Which flesh is your flesh?
Vermis I - Lost Dungeons and Forbidden Woods is an art book created by Plastiboo in 2022 - the first installment in a series of game guides for the fictional Role-Playing Game Vermis.Heavily inspired by Dark Souls and old-school dungeon crawling games, the book guides the "player" through a Dark Fantasy world mostly inhabited by monsters, skeletons, knights, and monstrous skeletal knights. Information on the world at large is mostly hinted at through the descriptions of characters and items, and even much of what is stated still leaves a lot to the reader's imagination.
The sequel, Vermis II - Mists and Mirrors, was released on September 28th, 2023.
Vermis I provides examples of:
- Black Knight: The world of Vermis has no shortage of these, from enemies (Lost Paladin, the bridge knight), to friendly NPCs (Lonely Knight), to playable characters (Lost Old Glory, Miner Knight, Cursed Fool). Though, the grainy monochromatic illustrations often make it difficult to tell what color a given knight's armor actually is.
- Book Ends: The first page of the book shows a corpse looking into a well to see an illusion of its past life. The last page has the player looking into a well to see that same corpse looking back at them.
- Brown Note: At several points throughout Vermis, the player can take on a horrific affliction by simply looking at or listening to the wrong thing. The game is implied to give the player a way to close their eyes, partially to help deal with these.
- Brown Note Being: The Helmet's Beast living in the pit at the Green Sun Ruins area will petrify the player's skin if they look at its eyes.
- Child Eater: Children are seen as a delicacy among witches, and are frequently kidnapped and eaten by them.
- Cool Helmet: While many characters wear simple close helms that wouldn't look out of place in an actual medieval battlefield (which are already cool in their own right), the book also features much more unique interesting and unique designs. Particularly the grinning metal visage of a goblin worn by the Goblin Knight.
- Crapsack World: The world of Vermis is one infested with all kinds of monsters, undead, witches, and far worse. Friendly encounters in the wilderness are somewhat rare, and the only major human population center mentioned is said to be in a state of chaos, split between several factions in a bloody civil war. Understandably, the birth rate in this world is rather low at the time Vermis takes place, and many of the children who do get born end up being abducted and eaten by witches.
- Dark Fantasy: The book depicts a very bleak setting, filled with dangers and unspeakable horror, and nearly devoid of hope. Humanity seems to barely be keeping its head above the water, and the infighting between incompetent leaders is doing nothing to help.
- Dem Bones: Vermis is packed to the brim with hostile skeletons, with the player encountering them in every single region with the exception of the Silver Swamp. Skeletal enemies are especially prevalent in Greengrave, as one would expect of a graveyard.
- Dungeon Crawling: The entire book/game is a trek through one dangerous area after another, with plenty of monster fighting, puzzles, and deadly traps along the way. The actual goal of the player's journey seems to vary from character to character.
- Flaming Sword: In the fireplace of a cursed cabin, the player can find a ring that allows them to turn their current weapon into one of these at will.
- Flying Face: The head of a witch can survive without its body, so there are many disembodied witches flying about the world, using their long hair as makeshift wings.
- In the Silver Swamp, the grotesque head of an old man floats out from the water and hints at the true nature of the swamp before disappearing.
- Towards the end, a floating skull is encountered in a garden. It speaks incoherently but seems to enjoy the player's company.
- Forced Sleep: The Silver Swamp is a quiet, foggy area cursed with magic that makes it so that those traveling through the zone will find it harder and harder to stay awake. When they finally fall asleep, they must face an eerie doll-like swordfighter in their sleep. If they lose, they die and become one of the many ghosts haunting the swamp.
- Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Averted. More than half of the playable characters are only shown with their face hidden by a helmet, and all but two of the non-hostile NPCs are knights with their heads fully protected.
- I See Dead People: Early on in the journey, the player can encounter a knight huddled in the corner in fear, babbling about the undead despite the fact that he seems to be the only one in the room. Coming back to the area later, you will find the knight dead, and you'll be able to loot his ring which allows one to see the ghosts of the deceased.
- Magical Weapon: One page is dedicated to The Immortal Blades: Bladed weapons of legend that are stated to be unbreakable and magic, with each having abilities unique to it. What those abilities actually are, however, is never elaborated upon.
- Zughot the Unseen Blade, found in the final area, is a sword with an invisible blade.
- Then there are a couple of weapons with strange qualities, but which may or may not actually be magic. One of these is a sword that makes a distinct whistling sound when swung, and the other is an unexpectedly light paladin's sword which gives off a colorful shimmer as though it were covered in oil.
- Mushroom Man: Mushmen are briefly mentioned in one section as creatures that can provide adventurers with information, ranging from incredibly helpful, to lies that will lead the listener to their death.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Goblins in Vermis are the remnants of a civilization that fell long ago. They prefer to lurk in the shadows and stab unsuspecting adventurers in the back. They also seem to have eyes similar to those of a chameleon.
- Our Witches Are Different: The witches in this world don't appear to be human. Some are described as having velvet skin and an appetite for children, and parts of their bodies are able to survive being severed from the whole.
- Rat Men: One of the playable characters shown at the start is the Rat Man. Once a man, now cursed to roam the world as a feral abomination.
- Rope Bridge: A long, rickety rope bridge must be crossed in order to escape the Flutewood Forest. Unfortunately, there's a large knight in heavy plate armor standing right in the middle of it. He charges when the player comes near, but this causes the boards to give out from under him, saving the player a fight but forcing them to make a mad dash to the end before the structurally compromised bridge gives out completely.
- Shoot the Mage First: When encountering the necromancer and his horde of skeleton warriors in the Green Sun Ruins, the book advises the player to ignore everything else and kill the necromancer as fast as possible, which then causes all of his servants to collapse.
- Stealth Pun: In the Pauper's Catacombs, the player finds a knight huddled in the corner, clearly inexperienced and not ready for the horrors of dungeon crawling. Said knight is wearing a full suit of green armor.
- Wicked Witch: From hexxing an entire swamp to turn it into a death trap, to kidnapping and eating children, to preying on innocent travelers. Witches are a significant force in making the world of Vermis the shithole that it is, and they are feared and despised by almost everyone.
