.
We'd love to hear from you if you make something!
contact@gourdinkobo.club
Bluesky: @gourdinkonbo.club
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Table of Contents Fix11 days ago
- Print (POD) version availableOct 25, 2024
Comments
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This is outstanding! The ogre, owl bear, and kobold illustrations are immediate all time favourites for me. And the invisible stalker is masterfully executed.
I have one suggestion for the next iteration: re-order a few of the monsters that are burdened with leading adjectives so they are grouped together rather than scattered throughout the collection. ie "dragon, black", immediately followed by "dragon, blue", "dragon, green", "dragon, red", and "dragon, white", all under "D" rather than having "black dragon" on pg. 12 and then "white dragon" on pg. 142. The references should be under "dragon" rather than under each colour. (Same goes for the various bears, giants, etc etc).
Thank you! I like to learn which monsters people like, it’s always kind of surprising, and nice of course.
Your suggestion makes sense. This is actually the way monsters used to be sorted out in the Cairn bestiary prior to the changes made by Yochai for the 2nd edition. I followed Yochai’s logic to keep things consistent between both the “official” content and the Illustrated Bestiary.
I would think of your proposed version more as an alternative that an updated version, but I like the idea. I’ll see if I can get my hands on this in the not too far future :)
this is fucking amazing. it's so evocative. i feel like i could build an adventure or setting with any single one of these monsters. thanks for making this CC by SA as well. you've done the world a service
Much obliged 💚 Please do!
This is great! Amazing illustrations. Picked up the regular bestiary and although its a great reference in a small package, it really left me wanting to see the monster art. This was the first hit when I looked for alternatives so thank you!
heads-up, table of contents page numbers are incorrect on the Spreads PDF. I just printed the spreads and saw that the page numbers are off. Just wanted to make you aware :-)
Glad you enjoy the book! And thank you for pointing out the ToC page numbers error, this should be a quick fix.
Edit: The issue has been fixed. This was actually a problem in all versions of the Bestiary. Thank you again for letting us know!
No problem! I just printed my own annotated ToC yesterday, lol. I should have waited a day. Kudos on the quick fix.
I have a monster card template I created for cairn. Would you mind if I used your imagery for these cards?
That’s awesome, go ahead!
No need to ask, you can just follow the CC BY-SA guidelines, which are very simple :)
I updated my cards with your imagery.
https://dustatron.itch.io/cairn-monster-cards
👍️
Bonnes idées. Excellent travail.
Super
Got myself a physical copy from Lulu. Thanks for making this amazing book!
Thank you so much!
I used a few of the creature illustrations for the bestiary in a new Mausritter setting: https://hlashbrooke.itch.io/whiskers-in-the-wind
Thanks for making this beautiful work available!
Wow this looks super neat! 🐀💚
Thanks! I’d be happy to send you a free download link for the whole thing since the art from your work is such a key part of it. I don’t want to post that publicly, but if you drop me an email here I’ll send you the link: https://tenacregames.com/contact/. Or you can find me on Discord as hlashbrooke.
Beautiful!
Thank you! ✨️
It’s really very beautiful!
🙌
Sharing this as Creative Commons? Now that's truly an extraordinary move! Thank you for sharing freely, and allowing your incredible work to spread further!
Happy to give back to the community!
Wow, top work, instant purchase for me!
Big thanks! Enjoy! 💚
The art in this book is just stellar. Releasing it under creative commons is exceedingly generous. If there's ever a print version of this, I'll absolutely pick it up!
Thank you for your support! 🫶
Thank you so much for generously sharing this.
💚
I'll also print it out and keep it handy for anything D&Desque I run. Thanks so much for also providing the art separately. Classy move!
Excellent💡
Incredible stuff
🙌
Amazing, thank you!
🌟
Will happily add a printed version of this to my library!
Thanks! It will be an honor to be part of it :)
This is insane!!! Not only is this incredibly good looking, but you’re sharing it with the world with CC-BY-SA! This kind of labor deserves support!
🫶
Esse material esta incrível!!
🔥
What a great work!
💚
Awesome!!!
I need a printed version asap!
I loved the Invisible Stalker! XD
POD coming soon！ Glad you liked the Invisible Stalker, it was a challenging one :P
Stellar
✨️
This is incredible!
🙏
This is extremely cool, amazing work!
🙌
Really, really good! Great work!
I create Print and Play games, if at any time (in the future, maybe...) I make some monsters related game, may I use these (awesome!) drawings?
The CC BY-SA license says you can :)
Wow!!
Thanks!💚