Step Through Ultan's Door

 

This lovingly crafted zine takes you through Ultan's door into a world beyond the veil of sleep. Inspired by the dreamer's tales of Lord Dunsany & H.P. Lovecraft, and the lush weirdness of Clark Ashton Smith & William Hope Hodgson, Through Ultan's Door presents a vivid setting that can be run as a campaign or inserted episodically into existing games. The zine's award winning lavish illustrations by a team including Huargo, Daria Khlebnikova, Russ Nicholson, Orphiccs, David Hoskins, Johan Tieldow, and Gus L bring author Ben Laurence's twisted and haunting vision to glorious hypnagogic life. You may purchase the zines in print and PDF form here, and in PDF form alone here or here. 

The Opium Dreamer Class by Orphiccs

Through Ultan's Door is a continuing serial zine that introduces you to Zyan, the flying pearl of Wishery. This cursed city of the dreamlands sits atop an island that hurtles through the Azure Sea, as the Zyanese call the sky of Wishery. It is a place by comparison to which the waking world is but a pale echo: a city where all hide behind carnivale masks; where candy making rivals the highest arts of opera and gamesmithing; where trial by puppet is the most feared punishment; and where humans engage in a slow war with cats. 

Testimony by Cat Illustrated by Huargo

Issue 1

Cover by Huargo

A printmaker named Ultan, while laying poison for rats in his shop just off the Square of Eidolons, is said to have come across a fabulous cerulean door in the space beneath his stairs. He claims that this doorway was not there as recently as the previous day, and, even more implausibly, that it leads to the sewers of Zyan, the infamous floating city of Wishery. This issue takes you through the printmaker's door into the Ruins of the Inquisitor's Theater, a dreamy dungeon replete with oneiric puddings, delicate shadow puppets, mischievous giggling white swine, and much more. 

Issue 2

Cover by Russ Nicholson

Go through Ultan's door in this second issue into the Catacombs of the Fleischguild, replete with fiendish traps of the butcher priests, blood demons, muscle jellies, flayed heretics, and much more! Learn about the shades of Zyan, bound to serve by antique contract, who hunger for the eerie light of the Necromantic Moon. Will you dare to steal the ruby known as the Heart of Haldicar?

Double Issue 3

Covers by Huargo and Orphiccs

Float down the sewer river of the dreamlands with this double issue. It presents a pointcrawl along a sewer river of the dreamlands that winds its way through Zyan towards the great sewer falls. It connects the dungeons from issues 1 & 2 with 7 new locations, including an entire settlement, the Sanitorium of the Benefactors, and introduces numerous phantasmagorical factions including the sewer wyrm Cephaia, Prophetess of the Muddled Waters; her rival the Cranemay, melancholy fey witch; and the Lurid Toads, ominously polite cannibalistic parasites. Complete with a giant dreamy sewer encounter table, and rules for playing your very own opium dreaming wizard!

A street view of the Sanitorium by Daria Khlebnikova

The zine is printed locally in Chicago on the highest quality French Paper Co. paper, with detachable covers that serve as maps (with delicious hand-drawn cartography by Gus L), and separate encounter cards. The zine is a beautiful artifact designed for ease of use at the table. 

As you can see from this photo, the map, encounter card, and key can all be open simultaneously, so that you can play directly from the zine without need for cumbersome printouts or frantic flipping. 

"This is almost the platonic ideal of the Artisan Zine. It could only be the product of an intelligent, well-resourced, careful individual with good taste who took a long time and much research, invention and playtesting to produce it. It's particular, from its dungeon treasures all the way to the paper chosen and folded by hand to make it. Even the form and the way the paper is arranged is an elegant arrangement of information and aesthetics that could only be made easily by one mind who both comprehended and *physically created* the whole thing as one."

Patrick Stuart, False Machine

"Lush, rich prose, the ruins of a decadent empire, and heavy opium clouds bring the OD&D HARD. Digest format is as digest format does. The descriptions are lush and rich with great imagery...which is exactly what I'm looking for. I want to be excited. Ben jabbed an idea into my head and I can fill in the rest effortlessly because of his ability to communicate the seed to me, the DM."

Bryce Lynch, Ten Foot Pole

"The city of Zyan feels like something out of Clark Ashton Smith, Lord Dunsany, William Hope Hodgson, or even H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands. There's a lush--even cruel--decadence to the place, described in a surreal, almost psychedelic way. Laurence's writing is remarkably effective in establishing a mood and I often found myself luxuriating in the prose. That's a rare thing in game writing, particularly when it comes to detailing what is, when all is said and done, a dungeon...It's a truly wonderful book and I cannot recommend Through Ultan's Door enough."

James Maliszewski, author of Grognardia 

"It feels really fresh. The ecology of the dungeon, the different kinds of creatures you encounter, the way it straddles this tone between light adventure fantasy and dark wicked fantasy, I think is really great… this whole dungeon feels like a really great monster manual come to life."

—Jason Cordova, Fear of a Black Dragon

"Like all the things I've seen from Ben Laurence so far, there is an incredible sense of taste to the design of all of this. There's beautiful layout, and he works with a couple of different artists to create this very coherent style: this very decadent, baroque, almost body-horror feel to all of the art. It works together beautifully..It's some of the best art I've ever seen in a zine for Dungeons & Dragons, that's for sure."

Ben Milton, Questing Beast 

The Manual of Yawning Incantations by Johan Tieldow 

The zine was also a winner of a Questing Beast Award as 1 of the 8 best RPG books of 2021!