Mark Smylie, author of Artesia and the Barrow, has a Patreon

[Lord of Rhinos]

Patreon

 

Mark Smylie published the Barrow back in 2014.  Its a grimdark fantasy set in the world of Artesia that Smylie had previously created in a series of graphic novels.  As I recall several members of the board were big fans of that book. At this point he's planning on self-publishing the second book.  There was a lot of scuttlebutt back then that he wasn't able to publish the second book due to disputes between him and his comic book publisher.  He doesn't make mention of it, so maybe those rumors were false.

[Ran]

I have long wondered at the state of things.

I'm sad to see that there's no Patreon tier level for getting the next issue of Artesia Besieged, though. I could consider $20 a month for a page a week, or even every two weeks...

I see he explained the situation with this novel and his previous publisher in the Patreon introduction. 

 

ETA: I see Smylie has been active the last few months at the ArtesiaRPG subreddit, with lots of bits of world-building trivia revealed for those who enjoyed his Known World, as I have done.

 

Edited November 11, 2019 by Ran

[Gaston de Foix]

I've been looking for a new book to pick up.  Any insights into style/character/prose quality?

[Ran]

51 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I've been looking for a new book to pick up.  Any insights into style/character/prose quality?

See here for background and some light review commentary. What I will say is that it definitely feels like a first novel, that my reference to issues with his being a visual artist first relates to the fact that I think his writing is overly verbose and descriptive (and this doesn't seem to have changed substantially, reading the two prologue chapters unlocked on the Patreon) and not particularly beautiful so as to make it a pleasure to dig through to get to the meat of the story. But it's a very deeply built setting, one that he has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about, and he's able to set up some remarkable and memorable set pieces while also having no problem creating characters who are off-putting-but-interesting.

The Barrow itself is a sort of sword-and-sorcery quest against the epic backdrop of the setting. As to characters, the main one is Stjepan Black-Heart, who is the younger brother of Artesia, the titular character from the (stalled) comic book series that first introduced readers to the setting. She doesn't feature in the first novel at all, as it takes place prior to the events of the graphic novels and Stjepan and she haven't seen one another in a good while. Stjepan is... interesting, an educated man in a rather barbaric world, caught up in things bigger than himself. He's also bisexual, and in general sex is rather very present in the book; it's a very sexually free setting (as anyone who's read the Artesia comics would know), and the Goddess of Perversion has a role in things (through her worshippers) so lets just say there's some pretty deviant stuff going on, and Smylie does not shy away from explicit description. The other notable character is Erim, a warrior woman disguised as a young man, who has her own issues in relation to her sexuality and her place in the world.

There's a excerpt from the start of the novel that kind of features a lot of what I say above. If the actual setting intrigues you, Smylie has two sourcebooks available for free here which provides some of the essays and other information he provided in the annuals and elsewhere, with a smattering of his artwork.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Ran

[Gaston de Foix]

Thanks.  I'll give it a try. 

[Infidel]

Interesting - I really liked the tone of The Barrow. I may jump on the $5, assuming there is a modicum of editing to the in-progress chapters.

[Darth Richard II]

I always wondered wtf happened with PYR.

[Ran]

Signed up for the Patreon and he's up to the 9th chapter now. Moving at a good clip, and has shared unpublished art and new maps and other interesting tidbits A little depressing, as a fan of the comic, that it's ever clearer that he's basically given up on ever resuming Artesia Besieged, but so it goes. 

One thing I have to say is that The Witcher TV series kind of feels, in its geopolitics and general culture, not that far from Daradja and the Middle Kingdoms. Certain bits of the show really made me think, "That's basically how it'd play out in Artesia's world." 

[Ran]

On the off chance anyone might be interested, thought I'd update by noting he's released the 20th chapter (well, 18th proper chapter, plus a two-part prologue) today. I believe Smylie has indicated he had 50-odd done so far, and his updates have been at a good  and steady rate. Plus he's been releasing maps, a cleaned-up hand expanded istory of the world, and other things, as well as interacting with patrons in the comments.

It all comes together to make me feel like this is one of the most thoroughly built fantasy worlds of recent vintage. He has an enormous amount of stuff figured out, especially as regards the cosmology and history.

As to the story itself, I won't lie, Smylie still over-describes things -- I still think his having started as a visual artist makes it impossible for him to not convey all the details he'd put in if he was drawing something for the comic, and his having so much world building done means he can't but help reveal it when he can -- but Black Heart is flitting around characters in an interesting way, giving a broader picture of the setting. And one chapter, for Artesia fans, is noteworthy as it brings Daradja and some of its (very) notable characters back on the stage (it is also a very NSFW chapter, because, well, of course it is, given who features). 

Edited February 14, 2020 by Ran

[Werthead]

I know nothing about the story or world, but those maps are intriguing.

[Red Tiger]

I just want more Artesia, if he decides to pick that up again, i'll pledge.

[Ran]

On 2/15/2020 at 12:58 AM, Werthead said:

I know nothing about the story or world, but those maps are intriguing.

It's a pretty massive setting. I'm not sure what I'd compare it to. It's more in the direction of like a Black Company in some ways with the pervasiveness of magic and darkness of it all, but the cosmology is seemingly as deep and complicated as Erikson's Malazan books, and then there's the political angle that brings to mind ASoIaF. He has a bibliography (at the end of the compendum linked below) of influences, and the three fantasy series/books he notes as influences or inspriations are Mary Gentle's Ash, Carey's Kushiel series, and ASoIaF.

There are more maps at the old Sword and Barrow official site , and here's a compendium (possibly duplicated by the repackaging of source material he has posted for free at the Patreon) still around at the Artesia Online site.

On 2/20/2020 at 2:33 PM, Red Tiger said:

I just want more Artesia, if he decides to pick that up again, i'll pledge.

Yeah, I'd still pledge more if he started doing pages of it, but it really seems he simply can't see himself having the time. What a shame. That said...

Spoiler

The Daradja-set chapter I alluded to features Pavel, Hueylin, Ulin, Ferris, Umasza, Hymachus the armorer, Bran.... and Artesia herself, whose is most of the reason why it's a very NSFW chapter. Black Heart takes place almost exactly a year before the start of the Artesia comics.

Edited March 10, 2020 by Ran

[Red Tiger]

21 minutes ago, Ran said:

It's a pretty massive setting. I'm not sure what I'd compare it to. It's more in the direction of like a Black Company in some ways with the pervasiveness of magic and darkness of it all, but the cosmology is seemingly as deep and complicated as Erikson's Malazan books, and then there's the political angle that brings to mind ASoIaF. He has a bibliography (at the end of the compendum linked below) of influences, and the three fantasy series/books he notes as influences or inspriations are Mary Gentle's Ash, Carey's Kushiel series, and ASoIaF.

There are more maps at the old Sword and Barrow official site , and here's a compendium (possibly duplicated by the repackaging of source material he has posted for free at the Patreon) still around at the Artesia Online site.

Yeah, I'd still pledge more if he started doing pages of it, but it really seems he simply can't see himself having the time. What a shame. That said...

  Reveal hidden contents

The Daradja-set chapter I alluded to features Pavel, Hueylin, Ulin, Ferris, Umasza, Hymachus the armorer, Bran.... and Artesia herself, whose is most of the reason why it's a very NSFW chapter. Black Heart takes place almost exactly a year before the start of the Artesia comics.

Spoiler

Does it have gangbangs? I can't believe I just wrote that, but hey, it was kind of an Artesia trademark.

 

Edited March 10, 2020 by Red Tiger

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, Red Tiger said:

  Hide contents

Does it have gangbangs? I can't believe I just wrote that, but hey, it was kind of an Artesia trademark.

 

Spoiler

About half the chapter. 

 

[Red Tiger]

LMFAO, why am I not surprised.

[Ran]

The latest installment has some pretty wild cosmological stuff -- stars literally flying down to earth on the Day of the Dead because they're actually heroic spirits who were given a place in the celestial firmament and get to pay a visit to their old haunts on this particular day. Makes astrology particularly tricky (but also rather more real than in our world!)

Also, Smylie's put up the the Artesia Besieged issues he completed at Drive Thru Comics. There's also some freebies (the Book of Urgrayne, which I believe collects pieces from the annual, and the Compendium I linked earlier), a nice price-reduced bundle collecting all the issues prior to Besieged, and of course the Origins award-winning Adventures in the Known World RPG. 

[Ran]

For those who are patrons but have found it difficult to follow all the individual chapters, he's now bundled together the first 15 chapters into a PDF with the chapter illustrations he's made (full-color art), maps, and an additional glossary at the back. Handy way to read it. His intention is he'll do a Part 2 release at some point, and is presently hoping to get a part 3 done by the end of 2020. He'll still release chapters individually, but that gives a sense of his pace in terms of chapter releases and writing, assuming he sticks to ~15 chapters a part.

[Ran]

Also, for the next 6 hours you can get the first volume of the Artesia comic series at Drive Thru Comics at a steep discount, in PDF format. It's a little rough around the edges compared to the later volumes, but the battle sequences are pretty cool.

[Ran]

Smylie's completed his Historiae Mundi: A History of the Known World, filled with maps and information. Some of it was present in the RPG and in the various material he previously published, but there's a great amount of new stuff, including a section bringing the history up to present. It's available on DriveThruRPG for any fantasy world-building nerds out there... but if you subscribe to the Patreon, you can get it as part of that.

This reminds me to bring up one interesting thing that's become evident in these two novels, and which Smylie has been explicit about: his sense of the world has changed a bit since the comic days. It was originally a sort of late Medieval to early Renaissance kind of world, but he's increasingly expanded it to encompass something a bit like the Early Modern as well -- at least when it comes to fashion (tricorne hats and buff coats) and weaponry (pistols have started showing up), but in some other areas (printing presses are an important plot point in Black Heart).

While bombards were referenced in Artesia Afire, it felt properly medieval, limited to large artillery, but pistols is quite new. The explanation he has is fairly clever, though: weapons that use Black Elixir (as it's called) require a trained magician to be usable (so it's not exactly like our gunpowder). So armies may have magicians on hand to operate siege cannons and bombards, but personal weapons like rifles and pistols just aren't worth doing since no one has armies of magicians on hand ... and if you did, they wouldn't be in the frontlines anyways, too valuable.

A piece of art for the Historiae Mundi shows a naval battle with cannon on both sides, and in the foreground you see a cannon being readied to fire... and rather than a gunner with a lintstock, there's a magician clearly casting a spell.

 

Edited May 10, 2020 by Ran

[The Grey Wolf]

I love worldbuilding so thanks @Ran!

Is the PDF available for purchase of high quality?