INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN HARDY

Some time ago Stephen Hardy mentioned in WFRP Facebook groups that he had worked as a freelance illustrator on Flame Publications’ draft Lustria supplement in 1991. Moreover, not only had he seen the draft supplement, but he even still had sections of it. I was intrigued, and thought I’d ask him more about it. He was kind enough to answer my questions.

What is your gaming background?

I’ve been tabletop gaming for 40 years and play board games, war games, card games, and roleplaying games regularly.

“Professionally”, early on I wanted to be an artist and illustrator and I had some very small successes with ad hoc scribbles in a few magazines and so on, and later in my time in archaeology, I’d had a few more bits and pieces published. The “big break” (which ultimately never came off) was with Flame Publications and 1st Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying. Which is, I guess, is why we’re in this discussion today!

Other than that, I worked as a keystore manager for Games Workshop back around 1999-2000, when Warmaster was the new release and 40K was in 3rd edition. More lately I wrote my own fantasy wargame, Warband, which was published in 2015 (through Wargames Vault and Pendraken Miniatures). That was a lot of fun to do, and I’m currently developing various projects for future Warband goodness.

How did you become involved with the Lustria supplement?

On spec submissions! At the time I was looking to make it as an illustrator and sending samples to every company and publisher I could find (back then, the internet was still a new and mysterious thing so letters and paper were the way to go!). I got a few bits published here and there but nothing permanent or promising, but then Flame Publications showed an interest.

I recall being quite excited as I loved WHFRP 1st Edition, and it was really interesting to have the “back and forth” with Carl Sargent over what they were looking for and what their plans were for my work.

What work did you do on Lustria?

It was illustration work, and the images I produced went through various iterations as Carl commented and I tweaked. Frustratingly, most of those pictures have been lost, along with most of the correspondence. I still have a few though. I seem to recall that the comments from Carl were usually along the lines of, “Great! Redo with more spikes!!” Spikes and punk were a thing then, I guess, before the Dark Times…. I struggled with the Amazons as I wanted them to be softer and more feminine, but clearly spikes were the way to go.

What briefing materials did GW provide you?

I didn’t get anything from GW directly, as far as I know, as my briefing documents came from Flame Publications. It was mostly Carl and Tony Ackland who were overseeing the stuff I was churning out. It was actually inspiring to have professionals critiquing my art.

The briefing materials Flame sent through were a bit of a mix. There were some general submission guidelines and some comments about expected styles. They came from GW and were branded as a “Citadel Journal submission guide”. It boiled down to “we have our house images, so a space marine should look like a space marine, but we’re looking for your take and your style on those themes”. Backing that up were some specific requirements from Flame about slann, pygmies, and Amazons. If I recall they seemed most concerned about the pygmies, which they wanted to look “dangerous”. The advice talked about the risk of making them look comical which wasn’t what they were after.

What was the draft supplement like? What did it cover?

Well, following on from the above question, then there were the excerpts from the draft manuscript for the Lustrian supplement that they sent though. These were mostly background “fluff” details of the culture and appearance of the three playable races that were intended: slann, Amazons, and pygmies. There’s a lot in there about culture, society, material culture, how the various races lived, etc, and there are a few snippets of the rules, but these weren’t required for me to produce the images so I didn’t get more of this. Of course at the time as a keen 1st ed player I would have loved to see those rules! From the perspective of producing art it was really useful as it gave me a clear view to work from. It struck me that these were clearly and heavily based in real-world Mesoamerican cultures and so I drew heavily on existing art and archaeological artefacts from those people. I recall favouring the later Aztec imagery as it seemed closer to the historical timeframe of the Old World than, say the Incas or Pueblo cultures. The document itself is clearly a rough draft, with little typesetting, no imagery, etc, and if I’m honest, went into a lot of detail about the various cultures that many roleplayers would probably have skimmed over. Discussions of basket weaving and pottery styles probably aren’t high on the list of most roleplayers’ “vital information” lists!

Thankfully I have one “rough test” picture of two of the playable races that has survived.

Here’s the slann warrior that I did as a static study of the overall look. I tried to move to a more realistic “stringy” appearance than the prevalent slann images of the time and I recall Carl liking this. I suppose it was arrogant of me to think I could push the GW imagery in a different direction! As you know, the core look of these beasties was sort of pudgy and frog-like, and as with most things set out by John Blanche. I think Carl wanted tattoos added to the slann, but this settled what was likely to be the look for them in the supplement (or so I understand).

Given the instructions for the pygmies, and my interpretation that Flame wanted to move away from the “dark skinned Halfling” look, which I think Paul Bonner had done really well in the ‘Hanging Gardens’ adventure for White Dwarf, I wanted to get these little fellows right. My sources here were images of various Brazilian rainforest tribesmen. I wanted him to be small, wiry, and stealthy and so I put him in a hunting setting in the jungle. I didn’t get feedback on this that I can recall so I don’t know if that’s what Flame was after. I wasn’t really happy with his look as it still seems a little “cartoony” to me, but I really enjoyed doing the forest and the jaguar!

With the Amazon that I did, I went for a softer, more feminine tone. This prompted the “more spikes” instructions! Clearly I was off target with what they wanted here. I did redo this look adding in spikes, which I tried to twist more into tusks and teeth, or obsidian pieces, but sadly I’ve lost those redrafts. Oh and I wanted to draw the bolt pistols in but I seem to recall some instructions to avoid them. Don’t quote me on that though….

How similar was it to the Lustria material that had already been published?

It was very close. There were references to Rigg, the koka kalim drug cult, detail about slann spawning ponds, their lack of firemaking, and their unique links to daemonology (that I felt resurfaced with the later fimir concept from Albion). As I didn’t see the rules sections I don’t know how close “mechanically” it was to the setting already established mainly by Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It was also clearly stated that the slann were descendants of the star-faring “Old Ones”, and so the link between Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 was still intact. It’s interesting that there are mentions of slave lizardmen and kroxigors, but they don’t feature prominently as they do in later fantasy editions.

Who was writing the Lustria supplement? Was it based on Richard Halliwell’s draft or was it a new document?

That I don’t know. As a freelancer, I dealt exclusively with Carl Sargent. I assume there was a team involved and I’m of the view that Tony Ackland was overseeing the art direction.

Do you know why it was never published?

Again, sadly no. I’d put some considerable effort into the images and was looking forward to my “big break” so to speak. Carl was always clear though that Flame were pushing for this to go ahead but it might not happen, so when the word came down that GW had “pulled the plug” I was obviously disappointed but not surprised.

My guess is, based on what happened in the years after that, that GW were planning to take Lustria in a new direction (lizardmen and skinks) and the supplement would have entrenched the “old ideas”. I don’t think we’ll particularly miss the highly suspect pygmies, but I’ve always felt GW lost something when they ditched the slann (or rather amended them to what they are today). In my view, the slann were a genuinely unique and interesting creation of GW. I guess they were lost when GW broke the links between Fantasy and 40K as the slann crossed into both games.

Thanks to Stephen for answering my questions. His blog, The Shire and Everything After, can be found here.

For more on the Lustria supplement, see ‘Lost Warhammer: Lustria’.

Internal art by Stephen Hardy. Title image used without permission. No challenge intended to the rights holders.