Vanishing men and a horrifying truth

Katerina Ladon should need no introduction. She’s provided illustrations for a whole host of game companies and has been a regular contributor to Shadow of the Demon Lord and PunkApocalyptic: The RPG and, without a doubt, she has become someone I can trust to deliver the goods when I need for something monstrous and fun. As with the other fantastic artists who have contributed to the pages of Unspeakable Things, I gave Ladon no direction, no guidance beyond telling her to come up with something nice and scary, or something to that effect. Well, she turned over a delicious illustration that combines the erotic with the grotesque, as you can see on the cover page.

The image brought to mind the succubus, naturally. A striking feminine form holding aloft a powerless man to use or discard as she sees fit certainly falls within the concept of a fiendish vamp. Yet, her size, the glittering jewels dotting her skin, the exaggeration of her form evoke avarice, wealth, and excess. With “desire” fixed firmly in mind, I wrote this supplement to make the monster a manifestation of masculine desire and the ruin that loneliness, alienation, and unanswered appetite can bring. Let Mister Preswick’s mistress, the Mother of Destruction, wreak havoc in your games as she has on my creativity.