In the late 90’s, my friends Barbara Manui and Chris Adams (who created the comic strip Yamara in Dragon Magazine) published a Role-Playing Game (RPG) called Continuum, about time travel. They hired the great Michael Kaluta to do the cover artwork, and they also approached me to create a few small pieces for the interior. The first two were “blueprints” for time travel devices. Pictured above is the first one, which I envisioned as a heavy, brass “pillbox” case, with circular control panels that swing out for individual use, and it was small enough to be easily carried in a coat pocket, for use in the field. The main image is a top-down view of the device, showing the control panels as well as some buttons on the top. On the left, you see a bottom view, and under that a side view of the brass device. It was kinda steampunk.

The second “blueprint” is of another device, featuring an energy coil. This is was also to be in brass, and it is pyramidal in shape. At the top-left we see the device from the bottom, and the three views at the bottom-left were details of each of the sides of the pyramid device. The large image to the right shows what is inside, when you open up the three triangular sides. This is a top-down view, showing the energy coil in the center, and the detail at the top-right shows a side view of the coil.

The other two illustrations I did were celestial/zodiacal in theme. Since time travel must deal with spacetime and the movement of the galaxy, I assume that these figured into the science of time travel in the game. As with all these illustrations, they were done in graphite and ink at a small size, since they would be reproduced as a quarter page.

The last diagram is another zodiac theme. The captions in these diagrams are in an alien handwriting. No, I didn’t take the time to create an alphabet or language, I just scribbled. The large “sigil” in both of these illustrations was informed by my former research into medieval manuscripts and codices, such as the Greater and Lesser Keys of Solomon. There will be blog posts on these kinds of sigils in the future.