The Quest

As promised, here's a closer look at one of the pieces of art found in The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album. 

This piece is accompanied by the following text:

Welcome to a world of bold adventurers, strange races, magic and monsters! Here at the Green Dragon Inn, a busy inn in a town on the shores of the Lake of Unknown Depths, a group of adventurers have met to plan a daring expedition in search of fabulous treasure. They sit at an outside table, quaffing amber ale and charting their course to wealth beyond belief. 

The Lake of Unknown Depths is a body of water within Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk setting. The Green Dragon Inn is another locale from that setting, found in the River Quarter of the Free City of Greyhawk itself. However, the text doesn't explicit connect it to the Free City, asserting instead that it's found a nameless "town" on the shores of the lake. I can't help but wonder if this omission/obfuscation was deliberate.

In any case, the text continues:

In the left foreground, a pair of halflings, thieves by trade, ponder their part in the expedition. Ruddy-complexioned, their sandy hair and hazel eyes match their dusty gray and brown garments. 

I wish I'd remembered this illustration last month when I was looking at the depiction of halflings during the TSR era of D&D. The two halflings shown here look more like some sort of fairytale creature, such as a leprechaun or brownie, than Tolkien's hobbits.

 Across the table, the dwarven fighter's bright green eyes glow excitedly from his tanned face. Gold adornments glitter against the somber background of his dark brown beard and even darker waistcoat. Next to the dwarf, observing the party's map, is Sertern [sic] the cleric who, like his deity St. Cuthbert, favors blue for garb and silver for decoration.

Serten – spelled with only one "r" – was a player character in Gary Gygax's Greyhawk campaign, played by Gary's son, Ernie. His name, like that of the magic-user Tenser, is an anagram of "Ernest." Like the one described here, he was a cleric of St. Cuthbert. If it weren't for the fact that the name is consistently spelled as "Sertern," not "Serten," I'd have assumed the difference was due to a typographical error. However, it would seem to have been deliberate.

Behind and to the left of Sertern is a golden haired and russet garbed ranger, famed as a valiant fighting man. The elf to the right, indicating the goal on the chart, is both fighter and thief. His drab clothes suggest no particular identity, but his pale skin and auburn hair mark him as a wood elf. At his side stands another dwarven fighter, sporting a scarlet cap and gray beard. 

I assume that the references to colors throughout the text is intended as an aid to anyone who might choose to use the Coloring Album for its intended purpose. Even so, I must admit that it lends a certain vibrancy to the text it might otherwise lack. It's also a nice antidote to the notion that fantasy worlds come only in various shades of brown and black.

Gesturing with his tankard, the renowned fighter opposite wears his armorial colors: deep yellow for shirt and cap, green for trousers and vest. Two lesser warriors, lower right, are honing the sword blades to razor-like keenness. The swords themselves are works of art with gilded hilts and precious gems. The innkeeper, his wife and the stableboy are all busy caring for the wants of the adventurers, for they know the party will soon set forth on their quest – possibly to return loaded with bright gold!

Gygax won't win any awards for his prose, but he nevertheless paints a decent picture, especially when paired with the artwork of Greg Irons. Taken together, they present a somewhat grounded, even grubbier fantasy world of the sort one might find in the works of, say, Robert E. Howard or Fritz Leiber. I found myself thinking of Dave Trampier's treasure hunters from the back of the Monster Manual. The characters depicted here are all rough, hardened men on the make rather than conventional heroes. That's pretty cool in my opinion – and certainly in keeping with the literary roots of the game.